CHAPTER 38
"TALK TO ME"
Jason took his injured friends into the decontamination room where they could sit down and he could treat them properly. He had Grant use Buckley's abandoned knife to slice some of the discarded overalls into pieces while he helped the Doctor strip to the waist. He then began cleaning his friend's extensive wounds.
The Doctor was shocked when he noticed Jason was actually trembling. Now what could've shaken him? he wondered. "Jason, what's the matter?" he asked concernedly. Receiving no reply, he gave the Alterran a searching look, stopping him from his work by catching hold of his wrist. "Jason, talk to me. Something's obviously upset you, now what is it? Just what happened out there?"
Jason looked away and drew a deep breath, a small voice in the back of his head wishing that just once the Doctor would not push for answers. Concentrating to get control of himself, he met the Doctor's gaze steadily. "I wanted to kill them," he admitted in a quiet voice that contained every bit of his suppressed rage. "When I saw what they were doing to you and then—" He waved a hand in Grant's direction. "I lost it. I totally lost it. Smashed everything I could get hold of." Closing his eyes, he gave an angry growl, thumping a fist against the wall and putting a sizeable dent in it. "Will I ever get this demon of a temper under control?"
The Doctor gave him an understanding look, but his voice carried more disapproval than he intended. "I'm afraid that's a question only you can answer."
Jason gritted his teeth and forced himself to stay calm. "Oh, thank you very much for your support and understanding, Doctor," he snapped bitterly. "It was meant as a rhetorical question. You've already made it quite clear that you won't tell me what you saw in my future."
Grant knew he could not even begin to understand what was going on. He was also taken aback when he realized that the confrontation with the mercenaries had shaken his rescuer as much as it had shaken him. This thought brought little comfort, however, as he was still very uncomfortable in the shape changing Alterran's presence. He decided to discreetly withdraw from the room. It did not go unnoticed by the others.
Shaking his head, Jason returned his attention to the Doctor. "Great. And just to make matters worse, I've managed to scare poor Grant out of his wits."
The Time Lord was looking in the direction his companion had taken. "I'm beginning to suspect he's at the beginning of his time with me. He was incredibly insecure at the start. Unfamiliar territory, alien life forms. And let's be realistic. You're true appearance can be quite a shock, even to rabble like—" He broke off when Jason gave a low growl.
"Doctor, I don't care if those barbarians thought I was the devil incarnate. They were going to kill you," Jason said slowly and deliberately. "Stretch you like a rubber band until all your joints popped before moving on to breaking bones and who knows what else. And Grant was to be sliced and diced in the next room. That is what set me off."
The Doctor studied him a moment before saying in an apologetic tone, "Then I thank you for saving us and not killing them in the process."
Jason remained silent, giving him a dark look before returning his attention to his work. He finished cleaning the blood from the Doctor's face and side before examining the gash on the back of his head.
"Careful!" the Doctor exclaimed, flinching away. "I'm under there."
The Alterran smiled but did not reply. He looked thoughtfully at the wounds covering his friend's body before returning to his seat directly in front of him. He took hold of one of the Doctor's arms and studied the abrasions on his wrist. "I normally wouldn't consider doing this," he said mysteriously, "but with all this excess radiation, maybe…" Looking up, he said, "You keep asking me if I trust you, Doctor. Do you trust me?"
The Doctor's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Ye-es…"
"Good. I'm not sure how this will feel."
Before the Doctor could ask what his friend was talking about, Jason was gently running his fingers over the gashes on his wrist. There was a slight tingling sensation and then, to the Doctor's amazement, his injuries started to heal over. He was so startled by this that he let out an involuntary cry, causing Jason to stop and look up. "Did I hurt you?"
"No. But you continue to astound me. When did you learn that little trick?" the fascinated Time Lord asked, exchanging an astonished look with Grant, who had returned at the sound of his cry.
"About five seconds ago," Jason replied succinctly, meeting his friend's fascinated gaze. "I have to use up all this excess energy from the conversion rush. Power to burn, as they say. I learned how to manipulate the molecular structure of inanimate objects not too long ago. Turns out it's easier than I thought. But living tissue is another matter entirely, requires a lot of energy to manipulate."
"That explains the tingling."
Jason waved the hesitant Grant over and touched his oversized coveralls, altering them to fit his slight form. "Better?" he asked mildly.
The boy nodded, throwing a nervous glance in the Doctor's direction. He had to force himself not to flinch away when the Alterran reached up to touch his face. He felt a slight tingling and realized the cuts were being healed, the pain subsiding and then disappearing. He turned and looked at himself in a mirror that was across the room. Once satisfied he had not turned green or was glowing in any way he said a quick thank you and then vanished through the door, saying something vaguely about retrieving his shoes.
The Doctor shook his head, returning his attention to Jason. "I can only assume it was you who told my respiratory by-pass system to kick in before it was actually needed. And got everything else working in the right direction so I didn't bleed to death. Care to tell me exactly how you managed that?" This time his tone left no doubt that he was clearly impressed.
Jason cleared his throat nervously. "That was more luck than skill, I think."
"A telepathic nudge?"
"More like a telepathic scream of 'please work!' I think the conversion rush had more to do with it than anything. We both know I'm not that good." Jason gave the Doctor a searching look. "We do know that, don't we?"
"Yes, we do." The Doctor met his gaze evenly. "Jason, I have dealt with crossed timelines before, you know."
"Yes, but I haven't. Well...not my own, at any rate. I didn't think it would make me this crazy."
"I'm sorry I said anything," the Doctor sighed resignedly. Within a few minutes the Healer had healed the gashes on his friend's face and hands, carefully set and healed his broken ribs, and moved on to heal the garden of bruises that were blossoming all over his upper body. As the Doctor got dressed again, he finally asked the question that was uppermost in his mind. "Not that I don't appreciate your being here, and all that, Jason. But would you mind telling me why you're not on your way to Earth right now?"
"Actually, I'm just killing time. SorRell contacted the other planets and asked for backup troops. I told her to get all that lined up before finalizing the arrangements on my transport. They need every ship they have to shuttle troops."
The Doctor sat down again and Jason moved behind him to work on his scalp. "And how did you get here, Doctor? Weren't you supposed to be meeting up with SorRell's troops in some tunnels somewhere?"
The Doctor explained about the long journey through the tunnels, the climb into the empty room and the ultimate encounter with the men whom he thought might be Gres-Fa-Raayn mercenaries.
Jason finished healing the scalp wound and began cleaning the blood from the Time Lord's hair. "What in the world are Gres-Fa-Raayn mercenaries doing here? I checked all the reactors and only this one has—er, had—dangerous radiation levels."
Before the Doctor could respond, Grant suddenly called out from the next room. Thinking the mercenaries had returned, the two were out the door and beside him within seconds.
"What's the matter?" the Doctor demanded.
Grant pointed to the mountain of debris. "I heard something. Over there."
The Doctor turned to Jason, who nodded in response to the unspoken question. He held up a hand for silence, turning his incredible hearing in the direction indicated. He listened a few seconds, his brow furrowed in concentration. Closing his eyes, he tried to zero in on the faint tickle of a sound. "There's something…moving," he whispered. Suddenly his eyes snapped open when he heard the unmistakable sound of a human moaning in pain. "Make that someone."
Needing no further prompting, the Doctor dove at the pile of debris, the Alterran moving to his side to help. "Of course, Percy!" the Time Lord exclaimed as the initial confrontation in the room returned to his memory.
"We forgot all about him," Grant said, seeing the mountain of junk in a new way.
Jason gave them a puzzled look, pushing a large section of equipment out of the way and sending a cascade of loose circuit boards in all directions. "Percy?"
The semi-conscious Percy was suddenly visible, sandwiched within the pile of metal and plastic. Jason checked him quickly before pushing the rest of the junk pile out of his way with a mighty heave, sending it to the floor with a crash. "I should've started my tantrum at this end," he remarked as he carefully lifted the limp form clear. He carried the young man into the decontamination room and gently placed him on a table that was in the center of the room.
"Will he live?" the Doctor inquired bluntly as the Healer began his examination.
"Yes. He's not as bad as he looks," Jason replied without looking up. "Banged up, mostly. He's got a mild concussion and his left forearm is fractured in a couple of places. He must've landed on it when he fell into that mess." He glanced around the room for something he could use to immobilize the arm.
"He tried to stop the others from…" Grant's voice trailed off and he gave way to an involuntary shudder.
"He's not Alterran, is he?" the Doctor asked thoughtfully. "He certainly didn't belong in that lot of barbarians."
"I'll go along with that." Meeting the Doctor's questioning gaze, Jason informed startlingly, "He's Wieonol."