Chapter 29

Over the next two days, Jack and Sam took on their responsibilities with as much vigor as was possible considering the circumstances. Jack rarely left the Doctor's side, only doing so to get something to eat or to clean himself up when necessary. Sam had taken to entertaining Glad as much as possible to help her cope with the Doctor's continued unconsciousness, even though she insisted on being at his side for at least an hour both days.

The conversation between Sam and Jack that night had a definite impact on their relationship, as did their mutual concern for the Time Lord. Neither brought up the conversation again, but the shift in their attitudes towards each other was palpable. Sam no longer looked at Jack as if trying to ascertain the motivations of the other man and Jack no longer looked at Sam with rose-colored glasses. Well... he still saw Rose. Al mentioned the change to both men, but separately. In neither case did he get a satisfying answer to what had led to the change. Finally, he just accepted that a peace had been made between them and that he didn't really need to know why.

It was just past lunchtime on the third day of the Doctor's trance and Jack had just entered the Imaging Chamber after taking care of some administrative activities for the project. As he centered himself on the infirmary, he noted that Glad was there with Sam.

"He's been like this for days," Glad said, her tone filled with worry. "Is he going to wake up?"

"There hasn't been any change, but that could be a good thing. I'm not one hundred percent sure how these healing traces work," the leaper replied.

Jack made his presence known. "Morning, Sam."

Sam smiled back but didn't say anything, not wanting to tip Glad off that there was another person in the room that she couldn't see. She had enough to worry about without that particular knowledge.

The Captain looked at the Time Lord's still form. "He seems paler today." He studied the monitor, just as he did every time since the Doctor slipped into his coma. "Has his temperature gone down?"

Glad, remembering how she had cared for her father when he was sick, moved her hand to touch the Doctor's forehead, wanting to feel if he had a fever. As she did so, her hand moved over his mouth. She gasped with fear. "He no longer has breath!"

"What?" Sam asked. He put the stethoscope up to the man's chest, checking both sides rapidly. "His hearts have stopped as well!" Sam's instincts immediately kicked in and he started CPR. He was doing a modification of the technique in that he first did compressions on one side, breath, and then the other side. It was a tricky procedure.

"What are you doing?" Glad questioned with confusion. She really didn't know how this odd pressing on the chest and then kissing the Time Lord was, in any way whatsoever, helpful. She was at first somewhat miffed that she didn't receive a response but seeing him continuously doing the same thing over and over again, she figured maybe it was something he couldn't stop. She simply watched and prayed as he continued his strange ritual.

Jack watched with baited breath as Sam persisted in his continual ministrations, hoping for some kind of reaction from the patient lying on the table. Even as he did so, the Imaging Chamber door opened, allowing Al to enter.

The Admiral frowned in concern seeing Sam doing what he figured was a form of CPR. "What's going on?" he questioned. Looking around at the worried expressions on the three conscious occupants standing over the Doctor, he started to ask, "Jack..."

"The Doctor's not breathing and his hearts have stopped," came the blunt reply, immediately explaining Sam's actions without going into detail.

A good fifteen minutes past without a response. Glad had found a chair and was staring down at the pale face of her mentor, determined not to cry despite being certain that she would never get to tell the Doctor how much she cared for him. Al and Jack were both pacing back and forth, waiting for results that were looking less likely by the second.

Finally, knowing that Sam's actions weren't helping in the least and noticing how exhausted the physician was making himself, Jack walked over to him and broke the silence. "It's been too long, Sam. Let it go."

"I can't," the leaper said obviously hoping that somehow the Doctor would respond. "This is all I can do for him."

Al knew how hard Sam took death, especially during a leap. "Jack's right, kid. You're not helping here. He's gone."

Jack turned to Al, giving him a glare. "You don't know that." Turning back to Sam, he continued off of Al's words, not allowing Sam to respond. "If the Doctor regenerates, he regenerates. If he's dead, there's nothing we can do to prevent it. Right now, all you are doing is giving him some really nasty bruises and making yourself physically sick." He took a slow breath. "You have to let it go."

The leaper stopped his actions. "Damn it! This life didn't last nearly long enough. I should have noticed the gas sooner and retrieved the antidote quicker. Maybe he would have had a chance then... to have this life approach his people's norm."

"You did everything humanly possible," the immortal man told him firmly.

Glad got off her chair, somewhat in shock. Still she could see her new friend had tried his best, even if she didn't understand what he'd been doing. "The priests say when someone good dies, no matter what we think, it's because our Lord wants them with him. The Doctor was good." She blinked as tears started to finally trickle down her cheeks. "Oh, Sam! I'm going to miss him!" She rushed into his arms, sobbing heavily.

Sam felt numb as Glad fell into his arms, her head against him, tears wetting his shirt. She was living and in pain, as he was and as much as he'd wanted to save the Doctor, he knew the girl needed someone to be strong. "I'm sure the priests are right, Glad." He knew there was still the possibility of regeneration but didn't want to get her hopes up. Instead he just let her cry.

Jack turned to look upon the body of his friend, stunned and confused as the Doctor didn't seem to be regenerating as he had hoped. "It's not supposed to be this way," he murmured under his breath, so low that no one else could hear him. The Doctor was meant to live far into the future and here he was, lying motionless in the TARDIS' infirmary, no pulse, no hearts beats, no breath... it defied all that he knew about the timelines as they were meant to be. Rubbing his face with both hands, he exhaled slowly and turned away, not wanting to deal with this reality quite yet.

A gasp from the table made the whole room jump. Glad screamed in fright, backing away from Sam as she rushed as far from the table as possible. "He's like Lazarus!"

Al, who had followed her nodded. "Yeah. That's just not right!" He pointed to the prone figure who was now struggling to breathe. "He was dead."

Sam shrugged, even as he smiled at the Doctor's recovery. "It sure seemed like it to me. No heartbeat, no respiration. But then, I really don't know Gallifreyan physiology."

Jack, recovering from the sudden reversal, laughed joyously. "Yes!" he cried out as the Doctor's eyes snapped open.

Disoriented, the Gallifreyan turned on his side, his eyes closing once again in a hard wince as he scrambled off of the table, dropping to the floor with a hard thump. He rasped several breaths, his head pressed to the cool floor as one hand clutched at his chest.

Sam moved quickly to the fallen man, concerned by the action. "Doctor!"

The Time Lord put out a hand, blocking Sam's attempts to help him. "You stay back!" he rasped. "I bet you did CPR on me, didn't you!" he said accusingly. Crawling a few feet, he leaned against the wall, forcing his lungs to cooperate with him. "Rassilon'it-mamis! That hurts! Feels like an elephant stepped on me!" He paused, instantly thoughtful. "Wait a minute... you shouldn't have had to perform CPR! It's not like my hearts stopped or anything."

Sam blinked a moment as the Gallifreyan took him to task for doing the only thing he could think of at the time. "Yes, they were stopped. Totally. You were dead, Doctor. Even the TARDIS felt it."

"Dead? As in not breathing, no hearts beats, nothing?"

Sam nodded. "Nothing."

The Doctor grimaced as he gently rubbed his chest. "Healing comas usually don't end that way. Must have had one hell of something wrong with me." He blinked for a moment, realizing the implications of his words. He looked up at Sam, his eyes softening. "You saved my life. Again." Before he could speak further, he felt arms wrapping around him.

Glad hurried to the Doctor's side and enveloped him with a tight hug. "It's a miracle! You're alive! You'd died but you came back to us!"

"Yeah," the Gallifreyan acknowledged, sounding somewhat mystified by the event. "But I'd be hard pressed to tell you how." He looked to the physicist and the holograms for answers.

"You were poisoned. Mokanic acitonic gas. Ptah-Hotep had set a trap for alien visitors to his tomb." Sam explained.

"Mokanic acitonic gas is deadly. Humans are one of the few in the universe to have a natural immunity to it. Causes nasty hallucinations." The Time Lord frowned slightly. "So... I must have been in a healing coma...which you helped me complete... shouldn't have made it even that far if the gas had affected me. Why didn't I die?"

"The TARDIS showed me the antidote and the application format was clear by the needle type," Sam explained.

The Doctor looked down at himself and noticed the two small dots on his chest which were now just scabs even though the bruises that surrounded them were still fresh. "Ah... Well, then." He struggled to get to his feet, failing almost immediately and sliding back down to his rump.

"Still feeling the side effects, I take it?" Jack questioned.

Glad extended her hand. "I'll help you up, Doctor," she said with a smile.

Al looked to the Time Lord, a bit miffed that he didn't seem more grateful to his best friend. "I guess it was a good thing for you that Sam would know how to save your life."

"I'm just happy we still have you around," Sam told the Gallifreyan.

The Doctor got to his feet with Glad's help and looked at the two men. "Yes," he said after a moment. He stumbled slightly to Sam, an appreciative smile on his face. "Thank you. Again."

"You would have done the same," the leaper said modestly. "You're more than welcome." He grew quiet. "I guess this was part of the time loop too?"

A frown graced the Time Lord's visage. "Was it? How was me being poisoned with a deadly hallucinogen... by the way, I hope I didn't do or say anything I might regret later... then nearly dying from a botched attempt at a healing coma which you had to assist via CPR a part of the time loop? Of course, I'm assuming that you are referring to the time loop that involves your writing those papyruses and the warning on the tomb wall."

Sam nodded. "I thought that everything was as I found it before. I even noticed that the TARDIS left the scratches on the floor that we thought happened when the sarcophagus was moved. I was wrong."

"Really? What did you miss? I had assumed that you found everything and corrected them."

"Well, see, that's the thing. After the gas started to affect you, you sort of went... well... crazy. You were particularly upset about a painting of Set on the wall. You attacked it and damaged it pretty badly. You called it Sutekh."

The Gallifreyan's eyes widened slightly at Sam's words. "Oh," he said quietly. "Well, there's a blast from the past," he murmured, rubbing his sideburn.

"When I saw the damage, I realized that it was damaged just as I'd seen it the first time." When there still seemed to be some question as to what he was saying, he continued. "I thought when I entered the tomb in 1957 it was the ravages of time or later tomb defacers that had done the damage but that never made complete sense to me. There should have been things taken if that was the truth and more of a mess in the tomb. Instead, the find had been spectacular. The attack you did to the wall painting was what had to happen."

The skinny man just nodded at Sam's words, affirming his agreement of the latter's conclusions. Still, the thought that he'd been hallucinating about the Osirian who called himself Sutekh the Destroyer wasn't exactly the best news he'd heard. "I didn't... say or do anything else that I might regret later, did I?"

"You mentioned someone named Alistair," Glad told him gently. "But I don't see anything wrong with talking to your friends. At least, I assume he's your friend. You weren't angry when you said the name. You also said something about a Jack." She tried to recall what exactly.

"Me?" Jack said, surprised.

Glad continued. "Something about being sorry to leave him but that you had to. That he was... um... all wrong and that he'd turned on you because of a wooden torch."

The Doctor raised his eyes to look at the ex-Time Agent before sniffing slightly and turning his head away. "Did I?"

Al looked towards the man who'd kept the project running the last few years and decided to speak. "Sometimes even friends can say things that hurt." He knew that from experience having been on both the giving and receiving side of that. "I may not be the Doctor, but I know you're a fine man, Jack."

"Thanks, but I have a feeling there's more to his words than just bad blood," Jack replied to the Admiral. He looked at the Time Lord knowingly. "Isn't there, Doctor?"

The Gallifreyan again raised his eyes to Jack, not answering him for a long moment. "I think there's a lot we have to discuss."

Sam nodded. "That may be, but I think that an audience for the conversation isn't what either of you want. In the meantime, I think we can leave this place."

Jack shrugged. "We'll talk when the time is right. At the moment, you have work to do, though. It can wait."

The Time Lord immediately stood a little taller at Sam's words and latched onto Jack's as well. "Yes. Yes!" he reiterated. "Still have much to do."

Glad blinked at the Doctor's and Sam's words, having not heard Jack's and Al's part of the conversation. "But I wouldn't mind you hearing what the Doctor has to say to me, Sam."

"Um... yeah...we were talking with those people you can't see, Glad. You remember? We told you about them earlier."

"The two you talked about earlier? Would this be the Alistair and Jack you mentioned in the tomb?"

"Well... Yes and no. Yes to Jack, no to Alistair. Well... there is one named Al but that's short for Albert, not Alistair. They're just people that you can't see and hear," the Doctor explained. "Sam can see them because they're directly connected mentally to him through the person he's replaced..." He gave him a look. "Temporarily, I might add. As for me... well, I'm brilliant!" He strode from the infirmary with authority, acting as if he hadn't just come back from the dead despite how sore he still was.

Sam noted the direction the Time Lords was headed and called after the man. "Doctor, you might want to go to the wardrobe first."

"Wardrobe?" the Gallifreyan queried with a frown.

"No shirt, no shoes, no service?" Jack quipped.

"Well, that depends on where you go for dinner," the Doctor started. When he saw Jack raise his eyebrows to indicate that he was missing the point, he again looked upon himself, noting that he was only dressed in a pair of trousers. "Oh. Right." He immediately changed direction. "Meet you in the console room. Will only be a mo."

Sam and Glad went to console room to await his arrival. Jack and Al simply centered themselves there. A few minutes later, the Time Lord came in, dressed once again in a pinstriped suit.

"You know, I'm usually not one to comment on a man's wardrobe..." Sam started

Al took exception to the statement. "Oh yeah? You've been commenting about mine for years."

"That's different. Yours is just... well... innovative." He turned back to the Doctor. "But yours... do you always wear those suits?"

"What's wrong with brown and blue?" the Gallifreyan wondered with a frown.

"What I mean is you're always wearing the same two suits. Considering your lifespan, wouldn't that get a bit boring?"

"Do you really want to go through a listing of all the different styles I've chosen over ten individual lives?"

"Not really."

"Then that settles it," the Doctor stated with a grin.

Sam shrugged, letting the matter drop despite it not really being settled at all. He watched as the Doctor threw various levels on the console knowing they were once more about to enter the vortex. "So where to now?"

"Egypt, first week of March 1957."

"The day I found the tomb?"

Al spoke up. "We really don't need to do that... do we? I mean, isn't one undead person enough for one leap? Maybe we could go somewhere... less... spooky. Like this trout fishing stream I know of."

"As much as I love fishing, no," the Doctor replied bluntly. "Actually we're not going to the tomb the day you found it..."

Al looked relieved but immediately tensed up again as the Time Lord finished his thought.

"...we're going to go to the tomb the day after you found it. Have a bit of an errand to run, a promise to keep. We still need to take Ptah-Hotep to Sekhmet." He marched up to the console and entered the coordinates for their destination.

Jack, knowing that they were about to lose contact with the time travelling trio for a short while, spoke up. "That's our cue, Al. Time to go until they rematerialize." To the Doctor, he informed, "We'll see you on the other side." Then, with a broad grin to Al that showed just how relieved he was that the Doctor was better, he raised his handlink and opened the Imaging Chamber door before exiting, encouraging Al to do the same.

Al gave a last look at the group. "I really think this is a bad idea, Sam." He was about to say something more when the Doctor started the TARDIS' engine, sending the blue box again traveling. He suddenly found himself in an empty Imaging Chamber. "I hate when that happens," he groused before following Jack out of the room. As he walked down the ramp, he called to the ex Time Agent. "How soon do you think we'll be able to reestablish a lock on Sam?"

"Who knows?" Jack commented, seeming unconcerned about the loss of contact. "They'll show up eventually."

"That may be sooner than later, Captain," Ziggy said. "I have a lo..." There was a pause as if the computer was confused. A moment later, her arrogance was back in full force. "Doctor Beckett is no longer within established parameters."

Jack frowned, staring up at the ceiling. "What do you mean he's no longer within established parameters? You just started to say you had a lock? What happened?"

"I think there may be a problem with the software you had installed. There isn't anything to lock onto at present."

"There's nothing wrong with the software I installed. Obviously, you lost the lock. Just run another scan using the program I gave you to make a lock on Rose's cell phone."

Ziggy's light dimmed. "I have already attempted that. It didn't work."

"That's impossible," the Captain protested.

"It may be impossible, but it's true, Captain," Ziggy said, sounding miffed.

"Now you see what I put up with," Al said as an aside.

"I heard that, Admiral."

"Yeah? Well, it's true, you bucket of bolts."

Jack shook his head and marched to the control console. Nudging Gooshie out of the way, he dropped to look at the wiring. "I don't understand. It should be working!" He paused thoughtfully. "Unless..."

"What?" Al asked.

"Osirian technology," he growled in frustration.

"Sam said something about them. Who are they and why would their technology be important here?"

"What did he say?"

"Something about this cat goddess being one. Personally, I thought he was just under too much stress from being left behind by the Doctor."

"Sekhmet, right?" The head of Torchwood took a breath. "They're an alien race. The ancient Egyptians actually worshipped them and they had advanced technology - telepathic technology. From what I understand, their technology could give off some really strong electromagnetic interference."

"And you think that's interfering with getting a lock on Sam?"

"It's possible." He gestured to the console in front of him. "I mean, this technology is extremely advanced for this era but the Osirians had the ability to manipulate matter with their minds. Well, that's what the history books say. It could be that the technology in Ptah-Hotep's tomb is so advanced that it just runs over your locking capabilities like a semi over road kill."

"Nice picture."

"Thanks. I like to be as metaphorically accurate as possible."

Al looked towards the Imaging Chamber. "I hope you're right. I just have a bad feeling about this. What if something happens to them?"

"You have a bad feeling if you buy chicken instead of beef for a barbeque," the Captain told him with raised eyebrows. "You just need to understand, they're in the TARDIS, the best ship in the whole universe. Can hold back the hoards of Genghis Khan and the heat of a supernova. Believe me. Nothing is going to happen to them."

Al sighed. "You know, this 'think positive' attitude of yours is annoying. I was referring to when they get to that tomb... and that mummy..."

"Al... stop it. Just... relax. Go home to your wife and make love to her for hours and hours until she's breathless."

Al considered his boss's statement and smiled. "Well, I don't know about all of that, but it looks like Sam's going to be gone for awhile anyway." He had to admit, the Captain's suggestion wasn't a bad one. He turned his gaze to Ziggy. "Be sure to let me know the first sign of a link with Sam."

Ziggy's light brightened. "As always, Admiral."

Al smiled. "Okay. Heading home then. Thanks, Jack."

"No problem. Have fun."

"That goes without saying." Al left the room, whistling happily.

Jack smiled and headed to his office. He had some research to do and there was no time like the present.