Tony stared in shock at the image of the Doctor standing before him. He tilted the cube in his hand, but the projection always shined upwards.
The Doctor grinned. "Cat got your tongue, Tony? What do you think? Not a bad magic trick, I'd say."
"Are you alive?" Tony whispered.
The Doctor looked uncomfortable and tilted his head, tugging on his ear. "Wellllll, about that. No. No, I'm not alive, Tony. I'm sorry. There wasn't anything I could do."
"Then what's the use of you?" Tony shouted. Before he could think, he threw the cube across the room, hard. It bounced off the wall and the image turned off. Tony gaped in horror and regret. He swung his legs over the side of his bed, staring at the cube.
The door to the bedroom opened, and Pete stuck in his head. "Everything okay?" He looked worried.
Tony nodded. "Yeah… I… sorry, Dad." He stared at the floor.
Pete walked into the room and clasped his shoulder. "We're all going to miss him. Blimey, I can imagine him here now, talkin' a mile a minute like he does." He sighed. "We just have to keep him alive up here." He tapped his head.
Tony looked up at his dad and nodded, and when he said nothing more, Pete squeezed his shoulder again and left the room with a quick, "Night, son."
Once the door clicked closed, Tony crept toward the cube, lying innocently on the cream colored carpet. He stared at it a moment, then nudged it with his toe. Nothing happened.
Reaching down, he slowly lifted the cube. Once again, it grew warm to the touch. And in a moment, just as before, there was the Doctor standing in miniature in front of him.
"Good thing I made this durable!" The Doctor grinned at him again, shoving his hands in his pockets. When Tony said nothing, he added, "I suppose you want to know just what it is you're holding?"
Tony nodded.
"Well, I'd describe it as an interphrenic disassociative resonance cube." He paused at Tony's blank look. "Not ringing any bells? Ah. Well. I've left some bits of me in this cube. Not all of me, mind. Lots of memories, gone. Emotions? Not really. Just simulated a few to make the verbal interface comfortable. And it's keyed to your brain waves, so really this cube is just unlocking an image in your mind."
"So no one can see you but me?" Tony asked.
"Bright boy! Yes. Exactly! It's probably best you not speak to me in front of anyone else. They might think you're a bit, well, mad."
"Rose wouldn't. She'd believe me."
The image shifted uncomfortably. "Ah, well, yes. She probably would, at that. But… don't tell her, Tony. Let's keep this between us, what do you say?"
"Why?"
"I think… your sister's going to have a rough time. But it will get better! It will! But perhaps not if I'm… hanging around, you see. I'm here, but I'm not here. That would be difficult for her to understand, and it might make it harder to- well, feel better, I suppose." The Doctor ran his hand through his hair.
"Why me? Why am I the only one who can see you?"
"You're my little brother, Tony Tyler! I wish I had a chance to see you grow up. But if I'm going to miss that, well, I'd like to think that I at least helped you along. You can talk to me, get advice, just like I were still around. Mostly. I mean, I can't play catch. But still – useful!"
The boy looked thoughtful. "You said you gave me the gift of cleverness."
The Doctor grinned broadly, and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Right! That! Well, you were already a clever boy, but being as young as you were, well, the brain is more flexible then. It was easy to improve a few synapses here and there. And now, well, you… you're not just clever, you're going to be really clever. Maybe, possibly, a little too clever. Again, you might want to keep that to yourself. Humans have an unfortunate tendency to take apart things… and people… they don't understand. So, just go along as you have been. Video games. Telly. Football. Normal pursuits for a boy your age, and no one will notice."
Tony felt his pulse pound with excitement. From the moment they had run through the sprinklers together, all he had ever wanted was to be just like the Doctor. It had seemed like an impossibly lofty goal, but now, with just these words, the Doctor had handed him the means to finally achieve it.
Suddenly, he felt a sweeping wave of exhaustion. He let out a huge yawn.
"That's your brain trying to compensate with everything it's been fed tonight. You're going to be pretty tired for the next several days. But we'll talk again, all right?" The Doctor looked sympathetic.
The boy's eyes felt like lead weights. Suddenly, he could barely keep them open. He put the cube down on the end table, and the Doctor instantly vanished. Crawling under the covers, Tony faded without pause into blissful darkness.
The Doctor was right. For the next several days, all Tony could manage was to crawl out of bed for meals, sit exhaustedly on the couch for a spell, and head back to bed. He heard his parents talking a bit about his behavior, using words like 'depression' and 'therapist', but he couldn't bring himself to be bothered. Fortunately, they seemed even more distracted by Rose, who was staying at the house and seemed just as listless as he was. His parents were rarely able to get more than a few words out of her. Tony felt he should be concerned, but he couldn't find the energy to talk about it.
This continued until the morning his eyes flipped open and he felt his body bursting with energy. He leapt up, noticing everything in the room all at once. The sun was streaming in through the windows. His room had been tidied while he slept. A glass of water had been left on his bedside table beside the cube. The cube! That was still there. He grabbed it eagerly.
The Doctor popped up immediately. "Hello Tony Tyler! Feeling a bit better now?"
Tony smiled. "Yeah! Great!"
The Doctor nodded sagely. "Your brain has managed to adapt to everything it's been fed, and you should be over the worst of it."
Tony nodded. He felt anxious to leave the bedroom and start exploring. "Yeah… and everything's so… fantastic, Doctor! I feel like everything around me is so fascinating. If I could just go out and find out more…"
"Excellent! Go out! Start reading a few books! Try the library! But Tony… remember what I said, just between you and I. A normal boy, right?"
"Yeah. Normal boy. Got it." Tony pocketed the cube, and headed downstairs. Jackie was in the living room on the plush grey couch, reading one of the cheap romance novels she always seemed to have on hand.
"Morning, Mum!" Tony grinned. "I'm starved."
Jackie looked up with surprised pleasure. "Hungry? Well that's a welcome change. You haven't wanted a bite for days." She got up and he followed her into the kitchen. "What're you cravin', then? Eggs? Bacon!"
"Yeah. All that, Mum. It all sounds good."
She nodded, but gave him a slightly concerned glance. He remembered the Doctor's warning, and toned down his cheery attitude. "Um, Mum. How's Rose?"
Jackie put a pan on the stove and began rummaging in the fridge. "Well, I'll tell you the truth sweetheart, she's not doing well. I'm glad you're up and about. Maybe you can talk to her. It's worse than the last… I mean, well, I've never seen her quite so bad. It's not surprising, though. Only time can help her now."
Tony nodded. He waited with impatience while his mother put together breakfast, then devoured it all. He still felt hungry afterwards, and after his mother had departed, he ate several pieces of bread and marmalade, a few hardboiled eggs, and a tin of baked beans without bothering to warm it first.
Finally feeling somewhat sated, he walked back upstairs to the little room that Rose used when she and the Doctor had stayed nights. He frowned. Just Rose, now. Though the Doctor was riding around in a cube in his pocket. This was going to take some getting used to.
He knocked lightly on the door. "Come in," came the muffled reply.
Tony walked into the room. Rose was sitting back on the pale pink bedspread, leaning on her hands. She seemed to be just staring out the window.
She glanced over at him. "You look like you're doing a little better."
Tony nodded. "Yeah. A bit." He sat down next to her.
"'S hard, Ton'. 'S just really, really hard." She kept looking out the window. "How do you feel?"
"Sad, I guess. Confused."
She nodded. "Yeah. Just, most of what I feel is angry. Angry at the world… angry at him. It's hard not to be angry at everything."
Tony leaned over and gave his sister a hug. She hugged him back, so hard he could barely breathe, but this time there were no tears. He wondered when the tears would come.
After a long time, she released him and looked at him intently. "Go Tony… Make Mum and Dad happy. They're going to worry about me, but… I don't need them to worry. I just need to know they're happy. All righ'?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Sure." Rose's words had the ring of truth. He was going to need to hold his family together right now, and his big sister wouldn't be able to do it. Tony would do whatever was necessary.
Over the next year, Tony focused on two things: being an ordinary kid, and keeping his family from fracturing in the wake of the Doctor's death.
The former was surprisingly easy. School was a breeze now, but he made sure his work stayed expectedly average. After school, he played sports with friends, and on weekends, Jackie would have to pry him off his game consoles to do his homework. Rose's ongoing depression meant that his family was relieved not to have to worry about him after all. They sent him to a grief counselor once, but he read several books about coping with grief ahead of time and made sure his answers sounded like he was neither exceptionally depressed, nor far too happy.
His evenings after bedtime were spent reading dense library books and chatting with the Doctor about them. It was amazing to him how much more easily he could grasp the ideas that he read. The Doctor encouraged him especially to explore the sciences. It was a relief to have someone to talk to about his thoughts, and he wondered if that was why the Doctor had provided him the cube, knowing he would be far too lonely if he truly kept his secret. Tony went to extreme lengths to keep his rapid strides in learning from his family and friends. He never checked out books outside of his ordinary reading range from the school library. Instead, he found the local public library and got a card, sneaking off there with a football under his arm, as though he was heading to the park. Researching online also provided many answers for him, and he was careful to erase his browser history and remove any other footprints he left electronically. He quickly became an expert at covering his tracks.
Keeping his family together was much more difficult. None of the Doctor's improvements changed his emotional maturity for his age, and he would become alternately depressed, frustrated, and sometimes just oblivious to his family needs. It was obvious to him that Rose only thought about the Doctor now. She took a leave of absence from work for several months, and Jackie spent half the time being sympathetic, and the other half of the time frustrated with her lack of success in rousing her daughter from her grief. Pete seemed to be more understanding, but also didn't seem to feel there was anything he could say or do. Perhaps he couldn't.
After several months, Tony decided to talk to the Doctor about it. He had only really been consulting the Doctor on matters of learning. The image had said its emotional range was limited. But he felt it was worth a shot. There wasn't anyone else to talk to, after all. The Doctor's reaction was a little unsettling. He seemed to chuckle and behave as though unconcerned, but Tony could swear there was a haunted look in his eyes.
"Your sister is a brilliant woman, Tony, just brilliant. It's not good for her to have only her memories for company. She needs a purpose. Help her find one, and you'll help her move on." The Doctor had winked off then, before Tony had let go of the cube. That had never happened before.
Tony decided to find out more about his sister's work before the Doctor's illness. Perhaps he could find a way to encourage her to go back to work.
At dinner, he asked his father, "Dad, what sort of work did Rose do at Vitex? You know, before she was traveling?"
Pete looked surprised and uncomfortable. "Yeah, well. She… she did marketing, Tony. Came up with great ideas. About where we could take the brand. Get more people to buy it. That sort of thing."
Tony tried further questions without much success. Pete seemed evasive in his answers, and the boy could see his father was hiding something. The more secretive his father seemed, the more curious Tony became. His parents, for all their wealth, were the most bland, ordinary people he could imagine. Like any child, the idea that his mother and father could have hidden depths was unbelievable. But Tony kept his eyes open now, and he began to notice little things. His father's office at home had a fingerprint lock. They already had a few guards around the exterior walls, excellent security and motion detectors in the house. Why should his father's office, alone of all the rooms in the house, require a special lock? He was determined to find out.
His first step was to begin researching fingerprint scanners and how to defeat them. As he read through relevant websites, he realized that he was enjoying this challenge for its own merit, and not merely to satisfy his curiosity about the locked room. Tony came up with a plan quickly. He could make a mold of Pete's hand by pretending he was doing it for an art project. He would go directly to his dad about this, as he noticed that he was surprisingly clueless about the sort of things a boy his age would do in school. Odd, really, since he had already had one daughter finish school, even if she hadn't completed her A-levels.
He picked a day when Jackie had taken Rose out shopping; she had been hoping to distract her from thoughts about the Doctor that day. Pete was sitting at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee, scanning the news on his phone.
"Dad, can I ask a favor?"
"Sure, what do you need?"
"Well, we have an art project at school. About family. And I thought it would be cool to cast a replica of your hand. Like a symbol."
Pete sipped his coffee. "Sure. What do I need to do?"
Tony smiled. "Just sit there and I'll take care of the rest." The boy had already researched how to make molds and soon had exactly what he needed. He might have to make a plaster cast later, just to make his father think he had turned in an art project, but for now all he would need is to press some rubber cement against the thumb area and make a quick fake print.
That night, Tony crept down to the study with the false cover on his thumb. Pressing it down, he was relieved to see the reader turn from red to green without complaint. The lock clicked open quietly. This wouldn't have been nearly so easy if he weren't abusing his dad's trust. He felt a little guilty.
Tony had been inside Pete's study many times, so he wasted no time looking around the office. After shutting the door quietly, he moved directly to the computer. It was locked, but Tony had been watching Pete for days, and saw him enter his password earlier this week. Less sharp eyes would not have caught the quickly entered sequence, but thanks to his slightly heightened senses, another benefit of the Doctor's synaptic influence, he was able to see the code and memorize it for later.
He began to search through his Dad's mail. It was full of dull Vitex business dealings. Tony hadn't studied much in the way of finance or business yet, and his eyes glazed over. He felt disappointed. The boy had been certain his father had been keeping some sort of secret. He spun around in the swivel chair, thinking about his options.
It would probably not be a good idea to try to break in here frequently. If he was going to find anything, it would be tonight. But he was already feeling tired and more than a little bored. Sighing, he decided to go slightly deeper into Pete's files before he shut down the computer. Most of the documents, like the mail, were quite dull. Business files. Expense reports. He found some heavily locked financial spreadsheets. They didn't interest him much, but he had fun breaking into them just for the practice. He opened one up, and his eight year old eyes glazed over at the rows and columns of numbers. Most of the phrases in it were obvious and of little interest. But hidden in the third tab of one of the spreadsheets was a curious word, one he had never heard his father utter before. Tony couldn't imagine what it possibly meant, but somehow it leapt off the page and stood out from the dense block of information. It was as though his brain had directed him to find that single world. Torchwood.