Chapter 2 - Empty Beds

Koschei finished up the last of the major repairs and then went to the main Hospital, looking around for people who weren't wearing the long robes of Logopolitans.

The dark haired man and the blonde woman beside him caught his eye and he headed towards them.

"Owen and Katie Harper?" he asked and they turned to look at him in surprise.

"Yes?"

"Lady Aislynn had to run back to Earth, but she asked me to collect you all and bring you home," Koschei told them and they looked at him in surprise.

"She left without us?" Owen asked, his face disbelieving.

"There was an explosion, on Earth," Koschei explained, his eyes blurring with tears he had no time to shed. "The children, our children, we'd sent them to Earth to be safe, while the Entropy wave came, and ...," he trailed off, not able to continue.

"Koschei?" Martha Jones came towards him, face concerned and he looked at her, tears breaking free.

"They bombed Pete and Jackie's house, the children were there," he told her and Martha Jones wrapped him up in a hug. He clung to her, the feelings of guilt for what he'd put her alternate self through fading, as his fears for the children overcame him.

"We should go then," Owen replied. "Time Lord children being cared for in a regular hospital?" His gasp of horror made them all start moving, with Martha chivvying Koschei into the main hallway of the hospital.

"I had to get the TARDIS fixed, Tomoko disabled it," he murmured and the others gave him a variety of looks, but the medical instincts came to the fore once again.

"Okay, Koschei, now let's go, all right?" Katie told him gently, helping Martha to steer him. He dimly noted Harry, Rory, and the others gathering in the hallway as they walked, but he was so frantically worried that he found that he couldn't quite focus.

"Yes, of course," he murmured and looked up at Martha. "There are already so few of us, what did we do to make them hate us like this?" he asked and Martha just mutely shook her head.

"I don't know, but we'll take care of it, okay?" she murmured soothingly and he just nodded. The Doctor was right, these humans were rather wonderful when you got to know them.


Susan was moving from bed to bed, scanning the children as she went and trying not to think about what had happened. She had to stay to stay focused on the task at hand. Her years as a doctor in the War came in good stead just then. She had the steady nerves and calmness under fire that she'd learned in that conflict. Her hand never even trembled as she read the injuries to little Jenny.

Rose was sitting next to Jamie, holding his hand in hers, while Grandfather sat with Jenny and they both looked utterly devastated. Dar was standing in a corner, propping up the wall and looking like he was ready to stick a blade in someone. Susan glanced at him and shivered, remembering the cold-eyed man he had been when he'd captured her and dragged her to the Tower.

She had put the children into healing trances, stabilizing them, but she couldn't stop thinking about Davian. His face the last time she'd seen him, so serious and sad as he'd helped her gather the children's things together for the trip kept rising in her mind, despite her best efforts.

If he'd been a full Time Lord, would he have died? She wasn't sure, but she did know that he had been far less able to survive because she hadn't yet found a substitute for the Untempered Schism. She rose and stepped out of the ward, wondering if her failure had killed Davian, when Guinn ran up to her and grabbed her hands.

"Susan!" he cried, his face bleak and desperate. "Freeya! She's not here!"

"Are you sure?" she asked, knowing it was a stupid thing to say, but not having any other words.

"I've checked in every ward, she's not here!" he cried. "She's not in the morgue either," he told her.

"Could she be...?" she asked hesitantly and he looked at her.

Susan turned and went through the wards quickly, counting and frowning, seeking something and not finding it.

"Nurse, there should be another child here, a boy," she asked and the nurse shook her head.

"No, that's all of them," she replied and Susan frowned even more deeply.

"Where's Justinian?" she asked Guinn, who looked at her with an expression of deepening dismay, before he bolted from the room, and then she went back to her Grandfather. She didn't like the way her mind was working.


Guinn ran from the Ward, heading for the Trans Mat to Torchwood. He knew he could get a lift from one of the agents there by mentioning the Doctor's name and flashing the badge Kate had given him. He spotted Aislynn as he headed out and she stepped in front of him, forestalling his flight.

"Shall we, then?" she said coolly and he stood there, gaping at her, trying to understand what she was talking about.

"Excuse me?" he asked, startled.

"We're going to the scene of the blast, I take it?" she enquired with an elegant tilt of her head.

"I yes, I... I'm sorry. I never said so before, but I am," he blurted out and his face was flushed and scarlet.

Aislynn looked very surprised. She stood there for a moment, examining him, her eyes assessing, and he wriggled under her gaze, feeling like a truant student before a sharp-eyed professor.

"Thank you for that," she said, and her tone was neutral. "Come on, we've places to be."

"Freeya, she wasn't with the others, she's missing! Justinian too!" he spat out, a bit incoherently.

"If she was anywhere on the site, we'll be able to locate her. The Elysium has had a full... upgrade... several times during the course of the War."

"I know that, I did the work," he muttered and she nodded. "I just hope they're okay, I really do, she's only eleven and he's just ten," he told her, his face bleak.

Aislynn gestured him inside. Taydin was standing at the console and he gave Guinn a long level look that made the younger Time Lord feel as though he was being dissected.

"Coordinates?" she asked in a brisk tone and he recited them to her. There was a pause as she studied him. "Lord Guinntashay, because of your superior engineering skills, I am giving you access to run the scanners when we arrive."

"You are... kind. Thank you," he replied and she typed the coordinates in and got the access sorted.


Aislynn looked up at the man who had once been the Master and tried to recall the cruelty and coldness of his former self. She found it harder than she had thought to reconcile the quiet, sad man in front of her with the icy, precise automaton from before.

She recalled the emptiness of his eyes, the way his face had seemed frozen over, how his gaze would pass over you like you didn't really exist and she could hardly believe that they were the same person. Lord Guinntashay looked up at her and the deep concern in his energy, the way he was nearly quivering with worry, was the exact opposite of the uncaring creature he had been before.

"We're landing with cloaking on, I don't care to be seen unless we're ready," she informed him and he surprised her with a small smile.

"As odd as it sounds, I have UNIT ID," he told her, pulling out the card and looking at it wonderingly. "This universe is topsy-turvy," he said so softly that she barely heard it.

"A lot of things are topsy-turvy now," she said quietly and he looked up at her, almost fearfully. "We're landing." She finished the materialization protocol, wondering when she had ceased to fear this man.

She activated the main screen to show an image of the wreckage, then stepped back to get out of his way of the scanning console. For all the anger and distress he had generated in her, she had never doubted his real gift. He was utterly brilliant, a true once in a millennia genius. What had been done to him, what he'd been turned into, it was a perversion of everything she held in high esteem. She, who knew the pain and alienation that a gift could bring, felt a pang of sympathy for the further destruction done to him.

He ran his hands across the boards with infinite gentleness and then began coaxing them to a greater depth than she'd ever seen before, calling up functions that she'd been unaware of and she was shaken by that. He was moving with a grace and assurance that had been completely lacking before, as though he was far more at home with the ship than with the people who flew in her.

"You've done an excellent job repairing her, but there are some tunings that she still needs," he muttered, his eyes abstracted as he worked.

"That doesn't surprise me. I love this vessel, but mechanical engineering is not my forte. Her current well-functioning status is entirely due to Scout Commander Taydin's efforts." She rested a hand on the console, while Taydin remained silent, pretending he had heard nothing of her praise. "I would like to get her tuned at some point," she mused.

"You're an excellent engineer," he told Taydin and then dropped his head back down. "I designed these systems, though, so I have a bit of an advantage," he told her absently, his focus still on the console and the work of the sensors, rather than the conversation.

He called up the images of the house's interior and breathed out looking both relieved and unhappy at the same time.

"They're not here," Aislynn finally articulated what the scans revealed.

"No," he replied, his voice flat and hard. "They're gone."


The Doctor stood beside the body bag, his face like stone. He'd been called away from his children's bedside by a confused orderly and dragged down to the morgue, Dar trailing after him like a dark shadow. He didn't want to be there, with the body of a young man that he had so spectacularly failed to protect, but there wasn't anyone else.

He was strangely grateful for Dar's steadying presence behind him. The younger spy was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, looking like a body guard and making the orderly somewhat nervous, but the Doctor didn't care. At least he wasn't alone in here.

"From what the first responders said, he was found on top of about three of the children, he'd thrown himself over them to protect them," the white coated technician told him, glancing nervously at Dar, and the Doctor nodded.

"He was a good lad," he murmured, wishing that there was more to say. Wishing that this life had not ended so soon. The empty place in his mind where Davian used to be was like an ache. There were too many gaps now and it hurt to think about.

"We need a name for the certificate, and if you could notify next of kin?" he asked gently.

"Davianarsonavanit, of the Arcalians," he told the man. "He was an orphan, we're the only family he had." He was fighting the rage in his guts, but it was so hard as that face, once so filled with sweetness and warmth, lay there, gray in death, bruised and cut up, the beauty of him wiped away. His Song stilled forever.

"Yes, sir," the man replied a trifle uncertainly and frowned at the page.

With a sigh, the Doctor patiently spelled out the boy's name. It was the last thing he could ever do for Davian, after all. Might as well do it right.

As soon as he was done, he looked down one last time at the boy, and sighed.

"I'm so sorry, Dav. I should have protected you better than this."

"We all should have," Dar muttered and he closed his eyes against the tears that were threatening to spill over.

The Doctor turned to go back to his children, his deadly shadow drifting behind him.

He tried to keep them all safe, to protect them, to give them futures and he kept failing, time and again.


Guinn was staring at the monitor and then he looked at Aislynn and opened the door.

"I can see Agent Chesterton, let's go enquire, shall we?" he asked.

"As you wish… I haven't proper identification, though, will that be a problem?"Aislynn pointed out.

"It'll be okay, don't you have Torchwood ID?" he asked, looking perplexed.

"We left Earth without notice, because we had received a Distress Chant from Logopolis. I was to receive paperwork, but it hadn't been completed at the time."

"Well, Agent Chesterton knows you, it'll be fine," he replied and headed out, flashing his badge at a very surprised police officer.

"Guinn Campbell, UNIT, and Aislynn Novia, Torchwood," he told the officer and waved at Agent Chesterton, calling her over.

Guinn paused and stared at the scene. Seeing it on the scanner hadn't quite prepared him for the reality of what had happened.

The whole house had been flattened. Pieces of rubble and chunks of masonry were strewn for hundreds of feet around the area and the wreckage was still smouldering. Jackie's gardens had been trampled down, first by the blast, then by the paramedics and firemen as they worked to free people, the gravel walkway had been blasted clear even.

The air had an acrid tang, a mix of burning materials and the foam the firemen had laid on to put it out. It was swarming with first responders, reporters, and above them, helicopters and Zeppelins circled like carrion birds.

The house itself was just gone. charred fingers of wreckage stuck up in places, but the rest of the place had been spread out over a very wide area.

"They were damn lucky anyone survived at all," Cassie told him, as she walked up to them, looking grave and very unhappy. Guinn nodded at her and gestured at Aislynn.

"Agent Chesterton," Aislynn said politely. "We really must quit meeting at bomb sites. Are you all right?"

"Yeah, we do always seem to meet after a bomb has gone off," Cassie agreed. "Mike and I are fine, actually, but Ramani and Chris are dead. I don't think you ever met them, but they were damn good agents." She shook her head in sorrow.

"I am so terribly sorry," Aislynn condoled her and Guinn nodded, glad that she was doing the talking just then. He pulled out his screwdriver and began doing scans for things that the Elysium's sensors were not tuned for.

"Let me walk you over, without a badge, you're a civvie here and London's finest get a bit touchy," she explained. "Pete..," she stopped, eyes filling with tears that she dashed away angrily. "Pete said you were going to join us soon, so no doubt Geneva will work her magic and get you all squared."

"How did someone even get in, I know you lot always have a perimeter around his house!" Guinn asked.

"We don't know. No one came in or out. We know that because we have cameras on the place." She shook her head.

"How did they survive?" Guinn asked as the readings told him of the total structural collapse of the house.

"They were all in the front hall, it's been specially reinforced, it's the only thing that saved them," Mike told them as he came walking up. He was smoking a cigarette, his hands clenched, and his face thunderous.

"How are they?" Cassie asked.

"Davian died," Guinn answered, his voice sounding calmer than he felt.

"Loren might not make it and Arista, we don't know yet. Pete had Jenny and Jamie under him, shielded them from the worst of it."

"God," Mike bit out.

"What kind of monster kills little children?" Cassie asked and Guinn winced.

"They've done it before," he reminded her and she nodded.

"Yeah, I know, but it backfired so badly on them, I never imagined that they would do it again."

"The chance to kill so many? Must have been too tempting," Mike spat out, looking disgusted.

Aislynn had been silent, checking around with her tuning sonic.

"Guinn… come and look at this." Her face was grim. "Do tell me I'm wrong, won't you?

Guinn walked over and scanned the area she was concentrating on, and scowled thunderously as he grasped what he was seeing.

"What?" Mike asked. "I know that look, the Doctor gets it too."

"There are traces of Vortex energy and temporal residue," Guinn admitted.

"Which means what in English?" Cassie asked.

"A TARDIS was here. That's how they got in and out without your seeing anything," he sighed and the Torchwood Agents both stared at him in stunned silence.