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The Age of Paradox 2.5: Miracle Day
Standing beside Angelo's bed, Jack smiled wistfully at his old lover.
No matter how badly it had ended between them, those few weeks they had spent together in New York, thwarting the Trickster's schemes as Jack taught Angelo about the future, had been one of the few periods of his time on Earth that Jack could still feel good about. Most of his decades of association with Torchwood were tainted by the knowledge that he was expected to bring something back for the organisation, whether it was technology or prisoners, and even most of his 'friends' in the organisation…
He didn't doubt that some of them had at least come to like him as they spent more time together, but he could never be sure that they hadn't at least started it as another means of keeping him in line. Angelo was one of the few people he knew had at least started spending time with him because he honestly found Jack interesting, even as Jack had to acknowledge how things had fallen apart after Angelo witnessed him come back to life…
"More bloodshed," he said, feeling a need to speak despite the difficult situation. "All these years later, and my life hasn't changed. People die, and it's only because of the Doctor that the casualty rate for this mess isn't higher… and yeah, I get that's probably not an accurate description when people can't die right now, but Friedkin's still going to be dead once this is all over…"
He shook his head and looked wistfully at his old lover, lying on the bed in silence. "I can't believe you were watching me. Maybe you said hello… some old man asking me directions and I just… looked right through you."
That was the scariest part of his form of immortality, sometimes; he was always recognisable to everyone, but if he didn't stay in regular contact with people it was easy not to recognise them as they grew older. He could still remember what Angelo had looked like during those crucial few weeks in New York, just as he had been able to keep Rose and Mickey's faces in mind ever since the TARDIS left him on the satellite, but without anyone to tell him he would never have realised that this was his old lover…
"Did you see him?" Jack suddenly wondered. "Did you see Ianto? You'd have liked him… or maybe not. You'd have been jealous."
Jack wasn't sure if he would have wanted Angelo to be jealous of Ianto or not. He didn't like to think of some of his lovers just pining their lives away as they waited for him to come back to them, and he appreciated it when they found someone who could give them the stability they might need after leaving him, but on the other hand, there was always a small, selfish part of him that didn't like to think of himself as so easy to 'replace' or get over…
"Got to go," he sighed, forcing his mind back to grimmer realities over amusing diversions. "Work to do. I'll take care of you, I promise."
Suddenly reminded of Angelo's words about how he could never find another man like Jack even if he travelled the world, Jack leaned over and carefully removed Angelo's oxygen mask.
"See you later, old man," the ex-immortal smiled, leaving a brief kiss on Angelo's lips… only for the machines around him to ruin the mood as they suddenly began to blare loudly.
"What's the point of that?" he looked around the room in exasperation as every life-sign suddenly flatlined. "He's sick, I know; tell me something new."
As the machine's noises continued to blare, Jack couldn't believe that a place this elaborate hadn't made the necessary adjustments already.
"Shut up!" he yelled, needing to vent before he turned his attention back to Angelo. "You want to tell whoever made this stuff dying's not quite the same any more?"
It wasn't as though he was insensitive to Angelo's health, but at the same time, the old man on the bed didn't exactly need this kind of attention in a world where death was impossible…
"That's better," Jack muttered in frustration as he pulled out a plug and turned everything off. "Kind of cruel though, Angelo; even if your heart stops, you go on living nowadays."
Granted, he was still concerned about the mental consequences if Angelo had to go without oxygen for a while, but the Doctor might be able to provide him with something that he could use to fix some of the damage in Angelo's brain if the worst happened…
"Like I said, I've got to go," Jack said, reaching out to take Angelo's hand… his still, unmoving hand… the hand Jack had definitely felt move earlier…
"No way," the former immortal said, stepping back to scan Angelo's body with his gauntlet. "That's impossible… Doctor!"
Even as he began to call for his friend, he was rushing to reconnect the machines before he started trying to perform CPR, somehow already certain that this wouldn't do any good but determined to try anyway.
"Jack?" the Doctor asked as he hurried into the room before his gaze fell on Angelo. "Is he-?"
"Yeah, we've got a dying man here; can you help me stop it?" Jack asked, even as the Doctor pulled out the sonic and ran it over Angelo's body.
"Impossible," the Doctor whispered, holding the device up to his ear. "According to this, he's just… he's normal…"
"But how?" Amy asked, as Doctor Juarez moved to take over examining Angelo's body.
"Jack, you have to think about this; there's no way he could die-" Gwen began.
"Just like there's no way Rex over there could have survived that bar in his chest when this all started?" Natalie pointed out, even as she looked anxiously at the body. "I know that this is… an awkward situation, but-"
"What is happening?" Olivia cut in, looking desperately at Vera as she continued her examination of Angelo's body. "You can't- he can't die!"
"I'm doing my best, but you have to recognise that if something ended the Miracle here-" Vera began.
"Ended the Miracle?" Shapiro looked pointedly at the doctor before looking at the growing crowd of people in the room. "Everyone else clear away; let Doctor Juarez do her work!"
"All right, step back!" another CIA agent called out, waving the Doctor and Jack away. "Clear the bed; we have an emergency. Stand back! You; do what you can. This man is either dying or dead!"
"Jack," Gwen looked apologetically at her friend as the non-medical doctors were escorted to the door of Angelo's room. "just… let Vera and the rest of the staff do their best, OK?"
"He… he can't be dead, right?" Esther looked uncertainly at Jack and the Doctor as she joined them. "He just can't be. That's impossible; nobody can die. He's just Category One."
"The Doctor and I both scanned him; he's gone," Jack said firmly.
"But is it everyone?" Rex protested. "I mean, did the world change back? And if so, what happens to me, hmm? I was-"
"Yeah, we know what you mean; you're just the only person here who's affected by that," Amy cut him off (Jack genuinely liked that woman; the right balance of compassion and getting in the other guy's face that any companion of the Doctor needed).
"Could someone check the hospitals and find out if anyone else has… well, started dying again?" Natalie raised an uncertain hand. "I mean, I'm not saying that Angelo isn't important on his own, but-"
"He's dead!" Jack yelled desperately at the others, just as Vera dropped Angelo's wrist where she had been checking his pulse.
It took a couple of hours for all parties at the Colasanto house to be satisfied that there was no obvious explanation for how the family patriarch had been the first and only recorded natural death since the Miracle had occurred. Shapiro had attempted to argue that Angelo's death could essentially be considered a homicide as it was now basically impossible for someone to die of natural causes, but the Doctor and Jack had made it clear that the priority should be working out how that had happened rather than try and charge someone for it. The CIA agent had at least been forced to agree with the TARDIS crew and the Torchwood team taking part in the research, which left Olivia sticking with them to find her grandfather's apparent final secret and put the missing pieces together.
The fact that Angelo was the only reported death at least assured all concerned parties that they were looking for something in the house itself, even if Amy doubted that Shapiro's theory that someone inside the house had done it was correct. Rex had already confirmed with the CIA that everyone with the alleged names of the Three Families had apparently ceased to exist decades ago, but Esther was running her own search with K9 just to make sure there wasn't some other trace they might have missed. The Doctor had called Sarah Jane Smith to run a few searches on her own, but he couldn't be sure what Sarah could find when she was already working on tracking and containing the wider consequences of the Miracle.
Looking at the rest of her new and old friends running around the house, trying to find some new lead or help propose a new line of inquiry, Amy wondered if she should feel insulted that she seemed to have basically become the team secretary right now. Aside from the issue of people running all kinds of checks to confirm that Angelo Colosanto was the only recorded death, they had finally received confirmation that Esther's sister had been moved into psych observation (which was at least one medical area that hadn't been affected by the Miracle yet). The Doctor had placed a call with a doctor friend of his to ensure the Esther's sister didn't do anything she'd regret before they could resolve the situation with the Miracle, but they couldn't keep diverting resources to focus on a few key people rather than trying to find a solution rather than just going with the current status quo.
On a wider note, Oswald Danes was still under discreet observation, but apparently all he'd done since that last public broadcast was make a few more sermons about hellfire and punishment and all kinds of things Amy almost didn't want to understand. Gwen had called her family back in Wales, and apparently not only was her father not doing well, but on a wider scale banks and pensions were starting to fall apart due to the long-term issues of the current situation. The Doctor had run his own search after hearing that news and confirmed that parts of Europe were declaring bankruptcy as the economies of multiple countries were starting to fall apart, even if he made it clear that solving the Miracle still had to be their priority.
Amy could just about understand how finances were in a difficult situation given the uncertainty of the future facing them all right now, but she still couldn't understand how Oswald Danes was making such an impression since the Miracle. She'd seen some impossible things since the raggedy man returned to her life, but the idea that anyone could want to listen to a man who was known to have murdered a little girl…
"…Thanks."
"For what?" Amy looked at Esther in surprise.
"Asking about my sister," the ex-CIA analyst explained with a cautious smile as she moved to sit down beside Amy at the current table. "It's one of those cases where… I mean, I love her, but sometimes… it's easier not to have to deal with that kind of thing myself."
"Been there, done that," Amy nodded at her with a grin. "I lived with my aunt since I was a kid, and even if she was never a bad guardian… well, there were times when I was glad that I didn't have to deal with her directly."
"You didn't?"
"After the Doctor moved in next door, I pretty much lived with him as much as I could without anyone realising I'd basically moved."
"I… look, about my sister, I was never- I just-"
"I'm not saying you resent having to deal with her; I'm just saying… family is always tricky," Amy cut her off with an awkward shrug. "You're talking to the girl who left her aunt to travel with the Doctor, his robot dog and his daughter-"
"Daughter?" Esther repeated, eyes widening even as she lowered her voice and looked incredulously at Amy. "Natalie… she's the Doctor's daughter? How does that-?"
"It's… complicated," Amy said, grabbing Esther's arm and pulling the older woman towards her so that her lips were close to the blonde's ear. "I don't exactly want to get into all that with all the ears around here, but… let's just say alien technology was involved and leave it at that."
"Alien technology?" Esther repeated, her voice still low as she moved back to look Amy more directly in the eyes, mind racing with possibilities. "Does that mean… is that why she's so old? I mean, they look like they're the same age…"
"She was… basically, Natalie was grown from a cell-sample taken from the Doctor by an alien machine before he knew what it was doing to him," Amy explained, after taking another glance around to satisfy herself that nobody was close enough to hear her. "She came out of the machine fully grown, but the Doctor's basically her only actual parent, so he just… well, here we are."
"I… have no idea if I should believe you or not," Esther looked uncertainly at her.
"Keep an open mind when dealing with the Doctor; that's always the best strategy in my experience," Amy nodded at the older woman. "Seriously, you're doing a lot better than Rex; I still don't think he's fully accepted he's not really qualified for this."
"Is that meant to suggest I'm-?" Esther began with an indignant glare.
"You're not passive, you're adaptable. I've spent enough time learning from the Doctor to recognise that there are differences; you can recognise when you're out of your depth and need to let someone else take charge, but you're still able to help out where you can."
"…Thanks," Esther nodded at Amy in a more conciliatory manner. The two women sat in silence for a few moments, until Esther stood up and walked off to Angelo's old room, a thoughtful expression on her face. With nothing better to do right now, Amy followed the analyst to Angelo's room, where Jack and the Doctor were sitting silently on Angelo's bed.
"Have you checked the floor?" the young woman said, thoughtfully tapping her feet against the floor.
"The floor-?" the Doctor began before he looked over at Jack, a sense of apprehension in his eyes that suggested to Amy that she'd just missed something.
"I mean," Esther continued, as Amy noticed the Doctor and Jack growing increasingly apprehensive, "we've been looking at this as though there was something different about Angelo's body, but the only strange thing here is the floor; I mean, the bed's on a sort of platform-"
"And that's very interesting, but I'm sure the Doctor considered that already-" Amy tried to protest as the Doctor shot her an anxious glance.
"But it's not part of the original design; it can't be-"
"Esther, any other day, we'd appreciate the initiative, but this isn't-" Amy began.
"It's the floor," Esther said, her voice a low whisper.
"Esther, stop-" Jack tried to protest, before Shapiro walked into the room smoking a cigarette.
"This is a hell of a lot better than nicotine gum, let me tell you," the CIA agent said as he held up his cigarette. "You know what the rumour is from Washington? If cancer cells are immortal, well, then the Miracle switched them around and made them just plain mortal. They're keeping it quiet in case there's an outbreak of spontaneous joy; I mean, we can't have that. But it means we've got nothing to worry about. We can smoke our way into the next Great Depression."
With that observation made, Shapiro looked between the Doctor, Jack, Esther, Gwen and Amy, clearly spotting the tension between them after Esther's words. "Now, somebody want to tell me what's going on between you lot?"
"Nothing," the Doctor and Jack said at once.
"I'm sorry, Jack, Doctor, but what matters now is figuring out how Angelo Colasanto died," Esther said, before she turned to Shapiro. "I think there's something under the floor."
As much as Amy appreciated Esther's initiative, she had a feeling that if the Doctor and Jack had wanted to avoid drawing attention to this detail, things were just about to get more complicated all over again.
Once again, the Doctor was grimly impressed at human ingenuity even as he resented the direction it had currently taken them in. It didn't take long for a four-man CIA forensics team in white suits to cut up four identically-sized sections of wood from the platform Esther had found, revealing a lattice of interconnected hexagons underneath what had been Angelo's bed. There were occasional polygonal shapes lying over the hexagons, but there was no obvious patter to where the shapes were positioned or even what the shapes were themselves.
"OK, people, thank you very much; leave the room immediately," Shapiro said firmly to the scientists. "Good work; wait for my call."
"We can't tell you what that is," the Doctor said as soon as Shapiro turned to look at him.
"You are on American soil as consultants for the CIA-"
"Acting as agents for the Unified Intelligence Taskforce to stop a global problem," the Doctor cut Shapiro off, projecting that strange sense of great age he could always pull off when he truly needed it no matter what he looked like in his current incarnation. "I'm not officially obligated to tell you anything if I think you genuinely don't need to know it."
"I've read your files-"
"Obviously you can't have read all the files as my activities with UNIT are classified unless you have some specific request."
"And if you're going to try and start quoting whatever you dug up from the Torchwood archives, I would remind you that we're not working as Torchwood at the moment," Jack cut in, a cool edge to his voice that reinforced that he wasn't kidding around. "Officially, we're all part of a joint UNIT-CIA task force at present, which means only the Doctor or UNIT have the right to dismiss anyone we brought into this mission."
Shapiro's exasperated glare made it clear that he would very much like to be able to do something to the Doctor and Jack for their open defiance of his authority. To his credit, the CIA agent simply stood in silence as the two men gave him the kind of cold stare that could have only been produced by men who had lived such remarkably long lives.
"For what it's worth," the Doctor said at last, giving the lead CIA agent a brief nod of acknowledgement, "this does confirm the theory that a morphic field is responsible for this immortality."
"How?" Rex asked.
"Hold on; you know what's causing the Miracle?"
"Only in the sense that you could say someone dying of radiation poisoning was being killed by radiation," Jack clarified. "We still don't know how, where or what is causing it; we just have a general idea."
"Hold on, let's make sure we're all on the same page; you're saying that this… thing in the floor is transmitting… what, some kind of field that cancelled out the first one so Angelo could die?" Esther asked.
"And where would he get something like that?" Rex asked.
"You'd be surprised what's been left lying around on Earth over the centuries," the Doctor grinned briefly at Rex before he turned back to Shapiro. "But before you get any ideas, the field is only as big as that panel."
"So we could stop the Miracle if we could create a field as big as… what, the whole planet?"
"You would need a structure like that panel the size of the whole planet to do that," Jack said.
"Well, I'm sure we'll be able to replicate its effects-" Shapiro began.
"Don't touch it," Jack said as Shapiro moved as though about to crouch down beside the panel. "Seriously, that's a proper null field. You change the dynamic in any way and it could nullify everything, even life."
"Then you need to make it safe-"
"It's not that simple, Agent Shapiro," the Doctor interrupted with a cold glare. "Do you honestly think I wouldn't be doing everything I could to adapt this thing to negate the Miracle if it was possible to use it that way?"
"If this thing allows people to die-"
"Right now, it would only work if you brought everyone here and left them on top of that panel if they were suffering terminal injuries; how is that a practical solution?" The Doctor shook his head. "That's the problem with the CIA; no matter what version I'm dealing with, your solution to any problem is to shoot at it and complain when I don't do things your way even when you asked me to get involved."
"You stuck your nose into this mess; I didn't exactly have a choice-"
"And you were doing a great job before I got involved, weren't you?" the Doctor retorted. "Tell me, how much progress had you made in finding anything about the Miracle before Rex tipped you off to come here?"
The Doctor liked to think that he was mature enough not to be this petty when dealing with people who were ostensibly on his side, but Shapiro had been aggravating enough so far that the Doctor felt justified making this particular point.
"…You're a lot more sarcastic than the files suggested," Shapiro observed with a cool stare.
"Your agency's last recorded encounter with me was my fifth body; nice chap, but a lot more cautious than some of them," the Doctor shrugged before he turned back to the panel. "But I will take a look at this for the moment…"
Crouching down beside the panel, the Doctor reached out to touch a certain panel, hoping that he'd calculated correctly. This wouldn't get him answers, but with everything he had put together so far, he needed a few moments on his own so that he could at least test his theory.
As he made contact, he allowed his mind to drift, seeking out that dark part of himself that would always be connected to his enemies, the part of himself that he would only dare reach out for when he was sure he was already in their crosshairs…
"Hello, Doctor."
It was a voice the Doctor hadn't heard for centuries but had remained in his nightmares ever since their last confrontation in the TARDIS before he had made his greatest mistake. Looking up from his position crouched beside the control panel, the Doctor found himself staring into the eyes of a man who should have been the distinguished Victorian gentleman but had become a twisted version of his former self. Wearing bone armour under the tattered remains of that old coat that seemed to change colour whatever way the light hit it, right sleeve hanging limp where only a stump remained, the wavy brown locks shorn away to leave a bald scalp…
"You," the Doctor virtually growled.
"Come now, Doctor," said the old man whose face he had once worn, grinning malevolently at his adversary, "can't we do each other the courtesy of using our titles at the very least?"
"You deserve neither of them." The Doctor stood up and folded his arms, unsurprised when Time remained frozen around him. "Especially after this."
"This?" the Grandfather asked with mock innocence.
"And not just the current problem, but the challenges I faced ever since I found Rose in 1987." The Doctor wasn't surprised when the Grandfather remained silent after that comment, but the gleam of triumph in his eyes was hard to hide. "Falling into that reality where her father lived could have just been the Web of Time having some trouble adjusting to her bit of interference, but finding five different timelines where the divergent event relates to my actions? I don't leave Gallifrey, I never work for UNIT, I run away rather than face my trial, I take a more pro-active but ruthless approach after a bad regeneration, and I went back to save the Valeyard? I even sensed someone making Mr Patchwork go back for him before the rest of us stepped in; are you seriously going to try and convince me that you didn't have anything to do with those?"
"It was the result of some contemplation by various of my most ambitious children-"
"And it didn't even work, did it?"
"We did create new worlds-"
"A world where I'm over-compensating trying to make a difference because I'm having trouble recognising that my actions have actual consequences, a world where I've redeemed the Daleks, a world where I just hid away, a world where I was still fundamentally trying to help in a warped manner, and a world where my darkest manifestation realised that he was wrong; not exactly any outcomes there favourable to your agenda, are there?"
"The author-"
"Made changes to help others, where your little cult will do whatever you wish for the sake of it." The Doctor knew that his other self was probably just becoming more and more angry about being constantly interrupted, but he doubted either of them could touch each other right now, so this was a suitable compromise. "The Valeyard was the closest you'll ever get to a version of me who'd join the Faction of his own free will, and he actually regretted what he'd done by the time I got there."
"Only because it wasall over-"
"And you think he wouldn't have learned from his mistakes? Do you honestly think the Valeyard would have continued meddling with Time so long as it didn't affect him? He might have been fundamentally selfish, but who's to say he wouldn't have changed on his own eventually? You can only smash everything for so long before it gets boring-"
"I haven't become bored yet-"
"Because your little family are a bunch of parasites egging each other on while keeping yourselves in check until you can really let rip," the Doctor cut his counterpart off, enjoying the indignation on the Grandfather's face; clearly nobody told him to shut up very often. "You enjoy the challenge of pushing the envelope without actually breaking anything, but you can't honestly think you can keep this up?"
"We will achieve that level of power eventually," the Grandfather replied with a cool glare that soon became a smirk. "After all, nothing's stopped us doing some interesting work here so far, have we?"
The Doctor was prevented from properly reacting to that when the Grandfather vanished, leaving him to shift his focus and let his mind return to his body, even as he felt the unusual urge to swear in frustration.
He finally had relatively clear evidence that the Faction were responsible for this latest mess, but there were still so many details he didn't know for a fact yet…