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The Age of Paradox 2.5: Miracle Day
Studying the assembled notes he'd made of the situation, the Doctor still wasn't sure what they were exactly dealing with at this point.
Getting away from the airport hadn't been too difficult, although the Doctor was prepared to bet that had been because of the advantage that nobody was expecting Esther to do anything to disrupt the plans of whoever had turned the CIA against her and Rex. Rex had explained that the woman who'd met them at the airport was Doctor Vera Juarez, who had apparently treated him for his injuries immediately after the accident that had left him injured, as well as being the one he'd talked to when treating Jack's poisoning, and it turned out she'd been recruited for a medical board to discuss the response to the Miracle. When Amy had been clearing out Doctor Juarez's personal effects from the car, she'd taken a quick look at some of the woman's papers from that meeting. Fortunately, speed reading had been one of the techniques the Doctor had taught her for cases where they had little time to take in important information, which had included details like that humans were apparently the only species that had been affected by the Miracle and how analysis of severed limbs confirmed that humanity still seemed to be aging even if they couldn't die any more. Amy had noted a few speculative notes about how the healthcare system would have to adapt to cope with the current situation, but there was nothing to confirm how they were going to actually deal with humanity's new 'immortality' long-term.
The Doctor had a few speculations of his own about how this immortality would affect diseases and germs on a long-term basis, but he'd waited to consider the situation in more detail until they'd abandoned Vera's car after finding a second-hand car place with a few SUVs on display. The Doctor had managed to withdraw a few thousand pounds from his old accounts, grateful that he'd left the accounts open even after he and Amy had moved on from Leadworth, that allowed them to buy a suitably-sized car straight away while Rex used his own experience to convince the salesman to skip most of the paperwork. They'd eventually managed to make their way to an old American safehouse Jack had arranged during some past mission for Torchwood, and the Doctor and Esther had set up a couple of laptops to carry out more research. In the meantime, Amy had gone with Rex in the car to have a talk with the man who seemed to be behind sabotaging Rex's contacts in the CIA, and Gwen and Natalie had gone out to try and find food, leaving Jack to work on helping them connect K9 to the network to run the proper search.
"You're sure that's… safe?" Esther looked uncertainly at K9 even as she kept tapping at her keyboard. "I mean, couldn't this… I mean, I've seen the Terminator movies…"
"K9 is nothing like Skynet, I promise, Esther," the Doctor smiled at the young woman as Jack connected the next set of cables to K9's side. "This is just to help him carry out a more detailed search; we're not going to have any kind of artificial intelligence coups on top of everything else."
"On that topic, nothing against K9, but why are we adapting him like this?" Jack asked as he stepped back from the robot dog. "Didn't you mention having an independent friend with an advanced computer back home?"
"True, but Sarah's likely got other things to deal with, and at this point it's probably best to let someone else stay available in case Earth has… other matters to worry about while we're busy tackling this mess," the Doctor said, before he turned his focus back to the computer screens. "Anyway, it doesn't look like we're going to have much luck doing things this way; the most obvious approach was morphic fields suspending the human race, but that turns up too many options and no definite way to narrow it down right now."
"And it's got to be more than that, anyway," Jack observed. "I mean, we all saw that woman back at the airport; even if the broken neck didn't kill her, she should have been paralysed in that state, but she couldn't even be unconscious."
"True," the Doctor nodded thoughtfully. "It's as though something is making people stay alive, like that man you mentioned who was still conscious even after he blew himself up… actually, did Agent Matheson say if he ever lost consciousness during his accident?"
The moment Rex held his gun against the fat man's head, Amy knew that this had been a bad idea. She'd come along with the man because she didn't think it was a good idea for any of them to be on their own right now, and it wasn't like she had much of a life to get 'compromised' when she was travelling with the Doctor, but she didn't want to see her new ally shoot someone in the head.
"Who told you to set me up?" her new CIA acquaintance said as he glared at the other man, who was wearing a dressing-gown and urgently pleading for Rex to put the gun down. "Because everywhere I turn the whole CIA has been poisoned against me, by you. Now who told you to do it?"
"I don't-" the fat man began.
"I would really recommend you not try to tell us you don't know what he's talking about," Amy cut the man off with a cool glare, hoping that following the Doctor's example would be enough to make up for the fact that she was so young. "If nothing else, it's insulting to all of us to think that we don't know you'd be lying anyway."
"Wh-who-?"
"My name is not important," Amy cut the fat man off (that was suitably dramatic, right?). "What is important is that this man spent some time on the way over here wondering just what would happen if he shot you in the head in a world where it's literally impossible for you to die of anything, so maybe start talking unless you want a bullet lodged in the part of your brain that's responsible for bladder control?"
Amy didn't like even pretending to be this ruthless, but hopefully she wouldn't have to actually be this ruthless and let Rex do it. She didn't believe that Rex Matheson was a bad person, but it was becoming increasingly clear that he was set in his way of doing things and didn't fully appreciate the scale of what they were dealing with right now.
"I-I don't know who they are," Friedkin protested as Rex held the gun against his head, sobbing in an embarrassing manner. "I never did. They just, they just paid me over the years. They've been there for decades and I can't- couldn't stop them; I mean, it's too late. Look, they-they've only ever contacted me on one telephone number."
"Which is?" Amy asked, as she glanced at her watch. Based on the Doctor's stories about his own experience dealing with more conventional law enforcement during larger problems, she was fairly sure that they would have some time before anyone responded to whatever alarms had been tripped when they broke in, but they still couldn't afford to wait too long…
"Th-they only contact me," Friedkin said, pulling out a red flip-phone and passing it to Amy. "They contact me through that. But listen, Rex, you won't find them. I never did. They're everywhere. They know everything."
"They don't know everything," Amy said firmly, glaring at the man in contempt. "For one thing, they don't know who they're up against now."
"And right now," Rex said bitterly, "you should just worry about going deaf."
Amy didn't have time to protest before Rex had fired the gun just beside the fat man's ear, leaving Friedkin screaming in pain as Rex ran from the house and back to the car.
Right now, they had managed to retrieve their first potential lead on whoever was behind this mess, so at least they had come away with more than they'd had at the start. As she pocketed the phone, Amy made a note to have a talk with the Doctor once they got home and hope that they could get Rex to 'calm down' before he did anything they'd all regret…
"We got it," Rex said, waving the phone as he walked back into their small 'base'. "The phone Friedkin was using to talk with whoever paid him off."
"Nice job," the Doctor nodded at Rex before he glanced over at Amy. "Did it go well?"
"Apart from one thing," Amy said, slapping Rex sharply on the left ear, nodding in satisfaction as he winced and clutched his head. "Don't do that again."
"What-?" Rex looked at her.
"I didn't say anything at the time because the priority was to get away, but I thought the Doctor made it clear that we don't shoot people?"
"I didn't shoot him-!"
"No, you just fired off your gun beside the man's ear and left him temporarily deaf," Amy clarified. "I could tolerate you knocking him out so he doesn't raise the alarm until we've gotten away, but what you did was pointless temporary torture."
"She's right." The Doctor stood up, looking coolly at the CIA agent. "Like I told you at the airport, you do things our way or-"
"And who said I was taking orders from-?" Rex began.
"Because we all are," Jack interrupted, looking at Rex in the cold, direct tone that reinforced just what Jack could become if he dropped the flirtatious teasing. "Like I said earlier, he's the Doctor; he's the best there is at what he does, and what he does is save the world."
"This guy?" Rex waved a hand at the Doctor. "He's barely graduated-"
"I'm older than I look," the Doctor cut Rex off, arms folded to stare coolly at the CIA agent with the kind of intense stare that reinforced his great age. "You can doubt me if you want, Agent Rex Matheson, but we've already established that basically every bridge you had in the CIA has been burnt, and we're dealing with a situation that you have no experience with."
"And you do?"
"I've been dealing with everything from a madman in the attic to a pan-dimensional being trying to remake existence, and I'm still here," the Doctor countered. "I will admit that I'm not used to something that makes the human race the most useless kind of immortal I've ever encountered, but give me time and whoever's behind this will regret they messed with the human race."
"…Who are you?" Rex looked at the Doctor.
"I'm the Doctor," the Doctor replied. "That's all you need to know right now."
"Uh, guys?" Esther raised an awkward hand. "Not meaning to interrupt… this, but I've been trying to track Friedkin's online activity from my old link to the CIA network, and I'm hitting a vine when I try to trace that number."
"A vine?" Amy asked.
"A vine is when you trace a number back but the trail branches out, then it branches out again and again," Rex explained, apparently grateful to be back on a topic that he knew something about.
"Piggyback those secondary numbers spreading out almost exponentially. So instead of tracing one number you're chasing five hundred thousand."
"In other words, we're not likely to get anything that way," Jack shook his head before he looked at the Doctor. "Unless K9-?"
"Negative," K9 cut in. "I am not designed to interface with the telephone network in that manner, and we must assume that our opposition retain the ability to track such searches."
"Worth checking, anyway," the former immortal shrugged.
"What's worth checking?" Gwen asked as she and Natalie walked into the room.
"A lead that won't work out," Amy said as she took a bag from the blonde solider.
"Anything from Rhys?" the Welsh woman asked.
"Computer records confirm that Rhys Williams and Anwen Williams have been moved to an undisclosed safehouse in the custody of Sergeant Andrew Davidson," K9 put in. "No contact details have been provided, but last reports indicated that all concerned parties were safe and secure."
"Right, well, no offence, doggie, but that's my family, so hurry it up and find a contact, OK?" Gwen said, before she turned back to the shopping bags and began to distribute their contents. "Right then, here we go; brand new mobiles for everyone, courtesy of Jack and the Doctor. You're sure that's all right? I mean, is there enough in the accounts?"
"The Doctor and I have good eyes for investments; we'll be fine," Jack nodded reassuringly at her.
"Food was a bit more of a problem," Natalie said apologetically, holding up her own bags. "With people panicking about the Miracle, we had to grab snacks at the… gas station, I think is the term over here?"
"It should keep us going for the moment," the Doctor smiled at his daughter.
"It's getting bloody mental out there," Gwen shook her head in exasperation. "Like Natalie said, some TV show said that the Miracle was a virus, and then some website said it was the plague, so they all run to the shops and they clear the shelves. Oh, and there's this new cult out on the street, call themselves the Soulless."
"Soulless?" the Doctor repeated.
"These guys," Gwen said, passing the Time Lord a white mask with a downturned black mouth and dark eyes with a tear coming from the left eye. "Apparently, everlasting life has robbed mankind of their souls."
"Humans," the Doctor shook his head in exasperation as he tossed the mask to one side, even as he gave a brief smile at Gwen.
"Oh, and they're out of painkillers," Gwen added, shooting a brief glare over at Rex. "So sorry, but you're just going to have to keep dealing on your own."
"Maybe that Danes git had a good point…" Rex muttered as he sat down in a corner of the room.
"Danes?" Amy asked. "That guy talking about free drugs on the radio?"
"You're seriously considering that Oswald Danes had a point?" Esther looked at Rex with new incredulity.
"For those of us who weren't staying up-to-date with the news, who is Oswald Danes?" Natalie asked.
"Convicted murderer and paedophile sentenced to death on Miracle Day," Rex said with a bitter edge. "He was a teacher until he killed one of his twelve-year-old students."
"Ah," Amy said.
"In other words, not a very nice man?" Natalie asked.
"When he was asked about his victim, he said that she just didn't run fast enough," Esther responded with a bitter edge.
"…That is sick," Natalie said, her expression twisting with the kind of cold contempt the Doctor had never seen from her before.
"Could you clarify what this Danes chap has to do with anything?" the Doctor looked curiously at the two Americans.
"Oswald Danes was meant to be executed at pretty much the moment when the Miracle started to affect things," Esther explained. "After his execution failed, he was able to use some warped legal argument to get himself released on the grounds that he couldn't be tried and convicted for the same crime twice and he'd be a victim of cruel and unusual punishment if they tried to do anything else to him after his execution didn't work out…"
"And there lies the problem," the Doctor noted. "I'm not a fan of the death penalty per se, but society as a whole needs death as an option for so many things that we would otherwise take for granted; I take it Danes is doing more than just enjoying his freedom if you're bringing him up as an example of the problems?"
"He made an appearance on live TV to talk about the implications of the current situation and claim that he was 'sorry' about everything he'd done," Esther said, a bitter edge to her voice. "I'm not sure how many people believe it and how many were just going along with it, but either way… just because he can't kill anyone now doesn't mean he should just be… allowed out."
"He survives a legal execution and now he's a media personality?" Amy looked at Esther in surprise.
"Humanity loves controversy," Jack observed solemnly. "There's a reason Hitler and Mandela made such an interesting impression."
"You're seriously comparing Hitler to Nelson Mandela?" Amy looked incredulously at Jack.
"Or comparing either of them to this guy?" Gwen added. "They were basically arrested for making a political stand; even Hitler didn't actually rape anyone-!"
"Hey, I didn't like Hitler any more than anyone else, and I'm definitely not implying that Mandela's crimes can be compared to what Danes did, but you have to admit that them both going from convicted criminal to head of their respective governments is impressive," Jack countered. "Point is that there's precedent; we like to believe that the prison system makes an impression, even if it doesn't always work out."
"Even for a child-killing rapist?" Gwen looked at Jack in disgust.
"I said the principle had precedent, I never said I agreed with it in this case," Jack corrected, even as he looked apologetically at Gwen. "The point is that we want to believe prison can change people; it's just that some people can't be changed."
"Well, whatever your views on prisons reforming people, Danes has certainly been milking the attention," Esther put in. "Some of his TV appearances made for an interesting few debates back in the office before everything started to go against us; he started crying about his victim at one point, and people were actually polarised on whether he was being sincere or not."
"Interesting," the Doctor mused. "Well, as unpleasant as the man might be, he does present us with another avenue of investigation to consider…"
"You think it's worth talking to Danes?" Rex asked.
"Considering he seems to be the 'face' of the Miracle, it's worth thinking about at least, but we should also look into who else might be profiting from this. Danes's execution occurring at the right moment could just be a coincidence that someone's decided to use for the symbolic value, but there have to be other people who are getting some kind of benefit from this situation…"
"Tracing the money, huh?" Rex smiled slightly at the Doctor. "Could work…"
"So glad it meets with your approval," Amy muttered as she glared briefly at the agent.
"And that reminds me," the Doctor said, taking one of the phones and standing up from his laptop, "I have a call to make to an old friend; just give me a moment."
"You're 'calling an old friend' at a time like this?" Rex glared at the Doctor even as the Time Lord took out the sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the back of the phone. "We're trying to be discreet-"
"And I am calling a secure line on an equally-secure phone to talk to a man who has important connections with the United Nations and experience in dealing with the bizarre," the Doctor interrupted. Not giving Rex time to respond, he walked out of the apartment and headed up the stairs to the building roof, doing some quick modifications with his sonic screwdriver. The phone line itself should be secure, but a part of him didn't feel like making this call in front of Rex Matheson just yet…
"Doctor?"
"Brigadier?" the Doctor smiled in response. "Should I ask how you knew?"
"A call from an unknown number to my secure personal line during a truly unconventional social upheaval; who else would it be?" Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart replied with a warm smile clear even in his voice. "Although I will confess to some curiosity about why you chose to call rather than visit…"
"I'm currently stuck in America and the TARDIS has been confiscated by the CIA."
"I had heard reports, but I wasn't sure of their accuracy," the Brigadier mused regretfully. "Not Control, I assume?"
"I considered that, but he would have done something to let me know that he had the old girl by now if he was part of this," the Doctor confirmed. "Anyway, I'm doing what I can to investigate the situation, but I wanted to check with you to see if UNIT had anything I should know about?"
"Fortunately for you, my consultant status has been reactivated already, Doctor," the Brigadier said, with that warm exasperation he always seemed to assume when the Doctor's more stubborn incarnations acted as though he was still an active member of UNIT (in hindsight, the Doctor sometimes worried if he'd pushed the Brigadier too far during that mess with the Fourth Reich when he'd been wearing that terrible coat). "Unfortunately, I don't have any obvious answers for you yet; our scientists are analysing what we can, but there is nothing to indicate what could have caused such a massive change, or any indication of how to undo it."
"I take it that means UNIT scientists have also noted the reports of how the immortal are still aging?"
"Among other things," the Brigadier confirmed. "There is some speculation that cancer has ceased to be an issue, which would at least be some kind of good news, but to date we haven't found any test subjects willing to volunteer for those experiments."
"Quite," the Doctor mused. "Anyway, getting back to the immediate issue, is it worth asking for help over here, or would that be pushing my luck?"
"Pushing your luck," the Brigadier said grimly. "I was keeping an eye out for reports of your presence as soon as the Miracle was reported, but when it was announced that you had been extradited by the CIA… well, as you recall from our past dealings with them, the political situation is a delicate matter."
"I understood that when neither of you could admit that aliens were real, but how does that apply to this?"
"Because it would mean admitting that you're real, Doctor."
"Ah," the Doctor nodded in new understanding. "Ask UNIT to step in and demand that I be returned to you and that raises all kinds of questions about why I was arrested in the first place?"
"If we had managed to get to you first, it might have been possible to put you in a position to coordinate our response to the situation, but as it stands… well, this is a bit trickier," the Brigadier explained. "I'll see what I can do to keep you informed if we find anything useful, but for the moment, you should consider yourself on your own."
"Understood," the Doctor replied with a brief smile. "For what it's worth, I've got a few leads already; it just would have been good to have some other assets available."
"I assume I can call you back on this number if I hear anything useful?"
"And I'll do the same," the Doctor responded, before he ended the call.
It was a pity that the Brigadier hadn't been able to offer more help, but his old friend had made it clear that he'd be available if he was needed, which at least gave them a potential ally to call on.
Of course, that just made it more important for the Doctor to confirm who and what they were up against so that it would be easier to justify UNIT's more active involvement. This might be an unusual situation, but UNIT's remit had become a bit narrower since the days when they could get called in on nothing more than unusual events at a nuclear facility; without any idea of the cause or any theory as to a possible solution, certain parties could argue this was nothing more than a really bizarre twist in human evolution…