This chapter is quite short, but I felt that to launch into the next phase would make it prohibitively long... so you get a tight, sweet, hopefully slightly painful next installment of our saga! Hope you like.
IN NO TIME
"Fine," said the Doctor, in response to Tish's plea that he just give Windselt whatever he wants. "What is it you're after?" His eyes were set like steel and his body eerily still.
"Oh! So we're willing to play the game, now that someone the Doctor cares about is in danger? What happened to collateral damage? What happened to only two die to save thirteen? Ladies, have we changed our minds?" asked Windselt, feigning sympathy.
"Please!" spat Linnea Mays, rather out-of-turn. "Surely even you can see that you've crossed over the boundaries of honour and fair play."
"Linnea, let me handle this," the Doctor said to her, voice low, teeth clenched.
"I can see that I have," sighed Windselt, sounding rather bored. "I don't care, but yes, I can see."
"Well, the equation stands," she spat back at him.
"Linnea, let me handle this!" the Doctor repeated, a little harder, a little more clenched.
Linnea ignored him. "Nothing's changed," she said recklessly. She turned and faced Martha, and gestured at the bump at her middle. "If two have to die, even if it's…"
"Do not finish that sentence, sweetheart," Tish warned. "We will not have any more discussion of collateral damage, or so help me, we will leave you here with the Phantom of the Internet, and will have no qualms about forgetting you ever existed. Do you get me?"
Linnea's eyes shot wide open and her jaw dropped. She'd fancied herself the leader of this gang of girls, and was genuinely shocked to be challenged.
The Doctor cleared his throat. He would thank Tish later. He felt sure, without a doubt, that he and Martha had chosen the right person to care for their son. "So, as I was saying, my wispy friend: what is it you want?"
Windselt grinned. "I've already got it. Well, almost."
The Doctor scowled. "I beg your pardon?"
"Let me ask you something, Miss Jones," Windselt said. "Martha, that is."
"Leave her alone, Windselt," said the Doctor, still scowling holes through the ectoplasm.
"Where were you born?" he asked her.
"What?" Martha asked, still doubled over, distracted, trying in vain to protect the baby.
"Where were you born?" he repeated. "Gallifrey, was it?"
"No, of course not," she spat.
"Oh, then it must have been Sorofrann," he reasoned. "And you must have been one of the lucky few to have won a scholarship to be schooled with the Time Lords."
"What are you talking about?" Martha asked. She remembered meeting the Doctor's friend Lincomb, who had been born on Sorofrann, and who had done exactly what Windselt was describing.
But slowly it dawned on her what he was getting at. He didn't really think she was from Gallifrey or Sorofrann at all. In spite of his smug inquiries, he knew very well that Martha Jones had been born on Earth, into a normal, human family.
"So how is it, Miss Jones, that you are so gifted in technology?" he asked her. "I've been watching you, and you have been keeping up with your pin-stripe-clad friend here, hardly missing a step as he machine guns his lofty theories and Gallifreyan gibberish at you. It seems also that you keep a similar perspective over time and space, more and more as the months have progressed, over the past, say, half a year?"
"I see," she said, standing up straight. "You really are an unimaginable bastard." She was echoing the Doctor's words from a few moments before.
"Almost as if an alien presence has taken up residence in your body, if only temporarily, and given you the sight," he said, mockingly.
"So… what? We're at an impasse?" asked Tish, utterly appalled that the villain was not playing fair. "You're holding the baby hostage for… itself? How is that even…?"
"This has been your goal all along?" the Doctor shouted. "To steal a Time Lord baby?"
"No, no, of course not," Windselt said, dismissively. "At first it was to gain energy, work out how to assimilate human energy signatures with my being so that I could become corporeal again, and then once I got myself out of this little hell I've been thrown into, I could… you know… wreak proper havoc."
"Of course," the Doctor said shrugging. "If you're going to rain down destruction upon humanity, you don't want to cut corners."
"But the more I learned of you and Miss Jones and your offspring, the more I realised… mere human energy is not enough. Humans are rooted in the physical – they eat, they sleep, they copulate, they consume mass quantities of fermented barley – slaves to their ids, if you will. And that all sounds like great fun, don't get me wrong. But a Time Lord, Doctor… a bird's-eye view of all of time and space, what is, what was, what will be and what must not. And not just view it, but wield it. Travel, manipulate, pervade it, and feel it flowing through every fibre of your being. It's what a Time Lord consciousness does."
"Oh, bollocks," the Doctor sighed, pulling one hand down over his face.
"What is he talking about?" Tish wanted to know.
"From here, he can wield information, and he's been using it as a weapon," the Doctor explained. "He's been using his unique situation to manipulate you girls."
Martha chimed in, voice cracking under the strain of emotion and uncertainty. "Think of what he could do, wielding information throughout all of history, throughout the entire universe, with just the click of a mouse."
"Oh, God," Tish whispered.
"Yep. Exactly," the Doctor agreed. "Just like God."
Windselt laughed. "So much better than being merely corporeal," he boasted. "I was a fool not to realise the potential of my dilemma from the start. All of the internet and all of the tangible universe melded together as one, and with me as the only being anywhere who can move freely, metaphorically of course, and leave my stamp on both. Right here, from this little computer. Isn't it fabulous?"
"Oh yeah, I'm just chomping at the bit for that to happen," the Doctor muttered sarcastically.
There was an uncomfortable silence, and finally Martha said, "Take me, then."
"Oh, Miss Jones," Windselt whined, as though he were so disappointed in her. "You're clever clever clever, but in your motherly haste, you haven't thought this through."
"Take me instead," Martha said. "Let the Doctor have the baby's data, and you can have me. Just… leave our son out of it."
"Martha…" the Doctor muttered, realising, as Windselt had, that she had not thought it through.
"Oh, you know as well as I do that you're pretty well useless without that child of yours," Windselt pointed out. "Once I separate you from him, well… it's him I'll want. So, sorry mummy, you can't save the day for the little tyke this time."
One more awkward silence fell over the group, and the Doctor said, "Let's just go."
"What?" asked Tish. "You can't be serious."
"I am absolutely serious," he argued. "Come on, ladies, turn around, and let's leave. Come on now, avanti, allons-y and the like." He was trying to push them through the door back into the mall area, where Windselt could not follow.
Martha was looking at him suspiciously, but only because she wasn't sure what he had up his sleeve, only that he had something.
"No, Doctor!" Tish protested. "This is madness! Girls, stay put!"
"Look, if we give him what he wants, he takes the baby. If we leave, he takes the baby. Either way, we're screwed. And if it's a question of data replacement or assimilation of the baby's Time Lord consciousness into Windselt's to make a bigger, badder, God-like Windselt, I'd rather just have it effectively deleted, thank you very much. So, let's go."
The girls turned to go, most of them confused, and just happy to have a direction.
"Doctor, that's a very bad idea," Windselt said.
"Well, clearly," agreed the Doctor. "But you haven't given us any fair options. So we're choosing the one that means we don't have to stand here and look at your pleasing, yet oddly disturbing, face anymore. So… bye."
"Doctor…" Martha began.
"Look, love," he said to her, taking her by the shoulders. "This whole situation is one big farce. Trust me, you can leave, and your conscience is clear. Trust me."
"Are you kidding?" she shouted.
"No. Because I think this big blowhard is bluffing."
"What did you just say, Doctor?" asked Windselt. "Dost mine ears deceive me? Did you just accuse me of bluffing?"
"That's right! Bluffing! I don't think you have the finesse to isolate the baby from Martha, and you don't have the power necessary to assimilate its consciousness with your own. And I know for certain that it's impossible to do those things together, so… do your worst. We're leaving."
"One last warning Doctor!" Windselt shouted.
The Doctor ignored him, and led the women to the door.
And in one great, blood-curdling moment, Martha Jones screamed. When the Doctor turned to look, she was standing with her arms stretched out to the sides, and she was looking down at her body in astonishment. She was as thin as a rail – her bump was gone.
She began to hyperventilate, and Tish helped her get to her knees.
"Now you leave me no choice, Doctor," Windselt said, shaking his head. "You forced me to replace the data of your child, so I'll just have to take you instead."