Chapter 3 – Don't Say The Z Word

"Owen, anything?" Jack's voice asked from behind him as Owen looked up from poking about inside the alien's back, a huge frown apparent across his face with his brow furrowed.

"Nothing!" Owen declared, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve as he set his tools down on a side table. "Get this, right?" He beckoned Jack towards him and waved his hand vaguely over the Doctor's back, ridden with holes. "Six bullet holes, an entire barrel fired from five metres distance. I can believe that, yeah. But look at this…" He hovered a circle over one of the holes with his gloved finger. "No gunshot residue around the wounds."

"Could've been high tech?"

Owen was shaking his head. "I thought that, but then…" He reached over to the side and picked up an X-ray sheet, holding it up to the light. "Here's where the bullets entered, see the disruptions internally?" Jack nodded, scrutinising it closely. "But look, the bullets aren't visible on the scans. So I took a look around, nothing. Not even any exit wounds…" he trailed off, as if letting Jack form his own opinion on the matter.

"Don't be stupid, they can't just disappear…" Jack said instantly, looking down at the Doctor's pale and unmoving facial features. It really was quite scary. "Okay, did you catalogue his injuries?"

Owen nodded, dropping the X-ray and handing Jack a piece of paper with written notes on.

"The damage from the quote bullets unquote was irreparable. If by some miracle he survived and was human he would be paralysed, and would spend the rest of his life on a ventilator to compensate for his injuries. I can't say anything specific – he's too different internally – but what I do know is there is no chance this guy was murdered by human hands, or a human weapon…" he paused for a moment, before adding, "…or human morals."

Jack nodded, resting a hand on Owen's shoulder. "Shooting an unarmed man six times with his back turned…these guys had no reason to love."

There was a brief pause as both men took this in. Jack finally turned, walking up the steps towards Tosh.

"Get your autopsy equipment ready," he suddenly said, not being able to turn around for the image of the Doctor dead on the table. "If nothin' turns up, we're goin' in." He disappeared into the main Hub.

"So were you two together?" was one of Gwen's first questions as she and Rose sat down together to examine the contents of the suitcase. To her surprise, Rose shook her head.

"Not…really. He was my best friend." The very fact she was using him in the past tense brought tears to Rose's eyes.

Gwen looked at her, raising a supportive smile. It was a technique she frequently used to use in police interrogation, just that little smile of reassurance to a person could coax them into saying a lot more. "But…?"

"I wouldn't have minded," Rose said simply, wanting to steer away from the subject. She gestured at the contents of the suitcase. "What you lookin' for?"

"Any evidence of his murderer; footprints, fingerprints, that kind of thing."

"Got anythin' yet?" came a sudden voice from the doorway and Rose turned to meet Jack strolling into the room. Gwen shook her head.

"This man covered everything up Jack, there's no trace."

"Dammit," he cussed, fists tightening. "This thing's pretty good."

"Thing?" Gwen echoed. "So we've found it's not a human?"

"Not in method. Doesn't rule it out though." He sighed. "Then there's only one thing left to do."

Gwen and Rose looked at Jack as he rose to full height.

"We're gonna slice him open and take a look inside."

Rose had opted to stay out of the room during the procedure and no one could really blame her. It was hard enough just accepting your best friend had been murdered, never mind how he looked internally. Tosh and Ianto had also chosen that specific time to find other thins to do, leaving Jack, Owen and Gwen ready for the autopsy.

Owen readied to knife, hovering over the lines he would cut into his alien patient. Standard Y scar since this alien was basically humanoid in structure.

Slowly he lowered the knife to the Time Lord's chest, making a direct incision along the sternum. He pressed harder, finding more layers of skin than he would with a normal human patient. He broke the skin and started to slice downwards.

But he wasn't ready for what was about to happen next.

He heard himself screamed in alarm as suddenly a pair of hands flew up and gripped his neck tightly, throttling the life out of him. His previously dead patient was now perfectly alive and screaming, jumping up off of the table and backing Owen into the Med Room's white wash walls. Deep brown eyes stared at him with hatred, the grip around his neck tightening as the alien began to strangle with intent to kill.

"Holy shit!" Owen heard Jack's alarmed voice from infront of him, but his vision was already beginning to blur and merge into indistinct shapes, on the verge of completely passing out.

The alien's eyes began to glow slightly, a bright blue energy tingling in his irises as suddenly an invisible wave of energy shot out from him, throwing absolutely everyone who got in the way off of their feet.

"Doctor!" Jack yelled as he quickly got to his feet and tore over to the Time Lord, grabbing him from behind with his arm around his neck. "Doctor, calm down!"

He seemed to lose a little of his hatred as Jack called him, grip loosening as Owen's weak body collapsed to the ground, hand massaging his neck. Jack's arms dragged the Doctor to another wall and slamming him hard onto it.

"Doctor, calm down!"

"He was cutting me open!!!" the Doctor yelled back, fighting against Jack's strong grip to get away.

"I told him to cut you open!"

"Jack what's goin' on?!" called another voice from the top of the stairs, and both men looked up to see Rose staring at them both in alarm, the Doctor suddenly stiffening. "Doctor?!"

"R-Rose?" he stammered in shock, relaxing in Jack's grip. "W-What…" Obviously this seemed to be too much for him, instead slipping down and falling into sitting position on the floor, holding his head.

She bounded down the stairs three at a time, almost falling over in her rush. She grabbed him in a tight hug and held anxiously onto him.

"It's okay…it's alright…you're alright…" she whispered, stroking back his hair affectionately. "See? It's fine. You're fine."

"Where am I…what happened…?" he gasped, clinging desperately to Rose as he rocked back and forth. "Why…why is everything…why…Rose…ROSE?!" he cried out as his hands got tighter, more frantic to keep her there. She shushed him gently and held him close as Jack quickly gestured at the Torchwood crew, pushing them out of the room.

The Doctor was absolutely terrified. His body shook without control, something Jack took as both shock and the fact he was half naked. He swiftly grabbed a blanket from the side and draped it over his shoulders, trying to warm him up.

"Doctor, are you okay?" Jack asked immediately, dropping infront of the two. The Doctor closed his eyes, still looking more than petrified.

"Where am I…where am I…?" he repeated over and over again, tears pouring down his cheeks. Neither Rose nor Jack had ever seen this behaviour from the Doctor before, and they were terrified themselves.

"It's okay, we're in Jack's Torchwood, you got shot but you're okay now. Breathe deep."

"I can't…" he murmured, rocking back and forth in the foetal position. "I can't do it, I can't…"

"You can't what? You can't breathe right?" Jack asked quickly, already moving to get an oxygen mask – but what the Doctor said next stopped him dead in his tracks.

"I can't breathe at all…my lungs…they're dead…Rose…" He buried his head further into her shoulder. "I can't breathe…"

Jack moved back towards them both, grabbing a handy stethoscope from a tray of equipment on the side and kneeling down infront of the Time Lord. He checked the Doctor's hearts for beating but – not to his surprise – he found none. He quickly swept a scan over the Doctor for vital signs, coming up with the same negative everytime. The Doctor had no heartbeat, no pulse, wasn't breathing and had no activity in the brain. Every organ in his body said he was dead, but here he was perfectly alive.

"Okay just relax Doctor, focus." Jack took him by the shoulders and pulled him up slightly, examining the cut Owen had inflicted for the autopsy. It wasn't bleeding…his blood must have congealed. "Look at me."

The Doctor did so, and Jack could see this wasn't a joke. He really was terrified.

"Okay how about you just get some rest? We'll sort all this tomorrow."

The Doctor nodded as Rose and Jack offered him a hand up, supporting him as they made their way through the Torchwood base to the level above where the rest of the team dwelled. Aside from the fact the Doctor still looked like a dead body and was half in consciousness they treated him well, Ianto making Jack's bed habitable as it was the only place the Doctor could rest comfortably. He fell asleep before they even reached it, although the only sign that indicated he was asleep and not dead was the way his eyes moved beneath their lids in REM sleep.

Jack made up a bed on the sofa for Rose whilst the others filtered away back home for the night. He waited by Rose until she fell asleep, before quickly checking on the Doctor down on his bed. Still in REM.

"What happened to you?" he asked the sleeping alien, but he didn't reply. Without a hint of a dirty thought about the Time Lord being in his bed, Jack Harkness closed the lid and let him rest.

A/N: I like Firefly :D