Disclaimer: I don't own what you recognise; the drill should be familiar to you by now
Feedback: I'd appreciate it; I'm trying to do something a bit different here
The Age of Paradox 2.5: Miracle Day
"Right then," the Doctor said, settling back in the car to look at Jack, "what's the situation here, exactly?"
"It's… a bit of a long story," Jack said as he looked back at the Doctor. Despite the abrupt arrival of the police forces at Roald Dahl Plass, the CIA agent responsible- whose name the Doctor had established was Rex Matheson- apparently hadn't been prepared for more than Jack, Gwen and Rhys, so he'd been forced to quickly arrange to 'hire' a small bus that would transport the other three unexpected members of the group. He'd also managed to hire a trailer for transporting the TARDIS, although it had taken a fair argument from the Doctor to convince him to let K9 stay with the rest of the TARDIS crew and Torchwood team in the bus.
"Well," Amy observed as she folded her arms and sat back in the bus, "we've probably got some time until we get to the airport, so you could try and explain it?"
"Starting with why it's such a big deal that you're mortal?" Natalie asked. "I mean, we're all mortal-"
"But Jack Harkness has been a fixed point in time and space since the two of us parted company, which means that he's basically been immortal for over a century," the Doctor clarified.
Amy and Natalie could only stare at Jack in silent incredulity at that revelation, and even K9 seemed to turn slightly from his position on the floor to look at the captain with what could be surprise.
"Immortal?" Amy repeated. "As in… you can't die?"
"I could die, I just wouldn't stay dead," Jack affirmed. "Shoot me, stab me, burn me, whatever you like, and I'd just come back to life a bit later."
"Wow," Natalie said. "I can't decide if that's cool or freaky."
"Yeah, try learning about it when you've dug him out of a collapsed building and you see him come back to life," the overweight man observed. "Oh, Rhys Williams, and this is Anwen; we're Gwen's."
"Amy Pond," Amy shook the other man's hand. "And this is Natalie Kriener; she's the Doctor's daughter."
"Daughter?" The other three looked at Natalie in surprise.
"I was grown from a sample taken from Dad on a colony in the far future," Natalie explained with a nonchalant shrug. "So there's no point asking me who my mother is, because I didn't have one; Dad was it, but then he spent a few years thinking I was dead until we ran into each other on the colony of Uxarieus a couple of months ago."
"Ux-where?" Rhys asked.
"It's in the future and that's not important," the Doctor waved his hand dismissively. "And on the topic of Jack's immortality, that was the result of a long and complicated chain of circumstances that I couldn't duplicate even if I wanted to, so like with Natalie's origin, it's best to keep things simple."
"Such as clarifying how it happened, maybe?" Amy asked. "I'm not asking for specific details, anyway; just need to be clear on how he ended up like that."
"He had to absorb the power of the Time Vortex to deal with a massive alien army, and in the process he brought me back to life after one of the enemy killed me during the fight."
"Ah," Amy said, taking a moment to process Jack's words before she looked at the Doctor in surprise. "That's something you can do?"
"It was an emergency situation where I was absolutely sure that I had exhausted every other option to stop the enemy," the Doctor explained. "If nothing else, I ended up having to regenerate after that because of the cellular damage I sustained in the process…"
"And then you changed your face and kicked me out of the TARDIS just after I got back into the thing," Jack observed.
"I was in the middle of a post-regenerative fit and lashing out to get rid of something my instincts told me was a threat; how often do I have to apologise for that?"
"You saw Jack as a threat?" Gwen asked.
"It's the nature of his immortality," the Doctor explained with an awkward shrug. "As a fixed point in time and space, Jack shouldn't even exist according to my awareness of time and space. I was basically acting on instinct when I brought him back to life and couldn't control what I was doing, and while I was willing to let him stay afterwards on a conscious level, when I regenerated I was operating on instinct…"
"I get it," Jack cut the Doctor off, as he gave the Time Lord a slightly awkward smile. "It's… well, it's been a while since then, and I like to think we worked past the worst of it."
"We're going to need that," the Doctor affirmed, once again looking seriously at the rest of the people in the car. "Whatever's going on here, I have a feeling it's going to take all of us to deal with it."
"Right… so, with our personal history established, what's actually going on here?" Amy asked. "I mean, what's got that Rex guy so worked up that he's dragging us all the way to America to interrogate us, and why does he think we have anything to do with it?"
"A couple of days ago, the human race seems to have lost the ability to die."
"…Well," the Doctor said, after taking a moment to process that revelation in silence. "That was… unexpected."
"We've… lost the ability to die?" Amy repeated in confusion, while Natalie just stared uncertainly at the others. "But… how can you lose the… you're saying we just can't die?"
"There hasn't been a single reported death on Earth for well over twenty-four hours," Gwen nodded in confirmation. "Nobody's died of old age, nobody's died of illness… I mean, my dad's had a stroke and Agent Matheson's apparently been impaled through the chest and they're both still alive when doctors have confirmed they should be dead."
"And I saw a suicide bomber get his head separated from his body and it was still blinking," Jack added.
"Suicide bomber?" the Doctor looked sharply at Jack.
"I didn't make him blow himself up or anything; I just looked at his body when it was taken to the morgue after he set off the bombs," Jack explained, a brief edge to his voice as he looked at the Doctor. "I suggested they cut the last tendon connecting the head and the body to see what would happen, but the body was completely pulverized; he'd have needed to be… well, me if he was going to get better from that."
"And I take it that doesn't apply?"
"From everything I've seen and heard, the only thing that's changed is that nobody can die, but everything else about us as a species is still the same," Jack explained. "Obviously we can't know how aging has been affected by this shift this early on, but from what I can tell, people are still healing at the normal rate after they get hurt, Gwen's dad proves that we're still getting sick… and as I just mentioned, I don't have my old accelerated healing any more."
"Understood," the Doctor nodded. "So why does Agent Matheson think this has anything to do with Torchwood?"
"Because at what appears to be the same moment the last death occurred, someone sent out an e-mail with the word 'Torchwood' to every major intelligence service on the planet," Jack explained. "I was able to delete most of our online data to keep our activities discreet, and I'm fairly sure that we never did anything that might have caused this mess, but Agent Matheson's assistant must have managed to find a few offline files I missed as he was able to find Gwen's house, and now… well, here we are."
"Rhys and I were attacked just as Agent Matheson got there, but we were attacked by someone else in a helicopter before Jack was able to step in and save us," Gwen explained.
"I see…" the Doctor nodded thoughtfully, before he looked between Jack and Gwen. "And this is your team? What happened to… Ianto, wasn't it?"
"Dead," Jack said, an edge to his voice making it clear that the Doctor shouldn't pry any further.
"Right then," the Doctor nodded in a firmer matter as he sat back in his chair and looked over at Jack. "So we've got the human race stuck in a state where they can't die but are apparently able to do everything else, caused by some unknown party that wanted to draw attention to Torchwood for some reason as they kicked it all off; not the best situation I've ever been in, and a few questions that need answered, but this could be a lot worse."
"Hold on; it's bad that we've lost the ability to die?" Rhys looked at the Doctor in surprise. "I mean, Gwen's dad's already been saved by this-"
"After he's had a stroke that should have killed him and he's still ill from it?" Gwen put in.
"Exactly," the Doctor observed. "Whatever caused this, it's still in the first couple of days, which means humanity's still processing the full consequences of what's been done to it, but whether this is a misguided attempt to help the human race or a twisted and very complicated coup, either way it has to be stopped before things get worse."
"In what way?" Natalie asked.
"Hopefully it won't get that bad before we can stop it," the Doctor said, a solemn edge to his voice that told his old companions more than they wanted to know.
However things stood at the moment, if the human race had really lost the ability to die but hadn't acquired any kind of enhanced healing to go with it, the Doctor had some very grim ideas about how the human race was going to cope with its new state, and none of them were good.
I'm not even sure if I should be focused on who caused this or worrying about the consequences if humanity has to deal with this immortality long-term…