Mickey sat spinning himself round in a swivel chair in the boss's office, half a mug of cold coffee in his hands. Rose had perched herself on the edge of a desk, and was looking out of the window at the dark street below.
"Listen to those sirens," She said, as the sound carried distantly.
"They've been going all night." Mickey rubbed his eyes. "And so have we. You look knackered."
"Thanks!" Rose retorted with a smile.
"It's a shame, though, isn't it?" He stopped swivelling long enough to look at her. "We only ever get to spend a bit of time together when weird stuff is going on."
She got up from the desk, changed the subject. "I feel useless, just sitting here."
"How d'you think I feel? All I'm good for is playing chauffeur for your mate!" Rose felt a pang of sympathy.
"At least we're on our own." Mickey shot her a questioning look before indicating over her shoulder to the other side of the room where Peter was sat on the floor, his back resting against the wall, as he slept. "Ok, semi-alone," Rose admitted.
"I thought he didn't sleep most nights?" Mickey questioned. Rose shrugged.
"Depends on how full the moon is." She looked out of the window and up at the night sky. "It's not very big tonight. I've seen him on a new moon, finds it impossible to stay wake."
"Why?"
"I don't know. He's not human remember. Wired up differently." Mickey considered for a moment.
"So he really is asleep now?" He whispered.
"Why?" Rose whispered back as she glanced over at Peter. She saw the left corner of his mouth twitch in a smirk for the briefest of moments. He wasn't awake but Rose got the feeling he was still listening in.
"Well it's just..." Mickey began to say but Rose put a finger on his lips.
"Asleep or not, his ears don't rest. Watch." She then picked up a pencil that had been set with five others in a neat line on the desk. Peter caught the launched object with a single hand, his eyes not even bothering to open.
"How did...?" Mickey began to ask.
"Cause I don't fully switch off everything like you humans do." Peter replied as he roused and yawned widely, stretching out his arms. "So what were you going to say Mickey?" He chuckled. Mickey's face blushed.
"You know it's rude to eavesdrop." He mumbled. Peter shrugged.
"It's not my fault my ears are programmed to stay on alert all the time. Even to pick up on dull conversations." Mickey was about to retort when Rose decided to cut the brewing argument short.
"How long does the Doctor need?" She wondered aloud.
As soon as Mickey and Keisha had turned up, the Doctor had whisked Keisha off for 'tests'. He"d already taken a bit of blood from Rose and Peter. Now he cracked open a new syringe with an apologetic smile.
"There's a sugar cube in it for you, Keisha."
"What're you gonna do?"
"It's all right. I'm a Doctor."
Mickey had made a quick getaway at that point. Found his way to the staff kitchen and the coffee supplies, and a quiet office where he could drink a cup. And happily, Rose had decided to join him. Peter had only followed to escape the laboratory and to find some food.
"Maybe we should go out looking for Anne," Mickey suggested.
"I don't think we stand a big chance of finding her."
"We don't know that, do we?"
She looked at him sympathetically. "I feel bad about it too, you know."
Mickey looked away.
"Wasn't you who let her go, was it?"
"It wasn't your fault. You were sick." She pointed to his coffee. "And you shouldn't be drinking that. It makes you wee more, and you're trying to put water back."
"Can't do anything right tonight, can I?"
"God you two are a right bundle of laughs tonight. Cheer up would you?" Peter said as he stood up and crossed to the window. "Long way to go till this night's over." He then heard someone approaching and turned to face the door.
A few moments later, in came Vida Swann. Mickey had met her briefly on his way in. She was proper fit for an older woman, though right now she was looking as worn and crumpled as the lab coat she wore. One sleeve was rolled up, and she was dabbing at her arm with a piece of cotton wool.
"Spiked you too, did he?" Mickey asked.
"I'm the control, apparently." She yawned. "The Doctor says you're good with computers, Mickey."
He brightened a little. "I'm not bad."
"Says you have experience of military websites."
He couldn't help a small smile.
"A bit."
"Why are you asking about computers?" Rose wondered.
"The Doctor wants me to trawl through naval personnel records for the crew of the Ascendant," Vida explained. "To see if they had anything in common, some link that might mark them out."
"That could take ages," Said Mickey.
"Which is why the Doctor said you'd help me." Vida sat at the next desk, in front of a flash-looking computer. It chimed loudly as it was stirred into start-up. "I've got limited access to certain areas of the site, but we need to get into the service files."
He nodded, started up the computer in front of him.
"Yeah, OK. Should be cool. A challenge." Rose and Peter watched the pair beginning to tap away at their keyboards.
"Well, that's nice for you two," Said Peter, heading towards the door with Rose.
"You could give us a hand," Mickey suggested.
Rose turned and smiled at him sweetly.
"Make some more coffee for you, maybe?"
He grinned." If you're offering. . . "
"I'm surprised UNIT didn't teach you computer hacking Lieutenant?" Vida asked Peter with a smirk.
"Please sitting at a desk doing back ally hacking? Boring."
"I guess it takes a more technical person to enjoy it, or one with the right amount of skill." Mickey stated. Computers was one of the few areas he was better at that than Peter and they both knew it.
"Well I'm glad you enjoy it so much, cause it's going to a while to get to those service files without the passcode." Peter stated before turning to the door again.
"What passcode?" Vida asked. Peter managed to get rid of his smirk before he turned round to them again.
"Oh the UNIT level one passcode that allows access anywhere we've used before, including computer files." Peter dug out his UNIT ID card. "Conveniently enough printed on the back of the qualified ID cards."
"Legally you still shouldn't have that" Vida told him.
"Do you want it or not?" Vida rolled her eyes but held out her hand for it. Peter, however, handed it over to Mickey. This didn't surprise Vida. Working in a high risk security job quickly short-listed people you could trust.
"We'll see ya than." Rose waved goodbye and out she and Peter went. Mickey watched them go, sighed, and got to work.
Rose and Peter found the Doctor was shining a torch into Keisha's eyes.
Keisha was sat on a stool looking nervous; the small mountain of chemistry equipment on the bench beside her couldn't be helping.
"Dr Frankenstein, is it?" Rose said.
"Nah, just a talented amateur," The Doctor replied. "Though you should see what I've been doing with that water sample." He put on a spooky, mad-scientist voice "It's alive!"
"Am I gonna live, then?" Keisha asked, reminding him of her existence through a forced smile.
The Doctor looked over at Rose. "You know, it's just as I thought. Like you, she's got alien matter in her blood."
Keisha frowned.
"What?"
"Shh," The Doctor told her, and turned back to Rose and Peter. "She's got little specks of white in her eyes, too. Very odd."
"She has a name, you know." Rose rushed over and crouched beside Keisha, held her hand.
"Your bedside manner stinks."
Keisha looked anxiously at her friend.
"What's he on about, aliens?"
"On a good note, Peter your completely unaffected, not a speck of it on you" The Doctor told his other companion.
"A good sign I guess, any reason?" Peter asked. The Doctor shrugged.
"Rapid healing, lack of connection to any of the ghosts, better immune system, higher temerature. It could be anything. Something in that Sayian biology is stopping it going in."
"What's a Sayian? And why are you saying there's stuff inside me, even in my eyes!" Keisha quized the Doctor. He pouted.
"You know, I've seen something like it before."
"Where?" Rose asked.
"In oysters."
"He"s barking!" Keisha complained.
"Shhh," The Doctor said again. "An oyster doesn't make a pearl for fun, you know. It happens when it's in pain. It sometimes gets a bit of dirt or whatever stuck between its mantle and its shell, like you might get a splinter in your finger. But because oysters aren't so good with tweezers, they try to bury it, stop it hurting. Secrete this stuff that hardens over the splinter, layer after layer." He nodded. "We're starting to see something similar here."
"Your saying my eyes are turning into pearls?"
"Only that there's been some trauma in the area of the optic nerve and your body – tanked up with the weird alien proteins in your blood – is trying to soothe it, to cover it up." He gave her a steady look. "But if given the chance, the effect can get out of control. So you have to stop believing in that vision of Jay."
Keisha reacted as if she"d been slapped.
"What are you on about? I must get to him."
He took both of her hands, tenderly.
"No, Keisha, you mustn't. Because it's not Jay."
"It is!" She snatched her hands away, looked imploringly at Rose.
"What's he on about?"
"I imagine it's gone to work on your brain cells too, making you more susceptible to suggestion," The Doctor concluded. "Hard to tell for sure without taking a sample from the brain stem."
"Get off me!" Keish jumped up, and her chair went clattering across the shiny floor.
"Go easy on her, Doctor." So the Doctor marched up to Rose instead, and shone his torch in her eye.
"Hmm, thought so. We've got the same process going on here. . . though the damage is less advanced." He patted her on the shoulder, consolingly. "The alien cells are loads more concentrated in Keisha. She's awash with the stuff."
"Are you trying to scare me on purpose?" said Keisha.
"I imagine it's because her feelings for Jay run so much deeper than yours, Rose. Must make it easier for the stuff to get into her body chemistry." He smiled, a blown-away sort of smile. "They say you can"t measure emotions with science. Well, this stuff makes it easy! And look see," He went over to Peter and shone his torch momentarily in his eye too. "Nothing at all! Cause he doesn't know Jay, has no care for him. Your three samples give us a chemical measure of the difference between heartbreak, mild regret and no feeling at all. Isn't that amazing? It's wonderful!"
Rose felt Keisha's eyes on her and blushed.
"I don't just feel mild regret about Jay, Doctor!"
"The proof's in your blood," He said, oblivious to her embarrassment.
"What worries me is the way it got there. Airborne infection? Mental projection? And then there's the other big question. Those soldiers on the bridge got drunk dry when there was a whole river underneath them going begging. Why?" He gasped. Then sucked in his cheeks.
Then blew out a deep breath and clicked his fingers. "Mental and airborne! This is about pheromones. Pheromones taken to the max!"
"We bunked off science, OK?"
"Pheromones – a kind of communication through chemicals," He explained. "Peter you'll know them. Little airborne signals just waiting for the right receivers." Peter nodded.
"Like smelling a marked territory. Tells you to stay away."
"Did you know a male moth can detect the spray of a ripe lady moth up to a mile away. He gets the signal, drops whatever he's doing and goes off to chat her up." The Doctor also added.
"I'm so happy for Mr and Mrs Moth. What are you on about?" Rose asked.
"These water-based life forms can dip into the human body and brain, right? You and Keisha are living proof of that." He glanced at Keisha.
"And when Jay appeared to you, you saw him just as he used to be. You believed absolutely it was him, despite all the evidence screaming that it couldn't be."
"It was him," Keisha insisted, her voice wavering.
"And yet Mickey, who's never met Jay, couldn't see him at all." He looked at Rose and Peter. "Just as we couldn't see Anne's son on the bridge, when to her he was clear as day."
Peter sighed.
"Go on, then, Sherlock. What's this got to do with pheromones?"
"What if these water-creatures collected sensory information from Jay, about himself and the people that lived In his memory, and exported it?"
"What, you mean like opening a computer file and saving it as something else so another program can read it?"
"Exactly. They exported it as a bundle of alien pheromones – Essence of Jay, from Calvin Klein – and transmitted it through human cell-water." He laughed, shook his head in wonderment. "Alien pheromones that can pass through aquatic molecules like nobody"s business. Water in the body, in the breath, in the air. . . Passing at the speed of thought from person to person to person, through villages, towns and cities. . . "
"Like those filaments in Vida's chemical tracers," Rose realised, "Spreading and circulating through the ocean. . . "
"An ocean of humanity," The Doctor agreed. "Carrying information you can trace – or weapons you can trigger. And these creatures trigger their weapon when they finally find someone they recognise from Jay's memory, someone who responds to the pheromones. With a chemical push, they help the victim make sense of the signals to create the apparition and – wallop! You"re a believer. You're caught. Easy when you know how."
Rose struggled to take it in.
"Doesn't sound the easiest way to catch someone."
"Spinning a web looks complicated to anyone other than the spider," He retorted. "A spider just gets on with it, because it"s what a spider does."
"But the power they'd need to do that. . . " Peter began.
"Makes them very, very dangerous." The Doctor clicked his tongue. "Cheer up. It's all guesswork, I could be totally wrong. Who cares? Doesn"t really matter at the end of the day. What does matter is –why? Why reel in the crew's loved ones like this?"
"Will you just shut up?" Keisha stared at him, her eyes big and shiny with tears. "You make it all sound like... like it"s just a stupid cross-word clue or something! Jay's in trouble, he needs me. My mum"s seen him too, and when she gets here. . . "
"Your mum's coming?" The Doctor rounded on her. "You said back at your flat that she wouldn't care if he was dead, that she'd abandoned you."
"Well, I was wrong! She's coming over tomorrow. She told me."
"Must have been a bit of a shock, hearing from her after so long." He glanced back at Rose and Peter. "Probably saved her life, a jolt to the consciousness like that. Her natural emotions overcame the exaggerated ones stirred up by the pheromones. But even now they're starting to take control again."
"Stop it!" Keisha shouted. "We're gonna be a family again. Me, Jay, Mum. All of us." Her face twisting with tears, she turned and stormed out of the lab.
Rose began to follow her, but the Doctor grabbed hold of her arm.
"You see? She can't think straight. That alien stuff won't let her. She'll go on believing what it wants her to until it's too late."
"Then we can at least try and delay it" Peter said.
"And she's still my mate. I'd better see if she"s all right." Rose agreed before leaving the lab. Peter almost followed but paused.
"What are you going to do?" He asked the Doctor.
"I'm going to keep testing that water. . . I'm going to see if Vida and Mickey dig up something on the crew. . . " He unrolled a large sheet of paper on one of the lab benches. "And I think I'd better take a look at Vida's plans of the underground citadel."
Peter raised his eyebrows.
"What are you looking for?"
He gave him his craftiest, most feline grin.
"A back door."
"Happy hunting, then." He waved and went off after Rose and Keisha. But on his way out he noticed a small puddle on the tiled floor. For a moment he tensed up, as if he was in an unknown danger. Then he looked up and saw a discoloured patch on a ceiling tile. A little bead of water dripped down from it. He blew out a shaky breath. What was he like? Growing nervous at a leaky pipe or something.
As he went off after Rose and Keisha, he didn't see, nor hear, the puddle swell and bubble out from the tiles and start to flow inside the lab.
The screen was blurring in front of Vida's eyes, and she forced herself to concentrate. It was late, and the day seemed to have gone on for ever. She wished she was somewhere else, far away and sunny, doing the things it was fun to stay up all night doing. But not sleeping. She couldn't imagine ever wanting to fall asleep again, now she knew what waited in the dark.
The bottom had fallen out of her life. She had told the Doctor just about every secret she knew, even shown him the new transmitting tracers which only a handful of people were supposed to know about.
The Doctor had grinned and called them quaint. Vida felt like calling him one or two words too. She was hanging out for a hug right now. Where the hell was Andrew?
"Found anything weird yet?" asked Mickey through a yawn. Peter's ID passcode had got them into the right files but it didn't pick up clues for them. That they had to do themselves.
"Apart from the way I'm sitting here with a complete stranger riffling through confidential files for clues as to why an alien intelligence might have sunk a frigate? No."
"Only asking," He muttered.
"A vice admiral is showing up in a few hours. If Andrew doesn't put in an appearance soon – he's my boss – I'll have to go solo and. . . "
She slumped forwards, pushing her head against the cool glass of the monitor screen. "What do I tell him? What the hell do I tell him? He's been putting all the secrecy around the wreck down to some internal cover-up, trying to stop high-up heads rolling."
"Tell him the truth – that it's down to aliens."
"It's one thing finding unidentified organisms in sea water. It's another finding them in the bodies of senior naval personnel." She raised her head wearily. "Besides, Crayshaw would rip a story like that into pieces, and I'd soon follow."
"Crayshaw." Mickey flung his arms out in a big stretch. "He's the big man, calling the shots, yeah?"
"Skinny little man, more like." Vida clicked on her fiftieth file – soon to be, she was sure, her fiftieth dead-end. "Rear Admiral John Anthony Crayshaw. What about him?"
"Bit past it, don't you reckon? Who put him in charge?"
"Good question." Vida shrugged. "We made some inquiries, trying to go above his head. But no one seemed quite sure how he was selected. We were referred to a Commodore Powers, who was meant to be handling the inquiry into the Ascendant, but he never got back to us. Suppose he deferred to the higher rank."
Mickey sat up straighter in his seat.
"That's Commodore James Powers, age forty-five, on the Directorate of Navy Plans at Whitehall, yeah?"
"Yeah. He's responsible for deploying those soldiers around Stanchion House, securing the area around the wreck." Vida looked over to his desk. "Why have you brought his file up?"
"Why not? We're getting nowhere with the small fry, may as well check out the big geezers." His lips moved a little as he read. Then he frowned. "Wonder if this is why they chose Powers for the job. He was on a tub that went down in the North Sea too."
"Or the German Ocean, as Crayshaw calls it," She scoffed as she crossed to join Mickey. "I know he's old, but the North Sea hasn't been calledvthat since for ever. . . " Looking over his shoulder, she checked out the file. "Three years ago, HMS Lancer."
"I don't remember hearing about it."
"Smaller ship, crew of just thirty. Easier to hush up." She read on. "Powers was the only survivor, picked up in a lifeboat. . . "
"And took a lot of time off work by the look of it," Said Mickey. "Extended sick leave." He clicked on another area of the website, brought up another submenu. "What about Crayshaw, wonder if he ever sank?"
Vida waited while he worked to bring up the old git"s record. "Funny. He ain't here."
"He's a rear admiral. The file's probably restricted, even to a level one clearance."
"I'll search the whole site, see if anything comes up," Mickey announced.
"OK," Vida crossed back to her chair and slumped in it, closed her eyes, let the drowsy hum of the computers drag her into a daze.
"Oh. My. God. It came up."
"What did?" She said a little grouchily.
"How long since they stopped calling the North Sea the German Ocean?"
"I don't know. Some time in the eighteenth century?"
"Well, old habits die hard. And he's been around long enough to get a few."
Reluctantly she opened her eyes.
"What are you on about?"
"The only place I can find any mention of this John Anthony Crayshaw bloke is in the naval history section. He was fifty-five and his ship, the Ballantine, went down in a storm. And what d'you know – that was in the North Sea." Mickey turned to look at her, grave-faced. "In 1759."
For a few moments all she could do was stare at him.
"That"s crazy. I mean, I know he looks old, but getting on for his 250th birthday?"
Mickey shrugged.
"You're probably right. Probably just a weird coincidence."
"I mean, it's not very likely that Powers picked a footnote from naval history to head up this inquiry and give him control over the military presence around Stanchion House, is it?"
"Right. Let's not get carried away."
"No. Don't want to look stupid."
"Nah."
They sat in silence for about two seconds before jumping lip from their seats and sprinting to tell the Doctor.
The Doctor caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye, looked up from the plans. No sign of anything. Then he realised the water he"d been analysing had vanished. The beaker was empty.
A faint seaside whiff caught in his nostrils.
"You're here, aren't you?" He said aloud, staring round. The room seemed empty. Then he saw the sink was almost full, and yet he'd run no tap. The water jumped out of the sink like a living thing, struck his face as cold and hard as glass. He fell backwards against the lab bench, sent it screeching across the floor, collapsed to his knees. He couldn't breathe. The water was squeezing up his nose, through his lips, forcing its way into his eyes.
Revenge, He thought. It's testing me just like I tested it. "No," He said, spitting the word out into the water, forcing himself to stay calm. "Get out."
But the pressure was rising in his head. It was like tasting history, old, sour and salty on his tongue. He felt the growth of slow centuries, ancient knowledge amassing somewhere beyond the tip of his mind, an insistent feeling that the time was drawing near. Time for the feast. . .
Screaming soundlessly, the Doctor fought to cling on to consciousness as the alien fluid stepped up its attack.
Peter found Rose and Keisha further down the corridor.
"Hey," He said gently, "Are you OK?" He looked to Keisha in particular.
"Yeah. Great." Keisha turned around, her face hard and tear-stained. "I was just telling Rose about Old Scary" She said.
"Old Scary was a weird nutter who used to tramp around the estate when me and Keisha were kids." Rose quickly explained.
"He used to scare the hell out of me," Keisha went on, "Dragging that shopping trolley full of junk around, yelling bits of old poems and other stuff. Remember Rose? He'd show up in my nightmares sometimes, shouting about doom and destruction and the end of the world."
Rose nodded.
"He used to scare me too."
"Well, next to your Doctor, Old Scary"s a cuddly teddy bear, ain't he?"
"Oh, come on!"
"How can you both bear him? In, like, five minutes he's scared me more than I've ever been scared in my whole life. He's poked me about, told me my eyes are gonna be oysters, I'm turning into an alien and my brain's being messed with," She nodded, her lip curling. "Oh yeah, and he's shown me that my so-called mate couldn't care less if my brother's dead."
"I do care!"
"You mildly regret it, he said."
"It's not like that. . . " Rose tried to take her hand, but Keisha snatched it away. "Look, I know you"re upset but –"
"Course you know. Rose Tyler knows everything these days since she"s taken up with her cute little weirdo." Rose caught the glitter of pearl in Keisha"s eyes. "Well, here's something you don"t know."
"Keisha –"
"The minute you went off travelling, right, Mickey came sniffing round me."
Rose was floored. She stared at her old mate.
"He never."
"He did. He came round and he tried it on."
"Yeah?" She folded her arms. "And what did you do?" Keisha's face clouded, she looked away. And in that moment Rose realised she already knew, and it was like someone kicking her inside.
"What do you care anyway?" Said Keisha, suddenly back on the attack. "You just went off for a whole year with not a word, not a call. Not even a text, for God's sake!"
"I thought I was coming back!" She shouted.
"And when you do get back, you still don't bother calling, do you?"
"Don"t twist this round! You've just told me that you. . . " Rose felt her throat burning. "That you and him. . . "
"Hey, hey, what"s happening?"
Rose turned to find Mickey rushing down the corridor, Vida just behind him. He looked worried. With good reason. . . He quickly caught onto the anger of Rose and the silent warning Peter tried to give him.
"How could you, Mickey?" Rose said quietly. She said it again, lost for any other words: "How could you?"
Straight off, he knew what she was talking about. She saw the look on his face. Guilt, dismay, no fight in him. "It's true, then," She said.
It was weird. Suddenly, the monsters, the alien plan, that was all background stuff. All she could think about was the horrible wrongness of Mickey being with one of her best mates.
Until the monsters came back.
Suddenly water flooded down from the ceiling, a ton of it, drenching them all. Rose was knocked to her knees, and Vida let out a shriek of surprise. Then the water seemed to thicken, and suddenly three threatening figures stood in the corridor.
"Oh god! They're back!" Peter called out.
One looked like a pirate. One looked like he'd parked his sub outside. The third was a woman in Victorian dress, who might once have been pretty. Now, like the others, her face was blotchy and bloated, eyes like enormous bulging pearls."
Keisha was already screaming. Mickey started forwards to tackle the pirate, but was knocked back by a powerful blow.
"No!" Rose shouted as he crashed against the wall and his eyes flickered shut.
She grabbed the U-boat captain by the shoulders, and cringed as something cold and lumpy squished beneath her hands. That wrong-footed her, and he was able to shrug her off quite casually, sending her sprawling into Keisha. At least it shut up the screaming.
The Victorian girl and the pirate were already making for Vida, their backs hunched, arms outstretched. The U-boat man was following. "Run, Vida!" Rose shouted. "It"s you they want!"
Vida had just twigged and was running back the same way she had come. As Peter pulled Rose up they saw the Victorian girl melt away, clothes and everything. A wave of water surged along the corridor, broke over Vida's ankles, swept past her.
And suddenly the Victorian girl blinked back into existence, arms wide open, eyes bulging and blank. Vida gasped, tried to duck aside, but the girl snatched her up, held her tight despite her struggles. Peter sprinted over to help her, but the pirate turned and lashed out with the back of his hand. He parried the blow with both hands, gripped on to the white, wrinkled flesh of his fingers. It was like clutching maggots. The U-boat captain grabbed hold of his face, clamping down over his nose and mouth, and suddenly he couldn't breathe. There was a pressure in his ears as if he was under water. He tasted the burn of saltwater in his throat, the smell of it in his nose. His vision speckled with black.
And suddenly he was knocked aside by a huge rush of water. Choking for breath, he was slammed into the wall as it sluiced past. Blearily he saw a shape being swept away by the water, kicking and screaming. Vida, helpless as a child caught in a flood.
She vanished from view around the corner. Peter got up again and gave chase, Rose joining him as she also recovered from the serge of water. They saw that the corridor was already bone dry. Mickey was still slumped against the wall, rubbing his head in a daze, but Keisha was on her knees, slack-jawed, staring after the bizarre kid-nappers.
"Look after Mickey," Rose snapped. "And tell the Doctor!"
"Don"t leave me, Rose," Keisha stammered. "They could come back. What will I do if they come back?"
"Why ask me? You just proved I don"t know a damn thing."
"But Rose –"
"We ain't got time for this," She snapped, she and Peter pelting after Vida. "Sort your life out, Keisha. No one's gonna do it for you."
"Rose, you can't go chasing that stuff." I'm not just giving chase, she thought guiltily. I'm running away."