Chapter 10: Lions

It didn't surprise the Doctor at all that Evie had been very silent and with drawn since their arrival back to the TARDIS. It didn't take a genius to see the swirl of emotions in her eyes. He had been hoping she might talk to him a bit but the hope was in vain when she vanished to the kitchens with Luke. She wouldn't admit that seeing her mother had affected her as deeply as it did, she was too prideful for that.

'Just like Donna,' the Doctor thought, reminiscing on their adventure in The Library. Donna had refused to admit that she was upset, but he couldn't help but notice she moped about for several days after the experience. Not that he could blame her of course. Computer generated or not, that family had felt real to her and the pain of loosing them was just as real. It also struck at the core of one of Donna's deepest fear of either never having a family or having a family only to have it ripped from her.

Seeing her mother today had struck a similar type of fear in Evie. They had only a few days left before Donna died and they were still no closer to answers than they were when they got here. Evie was loosing hope that they could prevent her mother's death and that was slowly eating away at the Doctor. He had failed Donna; he wasn't going to fail her daughter.

"Damn," Jack muttered darkly as he watched numbers scroll over the computer screen. "There is nothing wrong with her DNA at all. No spikes in any of her biological make up, nothing. It's the exact same as when you left her."

"Run it again," the Doctor said absent mindedly, staring of into space.

"I did run it again," Jack said. "I ran it four times. There is no change."

"Run it again, Jack."

"Doctor, I am tell you, there is NO. CHANGE."

"Then you're not looking hard enough."

"I'm doing the best I can here, Doc."

"You're best isn't good enough!" the Doctor shouted, grabbing the front of Jack's shirt. "She's not going to die again, Jack, do you understand that! I won't let that happen so you run it again! And you keep running it until you find something!"

Jack understood that his old friend was getting close to desperate but that didn't mean he took kindly to someone, even The Doctor, man handling him when he didn't want to be. Firmly, with as little malice as he could manage, Jack pushed the Doctor's hands off his person.

"Don't think you're the only one suffering through this, Doctor," Jack glared. "We all want Donna back just as much as you do. So don't get uppity with me just because the facts are what you want them to be."

"But there has to be something we're missing," the Doctor said, sounded defeated.

"I swabbed the whole outside of that coffee cup and I am telling you, Doctor, there is nothing in that sample to suggest that there is anything physically wrong with her," Jack replied

"What about the inside of the cup?"

Jack and the Doctor looked over to the door way that led to the rest of the TARDIS. Evie stood there with a questioning look on her face.

"What do you mean?" the Doctor asked.

"Remember when you told me how you met my mum, how she got beamed into the TARDIS because that Lance bloke was lacing her coffee with something?" Evie said, walking up on to the platform.

"Yeah, so?"

"So anyone who knew my mum for longer than five minutes knows that she is addicted to coffee, and that is her favorite shop. She went there almost every day. If someone was trying to slip her something it wouldn't be all that hard to plant someone in the shop to mix something into her coffee again," Evie said, picking up the cup from the ledge and popping the lid off. Sure enough there was just a little bit of coffee in the bottom. She handed the cup to Jack, who looked down into the cup as well. "Run a sample of the coffee inside the cup and maybe it might tell us something. If not, then we've at least ruled out a theory which will narrow down the search."

"That's… brilliant!" the Doctor exclaimed, as Jack turned back to the console and began extracting a sample. "How'd you come up with that?"

"Not sure, it just sort of popped into my head," she explained, crawling up into the pilot's chair. "My brain just randomly makes connections like that, like when I'm trying to solve a problem. I see a lot of things in patterns, like a puzzle, and when I see a piece that might fit it just makes everything fall in line and make sense."

"I know exactly what you mean," the Doctor chuckled.

"Oh good," Evie chuckled softly. "I was afraid I would confuse you as much as I confuse myself with that logic."

"There is something that's been bothering me about you though," the Doctor said, getting a pensive look on his face.

"What'd I do this time?" she asked, rolling her eyes.

"You're smart."

"Well spotted, Spaceman."

"No, Evie, you're really smart."

"I've always been smart," Evie shrugged. "I learned to read before I was two, and was doing math by the time I was three."

"No, no, no this is different," the Doctor said. "You were always above average in intelligence but university at sixteen? Writing correct theses on subjects that most PhD's struggle to even grasp the understanding of? That doesn't fit with the future I saw."

"What did you see?" Evie asked.

"Not going to give you that many spoilers, sorry," the Doctor chuckled at the sour look she gave him. "It's just, I notice more and more. You think more like a Time Lord than a human."

"But that's good isn't it?" Evie asked. "I mean, if I'm just as smart as your kind I could do a lot for my kind. I could come up with ways to help my people that might otherwise not occur to us."

"You are so your mother's daughter it's almost scary," the Doctor smiled. Evie gave him a soft smile as well. "Thing is, you're not suppose to be this smart."

"Well it's a good thing she is," Jack said over his shoulder. "Come look at this."

The Doctor and Evie hopped up and went to Jack's side. Evie read for a moment at the screen before furrowing her brow in confusion.

"What is that?" she asked.

"Nanobots," Jack glared at the computer.

"Nanobots?" she said. "My mum has been drinking tiny robots?"

"It would explain why nothing showed up on the tox screen, we were looking for something purely organic, not mechanical," Jack frowned. "And these aren't normal nanobots either."

"What do you mean?"

"Nanobots were created as a way to perform extensive surgery with out leaving behind massive scaring," Jack explained. "They're machines but made out of materials that if left inside the body won't damage it. Think permanent stitches that don't rot."

"But that doesn't make any sense. The way you explained it was you had to alter mum's memories and put a block there. If the fail safe that the Doctor put into mum was on a mental subconscious level then they wouldn't be able to do anything unless…"

"Unless they are built and programmed to access the mind," the Doctor finally said, turning white the longer he looked at the screen.

"I take from your tone that is a very bad thing," Evie said.

"With that kind of technology someone could enslave an entire planet, simply by tapping into the subconscious and implanting a need in people to serve them."

"What like brainwashing?" Evie asked.

"Worse," the Doctor stood back and started to pace back and forth. "Let's say for example you came face to face with a lion, your reaction would be to flight or fight, yeah? What tells you to do that? Your basic instincts to survive are apart of your subconscious. Your species has a very keen sense of danger. It's what tells you to accept something or not. If someone went in and removed your instinct to be afraid of that lion what would happen do you think?"

"Knowing me I'd probably try to take it home as a pet," Evie chuckled.

"Exactly," the Doctor said. "You'd accept it into your life with open arms. Now lets say that lion is still a normal lion. What do you think would happen?"

"I'd get killed," Evie swallowed hard.

"Someone is trying to take away Donna's ability to be afraid of them, so she won't reject them."

"So you're saying someone, possibly dangerous, is trying to subconsciously make Donna their... what, ally?" Jack asked.

"Sounds more like prey to me," Evie said.

"Or someone is trying to make Earth its prey and Donna got caught in the cross fire," the Doctor said.

"Wait, how would someone removing her fear of them cause the mind shield to break down?" Evie asked.

"For something like this to work they'd have to have complete access to the brain, so they would have to break down the shield and get inside her true mind. After that it'd just be a matter of something sparking a memory," the Doctor winced at the sudden guilt that flashed across Evie's face. "We need to go back to that coffee shop and get some more samples. If it's all of the coffee, then Donna is an innocent victim. If it's just her cup then we'll know she's being specifically targeted."

"I'll go," Evie said, making her way over to the door. "I am a bit less noticeable than you guys."

"What's that mean?" Jack asked.

"Two adult men, one wearing a World War Two coat, and the other with trainers and a suit?" Evie laughed. "Come on… this may be London but even that's pushing it."

Evie darted out of the TARDIS before she could be subjected to their indignant retorts at her jab to their fashion sense.

TBC

A/N: Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, it's been a busy few months. R&R! I makes me happy!

~Chupip