Chapter Eleven: Switcheroo

Once the Doctor and Jack had left the medbay, Rose leaned back into her pillows with a sigh. "That's them gone, then."

Martha checked the tubes leading from her new friend's arm, letting out a shaky laugh. "Leaving us on a spaceship. I still can't believe this is real. I mean, how many people want to go to the moon, and here we are? My job's landed on it!" Her face fell. "Except I'm going to have to find a new one, aren't I?"

Rose smiled. "Yeah. I think the Doctor's got a thing with jobs—he blew my job up when I met him."

"Well, suppose I got lucky then, since the hospital's still in one piece…" Martha sighed. "I've got a party tonight. My brother's twenty-first. Well…I had a party, anyway. My mother's going to be really…really…"

Rose nodded, eyes closing. "Yeah, I know the feeling. My mum's probably going mental right now…"

"Whoa there, keep your eyes open." Martha shook her gently as she inspected the stream of crimson slowly making its way through the tube to Rose's arm. "Keep talking."

"'Bout what?"

"I dunno…er, got any family besides your mum?"

"Nah, just my mum. She's still in London. Like I said, probably going mental right about now."

"Does she know about…well…"

"About me travelling with an alien?" Rose grinned. "Oh, yeah. Mind, she was trying to put me off him for the longest time. She's gotten used to him though—suppose it helps he's a bit younger and prettier now…"

Martha laughed. "Younger? What, do aliens age backwards or something?"

Rose laughed too. "Something."

"So then…if you don't mind me asking…what is he?"

Rose's grin faded. "He's…a Time Lord."

"Not pretentious at all, then. Are all Time Lords that…" She trailed off and waved her hand over her head like she was running her fingers through tall hair.

Rose's lips twitched. "Pretty? Dunno. Never met any others. He…He's sort of the last. His planet's gone."

Martha covered her mouth. "Oh!"

"But he's fine now," Rose said hastily, "Mostly. Just…don't ask him about it, yeah?"

"Er, yeah. Okay."

There was a long silence where Martha seemed completely unsure of what to say. Finally, she mustered up the courage to ask: "That Captain Jack, is he…well, single?"

Rose grinned. "Sort of. He's kind of in a relationship with everything in the entire universe."

"Everything?"

"He once hit on these things that look like slugs."

Martha paused to digest this information. "…I don't think I actually mind."

Rose giggled. "Nobody does."

John Tyler had spent over two months in this hospital. He knew every room and everything in every room, and the Doctor was going to use that to his advantage.

His first stop was to the nearest available anesthesia machine, in a surgical patient's room.

"Dr. Tyler?" said the doctor tending to the elderly patient. "What are you doing?"

"Dr. Darvill!" The Doctor greeted him as he grabbed the spare anesthesia machine. "How is Mrs. Aldred?"

"Made it out of surgery before the hospital was moved," Dr. Darvill said with a frown.

"Lovely." The Doctor snatched the anesthesia machine next to Mrs. Aldred's bedside. "She done with this then?"

Darvill's eyebrows raised in confusion. "Yes, should be waking up any minute, but Dr. Tyler, you've already got one."

"I need at least two."

"For what?"

"Field trip." The Doctor answered cheerfully as he disconnected the hoses. "Have you got a marker? Big, black one?"

"Er…yes." Darvill handed him a thick permanent marker from his lab coat pocket.

The Doctor drew a big fat cross on the back of his own right hand, capped the marker, and handed it back to Darvill. "Ta. Listen, Dr. Darvill, we're evacuating. I need you to help get everyone downstairs. There's a man called Captain Jack down there, and he'll tell you where to lead them. Just do whatever he says, and tell everyone else to do the same. You got that?"

"Captain who?"

But the Doctor had already wheeled both machines out into the hallway, sonicking one of them as he hurried along. He paused to spit on the wall, then pressed onward. He needed to leave as much of a trail as possible. They wanted a Time Lord? He'd give them a Time Lord.

"…So then, Jack asked if it was single," Rose giggled. "And it sort of wobbled its little eyestalks and clicked its mantis jaw-things, which apparently meant yes."

"No!" Martha gasped, shaking with laughter. "And he didn't even think about normal mantises?"

"What, that the females bite their bloke's head off? Didn't even occur to him."

"Do you always talk about me behind my back?" Jack asked as he entered the medbay. He looked worn-out, but cheerful. "How're you doing, Rose?"

"Loads better. Martha's been brilliant."

Jack sent Martha a dazzling smile. "I bet she is. Which is why I was actually going to ask you…the Judoon have made it to this floor and I don't have half the people loaded into the console room yet."

"Yeah, I'll lend a hand," said Martha.

Rose pushed herself up onto her elbows. "I should—"

"You should still rest," Martha insisted, giving her shoulder a gentle nudge.

"We've got it covered," Jack told her, "Don't worry."

Rose fell back to the pillow with a groan. "Where's the Doctor?"

"Upstairs. He's been sending people down."

Rose frowned. "But you haven't actually seen him?"

"Well, no, but some of them did."

"And the Family—"

"He said he's got a plan. He can take of himself, Rose."

Rose sighed. "I know, I just…" She let out a groan of frustration. "I hate just sitting here."

"But you look so gorgeous doing it." Jack squeezed her hand with a grin, then hurried out of the medbay with Martha.

Rose watched the slow, steady drip of her blood in the machine at her bedside and willed it to go faster.

The Doctor wove his way through the hospital, sonicking the anesthesia machines he'd grabbed and leaving a clear Time-Lordy trail, until he reached a drug supply room. He was about to open the door when it crashed open, letting a Judoon out.

The Doctor halted, craning his neck to look up at the hulking Judoon before him. The Judoon growled back at him, "You will be catalogued."

"Hold on, hold on!" The Doctor waved his hands up in surrender, then turned his hand to show the big fat cross he'd drawn on. "Already been catalogued. Human as they come, that's me. Name's Tyler, John Tyler—"

But the Judoon lost interest the moment the Doctor showed the mark on his hand. It marched right past him.

The Doctor watched it go with a shake of his hand. Judoon were thick. Dragging the anesthesia machines, he entered the drug supply room the Judoon had just left. Inside, one of the nurses was huddled behind the counter in the corner, face in her hands as she sobbed. She looked up as the Doctor entered.

"Dr. Tyler?"

"Hello, Ms. Gillan," he greeted her, pausing to hold a hand out to her. She took it, and he boosted her to her feet. He squeezed her hand. "No need for tears, all right? It's going to be fine. We're evacuating."

"H-how?" Ms. Gillan sobbed. "Those rhino things are everywhere and we're on the moon!"

"Now, now, none of that," the Doctor soothed, "Out you get, into the hall." He nudged her outside. "That's right. Listen, Ms. Gillan, I need you to be strong now. Can you do that?"

Ms. Gillan sniffed and nodded.

"I need you to help get everyone downstairs to the MRI room on the third floor. Tell them all to get inside the blue box. There's a man named Captain Jack down there and he'll tell you where to go. Do whatever he says. Can you do that?"

She nodded again, shuddering as she wiped her eyes.

"That's a good girl," the Doctor praised. "Go and be brilliant."

Resolutely, she shuffled off in the direction he pointed. The moment she had left, the Doctor whirled back to the shelves stocked with bottles, tossing dose after dose of certain pills into the machine and shoving others into his pockets. As many as would fit anyway.

"Pockets," the Doctor muttered to himself in frustration. "Need bigger pockets."

Rose had sung almost every verse the Doctor had ever taught her of "99 Planets in the Grolian System" when Jack returned to the medbay looking utterly haggard.

She sat up. "What's going on? Is the Doctor—?"

"Still haven't seen him. I sent Martha upstairs to help him."

"How's the hospital?"

"We're falling behind. We've got the bottom floors, but there's still some people on this floor, and the Judoon are almost done with the fourth."

"And the body's on the fifth. Right. Not much time, then. Need some help?"

"You definitely feeling better?"

"Much."

Jack sighed. "Then the Doctor's going to kill me, but…yeah." He helped her take the needle out of her arm and wrap on a bandage. Cautiously, she swung her legs off the table and stood up. No light-headedness, no dizziness, not a trace of wooziness. If anything, her legs were itching to run.

"Allons-y, then!" she said brightly.

The Doctor left the supply room as quickly as he'd entered it, pausing to spit one more time on the wall. His mouth was dry, but set in a grim line. The Family would definitely be able to find him now. No way they could miss him.

The throngs of hospital patients and staff dwindled as he continued through the hospital. Dr. Darvill and Ms. Gillan were evidently doing a good job evacuating everyone. Now, if he could just find a suitable room to lay out his trap—

But the Doctor froze as he turned the next corner. "Oh, no."

There, in a crumpled heap on the floor, lay Julia Swales and a middle-aged balding man.

He dropped to his knees next to Swales, pressing two fingers to her throat in a hopeless gesture. Just as he'd expected, no pulse beat there. Both she and the man were cold, and quite clearly dead, which meant...

The Family of Blood had moved to different bodies.

Jack cupped his hands around his mouth. "Anyone else down here?"

There was no answer, only a babble of voices from the floor above. Jack breathed a sigh of relief. The air was getting quite thin, and he could feel his lungs expanding more than usual to compensate. The evacuation had gone much faster with Rose to help. And since it looked like the Doctor had sent most of the fourth floor down, all they needed now was to evacuate the top floor. Hopefully the Judoon hadn't reached that floor quite yet…

He heard a wail, and stopped. It sounded like a child, very small and very frightened, and just around the corner. He hurried towards it to see a little girl, no more than five or six years old, sobbing on the ground in a crumpled heap.

"I'm scared," the little girl wailed. "Where's Mummy and the nurses?"

"Hey, hey," Jack said soothingly as he reached her. "It's okay. Your mummy's probably with the others. Come on."

The little girl sniffed and held her arms out. Jack picked her up in a bear hug. "Up you go—"

Something hard slammed into the back of his head, and he staggered forward before losing his balance. Instinctively he twisted as he fell to avoid crushing the girl in his arms, landing with a jolt of pain through his right shoulder.

He sat up quickly, ignoring the explosion in his head, and pushed the little girl behind him. A surgeon in his forties stood over him, a heavy walking stick in hand. With a guttural cry, he brought it swinging down on Jack's head again. The captain ducked, and the walking stick missed him by centimetres. As the surgeon's body turned for another swing, Jack hooked a leg around the surgeon's and yanked, sending the surgeon tumbling to the floor. Taking advantage of the seconds he had until the other man recovered, Jack scrambled to his feet and reached for his blaster…

But it was gone.

"Looking for this?" the little girl said sweetly.

Jack spun to face her. There was his blaster, clutched in her hands. Her childish face lit up with malicious glee.

The girl expertly aimed his blaster at his chest. "Don't move," she ordered.

The last couple of centuries had driven Jack's fear of the wrong end of a weapon out of him, but this time his heart pounded, suddenly very aware of who he was facing. The Doctor's words echoed in his head: No dying. No injuries. Don't get hurt at all.

A young man stepped out of the room behind the little girl. Jack recognised him from Martha's image on the psychic paper. "Excellent, Sister of Mine," the young man crooned, patting her on the head. "He'll do marvelously."

Jack's stomach dropped. Not good not good not good…

"Jack? Jack, I think this floor's finished. Where are you?"

Jack's and all three Family members' heads swiveled towards the sound of the approaching Rose's voice for a brief moment, and then back to each other.

Jack leapt at Son of Mine as he yelled, "Rose, RUN!"

Rose whirled around the corner, hair flying behind her. She froze at the sight in the hallway: Jack, tackling Son of Mine; Sister of Mine, aiming a blaster at Jack; Father of Mine, walking stick clutched tightly in his hands and ready to swing at Jack's head—

"No!" Rose dived at Father of Mine just as the walking stick came swinging down. Daughter of Mine fired; the blast slammed into the wall under Rose's arm as she knocked the walking stick to hit the floor next to Jack's head instead. Jack and Son of Mine rolled haphazardly, punching and kicking.

"It's the Family!" Jack warned as he wrenched Son of Mine's hands off his throat. "You've got to warn the—"

A blast hit the floor centimetres from his head as Daughter of Mine shrieked, "Stop moving, will you?" in her childish voice.

Father of Mine swung the walking stick again, this time at Rose, but Rose caught it and held on. Neither of them released their grip on the walking stick as they both tried to wrench it from the other's grasp.

Meanwhile, Jack had managed to pin Son of Mine down. He spared a brief glance at Rose. "Rose, go, it's the Family, you've got to warn the Doc—"

But he let out a scream as Son of Mine glowed green beneath his hands. Green gaseous substance leaked from Son of Mine's mouth and swarmed over Jack's face.

Rose turned from her own struggle in time to see Jack collapse. Her distraction gave Father of Mine just enough opportunity to smash the walking stick into the back of her head.

With a cry, Rose sunk against the wall, dazed, and Father of Mine yanked her upright and wrapped an arm tightly around her throat.

Rose's hands went to Father of Mine's arm out of instinct, pulling desperately to free her airway. The air was already thin and she could barely breathe…

"Jack," she choked, gasping for air.

Jack slowly rose to his feet, then turned to face her. The body at his feet did not so much as twitch.

An inhuman grin spread over Jack's features as he nodded at both the man holding Rose and the little girl in turn. "Father of Mine, Sister of Mine. The switch was successful."

A/N: I like cliffhangers. Cliffhangers are cool. You know what else is cool? Reviews. Reviews are cool.