A/N: Ah, internet, ah, life... Catching up one day and I'll have another to catch up tomorrow!
"Instrumental Glory"
26. Would Be
Mesiary, in the year 2015
Blaine had needed time to stop and collect his thoughts when the world had started coming back to him, though he wouldn't get too much of it.
It had been something different that time, when the headmistress had done whatever she'd done to him. Before, more or less, he'd been made active by association. This time, she had purposefully done something to him, so he would turn on the Doctor and Donna and kill them. He had no recollection of what he might have done during that time, only that when he'd started coming out of it, he still knew things. The Doctor had known somehow that he would know these things, and Blaine had done his best to pass on the information in what way he could, before it was completely gone from his head. When he was entirely himself again, he'd just sat there, on the ground, inside the TARDIS.
After a while, the Doctor had brought him something to drink, and he had started feeling better. When he'd asked what it was, the Doctor had tipped his head to Donna.
"Tea," she answered him.
"Right," he breathed, drinking on. "What happens now?"
"Well, thanks to you, we know where to go," the Doctor revealed. "We know what these masters wanted those children for."
"Why's that?" Blaine wanted to know. He had been the one to tell the Doctor and Donna about it, but the knowledge had left him.
"Plausible deniability," the Doctor went on. When Blaine frowned, he frowned back, stepping up to him. "The targets, three of them, will be found in a children's hospital."
"Send in a goon, they'll point the finger at him," Donna pitched in.
"Yes, that's…" the Doctor looked after her with a disapproving look she knew was aimed at her vocabulary. "That's right."
"But they won't suspect children," Blaine put the pieces together nonetheless. "Why would they want to kill anyone who would help sick kids?"
"Whatever the reason, they didn't see fit to put it in your head, so your guess is as good as mine." The Doctor crouched in front of him, his voice earnest. "If you're not up to this, you don't have to…"
"Just tell me what I need to do," Blaine shook his head, looking back at him.
X
If they didn't know why the masters wanted three people dead so much they would go to the lengths they had gone to secure their killers, they at least knew who these three unfortunates were, which made it much more likely for the Doctor and his companions to work out their plan.
The Doctor wouldn't be entering the hospital, not right away. There was something he needed to get ready, he'd explained to Blaine and Donna, so until it was ready, they would have to do the first part on their own. This first part required for them to locate these would be victims. One of them was a doctor, the second a nurse, and the third, to their surprise, was not staff at all but the father of one of the young patients. They'd decided that Blaine would deal with drawing out the doctor and the nurse, while Donna would get a hold of the father.
As ideas went, this one was born out of one imperative rule: they had to make sure the children would not be collateral damage. If they could draw out the targeted, then their intended killers would have no choice but to follow them. Like Blaine before, the Doctor had pointed out to the two of them how to use their built in failings. They had one job, to eliminate their targets. They needed to be able to get to them if they were going to do that.
So far everything had gone about as well as it could. Blaine had gotten hold of the doctor and the nurse, and Donna had gotten the father, and now they were bringing them out of the hospital. On the inside, they were afraid if things had gone so well that they were bound to go horribly wrong all of a sudden, but then they were out of the hospital, and the Doctor was waiting, his feet grounded, his posture making it clear he was ready and waiting. He had an object balanced on his shoulder, and they had to notice it looked an awful lot like the children's weapon, to which he promised this was both a coincidence and an intended retort from him to the masters. Because the thing he held was not a weapon: it was a pulse.
When the children came out in search of their targets, Brin, Seyelle, and Rolan, all three wearing hospital gowns as though they'd been patients themselves, the Doctor aimed the thing he'd been working on at them, and with the flip of a switch the pulse was released. In a matter of seconds, all of the masters' work had been undone, which gave the Doctor only some small amount of satisfaction; it had still come with the price of seventeen dead children.
X
The doctor, the nurse and the father had been sent on to return to where they belonged, two of them tending to the children, one visiting his own. Whatever they thought they'd been witness to, they were left to make up their own stories.
Their would-be assassins had been taken back to Isher Academy. The Doctor had been looking forward to get a word in with their masters, but even as they arrived, they could see the school was in turmoil. Mysteriously, the headmistress had disappeared, as had one of the masters, and one of the guards. There was no trace left of them, and if they hadn't seen them in the halls every day, in class, or by the vault, guarding the instruments, they might never have known for sure that they'd been part of the Isher world. Then there were those who claimed there was no such thing as an elite program at Isher, and when they mentioned the instruments, the remaining masters were not shy about taking them into the vault, showing how there were no instruments matching the descriptions they gave.
It would all come to light somehow, some of it at least. Elite program or no, seventeen deaths would surely spell the end for Isher. The Doctor wanted to prevent that from happening, but he couldn't do it, especially now… Those responsible had gotten away, and he couldn't forget that.
TO BE CONTINUED (TOMORROW)