Tesla sipped at the wine as he studied the data that Helen and the other doctor handed him, the Cabal had some intelligent people on their side he had to give them than. But they weren't as intelligent as him. The vampiric DNA in young Ashley had clearly been derived directly from the Source Blood, something he had never had the chance to try in his own attempts to revive his race. However it had been spliced into Ashley's own abnormal DNA in such a crude fashion that Nikola was amazed she had retained her ability to teleport.

"Well this is what happens when you allow children to meddle in things they don't understand." He said, "I'd be ashamed to have produced something of this poor quality."

"That's my daughter Tesla." John snapped at him.

"And while that no doubt counts against her, she has the many qualities she inherited from her mother to cancel it out." Tesla snapped back, "That was not, however, what I was referring to. No, it was the quality of the genetic engineering used. Look here." He pointed to a specific section of coding, "They just smashed open the DNA and stuck the extra in with no regards for the damage they were doing, it's a wonder they didn't kill her in the process."

"Thank you Nikola." Helen said, she had been trying very hard not to think about exactly what the Cabal had done to Ashley while she was their prisoner. She knew that she would eventually have to face it, no doubt Ashley would need to talk to someone at some point and she might be more comfortable with her mother than anyone else. "Can you help her?"

"Can I come up with a way to remove only the crudely spliced vampire DNA but still leave her natural abnormal DNA intact?" Nikola said, "Of course I can Helen, I already have."

"What?" Helen asked shocked.

"Well when trying to resurrect a species it always helps to have a back up plan in place just in case."

"In case your creations turn on you?" Owen said.

"It hasn't been a problem yet." Tesla said, "But as Helen will testify, as yet my creations of mindless. Perfectly obidient but totally useless as far as my over all plan goes."

"I hope you aren't planning anything too stupid Nikola." John put in.

"None of my plans are ever stupid." Tesla said, insulted at what John was implying. "The problem is in the actions of others not in my planning." Druitt muttered something that sounded a lot less than complimentary about Tesla and the degree of relatedness of his parents.

"We'll discuss your latest plans later Tesla." Helen told him firmly, it was her job, as the head of the Sanctuary Network, to protect humans, abnormals and the balance between them. That sometimes meant making very tough decisions and at others smacking one of her oldest friends until he saw sense. Though she doubted anything would ever cause Nikola to abandon his quest to restore his ancestral race. "Where is the device?"

"The safest place I could think of." Nikola said with a grin.

Helen groaned, "Please tell me you did not hide it in my House." Tesla just grinned wider and Helen shook her head, "John, please take this grinning cretin back to the Sanctuary so he can retrieve his device from whatever dark corner he's hidden it in."

"Helen, who ever said it was hidden in a corner?" He drained the rest of his glass of wine. "Not bad for such short notice, I might have to revise a very few of my opinions about the Welsh."

"Please grasp your ears firmly and remove your head from your conceited arse Tesla." Ianto shouted back from where he was working on a report.

"That was a compliment you ignorant child!" Tesla snapped

"Then you need to check your definition of a compliment." Ianto shouted back, "And for the record ignorance can be cured but stupidity is forever."

Tesla looked thoroughly miffed while Helen tried to hide a smile. John didn't even bother trying and started laughing, "Well done Mr Jones." Tesla glared at John.

Helen managed to fight back her smile and managed to look faintly exasperated. "Gentlemen, if you can put aside your rivalry for a few more minutes and please focus on Ashley. John, take Nikola to the Sanctuary so he can retrieve his device."

"As you wish." He said, then raised his voice. "Miss Sato, can you please lower the EM shield?"

There were a few clicks as Tosh typed the order into her computer, "Done." She called back. With a nod to Helen, John grabbed Tesla's arm and teleported them to the Sanctuary.

"Are they always that bad?" Owen asked.

"I think it's getting worse with age." Helen told him.

"And nice one teaboy!" Owen called out as Ianto walked past them, carrying a folder that needed filing in the Archives.

"I knew all that practice on you would come in handy for something dead-boy."

"I thought you never spoke ill of the dead?" Owen complained.

"I decided you talk too much to be counted as dead." Ianto shouted back over his shoulder as he disappeared in to the passage way that lead to the Archives.

Helen shook her head and wondered if the incessant arguing was simply programmed into males, regardless of species, but no, it couldn't be, Henry and Will were never this bad. At least not when she was around.

"Where's Ashley?" She asked the room in general, having suddenly realised that her daughter was no where in sight.

"Still with Jack on the Shooting Range." Tosh called out, she taped a few keys. "She looks like she's working out some frustration." Helen walk over to that she was standing looking over the Asian woman's shoulder. There, in the small window showing the CCTV footage from the range, was her daughter. Absently Helen noticed that her daughter's stance was, as always, perfect but she paid more attention to the look on Ashley's face, as best she could see it with the angle of the camera. She'd seen that look once before, when they were shooting together on the range after they got back from Rome.

"She's not dealing well with this." Helen muttered.

"That's not really surprising though is it?" Gwen asked as she joined the other two women, Owen had disappeared, likely to tidy the autopsy room since he was never one for talking about the emotions and feelings.

Helen shook her head, "Ashley has proved in the past that she doesn't always handling bad things very well. After she found out about John she tried to pretend that it didn't matter to her, then she just tried to ignore it completely."

"That's not healthy." Gwen agreed.

"It will be worse for this, because she won't be able to ignore it." Helen said, "In my House she'll be fine, no one will say anything to her but if she visits one of the other Sanctuaries she will be faced with what she was forced to do while under Cabal control and I fear that if she tries to bury her feelings on this subject instead of dealing with them she will eventually have a breakdown."

"Quite possibly." Gwen agreed "But Will's a psychiatrist, can't he talk to her?"

"He can try." Helen said, "But when it comes to things about which she doesn't want to talk nothing can make her. A trait she comes by naturally I'm afraid, on both sides. I hope she will eventually speak to me, or at least one of the others, she grew up with Henry so she might turn to him instead. I don't care provided she talks to someone."

"I think she might do just that." Tosh said pointing to the screen where Jack had wrapped his arms around Ashley was carefully taking the gun from her shaking hands.

Jack was a little concerned with the focus and determinations that Ashley was using in her shooting, it could almost be described as malice. Looking over at his god-daughter he wondered what she was seeing in her mind, because it was almost certainly not the paper targets they were shooting. He didn't say anything to her though, knowing that she would talk when she was ready and not a moment sooner.

He became very concerned when he noticed that Ashley's hands were shaking but she didn't stop shooting. Placing his own gun down on the table he stepped up behind her and wrapped one arm around her waist while this over one reached up to take the gun from her.

She released it immediately and almost collapsed into his arms. Jack carefully lowered them to the floor and pulled her onto his lap so that she wouldn't get cold on the concrete floor. He set her now empty gun on the floor and pushed it away from them, then he removed her protective gear and his own before he wrapped both arms around her.

There were tears running down her cheeks and she tried to muffle the sounds of her sobs in his shirt. With his arms still around her he managed to reach his wrist strap and tap the necessary controls to block the CCTV for the room, knowing that Ashley wouldn't want anyone to see her breaking down like this.

"He's blocked it." Tosh said the CCTV from the shooting range went blank. "There's no way round it." She added looking over her shoulder apologetically at Helen.

"That's alight Toshiko." Helen assured her, "She's safe with him and if she talks to him then at least she's talking to someone rather then repressing everything."

"I didn't want to Uncle Jack." Ashley said quietly as her sobs calmed slightly. "I didn't want to hurt any of them. I didn't want to kill them. Doctor Hitomata tried to reason with us, but I couldn't stop myself, I killed him!" She sobbed again, "He was always so kind to me, he called me 'Ryuuko', it means 'dragon-child' because when I was twelve I trashed his office when I was left alone there for five minutes." She sobbed again, "He called me that when he was trying to reason with me, he reminded me that the dragon can be a protector as well as a destroyer. I broke his neck."

"No you didn't Ashley." Jack said firmly, as he rocker her in his arms slightly, just like he used to when she was a child. It had never failed but if she had a bad dream when he was visiting her in London she would seek him out rather than James, and she'd had a remarkable number of bad dreams as a child. "The Cabal killed him. Is the gun the killer or is it the person who pulled the trigger? They had control of you, you were not more guilty than the gun it. The Cabal are the murders and I am sure that in whatever afterlife there is Hitomata knows that it wasn't his Ryuuko that killed him but he would be sad to see his little dragon broken by the true monsters in the world."

"I see them, every time I close my eyes." She admitted sadly, "The horror in their faces as they knew they were going to die, the sadness that it was me killing them. They looked betrayed, Jack, and they should have been, because I was destroying everything I believed in, everything my mother had worked her entire life for."

"The Cabal was destroying everything you believed in. The Cabal was destroying your mother's life's work." Jack said firmly. "

"I should have been able to do something."

"Did you know what the Cabal would do when you went to that compound? Did you deliberately allow yourself to be caught? Did you surrender and give in the their mind control or did you fight every step of the way?"

"I fought."Ashley admitted in a soft voice, "I fought so hard but it didn't do any good."

"Yes it did Ashley, you stopped the other one killing your mother." Jack reminded her, "And you decided that you'd rather die than allow yourself to hurt her. That is what matters, you did good when you broke through the control."

"I tried to escape." Ashley said softly, she'd stopped crying now but she didn't try to move from Jack's lap. It reminded her of been a little girl, when she had believed that her mother and uncles would stop all the bad things in the world from getting her. It was nice to feel that again and to know that as long as Jack had his arms around her she could allow herself to be that little girl again and her Uncle Jack would protect her.

"When?"

"Just after they started using the Source Blood on me. They had to ease off the control drugs so they wouldn't interfere. I was dream of mom, and when she called my name in the dream I woke up and my mind was my own. I used my nail to cut the straps holding me to the table and then I tried to kill the doctor who had been controlling me, drugging me. But I couldn't, I think that insect was stopping me."

Ashley shuddered with revulsion, "Just the memory of her makes me sick." She spat, "She acted like a proud parent, she kept saying that it would be okay, just like mom did when I broke my leg or when I was sick. Between that and the sight of these nail I wanted to be sick." Ashley took a deep breath, trying to hold back another sob, "I just wanted my mom to burst through the door with Will and Henry, or my father to appear, slit her throat, then wrap his arms around me and take me home. I wanted to wake up in my own bed and then laugh about my bad dream with Henry over breakfast."

"I know you did darling." Jack said soothingly, "And I am so sorry that we couldn't come for you. If I had known what was happening I would have called in every favour I had to find you, your mother and Druitt did everything they could as well but the Cabal had you too deeply hidden. Even when told it was hopeless they didn't give up on trying to find you."

They sat in silence for several minutes before Ashley finally asked, "Uncle James is dead isn't he?"

"I'm afraid so."

"I knew he must be, otherwise he'd be here too, no matter what state his House was in, he'd leave Declan in charge and come to see me. Besides if he had been alive Whitcomb would have named him as the target not Declan." Ashley said, "What happened to him?"

"He never made it back from Balaasam." Jack told her, he'd cornered Helen for the full story the previous night, wanting to know the details himself since James Watson had been a good friend to him for many long decades. "The machines that kept him alive had been failing for sometimes but he didn't tell anyone, your mother things it was because he knew no one could help and he didn't want to worry them. He was able to help retrieve the Blood and he was happy to have one last challenge." Jack smiled, "He was also able to make up with your father. John told me that their tasks were linked and at the end James knew that he had changed."

"That's good." Ashley said, she was crying again but this time they were tears of grief for her god-father. "Do you think mom would let me go to his grave?"

Jack shook his head, "He hasn't been buried yet. Your parents both devoted all their time to trying to find you, they knew that James would have wanted that, rather than taking a day to bury him. Your father brought him back from Balassam, but I'll talk to Helen and make the arrangements. I believe he wanted to be buried at his Sanctuary."

Ashley nodded, "He did. He mentioned it last time I was at London, he even pointed out the spot. Do you think he knew?"

"A mind as great as James's knew that death could not be cheated forever." Jack said and then nodded, "He did know but he didn't want to worry anyone with what he knew could not be changed." He saw Ashley wipe her eyes, "Are you feeling a bit better now?"

Ashley paused to think for a second and then seemed almost surprised at the answer, "Yes, I think I do, just a bit but I do feel better."

"It'll take time Ash but you will get through this." Jack promised, "And I'll help you." He lifted her off his lap and then climbed to his feet before offering her his hand to help her stand also. Then he pulled an handkerchief from his pocket and drying her cheeks. "There now no one will know." Ashley gave a shaky laugh, they both knew that it was a lie. Her eyes would be red from crying but it was nice of Jack to try and make her feel better. "And I better put the CCTV back on before someone wonders what we're doing in here." He smirked at her as he activated the controls on his wrist strap to restore the CCTV function to the room.

To say that Kate Freelander was nervous when she heard that John Druitt was back in the Sanctuary and looking for her would be something of an understatement. She would never admit to anyone that the man scared her but he was Jack the freaking Ripper, who wasn't even slightly worried when they heard he was looking for them? Apart from Helen and Ashley Magnus obviously.

She wasn't going to hide from him though, that would be the same as admitting she was scared of him, so she thanked Steve the Lizard-man when he warned her, and carried on feeding Ralfie, the baby Steno that had imprinted on her. Despite the best attempts his favourite food was still burgers.

"Miss Freelander." Druitt said as he walked through the door to Ralfie's room. "I would like to speak to you for a moment."

"Go for it then." She didn't stand from where she was kneeling to pet Ralfie but she did look up at him.

"I would like to thank you." He probably couldn't have surprised Kate more if he had asked her to marry him. "I understand from Ashley that you stopped her from killing Helen."

"Did she tell you that I did it with a Rocket launcher?" Kate asked hesitantly, she wanted to make sure that Druitt knew the full story. That way he wouldn't come after her blood later when he found out. At least in that exact moment she had Ralfie to help protect her.

"She did not." Druitt said. "However that does not lessen or remove my gratitude, you save Helen's life and spared Ashley the memory of killing her mother, how you did that is irrelevant since little short of a rocket launcher would have stopped her at that point." He bowed, "So as I said: Thank you Miss Freelander, I am in your debt."

"You're welcome." Kate said and he nodded and left. Then she turned to Ralfie, "Well that was weird. Was it me or did Jack the Ripper just thank me?" Ralfie didn't seemed to have an answer but instead licked her face and tried to climbed on her, wanting to play. "Alright, alright." Kate said with a grin and threw the ball for him again.

John arrived back in the Entrance Hall less than a minute before Tesla, he was both unimpressed and unsurprised when the vampire walked in with a glass and metal cylinder in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. Some of Helen's best wine unless John was very much mistaken.

"There was something wrong with the wine Mr Jones provided?" John asked, "You were drinking it fast enough before we left."

"I have decided that the wine in Wales leaves something to be desired." John assumed that the issue was the man who handed the wine to him, Tesla was undoubtedly pissed off that Ianto Jones had been able to outsmart him. Trying, and possibly failing, to hide his smirk John grabbed Tesla's arm and teleported them back to Cardiff.


AN: Please leave a review? There's just one more chapter and the epilouge left now