Chapter Forty-Six
Chilli and coriander burst across the Doctor's tongue as he bit into a crisp samosa and enjoyed the hospitality of Mrs Khan of Number 13. Rose's domestic approach wasn't working as well as it might have done given Mickey's presence on a street that seemed to abhor people of colour and Mrs Khan welcoming them into her home before thinking to ask what they wanted was a pleasant change of pace. Multiple doors had been slammed in their faces, although Peter Quint from Number 3 had been nice enough until he invited Rose and only Rose inside but he was still preferably to the fiercely racist young woman at Number 7 who would have had her nose broken if Mickey hadn't grabbed Rose around her waist and physically hauled her away.
The Doctor doubted the lecture he delivered on her doorstep about equality between the races – and, let's be honest, young lady, it's not as though you are actually separate races after all, are you? Nope, you lot've just got it into your silly little heads that – hey! – before she shut the door on him too was going to sink in. And with that incident quickly followed by Zoe and Jack bursting out of a house across the street as another person was shoved into the back of a black car with a blanket over their head, the Doctor wasn't particularly enjoying his night, which made Mrs Khan's warm hospitality all the more welcome.
"These are great samosa, Mrs K," Mickey said, having picked up an excess of charm from watching Jack. "Perfectly spiced, very crispy."
"You are a dear," Mrs Khan replied, setting a silver tray down and lifting the teapot up to pour them a cup in delicate china. "I always make too many, so it's nice to have someone to eat them. With my children gone, no one comes around much these days."
He bit into one around his smile. "Happy to help."
"Sugar, dear?"
"None for me, ta," he said. "My nan used to say I was sweet enough."
Rose raised her eyes to the ceiling and rubbed at her mouth, hiding her smile. Clearing her throat and wrestling her amusement under control, Rose smiled at Mrs Khan.
"I like your TV," she said, nodding at the set that was being used to support a collection of porcelain rabbits. "I've been tellin' John here that we should get one of our own but he's the sort who thinks it rots the brain."
The Doctor chewed on the last of his samosa, aware she was having a dig about the other night when he had gone off on a mini rant about the TV. His annoyance stemmed from the fact that Humphrey was beginning to show changes along his telomerase but it was still too early to make any determinations about what that meant for Zoe. Finding her and Rose sprawled together on the sofa, Jack and Mickey on another one with empty pizza boxes and popcorn strewn between then had set him off on a rant about the foolishness of humans becoming enslaved to the goggle box, ending only when Zoe reached up and tugged him down onto the sofa with her, fitting him against her front so that she was able to stroke his hair until he fell asleep.
"Oh, nonsense," Mrs Khan said. "It's a revelation, dear. Never thought I'd get one myself though, far too expensive, but then there was this deal on and I couldn't resist."
The Doctor swallowed. "Let me guess, Magpie Electricals."
"That's the one," she said with a nod, holding out the plate of samosas to him again, and, for fear of being rude, he took another one. "Down on Forizel Street. Strange little man runs the shop but he doesn't mind selling to us coloured folk. There are plenty around here who do."
"I bet," Rose said, sympathetically. "We met a man across the street earlier who didn't much like my sister who's black, an' then there was a woman down the road who really didn't like Mickey. Took one look at him an' went off on one."
"That's Grace," Mrs Khan told them, an edge to her voice. "Don't be fooled by her. She likes us coloured folk well enough but only in her bed." Mickey and the Doctor raised their eyebrows, surprised. "Can't say the same for Mr Connolly across the way. Reckon he'd shoot us sooner than touch us. He's one of those fools who thinks Britain should be white. I keep wanting to tell him that if he wants Britain to stay white, then maybe Britain shouldn't have invaded our countries."
The Doctor grinned. "Quite right too. India, isn't it?"
"Chennai," she said, wistful. "I do miss it but this is where the opportunities are. My husband, he wanted our children to be raised here: Good British children, with good British opportunities."
"And where is Mr Khan?"
"Buried in East Africa," she said. "He died during the war."
The Doctor noted the medal sitting above the fireplace. "I'm so sorry."
"Thank you." Picking up her tea to distract herself from the throb of long-remembered grief, Mrs Khan eyed them. "A strange job you three have, isn't it? Inspecting houses for the Queen?"
"Little bit," Rose admitted before the Doctor opened his mouth to add unnecessary detail to their cover story. "But she wants to make sure that everyone can join in the celebrations tomorrow. Said it's important that no one's left out."
"Speakin' of Mr Connolly though," Mickey said, forcing them back onto the matter at hand. "He had someone taken away earlier. About half an' hour ago. There was a right proper ruckus up the street."
Mrs Khan's tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth. "That'd be poor Rita's mother, I imagine. Haven't seen her for days. They were saying that she was ill but it looks like she's got what the others had."
"And what is that, exactly?" The Doctor asked. "Is it a sickness?"
"No one knows," she said. "No one's talking anyway. All I know is that the men in black started coming around here a few weeks ago, hauling people off under blankets into their car and not telling the families anything. It's a disgrace."
"That it is," he agreed. "But do they have anything in common? Anything linking them together? Age, gender, ethnicity?"
"Sorry, dear, but not that I know of," Mrs Khan offered the plate of samosas to Mickey again. "There was Mr Gallagher earlier today, he's only in his thirties but a little -" she waved her finger by her head. "The war did him in with all those shells exploding by him. Sometimes I can hear him screaming in the night. That poor wife of his is a saint but she told me, she said, Mrs Khan – she's respectful like that, a real good girl – she said, Mrs Khan, I can't leave him. I love him. He fought for this country and now I have to fight for him too. You wouldn't get many like that. Not around here anyway."
The Doctor began to realise that Mrs Khan was lonely. As the words were fell from her mouth, rattling around in a desperate urge to have conversation with someone that was deeper than passing pleasantries, he was reminded of Zoe after his return from the Game Station. The sharp edge of loneliness had made her both desirous for company and irritated when her solitude was pressed upon too much, fluctuating between both extremes as she got used to having people around on a consistent basis again, and he saw that in Mrs Khan.
"Then there was little Betty, only five – you should have heard her mother screaming." She shook her head, face turned down in a frown. "Her poor father was knocked out stone cold when he tried to stop them taking her. Every time I see them now they look as though they aren't quite there. There's also Antonio, from Italy, he's a homosexual." She said the word by dragging the syllables out as though it was five separate words and not one. "And Gerard from down by the corner shop. He's not like Antonio but he is French."
"It sounds like there's nothing connecting them," the Doctor said, faintly disappointed. "Oh well, not really in our remit what with being representatives of the queen." Rose cleared her throat and shot him a look, letting him know he was dipping into his upper-class English accent again and he switched out of it. "Thank you very much for your time, Mrs Khan, but we really should be getting on. More houses to see before the big day tomorrow and all."
"Must you?" She sounded disappointed and forlorn at the loss of company that the Doctor's stomach twisted. "I have some ginger cake that needs to be eaten."
"Terribly sorry," he said, rushing through the farewells before he caved and ended up moving in. "But we really must. Thanks again."
"The samosas were brilliant, Mrs K, thanks," Mickey said as he squeezed past her and out the door.
Mrs Khan was slow to shut the door behind them, her face peeking out from behind her curtains as they walked away from her house. The Doctor struggled not to look back even as Mickey turned to wave goodbye to her.
"Poor thing," Rose sighed, rubbing her arms against the cold. "She's lonely."
"Yeah," the Doctor replied, offering her his arm. "Nothing we can do about that now though. What I want to do is to have a chat with Mr Connolly and find out what happened there. Jack and Zoe should've been back by now."
"Unless they actually caught up with them," Mickey said, hands in his pockets. "Jack's a dog with a bone sometimes. Probably got some people tied up to chairs questionin' them."
The Doctor laughed. "That does sound like them."
Hurrying them across the street, the Doctor rattled the knocker on the Connolly's front door as Rose leaned against him, her cheek squashed against his arm. Conscious of that fact that Connolly was a well-known racist, Mickey hung back on the pavement just out of sight so that the Doctor might actually be able to get some answers. There was a loud yell from inside the house and a sound of flesh hitting flesh that jerked Rose upright, wide awake and halfway to furious, before the shadowed form of Connolly approached the door and yanked it open.
White-frothed spit clung to the corners of Connolly's mouth and red burned across his face, moustache dishevelled from furious shouting. The Doctor dragged his eyes over him before looking over his shoulder where Rita was being helped into the kitchen by Tommy, her hand clutching her mouth.
"What?" Connolly snapped.
"Everything all right?" The Doctor asked, speaking to Tommy who glanced back over his shoulder, face narrow and pale. He gave a small nod before disappearing into the kitchen with his mother. "Seems a little loud right now."
"Mind your own business," he spat. "We don't need anyone else in our business today. So you can just –"
"That's why we're here," the Doctor interrupted. "The man and woman who were here earlier are our friends. I don't suppose you know where they've gone, do you?"
"No!" The door started to slam in his face. "Now bugger off."
Faced with a closed down and Connolly's retreated form behind the distorted glass. "No matter how many times a door's slammed in my face, it never stops being rude."
Rose rolled her eyes and turned on her heel, guilt pressing in on her at leaving Rita in a house with a man who hit her though she knew that there was nothing she could do to help. When Jimmy had blackened her eyes and bruised her ribs, nothing would have persuaded her to leave him: Not even Zoe turning up on her doorstep in tears, begging her to come home because I miss you as though that was enough to pull her free of the mess she had entangled herself in. With a child in the house and divorce still stigmatised, she imagined it was even harder for Rita to think that breaking free of her husband was possible and Rose hoped that there was at least some happiness in her life.
Grabbing the Doctor by his wrist and then taking hold of Mickey's when they passed him, she pulled them away from the Connollys and down the street, an idea forming in her mind. Once assured they were keeping pace with her, she released their wrists only to laugh when – as though they had planned it – they each took a hand and threaded their fingers together.
"I have an idea," she told them.
"Christ," Mickey said. "Last time you got an idea, I had to talk you out of getting your ass tattooed."
"Really?" The Doctor looked down at her with interest. "What were you going to get?"
"A butterfly," she admitted, ignoring his growing smile. "An' yeah, I know, proper cliché an' all that but I was drunk an' it seemed like a good idea at the time. Mickey sort of threw me over his shoulder to get me away from the tattoo parlour."
"Would've been easier if Shareen hadn't been eggin' you on," Mickey said. "She kept hitting me with that damned bag of hers screamin' that I was kidnappin' you."
"Ah, Shareen," the Doctor said, fondly. "She's a bit of a character, isn't she?" He swung his and Rose's joined hands between them. "Go on then. What's your idea?"
"It's obvious, isn't it?"
"Clearly not," Mickey replied. "What is it?"
"Honestly, stick a plate of samosas in front of you an' you forget who you are," she sighed, flicking her eyes at the Doctor. "An' don't think I haven't noticed you bein' all distracted too. If you hadn't been thinkin' about Zoe, we'd have gone straight there without havin' to make Mickey deal with racists."
"Straight where?" The Doctor asked. "And I have not been distracted by Zoe. She's not even here, how can I be distracted by her?"
Rose's eyes rolled. "Ever since you saw her in that stupid outfit she put on to make you feel better, it's like your brains've melted out of your ears. For all you bang on about not bein' a bloke, you sure do act like one sometimes."
"I – it's –" the Doctor floundered, heat warming his face. "What do you mean to make me feel better? She's not wearing that for me, is she?"
Mickey snorted. "Mate, how are you 900 years old an' this daft?"
"You've been out of sorts recently since the Ryga thing," Rose told him. "Zoe thought us all dressin' up would help cheer you up an' she chose her outfit just for you. Seriously, when have you ever seen her dress like that before?" The Doctor opened his mouth. "Don't answer that, I don't actually want to know."
A smile played across his lips, touched and a little amused. "I do love your sister, you know. She's a little mad but utterly delightful."
Mickey rubbed his eye and Rose sighed, sweeping away the jealousy that lived inside her even as she worked each day at killing it off.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm happy for you," she said. "But if you hadn't been thinkin' about Zoe's arse –"
"It is a nice one."
Mickey groaned, pained. "I will bloody thump you in a minute."
"Then you would've noticed that everyone we've spoken to said that they got their TV from Magpie Electricals," Rose finished, choosing to ignore the Doctor as best she could when holding his hand. "An' he said that he's only sellin' them for a fiver, so I think there's somethin' hinky goin' on there."
"Hinky," he grinned. "Someone's been watching one too many gangster films on the idiot box."
"Jack likes 'em."
"All right then," he said. "Magpie's Electricals it is."
The three of them walked hand-in-hand and passed through the streets, following the map on Mickey's phone. Florizel Street wasn't far from where Mrs Khan and the Connollys lived – barely a ten-minute walk – that they passed with gentle teasing and light conversation. While the Doctor was slightly disappointed that Zoe had gone off with Jack, he was glad to be spending time with Rose and Mickey.
He remembered the last time the three of them had been alone together, the briefest of moments at the end of a difficult day with the Autons, and he marvelled at how he hadn't known either of them then. They were two strangers to him, caught up in his life and handling themselves well – Rose better than Mickey but it wasn't as though he did have the good excuse of having been kidnapped by the Nestene Consciousness – and now they were his family. That day stood out in his memory as the day he started living again, mere weeks away from meeting Zoe, and without any idea that a man named Javic Thane existed.
He hummed an old Gallifreyan melody to himself, smile widening when Rose and Mickey both glanced at him, entertained by his good mood.
Approaching Mr Magpie's shop, the Doctor saw that, despite the late hour, it was still open. It was a battered shop with paint that peeled away from the wood and dulled gold letters painted above the glass where TVs sat, waiting to be sold. There was a flicker of movement inside – Mr Magpie working behind the counter, talking to someone, the sound of his voice muffled by distance and glass. The Doctor felt Rose let go of his hand and watched as she walked through the front door, the bell dinging above her head and leaving them to hurry to catch up with her. As they entered, Mr Magpie was lifting his head from his books, tight lines around his eyes.
"I'm sorry, sirs, miss, I'm afraid you're too late," he said, pushing himself up from the counter as though every bone in his body weighed more than it should, recognising them from earlier. "I was just about to lock the door and go home."
"Yeah?" Rose asked, looking out of place in the dusty, quiet shop that doubled as a workshop judging from the pile of equipment scattered behind the counter. "Well, I want to buy a telly an' everyone's ravin' about yours."
His shoulders drooped, eyes darting off to one side. "Come back tomorrow, please."
"You'll be closed, won't you?"
"What?" Mr Magpie asked, the light falling across his face that glistened with a fine sheen of sweat. "What do you mean?"
As much as the Doctor loved Rose he had to admit that she wasn't the most intimidating person around. Despite the set of lungs she possessed – one of his fondest memories was of her tearing strips out of the funeral home worker who had kidnapped her and locked her in a room full of Gelth-inhabited corpses – she was mainly just pink and yellow with kindness falling out of her ears. There was none of the harsh edges that had been scraped into Jackie as a single mother raising two children without a partner in the picture, and nothing at all like the anger that burned in Zoe and came out cold, pulling on all the threads of her life to create a rage that frightened even her.
Whatever mistreatment she suffered at the hands of Jimmy – and he knew it was more than a simple black eye and some unkind words, though that was more than enough – hadn't hardened her, it had only made her kind.
So the way Magpie was reacting to her by trembling all over like a leaf caught in the wind, sweat beading into thick balls on his skin, suggested to the Doctor that there was something else at play. A quick, sidelong glance at Mickey let him know that his friend had also picked up on the strange reaction. Slipping his sonic screwdriver from his pocket, he walked leisurely around the room and discreetly scanned the TV sets.
"For the big day?" Rose prompted. "The coronation."
"Yes, yes, of course," he said, flustered. "The big day. I'm sure you'll find somewhere to watch it. Please go."
Mickey leaned against the opposite counter, running his finger through the dust on the surface. "Why d'you want to get rid of us? We only want to buy a TV an' since you're practically givin' them away an' all, figured we'd get one."
Magpie's fingers pulled at the open collar of his shirt. "I have my reasons."
Rose waited. "An' what are they exactly?"
He opened his mouth, fear stealing his voice when a TV burst to life with a thunderclap of noise in the quiet shop. Rose jerked, startled, and Mickey stepped forward, his chest pressed against her back, as the Doctor whirled around, screwdriver raised defensively. On one of the screens that lined the wall, there was a crackle of energy that sped across the screen leaving black and white spots of static in its wake. As it cleared, a woman's face materialised. With hair perfectly coiffed and posture straighter than a wooden door, she sat primly, hands folded in her lap, and stared out at them.
Rose's heart thundered in her chest. "What the hell's that?"
"It's just a television," Magpie lied. "Just – just one these new programmes. I – it doesn't really do anything. Now, please, you have to leave. I've got to close up for the night and get home. My – my wife's cooking dinner and please, leave. Right now!"
Ignoring Mr Magpie's increasing panic, the Doctor stepped closer to the TV screen. Slipping his glasses onto his nose, he leaned in close and examined the woman who had appeared, screwdriver held an inch from her as he ran the scan. Behind him, Rose peppered Magpie with questions, pressing and pressing to find a weak spot in order to wrench information from, and Mickey hovered between the two of them, ready to lunge and grab whichever one of them needed help first.
"An' why are you sellin' them so cheap?" Rose demanded, hands braced on the counter as she leaned across it. "You can't be makin' any profit on them at five quid a pop, not when they should be goin' for eighty, so what're you up to, eh?"
"It's my patriotic duty," Magpie explained, mopping his brow. "Seems only right that as many folk as possible get to watch the coronation. Don't want anyone missing out because they can't afford it and all, not after everything we've been through together. Most of the people 'round here have been here for decades and that means we've been through two wars together. That sort of thing makes you want to help a person out. Besides, the newspapers are saying that twenty million people'll be watching. Can you imagine that? All those people watching what's happening in here in London and folks around here not being able to. It's not right, that's all, so I do what I can."
"How charitable," she said.
"Got to give back to the community," he replied, folding and refolding his handkerchief that was damp with sweat. "Now why don't you get yourself back home and get up, bright and early, for the big day."
"Nah." Rose shook her head. "You're hidin' somethin' an' we're not leavin' till we've seen everythin'."
"But I need to close," he whined, plaintive. "My wife –"
"You don't have a wife," she said, cutting him off. "You're not wearin' a weddin' ring an' blokes round here always wear one of those, isn't that, right? So stop lyin' to me, Mr Magpie, because somethin's happenin' out there. Ordinary people are bein' taken away in the middle of the night an' you're the thing that links them together, aren't you? You an' your TVs. So, tell us, what's goin' on?"
Face white and stricken, he shook his head and stumbled from behind the counter. "I knew this would happen. I knew it. I knew I'd be found out."
The Doctor tore his curious gaze from the woman on the screen who he swore was following him with his eyes and looked around as Mr Magpie staggered across the shop floor, shoulders pressed down by the weight of his troubles, and locked the front door. Mickey reached out and took Rose's hand, drawing her back towards him, looking to the Doctor to check on him before his eyes fell onto the TV screen and his mouth opened.
"Er – Doctor?" His hand awkwardly tapped the his arm. "You might want to have a look at this."
Patting Mickey's hand while ignoring him, the Doctor frowned at Magpie as he took his glasses off and put them back into his pocket. In his experience, no good ever came from an obviously nervous human locking the door with them still in the room.
"Mr Magpie," he said, reaching for Rose's shoulder and resting his hand there. "Whatever you're planning to do to us, take my advice: don't. It won't end well for you and it'll just annoy me."
Magpie stepped back from the door and wrung his hands. "I don't have a choice!"
"Guys, seriously, you need to –"
"Everyone has a choice, you're just choosin' this," Rose said, interrupting Mickey who stared unblinkingly over the Doctor's shoulder. "An' you may as well tell us what's really in this for you. What game are you playin' with these TVs? What are they doin' to people?"
"You think I'm in this for me?" A weak and reedy laugh fell from from him, sleeve drawing a path across his forehead. "Why would I choose this life? All I want is a cup of tea and some peace and quiet, not this – not this torture."
"If you're in trouble then we can help," the Doctor said. "We're pretty good at that. Who's torturing you?"
"Guys!" Mickey's snapping voice jerked the Doctor and Rose around. He pointed at the screen where the woman was shown sitting quietly, unmoved from her first appearance. "She's watchin' us, listenin'."
"Don't be daft," Rose said. "It's only a programme."
"Yeah, an' the Doctor's only a bloke," he shot back. "I'm tellin' you, she's listenin' to every word we're sayin'." Stepping away from them, he cautiously approached the screen. "Who are you? What're you doin' to the people 'round here?"
"Mickey," the Doctor warned. "Careful."
"She's in there," he said with a gesture. "How's she goin' to hurt me?"
"You'd be surprised."
"I'm not going to hurt you, darlings," the woman said, Rose flinching with surprise, fingers curling around the Doctor's elbow. "Why on earth would I do that? It would be such a waste of energy."
"What is she?" Rose breathed. "Is she like Momo?"
"No, I don't think she is," the Doctor said, staring at the screen. "You're definitely an alien life form though I can't put my finger on which. What happened, did you get stuck on Earth? Don't worry, happens to the best of us, but that doesn't explain what you're doing to the people here."
"Aren't you a handsome one?" She cooed. "My, my, I could just eat you up."
"Sorry, I'm a one-woman man and thoroughly uninterested," he replied, energy sparking in the air around them. "Who are you?"
Magpie dropped his head into his hands and groaned. "You should have left. Why didn't you just leave?"
"I feel funny," Rose complained, rubbing her tongue against the roof of her mouth and touching her hands to her hair that released small bursts of static. "My head feels full an' my teeth are vibratin'. It's not – I don't like it. Make it stop.
The Doctor snagged Mickey by the back of his jacket and pulled him back to his side, his hair lifting from his scalp and frizzing out around him. "You can control electrons from within the TV, that's a bit clever, but it still doesn't tell me who are you."
"I'm the Wire, darling," the woman said as her head tipped back and her painted mouth twisted open wider and wider and wider. "And I'm hungry!"
Bright energy hit the Doctor in the face, rocking him back on his feet, fingers spasming and dropping the sonic screwdriver to the ground. Distantly, he heard Rose and Mickey cry out in pain, buckling as they were pulled from their bodies and stuffed into TV sets, locked away for use at a later date. Struggling against the pull, able to resist for longer than his human friends, the Doctor felt himself slipping away inch by inch until the pain was too much to tolerate and he let go.
As he left his body, he thought of Zoe and Jack and almost pitied the Wire for what was to come.
Sitting on an uncomfortable metal chair with one leg crossed over the other, red heel dangling from the end of her toes, Zoe smothered a yawn.
For half the night, she and Jack had been kept locked in a dilapidated office with grimy, broken windows that had rotten wooden boards nailed over them in an attempt to keep the chill out and a single bulb that flickered its weak light over head. It was easily the worst makeshift prison cell they had been kept in and breaking out would have been the work of moments as the door was locked by a rubber band looped around the handle and a nail hammered into the doorframe. Though, since they were left unattended, they instead went through the paperwork in the room and get a vague idea of what was happening as well as send their location and a descriptive update to the TARDIS group chat.
However, there was only so much information to go through before they needed new input and they ended up playing Scrabble as they waited for their interrogation to start.
Zoe hated having to wait.
"Knower," Jack repeated. "Are you sure that's a word?"
"Of course I'm sure," she said. "It's a person who knows things. For example, a knower is aware that loquacity is a good word for Scrabble."
"I didn't doubt loquacity," he told her, pulling his tiles on the screen to create knitted. "All I said was that I think you've got a small advantage when we play by 21st century rules."
"I'm willing to play with 51st century vocabulary," she told him, tapping her finger against her phone as she considered her options. "But I wouldn't want to hurt your feelings when I trounce you at that as well."
He snorted. "You've only won six out of the last nine games."
"About to be seven out of ten." Legumes popped up on his screen. "Want me to go easier on you? I can change it to the child's setting if you like."
Jack glanced at her, amused. "You're a sore winner. It's a very unattractive quality in a person."
"See, all I'm hearing is that I'm winning," she said. "The other day the Doctor told me about this Solar Scrabble Championship that takes place every five years or something on Titan and I'm really tempted to have a crack at it."
"You two need to up your pillow talk game," Jack said, sending guineas back to her and making her curse as he racked up the points on a triple word square. "Although, I suppose Mickey and I talk about all sorts of stuff when we're in bed. Is that normal?"
"What, domestic pillow talk?"
"Yeah," he said. "I've never had a long-term relationship before where I actually slept in the same bed as the other person on a regular basis. You've got the Doctor and you've been married, is it normal to not do as much?"
Zoe stared at him. "What do you mean by not do as much? Do you mean like not have as much sex as at the beginning?"
"Wait, the sex drops off?"
"Well, yeah, eventually," she said. "Reinette and I were all over each other at the beginning because it was brand new and we were in love but eventually it sort of settled to about once a week, sometimes twice if we had the energy. She tended to get sick a lot and wasn't always up for it. Are you and Mickey petering out?"
"No, I don't think we are," he said. "I've just never had this sort of domestic relationship before where I talk about fungal cream with someone and it doesn't ruin the mood."
Zoe bobbed her head, frowning at her phone as she wondered what to do with a z and a y. "I'm not exactly an expert on relationships. Reinette did a lot of the heavy lifting in ours and the Doctor's – well, he's the Doctor. But I think as long as you're both happy then it doesn't really matter what the relationship looks like. If you want to talk about fungal cream, you go right ahead and do it. That's the sort of thing you should probably save for a partner anyway. What's this all about anyway? You've never struck me as the type to worry about these things."
"Casual sexual relationships are very different to what I've got with Mickey," he said. "I don't want to mess it up."
"You won't," she said, sending zygote to his phone before setting hers face down on her thigh. "Although I used to worry about messing things up with Reinette all the time. She was older than I was and had known me all her life and I felt like I was constantly playing catch up. Worrying about disappointing her took up a large portion of my day."
Jack breathed out, recognising himself in her statement. "I feel the same. Mickey and I are from two really different times and sometimes we bump up against each others expectations and it leaves this strange feeling behind."
"Like you've done something wrong but you don't know what?"
"Yes!"
"I had that as well," Zoe admitted. "With Reinette and the Doctor. I married a woman from the past and then hooked up with an actual alien. Differences of expectations are bound to occur there. At least that's what Yatta tells me."
"She told me to talk to you about it, said you'd probably understand," he said, surprising her as Yatta hadn't mentioned anything when they last spoke about keeping an ear open for Jack. "How do you deal with those expectations?"
"Mine or the Doctor's?"
"Either."
Zoe leaned back in her chair and stretched her legs out in front of her, thinking about the question. The truth was, neither she nor the Doctor had many expectations of each other except for honesty. Both of them were aware that there was a time limit on what they had with each other, an end date even if they didn't know when that was yet, and she felt that that kept them in the moment rather than worrying about the bigger picture. Aside from a discussion of children, they tended to avoid any mention of their future years down the line as it always reminded them how fragile their relationship was in the face of time.
"I suppose we want to make things work so we adjust and compromise and talk about it," Zoe said. "We've both had relationships before but this is the first time either of us is dating someone outside of our species, y'know? And we've found that just talking helps."
"Mickey and I are good at talking," Jack said in a manner that made it sound as though he wanted to write down what she was saying. "I suppose I'm feeling a little odd. I know it's important to Mickey to be monogamous and that's why I agreed to it but I didn't think that I'd like something so old fashioned."
"Old fashioned doesn't necessarily mean bad," she told him. "And the way I see it is that since you and Mickey are from really different times, the two of you are going to create something that's unique to you. Like Reinette and I did. Our looked like nothing either of us had seen before but it worked, and it worked well."
"I hope so," he admitted. "I never thought...these feelings I have for him, sometimes they're difficult to reconcile with."
"It's still early," she reminded him. "You guys have been dating for what, four months now? Five?"
"Four months and three weeks."
"Specific."
He grinned. "You know me."
"Four months and three weeks is maybe a little too early to have everything squared away up here." Her fingers tapped against the side of her head. "Give it time to grow and give yourself space to talk and, whatever you do, don't do what I did."
"What's that then?"
"Run away to Paris, set up a school for children living in poverty, and nearly die from cholera because you're too embarrassed to send a message to the person you're in love with," she said, making him laugh. "I was young and Reinette scared me a little." He laughed harder, her foot lashing out to bounce off his knee. "Shut up! You never met her. She had this look that she would just level at me and I'd know instantly she was pissed off with me about something but I could never figure out what until she told me. It used to drive her mad."
"I wish more than anything that I'd got to meet her," Jack said, rubbing his face with a smile. "I bet she'd have been a great friend."
"She would've loved you," Zoe admitted. "You actually remind her of me sometimes."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," she said, not wanting to elaborate, preferring to keep the memories of Reinette close to her chest. "But, listen, since you've come to me for understanding, which I fully approve of because I'm clearly fantastic."
Jack looked up at the ceiling. "What have I done?"
"I'll just tell you something that I wish someone had told me when I was with Reinette and that's to enjoy the moment," Zoe told him. "I wasted so much time with her because I thought I had time to waste. If I'd have known what was coming for us, I wouldn't have fucked about so much. With Mickey...tomorrow's promised to no one. The best you can do is enjoy what you have right now and trust that by putting in the work each day, the future's going to take care of itself."
"Sounds like good advice," he said, reaching out to take her hand, their palms resting together. "Enjoy the moment. I can do that."
"Better than anyone else I know," she replied, rubbing the end of her cold nose, glancing towards the door. "Honestly, where the hell are they? Who leaves two highly suspicious people alone for so long in the cold. I wish they'd put some bloody heating on. It's freezing in here."
Unfortunately the police officers didn't appear to know what to do with them. Between the faceless people in cages and them breaking in, they were at a loss and kept using the phone to places calls to people higher up the food chain than them. It took another hour before the door opened and the lead detective – Anthony Bishop according to his ID that he left on the desk – stepped in with his jacket discarded and shirt sleeves pushed up his thin arms. There was a rumpled look about him, dark smudges making themselves at home beneath his eyes, and his jaw patchy with an uneven shave, all of which served to highlight the pressure weighing on him.
"No one knows who you are," Bishop said, breaking the silence. "We called the palace and they don't know who Agents Mulder and Scully are, and they said that they definitely didn't authorise anyone to do house-to-house checks ahead of the coronation tomorrow."
"Really, that's strange," Jack said. "The queen herself –"
"Asked an American to get things ready for the big day?" The sound of Bishop's scoff covered Jack's muttered I'm not American. "I don't think so, buddy. Who are you? Who do you work for?"
"Do we really need to do this?" Zoe asked, a plaintive tone to her that came from spending hours in a cold room waiting to be interrogated. "Can't we just skip to the part where you tell us about the faceless people? It'll really save us a lot of time."
Bishop pulled back. "You're not the one in charge here."
"She kind of is," Jack said. "I mean, it's more of a flat hierarchy most days and we tend to alternate given the needs of the moment but, right now, she's in charge, so tell us what's going on so we can help you."
"No." The word snapped out of Bishop's mouth, deflating Zoe and Jack. "Right now both of you are going to tell me everything you know."
Sighing, Jack leaned back in his chair and ran his index finger over his top lip. Bishop was wound tight, every muscle in his body stiff with exhaustion and pressure. The fact that no one from outside the warehouse had come to take them away for questioning told Jack that the team was stretched thin and without external resources. With the coronation happening in less than twenty-four hours, Jack imagined that whatever security services existed in London in 1953 were maxed out and the last thing anyone needed was for some detective inspector to be raising a fuss about people with missing faces.
In his experience, people under that much pressure were bound to snap eventually, it was just a matter of getting them there.
"A single strand of spaghetti is called spaghetto," he said.
Bishop blinked. "What?"
"It's from Italian," Jack explained. "When a noun ends in i in Italian, that means it's plural; the singular form ends in o. That's why we talk about graffiti to mean the art form but graffito to talk about individual pieces."
"I didn't know that," Zoe said. "Did you know that, Detective Inspector?" Bishop stared at her, eyes dropping in a slow blink. "Oh, I've got a fun fact about frogs! The wood frog can hold its pee for up to eight months while they hibernate. They've got special little microbes in their gut that recycles the urea into nitrogen."
"I do love fun frog facts," Jack agreed. "How about this one? The small dot above the I and Js in the English language is called a tittle. It's where the phrase to a t is thought to come from."
"Another new piece of information," she said, bobbing her head. "I also know that the unicorn is Scotland's national animal and considering that the thistle is their national flower as well, I have to think that someone was drunk the day they were choosing them."
Jack grinned. "If you translate Jesus from Hebrew to English, then the correct translation is Joshua. We only got Jesus because it went from Hebrew, to Greek, to Latin, and then to English."
"Our European ancestors used to practice medical cannibalism," Zoe said.
"Chinese police use geese squads," Jack added.
"Oh, I wonder why you know that," she said, grinning at him, entertained by the idea of him being arrested by geese. "A chef's hat has exactly 100 pleats in it because it's meant to represent the number of ways an egg can be cooked."
"High heels were worn by men first," Jack continued.
"And New York was very briefly called New Orange."
"Days used to be twenty-three hours long when the dinosaurs were knocking about."
"Sea otters hold hands while they sleep."
"A cow-bison hybrid is called a beefalo."
Zoe tilted her head. "Not a buffalo?"
"Two very different things," Jack said.
"Enough!" Bishop brought his hand down on the desk and glared at them. "This isn't a joke. People are being violated and you're sitting here getting clever with me, so enough. You were there today when we took the last unfortunate, you were in the house with the family, and now you're breaking into this establishment. You're connected with this. I know you are. And when I find out –"
Zoe held up a hand to forestall his threat. "There's no need to threaten us, Detective Inspector. Despite appearances, we are taking this seriously."
"But I disagree with the conclusion you've drawn," Jack said. "The thing is, Mr Bishop –"
He jerked, eyes tight and wild. "How do you know my name?"
Jack nodded at the desk. "You left your ID there and us alone in this room for hours. We snooped. We're snoopers. It's what we do."
"Snooping snoopers who snoop," Zoe agreed.
"The thing is – and please don't take this the wrong way because I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job – but from what we saw earlier, it doesn't look like you're doing much investigating," Jack told him. "It looks like you're dragging innocent people from their homes and then shoving them into that cage back there when it looks like they could do with the hospital. Right, Zo?"
"Right," she agreed. "See, from our perspective, it looks like you're taking all the people without faces and locking them up because you don't know what else to do."
"Which makes sense in a roundabout way," Jack continued. "And at least you're not killing them. I know plenty of people and organisations that would dispose of them rather than figure out what was wrong but locking them up isn't that great either because Tommy made a good point earlier. How are you feeding them?"
Bishop's face cemented itself with harsh lines before he dragged a hand through his greying hair and his shoulders fell in on themselves. Zoe imagined that dealing with faceless people the night before the queen's coronation wasn't something he had joined the police force expecting to do. And she sympathised, remembering how she had felt when the strange and alien burst into her life in the form of the Slitheen – the Doctor himself strange and alien but at least he looked normal to her seventeen-year-old eyes. At least that had been explained away, even if the Doctor's explanation thrust her into a brand new existence where the universe was so much bigger and stranger than she had ever thought possible.
Bishop had no one to talk to, no one to turn to for help, and she felt sorry for him.
"They don't need feeding," he answered after a long pause. "They just...they don't do anything. They stand there and clench their hands and that's it. We've tried getting them to respond but how? They don't have eyes so we can't use light, they don't have mouths so they can't respond; they still have ears but even shooting right by them doesn't draw a reaction."
"Please tell me you're not shooting by their ears," Jack said, pained. "The damage a gunshot does to the ear drums is severe."
An ugly red colour filled his face. "What else were we supposed to do?"
"He's not criticising you," Zoe told him, shooting Jack a look. "But it seems that things are going well on the detective front. Are you even asking people questions or do you just kick their front door in and steal away with their loved ones?"
"I'm doing everything in my power," he argued. "You think this is easy?"
"No, I think it's quite difficult."
"And it doesn't help by having two cat burglars breaking into places they shouldn't be breaking into," Bishop continued, warming to his anger. "I've never seen two more mismatched people in my life. An American and a negro –"
"We really do just prefer black," Zoe said.
"If you're from Torchwood –"
"We're not," she said, heart jumping in her chest at the name she had pushed to the back of her mind, trusting in Harriet not to lead her astray. "But are they sniffing around here? Faceless people seem like the sort of thing they might be into."
"No." Bishop drew a hand over his face. "A small mercy if you ask me. Having them coming in would be a disaster right now."
The urge to ask why threatened to choke her, stealing her voice for a long moment, long enough for the silence to pull before Jack stepped in.
"Let me work this through out loud and you can tell me if I'm off the mark," he said. "Because I'm a service man – of a sort – and I know the sort of politics that go on in organisations like the police. My theory is that you've got orders from above to make this situation go away as quickly as possible. And if that means sweeping it under the rug so that the queen's coronation isn't ruined, then that's what you've got to do, right?"
Bishop exhaled and slowly sank into his sink, crumbling into it. "You have the sum of it."
"The whole world's watching Britain right now but, more than that, they're watching London," Jack continued. "And I bet the pressure from your superiors feels overwhelming right now. I get it, I've been there. One time I was in Marrakesh and –" Zoe cleared her throat. "Not important. What's important is that you're panicking because if you don't do what they tell you then it'll be your neck on the line."
"And the economy hasn't recovered from the war, has it?" Zoe asked. "You can't afford to lose this job. What do you have? Wife, kids, sick mother?"
His throat moved in a swallow, eyes fixed on his desk. "All three. And my brother's family. He died during the war. It's ten of us, eleven if you include me."
"All on your wage?"
Bishop nodded.
"No wonder you're feeling stressed," Jack said. "Because looking around this room at the information you've collected and the maps you've put together tells me that this isn't the room of a man content to do his job. You want to investigate but your hands are tied by people who want to project this perfect image of Britain. We can't be having Great Britain sullied by a bunch of faceless people running about, can we?"
Bishop stared at him, a muscle flickering in his jaw as he balanced on the edge of accepting the help they were prepared to offer. "After everything we've been through – the deaths, the air raids, the sacrifices we've all made...we need this. The country needs tomorrow to be good. It needs to be our fresh start."
"I know it doesn't feel it right now but things are going to get better," Zoe said, kindly. "You've lived through the darkest period in our history and come out the other side. No matter what happens next, it's never going to be as bad as the wars. Never."
"You can't know that."
"I can," she told him, wishing she could take him to her London and show him what life was like there. "It would take way too long to tell you how though."
Jack shifted, leaning forwards. "You're a detective, and I think that means something to you or maybe it used to mean something. When I joined my agency, I believed in the work we were doing and I was proud to wear the uniform and to do the work. Except now you're tired and you're frustrated and you're feeling the pressure. But you didn't join the police force to cover things up because that's what your bosses are telling you to do, did you?"
"I didn't," he said, voice cracking on a whisper. "I wanted to help people."
"Then help them," Jack urged. "Investigate what's happening. Zoe and I will help, so will our friends. And, trust me, we're really good at what we do. By the time the crown's sitting on the queen's head, all of this will be over and you can go home to your family. You just need to let us help."
Bishop's tongue touched his dry lips, eyes fixed on Zoe's bare foot, thinking.
"It won't help, we don't have enough time or people," he said. "With all the crowds expected, everyone's out on the streets to keep the people back from the Abbey. And even if we did, this is beyond anything we've ever seen. Faceless people? It's like something out of H.G. Wells. Twenty years on the force and I don't even know where to start. We haven't the faintest clue what's going on."
"That's where we come in," Zoe told him. "We can help, if you'll let us."
His eyes flickered with hunger, desperate for something to ease the pressure crushing his chest. "I don't know who you people are or where you've come from because you're like no people I've ever met before but if you think you can help then – well, I've got no choice, have I? I'm still a police officer at the end of the day even if my superiors have forgotten what that means."
"That's the spirit," Jack said, grin stretching across his face. "In that case, start from the beginning and tell us everything you know about what's happening here. When did this start?"
The atmosphere in the room loosened, and Bishop reached up and undid the tight button of his collar, pulling it free from his neck, tension dripping from his body. Glancing out of the room, he raised a hand to invite one of his officers, who he introduced only as Crabtree, in and gestured to another to make them all a cup of tea that Zoe instantly started looking forward to. Picking up her phone, she dashed off a quick message to the group chat to tell them they had an in with the police officers, mildly surprised that the Doctor, Mickey, and Rose hadn't staged some sort of rescue attempt in the hours since her last message. As Bishop began to fill them in, she discreetly checked her private chat with the Doctor to see if he had sent her a message but it had been radio silence since her last message.
"We started finding them about a month ago, heads just blank," Bishop explained. "They weren't doing anything, only standing there with their fists clenching over and over again. Gave those who found them a right proper fright and we had people in from all over looking at them before that was shut down two weeks ago because someone spoke to a journalist who then came around to see what was going on. Soon enough though we were getting calls about people in homes, family members trying to protect their loved ones. We had to take them too because we don't know if this is contagious or not. It's dangerous to leave them there." His face took on a defensive gleam. "It's not like we want to be snatching people like we are."
Zoe nodded. "We understand that. Quick question: are family groups being – I don't know what to call it – made faceless?"
"Sometimes but not all the time," he answered. "Those that are related tend to be children about the same age. Normally though it's just one member of the family."
"And does it happen at the same time every day?" Jack asked.
Bishop shook his head. "No. With the earliest ones, we'd find them in the morning but our theory was that someone was dumping them because they didn't know what to do with them so we don't know if they lost their faces at the time or sometime before."
"What about the later ones?"
"Can't get an accurate timeline on it," he said. "Most people were found like that when whoever they lived with got home from work or the shops. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, we don't get any calls about it during the night. You know, after ten and such."
"Okay," Jack nodded, glancing at Zoe who lifted her shoulders in a small shrug. "What about a pattern with who's being taken, anything there?"
"Not a pattern about the people, about the location." He gestured for them to rise and look at the map pinned on the wall at the exact moment the door opened and a plain-clothes officer walked in balancing multiple cups of tea and a plate of biscuit on a tray. Zoe descended on him eagerly and lifted the tray from his hands, placing it on the desk. "Thank you, Jenkins."
"Yes, thank you, Jenkins," Zoe said over her shoulder, blowing on her tea before gulping it down. "Next time, Mr Bishop, offer your prisoners a cup of tea sooner rather than later. I've been bloody gagging for a cuppa."
"I'll bear that in mind," he said with the first hint of humour Zoe and Jack had seen since meeting him. "With regards to the location, they're spreading out from North London to all over the city but the heaviest concentration is here." He tapped a small ink circle. "We think this is the eye of the storm. Most people here have had members of their families become faceless."
"I'm sure there's a technical term for it but god knows what it is," Zoe said, peering closely at the map as Jack shoved a biscuit in his mouth and chewed while leaning over her shoulder. "Where is this exactly? I've always been a bit useless at reading maps."
"It's just off Florizel Street," Bishop explained. "There's nothing there really. Mainly a residential street with a couple of shops: a bric-an-brace, a Paki newsagents," Zoe's mouth tightened at the racial slur and Jack frowned. "And an electronics shop."
"Electronics?" She leaned back into Jack's chest, hands curled around her cup of tea that chased the cold out of her fingers. "What sort of electronics?"
"TVs, radios," he said, shrugging. "Is it important?"
"Yeah, it is," Jack said. "Because it's not Magpie Electricals by any chance, is it?"
Bishop paused and looked at them, a frown pressing between his eyes as the door cracked open and Jenkins stuck his head around the door, silently beckoning Crabtree to him. The silent deputy crossed the room and bowed his head, a low murmur quiet enough not to disturb them.
"How did you know that?" Bishop asked.
"Earlier tonight, we met –"
"Sir." Crabtree turned and interrupted Jack. "Three more have been brought in off Florizel Street near the electronics shop."
"Well, that doesn't feel like a coincidence," Zoe said, finishing her cup of tea and setting it back on the tray. "Mind if we have a look, Detective Inspector? We only had a brief chance to examine our friend's gran earlier and those in the holding cell before you yanked us out."
"You may as well," Bishop said. "They don't change over time, not really, but maybe you can see something that we missed."
Jack slipped his arm through Zoe's, her body turning into his warmth as they followed Bishop out of the office, the only sounds they made were Zoe's heels clicking against the ground.
"This is going well," he said quietly, turning his head to speak into her ear. "No one's shot us yet."
"We have really low standards of what a good day means," she replied, enjoying the puff of warm arm he laughed over her skin. "Has anyone got back to you yet? The Doctor normally responds fairly quickly when I text him but I haven't heard anything from him and me texting him that we've found faceless people is just the sort of thing he loves."
"I haven't heard from Mickey either," Jack said. "I'm sure it's – "
He stopped walking. It was so unexpected that Zoe kept going until his hold on her arm jerked her back. Stumbling, she caught hold of him and opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing when she saw his face. Pale and taut, his eyes were fixed on a point over her shoulder, mouth parting in a small, pained groan that settled in her bones and rooted her feet to the ground. She knew, even before she turned, what she was going to see behind her and she didn't want to.
"Zoe," he breathed. "They're –"
She flinched away from him, turning before she was able to stop herself, and the breath was sucked out of her. Her world span as blood rushed through her ears and a whimper slipped from her throat. Beneath standard issue blankets, she recognised her family. Rose's pink-shoed feet and the dress that had made her so happy hours earlier; Mickey's dark trousers and familiar hands clenching into fists and his side; and the Doctor's –
The blankets were pulled from over them.
Sharp, visceral pain slammed into her at the sight of the absent faces, eyes immediately skittering to the ground, hand curled against her chest as the other held tightly onto Jack's. Breathing was difficult, and the pressure on her lungs and in her head made her feel as though she was drowning.
What am I going to do? she thought. How do I fix this?
Jack's free arm went around her waist, supporting her as her knees buckled, keeping her upright with the strength that ran through him. Hopelessness swept through her – the same hopelessness that had filled her when she realised the Doctor and Jack were on the Game Station and she needed to save them – and she thought those days of panic and worry were behind her.
The Doctor had promised to never leave her and while he was there in front of her, he also wasn't. Doing as she had done once before, she grabbed hold of the edges of her anger and pulled it taut as she found her strength within it.
Slipping from Jack's arms, she strode forwards until she was stood in front of her family, her eyes drinking in Rose's missing face, the ache inside of her turning hot and fierce and doubling when she looked at Mickey. At her side, Jack touched Mickey's face with careful fingers, whispering his name in the hope of a response. She watched him, putting off what she had to do, and only when she couldn't bear the sight of Jack's own grief did she turn to look up into the Doctor's blank face. Her hands tightened into fists at her side, furious that someone had taken the Doctor in all of his wonder and beauty and stripped his face from him.
It was easy in moments like these to believe she was the murderer Ryga believed her to be.
Bishop watched silently from behind Rose's shoulder. "You know these people?"
"They're our family," Jack said, throat moving in a swallow. His fingers fell from Mickey to brush lightly over the Doctor's shoulder and gently fix Rose's hair by sweeping it behind her ears. "You said you found them in Florizel Street?"
"Over by the old fountain," Crabtree answered. "They'd been left there. God knows how long though. Got a call from the milkman doing his morning rounds."
"This is the first time we've had them out in the open like this," Bishop told them. "If something like this happens tomorrow, we'll have the Torchwood lot on our backs, make no mistake."
Zoe released a long, trembling breath and turned from the Doctor. "We don't want that happening then. If the others weren't found out in the open like our family, where were they found?"
"Initially we were finding them in empty factories, some abandoned estates," he said. "Since they don't really move, we figured that someone was dropping them there. Either family members who were scared or the people who are doing this."
"I'm not sure this is people," Jack said, pressing a kiss to the back of Mickey's hand, setting it carefully at his side. "This is something else."
Bishop removed a cigarette from a dented silver case and stuck it in his mouth, lighting it with a trembling hand. "Like what?"
"That's the question, isn't it?" He turned to Zoe and touched her arm, grounding her in the here and now, and her eyes snapped to his. "TARDIS?"
"No," she said after a moment's thought. "I think we have everything we need here."
"Like?"
"Mr Magpie," Zoe said. "The Connollys. That's where we start."
He nodded. "I get Magpie but why the Connollys?"
"Don't you think Mr Connolly is just the type of person to dob his neighbours in?" She asked him. "Man like him who's more concerned with appearances than anything else? He'd absolutely be snitching on his neighbours. Bet he believes he's doing his duty by calling this lot in to snatch them up."
"Even his own mother-in-law?" Jack asked before he stopped and shook his head. "What am I talking about, of course he would. He runs that house like it's his own private fiefdom. I bet he's been planning on getting rid of her since before and all of this gave him the chance to own the house outright instead of living off her kindness."
"Couldn't do it straight away though because his wife would know it was him," she said. "Wait a few days, call it in, keeps his hands looking clean." Her eyes flickered to the Doctor and then away. "We can't just leave them here though, not like this."
Jack stepped in closer, the familiar smell and warmth of him wrapping around her, his fingers touching the bottom of her chin. "I know exactly what you're feeling right now. I don't want to leave them either but the best thing we can do is figure out what happened and reverse it. You know this."
Zoe swallowed. "Yeah."
"We'll deal with this together," he promised in a low murmur, leaning in and pressing a kiss to her forehead. "I promise."
Leaning into him, hand braced on his chest, she collected herself before turning to the Doctor. Eyes fixed on his shoulder, she stepped in close.
He smelt like himself – hint of spicy cologne, strange underlying scent of chalk and limes that always confused her, a brush of her lingering on him from when he had embraced her, but there was an acrid smell as well, something electrical and burning. It was strange standing so close to him and not having his hands on her: Whenever they were in the same room, he gravitated to her and tended to touch her lightly – a brush of his shoulder against hers, their knees bumping together when they were sat down, his fingers locked with hers. He was incapable of not touching her, though she was hardly any better.
She wanted to press her face into his neck and feel his arms wrap around her, mouth pressing against her shoulder as he whispered something suitably inappropriate into her skin. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she slid her hands into his pockets in search of the sonic screwdriver. With deep pockets and an inability to keep them clean, she rummaged past sweet packets, his phone, her book, a collection of handkerchiefs, a wallet that contained photos of his children and late wife, a yoyo, chapstick, a pair of her underwear that she didn't know he had, and something wet and sticky that had her jerking her entire arm in surprise.
"The screwdriver's gone," Zoe said, wiping her hands with one of his handkerchiefs. "It's not there."
"He might have dropped it, or whoever did this recognised it as alien tech and took it," Jack suggested. "Either way, it not being here makes it easier to trace their steps." She nodded her agreement. "All right, Mr Bishop. I want to get these three safe before we go anywhere because if anything happens to them, whatever's doing this to people is going to be only the second scariest thing you face today."
Finding somewhere safe and warm for the Doctor, Mickey, and Rose took half an hour as Zoe refused to leave them in a cold room, forcing Bishop to instruct Jenkins to drag the bulky portable heater into the room. It wasn't much but Zoe hoped it was better than nothing, and it helped her feel less guilty as she and Jack left the warehouse hours after first arriving there.
Dawn had broken across the sky – just after seven in the morning by Crabtree's watch – and the air was cool and fresh. Zoe paused outside the warehouse and breathed in deeply, shaking the threads of heavy tiredness that settled over her. They were going to be okay. She had to believe they were or else she would be unable to put one foot in front of the other. A milk van trundled past and startled her from her worry, glass bottles clinking in a song in the back of it, and street cleaners worked methodically down the road as even the dullest of London streets were being prepared for the day ahead.
And somewhere across the city within the ornate walls of Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II was beginning the most important day of her life while people up and down the British Isles were waking up ready to celebrate the start of a new era.
"How are your feet?" Jack asked, holding the door of Bishop's black car open for her, the morning light letting her know that he was also feeling the strain of the others' situation even if he looked more beautiful than she had hope of being. "Agonising yet?"
"Not until you mentioned it," Zoe said, feet giving a throb. "Now I'm feeling it."
"Sorry," he apologised, waiting until she was settled in the back before stepping in after her, Bishop and Crabtree seated in the front. "How you holding up?"
"I haven't decided to go to university for four years to solve this so I think, in the grand scheme of things, I'm doing all right." Jack huffed and took her hand in his, resting it against his thigh. "Whoever did this took their faces and dumped them in the street like they were nothing. It makes me angry that someone thinks they can just be discarded like that."
His hand flexed around hers. "Me too. Seeing them like that...it hurts. You don't realise how much a face is until it's gone. All those nuances, all that expression." His sigh was heavy, layered beneath the engine as Crabtree reversed out of the lane. "We'll figure this out."
"Course we will," she said, head coming to rest on his shoulder.
Leaning down, he brushed his lips through her hair and turned to look out of the window.
It was a twenty-minute drive to where the Connollys lived when one drove at a proper and legal speed, and Zoe felt her eyes grow heavy on Jack's shoulder. He smelt different from the Doctor – something earthier and fresher – but he smelt like home nonetheless, possessing a soothing and lulling quality that brushed away the image of her faceless loved ones and encouraged her to rest her eyes for a moment.
Fragmented dreams consumed her, muscles twitching in an attempt to relax, and she was riding through the acres around Versailles, wind in her hair, Louis at her side. She turned to her old friend only to find herself dancing across the wasteland of Skaro, Reinette laughing in her arms; she was kissing the Doctor, leather jacket gripped in her fingers, and he pulled back to look at her, smiling as he pushed her out of the TARDIS and she was plummeting to the ground only to watch a Zygon rip its way out of Amelia Pond, the Corsair leaning against a wall, slicing an apple with a paring knife.
"Sorry, human," the Time Lord said, slipping away as Jack shook her awake. "You're on your own."
"Zo." She jerked back from him, heart jackhammering in her chest, staring at him in surprise. "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. We're here."
Mouth dry, she peered out of the window and recognised Tommy's house. "Right."
"You okay?" He asked, concerned, touching his hand to her forehead. "You're a little clammy."
"Yeah, no, I'm fine," she lied. "Your shoulder's too comfortable, that's the problem. Must've dropped off for a second. C'mon, let's get this done."
Approaching the door, Zoe saw shadows pass behind the door and the lace curtains that kept people from looking in suggesting that the Connollys were up and about despite the earliness of the morning" The same was true up and down the street as windows opened and doors shut, the street waking up early for the coronation. Bishop rattled the knocker politely and stepped back, Crabtree lingering on the pavement as he kept a watchful eye on the comings and goings of the neighbours. There was a roar of annoyance, muffled behind the walls that could only belong to Mr Connolly and Zoe breathed easier when the door opened and Tommy appeared.
Relief flashed across his face, mouth opening before he thought better of it. Glancing over his shoulder, he quickly stepped out of the door and pulled it gently shut behind him, a bruise shadowing on his temple where there was a healing cut in his hairline. Zoe's stomach clenched at the sight of his father's rage, having seen too much of it as a child to miss the signs as an adult.
"Morning," she greeted. "Sleep all right?"
"Not really," Tommy said. "How's my gran?"
"Fine for now," Jack promised him. "We're trying to figure out how to reverse what happened to her. This is Detective Bishop, by the way, and that's Crabtree. You met them last night."
His eyes narrowed, annoyance and anger clouding his young face. "Yeah, when they were kidnapping my gran."
"We weren't kidnapping her," Bishop replied, eye twitching. "We removed her for everyone's safety."
"You kicked the door open," he said, showing him the shattered latch. "We've got to get this fixed now."
"That's not the most important thing that's happening right now," Jack reminded him. "We need you to tell us every single thing that's been happening inside your house. It doesn't matter if you think it's dull, anything can be –"
The door flew open. Tommy flinched away from it with such violence that he stumbled off the front step and into Zoe who caught him by the shoulders and instinctively pushed him behind her. In the doorway, Mr Connolly stood with pure rage etched across his face.
"What in the blazes do you think you're doing?" Spittle wet his lips, the early morning sun casting a shine on them, and Zoe's stomach twisted in disgust. "Get back in this house now, boy."
Tommy's knuckles dragged over Zoe's back as though he had gone to grab hold of her for support only to change his mind before touching her.
"I want to help, Dad," he said, mouth slick with fear. "What's happening isn't right and I want to help them if I can."
"Mr Connolly," Zoe began, deliberately pitching her voice low and calming. "I understand that –"
"Shut your mouth, you black whore," Connolly spat, the insult stinging for the briefest of moments before self-preservation kicked in as he moved towards her. "I'm not having some coon telling me what to do."
Her right arm shot up to block the fist that swung towards her face, bracing herself for the blow that never came. Jack's hand gripped hold of Connolly's fist and there was a shivering moment where no one knew exactly what was happening before Jack twisted in front of Zoe, grabbed hold of Mr Connolly by the front of his shirt and slammed him into the wall. Leaves from the gutter shook loose, the door rattling on its hinges, and Rita peered around the edge of it, fingers at her neck worrying the loose skin there. Slowly, Zoe lowered her arm and watched Jack force himself in Mr Connolly's personal space, calm and far angrier than Zoe had ever seen him.
Anger, it turned out, was not something she ever wanted to see on Jack's face again.
"Apologise," he growled.
"Jack –"
"No," he interrupted, forcing her to fall silent. "I am so sick of the intolerance in this fucking time. If it's not someone's skin colour it's their sexuality, if it's not that it's their gender, not to mention the unbelievably atrocious attitude to proper mental health care because I reckon you've got a touch of PTSD from your time in the war and might actually be a decent fucking human being if you had proper care, but I've had enough." He shook Mr Connolly who was slowly turning from red to purple. "No one takes a swing at her like that and no one speaks to her like that, least of all men like you. You're going to apologise to her right now or I swear you'll regret it until your last breath." Mr Connolly gurgled. "Apologise!"
Zoe reached out and laid her hand between his shoulder blades. "He can't breathe to speak. You need to loosen your grip."
Jack eased up just enough to allow thin strips air to be dragged into Mr Connolly's lungs, purple fading to red again as oxygen sank into him.
"I'm sorry," Connolly rasped, eyes locked on his face.
"Not to me," Jack snapped, jerking his head to Zoe. "Her. Apologise to her."
Beneath the fear of Jack, in his eyes lay hatred and mortification; Jack was humiliating him in front of his son and wife. Zoe knew it wasn't going to change his attitude towards people of colour or to women, he was going to remain racist and sexist until something else – something other than an angry American – forced him to change.
"I'm sorry," he forced out.
Zoe nodded her head once, aware of how meaningless the apology was, and tugged on the back of Jack's jacket.
"Enough now. This is a waste of time when we've got other things to be doing." She looked back to Tommy who was watching his father with a strange mixture of fascination and shame. "Tommy, I hate to ask this because I don't actually know how dangerous this is going to be but we need your help. You know what's going on here better than the rest of us. Will you help us try and figure out a way to fix what's wrong?"
"I –" he hesitated and glanced back to his mother who was staring at her husband, barely breathing, as Jack released him with a shove. "Yes. Of course."
"Don't you dare," Mr Connolly rasped, pushing away from the wall and edging around Jack who did not move. "You're staying here. I'm not having you run around London with these lunatics. I don't expect you to understand it but I've got a position to maintain. People round here respect me. It matters what people think."
He's just a man, Tommy thought. And not even a good one.
"Is that why you did it?" Tommy asked, lightheaded with courage. "Why you ratted on Gran? The police wouldn't have known where to look, not unless some coward told them."
Mr Connolly's face bulged, colour blotching his jowls once more and he took a step towards him only for Jack to swing himself between them, planting his body between father and son.
"How dare you?" Connolly hissed from the front step. "Do you think I fought a war just so a mouthy little scum like you could call me a coward?"
Tommy stepped around Zoe and would have gone around Jack had he not been blocking the entire path. As it was, he leaned around him and faced his father head on.
"You don't get it, do you?" He demanded, pale skin shot through with colour. "You fought against fascism, remember? People telling you how to live, who you could be friends with, who you could fall in love with, who could live and who had to die. You were fighting so that mouthy little scum like me and people like her –" he jabbed a finger in Zoe's direction. " – could do what we want and say what we want. Now you've become just like them. You've been informing on everyone, haven't you? Even Gran who took us in when you lost your job because you thought you knew better. All to protect your precious reputation that means nothing."
The door creaked and Rita stepped out, knuckles white around the edge of the door. Like her son, her skin was also bruised and her eye was beginning to swell though the make-up she wore did a good job of covering the damage.
"Eddie, is that true?"
He spun with the look of a cornered animal in his eyes. "I did it for us, Rita. For all of us. She was filthy: A filthy, disgusting thing!"
"She's my mother.," Rita said, softly, unmoved by his emotion. "When we had nothing, she took us in even though she couldn't afford it, even though you made this house a living hell with your moods. She put a roof over our heads and got Tommy into a decent school and this is how you repay her?"
All the others you informed on, all the people in our street, our friends."
"I had to," Mr Connolly said, nostrils flaring. "It was the right thing to do."
"And what about our neighbours?" Rita asked. "Patrick Gallagher got you a job in his office, the Swinton children helped you clean the guttering last winter, and Mrs Fischer cooked for us every night for three weeks when we had that flu. They're our friends, Eddie, and you sold them out."
He swallowed, head shaking back and forth. "No. No. I did the right thing. I did the right thing, Rita, I did the right thing."
"The right thing for us or for you?" Her eyes swept from her husband to her son who had witnessed too much violence in his home for her to believe she had done her best by him. She wanted to tell him that his father hadn't always been the angry, hateful man he was but that wasn't Tommy's burden to bear. "You go, Tommy. Go with these people and do some good. Get away from this house as quick as you can before it poisons you too."
Backing into her home, Rita slammed the door on her husband and the click-click-click of locks sliding into place filled the silence left behind. Mr Connolly stood down off the front step, confused and bereft, not understanding how his world had fallen apart.
Tearing her eyes from him, Zoe held her hand out to Tommy. "We need to go. Are you with us?"
Tommy stared at her hand and slowly took it, not sure where she was going to lead him but certain it had to be better than where he already was.