Chapter 23

Terminations

Tyler Mansion.

Wednesday, 9th October 2026.

08:00.

Vrwoorp . . . Vrwoorp . . . Vrwiirp . . . Vrwiirp . . .

The TARDIS slowly materialised in Pete and Jackie's living room to the sound of the universe breathing. The right hand door opened inwards, and Juleshka and Jason stepped into the room. Jackie and Alice were sitting on the sofa, where they were playing with Alice's daughter, Lillie. Alistair, the house manager, was on duty, standing by the sofa. Jackie had told him to have a seat, but he took his position as house manager seriously, and politely declined the offer. Jackie had just fondly rolled her eyes at him.

'Hi Grandma, Uncle Alistair, Auntie Alice, Lillie,' Juleshka and Jason called out. They all called back their greetings.

'Mornin' Mum,' Rose called as she stepped out in her dress uniform. She went over to Alistair and kissed him on the cheek. 'Thanks for takin' the kids in this mornin'. It's a big help.'

'It's my pleasure,' he told her.

John stepped out as Pete came in through the door 'Morning everyone,' Pete said, and got a chorus of greetings.

'I know you're goin' in early this mornin',' Jackie said. 'But have ya got time for a cuppa?'

Rose looked over her shoulder at the TARDIS. 'We've got a time machine, and we're gonna arrive at Torchwood before we've left here, so why not? That'd be lovely Mum, thanks.'

Alistair used his ear-comms to call for a pot of tea.

'Has Eyulf made his own way to school then?' Jackie asked.

'Yeah. He meets up with his friends on the corner, and they use Westbourne Park Passage to cut between the houses and over the train tracks. It takes them right to the back of the school, and it only takes ten minutes,' Rose told her.

'To be honest,' John said. 'I think he prefers to walk with his mates rather than me taking him. I'll see what he says about it.'

'So are you going in early for the Dunwich people?' Pete asked. 'I've been keeping up with the case on the bulletin boards.'

Being the former director of the institute, Pete's home office was still Torchwood enabled, and he liked to keep an eye on the old establishment.

'That's right Pete. We're going to try and save all the alien babies if we can,' John replied.

'Well how ya gonna do that then?' Jackie asked, knowing that the babies were only a few weeks old.

'Oh Mum. John's had a brilliant idea,' Rose said proudly. 'He was up most of the night buildin' the equipment.'

'Well, hardly all night,' John said. 'It took a couple of "TARDIS" days to modify the CT scanner, and then I grabbed forty winks before I came back a few hours later. And to answer your question Jackie, I'm going to reverse the procedure used to impregnate the women in the first place . . . or something similar.'

Jenny the maid brought in the tea tray, and they all had a quick cup of tea before John, Rose and Alice prepared to leave. They kissed their children, said their goodbyes, and entered the TARDIS.

Outpatients Department.

Torchwood Hospital Wing.

07:45.

The TARDIS materialised in a treatment room, fifteen minutes before it was due to leave the mansion. Both doors opened inwards and Rose and Alice stepped out.

'D'ya need a hand with that?' Rose asked, as John slowly wheeled out a doughnut shaped piece of equipment which just cleared the top of the door frame.

'No. It's okay Love. I can manage. You get yourself down to Special Operations for the briefing,' John replied.

She kissed him on the lips. 'Mmmm. Okay. See ya later.'

'Thanks for the lift,' Alice said as she went with Rose.

'No problem,' he called after them.

Alice looked at her wristwatch as they walked past the reception desk, and laughed. 'I can't believe you haven't even arrived at the Mansion yet.'

Rose gave her a lopsided smile. 'Try not to think about it too much. It'll do yer head in.'

John positioned the modified portable CT scanner in the treatment room and then wheeled out the table mount, which he clamped to the front of the scanner. He then brought out something the size of a dustbin, but with thicker walls, and all sorts of wires, lights and knobs.

'An xray scanner is a bit old fashioned for this place isn't it?' Marla asked as she entered the room. She'd agreed to start her shift early to help John set up.

'It would be if there was still an xray tube inside it,' John said with a grin.

'Why? What's inside it now?'

'A dematerialisation module.'

'Oh, right. And what are you thinking of doing with that then?'

'Well, as it takes an object, maps the position of every atom, converts it to energy and holds it in a pattern buffer,' John started to explain. 'I can transmit that energy to another location that has a materialisation unit . . .' He pointed at the high tech, white dustbin. 'That thing there . . . And reconstruct the object,' he finished, with an open mouthed smile.

'It's a teleport,' Marla realised.

'It's a teleport,' he confirmed. 'Although, it's a bit more focussed than your standard run of the mill teleport.'

'Only you could call a teleportation device "run of the mill". So how and why is it more focussed?'

'Well, the dematerialisation module will be rotating, just like a CT scanner when its acquiring the raw data for the image. Anything at the axis of rotation can be targeted for dematerialisation.'

'What. So you can teleport just a part of an object?' Marla asked, hoping she'd understood it correctly.

'Exactly! Now, I've just got to get it all powered up and run some calibration tests and we'll be ready.'

'Ready for what?'

The first ten patients from Dunwich, along with their partners, families or friends, had arrived in a coach which had been chartered by Torchwood for the day. Doctor Willers and the Reverend Leebody had come with them as moral support and friendly faces which they knew and trusted. They walked into the reception and were met by John, and a number of health care assistants.

'Good morning everyone and welcome to Torchwood,' John said. 'Charles. Hubert, good to see you again. Some of you already know who I am. It's John Smith, for those of you who don't . . . We're going up to the Outpatients Department waiting room in a moment where we can grab a tea or coffee. Alice DiMaggio will have a chat with you and let you know what we're going to be doing today.'

He led the way to the short, wide corridor where the bank of eight lifts faced each other. John and the assistants divided the group into four of the lifts and took them up to the second floor. On the second floor, they led them through the sliding glass door, past the reception area and into the spacious Outpatients Department waiting room. The Outpatients Department had been handed over to the treatment of the Dunwich patients. Regular clinics had been moved to another day so that the whole day could be dedicated to those patients.

When everyone had a cup of tea or coffee, and had taken a seat, Alice stood up.

'Hello everyone. I don't know if you remember me from the meeting yesterday. My name is Alice, and I'd like to give you a run down on what we hope to do today. We are seeing you all in alphabetical order, and I'll take you to a consulting room, either privately or as a family, and ask you some questions so that we are certain you understand the options available to you. Please feel free to ask any questions. We'll do our best to answer them as best we can.'

Margaret Haxby raised her hand, and Alice acknowledged her. 'Yes. Margaret isn't it?'

'That's right, yes. I wanted to ask, will I be able to have my termination today?'

'Yes. If, after you've had your consultation you still want to go ahead, then Doctor Jones will perform a preparatory scan, and Doctor Smith will remove the foetus,' Alice explained.

There were a number of other questions, which Alice explained would be answered during the consultations. 'So, we might as well make a start. I've got Elizabeth Brant at the top of the list.'

A woman in her late thirties stood up, along with a man Alice presumed was Mister Brant by the way she was gripping his hand.

'Please don't look so worried. Nothing today is going to hurt. There's no injections or internal examinations of any kind.' She led the couple to the consulting room and sat them down.

'So how are you feeling Elizabeth?' Alice started.

'Honestly. After that demonstration in the village hall yesterday, I'm terrified,' she replied.

'That's understandable; although Doctor Smith has eliminated that particular threat.'

Alice went on to ask questions which would assess her emotional and mental state, and how receptive she would be to being a surrogate in certain situations. After the consultation, Alice handed them over to Marla and John, for the next part of the process.

'Hello,' Marla said, as an assistant led the couple into the treatment room. 'Don't worry about all the equipment, it looks worse than it is.'

'Hi,' John said. 'It's mainly scanning equipment.'

'What, like an ultrasound?' Mr Brant asked.

'Similar, yes. But a lot more detailed,' John told him.

'So if you'd like to lie down on the couch here Elizabeth, I'll just do a preliminary scan of your pelvis,' Marla said.

Elizabeth lay on the comfortable examination couch, and Marla reached for a flat screen monitor on a telescopic arm, which had two handles either side of the screen.

'Do you want to see the scan, or would you rather we just got on with it?' Marla asked.

'I don't want to see it,' Elizabeth told her.

'Do you mind if I have a look Love?' Mr Brant asked. 'I just want to see what an alien looks like. Y'know, so I can try and make sense of all this.'

Elizabeth squeezed his hand. She didn't mind, because it would all be over soon. 'Of course Love.'

Marla moved the flat screen over Elizabeth's pelvis, and her insides were displayed there, as though they were looking through a window in her skin and muscles. The image was relayed to a screen where her husband could watch it. Various structures within the body were highlighted in different colours.

'That's the uterus, or womb,' Marla explained. 'That purple patch is the placenta, the pink string is the umbilical cord, and that green kidney bean, is the foetus.'

She put an "area of interest" cursor over the foetus and pressed a button on the screen. A list of information appeared on the left hand side of the image.

"Definitely alien DNA,' Marla said. 'Now, I have to ask you, are you both sure that you want us to remove the foetus?'

'Alice said it won't be harmed, is that right?' Elizabeth asked.

'Absolutely,' John assured her.

'Then yes. I'd prefer not to have it inside me.'

'If you'd like to come and lie on this table then,' John said, indicating the CT table. 'We can grant your wish.'

She lay on the table, and John moved her into the "doughnut" feet first. He used the scan data to centre the rotating beam over the uterus. He then carefully adjusted the volume of the zone of dematerialisation until only the placenta, umbilical cord, foetus and amniotic fluid where inside it.

He pressed the intercom button on the control panel. 'Chrissie? Are you ready?'

['We're all ready here John,'] Chrissie Anderson, the Senior Technical Operations Officer replied.

'Okay. Transmitting now.' He pressed the teleport button, and after a few seconds, the apparatus started to wind down.

In the medical ward, Chrissie had placed one of the incubators into the bin-like teleport receiver, and had waited for John to contact her to tell her he was transmitting the first foetus. When he had pressed the transmit button, she briefly saw a white light within the flask. After that, the monitoring equipment sprang to life. The display was showing temperature, oxygen saturation, and various other vital signs which showed that the foetus was alive and well.

'Well I'll be damned. It actually worked,' Chrissie said to herself. She pressed the intercom button. 'Package received alive and well.'

['Yes!'] she heard John exclaim.

Back in the treatment room, John turned from the intercom to face Elizabeth. 'There we are then. It's all over. You can have your life back.'

Elizabeth reached for his hand. 'That's just what it feels like. Thank you SO much . . . And the baby's all right? I mean, I don't wish it any harm. It wasn't their fault that they ended up in my womb, was it?'

'No it wasn't,' John agreed. 'But thanks to your cooperation, I think we've got a good result.'

'Definitely,' Mr Brant said, shaking John's hand. 'What'll happen to it now?'

'Well, at eight weeks gestation, I'll perform a harmless procedure which will stop a repetition of what happened in the village hall yesterday, and at forty weeks it can be taken out of the incubator and put up for adoption. There'll be some childless couple who will be glad of the chance to bring up a child.'

'Even an alien one?' Mr Brant asked.

'No different from any mixed race, multicultural family in my book,' John said.

'You must think I'm a terrible person to do this to an innocent baby,' Elizabeth said guiltily.

'Not at all,' John reassured her. 'That's why you had that chat with Alice earlier. You were both the victims in this, and this way, everybody wins.'

'Yes. I suppose you're right.'

'Course I'm right . . . I'm the Doctor.'

The rest of the day went smoothly, as they worked their way down the list of patients. Margaret Haxby and her partner Diana Dawson, were dispassionate, and showed no emotion as they went through the procedure. John was convinced that they didn't care if the babies lived or died during the removal process. They just wanted rid.

Young Mary Histon, the thirteen year old girl, was there with her parents, and was fascinated by the whole process. There had never been any doubt that hers was a result of alien implantation, and so she looked at it from a practical point of view, as if she were a zoologist looking at a newly discovered parasite.

There were a couple of women, who having heard Alice reassure them that John could make them harmless, had decided to keep the babies. One couple had been trying for years and had tried numerous fertility treatments without success, so this really was a gift from the gods.

The other woman was just one of those amazingly charitable people. She had told Alice that if the aliens who did this were so desperate for their children to live that they would put them in the wombs of total strangers, then she would show them pity and help them.

On the end of the list, were the Zellaby's, and because both mother and daughter were affected, Alice was going to see them together. However, Angela asked if they could be seen separately. The reason was, Angela couldn't be sure that the baby wasn't theirs.

'Good Lord. Is there a chance that there's still lead in the old pencil?' Gordon Zellaby had asked jokingly.

After their daughter, Ferrelyn had been through the procedure, and had the alien removed, it was her mother's turn. The results of the preparatory scan were no joke. Marla looked at the results on the flat screen scanner.

'Well. I hope this is good news for you,' she said. 'The babies DNA is human. Congratulations. You're having a baby.'

They went back to the waiting room to find Ferrelyn, and after telling her the news, they announced it to the whole room. There were cheers and tears, congratulations, and plenty of back slapping.

Rose had finished her shift at 16:00 and handed over the Watch to the next shift. She sensed that John had also finished, and went down a floor to the Hospital Wing to find him. She found him with Marla in the treatment room, drinking mugs of tea.

'Busy day?' she asked them.

'Yeah,' Marla said with a smile.

John gave her a beaming smile. 'Yeah, but everyone won . . . Everybody won Rose.'

'That's the third time now,' Rose told him, matching his smile. She loved it when he had the satisfaction of saving everybody.

'Third time for what?' Marla asked.

'Third time he got to play Father Christmas,' Rose said with a laugh. She saw Marla's puzzled look. 'Once in the old universe, he managed to work out how to save a hospital full of gas mask wearin' zombies . . . Don't ask. And then back in 2016, we saved all those people who were affected by the zombie bug.'

'Oh, I remember that,' Marla said. 'Wasn't that when you were on Parkinson?'

'Yeah,' John nodded. 'Although it was the TARDIS who saved the people that time.'

'Well this time, it was all you Love,' Rose said, kissing him on the lips.

'Let's not be too premature counting. We've got to save the babies on all the other planets yet,' he reminded her.

'Yeah, but we know we do that because the records in the archives changed,' Rose said.

Marla frowned. 'Hang on. Are you telling me that you are going back in time to save all the other babies on all the other planets?'

'Well, yeah,' John said as though she'd dribbled down her scrubs. 'We've got a time machine . . . Keep up.'

'So why didn't you go back in time and stop those women from Dunwich getting impregnated,' Marla asked. 'Or Zoriel from being . . . Ah.' She'd seen the flaw in her argument. 'Zoriel is a living, breathing, healthy young boy. If you'd gone back in time, he'd never have existed. It would be like killing him.'

'Now yer gettin' it,' Rose said with a grin.

'A temporal paradox, usually known as the grandfather paradox,' John explained. 'You see, when we went to Zoriel's planet and kidnapped him . . .'

'Rescued him,' Rose corrected.

'Okay. Rescued him. When we did that, he became part of our time line, so we had to deal with the problem in our time line; in our present.'

'Oh, I get it,' Marla said. 'You haven't met all those other babies out there yet, so you can jump in and save them in their present, which is our past.'

John gave her an open mouthed grin. 'Oh Martha Jones. I knew you were good.'

'But if you save them in the past and change our history, how do you know? Because you said the records changed.'

'Another good question,' John said. 'I remember having a similar conversation with you in the old universe, when we met Shakespeare . . .'

'What? Other me met Shakespeare? What was he like?'

'He fancied you,' John told her with a cheeky smile. 'Kept trying to chat you up with sonnets. Anyway where was I? Oh yeah, when you have a time machine, you tend to be outside of events that you influence.'

'A bit like watchin' life as a DVD and havin' the remote to jump from scene to scene,' Rose added, not realising that she'd used that analogy before. Once, in an altered timeline, she'd explained time travel to someone called Rory, who had been travelling with the Doctor.

'Ooh. Nice analogy,' John said.

'Oh right. I get it now,' Marla said. 'The TARDIS is your DVD remote.'

John picked up the analogy. 'That's right. Our timeline is here, all around us,' he said, waving his arms around. 'And everyone else's that we haven't met yet, is on the DVD.'

Marla slowly shook her in wonder. 'Unbelievable.'