Chapter Six
Two Lazaruses in a Row
I made a shaky step backwards. My hands were glowing, but they were not blistered as I had expected. Just surrounded by amber light – energy of a time vortex. Not something you have running through your body every day.
"Aaaaargh!"
I turned my head very cautiously, to look at the dead man on the floor. With a horrible yell he sprang up to a sitting position and was now staring at me; his blue eyes popping out of his handsome face.
"Who…? What…? Who…?" he gasped.
"Oh my god," I whined, afraid that a terrible headache I had would split my head in two. "Please, help me!"
I staggered and reached out towards the man, but he jumped away, unusually quickly for someone who was dead just a few seconds ago.
"Whoa!" he shouted.
A beam of light shot out from my fingers, connected with the metal railing and atomised it in a blink of an eye. The orange afterimage of the railing dispersed after a second of delay, dematerialising in a cloud of green and gold energy.
"Whoa!" I repeated the man's exclamation.
"What the hell are you?" the man asked angrily. "And where is the Doctor?"
"Dead," I whispered. There was amber light coming out of my mouth like a warm puff of breath on a cold day. "All dead."
"What?" The man glared at me unbelievingly. "No, he can't be dead! Not him! He was finishing the Delta Wave while we… Oh, no, he couldn't… He… Is he really…?"
"Dead," I said.
"Was I… was I…" he stammered hopelessly.
"Dead," I supplied quietly. "You were dead. You were brought back. I brought you back. I looked into the light. Into the heart of the ship. I was shown the truth. The whole truth. I can see the beginning and the end. But it's horribly painful. Help me."
"I don't even know what it means," the man said cautiously. "I only saw it happen once. And the old girl turned into an egg."
He quickly looked down at his own torso; as if afraid he somehow turned into something egg-ish.
"Anyway, who are you and what have you done with Rose?" he growled.
"Rose?" I swayed and slumped on the floor. "Rose's gone. He wanted her gone. She's home. She's safe."
My head was bursting with pain. The world around me went blurry and orange. There were images – possibilities – flying through my mind at such a speed, I couldn't consciously follow their procession. I did, though, unconsciously, and I made a frightening discovery. Whatever direction I tried to go, wherever I turned my thoughts to, everything ended in darkness and in silence.
"Death," I whimpered, clutching at my temples. "Everywhere. It's death. Wherever you go, it all ends in death. All things die. Even stars. Even galaxies. Even you. The time itself…"
"A damn bucket of laughs you are," the man snapped, but he didn't sound all that surprised.
I pressed my hands to the floor and interlaced my fingers with the metal mesh. The ship was the only constant in the whirlpool of alien knowledge. It was soothingly calm and quiet. It seemed to be watching me, puzzled. It was making small sounds of compassion and indecision.
"Help me…" I whispered.
All went blank.
But it wasn't then when I died. That happened later… much later…
I regained consciousness, still in the steering room, curled on the metal floor, but covered with an awful, furry coat smelling of moth balls. My headache subsided. I managed to look up, and saw the man we (me and the ship) had brought back to life. He was leaning over the ship's console, squinting at buttons and levers with an expression of deepest concentration on his angular, handsome (and slightly cheesy) face. As I stared, he hesitantly moved his hand and touched one of the switches. He screwed his eyes even more, inhaled and flipped the switch. The floor underneath me jumped, shivered and tilted, rolling me towards the railing, and in the process wrapping me in the coat until I resembled a furry tortilla.
"Damn!" The man reached up from under the steering panel and flipped the switch back. The ship calmed down. "How does he do that?"
"Don't tell me you can't fly it." I unwrapped myself from the coat and got to my feet.
The man gave me the look.
"I sure can," he snapped. "Just brushing up on the basics."
I sighed. "Yeah, right."
The man gave me the look again, and then he smiled unexpectedly. He had brilliantly blue eyes and a lot of white teeth.
"We got off on a wrong foot, didn't we?" he said as he circled the steering panel with his hand outstretched. "Let's do it properly. The name's Harkness, Captain Jack Harkness."
His hand was rough but warm. He was so alive.
"I'm…" I began before I even realised that the man was going in for a kiss. I snapped my head to the side, and his lips landed on my cheek. "…Ania…"
"Nice to meet you, Ania," he breathed into my ear.
I freed my hand and moved back to restore my personal space he'd just invaded.
"I'm fifteen!" I said pointedly.
The man chuckled. "I was just saying hello."
"Hello," I growled and looked down at my own hand. It wasn't glowing anymore, and my headache was more or less gone.
"What happened?" I asked a bit groggily.
"You just keeled over and that light, that energy, simply drained out of you. The TARDIS absorbed it. For a moment I thought you were dead." Jack shrugged slightly. "You still didn't tell me who the hell you were. What are you doing here, in the TARDIS? And why is the TARDIS so… ran-down? I mean, it looks even more squalid than ever. And where is Rose? He said he'd sent her back home, back in time, to when she would be safe. You said so as well. Just before you swooned away."
"Back in time?" I repeated. "So that's what the ship is? A time machine?"
To be honest, I already knew that, but I still wanted to actually hear it.
"A time and space machine," Jack said. "It moves in four dimensions."
"And this is the future?" I made sure.
"It's the year 200100, and we were on board the Satellite Five." Jack scratched his cheek. "Well, now it seems that we are in the temporal orbit, which is sort of… nowhere and… never."
I walked over to the tattered seat and flopped down on it with a sigh.
"200100?" I repeated. "200100? This ship took me to 200100?"
"Yeah," Jack admitted. "Just… why? And… how?"
"I've found it on a street corner," I said after a beat. "It was just… standing there, gathering dust. It looked as if it had been standing there forever, only I'd never noticed it before."
"The cloaking circuit's failure?" Jack whispered, bending over the console. "What year was that?"
"2010."
He held his breath for a moment. "Right."
"What?"
"Nothing," he said quickly, but I could swear it was something. "Was it abandoned? How did you get inside?"
"I just walked in. It was open. Well… it opened for me. And then it took me here, into space. I managed to find something called a fast return button, which sent me to… to where… or when… I found you. There were the Daleks behind the corridor's door, trying to get through, to capture the ship. So I dragged you inside and I pushed the same button again. And… Jack… you were dead. I gave you CPR, but it wasn't enough, so the ship… the TARDIS… helped… I think. There was this light… I looked into the light…"
"Yeah, but who are you?" Jack was staring at me intently.
"I'm… nobody…" I whispered. "I'm just a girl."
Jack's smile was gone now, and his eyes were cloudy and serious.
"He was right," he said, "about all the small moments and ordinary people. Crazy old Doctor…"
He looked at me as if calculating something.
"If you selected the fast return then why the TARDIS reappeared in the corridor?" he asked. "It should go back to the Doctor. To the controller's room."
"The Doctor is dead," I said quietly.
Jack started angrily. "You can't know that! He must be still there, finishing the Wave. That is it! He just needs more time."
I bit my lips.
"Look," Jack said in a trembling voice. "He can't be dead. You said the Daleks were still alive and they wouldn't be if he deployed the Wave. Nothing would be alive, not in the station, not on Earth. The Wave would kill every being… Unless…"
He turned suddenly and slammed his fist on the console. "Damn it all! I believed him! I was ready to die, to give him time to save us! The people. Humans all over the universe! And the Doctor failed? How could he fail?"
"I don't know," I whispered. "I'm sorry. The Daleks said he was dead. They could have been lying."
"They don't lie. For all it's worth, they are bloody veracious. Guess everybody needs at least one fucking virtue." Jack Harkness turned his head away. I thought he was just trying to hide tears, but I couldn't be sure. "I think we should try and figure out these controls," he said finally, his voice strangled. "Fly her back home."
I just nodded. Jack bent down, stroking odd levers with his fingertips. Suddenly his fist plummeted down and smashed something on the dashboard. Bits of plastic, or maybe glass, rained down on the floor and through the metal mesh to some lower levels of the ship.
"He sold us to the Daleks!" Jack yelled. "He gave up! The bloody Doctor, the great hero, always so wise, always so… so… brave!"
He swirled round and kicked at what was left of the railing.
"He had no right to give up! Those people there, they died defending the Earth below! I watched them dying, one by one! And they all threw their lives away so that he could send the Daleks to hell! He had no right to fail! You don't fail something like that! Not when the fate of the world is at stake! Not when there are people who trust you! You just can't! You can't! You can't put your hands up and die! You… you fight! To the end! You fight!"
It seemed that his knees gave way, as he suddenly sat down on the floor, hiding his face in his folded arms. He was crying now, there was no doubt about that.
I was sitting there in uncomfortable silence. I didn't understand the depth of his distress, although the things he was talking about seemed familiar. The ship's knowledge, transmitted on the wave of amber radiation, left some dim afterimages in my mind – the danger of the Daleks, the importance of running away and hiding, and, foremost, a sensation of great, desperate loss. Just like Jack I understood that the Doctor was fighting the Daleks, but, for some reason neither of us could understand, he gave up, he failed, and he lost. In losing, he forfeited more than his own life. He ruined the future of the universe. It seemed ridiculous that one man could influence the fate of the entire existence, but somehow I knew that the Doctor was such a man, and that it wasn't the first time he gambled with such tremendous responsibility at stake.
"We could go back to this… station," I said finally. "Make sure that he's…"
"No," Jack shrugged and wiped his face with the back of his hand. "You were right. All of this… it doesn't add up. Not unless he's really… dead."
"And how it adds up if he is?" I asked quietly.
"Yeah, but listen - the Chameleon Circuit failing; the odd girl wandering into the TARDIS and picking the odd switch from the console full of odd switches; the spatial shift at landing; the resurrection trick." Jack got up slowly and walked around the steering panel to sit down next to me. He reached out and tapped my hand gently. "No, nothing adds up. As it would be the case if the Doctor really, really died. Nothing adds up and nothing ever will."
"But…" I started. Jack didn't let me finish.
"Listen," he whispered. "Listen."
"To what?"
"To her. To the TARDIS. She's grieving. She's so weak, she's dying, and she's grieving. And yet her last act, her last deed was saving me. And you. Her last action was bringing us back to life. Two Lazaruses in a row," he chuckled. "Good old girl, the TARDIS."
I felt tears rising in my eyes. I had to blink quickly to stop them.
"What will happen now?" I asked.
"The Daleks conquer the universe," Jack said slowly. "They change it in their image. Everything that is free, everything that has a soul and heart and conscience – dies. Gets replaced by metal and anger. That's the end of all things, Ania."
For a long while we sat in silence.
"Let's go home," Jack said at last.
To be continued...
