Happy New Year everyone.
I don't own Doctor Who, the show, the characters, anything. If I did then there would be more alternate timelines and parallel universes focusing on dozens of different Doctors.
Anyway, to clarify, this timeline's version of the Third Doctor, played by Emily Blunt, was exiled to Earth during the 1950s but because of her predecessor causing problems with the Time Lords during their trial, the Doctor was threatened into choosing a face. In this case, a female face. The Third Doctor of this timeline has been on Earth ever since, working for UNIT while investigating and stopping strange phenomena by herself.
Enjoy.
A Different Doctor, a Different Exile.
The Lazarus Experiment.
"….the details are top-secret…Tonight, I will demonstrate a device with the push of a single button, I will change what it means to be human."
The moment she heard the aged scientist make that announcement, the Doctor knew she'd needed to watch it for herself, especially when she checked with her contacts and learnt the scientist was Professor Richard Lazarus, and he'd held a life-long determination to crack open the secrets of rejuvenation and immortality.
It looked like Lazarus had made some kind of breakthrough, but the Doctor's determination to attend the demonstration was partly due to her knowledge of Earth's future timeline to say nothing of her usual curiosity.
What it means to be human…
No matter how hard she tried, the Doctor had trouble working out exactly what the scientist she had discovered was named Richard Lazarus was doing. What made it more suspicious was Lazarus had next to no online presence, so she wasn't able to simply hack into the social media websites, and despite some last-minute access his computers to get an idea of what he was up to, the Doctor knew surprisingly little.
It was as if the scientist was purposefully preparing to surprise the human race.
But if he meant changing what it meant to be human…. There were just too many possibilities for her there, and her knowledge of the future told her she needed to be a witness. Not once in all the time she had visited Earth's future and travelled to the worlds Earth would colonise after the Dalek invasion had she witnessed any sign of humanity possessing any kind of technology which would make them more of what they were already, although she knew they'd eventually learn how to manipulate their body clocks and resequence their DNA, and since she had little to do since the Time Lords had exiled her to Earth in the 1950s and she'd been stuck here ever since before that nasty encounter with that weakened Weeping Angel had sent her back through time to make her live out two-hundred years of history while she had nothing to do with her time but ensure Earth's history unfolded the way it should, the Doctor knew she would need to get involved.
She needed to find out what Lazarus was doing, especially since she had found little about him online.
When someone said they planned to change what it meant to be human, the Doctor was intrigued since it opened dozens of possibilities.
In any case, it gave her something to do during her exile although sometimes she was convinced the Time Lords had deliberately exiled her to Earth so she would cause more interventions in Earth's history.
Dressed in a black dress with her hair in an untidy bun - if there was one thing she was grateful towards the Time Lords for for making her regenerate into a female body, it was she had discovered a greater desire to experiment with her wardrobe instead of walking around dressed in the same clothes for a few centuries; her second incarnation hadn't really cared much about his appearance, and while her original body had varied some aspects of his wardrobe, his general appearance had remained constant; in this body, however, the Doctor was glad she had the chance to experiment - her flat shoes barely making a sound on the pavement, the Doctor had little trouble breaking into the demonstration - she only needed to use the psychic paper she'd recovered from the Duchess of Richmond's Ball after Serena's unfortunate death, and a little hypnotic suggestion to the staff to let her in; she didn't like using methods like that, especially since they were the Master's usual MO, but after being on Earth so long, and after everything she had seen whether it was caused by humans or aliens - especially humans before they developed the technology to make themselves more interesting, she'd learnt a few burglar tactics went a long way. In any case, it saved plenty of time and besides she needed to see the demonstration.
It was taking place in a large auditorium where dozens of guests with men in tuxedos and women in dresses like her own were drinking from champagne flutes and eating nibbles, but the moment the Doctor walked in she spotted a tall white booth sitting on a platform with three silver-white beams surrounding it with cables running through to a small collection of computers and controls nearby. The humans were casting curious glances at it, but the Doctor had little trouble recognising the technology.
Suddenly the whole change what it means to be human just made sense.
Sonic micro field manipulators were not something you'd find in this point in history, although the Doctor readily admitted the technology and the science were available to the 21st century's level of technology. The moment she saw it, the Doctor knew the chances of it working were slim. While the theory was sound enough, there were just too many variables for it to work…
"Doctor?"
The Doctor jumped at the sound of her name and she turned and found herself staring at Martha Jones. "Martha? What are you doing here?" She asked, honestly surprised even as she stared at the young woman warmly.
When she had met Martha only twenty-four hours ago, it was when the young trainee doctor's hospital had been snatched by the Judoon and dumped on the moon because according to interstellar law, the Judoon didn't have any kind of jurisdiction over the Earth yet, and they had barged into the hospital and tried to find a disguised shapeshifting plasmavore who'd recently killed a child princess. The Doctor herself had infiltrated the hospital days beforehand, posing as a nurse when the TARDIS had detected some unusual activity around the hospital and it was the focal point of an H20 scoop a short time before the Judoon took the hospital.
With the TARDIS immobilised by the inhibitor still, she had needed to find a way in and discovering what was going on, infiltrating the hospital and trying to find the alien activity was the only logical step and was more liberating than posing as a patient.
When the hospital was teleported off of the planet and dumped on the moon with a limited amount of air, the Doctor had teamed up with Martha and they'd both pieced together the clues and confronted the plasmavore; it hadn't been easy, with the limited amount of air, and the Judoon sent to kill the alien in the hospital, the Doctor had not even bothered to ally herself with the thick-headed aliens. It was even harder on the Doctor herself since she had pretended to be human, and had some of her blood drained before Martha, who'd accepted her own alien origins, had exposed the plasmavore.
Once the plasmavore was killed, the Doctor had needed to contend with the work done on the MRI scanner which would have roasted a large chunk of the human race in the process, to say nothing of hoping the Judoon would send the hospital back.
After the adventure, the Doctor had slipped quietly away to recuperate before seeing in the news this demonstration was taking place, but the Doctor didn't expect to see Martha Jones again even if she was happy since she enjoyed Martha's company; the human was intelligent and intuitive, and thanks to her medical background she was capable of solving problems which reminded the Doctor of Liz, Jo and Sarah Jane (she wished the TARDIS was operational instead of it being under the Time Lords' control, otherwise she could have taken them with her).
In an ideal world, the Doctor would have asked Martha to come with her in the TARDIS, but unfortunately with the ship's limited teleportation abilities and being limited to Earth and the general solar system, they would not travel far even if it meant Martha would not need a passport.
"I'm a guest here," Martha smiled, "my sister, Tish, is part of the PR department; she's invited me, my mum, and my brother here. But what are you doing here, and why did you just leave after yesterday?"
The Doctor gestured towards the white capsule. "I'm here because of that," she replied, "when I saw the television footage earlier about what Lazarus plans to do, I had to see it. And I left yesterday so I could recover after what the plasmavore did to me."
"Are you okay now?" The real concern shining in Martha's dark eyes reminded the Doctor of one of the reasons why she liked the human doctor.
"Yes, I'm just grateful that thing didn't have a lot of time for a full drain," the Doctor replied, she'd mentally added the event to the list of moments where she had honestly thought she would be forced to regenerate.
"I'm glad, I just wish you'd stayed around," Martha changed the subject. "What is that thing anyway, what does it do?"
"Martha!" A voice called, and the Doctor and Martha turned and found three dark-skinned people approaching them - two women, one of them had her hair pulled into a tight bun and wearing a black dress, the other woman wearing a gold dress and let her long curly dark hair out while the young man uncomfortably wore a tuxedo, and the Doctor knew they had to be Martha's family (she wondered why her friend's father wasn't here, but she pushed that aside for now).
"Hi, mum," Martha's smile was dimmed slightly, an expression of mild embarrassment on her features the Doctor knew only too well since she had been on the planet long enough to know the older children got the more embarrassed they became when their parents showed them affection.
Mrs Jones took her daughter into her arms and gave her a warm hug, but her eyes drifted curiously over to the Doctor before she turned back to her daughter. "I'm glad you could make it," she said in that exasperated way which told the Doctor that her friend didn't normally go to social gatherings.
"Of course I was, mum," Martha rolled her eyes before she grinned at her brother. "Leo, you're in a suit."
"Don't start," Leo grinned good naturally back at his sister (the Doctor idly wondered about the birth order of the Jones family for a moment, but guessed Leo was the youngest, given how casual he seemed to be compared to his elder sisters).
Martha clearly noted how her mother was eying the Doctor because she stepped backwards and took hold of the Time Lady's wrist and pulled her forwards. "This is my friend, the-."
"Hello, Mrs Jones," the Doctor smoothly interrupted - while she didn't like interrupting Martha, at the same time she could see the burning curiosity in Mrs Jones' eyes. "I'm Doctor Jane Smith, but most people tend to call me the Doctor. I work as a scientific advisor to a few organisations worldwide, but I also work part-time in hospitals, and that's how I met Martha before the incident yesterday."
She had become tired of just handing out her title over the years, and if there was one advantage of having the Intrusion Counter-Measures Group and UNIT in your corner, it was you had a support net. While what she had just said was relatively true, she didn't spend much time with the governments especially after that Torchwood debacle a year back.
Mrs Jones blinked in surprise at the introduction, but the Doctor felt she'd done a good job after seeing the suspicion in her gaze just now. "Yesterday? Many people claimed what happened at the hospital was down to everyone being given hallucinogenic drugs-."
"They weren't," the Doctor interrupted again, this time putting an edge into her tone to make it clear she would not accept any kind of contradiction. "I may work for the British Government now and again, and Harriet Jones herself has become a very good friend and she frequently asks for my advice concerning matters beyond her expertise and knowledge, Mrs Jones, but that does not mean I have to like how they have decreed the entire world should not know the truth."
"And what is the truth?" Mrs Jones asked sceptically.
The Doctor lifted a brow, wondering about the woman's tone. She had encountered her own fair share of sceptical humans who were more than happy to scoff at what they believed was impossible rather than believe there might be more to their cosy little lives than they had first thought. It seemed Mrs Jones belonged to that category. "I would have thought that was obvious; there is far more to events out there than you would believe. And besides, I have made it my business to observe things like this, and prevent them from going wrong."
"Going wrong?" Martha's sister asked, her expression torn between worry and scepticism. "Do you think tonight everything is going to go wrong?"
"I hope not; I only came here tonight so I could satisfy my curiosity. When a scientist says they want to change what it means to be human, I get interested," the Doctor replied honestly with a shrug, "but I hope Professor Lazarus has ironed out any problems, especially since the technology behind that sonic micro field manipulator is quite sophisticated."
Tish turned to Martha in exasperation, clearly not understand a word the Doctor had just said. "She's a science geek? I should have known."
"What's wrong with liking science?" The Doctor asked, sounding hurt. "Besides do you even know what Lazarus wants?" She asked, making sure her question sounded rhetorical.
However before any of the Jones family could answer her, or ask questions of their own, a weak sounding voice called out over the orchestra and the voices present.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Professor Lazarus called, smiling over the crowd. "I am Professor Richard Lazarus and tonight I am going to perform a miracle. It is, I believe, the most important advance since Rutherford split the atom, the biggest leap since Armstrong stood on the moon. Tonight, you will watch and wonder. Tomorrow, you will awake to a world which will be changed forever."
He gave the crowd a rather theatrical bow - something about the bow and his little speech about how he saw himself on par with Rutherford and with a greater advance in human history than Armstrong's walk across the moon only served to make the Doctor more disdainful of the man, who's arrogance reminded her of Zaroff, Stahlman, Whittaker, and now it looked like she'd added a new scientist to the list of idiots who believed they had conquered some new mystery only to discover there was a price tag attached - before he nodded to a young woman standing nearby wearing a white lab coat, and he opened the door of the sonic capsule and closed the door.
A few moments later while a small team of white-coated young women worked at the controls before one of them pressed her hand down on a big red button. A bright blue light flared, making everyone squint before the three beams surrounding Lazarus' sonic capsule started to revolve around the still capsule, lightning bolts of white energy flaring around the capsule.
The Doctor herself was squinting at the glare, her mind racing as she tried to remember what she knew of this theory. It was relatively simple; hypersonic sounds being used to create a state of resonance, strong enough to hack into human DNA, and depending on the frequency of the sound waves and the amount of energy being poured into the field coils, it would be simple to reverse the age to where Lazarus wanted it to be reversed too.
But then a high-pitched squeal and the sound of an alarm frightened her; if anything happened to the capsule at this stage, it would send out a hypersonic blast which would likely level the building.
"Something's gone wrong!" She cried and she ran to the instrument bank, relieved she'd chosen her flats instead of high heels and she joined the two women who were struggling with the systems. "It's overloading!"
Reaching into her handbag, the Doctor pulled out her new sonic screwdriver, and set to work; if she could just reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, she might be able to head off the overload and shut it down-
"Somebody stop her!" The sound of the aged, reedy voice made the Doctor lift her gaze slightly and fix on an old woman wearing an expensive dress before returning to her work. "Get her away from those controls!"
With that the Doctor had her impression of the woman fixed in her mind while she worked; the woman clearly had no idea how Lazarus's machine worked nor what would happen if the overload reached its peak.
"If I don't stop this, the overload is going to level everything and demolish this place, is that what you want, you fool?" The Doctor snapped over the din, glaring at the woman pointedly to make it clear to her if she interfered then there would be dozens of needless deaths. Why was it everywhere she went, she'd always find somebody who was so ignorant of just how arrogant they were? Greel and Stahlman had been bad enough, but this woman wasn't even in the same league as those two incompetent imbeciles as even those two had some degree of knowledge, but she was so unimaginably stupid she didn't know anything of this technology.
After another moment of programming with the help of the scientists working for Lazarus who showed that unlike the old woman they had some common sense in their heads although she had little luck; there seemed to be so many unnecessary safeguards to prevent this kind of thing - for a moment she wondered if somebody had anticipated her presence, and ensured she would have dozens of roadblocks set up to prevent her from doing this sort of thing - and after trying her luck without any success, the Doctor leapt over the table and yanked out a cable - it was slightly primitive for a solution, but it worked as the capsule suddenly powered down. The Doctor took a moment to examine the instrument banks and found the systems had reset itself, clearly waiting to be used although if she had her way none of this technology would ever be reused.
Remembering the man stuck inside the capsule, the Doctor raced back for the capsule door and with Martha's help, wrenched it open - her mind went back over all the times she'd heard or seen sequences at the Academy of failed regenerations which had only made her original self against the idea of regenerating, and that was before she saw the gruesome results of Greel's failure to see he was not ridding himself of the consequences of what the zygma beam had done to his cellular structure….
Pure white steam escaped the interior of the capsule even as a human shadow appeared, and stepped out gingerly. It was Lazarus, but he was much younger than he'd been before; now he was a man in his forties. Lazarus gazed open-mouthed at everyone, and the Doctor could hear his heavy breathing while she gazed at him in horror.
No, this was wrong-!
Lazarus looked at his hand which was grasping the side of the capsule. Gently and slowly with his hand shaking, he caressed his cheek, a slow smile growing on his face which blossomed into a grin. Stepping out of his machine, Lazarus addressed the crowd. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am Richard Lazarus. I am 76 years old, and I am REBORN!" He yelled, throwing up his arms.
While everyone was cheering and clapping, photographers snapping shots at the newly rejuvenated scientist, the Doctor stood to the side, a frown of worry on her face.
She moved over to the Jones family, and she whispered to all of them while everyone was distracted by Lazarus. "You know how you asked me if anything was going to go wrong tonight…. Well, it has."
X
As she stood next to the Doctor, watching as the newly rejuvenated Lazarus was posing for photos with some of the young women who'd come to the demonstration, Martha couldn't help but find it surreal she was not only standing next to the Doctor while her mum, brother, and sister were off somewhere else.
Personally, Martha wasn't sure whether to be happy or not; she wasn't sure if she wanted the truth about the Doctor to come out or not, but at the same time she had to accept her mother and siblings knew the woman was here.
She'd barely had time to process everything that had happened to her over the last couple of days since she'd first met the Doctor when the hospital was ripped away from Earth and thoughtlessly dropped onto the moon where there was a limited supply of air - Martha still had questions about whether or not the Judoon would have even thought to send them back as soon as they found the alien they'd been looking fork, but at least she knew what the plasmavore had done to be chased through space by the rhino-like aliens in the first place, but she had wondered if the Judoon would have sent them back at all - and she knew she would always remember it as one of the most frightening and exciting moments of her life.
Not only had she visited the moon, but she had also learnt aliens were out there, and unlike what was depicted on Star Trek, it wasn't all one great big utopia.
There were good and bad aliens, just like there were good and bad people on Earth, and yet Martha couldn't help but wonder if things were going by too fast. When she had been invited to this demonstration thanks to Tish, although she knew her mum hadn't wanted to come but had because she had little else to do with her time, Martha hadn't expected to witness an old man regress in age, never mind meet the Doctor again.
"It can't be the same guy," she said out loud, glancing at the Doctor questioningly while she pushed the confusion out of her mind. "It's a trick, right?"
"I wish it were," the Doctor replied, gazing at Lazarus with what looked like worry and concern in her eyes, although there was something else there that told Martha the alien woman wanted nothing more than to vomit at the sight of Lazarus, but did not have the time.
"So, what just happened?" Martha turned to the alien woman (she wished the Doctor had stayed long enough for them to talk properly; she didn't like thinking of her as just the alien woman).
"He's just changed what it means to be human," the Doctor replied, quoting what Lazarus had said on television earlier that day. They continued to watch Lazarus, who was soon speaking to the old woman from before. Suddenly they watched as Lazarus just jerked. The Doctor hissed between her teeth.
"His neck…. It just cracked!" She hissed.
"What?" Martha studied Lazarus closely; he seemed fine to her, if he'd suffered some kind of neck injury, she would see it but he looked fine if a bit shaken. "He seems fine…"
"Trust me, he's not. Come on, I think its time we had a chat," the Doctor walked over to Lazarus before the trainee doctor could reply, Martha, having little choice but to follow. Looking past the Doctor, Martha watched Lazarus snatching a serving tray carrying nibbles on it, and he started eating them so fast Martha barely saw him pop them into his mouth.
"Richard!" The old woman chided, looking at him in astonishment; Martha couldn't blame her for that, this was not normal behaviour…
"I'm famished!" Lazarus said with his mouth full.
"Energy deficit," the Doctor commented as she sidled up close to Lazarus with Martha at her shoulder, while the newly rejuvenated scientist turned to her curiously. "It always happens with this kind of process."
"You talk as if you see this every day, Miss…?" Lazarus's voice was a mixture of curiosity and charm as he addressed the Doctor.
"Doctor," the Doctor replied, her tone making it clear there wasn't going to be any other name to go with it, "no, I don't see this every day, but I have some experience with this kind of transformation."
"That's impossible-."
"Please don't tell me what's impossible, especially since I understand this kind of transformation so well that… I might as well have gone through it. A couple of times. When you stepped out of the capsule, did you feel as if you'd just had an adrenaline rush and a feeling like you were going to be sick but felt too energetic to do so?" The Doctor interrupted, staring pointedly at Lazarus with an expression forbidding even a hint of an argument, but Martha was staring at her in surprise.
She wasn't sure, but she had the impression the Doctor was not joking, especially when she put a lot of emphasis on what she'd said about going through a process similar to what she had just seen.
Lazarus just stared at her in shock as if surprised the Doctor, a stranger, knew precisely how he'd felt.
"And now, you're eating nibbles; if I were you, I'd go for something bigger with fats, proteins, carbohydrates, and vitamins and plenty of water. It's more satisfying," the Doctor went on, sounding for all the world like a dietician. "And as for your capsule…. It uses hypersonic sounds to create a state of resonance. That's a remarkable achievement."
Lazarus was by now gazing at the Doctor with something Martha could not identify, but it was clear he was incredibly interested in her, but she got the impression he wasn't happy someone had worked out how his precious machine worked like it was a magical device only he should be allowed to comprehend. He had lost a couple of points in her mind. "You understand the theory, then?"
"Yes. I understand it," the Doctor's face was grave, "and I know it well enough to know you couldn't have accounted for all the variables."
A condescending smile crossed Lazarus' face even as he went back to the nibbles. "No experiment is without risk," he pointed out while he popped one into his mouth.
"Oh, come on," the Doctor spat in annoyance, dropping the politeness which made Lazarus turn to her once more, his expression surprised as if no-one had ever spoken to him in such a manner before, "that machine nearly exploded. With you inside it, while the technology hacked into your DNA…. You'd have been safer shoving your hand into a blender!"
"You're not qualified to comment!" The old woman snapped at the Doctor indignantly, but the alien woman swung around and glared at the old woman so strongly the protests died on her tongue.
"And you're not qualified to understand the dangers of what nearly happened; that machine would have exploded if I hadn't stopped it-."
"And I thank you, Doctor," Lazarus interrupted, smiling at the alien woman with what Martha was sure was meant to be benevolence, but it came off as condescending; she had the impression the scientist was grateful to the Doctor…for saving his life, not everyone else's, and if she was right then she didn't think much of his attitude. "But that's a simple engineering issue. What happened inside the capsule was exactly what was supposed to happen. No more, no less."
Why don't I believe you? Martha asked herself before she stepped around to see what the Doctor thought of that, and she caught sight of the Doctor's sceptical expression and the raised eyebrow. Martha realised the Doctor herself didn't believe him either, and she had the feeling the Doctor knew what happened wasn't meant to have happened.
"The Doctor's right," she spoke up, announcing her presence even if Lazarus and the old woman had known she was there all along, "you have no way of knowing that until you've run tests."
"Look at me!" Lazarus laughed, looking well at ease but Martha had been a trainee doctor long enough to have studied facial expressions, and she could tell the rejuvenated scientist was becoming tired and frustrated by the presence of the two women near him right now, telling him he was wrong when everyone had been praising him before. "You can see what happened. I'm all the proof you'll ever need."
The old woman spoke in a smug tone that made Martha wonder if she was just blind to everything going on around her. "The device will be properly certified before we start to operate commercially."
"Commercially?' Martha suddenly had a vision of things going very very wrong with the world if the thing behind her started reversing the ages of hundreds of old people, although she didn't entirely understand the implications yet. "You are joking. That'll cause chaos."
"Not chaos. Change," Lazarus interrupted simply. "A chance for humanity to evolve, to improve."
"Believe me, I'm all up for people to grow and while I can see the benefits of people who've lived to a ripe old age wanting to rejuvenate themselves so they can have the opportunities to discover a new side of themselves, I can't help but get the impression this whole thing," the Doctor gestured all around them, to the Lazarus machine, to Lazarus himself, and everyone in the room who didn't have a clue about the long-term issues this would cause if things went wrong, "is not about improving. It's just about you and your customers living a little longer. That's what you're going to do, right? Offer this technology to rich, upper-class people who've had their time, but wouldn't mind trying it all over again? 'I destroyed half a rainforest, but I made a massive fortune,'" the Doctor spat in a fake American accent to make her point, "'but now I've got a chance to do it all over again'"
"Was there a….point to that, Doctor?" Lazarus asked, his tone condescending and scornful.
"Yes. The point is you don't care about who you let into that thing, so long as they can live a little longer, which means they can get away with whatever they want. I'm a good judge of character, and I can tell you don't care about humanity evolving. Neither of you does; you are merely giving them a chance to live a little longer, although you're not going to offer it to anyone but the rich, upper-class elites, to the people who are polluting this world without batting an eyelid. A few years, during a….crisis, I met a woman. Anji Kapoor. Nice woman. A bit narrow-minded in places, but a brilliant woman. During the crisis I spoke to a French scientist with her present about why he hadn't told the world about a discovery, she made it clear the stock markets would collapse or become chaotic due to the unpredicted event. This is going to cause the same thing, everyone is going to go mad wanting to live forever, but what other consequences will there be? The truth is neither of you knows," the Doctor explained, sounding like she wanted to yell but realised it wouldn't help.
"That is not true," the old woman gazed at the Doctor with disdain, "I have never heard of this Anji Kapoor, but once this machine is made fully public and certified, there will only be a minimal effect on the international stock markets-."
"Ah, excuse me, but you don't know that; I don't need to look at you and see you are not a scientist, but your greed has clouded your reality," the Doctor interrupted while she made her disdain for the woman clear, turning her attention to her, and ignoring her indignant face, she carried on, "you don't understand the risks-."
Somehow Martha got the impression the Doctor wasn't talking about the stock markets or anything like that, she was talking about something completely different.
Unfortunately, the old woman had grown tired of this debate.
"Richard, I believe we have a lot to discuss," she said, sending a look of disdain in the Doctor's direction; Martha was impressed by the woman's control, personally since she didn't lash out when the Doctor had accused her of being greedy, but she had seen the rage clearly masked underneath the facade.
Lazarus followed her, looking only too happy to leave as well. "Goodbye, Doctor. In a few years time, I imagine you will look back on this moment….and laugh, at just how wrong you are."
He made to reach and take out the Doctor's hand, but she stepped back, so he was forced to kiss Martha's instead before he left.
The Doctor sighed, "That did not go well. Those idiots are out of their depths. Something went wrong inside that capsule, but I'd need to have a good look inside it before I can be sure."
"So, what do we do now?" Martha asked while she wondered what the Doctor was so worried about.
"Well, we can't do anything without performing tests of our own; this place must contain laboratories, if its dedicated to science," the Doctor said, glancing around.
Martha smirked, and she held up her hand. "Lucky I've just collected a DNA sample then, right?"
The Doctor laughed, looking at Martha's hand. "Oh, Martha Jones, you're a star! Come on, let's go and find a lab."
X
While she stood with Martha by the computer in a laboratory they'd managed to find - actually, so far, finding this lab had been easier than anything they'd dealt with so far; with the building virtually empty aside from the guests who'd come to witness Lazarus' demonstration, finding an empty laboratory to examine the sample of DNA on Martha's hand had been straightforward - while they both examined the sample Lazarus had unwittingly left, the Doctor couldn't help but think back to that mess with Magnus Greel in Victorian Britain shortly after she'd been thrown back into the past by that Weeping Angel when she'd gone to investigate those disappearances in Oxford a few years back.
Granted, she hadn't known there was a Weeping Angel there in a weakened state otherwise she might have been thrown back much further and was forced to live on a more primitive Earth while she waited to return to the TARDIS, and the Doctor had to admit she was lucky the Angel was weak otherwise she could have been thrown back in time much, much further.
But thinking about the current mess with Lazarus, the Doctor could not help but remember coming face to face with the infamous Butcher of Brisbane, scarred and deformed as a result of his use of the zygma beam powered time machine he'd used to flee his home century, which had torn his DNA to shreds….
Something of this mess.. it just reminded her too much of Greel, she only prayed Lazarus wasn't too similar.
"What did you mean?"
The Doctor turned her gaze away from the screen showing the readings from the microscope and faced Martha. The trainee doctor was staring at her curiously. "You'll need to be more specific," the Doctor said.
"Earlier, you told Lazarus you had experience of a transformation like that. You even told him he needed to eat something more substantial," Martha said.
The Doctor sighed and she looked at Martha, weighing up the pros and the cons of telling her. She liked and trusted Martha, who reminded her of Liz and Jo, with Liz's scientific excellence and Jo's faith and intuition. "You know I'm not human, don't you?" She began.
"Well, I know you've got two hearts, I still remember the Judoon chasing us through the hospital," Martha pointed out.
The Doctor shrugged. "Fair point," she smiled before she thought carefully through what she wanted to say. "I'm from a race known as the Gallifreyans, but our people are so old we mastered space-time travel, so the elite named themselves 'Time Lords,' its a pompous title but it's not without foundation. Not only can we travel through time and space, but we can also regenerate our bodies whenever we're subjected to some kind of trauma, or disease, or death. Our organs are replaced, injuries are repaired, and with regeneration, we can change our appearance."
Martha looked staggered by what she was hearing, and she stared at the Time Lady uncertainly, "And…you've regenerated yourself?"
"Twice," the Doctor replied grimly, remembering her first two regenerations without any kind of fondness for the process, her mind going back to those two regenerations she'd had in her life, how she had tried to hold back the temptation to regenerate even with the fluctuations from Mondas' presence to finally feeling herself…melt away in the TARDIS before getting her brain straightened out on Vulcan, to how she'd argued with the Time Lords during her trial. "It's more…biological than what Lazarus has gone through, but its similar enough for me to tell that something is seriously wrong with Lazarus."
Martha wanted to ask what it was about Lazarus that had the Doctor worried, but she wanted to know more about the Doctor in turn. "It sounds….like immortality," she commented.
The Doctor grimaced. "It's not. I can still die, and I've come close several times."
"Doctor," Martha began, wondering if she ever wanted to know about those times, "why are you on Earth? You didn't say much last time I saw you, but I got the impression you weren't happy."
"I'm not," the Doctor replied grimly, wondering if she should bluff or say something dismissive, but she quickly opted not to. She sighed and stared at the woman next to her. "I'm not just a Time Lady, Martha. I'm an exiled Time Lady. I'm stuck on Earth for as long as my people see fit. They've wiped my brain of the knowledge of how to escape, and my ship has an inhibitor on it to stop me leaving this place and time. They landed me in the 1950s, and I've had to live out the entirety of the 20th century since," she said grimly, remembering the hell she gone through just living through those years; the seventies and the eighties weren't too bad, especially when she had met Liz, Jo, Sarah, and Ace, but without the TARDIS unless the Time Lords wanted to use her for a mission, she had been stuck on the planet.
"Exiled? Why?"
"For interfering," the Doctor sighed, wondering how she could put the story into something quick while he scan of Lazarus' DNA finished up. "My people don't like it when we interfere with the affairs of other races and times. I only got started when I saw the effects of an alien invasion and how a man senselessly murdered a whole race just to save himself. Finally, I was captured, they changed my appearance, and landed me on Earth, and aside from a number of missions and when I was thrown back into the past, and forced to live through the entirety of the 1700s through to the 1940s, where I stole a time machine from a time meddler who was trying to change the beginning of the Civil Rights movement in America and escaped before I was brought back, I haven't left this planet in centuries."
"Hold on," Martha held up a hand while she looked at the Doctor as if she imagined the other woman was mad, "you were thrown back in time, and you stole a time machine to escape?"
"That's right," the Doctor confirmed, not really wanting to dwell on that encounter with Krasko too much, although she wished she'd managed to steal Knox's TARDIS when she stopped his attempts to change history in Scotland and in America. But the crafty time meddler had always eluded her. "With the time machine I stole, I had my freedom restored. For a bit," she added.
"And he was trying to change the history of the Civil Rights Movement," Martha's mind spun as she thought about the historical figures who had given her the inspiration to go far in her career. The idea someone had tried to change that…
"Let's just say, despite what Star Trek fans like to believe, ideas and opinions really don't always die out," the Doctor said solemnly. "I stopped the time meddler, and I ensured he could never do it again; I don't like stranding people in a time out of their comfort zone, but in his case, he proved to be the exception of the rule."
"No, it sounds like you made the right choice," Martha replied, thinking it made the best punishment, especially if he planned to do it for the same reason she and her siblings, and so many others had faced racism in some form or another over the years. "So, how come you're back?"
"My people found out what I'd done. I had been travelling for over a century when they caught me, and they sent me back," the Doctor thought grimly about how the Time Lords had directed the vortex manipulator she'd stolen from Krasko, and burnt the basic time machine out to ensure she couldn't have left, although she glossed over how the Time Lords had punished her by blocking her memories of her past, just leaving the basics until they were unblocked in the 90s.
"God, that sounds awful," Martha commented.
"It's worse than that," the Doctor's voice was dark and her back was stiff, telling Martha she did not want to speak about it anymore, but then the results of the tests came on the screen. "Here we go," the Time Lady commented before she leaned forward, her eyes scanning every inch of the scan results which showed a graphic of DNA. "Amazing…, its Lazarus' DNA, alright, but it's different."
"How?"
"Keep looking," the Doctor instructed, and the DNA just shifted and changed.
"Oh my god! Did that just change?" Martha turned to the Doctor in shock.
"Yes," the Doctor went silent as she tried to think about what this change to Lazarus' DNA would mean, but she had already seen enough to know the DNA strand was in flux… and it was taking a lot of energy to keep it stable. Would there be enough energy for Lazarus to recover with, or would there be another consequence?
"But it can't have!" Martha interrupted, her that's it manner not impressing the Time Lady that much; even after everything she had seen over the last two days, Martha was still thinking of possibilities in Earth terms. What would it take to convince her not everything had to follow human criteria?
The Doctor was not going to let that lie. "Why not? You've encountered aliens - some which resemble your own people, and others which resemble rhinoceroses. You've been teleported to the lunar surface and trapped inside a forcefield. You've just seen a nearly 80-year-old man reverse his age, and now you've just seen a strand of DNA change on the screen of a computer, and in the past, you witnessed a spaceship crash in Big Ben, and Cybermen attacking the streets of the city. What will it take to see nothing entirely be impossible?"
Martha was gaping at her in surprise, realising her standards for judging what was impossible wasn't always true. But in this case, Martha was certain this was not possible. "It can't have, Doctor."
"But it has, Martha. Lazarus' DNA has changed, right down to his molecular pattern."
"But how? I don't think he'd have wanted it to change to this extent…," Martha pointed out, trailing off as she realised she didn't know what Lazarus had really been doing.
"Lazarus used hypersonic sound waves to hack into his genetic structure and told it to rejuvenate himself," the Doctor said simply. She had noticed over the years, especially during her time with UNIT and the Intrusion Counter-Measures Group and when she had been investigating strange cases in America during the nineties those who were around her liked her explanations to be simple rather than drawn out, and in any case while she liked to appear the cleverest person in the room, but she had learnt enough over the years to see drawn out scientific explanations sometimes completely go over the heads and ears of those who listened to her, "and how something in his DNA has just been activated and it won't let him stabilise. Its demanding large amounts of energy. Something that's trying to change him."
"Change him into what?" Martha asked, remembering seeing The Fly starring Jeff Goldblum; the slow, gruesome transformation of Seth Brundle who'd accidentally taken in a common house-fly into the teleportation chamber with him, the computer had spliced them together, and the insect DNA was more dominant than the human DNA, and now she wondered if something similar was happening to Lazarus.
"I don't know," the Doctor replied, her expression grim, standing upright as she prepared to leave, "we need to go. We need to get to Lazarus."
Martha was sorry she'd asked. She should have known the Doctor wouldn't know judging from her expression, and the way the Time Lady had spoken to Lazarus earlier.
She had noticed the Doctor had been worried ever since the demonstration, and Martha wondered if she had known this was going to happen. But as soon as the thought entered her mind, she instantly dismissed it.
She might not have known the Doctor long, but the alien woman did not give her the impression she was the type to let things like this happen if she knew of the outcome. In any case, she had only come to the demonstration of Lazarus' machine to see what it was out of curiosity, although she guessed the Doctor had been worried deep down.
But her actions during the demonstration, when the machine's controls sparked, they were not faked. Neither were her fears for Lazarus; Martha had seen for herself how worried the Doctor was, although she wondered if the alien woman had known this would happen when she was confronting Lazarus.
Martha knew something was wrong, but it made sense the Doctor had come to the demonstration to see what was happening while being aware something might just happen, and she knew something had happened.
"Did you know something was going to happen?" Martha asked the alien woman as they both stood in a lift, heading up to Lazarus' office while she wondered how they were going to persuade the rejuvenated scientist something was happening to him unless he had already changed already.
"What do you mean?" The Doctor asked.
"Did you know something like this was going to happen when you came here tonight?" Martha demanded.
"No, I didn't, Martha," the Doctor replied, gazing at her solemnly. "Yes, I was worried something might happen like I told your family, but I knew when I saw the capsule Lazarus stepped in what it would do, but I honestly thought Lazarus would be alright despite having misgivings."
"What kind of misgivings?"
"The genetic manipulation device. It's a powerful technology, and a host of things could go wrong with it, especially when the genes are being hacked by a hypersonic field. What if it regressed him to a much younger age? What if it aged him further? It wasn't until the device malfunctioned, I really worried," the Doctor explained, "and that's why I was desperate to work on it before Lazarus was in there for too long. When I saw him step out of the capsule, younger than he had been before, I wondered what had happened to him, and I tried to tell Lazarus something must have happened to him. Well, you were there, Martha, he refused to listen."
Martha didn't need to be reminded. She had gotten a bad vibe from Lazarus when she'd spoken to him as well, she had also been repulsed by his arrogance and his self-assurance he was going to be alright.
X
Finally, the lift doors opened when it reached the top floor, and the two women stepped out into an unusually large office which was bare at one end, the Doctor flicking on the lights as she stepped in, and took in the large space which was so unnecessarily empty except for a large model of a cathedral, and a small collection of antique furniture at the other end, complete with a desk with a panoramic view of the city.
"This is his office, alright," Martha observed.
"He's not here," the Doctor groaned in frustration as she looked around.
Where is he? I thought we'd find him here unless he and that woman whom he was with have gone back to the party; I hope he hasn't, especially with how unstable his DNA has become…
The brief talk with Martha, where the human had put forth her suspicions of knowing there had been something dangerous going to happen had not really surprised her, especially how she'd told the Jones family something could go wrong, but she hadn't known it would. Ever since she had seen the announcement on the television earlier about the demonstration and Lazarus' words about changing what it meant to be human, the Doctor had been intrigued, but she hadn't known what was going to happen.
When she had seen Lazarus rejuvenate, she had known something had happened to his DNA.
But what?
That was the big question, and the longer she spent running around this place trying to find the idiot scientist, the harder it would be to answer the question.
She hadn't even gotten the chance to present a credible argument. All she'd gotten from Lazarus was the same arrogant dismissal she had received from scientists before.
Tryana from Skaro, before she had discovered her alliance with the Daleks was not what she'd thought.
Stahlman, in two universes, both of them obsessed with the success of their project while being unconcerned about the events surrounding them, and blind to all else.
Davros, the creator of the Daleks when the Time Lords had sent her to Skaro to prevent their creation when they'd found the Daleks would dominate the universe, who had been obsessed with the power of his own creations he had refused to listen.
And now Richard Lazarus.
The worst of it was, the Doctor doubted the scientist would listen to her now any more than he had earlier. She had worked that out ages ago, but she lived in hope.
"Let's try back at the re….ception," Martha began, but when she trailed off the Doctor turned to the trainee doctor questioningly, and found she was looking off in a different direction….and the Doctor followed her gaze to a pair of skeletal bones in high heels sticking out from behind a desk. The Doctor and Martha ran over to the desk and found the mummified remnants of the woman once known as Lady Thaw.
"Is that Lady Thaw?" Martha whispered as they both knelt by the body.
"It used to be," the Doctor nodded while they examined the corpse with their eyes. "It's a shell now, but it's mummified because all of her energy - her life energy - has been drained out of her."
"Lazarus?" Martha whispered.
It was the only logical explanation given how the rejuvenated scientist's DNA had not only mutated but it was unstable, and they knew it.
"Could be," the Doctor nodded, trying - and failing - to run through her mind the possibilities, but Lazarus was the only one, but she needed to reassure Martha the scientist might not have done this.
"So, he's changed already?"
The Doctor thought through the question, remembering the unstable DNA and how it fluctuated, trying to shift into a brand new pattern before it just returned to its original pattern in the blink of an eye. "No, not necessarily. You saw the DNA, it was fluctuating…. Of course, the process must demand energy. That's why Lazarus went for Lady Thaw; he did not and does not have enough energy in his own body… what if his energy is struggling to keep himself from changing into something even more bizarre, or it's struggling to stabilise his changing form, and he needs to compensate by feeding on others for their own energies? Either way, I don't think this is enough."
"So he might do this again? Like a vampire or a plasmavore going for blood?" Martha looked up in understanding before she frowned when the Doctor shuddered. "What's wrong?"
"Answering your first question, yes! As for your second….Please don't mention vampires!"
"Why, scared of them?" Martha was surprised; she had never seen the Doctor look like this before, she was used to the other woman looking confident and strong, never on the point of looking like she was frightened.
"Yes!" Martha was stunned by the outburst. "My people actually fought vampires; they actually exist, but the things you see in movies are nothing like the real vampires. Real vampires were powerful enough to drain the energy of planets, but I'll tell you about those legends another time. We need to deal with Lazarus!"
The Doctor stood up and went for the lift, hoping to find Lazarus before he drained too many people, but she wondered just how many people the scientist would need to drain before he stabilised, but they needed to find him and stop him. In any case, there was the chance it would not happen.
Martha stood up and followed her to the lift. As they went back down to the reception, they both hoped they were on time.
X
"This is starting to get ridiculous, I can't see him!" Martha huffed, gazing in frustration around the partygoers - she idly wondered why they were still here, but as far as she was concerned, after what they'd seen in the office, they were standing here like lambs to the slaughterhouse.
"He's got to be here," the Doctor went ahead of her, looking around urgently for the scientist, but it was clear she wasn't having much luck. "Keep looking."
"Hey, you alright, Marth?" Leo called when he spotted her. "I think mum wants to talk to you."
Martha wondered what her mother wanted to speak to her for, but she shook it off; she wasn't in the mood for one of her mother's tedious lectures, and she did have more immediate things to think about.
"Have you seen Lazarus anywhere?" She asked, hoping her usually nonchalant brother had seen the scientist recently.
"Yeah. He was getting cosy with Fish a couple of minutes ago," Leo replied.
"With Tish?" Martha almost screeched when the Doctor walked over, seeing her getting worked up.
"Martha, what's wrong?" The Doctor said urgently, barely noting Martha's mother approaching with a champagne glass.
"Ah, Doctor-," Mrs Jones began, but she was interrupted.
"It's Tish; she's gone with Lazarus!" Martha gazed at the Doctor with fear in her eyes, and the Doctor could see she was visualising a mummified corpse wearing her sister's clothes.
That was enough.
The Doctor turned to Leo urgently, inwardly annoyed by the boy's nonchalance. "When did they go?"
"Wh-?"
"This is important!" The Doctor's voice was low but dangerous and her eyes pinned the human, and Leo could feel the glimmers of fear inside of him at the look. "Your sister is in terrible danger, now where did they go?"
Leo needed a moment to get over how he felt about being stared at like that. "Upstairs, I think," Leo frowned.
"What do you mean, Tish is in danger?" Mrs Jones asked frantically; it was clear she'd wanted to talk to the Doctor, but that was thrown to the side in the space of this new information.
The Doctor stared at the woman for a moment, wondering whether or not she should tell the woman the truth. She had never really involved herself with the family of the people whom she'd taken on as temporary companions - she hadn't needed to, and while she would have preferred this to be low key, it was impossible now - and she decided to show Mrs Jones the truth. "The answer is in Lazarus' office," she said, sending a look to Martha, knowing the trainee doctor would catch on quickly.
And she did.
"Doctor-," she began.
"Martha, I think they need to see it," the Doctor said, grabbing hold of Mrs Jones's hand and pulled - she was dimly aware of a glass falling to the ground, but she didn't care. It was awkward being in the lift with two extra people who didn't have a clue what was going on.
And then they saw the corpse of Lady Thaw while the Doctor slipped out her sonic screwdriver, setting the device to scan for anomalous energy readings, knowing full well-fluctuating DNA gave off a lot of energy…and she found one. It was outside on the roof.
"He's just outside," she said, turning to Leo and Mrs Jones, who was staring at the mummified remains of what had once been a woman enjoying herself at the reception earlier. "Are you two going to help me save your daughter, or are you going to ask pointless questions? Lady Thaw's life energy was drained from her body, your daughter is likely still alive at this point. But she won't be unless we get out there soon."
It might be cold and callous, the way she said that but ever since she'd found herself on Earth, the Doctor had learnt sometimes the best way of telling people bad news was just to tell them, so it didn't hurt as much.
They had just stepped out onto the roof of the building, and they could hear Lazarus speaking softly as they approached, and they found Lazarus with Tish, just standing near the edge of the roof, just staring at each other in the darkness.
"…thing's ever exactly like you expect," Lazarus was saying to her without realising there was anyone else there while Tish just listened, enthralled, "there's always something to surprise you. 'Between the idea and reality,'" he quoted, the Doctor recognising the quote instantly thanks to the capacity of her Time Lord memory. "'between the motion and the act….'"
"'Falls the shadow,'" the Doctor interrupted smoothly, smirking when she saw Lazarus and Tish turn in surprise, the young woman's eyes widening slightly at the sight of her whole family, while Lazarus stared at them nonchalantly; the Doctor guessed the rejuvenated scientist had been alive so long and with the technology he'd pioneered, he was barely surprised by anything.
"Mum? Leo? Martha?" Tish hissed, sounding embarrassed and mortified by their presence - the Doctor paid little attention to the young woman, focusing instead on Lazarus. He looked human still, but there was no way of knowing how long he had left; she guessed the reason he had brought Tish Jones up here so quickly and had been in human form for a while was so then he had a ready-made smack waiting, and scared.
"So, the mysterious annoying Doctor knows her Elliot, I'm impressed," Lazarus said, "I'm impressed."
"What are you doing here?" Tish hissed at her family, her embarrassment turning into anger."
"Tish, please, get away from him!" Mrs Jones urged while Leo kept his eyes fixed on Lazarus, his muscles tensed and coiled as if he wanted to beat the scientist to death.
"Move away from him, Tish," Martha said urgently.
"What? Don't tell me what to do!"
"Tish, he's murdered someone tonight!" Leo said quietly, watching Lazarus for his reaction. "He murdered that old woman with him-."
"Lady Thaw," the Doctor interjected.
"Yeah, her. Her body is behind his desk. Didn't you notice it?" Leo asked rhetorically, knowing his sister would have run away before coming out with a man who could only be the murderer.
"What?" Tish turned to Lazarus, surprised but the Doctor was close by to see the young woman staring at the scientist with shock and disbelief, but Lazarus didn't really bother denying it; he acted as if the matter was beneath him.
"What happened to you when you transformed into the throwback creature that attacked Lady Thaw, Lazarus?" The Doctor asked the rejuvenated scientist, who was just standing there and she wondered what he was going to do. Lazarus was a walking time bomb, and she had no idea when he was going to explode.
"I felt a strange series of pains; I already felt it after the demonstration, but when I met with her I collapsed and transformed," Lazarus explained, his gaze following the frightened and spooked out Tish as she walked away, a hungry look slipping over his face, back to her family while the Doctor stood there, "it happened so fast…. I remember looming over her while she was terrified and then… I fed on her, and it was the most fulfilling meal I'd ever had in my life," he smiled, not concerned he had just admitted to sucking the life out of a woman.
"Oh, my god!" Tish whispered, backing away while looking at the scientist with horror and fear.
The Doctor shook her head, gazing at the scientist scornfully, "I wouldn't have thought you would have been interested in quoting poetry, conquering death and defying the laws of nature, while talking about the death of a woman," she commented.
"I was trying to help humanity evolve. I just didn't have the time to do what I liked. But that changed now, Doctor; imagine what I could have done in two lifetimes, or three-?"
The Doctor shuddered at the thought, especially given what she had been doing in her current lifetime. "It truly does not work like that. I've met people who've lived more in 20 years than others have done in 70, or 90. It's the person that matters, not the time."
"But if its the right person, what a gift that could be-," Lazarus went on.
The Doctor was starting to see nothing she said would make any difference with Lazarus. Not only had he arrogantly waved away her concerns earlier, but he had also murdered an old woman and had nearly done the same thing to Tish. A normal scientist would be rushing off to find a way of curing himself, not standing on a rooftop with his next victim and talking about how his rejuvenation technology could grant the gift of immortality to the right person.
"Or a curse!" She interrupted, recalling how long she had been trapped on Earth, forced to live through the 20th century twice - the first time hadn't been too bad, but when the Time Lords had caught up with her after she'd managed to escape after being thrown back in time after that meeting with a Weeping Angel, stranding her back in the past and locking off her memories so she wouldn't have any knowledge of events without considering they might kill her, she had flown into a rage when she recalled what they had done to her. The worst of it was she had known something was going to happen at specific times; the sinking of the Titanic, Mosley and Hitler spewing out their hate and justifying it by saying they were building a new future, the Battle of Britain, the Cold War mess, and on and on it went until her memories were unblocked by the Time Lords.
And in all that time, she had known something was not quite right with her. She never aged. She had found she had two hearts, making her frightened she was some kind of circus freak, and yet she had a knowledge other people lacked at the time, but until her memories were unlocked she had honestly no idea who and what she was, and why she never seemed to age. She hadn't found it a gift.
And now she had this arrogant fool in front of her, a murderer, who was trying to justify himself by saying he had given a great gift to the human race.
"Look at what you've done to yourself," she added, gazing at Lazarus with a mixture of sympathy and contempt, eyeing him and wondering how long they had before he changed…
Real anger crept over Lazarus' rejuvenated face, and as hard as he tried the scientist was unable to maintain his suave facade. "Who are you to judge me?" He asked angrily.
"Someone who's much older and knows what it's like to be almost immortal," the Doctor replied, her solemn tone telling her listeners she was deadly serious.
"Impossible," Lazarus sneered before he suddenly stiffened, his face grimacing in pain.
The Doctor stiffened as well. "It's starting," she said to the Joneses. "We'd better go," she went on even as they heard the bone-cracking sounds coming from Lazarus, and despite what she had said they couldn't help but watch with morbid horror as Lazarus' transformed into a spiny-scorpion like creature with a long neck showing a twisted parody of Lazarus' face.
"RUN!" The Doctor yelled, and they immediately ran back towards the office.
X
With the alarms blaring after Lazarus smashed his way through the glass upstairs, sealing the building tight, the Doctor and the Joneses needed to get to the reception room quickly, but as they raced down the stairs the Doctor tried to work out what she was going to do about Lazarus without any people dying.
When they arrived in the reception room, the Doctor sighed when she saw the guests and the serving staff from earlier, standing around, confused and alarmed by what was going on.
"Tish! Is there another way out of here?" The Doctor turned to Tish, hoping that she did know.
"There's an exit in the corner, but it'll be locked now," Tish glanced in the direction of the exit before she turned back to the Doctor. "Do you have any ideas, Doctor?"
The Doctor nodded and she took out her sonic screwdriver and made a brief adjustment. "I've set this to setting 54," she said, giving it to Martha who took it, and she leaned over to show her urgently how to reset it to default. "That's how you reset, but don't do it until you are out of the building. Now hurry!"
Martha nodded and she ran off, her family following her quickly, leaving the Doctor on her own. She looked around the reception hall and sighed, hoping she could persuade them to get out in time. She jumped onto the platform in front of Lazarus' machine.
"Listen to me, all of you!" The Doctor yelled. "You are all in serious danger! You need to get out of here right now!"
"Don't be ridiculous!" A well-dressed woman in a gold dress rolled her eyes. "The biggest danger here is choking on an olive!"
The Doctor bit her tongue in annoyance. The longer she stood here, arguing pointlessly with people who thought she was a lunatic, the easier it would be for Lazarus to attack them.
Glass shattered above them, startling the crowd but everyone screamed in panic when they took in the creature Lazarus had become. The Lazarus-creature leapt down into the reception room. Everyone raced for the exit while the Lazarus-creature moved closer to the woman who'd ignored the Doctor earlier.
"No! Get away from her!" The Doctor yelled, racing for the scene, hoping she could just push the woman out of the way….but she was too late when Lazarus' scorpion-like tail flicked forward, and two 'horns' flipped upwards and shot out towards her. "NO!" The Doctor yelled, but it was too late.
The woman screamed, but the sound became weaker as her skin lost all colour, and suddenly a mummified corpse dropped to the ground.
Lazarus moved off towards the other guests, who were swarming by the door - the Doctor had a feeling Martha was having problems with using the sonic screwdriver to open the door, with so many people near her, but she had to accept the woman had little understanding of how the sonic screwdriver worked. But she was not going to let Lazarus anywhere near the others.
"Lazarus! Leave them alone!" She said, an idea coming to mind and she pulled off one of her shoes and hurled it towards Lazarus' head, mentally hoping she had it right. The shoe smashed against the back of Lazarus' head, making the mutated scientist swing around, his bony tail clicking from each joint.
"Look at yourself, you narcissistic egotist! The mutation's too strong; what's the point if you can't control it? Killing all of those people over there won't help you. You are a fool, Lazarus! A joke! You're nothing more than a vain, arrogant, old man who thought he could defy nature, but Mother Nature's gotten her revenge on you, right? But you don't care about any of that, do you, and now you've developed a God complex? How egotistical can you get?" The Doctor spat at the mutated scientist who was coming towards her, his tail flickering around threateningly. "You are nothing more than a footnote in the history of failure! Oh!" She added brightly, flicking her hand around, willing her regeneration energy to appear, and her hand began to glow.
Lazarus stopped in astonishment, looking at the glowing hand with surprise. He wasn't the only one; out of the corner of the Doctor's eye, she spotted the Jones family, including Martha, who'd come back for her family, watching the glow in astonishment. The Doctor grinned and she dashed forward, darting in and out of Lazarus' insect-like legs, and gripped one of them to deliver the energy before she pulled away. She heard Lazarus let out a delighted shriek which sounded more like a traffic jam than anything else.
The Doctor used that to escape.
She turned around and ran away from the reception room, hearing the sound of Lazarus smashing everything in her wake just to get to her. She only hoped Martha was smart enough to get the door open.
The regeneration energy she had just given Lazarus was not enough to help him stabilise, but its potency was more than enough to persuade the mutant scientist to chase after her….
The Doctor ran out of the reception hall, her mind racing as she tried to come up with a plan to deal with Lazarus which would work. At the moment all the Time Lady could do right now was to lead the scientist away, knowing Lazarus had just gotten a taste for Time Lord regenerative energy, and she knew that was dangerous or even reckless.
The Doctor smiled as she heard the crashing sounds behind her - Lazarus was clearly having problems getting used to his new body when it came to speeding up like this - as the mutated scientist came after her. Now all she needed to do was to find another plan, one which would work on Lazarus before the mutated scientist got out and caused too much damage.
She knew there was no way to cure Lazarus of his condition; his machine was pretty complex, and while she knew how it worked she wasn't sure if it was complex enough for her to reverse the polarity, and return Lazarus to his original state before he first used the manipulator. She knew she could take some of the Lazarus technology and rework it, make it smaller and she could concentrate it into a sonic screwdriver, but she didn't have the time.
And it was her own fault, she reflected grimly as she raced through the building, looking for something which could help her while she tried to ignore the pain caused by her shoes - the flats weren't designed for running around like this.
She ran into a laboratory, knowing Lazarus was only just behind her but she was glad he still wasn't yet used to his new body. It might just give her time. When she was through the door, the Doctor gave a cursory look around the laboratory. If she had enough time to go through the electronic supplies and the chemicals stored here, she might be able to rig up a small but powerful bomb. But she didn't, she knew she had only moments before Lazarus came in through the door and she wanted to be out of here by the time that happened.
And then she saw the Bunsen burner taps.
The Doctor grinned, and her smile grew larger when she saw the light switch, realising she didn't need to build a bomb. It was already here… the Doctor worked quickly. She opened up every Bunsen burner she could reach, her nose wrinkling as the stench of released gas began to fill the room before she jumped onto a worktop and she worked on the light switch, thankful that in her current regeneration she had found herself in enough scrapes to work without her sonic screwdriver.
Once she was finished, the Doctor continued opening the burners, and she had reached the other side of the room when Lazarus came inside.
"Still running around, Doctor?" Lazarus spoke in his typical mocking manner.
"It's better than that looking at you, Lazarus; for someone so vain, you haven't looked into a mirror, have you?" The Doctor slammed her hand on the light switch just as she was running out of the room….
Only to find herself thrown to the ground as the heat from the explosion caught her unawares. The Doctor winced as she picked herself and she hurried away, but she waited at the end of the corridor so then Lazarus would see her. There was no doubt in her mind the scientist's new mutated body was armoured and reinforced enough to withstand the damage of the blast.
She didn't need to wait too long when Lazarus appeared. The scientist burst out of the burning laboratory, his scorpion-like form showing light scorch marks, but otherwise appeared unharmed.
The Doctor waited until Lazarus spotted her before she ran away, racing up the staircase she'd run down earlier with the Joneses. She could hear Lazarus behind her, but if she could just reach the top of the building. Finally, she arrived in Lazarus's office, and she ignored the mess caused earlier by the scientist when he came after her and Martha's family. After a quick look outside the Doctor went back inside and she stayed in the office for a moment, waiting for any signs of Lazarus when the scientist appeared down the stairs.
"Now why are you up there, Doctor? What do you have in mind?"
"Why don't you come and find out?" The Doctor countered as she moved slowly back.
"Or why should I waste my time on you, why shouldn't I go after the others, your friends?"
"Because if you do that, they won't satisfy you enough, Lazarus," the Doctor replied to the taunt although she was unsure if it was rhetorical or not. "You are still mutating, you need something to satisfy you. And I know my energy did that for you."
Lazarus may have sounded bored with the chase, but he was still coming up the stairs slowly. "Ah yes, the glow to your hand… What are you, Doctor?"
The Doctor took a deep breath, wondering how she could answer that question. "Let's just say, I'm nothing like the scraps you've been eating all night, Lazarus. I'm an all you can eat buffet."
"How interesting."
Lazarus burst out from the staircase, but the Doctor raced out onto the roof. She went as close to the edge as she dared to go, just as Lazarus cornered her in the open.
"Nowhere left to run, Doctor," the scientist said, pointedly using one of his new back legs to close the door although it wasn't worth the effort since the scientist had done some damage earlier. But the Doctor got his point, and in any case, she had no desire to escape.
"I am going to enjoy feasting on you, Doctor," Lazarus said, and the Doctor had the feeling the mutated scientist was smirking at her much as he had done before, but because of how mask like his face was, it was impossible for her to tell.
"You really like to gloat, don't you, Lazarus? Come on, feast on me; I'm totally different from the rest of the meat out there. You felt it for yourself," the Doctor retorted, hoping this plan of hers worked since she was out of options, and while she wished there was another way, she had learnt sometimes you had to face facts.
"But why come up here, Doctor?" Lazarus asked, a sudden hint of suspicion in his voice.
The Doctor smirked, although it was marred when she spotted Martha and her family appearing from behind, the Joneses were smart enough to keep silent. "So I can do this," she tapped the bracelet on her wrist.
"Wha-?" Lazarus began only to scream in shock as a bright blue light appeared around him and enclosed around his body, and closed around him like as though he was going through a door of some sort.
"Doctor!" Martha yelled and she raced to the Time Lady, just as Lazarus reappeared in the sky quite high up. The scientist fell with a scream and disappeared down the chasm between buildings.
"What did you do?" Tish asked.
The Doctor grimly held up her wrist to show them her bracelet, and the Joneses saw it resembled an ordinary bracelet but there were little studs set into it. "It's a transmat device; matter transmission. I slapped a part of it on Lazarus earlier when I touched him, and when I got out here I took another piece and threw it into the air as high as I could get it to go to act as a reception point. When Lazarus came out I teleported him out there, and let gravity do the rest."
"So, you killed him?"
"I'm not proud of it, Mrs Jones! I didn't have the time to take Lazarus' technology and see if I could reverse the effects of what he'd done to himself, and if I had followed that course of action, he would have gotten out and killed many more people. I had to think about them, and come up with a better solution," the Doctor snapped, making it clear she didn't like what she had done to the scientist any more than they did, but she had needed to do it.
"Do you think he's dead; I mean, I know he was high up and all that, but would it be enough?" Leo asked uncertainly, glancing between the Doctor and his mother, as though worried his question would rile both of them up.
"I should think so; Lazarus' carapace was strong enough to withstand a simple gas explosion in a lab. Compared to that, this is more dangerous," the Doctor said solemnly before she looked over the side (why did these buildings have to be so tall?) but she couldn't see anything. "Another immortal wannabe I had to kill, only this time I don't know if this is better or worse than Magnus Greel-."
"Who?" Tish shook her head, wondering who Magnus Greel was.
"The so-called Butcher of Brisbane," the Doctor explained, "he escaped his own time using what he believed to be a time machine."
"A time machine?" Mrs Jones sneered, while her children looked just as sceptical. "You seriously expect us to believe time travel is possible?"
"You've just seen someone being teleported away from you, and then reappear only a few metres high up in the air," the Doctor pointed out, shaking her head at the humans' blindness and their inability to grasp reality unless it came from their own work, "you've also seen a seventy-something old man rejuvenate and then mutate into a throwback evolution dismissed for humanity millions of years ago, why can't time travel exist?"
"A throwback? You mean-?" Martha began, but the Doctor interrupted.
"When Lazarus' machine malfunctioned, it didn't just hack into the cells to rejuvenate, "the Doctor explained while she hoped they didn't pester her more about Greel, even if this situation was slightly different from the time she had come face to face with when she'd had to live through those times, "It kept going until it unlocked the potential which has lain dormant inside human DNA for millions of years; Lazarus became a creature which all of you could have become, had evolution decided to select it. But the potential is there, locked in every human body, dormant until now."
The Doctor took a good look at Martha's face and she could see the scientific curiosity there in her face; the trainee doctor could now understand what had happened to Lazarus, even if it had been by accident.
"Come on," she said to them, nodding to herself as she thought of how she would love to return to the TARDIS. "I know a nice little place where she can have something to drink…"
As she walked away from the roof and headed for the stairs (or the lift, if it were working right now), the Doctor thought about what she was going to do next. She would need to get UNIT here to clean up the mess, and knowing them they would take the Genetic Manipulation Device to the Black Archive they had in their new HQ. The Doctor grimaced as she thought about the Black Archive, something she was not meant to know about; but given how her unofficial founder status, as well as her friendship with the Brigadier, had allowed her a lot of leeway over the years, she knew of its existence enough to know of how unimaginably stupid the archive could be if it fell into the wrong hands. The fact they had used alien technology to make the place TARDIS-proof did not help, but she had built in a few backdoors to help her break in in case the place was compromised.
But at the same time, she thought about Lazarus.
She felt guilty for killing the man, yes, but she had to remind herself if she hadn't killed him there was no telling what kind of long term damage he would have done. And there was no telling what it would have done to the timeline, although it was fascinating regardless the scientist had come up with a viable method of rejuvenation even if it changed history, even if he was the wrong person to ever be rejuvenated to that degree.
She had done what she had needed to do as a Time Lord to preserve history in case Lazarus had escaped or force-rejuvenated several others, so the same thing that happened to him would happen to others although she was sure they would not have embraced it as Lazarus had.