act two: absolution
- popular saying
"Someone's taken her." Livia tried to grasp the logistics. She hadn't left the office, and she was certain she'd have woken if anyone had entered. The Doctor was looking under the bed. She stared, disbelieving. "What are you doing?"
"Just checking."
Livia shook her head. "She hasn't rolled onto the floor, Doctor, someone has taken her."
"Is there another way out of this room?" he asked, looking around.
"Not unless you know a way to drill through rock and close it up behind you."
"As a matter of fact-"
"This is Earth and these are humans. The Cybermen…it just isn't logical. Who would have done this? What's so special about that human?"
"Nothing," said the Doctor. "She's just my friend."
"There's no such thing as just your friend, Doctor. I've read your entry in the APC Net. Your friends tend to get involved in as much trouble as you do."
"Off-topic, Livia." He strode out of the room, and she hurried to catch-up.
"Where are we going?"
"I'm going to see the Brigadier. This place must have some sort of security. Someone must have seen her. Don't know where you're off to."
"I don't abandon my patients, Doctor. Whoever their friends might be." She took a skipping step, just about managed to match his pace. "And if I didn't see what happened to her, what makes you think anyone else did?"
"You were asleep!"
She sniffed. "I am a very light sleeper, Doctor. I doubt anyone could just slip past me, especially when carrying a body."
"You'd be surprised." He rapped on the door to the Brigadier's office, didn't wait for a reply.
Ancelyn and Bambera were inside, and neither the Doctor nor Livia wanted to know what they'd been doing before the door burst open.
"How many times must I tell people to knock?" snapped Bambera, less than thrilled at the interruption. "What do you pair want?"
"Rose has gone," the Doctor told her.
"Oh, shame. So she wanted to have walk, so what?"
"Brigadier, she was unconscious, and she wasn't going to recover consciousness for at least another four hours," said Livia. "Someone took her from surgery. And…" She paused, sparing a glance for the Doctor before continuing. "And she made not have had the time that she needed for her recovery to be stable. We have to find her."
The Brigadier nodded, still annoyed, but now her sense of duty took over. "Ancelyn, see if anyone's left the base in the past…" She looked at Livia.
"Two hours," she supplied.
"My lady." Ancelyn bowed, left quickly.
Bambera sighed. "Alright, who could have taken her? And why?"
"It must have been someone who was known here, surely," said Livia. "As to why…" She shrugged.
The Doctor was quiet, pacing a little. "The stealth fields. If someone was using a personal stealth field, then they could have got in and out without being detected."
"Would it have hidden the girl to?" asked Bambera.
The Doctor nodded. "If they were careful."
Ancelyn reappeared. "My lady, no-one has arrived, nor has anyone departed."
"Is anyone missing?" asked Bambera.
"Not as far the duty officer is aware."
"Well, tell them to check," she said, letting him leave again. She rubbed her forehead, took a seat. "This is ridiculous. We're finally ready to fight back, and I'm worrying about finding one lost girl."
"Rose is very important to me," said the Doctor. "And this might be more important to you than you think."
"Do you know why she was taken?" asked Livia, turning her full attention to the Doctor.
He shook his head. "No. I've no idea. But when we find out it might-"
"What happened?" Jack, breathing heavily. He'd been running. Glanced from Bambera to the Doctor.
"That's what we're trying to find out, Captain," said Bambera, glancing over his shoulder to the second arrival. "Well, Ancelyn?"
"We can find no disappearances, but the duty officer will continue the checks. However, there is a vehicle missing from the garage."
"Oh, shame," muttered Bambera, growing increasingly annoyed at the number of people in her office. "Well that settles that, there's been an intruder… now where's he going?" she asked, the Doctor striding out of the room. "You stay right there!" Jack stopped in his tracks, Bambera stepped up to him, said, "You've still got a job to do here, mister. We have weapons to make, check and load. I'm not having my entire staff go off to look for that girl."
"Last time I checked," said Jack, "I wasn't on your staff."
"You've been conscripted," she said shortly. "The rest of you get back to work. There's still a war going on here."
Jack had every intention of going back to the lab where the glitter guns were being manufactured, eventually, but nothing on Earth or beyond was going to stop him from going after the Doctor when he left that room. And if Rose had gone out of the base then that's exactly where the Doctor would be heading too. Jack went straight to the garage.
Too late. But close enough to see the chaos that the Doctor had left in his wake. Mechanics and soldiers milling around. An angry officer on the comms.
"The Doctor take off then?" asked Jack.
The officer scowled. "Couldn't care less. But he decided to sabotage every other vehicle we've got left before leaving."
It wasn't long before the Brigadier arrived, in an even worse mood than before. "What the hell's going on here?"
The officer's explanation was interrupted by Jack. "The Doctor wouldn't do that," he insisted. "Sure, he'd borrow a car to go chase Rose down, but he wouldn't leave you high and dry. Trust me." He met Bambera's eyes, saw that she agreed.
"Assuming he didn't, then that would mean that he took the only vehicle we had left. Just one working vehicle."
"And one working stealth unit," added the officer who had been on watch.
"Right. And I think this might be down to our kidnapper too."
Jack caught on quickly. "They wanted the Doctor to go after them?"
"Yes. You knew what he'd do, didn't you? Not that hard to guess. He's hardly a man of complex motives, these days anyway." Bambera gave a long-suffering sigh. "Well, the rest of us aren't going anywhere until this lot's repaired. And we'll be lucky if we know what we're doing with the stealth units…" She broke off, seemed to come to a decision. "Captain, find Dr. Sullivan, and get yourselves to the conference room."
There was tea. There was coffee. There were even biscuits, though no-one had yet taken one. No idle chit-chat, but a dull melancholy in the air. Even with the increasingly good news from the south, no-one could yet celebrate here. Not with the sudden disappearance of the Doctor, not when everyone in that room knew exactly what sort of man he was.
The door swung open and Bambera marched in, all business. She took her seat at the head of the table, cast an eye over the men and women assembled. Such an odd mix of people, but she was used to dealing with the odd, the unexplained. That was what UNIT was all about, after all.
"You all know what's happened," said the Brigadier, taking her seat. "What I want to know is what you think we should do." She looked at each face in turn. "Our operation here can no longer be considered secure. This isn't a democracy, but I do want to hear what you have to say."
"What can we do?" said Livia. "Even getting out of the base isn't an option now."
"But who did this? Why take Rose? Just Rose." Professor Shaw plucked a biscuit off the plate, took a bite. Waited for an answer.
"It certainly doesn't fit in with the Cybermen's tactics," said Bambera. "And it wasn't anyone on the base, that's been confirmed now. No-one's missing."
"Well, we need to find her. Her treatment wasn't complete."
"How about using some of that Time Lord genius to help fix the stealth units then?" suggested Jack.
Livia scowled. "How about using some of that marvellous future knowledge to speed things along, Captain?"
"Not my field."
"Then, given that I'm a doctor, why would you think it was mine?"
"I thought Time Lords knew everything."
She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and they grew us in test tubes too. Get a grip. You're not the only one here worried about them."
"I can see those tears from here."
"Rose is my patient. Whatever my feelings towards the Doctor, that is a duty I take…that matters to me."
"Alright, that's enough," said Bambera, before Jack could retort. "Any more personal problems, take them outside, where I can't see them." She poured herself a mug of coffee, drank it black. "So they took Rose; the Doctor took off after them and no-one here can follow."
Liz nodded. "So it isn't Rose, it's the Doctor that they want. Rose was easy bait."
"Hardly easy," said Bambera.
"Alright," agreed Liz. "Easier then. Easier than getting to the Doctor directly, anyway."
"If Merlin has left us for a trap, then he must be warned," said Ancelyn.
"I'm sure he can take care of himself," Livia said. "But Rose is still in danger."
Bambera stood up. "Captain Harkness, Livia, whatever deficiencies you feel you have in your knowledge, get down to the garage and help with those repairs. Dr. Sullivan can continue the manufacture of the glitter guns, he seems to know what he's doing. But I won't risk contacting London again until we know how our security was breached, and that means finding the Doctor, and Miss Tyler."
"And, with such limit resources, how do you propose to do that?" A voice from the tunnel that led to the conference room. Smooth and confident, but a stranger.
Bambera scowled. "Who the hell are you? I gave orders that this was a closed meeting."
"So you did. But I'm afraid you guard is now quite convinced you countermanded them. Such a simple thing to do. And the security of your little underground home is not quite so difficult to penetrate as you seem to imagine."
Bambera drew her gun. "Who are you?"
The figure tutted, stepped forward. "So quick to resort to violence. But then, why should I expect anything better from humans?"
Dark-eyed and immaculately dressed in black, he stepped from the shadows. Ancelyn turned, whispered to Bambera, "This one is like Merlin."
Bambera understood, swore under her breath. "Time Lords coming out of the woodwork now. What do you want?"
"To help."
Livia, strangely quiet, now spoke. "I remember you."
He looked at her, and she met his dark gaze unflinchingly. "And I remember you, my dear: the President's doctor. Such an pity your expertise is now irrelevant. But I see your memories have returned; the Doctor's interference, I assume?"
"Did you take them from me?"
"No," he said. "As I told you I am here simply to help. Up until now I was content to observe, but events have moved faster the I predicted and the Doctor is in danger."
"Like he wasn't before," said Jack, glanced at Livia. "Who is this guy?"
"A friend of the Doctor's; he calls himself the Master. He fought in the Time War."
He spoke. "Friend has such pejorative connotations. Suffice to say that the Doctor recruited me, somewhat reluctantly, into that unpleasant affair against my better judgement." He took at the seat at the end of the table, ignoring the gun that Bambera was still pointing at him. "Much as revealing myself to your little resistance group is."
"Then why do it?" asked Bambera.
"I told you, to help. To be specific, to help you find the Doctor, seen as you seem unable to get on with it by yourselves."
"We don't know where he's gone," said the Brigadier.
"Ah, but I do," said the Master, retrieving a small silver unit from a pocket inside his coat. He moved slowly, not giving Bambera an excuse to shoot. "This little instrument will show me exactly where the Doctor is." He slid it across the table; Jack caught it, thumbed the controls on.
"Neat," he said. "How d'you know that's him?"
"The Doctor was kind enough to share a hot beverage with me while in London. His cocoa was laced with a tracking agent, making it a simple matter for me to follow his progress."
"We still can't risk going after him without a working stealth unit," said Livia.
"Indeed not." The Master smiled. "My skills are at you disposal."
Bambera snorted. "You must really take us for fools. Ancelyn, get some soldiers in here." She gave the Master a hard look. "Well, this has all been very interesting, but your UNIT file is perfectly clear on what happens to your so-called allies and what your plans for our planet tend to involve. I wouldn't trust you further than I could throw a Cybership. So thank you very much for your offer, but no thanks. You'll be spending the rest of your time here in our very best cell."
She wasn't nervous, or, at least, not as nervous as she should be. It was, she decided, a supremely bad idea to go and speak to him, but she knew that she couldn't ignore his presence indefinitely. Not when she had questions.
The guard let her past without much of an argument, and Livia found the Master pacing the single barred cell in the base. They'd never had much need to lock anyone up before.
"Ah, a visitor. How gratifying, though I'm afraid I'm not in a position to be much of a host." The Master regarded her from the other side of the bars, and she was careful to keep her distance. Standing as far away as she could, folding her arms.
"You escaped the…burning," she said.
"Obviously."
"How?"
"I could as you the same thing." He took a step closer to the bars. "But I think that your situation speaks for itself. I'm afraid I didn't have quite the same obstacles to overcome."
Livia nodded. "Your physiology is alien."
"But my psyche remains." He tapped his temple with a long, gloved finger. "Though, like you, I had to give up my TARDIS to remain safe."
"And you came to Earth?"
"I knew the Doctor would come back, sooner or later."
"You wanted to kill him?"
"Why ever would you think that?" he asked softly.
She gave a tight smile. "I've seen your file."
"I was under the impression I had removed my presence form the APC Net."
"Oh, they lost the records of your time-line, but that doesn't mean information can't be gathered. It made interesting reading."
"You must have been very curious to go to so much trouble."
"It was useful research. A psychiatric paper - so few Time Lords ever leave Gallifrey…" She broke off. "Ever left Gallifrey."
He tutted gently. "Ah, still grieving for a lost world."
"I didn't get the chance." She looked away, wishing she hadn't come.
"Worlds come and go, even worlds as ancient as Gallifrey. Nothing endures forever. And there's a new world right here. Ready for the taking."
Livia rolled her eyes, suddenly feeling on safer ground. "I've no interest in this planet. Beyond not dying on it."
"Really? Think about it. This world is in chaos; it needs a single strong leader to bring order. One single unified vision, and this planet could become a galactic power within a century."
"Your vision?"
"No human could conceive of planning for the centuries ahead; no human could bring the world the knowledge it needs to grow to its full potential."
"And that's what you plan to do?" she asked.
"You can't possibly want to stay on this planet forever."
"What exactly are you offering?"
"Help me, and I can help you escape."
Livia shook her head. "Even if I believed you could, this is ridiculous."
"Yes it is, but that's what you expected, isn't it?"
"What?"
He spread his hands, smiled, though neither gesture was particularly comforting. "Be assured, my dear, that the only ambition I currently have is to find the Doctor."
She swallowed, turned to go. "I don't believe you."
"I'm sorry," said Bambera, "but after the messages I've received from London, joining with the other resistance groups has to be our priority."
"You still haven't found out who breached your security," said Jack.
"Right now, that's not important. I have to use every available resource to get my troops to the city."
"What about the Doctor?" demanded Jack. "After everything he's done for you and everyone on this planet, you can't just abandon him."
"My first duty is my country and my world, Captain Harkness. The Doctor knew what he was doing when he went out there. And he knows damn well how to take care of himself."
He had thought she would be reasonable if he caught her alone, without having to hold up the morale of her staff. He had thought she understood. "Brigadier, I won't just abandon them."
She didn't move an inch. "I can't help you."
"At least give me the Master's tracking device. If you're not going after him, you've got no use for it."
"Professor Shaw wants to take a look at it. Any advanced technology could give us an edge over the Cybermen. The edge we need to win this war."
"I've already given you tech centuries ahead of what you have!" he exclaimed.
"And we're very grateful."
"Just not grateful enough to give anything back." He was angry, angry enough to do something really stupid. He controlled himself with an effort. "Is there anything you can do, Brigadier? Please?"
She shook her head. "I'm sorry, but the Doctor's on his own."
Jack found Livia in a corner of the garage, working by herself, an island of calm. Cross-legged on the cave floor, pieces of a sabotaged stealth unit laid out in front of her.
"Thought you couldn't fix it?" he said, crouched down next to her.
She poked at a non-descript length of coiled wire. "Can't. I was never very interested in engineering. But Bambera won't take no for an answer." She looked up at him. "How's it going your end?"
Jack grinned. "I, ah, got some help."
Livia raised an eyebrow. "You didn't…?"
"Come on, I thought you had some sacred duty to your patient. You want to find them, so do I. Bambera's being paranoid."
"She's got every reason to be." Livia lowered her voice. "She was right; he's extremely dangerous." She glanced at a passing soldier, let him move away before she spoke again. "What did you do?"
"Gave him one of the damaged stealth units to fix."
"He won't. He'll be out of that cell within the hour and we'll never see him again. Unless he gets it into his head to kill us."
"I don't think so. He seemed as desperate to find the Doctor as you are to find Rose."
"I'm not…" She coughed lightly. "Look, if Bambera finds out what you've done.."
"She's not going to."
"This base is under a military governorship. She could have you shot for treason. And me."
"That's not going to happen. And he's not going to disappear." Jack reached into his pocket, pulled out the Master's tracking device. "Bambera had it put in storage"
"And you just had to steal it."
"The Master's not going anywhere without it. Besides, I'm not staying here, not when the Doctor and Rose are out there and might need my help."
"You steal anything else?" she asked.
"Not yet. What d'you think we might need?"
"For goodness sake, Captain, there's a war on. This planet-"
"-will take care of itself. I'm from the future, remember? It'll turn out alright for Earth. But the Doctor and Rose are still in danger. So you in?"
"This is a terrible idea," muttered Livia.
"That's a yes, right?" adding his most charming grin.
She considered, not meeting his eyes when she spoke again. "I'll need to pack some things from the surgery."
Jack nodded. "Right. The Master seemed to think he'd be finished with the stealth unit within the hour."
"More than enough time." She paused. "You able to check the thing's working once he's done with it?"
"I think so."
"And make sure you get all the equipment back."
"All right, all right. Gee, just relax, okay?"
"Don't trust him, Jack."
"Right now, the only people I trust on this planet are the Doctor and Rose."
Livia smiled. "You're smarter than you look."
The Doctor drove.
Instinct more than knowledge. He knew where Cybercontrol would be and that was exactly where he was going. To the centre, to the heart, where he should have gone in the first place.
Where he would have gone, once.
And I will be the humblest Doctor of them all, he liked to think he had said to himself. Because he mattered less than anyone else at all, and the days when nobody died had seemed to drift and flounder and finally stop altogether. Unafraid and once more unto the breach again, again, whenever he could offer a hand to one who was falling, no matter how far he had to fall himself.
Arrogance, once the enemy, now his ally and he had refused to listen. Ignorance and improvisation, and, oh yes, the danger.
Then there was Rose. Rose, who he had to save. Rose who had been plucked so neatly from his grasp.
And I simply will not be beaten, he sang to himself inside his head. A Time Lord, never too old to learn new tricks. Still, he couldn't make the car go any faster and wished for a magic carpet. Or his TARDIS. Any TARDIS, and the beautiful song of their flight through the possibilities of time.
He had made a promise to keep her safe and he had meant it. Lose the world and save Rose and, yes, he could live with that. Somewhere, someone inside his head pointed out that that might not be the right way to go about making amends, but he was driving too fast to listen to any passengers.
Livia was trying not to look nervous, but from the looks of the passing soldiers was beginning to suspect she was a very poor actress. Jack was taking too long, and the duty shift was changing. Maybe that was what he was waiting for. The garage was certainly a lot quieter and was really paying her much attention any more.
The car in front of her, the car they were going to steal, didn't look very sturdy. She was sure they had looked a lot less flimsy before, and she wondered what she was comparing it too.
"Do internal combustion engines explode?" she murmured to herself.
"Exactly how long have you live on Earth for?" asked Jack, and Livia refused to acknowledge that he had surprised her.
Instead she paused, considering. "I'm not really sure. A couple of years, at least. The memories just sort of fade away rather than stopping."
"And how many cars have you seen explode?"
"Quite a lot. On the telly anyway."
Jack sighed. "Didn't you think about this before you…got your memories back?" He spoke lightly, ignored his own worries, doubts, his own gap in his memories.
"No," she said, a little sadly. "That's the problem. There's an awful lot of things that I never used to think about that are now worrying me a great deal. It's rather disturbing."
"Well, you don't have to worry about this," Jack reassured her. "It's not going to explode."
"Are you driving?" she asked him, raising an eyebrow.
"He is not, I am." Neither of them had heard the Master's approach. They exchanged a glance, Livia's look condemnatory. Jack shrugged.
"Guess I missed something," he said.
Livia sighed, turned to the Master. "I don't think you have a licence," she said.
"My dear, I don't think any of us do. And if you wish to stand here and argue trivialities, please do. But I am leaving. If you're coming, I suggest you get in. Quickly."
She frowned. "What's the-"
The sound of running. Soldiers' boots. Jack opened the passenger side door, leapt neatly inside. "Get in, Livia!"
She jumped inside, fastened her seatbelt. "Great. Burning more bridges."
The Master started the engine, swung the car around, heading for the exit with no intention of stopping for anything. "I'm sure they'll learn to live with it. But once you told the Brigadier who I was, did you really imagine she'd ever let me walk free?"
"If you hadn't been intent on making such a dramatic entrance maybe I wouldn't have been so surprised. She liked me before."
"And if you two could pretend to be friends for five minutes that would really help my navigation skills," said Jack, his eyes on the scanner and not mentioning the fact that the Brigadier probably wasn't too thrilled that he'd borrowed a couple of glitter guns either. "Right. Got him. And he's travelling pretty fast."
"If the good Doctor's going to exceed the speed limit, then so must we," said the Master, moving up another gear.
And the car rushed out of the caves, into bright sunlight and a clear day.