- repeated line, double entendre, (cf. "I can't make out the script.")
There were bodies in the water: bloated and long dead.
Jack kept his eyes open, his mouth closed, kicked as hard as he could. Broke the surface, gasping for air and looked for the Doctor. He was swimming for the shore and Jack followed suit.
"Didn't swallow any of it, did you?" The Doctor, helping him out of the water and onto dry land and wholly unperturbed by the gruesome sight that he too had presumably seen.
Jack refrained from any number of witty responses to the Doctor's question and simply said, "No."
"Something's wrong here."
"You think?" said Jack. He'd never spent much time in the early twenty-first century, but he was pretty sure London was meant to be a lot noisier than this.
"Rose must've noticed."
"Pretty independent girl. Probably wanted to find out what was going on for herself."
The Doctor was silent a moment. "Yeah, probably." He scrambled to his feet. "We'd better find some dry clothes, before you freeze to death."
"I'm fine."
"You're shivering."
Jack hadn't noticed. Now he couldn't seem to stop. "Better get a move on then." Dying of a chill definitely wasn't one of the glorious ends he had planned.
"You're going to wake up with a bad crick in your neck," someone whispered in her ear.
Rose's eyes opened. She was still in the van, still travelling fast. "Was I sleeping?"
"Looked like it," said Livia.
"Sounded like it," said the guy sitting next her.
Rose stretched as much as she was able, sat up, took a look out the window. Classic English countryside. It was even raining a little.
She rubbed her neck. Livia grinned. "Told you."
"You a doctor then?" Rose said lightly.
"Used to be. Still try to be."
"Oh. So we got out of London okay?"
The driver glanced over his shoulder. "Easy as pie."
"And where're we going?"
"Why, to our top secret headquarters, of course," Livia told her.
There was someone else in the warehouse.
Jack and the Doctor were being very quiet. It was something that they were both very good at.
A shadow was moving closer and, despite no telepathy on the part of one and a very limited useless sort on the part of the other, a single look between them was all that was required. Never underestimate non-verbal communication.
Jack provided the distraction, diving from one man-high pile of boxes to the other. The shadow stopped and the Doctor tapped its source neatly on the shoulder. "Excuse me," he said, very politely. "Are you looking for us?"
The shadow turned out to be all military uniform and stiff-upper lip. "As a matter of fact, yes," he said.
"Haven't got a change of clothes, have you? My friend over there's pretty cold and I'm none too snug myself. And we could do with a decent cup of tea."
"Doctor-"
"Aha!"
The military man frowned. "I told you, I was looking for you. We saw what happened on the bridge. Damn stupid place for you to materialise."
"I'm very sorry, I wasn't expecting to be shot at. You didn't shoot at me, did you?"
"No-"
The Doctor ignored him. "S'alright, Jack, come out. He seems to be pretty harmless - apart from the gun - and not trying to kill us."
Jack appeared, but kept his distance, just incase. "Great. So who is he then?"
"I'm standing right here."
"Good for you," said the Doctor. "Who are you?"
"Sergeant Conrad, and I've been ordered to escort you to safety."
"Why? What's so dangerous? What happened here? Why are there dead bodies in the Thames?"
"That's not my job to explain, sir." He ground out the last word, somehow managing to make it an insult. "All I have to do is get you back to the bunker. Alive if possible."
"Is there tea in this bunker?"
"As a matter of fact, there is."
The Doctor smiled. "Well, let's go then."
"Not until you and your friend understand a few things. I tell you to get down, you get down. I tell you to shut up, you shut it. Understood?"
"Perfectly," said the Doctor, and somehow that came out as a threat.
"Good. Now stay here. I have to check the route's clear." Conrad slipped away into the shadows, and Jack stepped closer to the Doctor.
"Pleasant guy," he said.
The Doctor shook his head, his expression quite serious. "I think he's got a good reason to be. So behave, right?"
"Don't I always?"
Dark and they were heading underground. Had been for some time. Dark outside, and they didn't bother with headlights, though there was some luminescence coming from the walls every few metres. Rose felt almost unbearably claustrophobic.
When the van stopped there was a flurry of activity. Everyone was up, quick-march, and dragging the boxes out and onto the floor.
They were in a cave, part of a system and from the other exits more people came. Taking the boxes away. Voices were hushed, conversation guarded. Still, something of an air of celebration.
Rose took a better look inside one of the boxes. It was filled with cans of Heinz baked beans. She frowned, and didn't notice she was being watched.
"You okay?" asked Livia.
"I…" Rose shook her head. "Yes, course I am."
"Something wrong with Heinz then?"
"No…it's just…" She stopped, took a breath. "You were risking your lives for cans of baked beans?"
"Not likely to get very far without food, are we?"
"Who are you, exactly?" asked Rose. "I've not had any sort of explanation."
"You never asked for any."
"Well, I'm asking now. Who are you people?"
Livia took a step closer. "Guess," she said quietly.
"What?"
"Guess, Rose. Pretend it's a game and guess."
"This is stupid." Rose decided that she didn't like baked beans very much at all anymore.
"Who attacked us in the street? Who were we shooting at?"
Rose shook her head, fighting a sudden instinct to run. There were too many of them. She had no idea where she was. The Doctor had no idea where she was.
She wasn't going to panic.
Livia's hand was on her shoulder, but it wasn't a threat. She look concerned. "It's alright. You scanned as human, you're safe here. But you don't know, do you?"
Rose hesitated a moment. Too long from Livia's look. The truth suddenly seemed very appealing. "I just arrived. We materialised on Tower Bridge and the Doctor…I just wanted some time on my own, I didn't have any idea we weren't somewhere safe. This is home. It's supposed to be safe. My home, and I don't have a clue what happened. I'm sorry, I just…people generally seem a bit hostile towards us, and if I didn't know what was happening, it's obviously suspicious and I wasn't really wanted to get shot at again and-"
"Rose, Rose, it's alright." She seemed a little paler. "Now, please, how did you get here?"
"I doubt you'd believe me."
"You said something about the Doctor."
"I, yeah, I guess I did." It was even quieter now, most of the boxes had disappeared and so had most of the people. "He's got this ship. The TARDIS-"
Livia interrupted. "Come with me."
"This certainly is a big secret underground bunker," said the Doctor. "Have you many of them? Very useful for invasions." He was feeling a lot better after a cup of tea, and Jack was looking a lot better in some dry clothes. Less blue and shivery, anyway.
"This way," said the sergeant in the most bored voice he could manage.
The Doctor knew about a lot of the stuff that was underground in London. The Underground for one. But he had to admit he wasn't aware of quite how far underground certain things were. Admittedly, it had been three decades since he was last paying any proper attention to what was going on on a day-to-day basis in the United Kingdom, but thirty years wasn't really a terribly long time.
The British certainly had been busy little bees. Or beavers. He liked beavers better. He wasn't so keen on alliteration.
There were an awful lot of soldiers though. Looking very fierce. He waved at one; the soldier didn't wave back.
Another elevator, another floor down. The sergeant stopped outside the only door on the new level. "You're to go right in," he said.
"Who's in there?" asked the Doctor.
The sergeant grinned. It wasn't pleasant. "The government in exile. Good luck."
When the elevator left with him in it, the Doctor noticed that there wasn't a call button for this floor. "Wonderful," he muttered.
"We going in then?" asked Jack.
"Either that, or we can stand about here and play Twenty Questions." He glanced at Jack. "No. We're not doing that."
Jack shrugged, opened the door. Nice and bright on the other side. Somehow the Doctor had expected something a little more ominous, a little more foreboding.
He was rather surprised to see a familiar face. "Doctor, do come in," said Harriet Jones. "Can I get you a coffee?"
Harriet Jones, Prime Minister, managed to disguise what she was feeling behind a smile that most politician's would have killed for. Or at least engaged in a little creative corruption. It wasn't the Doctor that she was expecting, but then her companion, now sitting on the sofa opposite her chair, had explained that one once.
She settled on being glad that she could ignore any potential awkwardness that could have come about had he been aware of exactly what had happened at Christmas, and offer him a coffee instead.
"And Mr Harkness, I believe?" she added.
"Captain, actually. But Jack's fine."
The Prime Minister nodded, ushered them inside, poured the coffee. For a few moments, she allowed herself to believe that all her problems would very soon be over.
Then the Doctor noticed Harriet wasn't the only familiar face in the room.
"Hello, Brigadier," he said, taking a hand, shaking it warmly. They were best friends after all. He was sure that he had said that, once.
"Doctor. I see you've regenerated again." The same voice, a little more worn. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was an old man now and were it not for his eyes the Doctor would have been very afraid for his oldest friend. It took some skill for a Time Lord to be friends with a human for the better part of a millennium. And somewhere along the line the Doctor had begun to think of the Brigadier as immortal. It was a very silly thing to do.
The Brigadier looked at Jack. "I take it this is the latest one."
"Of two," said the Doctor. He sat down and took a long drink of coffee. "Well, this is nice and cosy, isn't it? Nice little reunion."
"I wish it could have been under more pleasant circumstances," said Harriet. "Doctor, we need your help."
"And I need yours. Rose has gone missing. You remember Rose, don't you?"
"Of course. I'll do everything I can. But as you might have noticed, things aren't quite normal."
"Yeah, I did. So what happened, Prime Minister?"
Harriet and the Brigadier exchanged a glance. She leaned forward. "It was brought to my attention a few months ago that we had been sending probes deeper and deeper into space. That in our curiosity, we were, perhaps, reckless. We had drawn attention to ourselves."
"The last attack - the Christmas invasion - ended satisfactorily, for us anyway" interjected the Brigadier. "Although there was some controversy over the means that brought about its resolution."
"But the ends justify the means, eh, Brigadier?" The Doctor raised his eyebrows.
"My first duty is, and always has been, to protect the people of Earth."
"Shoot first, think later."
"Well, we are only human," said the Brigadier, quite calmly.
"All right then. What went wrong this time?"
"Nothing," said Harriet. "The major cities were evacuated and UNIT did exactly what they were trained to do. "
"There were some setbacks prior to the invasion though. Some sort of security breach at one of the organisations that was, ah, complementing UNIT's defence of the planet." The Brigadier sipped his coffee. "We simply didn't have the technology or resources to fight back."
"So who are they?"
The Brigadier gave a ruthful smile. "I'm sure you'll recognise them," he said, handing the Doctor a stack of eight by ten glossy photos.
"I know I do," said Jack. "Don't remember anything about a twenty-first century invasion though."
"Time is very flexible," the Doctor told him, examining the top photo. Staring back at him were two blank holes where eyes should have been and a face that shone silver. Humanoid, but not human. A Cyberman. The Doctor looked at the Brigadier. "But UNIT were prepared for a second Cyber-invasion. Or, at least, they were ten years ago."
The Brigadier nodded. "But we expected nothing on this scale. It's not just the home counties this time. Every major capital has been crippled by power suppression fields. Every country has the camps and the conversion factories. We're barely managing to keep our city-wide underground infrastructure intact. Communications throughout the country are patchy at best and it's been months since we've heard from even the continent."
"So what do you want me to do?" asked the Doctor.
Harriet leant forward. "How can we win against them, Doctor?" she asked. "How can we take back our planet?"
"Get out of my way," snapped Livia.
She had practically run through the cave system, a warren of tunnels and wider, open spaces full of boxes and people and tables and beds. Most were wearing uniforms, but no-one had challenged them until now.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," said the soldier, "but the general is in conference."
"Oh, please, she's talking to Professor Shaw. Again. And whatever they're planning this time, I doubt it will help any more than the bio-mechanoid virus. Which, by the way, I said was a stupid idea."
"Ma'am, please!"
Livia feigned tripping and ducked under the soldier's rifle, dragging Rose with her. "Sorry!" she called back, dashing down the tunnel.
"This is okay, right? This general isn't going to shoot me or anything?" asked Rose.
"No, she's going to be thrilled to see you actually. If only by proxy."
It wasn't exactly a door. More a roughly shaped piece of wood dividing one part of the tunnel from the next. Livia swung it open, and the tunnel opened out into another, smaller cave.
Two women, talking quietly over a desk, suddenly went quiet.
The younger - dark-skinned, short hair and in uniform - scowled in a way that made Rose think it was probably her favourite expression. And that she practiced it in front of a mirror. "Livia, if you're going to charge in here uninvited, at least try and remember to knock first."
Livia seemed not to hear. "This is Rose."
The general rolled her eyes. "I don't need to be introduced to every stray you bring in."
"She knows the Doctor."
The second woman, red hair going to grey, took off her glasses and sighed. "Don't we all?"
"Now. She just arrived a few hours ago; she arrived in London with the Doctor. He's here. On Earth."
The general was on her feet, staring hard at Rose. "So why isn't he here?"
"I only found out about that a few minutes ago," said Livia.
"People tend to threaten us a lot," explained Rose. "I was just being careful."
"Where is he now?" asked the general.
"I'm not answering any more questions until you tell me what's going," said Rose. "Starting with who you lot are. And who you're fighting."
"Look, you-"
"Can I get you a cup of tea?" interrupted the older woman. "Come and have a seat, you look exhausted."
"Thanks," said Rose, pretending not to notice the general give another roll of her eyes.
"Here you go."
Rose wrapped her fingers round a warm mug and suddenly felt a lot better.
The older woman sat down beside her. "Now, to answer your questions. My name's Elizabeth Shaw and that's General Winifred Bambera. We both used to be members of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce."
"UNIT," said Rose. "Yeah, I've heard of it. But what happened to London?"
They told her.
The Doctor was beginning to wish he hadn't asked for more details. He was tired; he was irritable; he couldn't stop thinking about Rose.
"I'm not a soldier," he told them. Not anymore, he didn't add.
"We were hoping for a more scientific solution," said the Brigadier. "There're survivors, there's a resistance, but we can't hold out forever."
"What you need is a more effective way to fight back." Jack hadn't said much, but he had been listening. Now he started talking. A lot. And the Brigadier and Harriet seemed very interested in what he had to say.
After a few minutes, the Doctor stood up and wandered away a little. They let him, or maybe they didn't notice.
He didn't like it here. He'd stayed on Earth so much, but something about this place, about now, crawled at his skin. He felt like he shouldn't be here at all.
The rumble of conversation grated in his ears. The noise seemed to scratch inside his skull. Stupid human. Stupid, stupid human.
"Alright, that's enough," he said. They were quiet. "What d'you know about Rose? Your lot found me quickly enough, you must have seen her."
"We did," confirmed Harriet.
"And?"
She sat back, resting comfortably. "Not until you help us."
He slammed his hands into the back of his chair, shoving it forward, hitting the coffee table. "Not good enough."
"Doctor." The Brigadier, a warning: behave, Doctor.
The Prime Minister's composure didn't change. "I cannot put the safety of one girl ahead of the nation, or the planet."
"It's alright, Doctor." Jack stood up. "I think I can make a difference here. The technology's primitive but they've managed to steal some stuff from the Cybermen. I think it could be enough for me to design a primitive glitter gun."
"What an extraordinary name," said the Brigadier.
"They were the crucial factor in the interstellar Cyberwars," Jack told him. "They're more effective than gold-tipped bullets and use up a fraction of the gold in ammunition."
The Doctor was very still. "You know what you're suggesting, right? You understand the chance you're taking?"
Harriet stood up. "If it turns the tide of this war, then it has to be worth the risk, whatever it is."
"It's interfering with the time-line," said the Doctor. "It might very well destroy your little planet."
"We've gotten our hands on advanced weapons before," said the Brigadier. "And we've been through invasions before. We'll do whatever's necessary.."
"So Jack's going to introduce you to this brand new alien-killing weapon, centuries ahead of what you've got, and then, when you've finished killing Cybermen, you're just going to happily give them up?"
The Brigadier gave him a steady look. "It's been done before."
Rose felt rather sick. The tea had stopped helping some time ago.
She was absurdly grateful that Professor Shaw - that Liz - hadn't left her side. Found herself sitting in the chair, resisting the urge to curl herself into the ball, holding the other woman's hand, unsure why: she didn't exactly give off a maternal air.
"Just one other thing," Rose said, very quietly. "In London, there were a lot of people hurt. Livia said, you said, they had to make a choice…" She trailed off, looking from one face to the other.
None of them wanted to answer the question.
"They had been injured," said Bambera finally.
"What choice?" insisted Rose.
Livia sat next to her, spoke gently. "You have to understand, Rose, that there was nothing else that could be done. The shots that hit those people paralysed them within minutes. They were going to be captured by the Cybermen, and anyone captured is put in the camps. They…they make us like them."
"But why couldn't you take them with you?"
"The shots held a tracking agent. It goes directly into the bloodstream. First step in cyberisation: know where your victims are." She paused, glanced at Bambera. "We can't let them have any more troops if we can prevent it; we're fighting for our lives here. Everyone on the supply runs knows the risks: you get hit, then you can take your gun and shoot yourself, or one of the others will do it for you."
Rose shook her head. "How could you?"
Bambera stepped forward. "Because it's what I would want. It's what any one of us would want. You haven't seen them. Or what happens when they strip away your dignity, your humanity, and turn you into some soulless machine who'll gun down anything they're ordered to: children, the wounded, the dying. It doesn't matter to them."
A knock at the door. A blonde-haired man, dressed like a soldier but wearing a highly incongruous sword. "Winifred," he said. "We must evacuate immediately. The invisibility magic did not work, one of their great flying ships is on its way here."
Bambera nodded. "Alright Ancelyn, you know what to do."
"My lady."
Bambera turned to Livia. "Get her out of here, get back to London and find the Doctor."
"On my own?" asked Livia doubtfully.
"I need my troops here to evacuate the civilians."
"Don't I get any say in this?" asked Rose.
"No," said Bambera shortly. "Now move. Professor, the labs."
"On it."
Rose hesitated, but as Bambera's eyes fell on her again she really didn't think she had the stubbornness left to argue. She'd been here a few hours; these people had lived like this for months. Besides, didn't she want to go back to London? That was where the Doctor was after all.