Chapter 13 - Meeting of Minds
Diana snuck through the crowd until she got to the edge of the room, right next to the door, before dialling. She half-wanted to listen to the meeting; but there was a big important discovery involved and its presence needed to be relayed at once. She didn't want to interrupt or distract, but she wanted to be close enough to hear.
She scowled when the phone continued to ring; then hung it up and dialled a new number. After a moment she stepped into the doorway so that she could speak in a low tone without bothering anyone.
"Owen? It's Diana, I'm trying to get hold of Aislynn, but she's not answering, do you know…" Her voice trailed away.
A moment later she had stepped right out of the door, closing it behind her.
Five minutes later, she stepped back in and manoeuvred through the crowd to Susan. She pulled on her elbow.
"Susan," she whispered. "Come with me."
"Is it an emergency?" she asked. "This is rather important."
Diana flipped open her laptop, set figures to scrolling across the screen, and shoved it into her hands.
"You're the doctor, you tell me." Her face was deadly serious. Susan read it through and a frown etched itself into her face. Without a word, she nudged her husbands and they all slipped out of the meeting.
"Are we going to transfer her to your TARDIS?" Diana asked.
"Of course not. She's highly contagious, she has to stay in quarantine. We'll Trans Mat to her."
"Fine. Do you have suits or something?" Diana asked as they headed down the corridor. "Because I'm immune, but you're not. Also, bring any tools or things that you think you'll need want because medi-bay isn't functional."
"Yes, you mentioned that her ship was damaged. I'll have to stop off at my TARDIS and finish the vaccinations on myself. She has equipment though, between the things that Dar stole from me, which I am going to have words with him about, and the crates of equipment I've already sent over, we'll be covered."
"Diana," Koschei asked her, while Guinn was already heading towards the workshop. "Just what sort of damage are we talking about? I presume the self-repair systems are offline?"
"Oh, yeah, they're hosed."
"Does the Elysium have power?"
"Uh-huh, well, we have the mini-Eye, so there's, like, food and lights and things. The airlock works fine. Supposedly the Eye will run everything on the whole ship, but it seems like… I dunno, all of the major systems are offline, so there must be additional things wrong with them. But you'll have all the power you'll ever what, if you can figure out how to make it go."
"What, precisely, is a 'mini-eye?'"
"Aislynn made it. It's based off something called the Eye of Harmony, but it's littler."
"Ah," Koschei replied looking rather nonplussed. "Someday I will have to find out how she did that." He shook his head. "Dar said that he sent her the parts to repair her ship though."
"Did he?" Diana shrugged. "I dunno about that."
"Well, hopefully Taydin can help her with that then," Koschei replied absently.
"Taydin?"
"Susan and he were both vaccinating themselves, so that they could go over and help her," he replied.
"Really?" Diana blinked and then grinned. "Go him!"
"Uh..." Koschei gave her a startled look and then smiled. "As you say," he murmured.
Susan emerged from her lab a few minutes later with her gray satchel over her shoulder and an abstracted air about her.
"You'll be careful, of course?" Koschei cautioned and she smiled up at him, stepping into his arms and kissing him softly.
"Of course I will," she assured him. "Besides, you two designed the vaccine, so it's fine."
"It'd better be," he responded, looking unhappy.
"It worked on Diana," she pointed out.
"Who already had a terrifying immune system that could bench press a Silurian Flu Virus and then run a marathon," he grumbled and she laughed and kissed him again, more deeply.
"Now, you go help Guinn, while I go take care of my patient, so off with you," she insisted and shooed Koschei off towards the workshop, while she strode to the Trans Mat to Torchwood 3 with a brisk stride.
"We're going? Finally?" Diana asked.
"Spit spot, Diana, don't dawdle," Susan replied and grinned back at her over her shoulder. "Don't worry, we'll be there very shortly."
They stepped off of the Trans Mat and Cassie and Mike were waiting for them.
"So, what's going on?" Cassie asked.
"She's taken a turn for the worse and I don't have time to chat about it," Susan told her with a small smile, still moving at a quick pace.
"Is she a danger to Earth?" Cassie asked as they entered the lift.
"Now you ask?" Susan snapped, frowning fiercely and punching the button for basement level 6. "Yes, of course she is! She's got Dalek Nanites in her! But, I will deal with it."
"Right," Cassie replied, looking taken aback.
"You tell Peter Tyler that the next time a bio hazard is presented to you, see to it that you lot actually notify me, eh? It would be rather nice," she snarked.
"I assumed that Dar...," Mike began.
"Never assume, especially with Dar," she sighed as the door chimed and opened.
"I'll remember that," Mike promised and Susan shot him a smile, as she headed for the plain looking closet door set between two cement pillars.
"Also, we found One hundred forty-three more Time Lords," she told them and they froze in place, staring after them both.
"Are you mad at Dar?" Diana asked.
"Furious, but I don't have time to worry about that right now."
"Right." Diana stepped forwards, produced her key, and opened the door.
Beyond was a solid white room without doors or windows. Diana stepped in, gestured Susan in, then closed the door.
"This is the airlock," she said to Susan. "It wasn't until after I met you that I figured that it might be some anti-Nanite thing? I suppose? It takes thirty seconds to cycle."
"That's the most likely answer," Susan replied, chewing on her lip in thought.
The door opened and a skinny, dark-haired fellow with a wide mouth and piercing dark eyes opened it.
"Doctor Susan?" he enquired.
"Doctor Harper, I presume," she tossed back and he smiled, but it was a bare stretching of his lips. He looked exhausted, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes and his hair greasy and limp.
"Yes. Are you vaccinated?"
"Yes," Susan replied and moved past him gently, heading into the console room as soon as the airlock door had closed behind them.
K'anpo Rinpoche held Liira and Lillitara's hands as they balanced on the branch. The twin girls were turning seven soon and he was stunned by how fast they had grown.
Vares and Sindian were sitting nearby, heads together down over a notebook, doing their school-work with expressions of concentration.
"Well, if we remove that electron, what happens?" Vares asked his younger sibling, who grinned and began working through the problem with him.
Sondam was sitting quietly a bit farther away, watching a butterfly drifting on the breeze, his face rapt as he studied it.
The youngest of K'anpo's adoptees, he was also the most profoundly damaged of them all. He'd lost so much. They all had, of course, but he'd been found on a battlefield having witnessed first hand the horrors of the war and the deaths of his family.
Very few nights passed where he didn't wake screaming. The rest of the time, he never spoke a word.
The twins had started speaking a few months back, though they were still scared and their speech could be halting as they tried to force words past the agony in their hearts.
K'anpo froze suddenly, his mind filling up with a song he hadn't heard in far too long. He helped the girls down from the branch and turned as a tall, stocky figure came walking through the woods towards them.
"Alli," he murmured, feeling tears starting in his eyes.
"Who's she?" Liira asked in a harsh, frightened whisper.
"My wife," he told them simply and then strode forward to gather her into his arms.
"K'an," she cried, holding onto him tightly as he crushed her against him.
"Alli," he repeated, unable to believe that it was really her.
"Hello," she replied, brown eyes warm on his. "I'm home."
Owen led the tiny ginger woman down the hallways to the medi-bay. She'd seemed taller over the monitor, he mused. In person she was really short, her hair was bright copper and more fiery than he'd thought, and it was shorter than he remembered.
"You get a haircut?" he asked.
"I caught on fire and my hair burned," she replied. He opened his mouth to ask and then closed it again. They walked into the Medi-bay and the ginger doctor moved with quiet efficiency, checking vitals and turning back Aislynn's eyelids.
"How long has she been unconscious?" Susan asked and Owen responded, both of them quickly falling into the rhythm of consulting and working together over their patient. She was competent and he respected that and she listened to him carefully, not dismissing him, as he'd been half-afraid she would.
This could work, he thought to himself and sighed out in relief.
Maradee felt the warm familiarity of her mother's mind and ran through the bustling streets.
"Mummy!" she screamed, pushing through the crowd, tears streaming down her face.
"Mara!" she heard the cry and pushed between legs, dropping down to hands and knees trying to get to her mother.
Strangers grabbed her and she was lifted up, suddenly finding herself being passed from person to person, as her mother's mind grew stronger in hers.
Finally, she saw her, saw her mother pushing through the crowd to her and at long last, she was in her arms again.
"Mummy!" she sobbed, clinging to her desperately, and her mother held her so tightly.
"Oh, Mara! You're so big," her mother cried, her voice breaking, as she sank to her knees, her daughter wrapped around her.
Neither one was particularly coherent after that, but neither one cared.
Diana caught her breath at the sight of Aislynn. Her skin had taken on an ominous greyish tone, and her hair, previously long and bright red and curly, had all been trimmed very short, shorter even than Susan's.
"...And her Artron levels?" Susan was asking Owen.
"Dropped a bit, but not dangerously low," he replied and Susan nodded, setting up a device next to her and turning it on.
"Well, I brought a few more functional monitors and K-9," she informed him as the robot dog unfolded itself from inside of her bag."
"It's bigger on the inside?" he asked, staring at the bag, and she nodded. "So, what else you got in there, Mary Poppins?" he asked and she frowned.
"I still do not like my portrayal in that, it's ridiculous and overblown," she muttered and Owen stared at her, before shaking his head and getting back to work.
"Why is it doing that?" Diana sounded alarmed as several of the monitors began beeping at once.
"She's dying, Diana and we're trying to stop that from happening. Please be patient while we work," Susan replied and she and Owen dived back into their efforts, hands moving over the patient and tools humming and buzzing, all their attention riveted on Aislynn and the monitors.
Diana's eyes flooded with tears.
"But," she said to no one in particular, "We found all the Time Lords! She waited a hundred years and she was finally able to get someone to go look and now… she might never know it," she finished in a rough whisper, then shook her head. "I'll get out of the way," she said and beat a hasty retreat.
The two doctors seemed to hardly notice her absence as they fought to keep Aislynn alive.
All over Gallifrey. old friends were reuniting, families were coming back together, and people who'd fallen asleep while the old Gallifrey still stood were coming to terms with all that had been lost.
Some were finding that everyone they'd ever known had died and been lost, while some were finding that while one or two members of their family had survived, but the rest were dead and gone.
Diana didn't know much about first-aid in either direction, since she had rarely been on the receiving end, and hadn't given much beyond the very basics. She hung out in the control room with nothing to do, because she knew that she would be a distraction to Susan and Owen, and that mustn't occur.
After a few minutes of hanging out uncertainly, she sent a text to Jake-77.
"Aislynn's dying," she texted him. "We found all the Time Lords because of her, and she may never know it." She glared at her phone as if it had done something to offend her, then headed dejectedly down towards the Replicator to get it to make tea.
"I'm sorry, Angel. Don't give up hope, through. Susan's Aces, she can do it," he texted back.
"Hope so. How's it going in the big meeting?"
"People talk too much," he replied and she could almost hear the tone of exasperation. "They just need to shut up and start building crap."
"Make tea!" Diana scolded the replicator ball, then sat down near it.
"Has everyone reached for weapons?" She texted Jake.
"Nope, the Doctor has used the eyebrow a couple of times though. Oh! He's pulled out the brainy specs, now things will get rolling," he replied.
"You need a pair of brainy specs. Brainy specs are sexy."
"I tend to like people to underestimate my brains, makes them less wary around me, but for you, sure thing," he sent back and his smirk was quite clear in her mind's eye.
The two Koscheis were in their workshop, working on the next phase of the cure for Aislynn. The Doctor was hiding out with them, trying to avoid Pete, Kate, Farian, or anyone else with a notepad in their hands. It was getting rather hectic out there and he was praying that it would work itself out without him having to sign anything else.
"She's been Singing at the Nanites," Guinn grumbled, paging through the data. "It's altered them rather significantly."
"It looks that way, she must have been worried about infecting others, but it must have made things even worse for her," Koschei sighed.
"Where are the concentration levels…" Guinn flipped through several screens until he found the data he wanted, then exhaled slowly. "So, first of all; there is no way that Lady Aislynn is thinking clearly."
"Not with that much clogging her up. She must be half mad at this point," Koschei muttered.
"Rather like me," the Doctor groaned and scrubbed at his face.
"How is it going?" Koschei asked and the Doctor gave him a rather grim look.
"It's a stress, honestly. For all the delight of having them here and the many problems that their presence solves, there are also a host of new wrinkles to make it all interesting," he retorted.
"If we put in this here," Guinn said, typing rapidly, symbols blooming on the screens.
"Ah! Yes!" Koschei exclaimed and the Doctor smiled to see them working together so well.
"I'll just read a book or something, shall I?" he chuckled as they began gesticulating and designing at a frenetic pace.
"Jake," Adie murmured and he looked up from his terminal to greet her.
"Hey," he replied, gesturing her into Diana's chair.
"Is it okay?" she asked, nervously eyeing the chair, and he smiled.
"She's on Earth, helping Susan to take care of that sick Time Lord," Jake explained and she nodded solemnly at him.
"I haven't really had a chance to speak with you since everything happened," she said. "Now that we are back on Gallifrey, I… I just wanted to make sure that you were all right and… I wanted to thank you. For going in after them all. It was very brave of you. I can't tell you how grateful I am."
"Um, nothing to be grateful for, just making sure Diana was okay," he said with a flushed face. "Um, I do actually need to tell you something." He stared at the desk for a moment before coughing. "Well, you might want to sit down for this."
"I am sitting," Adie said, amused.
"Right, of course you are. So, I had trouble convincing the Amazons about stuff sometimes so... I told them about you and showed them the bridge map you made. They were really... impressed. "Adie says" kinda became the way I could make them believe me. So, they kinda respect you. A lot."
"Ah," she said, "That explains the Library… yes, I understand now." She considered her words carefully. "Well I can't say I am not disconcerted, but the point was to get them all out alive. You did that. I will not question your methods."
"Thanks, I was kind of desperate a couple of times, you see. They were scared. Some of them, they'd never known anything but the Loops, hundreds of years they'd been there and they weren't sure they could function anywhere else, so I kind of said, you'd be there... on the outside, to help. I'm sorry, but I'm a human, and they were built by Time Lords. They might not have liked them, but they respected them and had the habit of obeying them. It was all I could think of," he finished shamefacedly, but Adie shook her head.
"No," she said, "I am sorry. I was the one that put them all there in the first place. If the original Gallifrey was still extant, I would be turning myself in for violating the Sistron Articles. As it is, I feel I owe them a debt, so you did well to tell them that I would help them."
"I'm sorry, but how were you responsible? I seem to recall that you got shoved on that station as an alternative to being killed and were pretty much a slave. So, sorry, but I do have to disagree with you there. I don't think prisoners are tried for the stuff they were forced to do under pain of death," he told her with a look of compassion, and he dropped a hand on her shoulder and gave her a little shake. "We're all guilty of lots of stuff, no need to weigh ourselves down with stuff we didn't do."
Adie shook her head, but it was a move of agreement.
"Oh, you are good for me," she smiled. "Yes, agreed. However, I still want to help."
"Of course you do, Doc says they're your sisters or something, by that law, though that doesn't make the Master your Da, which is good, cause that would just be weird, you know?" he teased.
"With this group, things do tend to get weird in a hurry. I am actually researching the Articles at present, so I expect things will get even weirder soon," she teased.
"Yeah, I heard Susan was on the warpath, good on her. I love Diana and am very happy she exists, but I sure wouldn't want to inflict that creation on anyone else. Not ethical isn't even the start of the things I'd say to that Rassilon bloke," he said with a frown.
"No kidding. Thankfully, he is dead." Adie said. Her eyes at that moment were curiously blank.
"Yeah, Koschei says he got his arse kicked back into the Time Lock when he tried to get out, along with the Doc's Mum, sadly." Jake looked unhappy. "Pity about that one, she saved the lot of them, you know, the original group of Time Lords. Except for you and Aislynn, every last one of them was here because of her. She stole the Eye of Harmony too, or built a new one, Doc's not too sure about that. He keeps muttering about the "Hand of Omega" or some such, lots of secrets that one has. Doctor's got tons of them and hardly ever lets on." Jake laughed. "Listen to me, yammering away when I ought to be working."
"I won't keep you," Adie smiled, standing. "Although, I did also want to relay a heads-up."
"Oh? Am I about to get propositioned by the next dozen now?" he asked a bit wild-eyed.
"I think that would depend on Diana, don't you? " She smirked.
"She was quite happy to pass me around, but I had to insist on no more than five at a time. Those girls will kill me!" he grumbled.
"I don't know about killing you," Adie said, "But there are a number of plots to feed you up. I imagine you'll be getting quite a lot of food presently."
"Oh, I don't mind that, Evie-44 spent her hundred years reading through a library, she cooked what she could find and did a pretty good job of it," he told her.
"Keep in mind few of them have ever had a chance to try and cook before, with actual ingredients, I mean."
"Well, yeah, but they're all fairly clever and fast learners, if they weren't they'd not have survived, eh? So, I'll take a bromo and be brave," he teased.
"You've faced so many horrors, I am sure that you will prevail in the face of scorched pie crust," she smiled at him, and turned to go.
"Never let it be said that I quailed in the face of pudding," he called to her and with a grin went back to work.