The crowd silenced and stared up at Amber nervously, waiting for her to speak.
"Now, what has happened here is government business and of no concern to any of you. You will leave this restaurant in a moment and not breathe a word of this to anyone. If you so much as whisper about it to a loved one, we will know. We know where you live; we would be upon you before you could finish the story." She said coldly.
"That's rubbish!" one man protested, "You don't know who we are, you don't know where we live! That's all government conspiracy! The public has a right to know if it is in danger!"
"That's all very well, Mr. Ross Morris, but are you sure I don't know where you live? Twenty four Garland Drive, Sunbury, London? Nice place actually." Amber said coolly.
Mr Ross Morris nearly fell to the floor there and then.
"Not a word!" Amber repeated, "Now the doors will unlock in a minute, and you will leave. My good friend the Doctor will be paying for all your meals, so you don't have to worry about paying the bill on your way out. I assure you that the public is not in any danger – you can sleep soundly in your beds tonight. Just forget this ever happened."
The people murmured anxiously to each other, and when the doors unlocked they all rushed at once for the exit. Once they were out, Amber jumped off the table and returned the paper to the Doctor. She looked down at the gun in her hand, about to return it to Jack.
"This is mine!" she said.
"Uh, yeah it is…" Jack said sheepishly.
"Keep it," Amber said, throwing it back to him, "If you've had it for the last however many hours God only knows where it might have been!"
Jack grinned and pocketed the gun again.
"It was worth it to have your hands so close for a few brief minutes!" he said.
"I hope you've got the money to pay off this lot," Amber said to the Doctor.
"He has bottomless pits of money, I swear," Rose said, "We'll go pay now," she added, dragging a reluctant Doctor over to the bar.
Amber walked over to the person she had shot and examined him, making difficult work of kneeling down in her dress and sandals. The Laser Compact Deluxe had made quick work of his head, but rather than blood and gore, there were shards of metal on the floor. Amber picked one up between her fingers and examined it.
"So the F.B.I. knows exactly who we are and where we live?" Tricia asked, leaning over Amber's shoulders to inspect the mess.
Amber stood up, switching back to what she normally looked like.
"I'm not with the F.B.I.," she said to a dumbstruck Tricia.
"So are you going to explain why you blew the head off a civilian in the middle of a restaurant?" the Doctor said once he had cleared away all the workers.
"Not a civilian!" Amber said, handing him the metallic shard, "and it was walking at me entirely invisible armed with a handgun! What was I supposed to do, let it shoot me?"
The Doctor craned his neck to get a better look at the casualty and saw he was pointing a gun in front of him.
"Couldn't you have held back?" he asked, walking over to inspect what was left.
"I'm and assassin, when someone points a gun at my head I don't really think twice about their intentions," Amber said and they knelt down together beside the body, "besides, I don't even think this is just an ordinary human. Not any more…"
Amber lifted the man's shirt to reveal a metal grid on his chest. Rose wandered over to take a look, trying to ignore his lack of head.
"The only thing I blew off when I shot his was a computer and a bit of skin." Amber said, "This one has been dead for a while, his functions are being run by super computers placed where his brain would have once been, connected to his muscles and organs via his already in place nervous system."
"A cyborg?" Jack asked.
"Yes, a cyborg," Amber said, "This is millennia ahead of this time."
"Trouble?" Rose said with a small grin.
"Just a tad," the Doctor said.
He went to inspect further the shards of metal, but as his hand approached they began to melt and run away to the nearest drain. The gun in his hand also melted away. What was left of the body spontaneously combusted.
"What's happening?" Rose asked.
"Cyborgs…" Amber said with distaste, "When damaged they always return to be repaired. When damaged beyond use the metal parts return for recycling and their carrier is destroyed."
"Gross," Mickey commented.
"Very," Rose said.
"I thought you were on holiday?" Harriet said.
Jackie and Tricia seemed to have lost the ability to speak.
After conducting a few scans with his Sonic Screwdriver, the Doctor stood up and turned to Amber and Jack.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"I don't know," Jack said, "but the cyborg, thing, it, was after something, or someone…"
"Cyborgs?" Rose said.
"Like in Terminator?" Mickey asked.
"Yes, like in Terminator…" The Doctor said impatiently.
"You don't think it's possible that the Time Agency is onto Jack?" Rose asked, "Maybe they caught on that you were conning them and wanted you dead."
"I'm not conning them, anymore…" Jack protested.
"Wouldn't he be a little hard to track?" Mickey said, "You know, the entire of Time and Space – that's a pretty large place to find someone in."
"But even if they found out too late they could just jump back through time to when he was there," Rose said, "right?"
"It's not impossible," the Doctor said.
"She's right if it's Jack they are looking for or not, because we only just got here, this lot must have been set up, placed inside human victims. That kind of operation takes months." Amber said.
"Good point," the Doctor said, scratching at his chin thoughtfully while Rose looked smug, "and I'm sorry for shouting at you earlier – you might have just saved all out necks."
"That's ok," Amber said.
"Right then," the Doctor rubbed his hands together, "Saving the world time again."
"What?" Jackie demanded and Tricia asked anxiously.
"Oh come on," the Doctor said, "We have Rose and Jackie Tyler, Jumping Jack Flash, Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North…"
"Harriet Jones, Prime Minister of England actually…" Harriet corrected him.
"…right, sorry! Now where was I? Oh yes! Harriet Jones, Prime Minister of England, Amber the Assassin, Mickey the Idiot and Tricia from the Shop! Perfect team for saving the world, now let's go! To the TARDIS!"
"Oh look at him all jumping up and down because the world is about to end!" Jackie snapped as she followed the Doctor and her daughter out of the restaurant.
Tricia skipped alongside Mickey as everyone marched very quickly towards a strange looking blue Police box.
"What is going on?" she asked, "I thought Rose's friends were with the Government!"
"You said it was nice to know the truth, you're about to learn the real truth," Jack said.
"The real truth?" Tricia asked nervously, "So you aren't with the air force?"
"Well I was," Jack said, "Just about fifty years ago."
"She was wearing a dress…" Tricia waved vaguely in Amber's direction. Amber was looking all around, clutching a large meat cleaver she had grabbed from the kitchen.
"She's an alien from another planet," Jack said bluntly, then walked forwards to catch up with Amber, scanning as he went with his watch.
"Mickey…" Tricia said.
"Tricia, I'm sorry about all this, it's the Doctor, he's trouble – things like this always happen when he's around."
"You knew about this?"
"Yeah, I couldn't tell anyone though, I mean, who would have believed me anyway?"
Tricia shrugged.
"Not me…" she admitted, "So is this why you have loads of folders on Aliens in your bedroom?"
"Well, here we are, welcome to the TARDIS!" the Doctor said, unlocking the door and pushing it open. Rose, Jackie, Amber, Mickey and Jack stepped in without hesitation but Tricia and Harriet entered with that apprehensive 'first time in the TARDIS' look.
"So, what do we do?" Jack asked.
"Well I should think that's fairly obvious," Amber said, throwing her meat cleaver down by the console and removing her jacket, "Cyborgs return to where they were manufactured when damaged. All we have to do is damage one sufficiently, but not so much that it self destructs, and follow it."
"How do you intend to find them?"
"I don't think that's an issue – they will be looking for us." Amber said, bending to pick up her utility belt and tying it round her waist, "All we have to do is get out in the open where no one is likely to get hurt, and wait."
She took out her ship and ducked inside for a second, returning with two blades in strange contraptions which she was strapping to her wrists. Rose and Jack watched with curiosity as she flicked her hands downwards, making the previously sheathed blades shoot out. She spun them round in her hands for a moment, and then returned them with a quick flick to their cases. Satisfied, she put her jacket back on, hiding the blades completely from sight.
"Only problem is, anything I have is only going to put rather large holes in the Cyborgs – I need something which isn't as powerful, but with a long range – I don't fancy fighting them hands on!" Amber said, ignoring the stunned looks on the faces of the humans, and turning to the Doctor, who was toying with the console.
"I don't have any weapons," the Doctor said, "I don't believe in violence, generally."
"What are you doing anyway?" Rose asked, jumping up to the console area.
"I'm trying to track any alien technology," he said, grinning slightly at Rose's disbelieving expression.
"You won't find anything," Amber and Jack said together.
"I didn't think I would, but it was worth a try." The Doctor said, "before we go rushing into your trigger happy plan."
"Why can't you track them?" Harriet asked.
"Cloaking device round the tech – the only way to locate them is to follow them in person. Otherwise we would have picked up the anomaly when we landed." The Doctor explained, "The TARDIS knows when things aren't right. It's not terribly accurate with only one person piloting her, even when that one person is as fantastic as me! So, it only really picks up things that are millennia, and I mean lots of millennia, ahead of your time. And there has to a sufficient amount of the tech, otherwise the signal is too small."
"So it couldn't pick up Margaret Slitheen because she was too small?" Mickey asked.
"Not because she was too small, because that was too small," Jack said, pointing at the extrapolator, which was half wired to the TARDIS.
"That's why we were dragged off course and into Van Statten's, Rose, the TARDIS picked up the tech and the alien signal." The Doctor explained.
"Can you tell it not to do that next time," Rose said with a shudder.
The Doctor smiled a grim smile. Jackie looked between the Doctor and her daughter, then up to Jack, but judging by his bemused face, he didn't have a clue what they were on about either.
"So what are you going to do?" Jackie demanded.
"Well, the guards at Downing Street have guns, but they may think it a little odd if we ask to borrow them." Harriet said.
"Wait," Tricia said, speaking at last, "My Dad, he owns the shop – he keeps a gun under the desk, you could borrow that."
Mickey stared at Tricia, as did Jackie.
"Tricia from the Shop," the Doctor said, "anyone would think you had done this before!"
And with a smile he held his hand out to the door and said, "Lead the way!"
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