Hi everyone! A short-sh interval of time between postings - yay me. Thanks for sticking by.
When we left off, Martha was still kind of spinning her wheels with Tammy in 1980, and the Doctor had asked her to try and track down Glenn's mother, as they had determined she'd been zapped into 1979, though in western France. He thinks perhaps with all of the stops they're going to have to make, all over time, to undo the Angels' damage, the fewer stops they make, the better for the TARDIS and the fabric of time and space... we will revisit that idea later on.
In the meantime, he had decided to try and get verrily rid of one of the Angels, and begin the process of kicking their asses back to wherever they came from.
We're building toward a climax, folks - the end of this chapter has a cliffie, and I hope you will feel breathless and anxious for the next installment! Enjoy!
THIRTEEN
The Doctor and his temporary companions found themselves in the somewhat unique position of having to kill some time. They wanted to rescue those who had disappeared from the cemetery in Oystermouth, but they also needed Martha on-board because… well, they just did.
But Martha currently had her hands full in the U.S. with a time-travelling mental patient, who may or may not want to return to the twenty-first century.
"Until Martha gets Tammy fit for release, one way or another, she won't come with us, so we have to wait," the Doctor sighed.
"All right. What other problem can we solve?" asked Captain Jack.
"Let's get that 1980 Angel, and see if we can't blast it back to where it came from. It's wrought enough havoc, far as I'm concerned," the Doctor said, teeth gritted.
"Oh-ho, yeah!" Jack said, energized by the Doctor's determination. He clapped loudly, then said, "How do we do that?
"Like this," the Doctor said, jamming gears into place. Absently, Jack thought that each of the last few times he had seen his friend set the TARDIS' coordinates and start the vessel moving, he had got increasingly aggressive.
Not that Jack could blame him. He was a Time Lord who had a time anomaly bleeding out all over the place, spilling onto the internet, across time, across the world, and now, across dimensions, and into his guts. He had a bottleneck in 1980 where he could fix things, except there was a stubborn human who wouldn't leave, and an almost equally stubborn Martha who wouldn't leave her. And Martha was another entire kettle of fish… the Doctor separated from her by twenty-seven years, with all the uncertainty, the knots in time having the potential to cripple the TARDIS and the Time Lord…
Yeah, Jack reckoned he'd let the Doctor have his miniature tantrums if he wanted them.
Over the Doctor's shoulder, Jack could now see on the monitor that they had materialised back in the cemetery.
"Can either of you tell which one is the 1980 Angel? Any defining features?" asked the Time Lord.
Both Jack and Glenn indicated that they couldn't tell one from another, "Unless I were to read it," Glenn added.
"It might come to that," the Doctor muttered, turning off the screen.
"Question," Jack said. "Why does it have to be the 1980 Angel? Can't we just start kicking all of their asses back into the Rift? Carefully, and with intentionality of course."
"Because that's the one that we've read already," the Doctor answered. "I believe twice. It's the one from which Glenn was able to extract time-travel data, and the one whose image we put to the TARDIS to read."
"How sure are you that it's the same Angel, only one of them is an image?" Jack wondered.
"I dunno," the Doctor shrugged. "Eighty per cent? Maybe less? I mean, the timeframe is close, but the locale is across an ocean… I mean, Connecticut versus western France. Seventy? Maybe sixty-eight?"
"But it's all we've got to go on, yeah? The sixty-eight per cent assurance of a Time Lord about a time thing, which is good enough for me," Jack said. "Let's get out there and find it, eh, Glenn?"
Glenn gave him the thumbs-up, and moved toward the door. He spied a sheer purple robe, presumably Martha's, hanging beside the door on the coatrack, and grabbed it. He had been wondering about it since he'd boarded the TARDIS, but reckoned it was none of his business. Specifically, he was wondering how it had made its way to the console room…
"Where you going with that?" the Doctor asked him.
"I'm going to use it to mark with Angel is the 1980 Angel," Glenn said.
"Better question: how the hell did something like that wind up in the console room, Doctor?" Jack asked, eyebrow cocked.
"It's a bathing suit cover-up. We were on the beach. Calm down, Captain," the Doctor said, flatly. Jack laughed. "And Glenn, while you're reading it, if there's anything new you can absorb, I'd appreciate it. We need to know if Tamara Litzinger was the only one zapped from Oystermouth, or if there were others. Something tells me it's the latter."
"I'll do my best," Glenn said.
Jack and Glenn did their thing… they made each of the Angels move, and read them. It took over an hour, as they were careful, protective of the TARDIS, and still vigilant. They were quite aware that even if they couldn't be zapped, Angels could possibly (probably) hear them, and possibly (probably) take revenge in some other way.
Glenn could tell straight away which one was the one he had read before, and that it was pissed off at him. He took petty, childish pleasure in draping the shoulders of the purple robe over the Angel's wings.
Then they returned to the TARDIS, and the vessel read Glenn. It discovered from his rudimentary readings that the other three points of zappage were fur-trapping Siberia, 1899, central Argentina, 1952, and somewhere in Japan, 1938.
"Weird it doesn't go back any further than 1899," Glenn mused. "I mean, are there Medieval-zapping Angels? Angels that can zap you back to the Crucifixion?"
"I have no idea," the Doctor said, softly. "I rather hope I never know the answer to that question. Though, it would be interesting to know how and why an Angel chooses a time or place, and whether that changes over time, whether they have limits, muscles to flex…"
"Is that as specific as we can get?" Jack asked, looking at the data on the TARDIS screen. "Siberia? Central Argentina? Somewhere in Japan?"
"For now," the Doctor said.
"I didn't read any of the Angels for very long," Glenn said. "We can always come back, and I can dig a little deeper. Maybe I can get latitude and longitude, or a city name, or something."
"What do we know about the folks who have disappeared?" the Doctor asked Jack.
"We have a list of their names. That's all."
The Doctor pulled his hand down over his face. He felt harried, and just a slight bit panicked. "I really want to set things right. I do. And I think that finding these people will do that – I can just feel it. But… but…"
"We'll find them," Jack consoled.
"But will we? Before it's too late, and time… time…"
"Time what?" Jack asked. "Changes? Repairs itself to accommodate the displacement?"
"Yeah, maybe. It could."
"You've got a time machine!"
"It's not that simple."
"Clearly it is, otherwise your gut wouldn't be telling you to put it right." There was a long silence while the two of them stared at each other. Then Jack asked, "Am I right?"
"Maybe," the Doctor answered, grudgingly.
"Look, I'll set my team on finding out more about the individuals," Jack said. "I'll call them right now."
"I can try to pick up energy signatures from their bedrooms, like I did with Tamara," Glenn said, stepping forward, literally raising his hand as if he were in school. "And we can match them to which Angel took them."
"Yeah, and that will at least narrow down who we are looking for where," Jack said. "It's gonna be okay."
The Doctor seemed far away. He shook his head. "We got lucky with Tammy. She had mental health issues – she was easy to find."
"And we might find that some of the other victims have characteristics that are just as distinctive, just as singular, that will make their movements just as predictable," Jack said. "Or at least somewhat predictable."
The Doctor sighed. "I suppose."
"Come on, with you and me and Martha on the case, plus Glenn, and my team…"
"It's still going to take forever, Jack," the Doctor said.
"What, are you afraid one of us is going to grow old doing this?" Jack wondered.
The Doctor smirked. "Touché," he conceded. "But a hell of a lot of the onus falls on Glenn."
"And you," Glenn reminded him. "I'm the only one who can do the energy thing – well, me and the TARDIS – and you're the only one who can run the TARDIS. Time travel – that's where it's all at. Without you, all of this is useless."
"Right back at you," said the Doctor. Then he clapped loudly, and said, "Captain, warn your team, we're bringing a Weeping Angel into the Hub."
Jack pulled his mobile phone from his pocket. The Doctor turned on the monitor, and asked the TARDIS to lock onto the Angel wearing the purple robe, and get coordinates for it…
"It's right outside," the Doctor muttered, swallowing hard. "Jack..."
And the Captain opened the door, and there it was, two inches away from his face, big as you like, snarling, arms extended, purple robe and all. "It's coming for you," he said."
"Yep, it is," the Doctor said. Then he threw gears into place, again, with a huge amount of forceful flourish, and the vessel began to grind, and move. And as it made its unique, otherworldly pulse, an apparition began to appear on the open floor of the console room.
"Oh, God," the Doctor gasped. It was more frightening than he had anticipated, having a Weeping Angel materialising inside his home. This was exactly what was meant to happen, but it made his blood run cold.
And in about fifteen seconds, the box had materialised around it, and a full, stone, quantum-locked Weeping Angel was there in the console room, with a sheer purple robe hanging off its wings. It was just the way they had left it - teeth bared, attack stance.
The Cloister Bell rang from somewhere within the depths of the vessel. And then it rang again two seconds later.
"What's that?" Glenn asked.
"It means the TARDIS is in distress," Jack whispered. "Something is serious, seriously wrong."
The Doctor stroked the console. "I know, old girl. I know. I'm sorry. We're taking care of it," he said. "Glenn, can you see if there are any other recent energy signatures in this one, before we take it back to Torchwood?"
"One of you is going to have to make it move," Glenn said, putting his hands into the appropriate slots on the console, without having to be told. He reckoned he might as well cut out a step, and interface directly with the Angel and the TARDIS, all at once.
"On it," Jack said. "Doctor turn your back."
The Doctor gladly went to a place in the console room where he could not see the damned thing, and rested his elbows on the railing, burying his head under his forearms.
"I'm closing my eyes on three," Glenn said. "Three, two… shut."
"I'm just going to blink several times in quick succession," Jack said. "Here goes."
He blinked five times intentionally. They were slightly longer blinks than, say, a natural blink. But it was enough to let him know…
"Why did you stop?" Glenn asked. "I need more!"
"Doctor, you may want to leave the room," Jack said, trying to keep his voice steady, but failing. "It knows it can't get me – it's coming for you."
The Doctor spun round in alarm and stared at the statue, now turned to face him, leaning in his direction. He narrowed his eyes and growled, "I really hate these things."
"Steady on, Doctor, we're almost done. Just go somewhere else," Jack said.
"No," said the Time Lord, teeth still gritted. "Let it come for me."
"That's ridiculous," Jack scolded.
"I'll just keep moving about, you keep blinking. I'm not going to let you two do this without me anymore!" the Doctor argued.
"Guys, I can't sustain this forever!" Glenn told them.
What followed was a chase round the console where the Doctor stood his ground as long as he possibly could before Jack put himself between him and the Angel, scolded the Time Lord, and then it started again. They did this three times…
"I've half a mind to let it bloody touch me," the Doctor said, with venom in his voice.
"Don't go Kamikaze on me, Doctor," Jack said. "Glenn, are you almost done?"
"I think so," Glenn said. "What I'm getting now doesn't feel… human. It's…"
And with a shudder, the Half-Eternal man yanked his hands out of the console. He was disturbed, and nursing a headache briefly... The Doctor grabbed onto the computer screen to read the data.
Luckily, Jack didn't take his eyes off the Angel.
"A couple more energy signatures," the Doctor said. "Two individuals other than Tammy have been zapped by this Angel."
Jack sighed. "So the first rescue mission will be Tammy, Glenn's mum and niece, two other people we don't know, and Martha."
The Doctor sighed in kind. "Looks like." Then he looked up into the time rotor, patted the console, and asked, "Want to take us back to Torchwood?"
He was gentle this time when he reset the coordinates and threw the vessel in gear. She began to grind and groan as always, but it sounded like she was putting in more effort than usual.
"She doesn't sound healthy," Jack said.
"No, she does not," the Doctor muttered back, with his hand now on the time rotor, and his eyes up in the cluster of cables where it disappeared at the ceiling.
"Welcome back," Toshiko said, as Jack stepped out of the TARDIS, onto the lowest platform of the Torchwood hub. He was holding a bundle of cables like a sleeping baby. "Where are your friends?"
"One of them is neck-deep in TARDIS guts, and is sonically screwing something, in hopes of kicking some Angel ass. The other is standing around with his eyes on said Angel, trying not to blink, so it doesn't zap the Doctor back in time without his TARDIS. Again."
"Ah," Tosh said, as though Jack had said the most normal thing she had ever heard.
"So how do we kick those things back into the Rift?" Ianto asked, standing nearby. Gwen and Owen were, at this moment, nowhere to be seen.
"It's… well… not sure yet. Got a bit of set-up to do first."
"Point us in the right direction," Tosh said.
Jack handed her the chaotic mess of cords that were in his hands, the ends of which stretched back into the TARDIS. "The Doctor is under the console now, getting one end hooked up," he said. "The other end goes… there." He pointed uneasily at the surprisingly innocuous-looking rift manipulator to his right, a bright orange column of light that for now, sat in something like a cage.
"Okay," she said. "How?"
"I was kind of hoping you would know," Jack said to her.
She took a deep breath and scrutinised the mad-looking piece of machinery through her glasses. "Fine. Work it out. It's all right, Tosh…" she said to herself. After a long pause, she switched her gaze and began to study the ends of the cords – the plugs, clamps, wires meant to be paired with something else. She talked to herself for a few moments in low tones, no doubt memorising what she was seeing. Then, she absently handed the whole pile of cords back to Jack and began walking round the Rift Manipulator, examining it.
"Tosh!" she heard, coming from inside the TARDIS. It took her a moment to realise it.
"Er, yes?" she called out.
"Does the manipulator have a Shoehorn fit?"
"Do you mean a Fontana self-transfer and inverter, series two?"
There was a pause. "Yeah!"
"Let me check…" she said, looking closely at the machinery. She squatted, then said, "Could a Open-sided conical converter be adapted?"
Another pause, and then the Doctor appeared, breathless, in the doorway of the TARDIS. "Blimey, yes it could!"
"Then yes," she replied, surprisingly calmly.
He stumbled out the door and fell at the feet of the Rift Manipulator, with a delighted growl.
"Doctor!" Glenn called from inside. "The Angel has turned toward the door! It's going to come for you!"
"Hang on, Glenn!" the Doctor called back. "Just don't blink!"
"Easier said than done! I'm doing my best! My eyes are drying out!"
"Just one more minute!" the Doctor said.
"Jack, get in here and help me!" Glenn demanded. Jack obliged without complaint.
"Tosh, go back into the TARDIS and look in the pit where I was," the Doctor said. "See if you can find the Shoehorn piece – the Fontana self-transfer and inverter, series two. There should be two receivers – just bring me one of them, and I'll work on adapting this thing…"
It sounded like he hadn't quite finished his sentence, but the sonic screwdriver began to buzz, and Tosh ran for the TARDIS.
Gwen and Owen happened in then, and the latter asked, "What the hell's going on now?"
Ianto tried to explain, which made him feel slightly less useless for the twenty seconds it took to do so.
"So how can we help?" Gwen asked.
"No idea," said Ianto.
"Tosh have you found it?" the Doctor shouted.
She answered by running back out of the TARDIS with a little black box in her hands. "Here you go."
"Brilliant," he said, standing up. "Fit it in there, and let me know when you've got it."
"What about all these cables?" Jack called from inside the TARDIS.
"Don't need 'em!" the Doctor said, running back the TARDIS himself. "The Shoehorn will allow us to do a wireless connection. Like Bluetooth."
"So I'm holding them for nothing?"
"Yep."
Jack let go, and they all went crashing to the floor.
The Doctor located the matching black box, which Tosh had politely and conveniently left on the console for him to find. He fit it into the appropriate port on the console, and called out, "Have you got it? Tosh!"
"I've got it!" she called back.
"Okay, everyone," the Doctor said. "Hold on to your hats."
And then, before the Doctor could touch anything, the lights went out inside the TARDIS, and the door slammed shut. For about two seconds, it was pitch dark in the vessel.
In that two seconds, the Doctor said, "Oh… oh no…" and Jack swore twice.
And when the lights blinked back on, the Angel had come closer to him.
"Shit!" Jack said, and he practically fell over his own feet trying to put himself between the Angel and the Doctor. "Doctor, let's get this done. Now!"
And the TARDIS' Cloister Bell rang, but it made a sickly sound, more like a grunt
Just before the TARDIS' gears began to grind.
"What are you doing?" Glenn asked. "Doctor, where are we going?"
"It's not me doing that!" the Doctor said. And he began to rush to stop the gears, nullify whatever was happening. "I can't override it!"
"What do mean, it's not you and you can't override it?" Jack shouted, panicking now as much as the Time Lord.
"You heard me!" the Doctor shouted back. "Something else is… oh… oh no…"
"What?" Jack and Glenn asked at the same time.
"Something's got inside…" the Doctor said, panicked, but no longer shouting.
The Doctor's quiet panic was so much worse than loud.
"Got inside?" Jack asked. He chanced a glance back at the Doctor, and it caused the Angel to advance even more. "How could something get inside?"
"It's the Angel," said the Doctor. "An Angel. It's moving us. Turning off the lights. Manipulating the TARDIS."
"Damn it!" Glenn shouted. "We should never have interfaced my mum's computer with the TARDIS!"
"I knew it was a risk," the Doctor confessed.
"Then why did you do it?" asked the half-Eternal man.
"Have you got any better ideas?" the Time Lord spat at him.
"Doctor, à propos of nothing, we need to move," Jack said. "I mean, away from this thing because we don't know when will be the next time it will put out the lights."
As if on cue, the lights went out again, the TARDIS' gears continued to churn, and all three men let out an involuntary shout of startle, fear, and despair.
In the two seconds the lights were out, Jack move lightning fast, and the Doctor found himself bashing his head against the metal floor, pressed between it and Jack.
When the lights came back on, Glenn asked again, "Doctor, where are we going? Where is it taking us?"
"Never mind that!" Jack retorted, standing up. He offered his hand to the Doctor, who took it, and used it to stand up. "A Weeping Angel has wormed its way into the TARDIS! Didn't you say that could cause a paradox? Like a big one? An apocalyptic one?"
"One digital Angel, localised paradox, not a big deal, apocalyptically-speaking," the Doctor said, grabbing onto his unruly dark hair with both hands. "But a huge deal, on the smallish scale of our lives."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning it can't switch off the sun, but it sure as hell can keep us from getting to Martha, which is, I'm guessing, what it's trying to do," the Doctor said, now panting. And then, all at once, a fire appeared in his eyes, and he threw himself at the console. He growled, "Oh no you don't! Jack, Glenn, keep your eyes on the stone one while I deal with the digital one!"
"Wait, what do you mean?" Jack wanted to know.
"I mean, it won't be able to absorb the entire Time Vortex out of the TARDIS' heart, but it can definitely feed on whatever potential is stored in her hard drive, bouncing about in the gears, and whatnot," the Doctor answered. "Four fully-formed Angels could end the universe. This one is just consciousness."
"So it would destroy the TARDIS?"
"It would basically cause this individual TARDIS' interface with the vortex to go offline, and possibly might even short out its molecular compression."
"Essentially rendering the phone box back into just a phone box?" Jack asked.
"Yeah."
"That's a good enough reason for me to say, let's fucking end this, Doctor!" By now, Jack was screaming.
And the gears stopped grinding, but all on-board could feel the TARDIS careening through space.
"Holy shit!" shouted Glenn, holding onto a railing. "Are we going to crash into something?"
"I'm in control now. We're in deep space, according to the…" And the lights went out again, and momentarily, the TARDIS stopped altogether.
When it came back, the Angel was right in the Doctor's face, and the Time Lord let out a frustrated cry, and leaned on the controls again, taking back over.
"It's chasing you around the console now," Jack pointed out, amidst the chaos.
"Yeah, thanks Jack, I had actually noticed that."
And the TARDIS made a sound that Jack had never heard before. The Doctor had, and he didn't like it at all.
"Oh God, she's tangling with the Angel," the Doctor said, looking up at the time rotor with utter, driving panic in his eyes. "Fighting for control…"
The gears ground, and it was apparent that they were being taken yet somewhere else.
"How do we untangle them?" Jack asked.
"First things first – concept then method. So, if we can pry the TARDIS' consciousness away from the Angel, we can…" the Doctor began. "No, no, that won't work without crashing the TARDIS."
The lights went out again. The Doctor jumped out of the way of the Angel, and when the lights came back on, he discovered that it had come for him round the console the other way.
"Doctor, think faster," Jack said, getting between his friend and the statue again. "I can't protect you from this thing. Not like this!"
He stood as close to the Doctor as he could, without getting in his way.
To his dismay, the Doctor began walking quickly round the console as he did when the wheels were turning, but yielding nothing yet.
"If we had a vessel, a living thing that the TARDIS could inhabit… maybe you could do it, Jack, just for a few minutes, while we… no, that's the same as before, wouldn't work without crashing," he said, at a million miles per hour. "Think, Doctor, think, think, think. Two Angels, one digital, insidious, messing with the TARDIS. One right here, chasing me around the console like a secretary around a desk. Two guys who can't get zapped, one guy who can."
"And that one guy is our only hope of getting out of this without destroying the TARDIS' innards!" Jack told him.
"Not to mention a whole host of other rubbish that Jack and I can't do without you!" Glenn yelled.
"Innards," the Doctor repeated. "Good point – this is the TARDIS, a familiar entity, both inside and out. I know her layout, I know how her heart works, I know…"
And the lights went out again. The Doctor did not stop pacing, though, and the Angel did not catch him.
Jack began to remove his Vortex Manipulator from his wrist. "Doctor, you've got the sonic in your pocket. If anything happens to you, and/or the TARDIS, fix this thing, and go find her. Even if the TARDIS goes down for a while, at least you and Martha…"
He held it out to the Doctor, but the thing practically blew up in his hand. "Ow!" he exclaimed, dropping it. "Shit!"
"They're not going to let us breathe, Captain," said the Doctor, stopping his pace.
"Clearly, so, Doctor, hurry up! Whatever you've got, let's do it! Now!"
"Okay," the Time Lord announced, with some finality. "Nothing has changed. We've still got to send these buggers back to where they came from, so let's…"
The TARDIS began to careen in a different direction, and everyone was jostled, including the Angel, which slid up against the railing, narrowly missing crushing Glenn. The Doctor used both hands, and the heel of his shoe, to get it back under control again.
"We've already triangulated with Torchwood, the Rift Manipulator," the Doctor said. "Let's hope Tosh is still standing at the ready!"
"Still going with that plan? Even for the digital one?" Glenn asked.
"You and I both know, Glenn, that there's a fine line between technology and energy," said the Doctor, holding a tense stance, speaking quickly, loudly. "An energy signature can easily be digitised – these Angels are taking advantage of that beautifully. Slithering into our computers, short circuiting the lights in the TARDIS…"
"And?"
"And… energy…" the Doctor mused, looking into Glenn O'Keeffe, eyes widening, everything slowing down for a moment. "Consciousness. Quantum lock. Quantum… particles molecules… just a phone box! Matter! Air and stone and ones and zeroes! Oh! I've got it!"
"Got what?"
"Energy signatures! Different types, Glenn O'Keeffe! Oh yes, we've found them – you've found them! - and all we have to do is convert it… and… send it back! Could it really be that easy? Yes… no. But yes, it could!"
"What the hell is happening?" Glenn asked Jack, whose eyes were still on the Angel, useless though that effort had become.
"All I can say is, the Doctor's working. Other than that, I have no idea."
The lights went out again, this time for longer.
"Ha!" came the Time Lord's boisterous laugh in the dark. "They're getting scared!"
And then there was a loud bang through the blackness.
Whoa. I hope your heart is beating fast now!
I'm going to do my level best to get the next chapter up ASAP!
And once again, I am shamelessly asking once again to hear from you, if you are reading this story! Give me motivation to finish it! :-)
Thank you for reading!