Chapter 24 The One with the Con Man

I own nothing recognisable x

The Doctor and Florence ran down the street, the emptiness was apocalyptic and the silence almost deafening if it weren't for the sounds of war echoing overhead, but they could neither see nor hear the child even turning the corner ahead of them, as if he had vanished into thin air between withdrawing his hand from the letterbox and them opening the door.

"What the hell was that about?" Florence asked the Doctor, stretching her neck and squinting her eyes to try and catch a glimpse of the boy as they stopped at another junction. "What do we do now? Nancy's gone, the kid's gone, Rose is gone!" The Doctor put his hands on her shoulders and bent down slightly to look her in the eye.

"Florence… Florence, calm down. we'll find Rose, don't worry." He reassured her. "I can find Nancy." Florence looked at him sceptically,

"You can find Nancy?"

He drew back slightly in offense. "What, you don't think I can?" Florence put her hand on top of his,

"No, no! I'm sure you can! I just… she's a professional sneak, might be hard?" He flipped his hand over to grab hers, letting them walk rather than chase after a child who so obviously was not going to reappear.

"Okay, fair enough, but I can!" He grinned down at her as they walked. "I'm very good at tracking! I find you, don't I?"

Florence laughed, "I think if anything, it's the other way round!"

The Doctor shook his head and laughed lightly. "We'll see about that." He looked left and right at the end of another street, before nodding and jogging off in the way he presumed Nancy went, like an alien sniffer dog. They reached another alley, a darker more sinister contrast to the quaintly normal street the house they had been having dinner at had been on, and he pulled her through the gap in the buildings. "Anyway back to Nancy, you've read books, haven't you?"

"What is that supposed to mean?" The Doctor rolled his eyes slightly at her offended tone.

"I mean…" He pulled them down another alley that opened up to what looked like an abandoned track. "Runaways on the streets of London always have little hideaways hidden in the shadows, don't they?" Florence nodded,

"I guess, like Oliver Twist and stuff…" She supposed, his logic was sound as was the sticking to the shadows route they were taking at the moment.

"Well then, look." He pointed to the wooded area a couple feet from where they were standing, seeing what had become a familiar young woman crouched over as she ran from tree to tree and down a slight hill.

"Oh bollocks did you find her just like that!" Florence told him indignantly, and he laughed before shushing her,

"Come on, then." The two of them snuck after Nancy's figure, and Florence would have felt bad for jumping out on an already paranoid young girl, if it wasn't for the fact that she kept evading their questions with such ease. The Doctor dragged Florence around the other side of the rusted broken down railway car as Nancy disappeared inside with a sack over her shoulder, making sure that they stood just next to the opening so that when she looked up she would see them.

An action that made them look no less suspicious to her than they already were. "How'd you follow me here?" She asked, the Doctor smiling his goofy pleased with himself grin.

"I'm good at following, me. Got the nose for it!" Florence rolled her eyes slightly at his attempt at humour, but Nancy still looked ready to flee at a moment's notice.

"People can't usually follow me if I don't want them to."

"My nose has special powers." That earned a slight smirk from Nancy.

"Yeah?" She looked at it. "Is that why it's so…" Florence choked out a laugh at her insinuation, the Doctor looking between the two of them, frowning,

"What?"

"Nothing!" Florence told him, placing her hand over her mouth, he turned back to Nancy,

"What?"

"Nothin'. Do your ears have special powers too?" Florence pursed her lips to stop another laugh coming out and the Doctor wrapped an arm around her, pinching her side.

"What are you trying to say?" Nancy gave the two of them a soft smile, probably the first Florence had seen from the girl.

"Goodnight, Mister. Miss."

She turned to leave, but Florence knew the Doctor couldn't and wouldn't let her run away from them again. "Nancy…" He called to her, making her stop but not turn around. "There's something chasing you and the other kids. Looks like a boy and it isn't a boy, and it started about a month ago, right?" She slowly turned to face them. "The thing I'm looking for, the thing that fell from the sky, that's when it landed."

"Nancy, please," Florence asked her gently, "you know what he's talking about, don't you?"

"There was a bomb." She finally told them. "A bomb that wasn't a bomb. Fell the other end of Limehouse Green Station."

"Take us there." The Doctor asked, but she shook her head,

"There's soldiers guarding it. Barbed wire. You'll never get through." The Doctor smirked at that, Florence knew he loved a challenge.

"Try me."

There was a moment of silence, as if Nancy was really seeing who the Doctor was for the first time. To Florence, seeing him in even half the light that she constantly saw him in may just be enough to get Nancy to trust him enough to show him where the bomb landed. Just to see him as the old stubborn fool who wouldn't take no for an answer would be enough.

"You sure you want to know what's going on in there?"

The Doctor looked her dead in the eyes. "I really want to know." He told her, and Florence nodded in agreement.

"Then there's someone you need to talk to first." Of course it was never as easy as find capsule, help boy, find Rose, grab something to eat.

"Who?" Florence asked.

"The doctor." Nancy told them simply, before nodding her head for them to follow as she jumped out of the car and back into the trees. The Doctor and Florence shared a concerned look before following after her.

The Doctor handed Florence some high tech binoculars he had pulled out of his Mary Poppins style pockets (a term that earned her a good two minute lecture about the influence that he himself had had on PL Travers when writing about the famous carpet bag, and how he didn't appreciate her profiting off of his personal effects after only knowing him for two days), and she peered through it to see the large capsule covered by a fabric sheet and heavily guarded.

"The bomb's under that tarpaulin. They put the fence up overnight." Nancy told them, before pointing to a larger old fashioned building behind the site. "See that building? The hospital." Florence handed the binoculars back to the Doctor to fiddle with and settled with squinting into the distance.

"What about it?" The Doctor asked, sparing it a moment's glance, focusing instead on the crash site that was important to him.

"That's where the doctor is." Nancy asserted. "You should talk to him."

"For now, I'm more interested in getting in there." The Doctor responded, and Florence bit her lip slightly,

"Doctor, why don't we see what this doctor has to say?" She asked him, and he turned away from the site to give her a look. "What? I'm just saying - it's heavily guarded and hasn't exploded in the last month? What's another hour?"

"Another hour could be the difference between life and death!" He maintained, and Nancy shook her head at him,

"Listen to your friend, talk to the doctor first."

"Why?" The Doctor asked, going back to looking through the binoculars.

"Because then maybe you won't want to get inside." Nancy told him, before stepping away from them and up the stairs behind them.

"Nancy, wait…" Florence called. "Where are you going?"

The young woman raised her eyebrows. "There was a lot of food in that house. I've got mouths to feed. Should be safe enough now." Florence nodded slightly, she had more important things to deal with, and the Doctor couldn't expect her to just tag along with no reason.

"Can I ask you a question?" Speak of the devil and he shall… not even turn away from his obsession to talk to someone. "Who did you lose?"

Nancy's face dropped. "What?"

He finally looked away from the site. "The way you look after all those kids. It's because you lost somebody, isn't it? You're doing all this to make up for it." Nancy hesitated, before looking at the Doctor with an uncomfortable smile,

"My little brother. Jamie." Florence noticed she couldn't look either of them in the eyes as she spoke, looking anywhere but them or the crash site. "One night I went out looking for food. Same night that thing fell. I told him not to follow me, I told him it was dangerous, but he just. He just didn't like being on his own."

"What happened?" The Doctor asked softly, Nancy scoffed slightly,

"In the middle of an air raid? What do you think happened?" Florence looked away from the poor girl, her heart aching at the thought of such a small child being so scared.

"Amazing!" The Doctor huffed out, and Florence looked sharply at him, seeing him looking up at the sky.

"What is?" Nancy asked, unsure where he was going with that.

"1941. Right now, not very far from here, the German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes." Florence looked up at the sky full of blimps and fighter planes and bombs exploding. "Nothing can stop it. Nothing. Until one, tiny, damp little island says no. No. Not here. A mouse in front of a lion. You're amazing, the lot of you. Don't know what you do to Hitler, but you frighten the hell out of me!" The two unlikely allies, one Time Lord and one 1940s street girl, shared a smile. "Off you go then do what you've got to do. Save the world." Florence smiled at her as the Doctor grabbed her hand, the two of them setting off down the iron stairs and towards their next clue.

Florence looked sceptically around the sterile hallways she and the Doctor ambled down, the silence was deafening. There was a chill to the air that Florence didn't enjoy, while she hadn't had much (if any) experience in hospitals, there was something about the complete stillness of the air that unsettled her. It was as if the hospital was frozen, and no one or no thing was even breathing, let alone able to help them find out what happened at the crash site.

"Are we sure this isn't breaking and entering?" She whispered to the Doctor as he unlocked another door, he shrugged in response,

"Technically I haven't broken anything." They both looked at each other before laughing slightly. "Beside, you just had half a dinner at somebody else's house without their permission, didn't you?"

Florence pulled a face. "That's neither here nor there…" She told him haughtily. "Guess it just seems more sinister here, where people are you know…" The Doctor pushed open a door and they entered a ward full of patients lying very still in their beds, stomachs not rising with every breath, not one person curled up on their sides, nor a single snore or sniffle coming from their oddly gas masked covered faces. "Comatose…"

The two of them walked through the ward, some of the patients weren't even covered by the bedsheets, it was as if they were mannequins on display that required no warmth or comfort. The Doctor frowned before rushing to the end of the room, opening the door and gesturing Florence to follow.

"Come on, let's see if the rest are the same." Florence nodded and cast one more unsettled look to the figure on the bed before hurrying after him.

"Quick question." She piped up after a moment, Nancy's words hitting her as they were standing in the abandoned hospital corridor. "This 'doctor'... real doctor or… you Doctor? I mean this is a hospital but Nancy just said 'doctor' could it be you? Or is that like crossing time boundaries or-"

The Doctor put a hand on her shoulder. "Florence, breath." She nodded, she had gotten ahead of herself slightly. "I don't know, suppose out of anyone, you can let me know!" He smiled broadly at her before dragging her off to another room.

"Oh, great."

They had checked six other rooms, across two more floors before ending up in the only hospital room that had been left lit in the cold dark night. Apart from the light, the room was the same as the others, filled to the brim with comatose patients all wearing what Florence could only assume were not actually precautionary gas masks on their heads.

Florence turned in panic when a door squeaked behind them, hand held to her beating heart when she saw an old man in a white doctor's coat step out of the office to the side of the ward.

"Oh my god!" She steadied her breathing as the man approached them, leaning on his walking cane,

"You'll find them everywhere. In every bed, in every ward. Hundreds of them." He informed them, and the Doctor nodded,

"Yes, I saw." He cast a glance at the patients to his side. "Why are they still wearing gas masks?"

"They're not." The man replied, and Florence almost groaned at the ominous reply, what on earth did he mean by that? "Who are you?

"This is Florence." The Doctor gestured Florence casually, before freezing, "I'm… er…" He gave the man a curious look. "Are you the Doctor?" Florence realised he was worried he couldn't give his real name, but also supposed if this was another incarnation of the Doctor he would recognise his past self, after all, the floppy haired Doctor that had taken her and Amy to see Van Gogh had a collection of portraits of them all at his disposal.

"Doctor Constantine." The old man confirmed, and both Florence and the Doctor let out a slight sigh of relief. "And you are?" He asked again, clearly not forgetting the Doctor's avoidance.

"Nancy sent me." Florence looked at him,

"Oh, so my name's okay to give out willy-nilly?" She whispered to him, but he waved her off.

"Nancy?" Constantine repeated, drawing the two back to the matter at hand. "That means you must've been asking about the bomb." Florence nodded,

"Mmhmm." She hummed in agreement. "Can you tell us anything more about it?" Constantine walked past them and towards the nurse's table in the middle of the ward.

"Well… what do you know about it?" He asked, and Florence had to stop herself from rolling her eyes at his evasiveness.

"Nothing." The Doctor replied on their behalf. "Why we were asking. What do you know?"

"Only what it's done." Constantine told them cryptically, looking around the ward.

"These people, they were all caught up in the blast?" The Doctor asked.

"None of them were." Constantine answered smugly, before coughing roughly and taking a seat at the table behind him.

The Doctor went to help but he held out a hand to stop him. "You're very sick." He pointed out, and Constantine hummed,

"Dying, I should think… I just haven't been able to find the time. Are you a doctor?"

The Doctor shrugged slightly, "I have my moments." Florence resisted rolling her eyes at his response.

"Have you examined any of them yet?" Constantine asked, and the two intruders shook their heads. "Don't touch the flesh… Any of them..." He warned, and the Doctor reached into his jacket to pull out his screwdriver, running it along the gas mask of one of the patients to their right. He turned and gave Florence a concerned look,

"What is it?" She asked, and Constantine hummed,

"Conclusions?"

"Massive head trauma, mostly to the left side." The Doctor asked as he continued running his screwdriver over the body. "Partial collapse of the chest cavity, mostly to the right. There's some scarring on the back of the hand and the gas mask seems to be fused to the flesh, but I can't see any burns." Florence peeked and saw the same scar on the back of the hand matching the boy at the house.

"Doctor…" He nodded, noticing it too.

"Examine another one." Constantine instructed him, and the Time Lord moved to the next bed.

"This isn't possible…" He murmured as he copied the same examination.

"Examine another." Constantine told him, yielding the same results.

"This isn't possible." The Doctor looked around the room filled with patients, and Florence thought back to the identical ones they had seen across the wards. "They've all got the same injuries."

Constantine nodded slowly. "Yes."

"Exactly the same?" Florence asked, and the Doctor nodded.

"Yes." Constantine confirmed.

"Identical, all of them, right down to the scar on the back of the hand." Florence looked at the Doctor,

"How? If the masks are attached to all these people? How did that happen?" The Doctor shook his head,

"I dunno. But something must have been, I don't know, a catalyst?" Constantine nodded sagely,

"When that bomb dropped, there was just one victim." He told them.

"Dead?" The Doctor asked.

"At first." Constantine told them. "His injuries were truly dreadful. By the following morning, every doctor and nurse who had treated him, who had touched him, had those exact same injuries." He motioned to the room around them. "By the morning after that, every patient in the same ward, the exact same injuries. Within a week, the entire hospital. Physical injuries as plague. Can you explain that? What would you say was the cause of death?" He asked and the Doctor shrugged slightly,

"The head trauma." He guessed.

"No." Was Constantine's response.

"Asphyxiation." He tried again.

"No."

"The collapse of the chest cavity."

"No." Florence looked around at the stillness of the figures in the bed, the way some of them were tucked in as if sleeping.

"They're not…" She whispered, and Constantine pointed his cane at her slightly.

"They are not dead." He told them, before suddenly whacking the metal bin next to him with his stick, a loud ring echoing through the ward, and the figures on the bed sat up suddenly, bolt upright, looking towards the source of the noise. The Doctor and Florence jumped back at the movement, Florence clutching the Doctor's sleeve in shock. "It's all right. They're harmless." Constantine consoled them, not moving from his seat as the two travellers had. "They just sort of sit there. No heartbeat, no life signs of any kind. They just don't die." Florence looked around at the multitude of men and women who had been imprisoned in the hospital, with no discernable cure from whatever was happening to them.

"They've just been left here?" The Doctor asked angrily, as the figures began to lower themselves back into their previous position. "Nobody's doing anything?"

"I try and make them comfortable." Constantine reassured them. "What else is there?"

"And you're the only one left?" Florence asked him. "No one else?"

Constantine shrugged slightly, as if it was nothing to him. "Before this war began, I was a father and a grandfather. Now I am neither. But I'm still a doctor." He told them, and Florence felt the Doctor shift uncomfortably next to her.

"Yeah, I know the feeling." He said quietly, and Florence had to force herself to look away from him when her head snapped towards him in shock at his words, it wasn't any of her business after all. But she filed the information away for a later date.

"I suspect the plan is to blow up the hospital and blame it on a German bomb." Constantine commented, looking out the window towards where Florence remembered the site was located.

Florence thought about the lonely boy running around London with the same scar on his hand, and clearly the same thing had crossed the Doctor's mind.

"Probably too late."

"I know." Constantine replied. "There are isolated cases…" His words were interrupted by a series of coughing fits, each one racking his body as he something was forcing its way up through his chest. "Isolated cases breaking out... all over London…" The Doctor stepped forward as he coughed again, but he held a hand up in warning, his breathing laboured. "Stay back, stay back. Listen to me! Top floor... Room eight-oh-two. That's where they took the first victim, the one from the crash site... And you must find Nancy again." Florence frowned,

"Nancy? Why?" She asked, and Constantine nodded weakly,

"It was her brother. She knows more than she's saying. She won't tell me, but she m-m-m-" He clutched a hand to his neck as he tried to force his words out. "M-M-Mummy…" The Doctor and Florence both back away slightly at his familiar words. "Are... you... my... mummy?" His mouth opened as wide as humanly possible before extending even further, Florence looked on in horror as a black mass forced itself out of his mouth, stretching across his cheeks and up and around his head, his eyes expanding and bulging into the terrifying shape of a gas mask adorned by all the other occupants of the room. Florence stood, mouth open in shock, unable to form words to describe the sight, as their latest informant's head lulled to the side in a similar comatose state upright in his chair.

"Hello?" Her thoughts were interrupted by an irritatingly recognisable American accent coming from the hallways outside the ward, her head turning sharply as a feminine voice joined in.

"Hello?" Florence and the Doctor looked at each other before racing out of the doors, Florence cast one more look at Constantine's figure as they left.

"Hello?" Came the voices again, and Florence turned a corner nearly tripping over Rose's trainers as she hugged the girl in relief.

"Rose!" She pulled back and rubbed the girl's arms reassuringly. "Where the hell did you go?" She turned to the suave pearly whites smiling down at her and threw her arms around him, noticing his complete surprise seconds too late. "Oh thank god you found her!"

"Hello there, nice to meet you too." Jack told her returning the hug way too intimately compared to his last one in Cardiff. Florence sputtered slightly as Rose pulled her back and wrapped her arms around the brunette tightly squeezing her shoulders,

"Sorry about Florence! She… worries! I'm so… new and all!" Jack looked at them a tad sceptically before turning his gaze to the suddenly sour faced man in front of him.

"Hope we're not interrupting. Jack Harkness. I've been hearing all about you on the way over." Florence bit her lip as she berated herself internally, she really had to get better at not spoiling things so obviously.

"He knows." Rose explained, nodding pointedly at the Doctor. "I had to tell him about us being Time Agents." The Doctor nodded, playing along, before Jack released his hand and slapped his back,

"And it's a real pleasure to meet you, Mr Spock." He walked passed the man and started back down the hall, and Florence had to hide her grin from the Doctor at his affronted expressions.

"Mr Spock?" He asked incredulously, and Rose scoffed,

"What was I supposed to say? You don't have a name." She pointed out.

Florence shrugged, "Could've been an agent codename." She suggested, and Rose rolled her eyes slightly,

"Not you, too…" She muttered."Don't you ever get tired of Doctor? Doctor who?"

"Nine centuries in, I'm coping." The Doctor retorted. "Where've you been? We're in the middle of a London Blitz. It's not a good time for a stroll." He berated her, but Rose only smirked slightly,

"Who's strolling? I went by barrage balloon. Only way to see an air raid." She quipped as they began to follow the elusive Captain Jack. Florence frowned.

"Huh?" The Doctor shared her confusion,

"What?" But the blonde ignored them both.

"Listen, what's a Chula warship?" The Doctor stopped suddenly,

"Chula?" He repeated, Rose hurrying along and Florence shrugged,

"If you don't know, doubt I will." She patted him on the shoulder in a similar fashion that Jack had before nodding her head in the direction they had gone in, back towards the ward. "Come along, Spock."

Jack was scanning one of the patients in the bed with the funky looking wrist strap Florence recognised from all those months ago in the cafe. She watched him, with his slicked back hair parted at the side and the same cocky attitude, and wondered how long he stuck around the Doctor for. She had seen him (twice) in Cardiff and once in London - well now twice in different time periods - and half those times he was alone. She could tell the Doctor didn't trust him currently, his eyes following the futuristic man dressed in period clothing as he went from patient to patient, and if the scowl on his face was any indication it was a mixture of distrust and dislike. However, they must have reconciled soon, sooner than soon since the Doctor had told her they had just been at the Blitz when they were in Cardiff. Fuck, Florence thought, rubbing her temples, timelines are exhausting. She was distracted from her thoughts by a gentle hand on her lower back, and she looked up to see the Doctor staring down at her, a concerned frown marring his features. She smiled gently at him, waving off his concern, it was sweet really, that he managed to both keep an eye on her and the loud mouthed American across the room.

"This just isn't possible!" Jack was telling them. "How did this happen?"

"What kinda Chula ship landed here?" The Doctor asked, watching Jack moved to the next patient.

"What?" Jack asked, causing Rose to chime in next to them.

"He said it was a warship." She told them. "He stole it, parked it somewhere out there, somewhere a bomb's going to fall on it unless we make him an offer." Florence looked at her curiously, this business of Jack's suddenly seeming a little more than shady.

"An offer?" Rose nodded,

"And quickly…"

"What kind of warship?" The Doctor directed at Jack again, but the Captain had turned away, biting his thumb anxiously.

"Does it matter? It's got nothing to do with this." Florence raised her eyes at his evasiveness, and the Doctor shook his head angrily.

"This started at the bomb site." He told Jack firmly, pointing at the bodies. "It's got everything to do with it. What kind of warship?"

"An ambulance!" Jack burst out, fiddling with his wrist strap and pulling up a holographic image of the capsule that they had seen on the TARDIS screen. "That's what you chased through the Time Vortex. It's space junk. I wanted to kid you it was valuable." Florence huffed slightly, of course, Jack was a con man. "It's empty. I made sure of it. Nothing but a shell. I threw it at you. Saw your time travel vehicle - love the retro look, by the way, nice panels - threw you the bait..."

"Bait?" Rose interrupted looking mildly offended by the revelation.

"I wanted to sell it to you and then destroy it before you found out it was junk."

"You said it was a war ship!" Rose threw at him, and he rolled his eyes slightly.

"They have ambulances in wars." He mocked her, walking away from them. "It was a con. I was conning you. That's what I am, I'm a con man." He threw his hands up at them. "I thought you were Time Agents. You're not, are you?" Florence made a face at him,

"Hey, hey, hey, you can't take the moral high ground here!" She argued, causing him to scoff.

"Oh. Should have known. The way you guys are blending in with the local colour. I mean, Flag Girl was bad enough, but U-Boat Captain? And you," Florence raised her eyebrows at him, daring him to continue, "A walking advertisement for a university that won't be established for another ten years?" Florence looked down at her sweatshirt, okay she would give him that maybe she should be more careful with her logo choices. "Anyway, whatever's happening here has got nothing to do with that ship."

Rose ignored him, in favour of turning to the one man in the room she could confidently trust. "What is happening here, Doctor? Florence?"

"Human DNA is being rewritten by an idiot." He told her simply, and Florence shrugged slightly at the blonde,

"We're not quite sure, to be honest…" She admitted.

"Some kind of virus converting human beings into these things." The Doctor suggested. "But why? What's the point?"

Florence looked around the ward. "Rose, these people… their injuries are the same, exactly the same." Rose frowned at her, going over to one of the patients to examine them closer. "And it's spreading, all across London."

Rose opened her mouth to reply only to jump backwards in fright at the sudden movement from the patient she had been looking at. Florence didn't understand what was happening, only that out of nowhere the previously comatose patients that had been inhabiting the ward were abruptly sitting up in their beds, swinging their legs over at almost the exact same time as each other and standing.

"Mummy. Mummy." They began calling out in unison, and Florence grabbed Rose, yanking her to her side. "Mummy? Mummy?"

"What's happening?" Rose asked, as the patients began walking towards them, focusing on the three intruders to the room.

"I don't know." The Doctor looked around the room, backing the four of them against one of the wall, with nowhere to run to. "But don't let them touch you." He warned, and Rose grabbed onto Florence's hand in worry.

"What happens if they touch us?" She asked, the patients getting closer and closer, still calling out for their 'mummy'.

"You're looking at it." The Doctor told her simply, still looking around to find some way of getting them out of the ward.

"Mummy… Mummy…" The patients were circling around the nurse's station, Florence watched Constantine's previously hobbling form now fully able bodied and approaching them with possessed certainty. "Help me mummy."

They were stuck, with no idea what was happening to the patients and, more importantly, with nowhere to run.

I can't apologise enough for the delay in this chapter! Life really had me in a chokehold! I hope you enjoyed this one - and thanks for alllll the love even though I've been absent! Love love love xx

See you for chapter 25! xo