Author's Note: Today, one of my employees was hit by a pickup truck and died. I'm pretty upset about this. Skye was a wonderful person, she was kind and caring and thoughtful, and she had her whole life ahead of her. It was a senseless and horrible death, caused by a careless and stupid driver. I can't believe I'm never going to see her again.
This chapter, and this story, are dedicated to her.
Enjoy.
The Doctor and Seo's deaths were all over the news.
Front page of every newspaper.
They left one for Jack, after they'd finished killing him, that evening. Just so he could spend the rest of the night, and all the next day staring at it. Staring at the dead bodies, on the front cover.
The two dead bodies of his friends.
Way to pile on the guilt.
He stared at it for a long time. Just trying to think of how he could have done it. Why. Trying to remember those two years.
After he'd given up with that, Jack just resorted to staring at the picture and trying to remember them. Missing them, bitterly. Mourning them.
Seeing Seo's dead face… it made him remember the Valiant. Made him remember the Master, as he'd dug Seo's body out of the ocean, trying to force life back into it, unable to admit his defeat.
He'd told Buffy, once, that Seo had beaten the Master by killing herself.
Buffy had been furious. Screaming at him that her baby girl dead was never a victory. Never would be.
"Glad you didn't get to see this, Buffy," said Jack. "If anyone could have found a way to kill me for good, it would have been you, right now. After you'd found out I'd done this."
He spent a long time thinking that, as he stared at the newspaper.
How he'd betrayed the whole damn family.
No one left alive except Dawn and Jenny. Maybe Jenny would come over and do the honors of flaying him, now that Buffy was dead. Or maybe…
"Maybe that's what I gotta do, next," said Jack. Staring down at that photo. "To make this right. I gotta find out what really happened. So I can tell Jenny the truth."
That seemed as good a goal as any.
Least he could help someone in that family. Even if he seemed to be doing a pretty good job of royally screwing up everyone else.
"Better Jenny finds out from me than reading it in the newspaper," said Jack. Already testing the stresses on the chains, and finding a weak spot. If he just… tugged hard enough…
The right chain flew out of its holding on the wall.
Thank God for shoddy government contractors!
He quickly got himself free from the rest of the chains. Scooped up the newspaper, looking down at it, swallowing around a lump in his throat.
"Never thought you'd see your sister dead in a photo on the front page of a newspaper," Jack muttered.
Then froze.
As he repeated his words.
"Never… thought… you'd see your sister… in a photo in any newspaper. At all." His mind racing. "Because Seo doesn't show up in photographs."
Jack tore open the newspaper, to find the continuation article. Saw a frozen frame of the footage in which he'd shot the Doctor and Seo. The frozen frame where Seo's body had fallen.
A body… he could see.
"It's not her," Jack realized. Turning back to the front page, again. Her face. "It's a copy. A duplicate. If it was her… she wouldn't show up. She wouldn't be there."
He threw the newspaper on the ground.
New determination rising up inside of him.
"I knew I was never that bad!" Jack realized. "That's why I took the mission for the Agency! Because I knew I wasn't actually killing them!"
He must have faked the whole thing.
He remembered faking the whole thing.
With increasing clarity, he remembered connecting into the surveillance footage. Altering it. Making sure that instead of them vanishing before they hit the ground, it looked like they'd actually hit. Actually fallen.
Body doubles.
"They're still out there," Jack said. Taking out a hidden gun, and blasting the lock off his prison door. "And that means, I gotta go find them. I gotta go rescue them." He raced out. "If it's the last thing I do!"
First place to look.
The Time Agency.
During those two years he couldn't remember.
The Doctor found Seo, the next morning.
Long enough that he hoped she'd gotten last night's conversation out of her head. But not long enough to allow Romana to get to her, again, and start convincing her that he could do things he couldn't.
Giving Seo hope, and then making him have to snatch it away from her again!
Whoever Romana was, it wasn't the Doctor's friend.
That was for sure.
"I know where we are!" the Doctor insisted. "What this place is! You were right. Big Panda, Baby Panda. But the people analyzing us aren't sightseers — they're temporal experts."
Seo rolled over, in bed.
Trying to bat him away from her, so she could sleep a little longer.
"Oh, you really are part human!" the Doctor said, shoving the blankets off and pulling her out of bed. "Get up! Rise and shine! No time to lose! We have to escape!"
That seemed to wake her up.
And a few minutes later, she was up and dressed and on her feet, ready to go. Hand-combing out her hair, trying to get the tangles out, as she raced forwards.
"It's Jack!" the Doctor cried. "That was the clue. That was what we'd forgotten. I didn't realize it until I remembered the younger Jack turning up to shoot us."
"Turning up to…" Seo's eyes widened, as she remembered. "Jack shot us!"
"But he wasn't Jack, yet," the Doctor said. "You could tell it just by looking at him. He wasn't wrong. The younger one, not the older." The Doctor hit himself on the forehead. "Stupid, stupid Doctor! Why didn't you work that out sooner? That's why he had no idea what you were talking about, when you mentioned the Activator."
"The Activator?" Seo said. "What about the Activator?"
"Haven't you guessed?" said the Doctor, altering his course, as he followed where she was subconsciously leading him. "Younger-Jack's been intersecting your life for some time, now. I could never quite work out how it all fit together. Not until the moment his younger self popped out of nowhere, and transported us here."
"With that beam!" Seo remembered. She grimaced. "I remember that. It really, really hurt. I think I screamed."
She rounded another corner, and the Doctor followed.
"So where are we?" Seo asked. "And where are you taking us?"
"Me?" the Doctor shrugged. "I'm not taking us anywhere. But the last time you were here, you got round all the transduction barriers. And I'm guessing, somewhere deep down inside, you still know how to do that."
Seo quirked an eyebrow at him. "Last time I…?" She shook her head. "I told you. I've never been to Gallifrey. I thought it was… just… out-of-timey and non-existy!"
"Well," the Doctor said, as he watched Seo manage to crack the code to the room with the transduction barrier in no time flat — almost without thinking about it — "let's just say that the last time you were here, you weren't exactly… yourself."
Seo seemed genuinely shocked when the door opened for her.
But still ran inside and launched herself at all the Time Lords working there. Attacking them with a savagery that made the Doctor think he had to be right about a few little bits of her previous life breaking through.
But Seo won out.
No deaths. Just a few strategic bits of hand-to-hand combat, and everyone in the room was out cold. As if they'd never known what hit them.
He didn't interrupt her, as she began to work the transduction barrier controls, like an expert.
"There," Seo said. Paused. "Except… I don't know what I did or how I did it." She looked up at him. "Am I saving your life, yet? I keep feeling like there's something deep down inside me that's showing me how to do all this, because I've got to save your life."
That was quite kind of Glory.
The Doctor hadn't quite expected that level of benevolence.
"Ah, well, I'm sure it's all you," the Doctor dismissed. "Being brilliant, as always. Although…" gesturing at the unconscious bodies. "…I'm not sure I approve of you doing that."
"I don't think I approve of it, either," Seo agreed, looking down at them.
Then snapped her eyes back up to him, and grabbed him by the wrist.
"Come on!" she called. "We've got to escape! We've got to save your life!"
"One thing, first," the Doctor said. Then locked the transduction barrier room using a little Time Lord trick he had up his sleeve. Encryption code was bigger on the inside.
No Time Lord pretender could hope to beat that.
"Now, run!" the Doctor shouted.
They hadn't even begun to make it out of the Capital before the alarms began to sound. And they could hear the sounds of guards gathering nearby.
"Faster!" Seo cried.
The Doctor raced after her, hard as he could. Must be getting old, because it was getting harder and harder to keep up. He felt himself falling behind, as she tugged him along, behind her.
"Halt!" shouted one of the guards. "You've taken down the transduction barrier without approval. Surrender, or be severely punished."
They swept round the corner, just before a shot could ring through and strike them down. The Doctor suddenly snapping a sharp left, as he redirected Seo. "Lower vaults!"
"Isn't this place a little small for your capital?" Seo asked, as they raced down the stairs.
"Normal version's bigger on the inside," the Doctor replied, barely stopping himself from tumbling downstairs. "Looks like this time, couldn't get it quite right."
"Doctor!" came Romana's voice, from behind them.
But they could already see the skimmers. The Doctor diving into one of them, in the driver's seat. Fiddling around to bypass isomorphic controls, and get it to start.
"But how does this help us?" Seo asked, climbing in, after him. "How does this save your life?"
"The transduction barrier," the Doctor replied, as the guards emerged, and he got the engine to start. "It's supposed to be around the whole planet, not just the capital. Not like this one."
"Someone's trying to keep us in the city," Seo confirmed, as the skimmer bay doors opened, to reveal daylight and red earth, before them.
"More than that," said the Doctor, as the skimmer burst forwards, with life. The guards all opening fire, trying to take the skimmer down. "I don't think the transduction barrier's a transduction barrier at all. I think all that landscape's an illusion. And the transduction barrier—"
"Is the smokescreen!" Seo cried.
As they flew forwards, straight into the daylight.
"Fingers crossed that it works," the Doctor said. Gaining speed.
A lucky shot pierced the side of the skimmer, and the whole thing began to list to the right. The Doctor struggling to keep it in the air.
"Should be through any second, now!" the Doctor shouted.
"And where will we be, when we're through?" Seo asked.
"Where else?" shouted the Doctor. Buzzing at the engine with his sonic. "The Time Agency!"
The skimmer burst with new life, darting forwards through the air. Flying free from the dome, free from the Capital, and right through the transduction barrier that shouldn't be there.
"Geronimo!" the Doctor cried.
Waiting to see what would happen next.
