Chapter 40: On the Run
Jack led them to a warehouse where they could hide. "It's one of my safehouses." He turned on a camp lantern and set it down on a rickety table along with the laptop. "Well, more safe than house, but that's what counts, right?"
The Doctor used the sonic screwdriver to start a fire in a short metal barrel, then draped his wet coat over some crates to dry. It had started raining shortly after he'd hung up on the Master, and they were all damp and cold.
He held his hands over the flames for a moment, then stuck them in his pockets. "So that's shelter taken care of. What about food?"
"I can go pick something up," Martha offered. "I saw a chippy down the street."
The Doctor nodded, and Martha walked back into the shadows. Rose wrapped her arms around his waist, and Jack showed more tact than the Doctor would have given him credit for by turning his attention to the laptop.
We're gonna be fine, Doctor.
He buried his face in her hair. I wish we could know that for certain, Rose. I wish… He paused, then let the wish come out. I wish you weren't here.
He felt a flash of hurt, followed almost immediately by understanding. Is it going to be that bad, then?
The Doctor looked around and found a chair. He pulled it over, then sat down and tugged Rose into his lap.
The Master is unpredictable, he explained. I still don't know what he's really up to, which means I don't know how to stop him. And he knows…
He had to take a deep breath to control his fear, and Rose caught his meaning before he finished the thought.
He knows we're bonded.
Yes.
Rose kissed his temple. You're afraid he'll use me for leverage.
I know he will, if given the chance.
She ran her hand through his hair and massaged his neck gently. We'll get through this the same way we always do, Doctor—together.
The Doctor pressed his lips to Rose's jaw. She arched her neck in obvious invitation, and he trailed kisses down her neck until he reached the hollow of her throat. He sucked there long enough to pull a sigh from her, then he moved up to kiss her lips.
It wasn't easy to get a good angle with her sitting in his lap, so he threaded his fingers through her hair and turned her head just a bit. Her mouth opened automatically beneath his, but despite the invitation, the Doctor kept the kiss delicate, sipping at her lips and stroking his tongue lightly against hers. One hand settled on her hip, and he ran the other up and down her back, enjoying the way she shivered in his arms.
A glimmer of intent flashed over their bond, and then Rose's tongue swept into his mouth, aiming for its roof. The Doctor nipped at her bottom lip and fought for control for a moment, but when she sucked his tongue into her mouth, he ceded the field.
Rose rubbed her thumb over the sensitive spot on his jaw, and the Doctor sighed into her mouth. I love kissing you, she told him. You always taste so good.
The Doctor smiled and pulled back from the kiss, enjoying her soft whine of protest. The sound changed to whimper when he dropped his lips back to her neck, working his way down to her shoulder with soft kisses and gentle nibbles. He tugged the collar of her shirt out of his way with his teeth and then sucked hard on her clavicle.
Rose scraped her nails against his scalp, and the Doctor pressed his lips to her collarbone to muffle his groan. When she did it again, his hands clutched at her back, trying to pull her closer.
Jack's voice pulled them out of their private moment. "As gorgeous as this is—and it is, you two have no idea how sexy you are—you should probably stop before you give my fantasies any more material."
Rose hid her red cheeks against the Doctor's chest, and he glared at the captain over the top of her head. "Jack."
Jack grinned, unrepentant. "Hey, I'm not the one who spent the last ten minutes snogging my wife, completely ignoring the fact that there was someone else in the room." He looked pointedly at his watch. "Besides, Martha should be back any minute, and I'd be willing to bet that she wants to see you two going at it about as much as you want me to see it."
The Doctor grumbled, but he knew Jack was right. Rose tried to slide off his lap, but he held her tight. Doctor…
Just… give me a minute, love. He felt her understanding, and then wicked amusement. A moment later, she gently stroked the bond, finding his arousal and caressing it. Not. Helping, he told her, barely holding back an audible groan.
Rose pulled back from her telepathic touch, and the tension eased out of the Doctor's body. When he adjusted his hold on her and tugged her shirt back into place, she sighed and rested her head in the crook of his neck. For a few minutes, she'd almost forgotten about the Master and the lost TARDIS, and she hadn't wanted to let go of the little bit of peace she'd found. But Jack was right—this was neither the time nor the place.
The TARDIS' silence worried her more than anything. The first month in 1969 was still fresh in her mind, and she had no desire to repeat the experience—especially not when it seemed almost guaranteed that they would need to run.
She took a deep breath and reached for the ship again. A moment later, she felt a buzz in the back of her mind, like someone was trying to contact her telepathically but was too weak to make the connection. The telepathic signature was familiar though, and she stretched as far as she could to meet her halfway.
A song hummed quietly in her head, and Rose relaxed. The TARDIS was here, close enough to communicate and hopefully close enough to keep her from getting sick. She did notice that the time ship felt wrong… weak, somehow, and she gritted her teeth at the idea that the Master had done something to her.
There was no chiming conversation like there usually was when she communicated with the TARDIS. Instead, the ship simply flashed a mauve warning at her before fading into an almost imperceptible presence in the back of her mind.
Footsteps echoed in the alley, and they all tensed until they could see Martha's silhouette. Rose's stomach growled when she smelled the chips, and she stood up and took one of the bags.
"How was it?" Jack asked.
Martha shrugged; she'd tried to be careful on the way there and back, but at the same time not look suspicious. "I don't think anyone saw me." She looked up at Jack. "Anything new?"
Jack tapped at his wrist device. "I've got this tuned to government wavelengths so we can follow what Saxon's doing."
She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I meant about my family."
Rose and Jack pulled chairs up around the rickety table the laptop was sitting on. The Doctor was already there, looking at something on the computer.
"It still says, 'the Jones family taken in for questioning.'" The Doctor looked at her over the rim of his glasses. "Tell you what, though. No mention of Leo."
Martha handed Jack his dinner, then unwrapped hers. "He's not as daft as he looks," she said with a smile, then straightened up when she realised what she was saying. "I'm talking about my brother on the run. How did this happen?"
"Oh, these chips are gorgeous," Rose moaned, blushing a little when Jack waggled his eyebrows at her.
"Actually, they're not bad," the Doctor agreed, his bland tone of voice at odds with the flirtatious look in his eyes.
Martha clenched her fists and stared at the table while she struggled with her resentment. She usually found their banter amusing and sweet, but right now watching the two of them together just reminded her that they still had each other while most of her family were in the Master's custody.
And who the hell is the Master, anyway? A Time Lord, yeah—but that doesn't really explain the Doctor's reaction to him. Martha turned her gaze to Rose, hoping her friend would catch the hint and ask the Doctor for more information.
They ate in silence for a moment, and then Rose realised that both Martha and Jack were looking at her expectantly. She swallowed hard when she realised what they wanted. On most days, she it was her job to soothe the Doctor's bad dreams and memories of Gallifrey, and her first instinct was to tell them to back off, like she had in Martha's flat. But the time she'd anticipated had come. They all needed some answers.
Rose took a breath and rested her hand on the Doctor's elbow. "Doctor… can you tell us about the Master?"
He stopped chewing and looked at her. Rose met his wary gaze evenly. Doctor, they're on the run with you. And they don't regret it, because they love you and they trust you, but they deserve to know something.
"Yeah, what is he to you?" Martha asked. "Like a colleague or…?"
The Doctor leaned back in his chair and popped a chip into his mouth. "A friend, at first."
Surprise flashed across Martha's face, and she looked over at Jack. "I thought you were going to say he was your secret brother or something."
All three of them looked at her, then the Doctor said, "You've been watching too many soap operas with Rose."
Jack looked at the Doctor, a furrow in his brow. "But all the legends of Gallifrey made it sound so perfect."
The Doctor reached for Rose's hand and laced their fingers together. "Well, perfect to look at, maybe." He leaned back in his chair and rested their joined hands on his thigh. "And it was. It was beautiful. They used to call it the Shining World of the Seven Systems."
Familiar images flashed through Rose's mind, pictures of red grass under a burnt orange sky. The Doctor's hand clenched around hers, and she realised he was sharing his memories with her as he spoke.
They gazed together across the valley, and as they turned, a city came into view, encased in a glass dome. Rose pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth. It looked beautiful, but there was something cold in the way that it was held apart from the rest of the planet.
"And on the Continent of Wild Endeavour, in the Mountains of Solace and Solitude, there stood the Citadel of the Time Lords, the oldest and most mighty race in the universe, looking down on the galaxies below. Sworn never to interfere, only to watch."
His voice lost the nostalgic quality, and Rose knew he was trying to distance himself from the next part of the story. "Children of Gallifrey were taken from their families at the age of eight to enter the Academy. And some say that's when it all began. When he was a child. That's when the Master saw eternity."
The Doctor's memory shifted to an image of a portal at night, surrounded by torches. There was something familiar about it to Rose, like it tickled a memory just out of reach.
"As a novice, he was taken for initiation. He stood in front of the Untempered Schism. It's a gap in the fabric of reality, through which could be seen the whole of the Vortex."
Rose started, and the Doctor rubbed his thumb over hers. That's why it had looked familiar.
"You stand there, eight years old, staring at the raw power of time and space. Just a child. Some would be inspired, some would run away, and some would go mad."
He pushed the memories away and shoved another chip into his mouth. "Brr. I don't know," he said, his mouth full.
"What about you?" Martha asked.
"Oh, the ones that ran away," he said, as if that was obvious. "I never stopped."
He looked at Rose. But you, love… You were inspired.
Beeping from Jack's wristband cut off any attempts to ask further questions. He flipped the cover up read the message aloud.
"Encrypted channel with files attached. Don't recognise it."
The Doctor leaned forward. "Patch it through to the laptop," he said as he wadded up the remains of his meal.
Jack looked uncharacteristically reluctant. "Since we're telling stories, there's something I haven't told you."
He pulled the laptop over and hit a button on his wrist device. The Doctor and Rose were looking over his shoulder when a familiar T logo popped up on screen.
The Doctor's recoil rippled over the bond. "You work for Torchwood," he said flatly, looking down at Jack.
Jack looked towards him, but didn't meet his eye. "I swear to you, it's different. It's changed. There's only half a dozen of us now."
"Everything Torchwood did, and you're part of it?" the Doctor spat out.
The Doctor had locked the memories of that day away, and even though Rose could have peeked, she respected his desire to not be reminded of how close they'd come to losing each other. But staring at the Torchwood logo, the memories broke through, and for only the second time, Rose watched through his eyes as she fell towards the Void. Even after eighteen months, his helplessness was devastating.
"The old regime was destroyed at Canary Wharf," Jack insisted. "I rebuilt it, I changed it, and when I did that, I did it for you—in your honour."
Jack finally looked up at the Doctor. Rose and Martha both held their breath, neither one sure how the stand-off between the men would play out.
The Doctor locked his memories back down, drew a breath, and looked away. He hit the play button with a little more force than was necessary, and the Torchwood logo was replaced by a woman sitting at a desk, her eyes wide with fear.
"If I haven't returned to my desk by twenty-two hundred, this file will be emailed to Torchwood. Which means if you're watching this, then I'm…" She let the sentence dangle and swallowed hard. "Anyway, the Saxon files are attached. But take a look at the Archangel document. That's when it all started. When Harry Saxon became Minister in charge of launching the Archangel Network."
The Doctor clicked on the attachment, and a computer rendering of a satellite system popped up on screen. "What's the Archangel Network?"
Martha pulled her phone out and handed it to the Doctor. "I've got Archangel. Everyone's got it."
"It's a mobile phone network," Jack said, pointing at the monitor. "Because look, it's gone worldwide. They've got fifteen satellites in orbit. Even the other networks, they're all carried by Archangel."
The Doctor sonicked Martha's phone, already positive of what he'd find. "It's in the phones! Oh, I said he was a hypnotist. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on." He tapped the phone against the table, and it quietly beeped the same four beat rhythm they'd heard everywhere since they arrived. "There it is. That rhythm, it's everywhere, ticking away in the subconscious."
"What is it, mind control?" Martha asked.
"No, no, no, no, no. It's subtler than that," the Doctor said. "Any stronger and people would question it. But contained in that rhythm, in layers of code, 'Vote Saxon. Believe in me.' Whispering to the world."
Archangel solved another mystery, too. "Oh, yes! That's how he hid himself from me, because I should have sensed there was another Time Lord on Earth. I should have known way back." He looked up at Rose. "Even you should have felt him, Rose, though you wouldn't have known the telepathic signature belonged to a Time Lord. But this signal cancelled him out."
"Can you stop it, Doctor?" Rose asked.
He shook his head. "Not from down here. But now we know how he's doing it." There were so many ways he could use the satellite network against the Master, if he could just get access to it.
"And we can fight back," Martha said, a genuine smile on her face for the first time since her family had been taken.
"Oh, yes!"
The Doctor picked up the sonic screwdriver, then looked at Martha. "Any objection to your phone and laptop being dismantled?"
"Not if it means we can rescue my family."
"I thought you'd say that," the Doctor said, already prying the back off the phone. "Rose, in the left pocket of my coat, there's a magnifying glass that clips onto my glasses. Can you get it for me?"
He pulled the battery out of the phone and set it down on the table. Rose appeared at his side with the magnifying glass in hand, and he slipped it over the right lens of his glasses. The extra magnification gave him the precision he needed to take out exactly the pieces he needed from both devices.
"TARDIS keys," he ordered as he finished up.
Three identical keys were handed to him. The Doctor took his own key out of his pocket, then rubbed his hands together and went back to work. With the sonic, he welded the telecommunication bits of the phone and laptop to the keys. Then he attached long pieces of twine to his, Jack's, and Martha's so they could wear them around their necks like Rose.
Finally, he straightened up. "Four TARDIS keys. Four pieces of the TARDIS, all with low level perception properties because the TARDIS is designed to blend in." The imprecise explanation made him pause. "Well, sort of. But now, the Archangel Network's got a second low level signal. Weld the key to the network and Martha—" He picked up his key and took a few steps back from the table. "Look at me. You can see me, yes?"
"Yep."
"What about now?" The Doctor put his key around his neck.
Martha's gaze drifted to the right. Jack chuckled when she closed her eyes and shook her head and tried to look at the Doctor again. Again, her gaze drifted.
When she clenched her eyes shut a second time, he waved and said, "No, I'm here. Look at me."
"It's like I know you're there, but I don't want to know," she said.
"But I can see you just fine," Rose said.
The Doctor looked at her, a crooked smile on his face. "You have a unique advantage." A simple perception filter couldn't touch the telepathic connection of a marriage bond.
She grasped his meaning immediately, but the strength of her self-recrimination surprised him. Hey. He waited for her to look at him, then continued. Don't beat yourself up like that—it's easy to forget the simplest things when you're tired and under stress.
When some of her frustration faded, he looked back at Martha. "And back again." The Doctor took his key off and jogged back over to the table. "See? It just shifts your perception a tiny little bit. Doesn't make us invisible, just unnoticed," he explained as he handed the keys out.
"So basically, it'll be like I'm a maid again," Martha muttered.
"Yes, well, it'll keep us alive while we track down the Master and rescue your family, so let's look on the bright side," the Doctor countered.
He started to hustle them down the alley, but Rose restrained him with a gentle hand on his arm. We need to take a break.
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. Rose, we need to find the Master and take care of this.
There's time, Doctor, especially if we use the Vortex manipulator. And Martha and Jack need to rest. They've been on their feet for almost 24 hours.
The Doctor shoved his hand through his hair. "We'll go after the Master in two hours," he said brusquely. "First, let's get some rest. Jack, if this is one of your safehouses, I assume you have sleeping bags stashed someplace?"
"Yeah, give me a minute."
The Doctor followed Jack into a smaller room and watched him open a crate of supplies. "Jack, I need to ask you to do something," he said as Jack pulled out two sleeping bags.
His friend looked up from his work. "Anything."
"I've got several plans to take care of the Master, but he tends to be a step ahead of me. Tomorrow, if Rose and I are both taken, you need to give the Vortex manipulator to Martha."
"Why not send Rose away, too?"
The muscle in the Doctor's jaw twitched. "If it's possible, do it. But I know the Master; if I'm captured, there's almost no chance he'll let her get away." He looked at Jack and answered the unspoken question. "He'll be fascinated by your immortality, but as far as he's concerned, Martha is just an ordinary human. She's the only one who has a chance of getting away, and getting her out of there might be the only chance any of us have of surviving this."
Jack paused with his hands on the lid to another crate. "Not to be morbid, but what happens to a telepathic bond when one of you dies?"
The Doctor clenched his hands into fists. "It hurts like hell," he said bluntly.
"You sound like you know that from experience."
"During the Battle of Canary Wharf, Rose nearly fell into a parallel world. The TARDIS managed to save her, but I was cut off from our bond for twelve hours." He didn't bother mentioning that they'd only been engaged at the time; losing Rose now would be ten times more excruciating than those twelve hours had been. "Now you know why I hate Torchwood so much."
Jack shook his head and pulled out the last two sleeping bags. "Jeeze, Doc. Is there anything the two of you haven't gone through?"
The Doctor refused to answer that question. Saying no, they'd gone through everything, would tempt fate to think of new ways to torture them. Saying yes would be admitting it could get worse.
"Just promise me that if things go wrong, you'll make sure Martha gets out of there."
Jack nodded slowly. "You got it." He rocked back on his heels and looked at the Doctor. "Your screwdriver is sonic."
The non-sequitur made the Doctor blink. "Yes."
"Is it able to neutralise sound?" The Doctor nodded, and Jack said, "You and Rose should sleep in here."
Instead of feeling exasperated that his friend was once again commenting on his and Rose's sex life, a chill went down the Doctor's spine. Jack's message was clear—if things went badly tomorrow, this might be his last chance to make love to Rose. Unable to speak, he nodded, then silently beckoned for her to join him.
"Sleep well, Doc," Jack said as he left the room carrying two sleeping bags.
Rose walked in as Jack walked out. She stood in the doorway for a few moments, watching the Doctor unzip two sleeping bags and then zip them together. The underlying frenetic energy in his swift, economical movements made her tense in fear.
When their bed was ready, he swept the sonic around the room, concentrating on the door. His hand was shaking slightly when he put the sonic back in his coat pocket before taking it off and folding it up to use as a pillow.
He stared at her from the other side of the bed, and Rose finally recognised the emotion that had been driving him—desperation. She walked towards him, taking her own coat off and tossing it on top of his as she went.
She didn't stop until she was standing in front of him. He raised a hand and ran it through her hair, letting the strands slip between his fingers.
"My Doctor," Rose whispered, and those words broke the stillness that hung between them. The Doctor cupped her face between his hands and pressed a hard kiss to her lips, using his tongue to persuade her to open to him. While his lips and tongue took possession of her mouth, one of his hands moved to the small of her back to pull her close.
Rose's hands went to his tie, undoing it quickly despite her shaking fingers. She dropped it, heedless of where it fell, and attacked the buttons on his shirt next. As soon as his Adam's apple was exposed, she pulled her lips away from his and latched onto it.
A groan rippled through the Doctor, and his hands dropped to the hem of her shirt. Arms up, he ordered after he'd tugged it up as far as he could, and Rose moved a half step away from him so he could pull her shirt over her head. She took advantage of the moment to push his jacket and Oxford off his shoulders and take his vest off.
The Doctor kissed her again while he worked at the fastener on her bra, growling in triumph when it gave way in his hands. Rose took it off and tossed it on top of their other clothes, then wrapped her arms around his neck.
She moaned when she felt his bare chest against hers, and the sound of her own voice reminded her of something. The others…
He traced a finger from her clavicle down to her sternum. Can't hear us. I soundproofed the room. His gaze bore into her. I need you, Rose. Let me make love to you?
A moment later, Rose felt his telepathic touch, and the anxiety his plea had triggered was swept away by passion. Yes, she said, and allowed herself to be lowered to the makeshift bed.