It was a little easier to fit into Grace's car, though the twins were still thankful they were small.
"Next left," the Doctor instructed, watching Ryan's phone.
"Where are we driving to?" Yasmin asked, leaning forward.
"I reckon she's using my phone to track the origin signal for the DNA bombs," Ryan said.
Graham touched his collarbone again. "Again, how long till they go off?"
"Don't know."
"Well, can't we just defuse them?"
The Doctor shook her head. "Not without the right equipment." She pointed. "Left again." Grace turned. "Stop." Before the car had properly stopped, the Doctor was already out, turning around in a circle with the phone outstretched. The rest of them joined her. "We're close."
Charity paused in her circle, in a direction, just before an explosion went off that way. There was a man there, or what looked like a man. Charity's teeth started to hurt.
"Bingo!" the Doctor joined Charity's perspective, narrowing her eyes at the man that made Charity's teeth hurt. "Oi!" The Doctor paused. "I was expecting a tentacle-y thing." She stepped forward. "Don't you move!"
Instead of listening, the figure turned away. In unison, the Doctor and Charity started to run after it.
"Wait, is that another alien?" Ryan asked the others.
Grace nodded. "Looks like it!"
The rest following the Doctor and Charity down the street, save Graham, who groaned. "Why is she running at another alien?"
"Don't just stand there, come on!" Yasmin called.
"Now you're all running at it!"
Ash didn't bother meeting up with Charity and the Doctor, though that was mainly because the necessary speed would indicate something beyond human. That was the same reason Charity hadn't actually caught the figure they were chasing – the Doctor couldn't do the same so close to her regeneration, but on a normal day, the twins would have caught the figure easily.
Well, on a normal day, the twins would have shot the figure and then chased it. But they knew that wasn't smart when the Doctor didn't know who they were – and it probably wouldn't be smart even when the Doctor knew who they were.
Though that didn't stop Charity from being upset when they didn't successfully catch the figure. The Doctor stuttered to a stop. "Oh, lost it," she said, taking deep breaths. "It's fast. I'm slower cos of all this..." she gestured at her chest, "fizzing inside."
"In here!" Ryan called from behind them, standing at a door to an industrial unit with Ash beside him.
Charity and the Doctor joined the rest of the group inside the building. "Got a man down over here," Graham called to them as he and Grace knelt by a body.
"That thing must've killed him." Grace shook her head. "I've never seen injuries like these."
The Doctor bent over the body. "Not a weapon blast, more of an ice burn." Charity stood above her, frowning. Ash wandered around the rest of the room with Ryan and Yasmin.
"It broke his jaw open too," Charity pointed at the man's mouth. "It took one of his teeth."
"What sort of creature kills someone and then stops to pull out a tooth?" The Doctor stood. "I'm sorry you all had to see this."
"I'll find something to cover the body." Grace moved back from the body.
"Thank you, Grace." The Doctor looked around at the people she could see. "I'm sorry any of this is happening. I'm sorry that thing on the train planted these bombs inside you, and I'm sorry I haven't figured out what's going on yet." She focused on Charity and her expression ensured that Charity knew that the Doctor still didn't know who the twins were. To her, they were just human teenagers unwillingly dragged into something dangerous.
"This is it," Ryan called from behind a second wall. "This is the thing." While Grace covered the body, the rest moved around to see the object in question.
Charity raised her eyebrows. 'Do you recognize it?'
Ash shot her a look as an answer. They may have spent all of their lives together, but there was the occasional thing that one twin recognized that the other didn't.
Of course, it was always more interesting when neither of them knew what was about to happen.
"It was all sealed up earlier," Yasmin said. "Looks like it's been broken."
"Or it's done what it came here for." The Doctor moved around it. "It's some sort of transport chamber, presumably for that thing we just saw in the alley." She reached the rest of them again, frowning. "But why here? Why tonight?"
Ryan raised a hand. "Actually, that might have been me."
The Doctor – and the twins – shot their attention towards him. "Why? What did you do?"
"When I went to get me bike, there were this line in the air. And then it moved, and there were shapes."
Ash raised his eyebrows. "And?"
"And I touched one."
"Ryan," Grace groaned.
"You all would've done the same."
Graham shook his head. "I wouldn't."
The Doctor nodded. "I would've." The twins raised their hands to indicate their agreement.
"Right, the shapes disappeared," Ryan continued. "A few seconds later, that," he pointed at the shape, "appeared. What've I done?"
The Doctor shrugged. "Hard to say, really."
"I suppose you'll be blaming this on the dyspraxia as well." Graham shook his head. "Can't ride a bike, started an alien invasion..."
"Graham," Grace hissed, taking Graham's arm.
"What?"
"Enough, love."
Ryan held up his hands. "All right, I made a mistake. But why did that guy move this thing from the Peaks to here? And how did he even know it were there?"
The Doctor pointed at him. "Good questions."
Yaz looked around the rest of the building. "Let's take a look round here, see what we can find."
The Doctor held up the phone, frowning at it. "Can't follow it. The tracking's been blocked, like it figured out what I was doing."
Grace shook her head. "If we were tracking bomb signals from that creature from t'train, why did they lead us here?"
"Another good question. I dunno. If I could analyze that..." the Doctor shrugged. "Course, what I really need is my..." her attention fell on the twins. "Oh! I could build one. I'm good at building things...probably." Without another word, she turned and ran off towards a workbench.
Graham and Grace made to follow her, but the twins stepped forward first. "We'll look after her," Ash told them.
The Doctor ducked behind a plastic curtain. Once the twins came upon her, she was already assembling components. In their youth, the twins had some experience building sonic or laser devices, though they hadn't done that in centuries. Their mamaidh had tried to convince them to have some device of their own, but the twins had been satisfied with their vaporizers.
"Do you remember your name yet?" Ash asked.
The Doctor shook her head. "Not a clue."
"You said you were an alien..."
The Doctor grinned. "You should've seen me a few hours back. My whole body changed. Every cell in my body burning. Some of them are still at it now. Reordering, regenerating."
Charity raised her eyebrows. "Sounds painful." The twins, still being on their first regeneration, had only heard stories of what regeneration was actually like. They knew their mother found it painless, but they knew the Doctor's had never been easy.
The Doctor paused, straightening more, almost turning to face them. Something seemed to spark in her eyes. "You have no idea. There's this moment when you're about to die and then...you're born. It's terrifying. Right now, I'm a stranger to myself. There's echoes of who I was, and a sort of call towards who I am, and I have to hold my nerve and trust all these new instincts. Shape myself towards them. I'll be fine, in the end. Hopefully." She shrugged. "Well, I have to be because you guys need help. And if there is one thing I'm certain of, when people need help, I never refuse." She grinned. "Right, this is going to be fun!" The Doctor pulled the curtain between them closed, leaving the twins alone, separate from their aunt.
'She won't like us,' Ash whispered.
'But she won't hate us.'
'She'll never have the chance to do either if she never recognizes us.'
The twins exchanged a look. While the Doctor build a screwdriver and the humans investigated the building, they had their own task.
They'd built up mental walls that even the Doctor couldn't break through. And if they ever wanted their aunt to finally recognize them, they needed to help her.
-I-I-
The twins were shocked out of their focus by the Doctor emerging from the curtains, sparking sonic device in hand. They'd sat down, but leaped up at the sight of her.
The Doctor was grinning, but she looked at the twins as she had before, with no hint of recognition. They knew the mental block wasn't entirely gone, but it should have been good enough for a Gallifreyan.
Perhaps it was enough for now that the Doctor could look at them at all.
"Hey," Ryan called, coming over to their section of the building, "we found a load of stuff." He led them back towards the office, where the rest of the humans were gathered around a computer and a paused video.
With a look to the Doctor, Yasmin pressed play.
"It's come back," the man on the screen, one Charity recognized in the passing way she did most people who'd had some part in a future she'd known but never fully processed, said. "The thing I saw the night my sister...everyone always says disappeared, but I know she was taken." The twins glanced at the Doctor and watched her frown at the mention of a sister, watched something pull at the Time Lady beyond just her natural desire to help the man in the video. "Seven years now, tracking energy signals, building predictive programs so that I'd know when the atmospheric disruptions matched what happened that day. And tonight it came back again and I've got it. I am going to find out what happened to my sister." The man swallowed. "If anything happens to me, her name was Asha. Don't let anyone else go through this."
There was a moment of silence before Ryan spoke. "He knew what he was doing might kill him."
"She was his family." The Doctor turned and left the office, returning to the transport chamber with sonic in hand. The twins were quick behind her.
"Did you just make that?" Ryan asked, coming up on the Doctor's other side.
"Sonic screwdriver. Well," the Doctor shrugged, "I say screwdriver, but it's a bit more multi-purpose than that. Scanner, diagnostics, tin opener. More of a sonic Swiss Army knife. Only without the knife. Only idiots carry knives."
Good thing the twins carried vaporizers, not knives.
"What are you doing with it?" Charity asked, pretending to not already know exactly what the Doctor was doing and some of what she would soon know.
"Mapping the distance this object has traveled. It looks like it started over 5,000 galaxies away."
"How can you tell?"
"That bit there," the Doctor pointed at a revealed bit of wires. "Recall circuitry. It's designed for a return journey."
"So whatever killed that bloke will have to come back here?" Graham asked.
The Doctor frowned. "Question is, why did it leave? What's it looking for?"
"What's your best guess, love?"
The Doctor straightened. "Two aliens, one city, one night. Best guess?" she looked between the humans and the twins. "Two species at war, using Earth as a battleground."
Both twins had to bite their tongues. Though they didn't know exactly what was happening, they knew that wasn't right.
Yasmin's eyes widened. "Are you joking?"
"No, sorry."
"So..." Graham shook his head, trying to understand, "so you're saying that the creature on the train and the thing that came out of here, they're now looking for each other spoiling for a scrap?"
"Bit more than a scrap."
"What are we going to do?" Yasmin rolled her shoulders. "Cos this is my home, and I'm not having it being an alien battleground."
The Doctor began to move around the room, gathering supplies from the bits of technology scattered around the room. The twins wanted nothing more than to help, but they couldn't do that without revealing how they somehow knew exactly what the Doctor was looking for. "We stop them meeting. Capture them, send them home. Away from each other, and away from Earth."
"How do we do that?"
The Doctor waved a hand at Ryan. "Well, give me a minute. I'm working on it."
Graham fingered his collarbone. "Not to sound like a stuck record, but can I just ask about these DNA bombs? Like, how long have we...?"
"Enough questions!" the Doctor interrupted. "You lot, you love to chat. I get it. Lots to do. I'm working on it all. And I haven't forgotten about your collarbones, Graham. Give me nine minutes, a bit of quiet, and I'll be ready to roll. Scout's honor." She held up her hand.
The humans eyed her, but they obeyed, stepping away. The twins took a moment longer.
However, they didn't quite get to nine minutes, because less than a minute in Graham received a phone call. "Hello? Yeah, Kevin. No, no mate. That's exactly the sort of thing."
A/N: "Hey"... to quote the most recent episode. Honestly, how could I watch that and not immediately come back to this story? :)
I don't want to make any promises, but I am going to try to continue this story into the new episodes. Too much interesting stuff happening for me not to!
Notes on reviews:
Guest: I was a bit confused when I first saw this review, but the moment that episode finished, I knew exactly what you were talking about ;)