Mickey followed the perimeter of the UNIT zone round toward the TARDIS, but then cut through the field operations tent. He had to get into the TARDIS, but he was also responsible for two units of men who would be arriving on site within half an hour. He logged his arrival on scene and his current location as the TARDIS. He scribbled 'not drawn' in pencil in the Greyhound 10 section of the log in indicating that he didn't have a radio. When he was done in the TARDIS and dealing with his men he would draw it then. He was heading toward the TARDIS when he was intercepted by Major Magumbo. She was early.
"Good morning, ma'am," Mickey saluted her formally.
"Captain Smith," she acknowledged. "Where is Doctor Jones-Smith? Has she been delayed?"
"She is already on site, Ma'am."
"She has not logged in as such."
"She's in the TARDIS."
"As much as I appreciate her friendship with the Doctor and her sense of obligation to young Joshua Temple-Noble, she is to be reminded that this version of the Doctor is not yet her personal friend, and that Joshua has deferred his guardianship to the Doctor for the time being. As such neither of them are her current concern. She is to be reminded that she has direct duties for UNIT that require her attention," Major Magumbo informed Mickey. "The young man who was seen leaving the area by the Doctor has been located. He is being brought here and Doctor Jones-Smith is required."
"To examine him prior to questioning?" Mickey checked.
"He is deceased," Major Magumbo informed him. "Doctor Jones-Smith is required to complete an urgent autopsy."
"That's odd," Mickey commented. "The Doctor didn't think he was hurt."
"Initial reports indicate there are no obvious serious injuries which is why the autopsy is being considered urgent. We need Doctor Jones-Smith to determine the cause of death, and to do so before we commit to sending troops underground," Major Magumbo informed him. "Have her report to me immediately."
"There may be a problem with that, ma'am," Mickey stated.
"I don't care about rank. Another young man has died and we need to determine the causes. If she wants to involve the Doctor in that investigation then I would welcome that, but we need to understand fully what the impact of contact with those creatures is before we send any troops down there to engage with them."
"Agreed," Mickey confirmed. "Can't you get the body diverted to the Leeds Office."
"The Leeds Office is not equipped to carry out top security autopsies," Major Magumbo informed him.
"Martha received a Code 9 emergency call this morning. It was Josh. It appears the Doctor has become unwell. She is in there with him now. What she finds out from treating him could be as important as what she might find out from conducting an autopsy, and, from what she has said, if she doesn't continue treating him then UNIT may end up having to explain why the Doctor has regenerated several years earlier than he should, or Martha may well end up conducting two autopsies," Mickey told her. He started to head toward the TARDIS, not wanting to be delayed any further. Major Magumbo elected to go with him. She could get a full report from Martha from within the TARDIS.
As they approached there was a flash of light within the tree line. "Oh, and, we asked for additional assistance," Mickey informed the Major. "From someone who is familiar with the Doctor and the complexities of time lines, and, who the Doctor has already met in his own personal time line."
"Good Morning Eryssa," Captain Jack bounded out from the trees. He gave her a quick salute but then blew her a kiss "I must say you are looking lovely today, Major."
"Captain Harkness," Major Magumbo acknowledged him. "As if I was beginning to think this day couldn't start any worse."
"Better, Eryssa, I'm sure you mean better." Captain Jack grinned. "Captain Mickey Mouse." Jack bumped knuckles with Mickey and then hugged him. Making Major Magumbo groan. She had genetically modified creatures underground, UNIT soldiers to manage, a dead civilian being brought in for autopsy, an injured civilian child in the TARDIS who should have been under UNIT care but had deferred to the Doctor who was not only significantly out of his own personal time line but was now injured, and to top it all off, they'd invited Captain Jack Harkness to join them.
The three of them entered the TARDIS. As they got in Martha was at the monitor waiting to get some further analysis of the swab that had been taken the day before. Josh was sitting on the floor holding up the drip, and just absently stroking the back of the Doctor's hand. The Time Lord was on the floor, turned onto his side, with an oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth.
"Christ, this is early for him," Jack commented as he regarded the Doctor on the floor.
"Jack," Martha acknowledged him without moving away from the monitor as some results were starting to come up. Then she just sighed and tapped the monitor with her knuckle. "You took that long to tell me that?!" she accused the ship.
"What does it say?"
"She doesn't have a large enough sample size to run the full analysis required," Martha commented. "We'll have to take some more bloods from him." She didn't get the results she wanted from the TARDIS so she went to hug Jack. "Glad you could make it. How long are you staying?"
"It was going to be a couple of weeks here and then back to Sto," Jack offered, but then looked at the Doctor. "We can play it by ear."
"Now you're both here we need to get him up onto the bed. We'll need to watch the drip lines and repack the ice as soon as he's on the bed. He's already had one convulsion," Martha informed him.
"Is that right?" Jack asked indicating to the monitor that showed the Doctor's body temperature was 23.1 degrees.
"It went up to 24.8," Josh informed him. "I'm giving him fluid from the fridge."
"What have you done there?" Jack indicated to the cast on Josh's leg.
"Broke my ankle."
"Martha looking after you too is she?"
"The Doctor is," Josh advised. "Who are you?"
"I'm Captain Jack Harkness. You must be Joshua," he acknowledged and Josh nodded. "I'm very pleased to meet you."
"He's 14 Jack," Martha warned.
"I'll take that for a minute," Jack suggested taking the drip bag that Josh was holding and the one that was clipped to the side of the bed. He went to put them on the bed, but saw that the sheets were covered in blood. "Is that his?" Jack indicated to the blood. Martha nodded. "That's a lot of blood." Jack pulled the sheet off the bed so that it was just the moisture resistant mattress underneath. "Give me a second before we get him up," Jack suggested. He went into the store at the back of the TARDIS sickbay and came out with a rolled up gel mattress. It was waterproof but had a soft surface so it wouldn't stick to the skin if someone was lying on it without a sheet. They could put a sheet on it after they'd had a look at his back. He could already see that it was going to be messy.
"Jack?" Martha checked what he was doing, as Jack unrolled the gel mattress across the surface of the bed.
"I knew he had one of these tucked away somewhere," Jack commented. "What do you think? 20 degrees to begin with?" he suggested. He used an electronic panel to set the temperature of the mattress. "It will cool to 20 degrees," he informed Martha.
"That'll be too warm," Josh suggested. "His body temperature should be 16."
"Yeah, but it's 23 at the moment, so it's still cooler than he is, and if we lie him on something that is too cold it's going to be too uncomfortable for him," Jack informed him.
"He cried at the ice," Josh acknowledged sadly.
"Set it to 10," Martha commented. "It won't be comfortable but we need his temperature down quickly. He's still in the danger zone and I don't want him fitting again."
"Sorry Doc," Jack stated as he set the mattress to 10 degrees. "Right, can you scoot out the way?" Jack asked Josh. "Just so we can lift him up onto the bed." Josh shuffled back out of the way on his backside. His ankle was getting pretty sore and he was careful. It felt like he'd been trying to help look after the Doctor for ages now and he'd been disconnected from his own painkillers during that time. He was really beginning to feel it. "Mickey?" Jack indicated for Mickey to take the Doctor's legs. As Jack bent down to lift the Doctor the time lord moaned. He cried out as Jack carefully tucked his arms around him and floundered on the floor as if trying to get away. "Sorry, Doc, we need to get you up on the bed."
"Try and be careful of his back," Martha suggested.
"You okay with this Mick?" Jack checked with him and Mickey nodded. "On the count of three?" Jack checked that Mickey had a good hold of him. "One, two, three." Jack instructed. They lifted the Doctor up from the floor between them and as gently as they could laid him down on the cold gel mattress. The Doctor cried out as he was lifted and the pitch of his cry went up as he was let down onto the gel mattress that must have felt like it was made of ice against his raging fever. "I'm sorry, Doc," Jack commented and caressed his head, but the Doctor groaned and even though he was mostly unconscious he tried to draw away from the contact.
"He's really burning up," Jack commented. He and Martha made sure that the oxygen tube wasn't kinked and fed some of it back into the TARDIS since he was no longer on the floor. They checked the drips were okay and Jack put them up onto a hook protruding from the back of the bed so that they could continue to run. He looked back to where Josh was still sitting on the floor. The boy looked very worried, but he also looked very pale. "Is that your bed?" Jack asked him and Josh nodded. "Let me give you a hand back up there."
"I'm okay to help."
"I'm sure that you are. It looks like you've been helping Martha out, but, Mickey and I are here now, and that looks like a temporary cast you've got on your ankle so that means it's new. I doubt the Doctor would be happy if he thought you'd hurt yourself in order to take care of you?"
"Did you take lessons in emotional blackmail from Martha?" Josh asked making Martha smile.
"Is it working?" Jack checked. "You know it's not really blackmail if it's true. The Doctor will be upset and you're not connected to any kind of painkiller sitting down here, so, I expect that even if you have been helping Martha out that you're hurting now. If you're not hurting yet you will be soon if you don't get connected back up. Now we're all here you can help from your bed."
"Okay."
"Good." Jack leant down to him. It looked to him if he tried to help Josh onto his feet so he could hop over to bed that the boy would just faint. "Put your arms around my shoulders," Jack suggested. "Prepare to be swept off your feet."
"14 Jack," Martha repeated.
"You will find, Josh, that I'm not allowed to say anything at all to anyone," Jack informed the teenager. He lifted Josh up from the floor and felt him tense. He got him back on the bed and helped him to put his leg back up into the sling and reattached his drip. There were seven doses of drugs ready to be delivered and Jack pressed the clicker in until it had delivered five of them. He left Josh with two just to use if he needed to. "Thank you for looking after him with Martha," Jack commented. "You get to rest and be moral support now."
"Actually, Josh?" Martha stated. "We didn't get a full blood profile done. I'm going to have to spend some time dealing with the wounds on his back. If I put a blood sample in to the analyser could you have a look at that?" she asked him. "See if you can cross match anything in his blood that shouldn't be there with samples in the TARDIS database? It looks like you were right and there are toxins, but there isn't a big enough sample, and we need to know if it's from the creature, from the infection, or something the Doctor is producing himself. Can you do that for me?"
"Yeah," Josh confirmed. Martha used the cannula to draw a larger sample of blood. She went directly to the side of the sickbay and injected the blood into a tube already seated in the analyser and partially filled with solvents. She set the machine off and it began by swirling and agitating the tube.
"It'll take a few minutes for the results to come through, but they will come through to your monitor and can you keep an eye on his stats as well?"
"He's 14," Jack repeated back to Martha what she'd told him twice. Martha nodded. She put another pack of the chilled saline and let that run.
"We need to get him on his front," Martha suggested. The Doctor moaned as they eased him off his side and onto his front. Martha made sure his head was to the side and his breathing remained clear. Then she got a pair of scissors and removed the Doctor's blood soaked T-shirt to reveal the double layer of thick pads she'd put on his back which were also soaked through with blood.
"Bloody Hell," Jack commented as Martha started to remove the dressings to reveal the wounds she'd spent two hours stitching the day before.
"He's been bleeding for around 18 hours now," Martha commented. "I'd have expected any kind of chemical to have been metabolised hours ago. We've isolated the chemicals that are keeping him from clotting, but something is also stopping him from dealing with those chemicals and I don't know what that is."
"Shit, Doc, that must really hurt," Jack suggested.
"I'm going to have to take all the stitches out and give him another good clean. It looks like this is the seat of the infection," Martha commented. The bottom third of the central slash was the deepest and widest area. There were six inches of it where it was intensely inflamed and was pussy with a yellow and orange gunk.
"And here," Jack commented as he used gauze to wipe away some tacky blood from the Doctor's skin by the top of the slashes across his shoulder. It was definitely inflamed there as well. As Jack wiped some more blood away the Doctor moaned softly.
"He's under too much stress," Martha acknowledged, aware that the Captain had barely touched him and elicited a pain response despite him being to all intents and purposes unconscious. "I'm going to have to anaesthetise him to do this properly," Martha stated. She turned to the Major who she was aware was standing in the corner waiting for an update. "I am going to be involved here for some time, Major. Lieutenant Larson will lead any medical response in the field." She knew the Major would have come in there with the intention of reminding her that her priorities laid with UNIT and the current situation outside, but if UNIT wanted to keep her then they had to accept her loyalties were not just to UNIT but also to the Doctor and to the Captain and the circumstances would dictate where those loyalties were most significant, and, at the moment the Doctor was her priority.
"The young man who escaped from the storm drain yesterday has been located. He has no visible serious injuries however was discovered deceased in his home. He is being transferred here for autopsy," Major Magumbo advised.
"Not the Leeds office?"
"They are not fully equipped to carry out an autopsy of this degree."
"Lieutenant Lawson can make a start and I'll review his findings and take over when the Doctor has been dealt with and is stable. Until this is resolved no personnel are to enter the underground systems and engage with any of those creatures."
"The order is already in place," Major Magumbo confirmed. "We are preparing to drill down into the areas the Doctor identified as being inhabited by the animals to feed in optic cables and cameras. We've got infrared surveillance equipment and geological ultrasound on route in order to survey the area and update the maps of the cave system. We should be able to monitor the animals without entering the system."
"Then, with all due respect Major, you are needed out there to coordinate that, and, I have a feeling this is going to be rather messy." Martha warned her. "And, I know you don't like mess." The Major nodded and left the sickbay. "Last time she observed one of my surgeries she was sick in the sink," Martha informed Josh and winked. "I really need you to be able to work on the bloods without being distracted by what I'm doing here, so we're going to get the TARDIS to put a screen up, okay?"
"I'm not going to be sick."
"I might be." Mickey sighed.