Even knowing what was coming didn't stop the horror from rising within Rose as she watched Margaret unzip her skin and reveal her true form. The grotesque green thing loomed above them.
"No!" Rose cried as the thing that had been Margaret grabbed hold of the aid, pressing him up against the wall and strangling him. She cast her eyes wildly about the room, finally grabbing a chair and smashing it against the alien's back. The thing cried out in pain, dropping him to the ground. He crumpled, breathing heavily. Rose let out a curse and moved towards him, but Harriet grabbed her arm as the alien lit up with an electric current and convulsed. The aid backed away from it quickly, and Rose helped him to his feet before pushing him and Harriet in front her as she raced past the alien and out of the room.
They ran into a corridor, only to be brought up short. "No, wait!" Harriet cried. "They're still in there! The emergency protocols! We need them!"
"Yeah, hard to read if we're dead," Rose pointed out, glancing back down the corridor. "That thing'll be after us in a minute."
On cue, the Slitheen burst out of the cabinet room and tore after them. They took off again down the corridor, Rose twisting the path whenever possible. She thought she caught a glimpse of the Doctor in the lift as she ran past, but she wasn't sure. Finally, they reached a dead end in a room with only one unlocked door in or out.
"Hide," she ordered the other two tersely, sprinting for the curtains. Just as she slipped behind them, the Slitheen crashed into the room. The alien halted its rampage when the room appeared empty, instead moving about more warily as it tried to sniff them out.
"Oh, such fun!" it cried happy. "Little human children... where are you? Sweet little humeykins... come to me... let me kiss you better...kiss you with my big, green lips."
Rose shuddered. Any time now, Doctor, she thought as she heard the door open again and more Slitheen enter.
"My brothers," the Margaret thing greeted the other two.
"Happy hunting?" asked one of the new Slitheen.
"It's wonderful," Margaret told him. "The more you prolong it, the more they stink."
"Sweat," noted the other newcomer. "And fear."
"I can smell an old girl," said the first. "Stale bird... brittle bones."
"And a young man," said the second, "stressed and eager to please."
"And a ripe youngster," Margaret went on. "All hormones and adrenaline. Fresh enough to bend before she snaps."
Rose jumped as the curtain was swept aside and looked up at the looming creature, eyes blazing.
"No!" Harriet cried, jumping from her hiding place. "Take me first! Take me!"
Rose used the distraction to pull the curtain down over Margaret's head, and was already sprinting toward the door when the Doctor burst in, blasting a fire extinguisher at the Slitheen.
"Out! With me!" he yelled to them. "Hello," he said, nodding at Rose as she stepped behind him.
"Hello," she said weakly.
He smiled, then whipped his head around at Harriet and the aid as they took up position at his other shoulder. "Who the hell are you?"
"Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North," she told him.
"Indra Garnesh, junior secretary, we met downstairs," the aid put in.
"Right. Nice to meet you."
"Likewise," they said in unison.
The Doctor blasted the fire extinguisher again, and the three legged it away from the cowering creatures.
"We need to get to the cabinet room!" called the Doctor as they ran down the corridor.
"The Emergency Protocols are in there!" Harriet informed him. "They give instructions on aliens!"
"Harriet Jones, I like you."
"And I like you too," she said.
The Doctor soniced open a side door, and they piled through, Rose locking it behind them. The Doctor ran to close the main door, but the Slitheen were already there. Thinking quickly, he picked up a nearby bottle of brandy and held his screwdriver against it threateningly.
"One more move and my sonic device will triplicate the flammability of this alcohol," he warned them. "Whoof! We all go up. So back off." He stared them down, and they hesitated. "Right then," he continued. "Question time. Who exactly are the Slitheen?"
"They're aliens," Harriet said helpfully.
"Yes. I got that, thanks," the Doctor said sarcastically.
"Who are you, if not human?" one of the Slitheen asked.
"Who's not human?" Harriet asked. Rose shook her head and shushed her. The Doctor shot her a grateful look.
"So – what's the plan?" he asked the creatures. "You've got a spaceship hidden in the North Sea. It's transmitting a signal. You've murdered your way to the top of government – what for? Invasion?"
"Why would we invade this God forsaken rock?" scoffed one of the Slitheen.
"Then something's brought the Slitheen race here," the Doctor said. "What is it?"
"'The Slitheen race'?" asked one of them, bewildered.
"Slitheen is not our species," explained another. "Slitheen is our surname. Jocrassa Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen at your service."
"So, you're family," the Doctor said, looking at them with new eyes.
"It's a family business."
"Then you're out to make a profit," the Doctor noted. "How can you do that on a 'God forsaken rock'?"
"Ahhh... excuse me? Your device will do what? Triplicate the flammability...?"
The Doctor pause, shifting uncomfortably. "Is that what I said?"
"You're making it up!" one of the Slitheen accused.
"Ah, well! Nice try. Harriet, have a drink. I think you're gonna need it," the Doctor said, holding the brandy out to her.
"Pass it to the left first," Harriet said, manners kicking in automatically.
"Sorry," he said, handing it to Rose without looking around. Rose bit back a smile.
"Now we can end this hunt," said the Slitheen menacingly. "With a slaughter."
"Doctor," Indra said quickly. "Doors."
He gave him a blank look. Then his face cleared and he grinned.
"Fascinating history, Downing Street," he said, going into full lecture mode. "Two thousand years ago, this was marsh land. 1730, it was occupied by a Mr. Chicken. He was a nice man. 1796, this was the cabinet room - if the cabinet's in session and in danger, these are about the four most safest walls in the whole of Great Britain." He reached out and pressed a button near the door. "End of lesson."
Metal shutters slammed down over every door and window, blocking the Slitheen from their intended prey.
"Installed in 1991," continued the Doctor. "Three inches of steel lining every single wall. They'll never get in."
"And we can't get out," Rose said flatly. He glanced at her, then shook his head. They were trapped.
oOoOo
Rose's mind worked furiously as she pretended to look for anything of use in the room. She knew what was coming...for Mickey and her mum, for her and the Doctor and Harriet Jones...and she couldn't tell him. She felt them hurtling toward an eventuality that would be made so much simpler if she could just hand him the information he needed. This was going to be...touchy.
"Right, what have we got?" the Doctor asked. Rose looked at him blankly, absorbed in her thoughts. "Any terminals? Anything?"
"I already told you, the cabinet has nothing in here but the speaker phone," Indra said irritably. "Everything else they bring in with them."
"That's helpful, thanks," the Doctor said snarkily.
"So, the Prime Minister…they couldn't use him, because he's too slim, yeah?" Rose asked. The Doctor nodded, looking impressed that she'd made this connection. "But the Slitheen are about 8 feet, how do they squeeze inside at all?"
"That's the device around their necks. Compression field," he explained. "Literally shrinks them down a bit. That's why there's all that gas, it's a big exchange."
"Wish I had a compression field, I could fit a size smaller," Rose said, and the Doctor smirked.
"Excuse me," Harriet piped up. "People are dead, this is not the time for making jokes."
"Sorry," Rose said sincerely as the Doctor scanned the walls. "You sort of get used to this stuff when you're friends with him."
"Well, that's a strange friendship," the older woman remarked.
"You have no idea," Rose said.
"Harriet Jones," the Doctor said, frowning at her. "I've heard that name before – Harriet Jones. You're not famous for anything, are you?"
"Hardly," scoffed Harriet.
"Rings a bell, Harriet Jones," he said, looking away as he struggled to remember.
"Lifelong back bencher I'm afraid, and a fat lot of use I'm being now," she said, throwing the folders down in irritation. "The protocols are redundant, they list the people who can help and they're all dead downstairs."
Rose leaned against the table, chewing on her nail. "What about defense codes for a nuclear strike? Where do we get those?"
"You're a very violent young woman," Harriet said, taken aback. Rose said nothing. Harriet shook her head. "There's nothing like that in here. Nuclear strikes do need a release code, yes, but it's kept secret by the United Nations."
"Say that again," the Doctor said, pausing his scan to turn to them.
"What, about the codes?"
"Anything. All of it," he said, looking thoughtful.
"The British Isles can't gain access to atomic weapons without a special resolution from the UN," Indra informed him.
"Like that's every stopped them," Rose said with a snort.
"Exactly, given our past record – and I voted against that, thank you very much," Harriet stated. "The codes have been taken out of the governments hands and given to the UN." Harriet glanced at the Doctor. "Is it important?"
"Everything's important," he said, frowning.
"If we only knew what the Slitheen wanted," she said. "Listen to me, I'm saying 'Slitheen' as if it's normal."
"Well, it's like you said, Doctor…family business," Rose said slowly. He looked up at her. "It's not an invasion, it's just them. But they want something, something we have here on Earth."
"Like what?" Harriet asked. "Gold? Oil? Water?"
"You two are very good at this," the Doctor said with a small smile. Rose grinned at him.
"Thank you," Harriet said, looking please.
"Harriet Jones," he said again. "Why do I know that name?"
Rose jumped as her phone went off. "That's me," she said.
"But we're sealed off," Indra said, confused. "How did you get a signal?"
"Super-phone," she said quickly, nodding at the Doctor. "Frequent flyer privilege."
"Then we can phone for help!" Harriet cried as the Doctor smirked. "You must have contacts."
"Dead downstairs, yeah," he told her.
"It's Mickey," Rose said.
"Oh, tell your stupid boyfriend we're busy," the Doctor spat.
"Yeah, not my boyfriend. Not so stupid, either," Rose said as she showed him the picture of the Slitheen.
oOoOo
"No, no, no, no, no – not just alien, but like, proper alien," Mickey was telling Rose on the phone. "All stinking, and wet, and disgusting. And more to the point, it wanted to kill us!"
Rose heard her mother shout something in the background, but ignored it. "Hang on, talk to the Doctor," she told him before handing off the phone.
"Is that Rickey?" the Doctor asked, snatching the phone. "Don't talk, just shut up and go to your computer." There was a pause as Mickey said something else. "Mickey the Idiot – I might just choke before I finish this sentence, but eh – I need you." His mouth twisted as if he'd just taken a bite of something that didn't agree with him. Rose smiled. He glanced at her and sighed. "You're going to need to go on the UNIT website and get into their information archives."
Indra looked as if he was about to protest, but the Doctor silenced him with a look. He pulled the phone from his ear and spun to the table, plugging the mobile into the speaker phone in the center. "Say again," he said.
"It's asking for the password."
"Buffalo – two Fs, one L."
"So, what's that website?" they heard Jackie ask.
"All the secret information known to mankind," Mickey told her. "See, they've known about aliens for years, they just kept us in the dark."
"Mickey, you were born in the dark."
"Not helping," Rose chimed in.
"Thank you," Mickey said. "Password again."
"Just repeat it, every time," the Doctor told him, then straightened and began pacing. "Big Ben...why did the Slitheen hit Big Ben?"
"You said to gather the experts – to kill them," Harriet said, handing out brandy glasses.
"That lot would've gathered for a weather balloon," the Doctor said, shaking his head. "You don't need to crash land in the middle of London."
"So they need it there," Rose suggested. "They needed to move the ship, and they needed the country on red alert. What for?"
"Oh, listen to her," Jackie scoffed.
"At least I'm trying!" Rose snapped back before she could stop herself. Stupid teenage impulses.
"Well, I've got a question if you don't mind," Jackie started, but Rose cut her off.
"Not now, Mum."
"I'm talking to him," Jackie insisted. "'Cause I've seen this life of yours, Doctor. And maybe you get off on it. And maybe you think it's all clever and smart, but you tell me. Just answer me this – is my daughter safe?"
"I'm fine," Rose responded quickly as the Doctor stared hard at the phone.
"Is she safe? Will she always be safe? Can you promise me that?"
"No one can promise that, Mum," Rose said, looking at the Doctor. "Don't put that on him. Even if I stayed here I could get hit by a bus crossing the street. But doing what's right and doing what's safe aren't always the same thing. The Doctor does what's right, and I'm going to do the same."
The Doctor looked up at her, his mouth falling open a little. Jackie was silent.
"We're in," Mickey said a little awkwardly, breaking the tension.
"Right then!" the Doctor cried, circling around the table again. "On the left, there's a tab—an icon—little concentric circles; click on that."
"What is it?"
"The Slitheen have got a spaceship in the North Sea and it's transmitting that signal," he said. "Now hush, let me work out what it's saying." He paused listening intently. "It's some sort of message…"
"What's it say?" Rose asked.
"Don't know – it's on a loop, keeps repeating." There was a buzzer blare from the phone. "Hush!" the Doctor ordered, listening intently as Mickey told Jackie to get the door. "It's beaming out into space, who's it for?"
"It's him! It's the thing, it's the Slickeen!" they heard Jackie cry.
"They've found us," Mickey said flatly.
"Mickey, I need that signal," the Doctor said.
"Then we have to stop the Slitheen," Rose said simply. "You're not going to be able to get that signal 'til they're safe. So come on, Expert. What do they do?"
"Oh, my God," Mickey said. "It's unmasking. It's gonna kill us."
The Doctor stared intently at the table, deep in thought.
"Doctor?" Rose said. "That's my mother."
He looked up at her and nodded. "Right!" he growled. "If we're going to find their weakness, we need to find out where they're from - which planet. So, judging by their face and shape, that narrows it down to five thousand planets within travelling distance. What else do we know about them? Information!"
"They're green," Rose said.
"Yep, narrows it down,"
"Uh…good sense of smell," she said, trying to think of characteristics while trying to remember what it was that they'd done last time, as well as keep herself from just telling him flat out.
"Narrows it down,"
"They can smell adrenaline," Indra added.
"Narrows it down,"
"The compression technology," Harriet put in.
"Narrows it down."
"The spaceship in the Thames," said Rose. "You said slipstream engine?"
"Narrows it down."
Rose cursed as she heard shouting from the phone. She thought furiously, trying to remember- "OH! The gas! It doesn't smell like gas! It smells like—"
"Bad breath!" Harriet cried.
"Calcium decay!" cried the Doctor triumphantly. "Now that narrows it down!"
"Just hold on, you two," Rose called into the phone.
"Calcium phosphate, organic calcium, living calcium, creatures made out of living calcium, what else, what else – hyphenated sodium – yes! That narrows it down to one planet!" the Doctor shouted. "Raxacoricofallapatorius!"
Rose sighed in relief and sagged against the back of a chair. Keeping what she should and shouldn't know straight sometimes felt like running a marathon.
"Oh, yeah, great," Mickey sneered. "We could write 'em a letter."
"Get into the kitchen," the Doctor ordered. "Calcium, recombined with compression field - ascetic acid. Vinegar!"
"Just like Hannibal!" cried Harriet.
"Just like Hannibal," confirmed the Doctor. "Mickey, have you got any vinegar?"
"How should I know?" Mickey asked.
"It's your kitchen," the Doctor said, staring at the phone in disbelief.
"Cupboard by the sink, middle shelf," Rose put in quickly.
"Give it here," they heard Jackie say. "What do you need?"
"Anything with vinegar!" the Doctor told her.
"Gherkins!" Jackie cried. "Yeah! Pickled onions! Pickled eggs!"
"You kiss this man?" he asked Rose, raising an eyebrow.
"Not anymore," she retorted, and smiled as his other eyebrow shot up.
They heard a tremendous crash, then the Slitheen roaring at Jackie and Mickey-then silence. Rose held her breath for a beat before hearing the loud bang of the Slitheen exploding. They all breathed a sigh of relief.
"To Hannibal," Rose said weakly, raising her glass.
"To Hannibal," the other three chorused, smiling as they raised their glasses.
oOoOo
While Jackie and Mickey were cleaning themselves up and regrouping, the Doctor leaned against a wall and watched Rose. He wondered if this girl would ever stop surprising him. Right now, she was talking quietly with Harriet Jones and Indra Ganesh, explaining the whole "not human" remark that she had avoided earlier, giving him space to think. And he should be thinking about the situation at hand…but he kept coming back to her.
She was so quick, so bright. She had made astute observations with remarkable speed. She had an innate sense of right and wrong, and had no trouble standing up to anyone, including him, to defend it. And the faith she had in him, the faith she'd used to stand up to her mother on his behalf, frankly astounded him. In the few days she'd known him, he had blown up her job, made her lose an entire year, and nearly gotten her killed more than once, and she was still here, helping him, defending him, supporting him without question. And somehow, just having her around made him feel a little less hopeless and alone. Given the sheer enormity of his loss, even this slight difference she made set her apart from any other companion he'd had.
There was one sure plan he had, a last resort in defeating these Slitheen. He vowed to himself that he would do everything in his power to avoid that. He couldn't lose Rose. Not yet. And certainly not like this.
oOoOo
"Listen to this," Mickey's voice said over the phone. They all leaned on the table, getting close as Mickey held the phone to the TV for them.
"Our inspectors have searched the sky above our heads," the fake Acting Prime Minister was saying, "and they have found massive weapons of destruction, capable of being deployed within 45 seconds."
The Doctor frowned. "What?"
"Our technicians can...baffle...the alien probes," the man continued. "But not for long. We are facing extinction. Unless we strike first. The United Kingdom stands directly beneath the belly of the mother ship. I beg the United Nations – pass an emergency resolution. Give us the access codes! A nuclear strike at the heart of the ship is our only chance of survival. Because…from this moment on…it is my solemn duty to inform you…planet Earth is at war."
"He's making it up," the Doctor said, pushing off the table and circling around it. "There's no weapons up there, there's no threat. He just invented it."
"Do you think they'll believe him?" Harriet asked.
"They did last time," Rose muttered. She froze for a second, but realized that the comment could easily be construed to be about the crash hoax.
"That's why the Slitheen went for spectacle," the Doctor said, nodding. Rose mentally wiped her brow. "They want the whole world panicking, because you lot - you get scared, you lash out."
Rose groaned. "They release the defense codes—"
"And the Slitheen go nuclear," he finished for her as he strode toward the door.
"But why?" cried Harriet.
The Doctor pressed the button near the door again, opening the metal shudders and facing the Slitheen waiting outside.
"You get the codes, release the missiles," he said quietly, radiating tension. "But not into space because there's nothing there. You attack every other country on Earth, they retaliate, fight back. World War Three – whole planet gets nuked."
"And we can sit through it in our spaceship waiting in the Thames," Margaret said as she came forward, back in skin suit. "Not crashed. Just parked. They'll be two minutes away."
"But you'll destroy the planet," Indra said angrily. "What for? What do you gain?"
"Profit," the Doctor said, eyes still trained on Margaret. "That's what the signal is beaming into space - an advert."
"Sale of the century. We reduce the Earth to molten slag, then sell it. Piece by piece," she said, smirking. "Radioactive chucks capable of powering every cut-price star liner and budget cargo ship. There's a recession out there, Doctor. People are buying cheap. This rock becomes raw fuel."
"At the cost of 5 billion lives," the Doctor noted.
"Bargain," she replied.
"Then I give you the choice," he told her. "Leave this planet or I'll stop you."
"What? You?" Margaret said, laughing along with the rest of the Slitheen. "Trapped in your box?"
"Yes," he said darkly, eyes blazing. "Me."
He closed the metal shutter on her, and Rose shivered.
