A/N: I'm so addicted to the Olympics it's unreal. :o How's your team doing?


Chapter 7 – DI Doctor

There'd been another death, that much was apparent. Of course, the Doctor had quickly said good morning to Leah and then run off to investigate.

Rose just rolled her eyes, giving Leah a hug and a kiss and tried to make sure the crumbs of the toast Leah was eating stayed in her mouth as opposed to all over the covers.

"How are you feeling this mornin'?" Rose asked her as the girl downed her orange juice with noisy gulps.

"Fine," Leah told her loudly, orange juice all around her mouth and on her hands. "I wanna go home. When I go home?"

"Just a few days," Rose assured her.

"F'rever," Leah said with a sigh, finishing the orange juice.

Rose smiled, taking the cup and using a tissue to dry her mouth. Leah began to dry her hands on her front before Rose gave her another tissue to use instead.

"So what d'you want to do today?" Rose asked.

"Make neckle-says, peas?"

Rose lowered her eyebrows, confused. "Neckle-says...? Oh! Necklaces!" she realised. "Yeah, we can do that."

The Doctor arrived again, looking sombre. Rose didn't even need to ask him, she could tell already.

"Me and Daddy are just gonna talk a sec," she said quickly, getting to her feet and grabbing the Doctor's arm to pull him away from Leah's bed towards the door, maintaining an air of confidence.

The Doctor scratched the back of his head awkwardly for moment. "Zolynawian Reverse Influenza."

Rose stared at him. "You're kiddin'. Tell me you're kiddin'."

"Wish I was," he muttered, still scratching the back of his head. "I'll get the file and check through it later; find out the cause. But two in two days both from ZRI. That's..." He paused to try and think of the word, lips pursed. "... Coincidental."

"Do you think..." Rose began, and then stopped herself for fear of what was about to come out of her mouth and the implications of it.

"Do I think it could be the disease?" the Doctor completed vaguely. "Maybe. I need to check the records. But Leah's going to be fine."

"Yeah," Rose replied positively, smiling. "She's a Tyler."

"A Tyler with a Gallifreyan immune system," the Doctor amended, grinning.

"Let's stop worryin' about her, yeah?" Rose suggested. "I dunno, it's just so selfish. If other kids are dyin' then we should focus on that rather than her all the time."

"So we're saying that something is going on here?"

"Maybe."

He gazed at her for a moment, a smile tugging at the edge of his lips.

She finally caved, grinning cheekily with her tongue between her teeth. "Oh, come on, we love it."

"Yep," the Doctor conceded, giving one final ruffle of his hair before taking her hand and moving back to Leah, who had been sat there staring at them for a while.

"What were you talkin' 'bout?" she asked instantly.

"Nothing!" her father replied brightly.

"It carna been nothing, else you'd stand there 'n not talk but you were talking so it was somefink," she pointed out, naturally suspicious.

"Nope, cannot fault that logic," the Doctor admitted with a shrug, then changed the subject. "So what are we doing today?"

"Necklace-making," Rose told him.

"Oh... Fun," the Doctor said, slightly unenthusiastically.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Go and find that file."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Go and investigate, we'll be here."

"Okay," he said, giving his girls each a kiss and a hug. "I'll see you later."


Jack was on the road to Bristol to a trace location. The radio was appropriately playing Chris Rea's 'Road To Hell' as he was crossing over the Severn Bridge, the ex-Time Agent breaking just about every driving rule in the book.

It took him barely twenty minutes to drive the fifty minute journey, following the map to pull up outside a Sainsbury's. As per usual he strolled straight through the police tape to the scene of the crime around the back of the building, shoving policemen out the way as he went.

He scanned the area, and found the point of alien interference near the wall. After checking with a forensic investigator, he confirmed that the exact point was where the body had been found.

"18-year-old and 17-year-old girl, truanting from school," the policeman told him. "Were having a smoke round here and they were attacked. They were both taken to hospital, one's in a coma and the other's in shock."

Jack pounced on this instantly. "Which hospital?"


Within two minutes he was back on the road, and Chris Rea was still playing. The policeman had been reluctant at first to tell him the name of the hospital, but one quick flash of ID and the gun in holster had quite easily been all he had needed to talk.

If they were both still alive, that was all the lead he needed. If he could just find out what this alien had looked like and how it had attacked then he was already over halfway to solving the problem.

Suddenly, his phone rang. He checked the caller ID, smiled and picked it up.

"Hey, Rose," he said down his blue-tooth headset. "How are you guys doing?"

"The Doctor's found himself something to investigate," Rose replied.

"Didn't take him long. How long was that, two days?"

"Not even that," Rose replied, laughing. "You gotta be bored on your own down there."

"Oh, don't worry about me, got my own little investigation going on."

"Really?"

"Yeah, some weird alien activity's going on so I'm checking it out."

"Well have fun with that," she said. "Oh, wait, Leah wants to talk to you."

There was a small scuffle, and suddenly Leah voice came very loudly through his earpiece. "Unka Jack?"

Jack suddenly stiffened, eyes wide as his hands tightened on the steering wheel. But he managed to keep his voice level. "Hello, Leah, how're you feeling?"

"Bleh," she replied. "Is boring here. When are you coming?"

"Sorry, Leah, I've got a bit of a mission at the moment, but I'll try my best to come and see you," he said quickly.

"Promise?"

"Promise," he replied.

"I miss you!"

"I miss you guys too," he replied, smiling.

"Daddy wants to talk to you, I can tell him to go away if you want?"

Jack laughed. "Nah, put him on."

"Okay, bye!"

"Bye, Leah!"

More scuffling over the phone was heard, just as Jack came off of the Severn Bridge and took a right.

"Jack, are you near your laptop?" the Doctor asked.

"Yep," Jack replied. "Hold on."

He pulled over into a pub car park, reaching over to his bag and pulling out the laptop. "What d'you need?"

"I need you to check some medical records for me, can you open a browser and type in the URL ' -ch-r.u-c.w' then go to..."

"Slow down," Jack protested, quickly hitting in the URL and hitting enter. A very odd-looking website came up, filled with strange markings Jack couldn't make head nor tail of. The layout was very weird. "What the hell is this?" he asked seriously.

"I hacked your laptop a while back to access the universal web... Did I not tell you?"

"Nope..." Jack replied, frowning a little. "Well, that'll explain some of the weird stuff me and Ianto found the other night on this crazy por..."

"Meanwhile!" the Doctor interrupted. "Through your telepathic connection to the TARDIS you should be able to read a..."

"Wait, hold on, I have a telepathic connection to the TARDIS?" Jack asked, boggle-eyed.

"Yes... Did I not tell you that either?"

"No, you didn't."

"I'm sure I mentioned it."

"You really didn't."

"Well, you've got one. So the text should partially translate for you. Have a look down the right side of the page and try and find something that resembles 'alerts'. In that language it sort of looks like the word 'peach' spelt backwards."

Jack had a long hard look, and after a moment found a backwards peach in the menagerie of English and alien. "Okay, found it," he said, clicking.

"On the list, try and find something that might look like Zolynawian Reverse Influenza, or it might be ZRI."

There was a brief pause, as Jack looked. "I can't see it. Hold on, I'll send a picture of the screen."

He raised the Doctor-enhanced iPhone and took the picture, sending it over the call.

"... It's there. Thanks, Jack."

"Got what you needed?"

"Yep," the Doctor replied.

"So what's your problem?"

"Had a few deaths on the ward from it. I checked the records, there's no obvious cause in either of them but 15 out of 21 kids on the ward have it. Looks like it's going around though, that was the alert list for common viruses at the moment across the universe."

"... Leah has ZRI," Jack muttered.

"Thanks, Jack, did know that," the Doctor replied somewhat sarcastically, then checked himself. "Sorry."

"You're worried, it's okay," Jack told him. "She's gonna be fine if she's anything like Mummy and Daddy."

The Doctor laughed a little. "Yeah. Thanks, Jack."

"You're welcome."

"Come up and see her. She really wants to see you."

"I've gotta go. Bye, Doc," Jack said abruptly, and hung up.


The Doctor pulled a face and checked the screen, but Jack had quite literally hung up on him. He sighed and pocketed the device, turning to go back into the ward before he suddenly caught sight of a small child's feet sticking out from behind a desk in the corner, obviously hiding.

"Hello?" he asked, moving forward. He didn't expect an answer, and he didn't get one. As he peeked his head around he found a little Ha'can boy in the foetal position with his face pressed into his legs. By the way the child was dressed and the very yellow face of a Ha'can with an exceptionally high fever the Doctor could tell he was a patient.

"Hello," he repeated, dropping down to his height. "I'm the Doctor, and you are...?"

The boy looked up with big bright-purple teary eyes. "Go away."

"That's a strange name," the Doctor continued brightly. "Are you okay, Go Away?"

"Shush," the boy whispered, and buried his head again.

"What is it? Is this hide and seek? I love hide and seek," the Doctor enthused, climbing behind the desk to sit by him. "Who are we hiding from?"

"My Dad," the boy whispered.

"Why?"

"He's evil," the boy said with a sniff.

"How's he evil?" the Doctor asked gently.

"I saw him last night, he killed Bri."

The Doctor blinked in complete surprise. Bri was the boy who was found dead that morning. "Sorry?"

"He was all dark with a dark coat and everything, and his face was twisted and he laughed and killed Bri."

The Doctor sat up a bit, suddenly very attentive. "Where's your dad now?"

"He got sent to Volag-noc."

"When?"

"Five months ago."

"What was your dad's name?"

"Ger-k'la Jitahi-lom Ta."

The Doctor's heart fell a little at his words as he realised very quickly what was going on here. He knew that name. "No one can escape Volag-noc, well... except me... and I promise you that your dad isn't here and he will never ever find you. If he'd escaped it would be all over the universal news and the Shadow Proclamation would be here in an instant to protect you and your mum, okay, Lirok?"

"But I saw him," the boy croaked.

"Hey," the Doctor said, leaning forward to hug the boy. "I believe that you saw him, but you are running a really high fever. There's this little thing called hallucinating; when you're really, really ill sometimes your mind can conjure up all these strange images. Some of them are nice, but some of them are nasty, but most importantly they're not real. So you're safe, okay?"

The boy looked up at him, sniffing. "Okay."

"Good," the Doctor said, smiling. "Better get you back to bed then, Lirok."

"Okay," the boy said again, but was so weak he could barely get up. So the Doctor scooped him up and took him back into the ward to a relieved-looking nurse, bidding the boy good bye before moving back to Leah's bed, approaching the completion of Leah's brand new necklace absolutely chocked full of beads.

"Oh, very nice!" the Doctor complemented as Leah held it up to him, beaming. "My two clever necklace-making girls."

Leah giggled. Rose was looking questioningly at him, so he inclined his head over to the corner. Then he felt Leah staring at him.

"Back in a minute," he told her with a winning smile.

She harrumphed and folded her arms, so he laughed, gave her a kiss and went to Rose.

"So what you got now?" Rose asked.

"I think it might be the fever that's killing them," the Doctor began quickly in an urgent voice, turning from happy father to worried Doctor in two seconds flat. "That boy was running a massively high fever. He says he saw his dad kill the boy who died last night. That's a hallucination, because his dad was Gakar-k'la Jikaqi-lok Ta."

Rose pulled a face at that. "What, and he's dead? He choked to death tryin' to pronounce his own name?"

"No," the Doctor continued, utterly serious. "You don't remember this? It was all over the news for weeks..."

Suddenly Rose's jaw dropped. "Oh god, he's the one that..."

"Yep," the Doctor finished so she didn't have to. "So that boy has to be Lirok, the only child that survived. His mum must be around here somewhere."

"What are they doing on Earth?" Rose asked quickly, trying to force herself not to turn around to look at Lirok.

"Probably new identities, new life... seeking asylum. Earth is pretty safe; being a level five planet. There are a lot of alien asylum seekers here on Earth."

Rose nodded, and got back to the subject in hand. "So we think it's the fever?"

"I don't know, but it seems too obvious. Just in case there was someone in here I'll try and get access to the CCTV, but it's not likely, not with all the guards on the perimeter."

The conversation was suddenly cut short by a little voice from across the room saying, "I'm bored!" and they both looked up to see Leah sitting there with her arms folded expectantly, so quickly they both shut up and obediently went back to her.