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
The Doctor might not like the current Categories, but he had to appreciate the speed at which the new system was currently operating. Once the new team had agreed that Rex was going to be sent into the camp, it had only been a few minutes after they placed the call that an ambulance had pulled up to take Rex away. Jack had played the part of 'concerned boyfriend' for no more obvious reason than a chance to have a bit of fun amid the current chaos, but once he was back in the apartment his attention was immediately on Vera as she shrugged on her coat and picked up a bag.
"What are you doing?" he asked, looking firmly at the doctor who he now saw had changed out of the loose dress she was wearing earlier into a fancy blouse and dark brown trousers.
"Following Rex," Vera replied, her tone just as resolute as his. "I phoned Washington and pulled a few strings; I've got observer status."
"I thought we sent Rex in for that?" Natalie looked inquiringly at her.
"I was on the panels that set those things up; I need to see what these camps are doing," Vera said firmly as she looked between Jack and the Doctor. "You can't talk me out of this… whichever of you's in charge of your little operation."
"Both of us and neither of us; it depends on who works best to give the relevant orders," the Doctor said, before he grabbed his jacket and shrugged it on. "And on the topic of being in charge, Doctor Juarez, you should get used to having an assistant."
"An assis- you?" Vera looked at the Doctor incredulously.
"Under 'John Smith'?" Jack looked pointedly at the Doctor.
"Of course not," the Doctor waved his hand dismissively. "No, for something like this, I think… 'Ian Taylor' will be a better call."
"Ian Taylor?" Vera shot a curious look at the Doctor. "Where did you come up with that?"
"Old friends of mine."
"Like Fitz?" Natalie smiled at her father.
"Older," the Doctor smiled. "Ian and Steven… in their own way, they helped me realise what I had to be when I started doing what I do."
He'd thought about dropping in on Ian and Barbara during his time in Leadworth, but it had never seemed like it would truly be safe to do that without drawing the Faction's attention back to them, and when Steven's new home was so far in the future, the less he did to attract the Faction's attention there the better as far as he was concerned…
"OK," Esther put in, the Doctor shaking off his train of thought as he realised that she was talking to Jack. "The point is, Vera, the Doctor and I should be able to cover all the angles inside the camp, while you and Natalie stay safe out here to do a bit of… research?"
"She has a point, Jack," the Doctor looked at his friend with an apologetic shrug. "I appreciate you wanting to do something, but right now the only thing we know for sure about these people is that they know who you are. Add in the fact that you're currently the last known person on this planet who can actually die…"
"He's right," Esther grinned, leaning over to place a kiss on Jack's cheek. "You're too connected and too fragile, mortal man."
"All I get is a kiss?" Jack replied, with the teasing expression the Doctor had long learnt meant Jack was just flirting because he was Jack rather than any serious interest.
"Look after yourself," Esther said with a more serious manner. "You're unique; you're Category Jack, so don't go getting into trouble."
"I'll make sure of that," Natalie put in, looking warningly over at Jack. "Be careful, Captain."
"As crystal," the former immortal nodded briskly at her. "So long as you're not going to put me on lockdown or anything like that…"
When she, Vera and the Doctor drew up next to the overflow camp, Esther couldn't stop herself smiling slightly at the thought that this was what her life had come to. She had spent years just working as an analyst for the CIA, never expecting to get closer to the action than the reports she wrote up for Rex and other agents in the aftermath, and now she was about to infiltrate what basically amounted to a death camp in the middle of a situation nobody could understand, working with at least two people who were making impossible claims she wasn't sure how seriously to take…
"And remember," she looked over at Vera, "you don't know me."
"And if we have to speak while we're in there, call me Doctor Taylor," the Doctor added with a smile.
"Right…" the doctor said tentatively, before she looked over at Esther. "Be careful out there."
With those final words, Esther left the car and walked up to the checkpoint, hearing the soldiers standing there saying something about showing ID. Once again relieved that she was just infiltrating the camp rather than smuggling anything inside it, Esther joined the queue for the checkpoint. She was briefly tense when her ID was checked and her bag searched, despite the Doctor and Jack's assurances that the new documents would stand up to scrutiny, but she was soon inside the camp and being led to her 'new' office. Most of the camp just seemed to consist of a mass of tents in military-green, with a few army trucks scattered around, but she could see at least one ambulance, along with a wide range of boxes that she assumed contained medical supplies. Eventually she reached what appeared to be one of the actual buildings on this site, and found herself in a normal-looking office with various filing cabinets against the walls, a few people on phones or computers around it.
"What happened to Rosanna?" a large dark-skinned woman with short hair said as Esther moved to sit in an empty chair at the end of a desk.
"I don't know," Esther said, deciding to keep the story simple. "They called me in from Central Office. My name's Esther."
"Rachel," the woman replied.
"Sorry, I don't know my way around the system yet," Esther said, grateful that she could at least bluff her way through this situation. "They told me to copy the states for the module."
"Nothing to do with me," Rachel replied, with the kind of bland resignation Esther recognised from temp jobs the world over. "Ask Maloney."
Looking in the direction that Rachel had indicated, Esther saw a glass-walled office at the other side of the room, with Venetian blinds half-hiding the person inside it. The door soon opened to reveal a balding man in a white checked shirt and glasses, who had what Esther felt was an exaggerated smile on his face as he walked over to greet Esther and the Doctor when a soldier escorted them in.
"Welcome, welcome," the man said with a voice that struck Esther as overly loud. "My casa's your casa. My name is Colin Maloney and I'm in charge here."
"Vera Juarez," Vera replied, shaking the offered hand.
"Welcome to Medical Lot 338, Vera," Maloney replied. "Sorry about theat. Suppose you take it better than me, huh?"
"It's fine," Vera said, ignoring the implication. "Let's get started."
"Yes," Maloney said, looking curiously over at the Doctor. "I take it you're-"
"My assistant, Doctor Ian Taylor," Vera clarified, making the title clear as she looked firmly at Maloney. "I'm Doctor Vera Juarez."
"Oh," Maloney said. "Oh, I'm so- I thought you were… er… anywho, I'm not disappointed. I must have done something very good that-"
"You received two qualified experts to see how things are going at the camps, correct?" the Doctor cut Maloney off, a blank expression on his face that struck Esther as something that made the Doctor more foreboding. "Now then, we'd like to start with the Module."
"I'm sorry, Module's closed, obviously," Maloney said, his voice actually lowering as he shrugged on his coat. "You're from Washington; you should know that."
"I know that our inspection orders mention it specifically," Vera said.
"Wow, a little dynamo, aren't you?" Maloney smiled. "Anyway, patients first, I think; don't you? That's always my motto."
Maloney was so caught up in his own words that he missed the glance the Doctor exchanged with Vera, making it clear to Esther that both of them recognised that this man was doing everything he could to not talk about the module.
"Rachel," Maloney continued, looking over at the woman Esther had spoken to earlier, "pull my cart around for me, would you, honey? I had a little cart customised. I think you'll find it easier on your feet. Look at you. You're thin as a twig. Bet you'd snap easily."
"I'm getting there, yeah," Vera replied, her tone just as cool as the Doctor's neutral expression. As Vera accompanied Maloney out of the office, the Doctor shot Esther a brief glance, Esther nodding at him in understanding.
Whatever was going on here, they needed to take a look at that module, and if Malloney wasn't willing to include it on their tour and it was reserved for Category Ones, that meant using their latest inside man.
Once she'd printed off the relevant form, it took Esther a few minutes until she felt that she could justifiably take a 'toilet break'.
Carefully navigating her way out of the office, she moved through the outside tents as quickly as possible. Fortunately the records and layout made the majority of the camp easy enough to navigate, and she soon found herself at Rex's tent. After walking past a set of shelves with all kinds of medical bottles on them that looked almost untouched, she soon found Rex, lying a stretcher with an IV in his arm near the middle of the open area.
"You OK?" she whispered cautiously; nobody nearby seemed in a position to pay much attention to them, but being careful couldn't hurt.
"Yeah," Rex said, sitting up even as he kept the grey blanket over him. "Sure took you long enough."
"It's busy out there," Esther countered defensively. "The Doctor and Vera are keeping the senior staff distracted-"
"What?" Rex said, although Esther didn't need to know her former boss to recognise just what part of that statement had attracted his attention. "I told her to stay out of this-"
"And you're not the boss here, remember?" Esther replied, even as she took care to keep her voice level. "The Doctor and Jack approved of the plan so long as she took care not to draw attention, and the Doctor's here to make sure she doesn't push her luck too far."
"But-!"
"Look," she continued, slipping her new form into the clipboard near his bed, "take this; it makes you dead… God, I hate this."
"Don't go getting sentimental on me," Rex said. "Did you bring the camera?"
Esther just carefully slipped him the small digital camera they'd purchased earlier, once again praying that what they were about to attempt would be enough.
"All right, great," Rex said, taking the camera and putting it under the blanket. "Now you need to categorise me; get me that red peg."
When he indicated the set of blue and red pegs hanging from a pole close to him, Esther suddenly felt the sheer wrongness of the situation.
One little peg was all they were using to basically distinguish between life and death?
The Doctor and Vera were right; life shouldn't be something you could just... break down like this…
"Go ahead, it's right there," Rex said, either not registering or just ignoring her own reaction to this. "Red peg. Put it right there. All right, here."
"Keep that on you in case you need to change categories," Esther added, halting Rex's efforts to pass her the blue peg he'd been wearing previously.
"Category One," Rex mused even as he put the peg into his pocket. "There's no coming back."
"Don't say that; you're gonna be fine," Esther said. "Just find out what's inside the Module, and then you can join us all outside."
"All right," Rex nodded grimly, before he lay down again, leaving Esther to hurry over to the nearest nurse.
"Excuse me?" she said, hoping that they weren't about to make a mistake as she led the nurse over to Rex. "Hello, hi, excuse me? This man's in the wrong place. His chart says that he's Category One. I double-checked with the office. He's not supposed to be here so we need to get him moved. Take him to the Module, okay?"
She wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea of putting Rex directly in the line of fire like that, even if they had no evidence that he'd be in direct danger, but they had to know what was going on behind the scenes here…
The Doctor still liked to take point when he was dealing with this kind of crisis, but he was coming to appreciate the advantages of letting someone else take official charge when he was going into the metaphorical lion's den. Doctor Vera Juarez was not only a credible public persona to 'lead' this investigation, but since she knew what she was dealing about from a medical perspective, she could focus on analysing the situation from that perspective while he
"I want you to meet Ralph," Maloney said, pausing his cart so that a young soldier could get in the rear seat beside the Doctor. "He's my personal escort while I'm on the lot. Great guy, great guy."
"Good to meet you, Doctors," the now-introduced Ralph nodded.
"Same," the Doctor nodded politely at his new seating partner.
"This is my first tour, but I think we might get some important people wanting to visit, you know?" Maloney said as he began driving.
"Mmm," Vera responded in a non-committed manner, shooting a glance at the Doctor that showed she was just as uncomfortable with this as he was.
"We've got a line on Hilary I'm feeling really good about."
"Hilary Clinton?" Vera asked.
"Duff," Maloney clarified as though it was obvious. "Hilary Duff… all right, this way."
The Doctor couldn't immediately recall who either of those people were, but Vera's reaction to both suggestions was enough to assure him that neither was that impressive. As the cart came to a halt, Maloney showed Vera into a tent, the Doctor walking in after them in time to find the man paused in front of a television set.
"Oh, we're missing it," Maloney said, looking at the image on the screen. "That Miracle Rally… I hear rumours of Phil Collins."
"This patient is being monitored every hour," Vera noted as she picked up a random clipboard from beside one of the beds. "That's very good."
"Yes, our priority is efficiency," Maloney affirmed. "If a patient is in decline, we monitor them very closely so that we can move them to Category One promptly without wasting any more resources."
"Efficiency," the Doctor repeated as he looked at Maloney, hoping Vera wouldn't object to him putting their cover at risk by making his current point.
"Yes, Doctor Taylor; efficiency," Maloney said as they walked into another tent. "We're dealing with large numbers-"
"Of people," the Doctor cut the other man off with a cool stare. "Your priority isn't to just get through the most amount of patients at a time, Mr Maloney; it's to provide those people with care and genuine attention."
"Everyone gets sufficient care-"
"Category Ones are basically treated as dead," Vera cut the camp supervisor off, matching the Doctor's cool glare at the man. "If you move a person from Category Two to Category One, you're not just adjusting the level of care someone receives, you're essentially letting them die."
"There are new triage regulations, Doctor Juarez," Maloney said, keeping his voice low. "We have to treat the ones who can recover-"
"And those regulations were started for emergency situations only," Vera countered.
"Well, this is an emergency," Maloney responded. "Everything here is an emergency. We can't give everybody private rooms. Would you like a private room… George? Yeah? See, they'd all love private rooms. But it's impossible. Now, you should see the kitchens…"
The Doctor let his mind tune out slightly as Maloney continued his tour of the camp, clearly wanting to make sure they focused on what he felt were the positives rather than give them time to dwell on their negatives. He could just about acknowledge Maloney's point that the human race didn't have a better option for dealing with the current situation, but in the Doctor's book there was still a difference between trying to cope with a difficult situation and just accepting the status quo and leaving it at that.
The question was just how bad things would get because of Maloney's inability to cope before they began to get better…