Chapter 7: The Crash Site.

Having landed Jack's spaceship on a deserted loading platform, the Doctor, Jack and Rose made their way between a couple of freight trains, towards the bomb site's main gates. Here, they paused behind a pile of bundles to observe.

"Ah, they've got Algy on duty!" Said Jack. "Must be important."

"We have to get past them." Said the Doctor.

Rose peered at the handful of soldiers patrolling the gates. "Do the words "Distract the guard" appear to move in my direction?" She said, combing her hair with her fingers as she did. She took a step forward but Jack held up an arm to stop her.

"I don't think so." He said.

"I can handle it."

Jack snickered. "I've known him a few weeks. Trust me, you're not his type. I'll distract the guard."

As Jack stepped out from cover, Rose spluttered in surprise. If she'd assumed correctly, Algy and Jack were an item. This never happened in those old war films. She particularly didn't expect it from a man who'd been flirting outrageously with her all evening.

The Doctor, on the other hand was completely unphased. "Relax." He said, reading her expression. "Jack's a 51st century guy. He's a little more flexible when it comes to dancing."

"How flexible?"

"Well, by his time, you lot are spread out across half the galaxy."

"Meaning?"

He smiled. "So many species. So little time..."

"What, so that's our mission when we get out there? We seek new life and... and..."

"Dance!"

Jack climbed through the gap between two trucks so he could get to Algy without any of the other soldiers stopping him. "Hey tiger!" He called to the Sergeant.

Algy turned to him, with a slightly vague expression. "Mummy?"

"No, it's me." He moved so he was standing in better light.

"Mummy?"

"Algy, it's me Jack. See?"

"Jack? Are you my mummy?" Said Algy. At this point, he coughed and gagged as a gas mask began to rise from his throat.

The Doctor rushed forward. "Stay back!"

"You men, keep away!" Jack shouted to two soldiers, who'd run forward to help him. Seeing the Air force captain's uniform and lacking any other authority, the soldiers obeyed.

They looked at the man lying on the ground, a gas mask fused to his face. Not only had he had no apparent contact with another victim but the whole process had taken about half as long as it had with Constantine.

"The effect's accelerating." Said the Doctor. "It's becoming airborne."

"Then what's keeping us safe?" Said Rose.

"Nothing."

Their conversation was cut off as the sound of an air raid siren filled the air.

"Here they come again." Said Jack.

"Didn't you say a bomb was going to fall here?" Said Rose, feeling as though they were wandering towards a smoking volcano.

"Doesn't matter." Said the Doctor. "'cos if this mutation's becoming airborne, we've got hours to go."

"'till what?"

"The end of everything. Of the whole human race, and can anyone else hear singing?"

"Rock a bye baby, on the tree top,

when the wind blows, the cradle will rock,

when the bow breaks, the cradle will fall

down will come baby, cradle and all."

The voice sang the song through again straight away. The Doctor followed it into the mess cabin. Here, he found a frightened-faced Nancy singing to a soldier in a gas mask, with his head laid peacefully on the table.

He motioned for her to move away. She sang another verse of Rock a Bye Baby whilst rattling her handcuffs to show why she couldn't. The Doctor crept up to her and removed the cuffs and the two of them crept out of the room, pausing at the door to finish the song.

At Jack's instruction, the soldiers nudged Algy on to a stretcher, with the aid of some long poles. They then carried him into the mess, careful not to touch the flesh, and dumped him with Jenkins. The Doctor shoved a bit of metal through the door handle then went to the tarpaulin.

"See?" Said Jack, uncovering the cylinder. "It's just an ambulance."

"That's an ambulance?" Said Nancy.

"It's a bit hard to explain." Said Rose. "It's... from another world."

Jack noticed a series of dents and gouges around the seal. "They've been trying to get in."

"They've been trying to get their hands on Hitler's secret weapon." Said the Doctor.

Jack shrugged. Trying to cut through space-age armour with 1940s technology was like a medieval blacksmith trying to break into a bank vault. Nonetheless, he made a note to drop the junk a shorter time before the bomb in future, just to avoid scrambling the timeline. As he pondered this, he pressed some buttons on a keypad by the seal. As he did, a part of the circuitry went up in a puff of smoke.

"That didn't happen last time." Said Jack.

"It hadn't crashed last time." Said the Doctor. "There'll be emergency protocols."

A light began to flash on the keypad, an alarm sounding each time it did.


In a deserted hallway in the Albion Hospital, the lone figure of the child abruptly swung its head to the side. "Mummy?"

Elsewhere in the hospital and the streets, gas mask victims rose from their beds, and hiding places and walked, almost as one, towards where they had been directed. A whole platoon of gas-mask zombies trooped out of the main doors of the hospital.


The door to the mess cabin thumped as Jenkins and Algy hammered on the inside. The Doctor promptly sprang into action.

"Jack, secure the main gates!"

"Why?"

"Just do it! Nancy, how did you get in?"

"I cut the wire."

"Show Rose." He tossed his companion the sonic screwdriver. "Set it at 28."

"What's that setting do?" Said Rose.

"Reattaches barbed wire."

Rose fiddled with a dial on the base of the sonic. Having found the right setting, she held it up to the end of the barbed wire and pressed the button. When nothing happened, she touched the ends of the wire together and tried again. The exact frequency destabilised the molecular arrangement of the steel and the two ends formed together like liquid.

"Who are ya?" Said Nancy. "Who are any of ya?"

"You'd never believe me if I told you." Rose replied.

"You just told me that's an ambulance from another world. There's people with gas mask heads running around and the sky's full of Germans dropping bombs on me. Tell me, do you think there's anything left that I wouldn't believe?"

Rose pondered for a moment. "We're time travellers, from the future."

Nancy laughed. "Mad, you are."

"It's true, we have a spaceship..."

"It's not that. Ok, you're time travellers. I believe ya. Believe anything me. But what future?"

Rose noticed that Nancy was looking skyward as she said this. The Luftwaffe were blanketing the sky, like a huge cloud of doom. No matter how many anti-aircraft shells got lobbed at them, they kept on coming, night after night. Tonight, they were particularly targeting this part of London and explosions were sounding barely half a mile away. Even if they could somehow stop the child, they wouldn't save the world.

"Nancy." Said Rose. "I know how this looks. But it isn't the end."

"How can you say that? Look at it!"

"It's not the end of the world or anything. Don't tell the Doctor I said this, but I was born in this city, in about 40 years time. I'm a Londoner, from your future."

"But you're not... German?"

"The Germans don't come here. They don't win. You manage to stop them. You know what? You win!" She grinned at the girl. "Come on. Let's see how the others are getting on."

Another bomb landed, even closer than the last. Jack was tapping at the buttons on the cylinder more fiercely than ever, knowing he had to get out of this place, if not this time, as fast as possible. Finally he found the right combination and the hatch slid open. "See Doctor, empty."

The Doctor wasn't convinced. "What did you expect a Chula medical transporter to be full of? Bandages? Cough drops?" Jack showed no comprehension of what he was implying so he asked Rose. "What do you think?"

"Don't know." She shrugged.

"Yes you do." He held up his hand.

"Nanogenes!"

"Exactly. It wasn't empty. There were billions and billions of nanogenes in there. Enough to rebuild a species."

Jack went pale as cold realisation dawned on him.

"You getting it now captain? When the ship crashes, the nanogenes escape, ready to fix all the cuts and bruises in the world. But what they find first's a dead child, probably killed earlier that night. One wearing a gas mask."

"What, so they brought him back to life?" Said Rose. "They can do that!"

"What's life? A quirk of matter. Nature's way of keeping meat fresh. Nothing to a nanogene. One problem though, these nanogenes aren't like the ones on your spaceship. They've never seen a human being before. All they've got to go on is this one child, and there's not a lot left. But they do what they've been programmed to do. They can't tell what's gas mask and what's skull, but they do their best. Then they spread out, work to be done. 'cos now they think they know what a human being's supposed to look like. Time to fix all the rest. And they won't stop. They won't ever stop! The whole human race is going to be torn down and rebuilt in the form of one terrified child and nothing in the world can stop it!"

Jack looked slightly sick. "I didn't know!" He went to stand away from the others, not daring to look at them. The Doctor, meanwhile, had pulled open a panel and began looking through the controls for any system that wasn't deadlocked.

"Mummy?" Called a voice down the line.

"Mummy?"

"Mummy?" Two more stepped up to join it.

"Mummy?"

"Mummy?"

"Mummy?" Three more appeared from the far side of the enclosure.

Rose looked at the light that was flashing on the cylinder. "It's bringing the gas mask people here!"

"It thinks it's under attack." The Doctor explained. "It's calling in the troops."

"But they're not troops!"

"They are now. 'cos this doesn't just fix you up. It gets you ready for battle."

"Is that why the child's so strong? Why it can hack into the TARDIS phone?"

"All that weapons tech in the hands of a hysterical four year old. And now there's an army of them."

More and more victims began to appear, covering every section of the fence. There was now no way out. They could let the Germans blow them up, or go out to join the gas mask zombies. Somehow, the latter prospect made the former seem like a relief.


Author's notes: One change in this chapter, regarding how the sonic can reattach barbed wire. Even though the sonic screwdriver has a lot of special abilities, conjuring barbed wire out of thin air just seems like an ability too far.