Chapter 11
The Ides of March
Esther Drummond kept driving. The first light of day danced on her face. She had lost the CIA cars tailing them some miles back. They were safe for now. But Jack was bleeding so much. She had to find some sort of doctor. She struggled to think how she could get him medical treatment without going to a hospital. They would classify him Category 1 immediately in this state.
"Jack, are you still with me?" Esther asked, hoping against hope that he would tell her what to do. "Jack, can you hear me?"
Jack lay in the backseat, his eyes unfocused. All he could feel was a dull pain in his abdomen and the dampness of blood on his shirt. He told himself he had to stay alive. There was so much more for him to do. He could not die now. The world needed him. Gwen needed him.
Esther turned off the car radio. News of the collapse of the world economy was not helping her mood in any way. She kept on driving aimlessly, wishing that maybe an answer to all of this would somehow materialise in front of her.
And it did.
There was a bright flash of electric blue light. Esther's foot pushed down on the brake pedal and the car skidded to a stop. Had it not been for the Miracle, she would have died because the shock made her heart stop for some seconds. A man had appeared out of nowhere in front of the car. He smiled. Esther immediately recognised the smiling face as that of Captain Jack Harkness.
She blinked in disbelief. Never mind the fact that he was both dying in the backseat and standing in front of her car, the oddest thing Esther noticed was the fact that he was wearing a black suit and not his World War II jacket. She slowly opened the car door and stepped out, wary of the very familiar and yet very strange man, who still stood there smiling patiently.
"Hello," he approached her, "Esther. Am I with you?"
"Uh," she hesitated, "yeah, you are. How did you-?"
"Let's see me then," he interrupted and pushed past her to open the backseat door. He chuckled when he saw his other self.
Esther could sense that something was wrong. This was not quite the Captain Jack she knew. He was acting out of character. His tone of voice was somewhat menacing. And he was unconsciously tapping a rhythm of four beats on the door.
"Where did you come from?" she asked cautiously. "What's going on, Jack? If you're even Jack, that is."
He hesitated for a second or so, debating whether or not to humour her with an answer. Then Esther saw him reach into his suit's inner pocket and she quickly drew a gun from her waistband, grateful that Allen Shapiro had absent-mindedly left weapons in the car.
What happened next was a blur. There was a bright orange flash of light. Esther could feel a bizarre pressure on her entire body. She fired the gun in desperation, emptying the cartridge. Then she saw his feet. And she cast her eyes upwards. Jack had become gigantic. Or rather, she had become very small, because everything else was gigantic.
"Well done, Esther," came Jack's voice from above, vibrating the air around her, "you're the first person to survive the tissue compression eliminator."
He bent down, picked her up and carried her over to the passenger side of the car, ignoring her punching his thumb. He opened the glove box and dropped her in, closing it swiftly before she could get to her feet. He returned to the backseat.
"Aww," the Master whispered condescendingly, "look at the state of you, Jack. You look like you need a Doctor. But he's not coming for you."
Jack stared at him with questioning eyes, but could not focus for long and passed out from the blood loss. The Master, tutting, pointed the tissue compression eliminator at him.
"This almost feels like suicide," he commented before activating the device.