CHAPTER 13

"PREPARE FOR A SHOCK…"

Even though he knew he was reacting to an irrational fear Jason had to will himself to calm down. He concentrated on what the Doctor had said. "You are perfectly safe." Of course he was. The Doctor was there. Closing his eyes, Jason keep this thought in his mind while still hanging onto the Time Lord's hand, his reassuring time aura acting as a lifeline. After a minute his heart rate started to return to normal.

The Doctor gave a satisfied smile and thanked the nurse before dismissing her, stating that it appeared the sedative would not be needed. Once his friend had sufficiently composed himself, he extracted himself from the Alterran's grasp. "Now, Jason. Do you remember what happened to you?" he asked gently. "How you came to be here?"

His friend threw a quick look in Mel's direction.

"I told him his ship crashed," she said in response to this.

The Doctor nodded, but his steady gaze did not waver from Jason's face. "But you don't remember it, do you?" he stressed.

Closing his eyes in resignation, Jason shook his head weakly.

"I thought not." The Doctor straightened, drawing a deep breath. "Well, prepare yourself for shock. You crash landed on Earth—" (Jason's eyes snapped open.) "—in the year 2000."

The Doctor watched as his friend's eyes widened further, his heart rate jumping slightly at the same time. "I told you it would be a shock. That's why UNIT's put its oar in." Jason's eyes narrowed, causing the Time Lord to chuckle. "Oh, you haven't seen them yet, I take it? I wonder how Mr. Benton will react when I tell him who you are."

"Why's that?" This was Mel, who was hanging onto the conversation by a thread.

"Because Jason and I got ourselves entangled with UNIT…Oh, I think it must've been sometime in the late 1970's." The Doctor turned to his former companion for confirmation, turning back when his current companion forcefully said, "Hang on a minute, Doctor. You told me he was from the twenty-seventh century with no way of being in the twentieth."

The Doctor cleared his throat, glancing over at Jason to see an amused, get-yourself-out-of-that-one look in his eyes. "You're no help at all," he chided before saying, "Mel, Jason and I used to travel together. In fact, I think I still have his UNIT paperwork in the TARDIS somewhere."

Mel looked from one to the other. "That explains it!" she blurted out.

The Doctor gave her a baffled look. "Explains what?"

"How we could understand each other," his companion replied, motioning to the Alterran. "You told me that the TARDIS translates everything for me, right? Well it must've been doing it for him too. It's just…for some reason it only worked for the two of us and nobody else."

"That's probably because Jason hasn't been in the TARDIS for a few years," the Doctor replied smugly, only to scowl and give his former companion a questioning look. "It has been a few years, hasn't it?"

Jason shot an amused look in Mel's direction before nodding and opening his hand twice to indicate the number ten.

"Ten years?" the Doctor observed with interest. Looking up, he grinned at his current companion. "As I said, it's probably because Jason hasn't been in the TARDIS for ten years."

Or it might be because I haven't been in since you've regenerated, Jason added mentally.

A sudden thought struck him and the Doctor turned back to the bed, patting himself down at the same time. "That reminds me. I have something of yours, Jason. I've no idea how I ended up with it…." He produced a small tube from one of his capacious pockets and held it up. "And I kept meaning to give it back, but never seemed to remember."

Seeing the surprised and delighted look in the Alterran's eyes, Mel asked, "What is it?"

With a broad smile, the Time Lord replied, "A little bit of magic." Suddenly he was completely serious. "Mel, I'm supposed to meet with the UNIT liaison in a bit. It's imperative that no one and I mean no one from this time period gets hold of this. Once they take the tube out of his throat, Jason can tell you why. Until that happens, don't let anyone take it. Do you understand?"

The gravity in his voice made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Mel nodded, asking again, "Yes, I understand. What is it? Really? It looks like a tube of lipstick."

"Not quite. This little miracle of Alterran engineering will help Jason recover a hundred times faster than this lot will." The Doctor waved a hand to take in the room. Turning back to the occupant of the bed, he scowled, trying to decide the best place to conceal the energy tube.

Jason reached out, touching the Doctor's arm to get his attention and wiggling his fingers before using them to spell out the word "cast."

"I'm a bit out of practice, Jason," the Doctor confessed. "Once more and slower." He spoke the letters as they were formed to make certain he was reading them correctly. "C-A-S-T."

Jason pointed towards his suspended right arm.

"Ah! The perfect hiding place!" came the delighted reply. Moving to the other side of the bed, the Doctor studied the upraised arm a moment. "This is going to hurt quite a bit, you know. There's not a lot of room in there. Your arm's put together with more metal than bone now."

The Alterran signed again. "S-L-O-W-L-Y."

Although puzzled, the Doctor did as requested and was surprised when the flesh along the side of the cast shimmered as the tube was pressed into it. As soon as it was completely hidden, the Alterran's body lit up momentarily, shocking the unprepared Mel.

"Doctor!" she gasped. "His whole body just…glowed!"

"Good. That means it's working," came the unexpectedly bland reply. "After that's had a chance to work you might fill him in on what happened at the crash site." Giving his friend a knowing look, the Doctor said, "It might jog his memory."

Jason responded with a dark look and was contemplating a rude gesture when the Doctor added as an afterthought, "Oh yes, they had to amputate your right leg after the crash, Jason, so you're working on reduced mass."

Mel expected all sorts of reactions to this callous delivery of such devastating news, but not the one it produced. The Alterran's eyes only flickered slightly, a thoughtful look passing across his face. He nodded, signed "O-K," and then closed his eyes, already feeling the relaxing affects of the energy tube.

"Yes, you get some rest and let that do its job," his friend ordered gently. Within a few minutes Jason had drifted into a contented sleep.

Having seen the look of consternation on Mel's face, the Doctor waited for the reprimand he knew was coming. "Doctor," she began threateningly, "how could you tell him about—?"

"Mel, Jason isn't human, he's Alterran," the Time Lord cut in sharply. "He needs to know all the facts about his condition so the energy tube can work properly."

"Why? So he can grow another leg?" came the sarcastic reply.

"Would you believe me if I told you yes?" Not waiting for an answer, the Time Lord straightened, drawing himself to his full height. He turned toward the door, suggesting they give Jason some peace for a short time.

Before Mel could voice an objection, the Doctor was steering her out the door. He had learned from the staff while he was reading the medical records that his companion had not left the Critical Care Unit since early that morning. He firmly but gently suggested that she get something to eat before she made herself sick.

"Don't tell me you knew the Ambassador had actually traveled with the Doctor, too?" K'ell'k demanded accusingly.

"Of course. His connection with everything made him the perfect choice. The only choice," l'X'el replied, adding as an afterthought, "Besides, I already told you the Doctor knew him."

"l'X'el! One chance encounter in time I can understand. But this! This moves the realm of coincidence well beyond any kind of acceptable level. It's not random anymore, it's open manipulation."

With a wry smile, his brother replied, "And when the Doctor realizes that, he'll want to know who would do such a thing—and then track them down."

K'ell'k blinked. "And that will lead him here," he gasped. Before he had the chance to say more he thought he heard a noise outside the vault and jumped down from his chair. As he did so, he put his hand on the console in front of him. The globe responded to the random input and altered the image to an unnamed planet light-years from Earth.

"What did you do!" l'X'el gasped in horror.

"There's somebody outside," K'ell'k replied.

"The manipulator is masking our presence in a time shift, you idiot!" his brother admonished sharply. "Even if somebody did come in, they wouldn't see us." He returned his attention to the computer and began frantically resetting the controls.