Journey Amongst the Stars

By Lumendea

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Empty Child: Plague

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or any of the spinoff material and I gain no income off of this story, just the satisfaction of playing with the characters.

…

Looking around the deserted hospital, it was all Rose could do not to shift closer to Jack. This place looked like something out of a horror movie, and after everything that she'd seen, Rose's imagination was a bit too good at scaring her. The old fashioned lights flickered every few minutes, making the shadows in the corners warp and twist. Her heart was beating a little too fast, and the natural creaking of the walls wasn't helping matters.

Still, she had to be careful with this Jack. Rather than seeing her relying on her brother, he'd see someone flirting with him and that was the last thing she wanted. He didn't know her. He wouldn't understand. They didn't have their relationship yet, not really. Rose didn't mind needing to build it, but she wasn't sure how to start.

Rose hated needing to tiptoe around Jack. Maybe she should just tell him that they'd met out of order, but this didn't seem like the time. She promised herself that she would find a good time to have that conversation. Hopefully, after she talked with his future self and cleared some things with him. Her life was so confusing.

"He's got to be around here somewhere," Rose said. "Doctor?" she called softly. "Hello?"

Then the Doctor stepped out into the corridor ahead of Rose. She smiled but didn't move to hug him despite the desire to. He looked thoughtfully, and the Doctor quickly checked her over before his eyes jumped over to Jack. Rose could almost see the "pretty boy" thoughts rising in his head and a jealous barb on his tongue. She really hoped this wasn't Sherwood all over again.

"Good evening. Hope we're not interrupting," Jack said smoothly. He stepped forward and took the Doctor's hand to shake it. "Jack Harkness. I've been hearing all about you on the way over."

"He's the one who brought that mauve alert item here," Rose said. "He knows about us being Time Agents." She met the Doctor's eyes as she said the last part.

"And it's a real pleasure to meet you, Doctor," Jack added. He gave the Doctor one more smile, glanced at Rose, and headed into the ward. Theoretically, Rose knew that he was giving her privacy to start putting his case to the Doctor.

"Hey, you," Rose greeted softly. She moved closer to the Doctor. "You alright? Anything happen?"

"I'm fine. Looks like you've been busy."

"A bit."

"Where've you been? We're in the middle of a London Blitz. It's not a good time for a stroll."

"Who's strolling?" Rose countered. "I went by barrage balloon. Only way to see an air raid."

"What?" Horror and worry filled the Doctor's voice.

"I'm fine," Rose said. "But what is a Chula warship?"

"Chula?"

"Yeah, Jack has a scout ship or something, but he says that he's also got a fully armed Chula Warship. He's looking to sell it to the Time Agency."

The Doctor frowned and headed into the ward with Rose on his heels. Jack was using his wrist device to check one of the patients. The look on his face was a new one to Rose, a bit of shock mixed with suspicion and fear.

"This just isn't possible," Jack said. "How did this happen?" He was looking at them as if he expected them to have an answer.

"What kind of Chula ship landed here?" the Doctor asked Jack.

"What?" Jack blinked in confusion.

"He said it was a warship," Rose said. She walked through the ward slowly, creeped out by the silent figures. "He stole it, parked it somewhere out there, somewhere a bomb's going to fall on it unless we make him an offer."

"What kind of warship?" the Doctor pressed. "What type? Why technology was on it?"

"Does it matter?" Jack huffed. "It's got nothing to do with this."

"This started at the bomb site. It's got everything to do with it. What kind of warship?"

Frustration and worry filled Jack's face. She saw the moment that he gave up. "An ambulance!" Jack snapped. He brought up his wrist. "Look."

A hologram appeared in the air beside Jack's wrist device. It was more of a tube than anything that Rose would have thought was some kind of ship. "That's what you chased through the Time Vortex. It's space junk. I wanted to kid you it was valuable. It's empty. I made sure of it," Jack said. There was a bit of sweat on his forehead, and she could feel his desperation radiating off of him. It was distracting. "Nothing but a shell. I threw it at you. Saw your time travel vehicle, love the retro look, by the way, nice panels. Threw you the bait-"

"Bait?" Rose frowned at the word choice.

"I wanted to sell it to you and then destroy it before you found out it was junk."

"So it was a con," Rose said. She knew that she shouldn't be disappointed in him, but she was.

"Yes, it was a con. I was conning you. That's what I am; I'm a con man!" Jack tossed his hands up in agitation. Then he took a breath and focused his gaze on her and the Doctor. "I thought you were Time Agents. You're not, are you."

"Just a couple more freelancers."

"Oh. Should have known. The way you guys are blending in with the local colour. I mean, Flag Girl was bad enough, but U-Boat Captain?"

"We were having a day at home." Rose shrugged.

"Anyway, whatever's happening here has got nothing to do with that ship," Jack finished.

"What is happening here, Doctor?" Rose asked as she studied one of the prone figures.

"Human DNA is being rewritten by an idiot." The Doctor was glaring at Jack.

"I need a bit more than that," Rose said.

"I don't know. Some kind of virus converting human beings into these things." The Doctor gestured in frustration to the people on the beds. "But why? What's the point?"

"Can we undo it?" Rose pressed. "Use a retrovirus to deliver a CRISPR packager or something?"

"That would be ideal. We need to return their DNA to how it should be," the Doctor agreed. He nodded to Rose and almost smiled. It was always nice when his companions caught on fast. Given that Rose had studied computers and physics, he was surprised that she knew what CRISPR was. "The issue is that without a clear understanding of what caused this, I can't be sure that a DNA package can be set to restore them. It could make everything worse. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats are DNA sequences that target specific sections of the DNA." He shook his head. "I wouldn't know what to target."

"It's World War II," Rose sighed. "This isn't supposed to be a problem."

"No, but if it keeps spreading, then what you know as the human race isn't to going survive the war."

….

Nancy slipped back into the Lloyd's house, telling herself that there was still plenty of time for her to raid their kitchen. A year ago, there would have been a crushing wave of guilt, but now there wasn't even a flicker. They had plenty. In fact, given the state of their waistlines, she was doing them a favor. She started gathering the remains of the meal that she and the others had run off on as she reviewed the most likely places for the children to be sleeping tonight.

It was cold, which narrowed the possibilities. News got around fast of the best places to sleep safe and warm. She expected that when she got there, the children would be curled up together like puppies. The thought was bittersweet as she drifted back to simpler and happier times. Then the radio beside her switched on making Nancy freeze.

"Please, mummy. Please let me in. I'm scared of the bombs, mummy. Please, mummy." The child's voice called to her. The front door closed. "Mummy. Mummy." This time the voice wasn't coming from the radio.

Nancy dove under the table and held her breath. Familiar shoes came into the view as the child walked into the dining room from the hallway.

"Mummy? Where's my mummy? Mummy?"

An apple hit the floor, and Nancy moved. The child bent down to pick the apple up, and Nancy scrambled for the door. Behind her, the child pointed at the door, and it slammed shut hard enough to rattle the walls. Nancy frantically tried the knob, but it wouldn't move.

"Are you my mummy?"

…..

At Albion Hospital, Rose was trying to split her attention between the scowling Jack and the Doctor. Both of them were trying to figure out the puzzle before them without talking to each other. It was foolish, and Rose had the nagging sense that she was missing something. Her eyes moved across the row of beds thoughtfully. Suddenly, the patients all sat up as one.

"Mummy. Mummy. Mummy? Mummy?" the patients called. They all spoke as one, like a hive mind or the creepy thing the Silver Lord had caused at Torchwood.

"What triggered this?" Rose searched the room for anything that had changed, but she didn't see any new stimulus.

"I don't know," the Doctor said.

"Mummy," the patients called. "Mummy."

"Don't let them touch you," the Doctor said.

The three of them were crowding back in the ward, trying to stay away from the slow-moving horde. Rose's mind jumped to zombies, and she swallowed, trying to contain the jolt of fear in her chest.

"What happens if they touch us?" Rose asked.

"You're looking at it," the Doctor said.

….

Nancy's eyes were burning with unshed tears. Panic and guilt tore at her throat like starving wolves. The child was moving closer to her in slow, measured steps. Regret filled her chest, but there was nothing she could do.

"Mummy?" he asked.

"It's me. Nancy!"

"Are you my mummy?"

That question haunted her. She didn't know why he'd started asking. He was so young. What had put the idea into his head? Now he kept asking, over and over again as he followed her, begging her for an answer that would mean nothing to a corpse.

"Are you my mummy?"

"It's Nancy, your sister."

The lie was ash on her tongue. She didn't know why she was still lying. Habit. It had been drummed into her. They'd told everyone that she'd gone to help her aging grandmother in the north. In truth, her grandmother had passed a few years before, but the neighbors didn't know that. There had been looks, the sort of looks that a young woman who went away for a time always got.

Everyone had known. They'd all known, but for the sake of priority and her reputation, they all pretended they didn't. Now that her parents were gone and buried, someone must have said something. Something to make him wonder.

"Mummy." He stepped closer.

"You're dead, Jamie. You're dead!" Nancy screamed.

"Mummy," was all Jamie said. "Mummy."

….

In the ward, the Doctor put his arm in front of Rose, shielding her even as he acknowledged that it would buy her seconds at best. She kept shifting, and he imagined that the urge to summon her sword and fight back must be strangling her. But it wasn't their fault. He studied them, trying to get some clue, but they were humans in strange gasmasks. It didn't make sense. None of this was going to make sense, and all he could do was try to think of a way out of this ward before he and Rose were touched and converted.

"Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy. Mummy," the patients, chanted.

Why that word? The Doctor wondered. Why the fixation on the mother? Where had the question come from? What was this plague? Then he stopped thinking so clearly as the victims crowded in closer and closer, caging him and the others against the wall with nowhere to go.