CHAPTER 31. Bait: 29 March 2011

In another day and time Jack would have bookmarked this location in this vortex manipulator to come back to, maybe bring a friend. Or a date. It really was something, the lush, golden foliage of the canopy, the white-flecked mountains as backdrop, the purest of blue skies. Whoever had built this place sure as hell knew how to build a scene.

But not right now.

He scrambled over another set of riverside boulders, cutting a path straight through the bushes to where he guessed they might have gone. He'd spotted clear wheelchair tracks leading straight along the river, leading along the same path the Doctor and he had traversed several days ago. Based on that he guessed that it was Amy who had gotten bored, predictably, and decided to go after them herself.

Hopefully, based on the lack of loud alarms, she was fine. Even more hopefully Kate would be with her, having followed the tracks like he was.

He cut a swathe through the think forest undergrowth and burst into the artificial sunlight, the river flowing ahead of him. He gasped as he saw the sight in front of him.

No fewer than six dead repticore lay before him, their eyes glassed over and their once-glittering scales begging to turn a murky, clouded brown. He could see instantly why – all had a line of scorch marks across them, a clear sign that they'd blasted with electron plasma. That was good – that meant Amy not only had his gun but was well enough to use it.

He didn't even consider the possibility that Kate could have done it. Alright, the girl could shoot, he knew that from their escape from the Dalek drill, but to pull off a move like this? That took serious skill.

He gave it no further thought, however, because he had just spotted something that had made him let out a loud gasp. It was silver and on its side next to several discarded camping bags and and the remains of a campfire.

Amy's wheelchair. He raced over to get a closer look.

Had she recovered so quickly that she'd been able to walk? Then why did it look like she'd been dragged out of it in a hurry, based on the way it had been tipped on its side? Was that Kate? Did that mean they were together? If so, where were they now? If not, who had taken her – was she OK?

Far too many questions, none of which had answers for.

That had to change. He had to find out what happened to them and where they were. He looked around briefly, and almost smacked himself on the head when he spotted the heavy rucksack again.

Of course. So obvious – Amy certainly couldn't have carried her own food, water and clothes. So she'd roped Kate in – hopefully not by force. Well, that meant they'd been together. Good. He looked around to see if there were any obvious clues to where they'd gone or, worse, where they'd been taken.

No. Nothing he could tell. Just a forest and some dead repticore. He realised for the first time that he recognised this spot – it was where the Doctor and he had triggered the alarm.

Maybe a coincidence? He didn't believe in those. He frowned – he had this sudden feeling, deep in his stomach, that something was gravely amiss here. But he had no idea what. Perhaps Amy had left a clue before she and Kate had (hopefully) dashed for safety?

He started searching around. Come on, Amy, he thought as he searched, just a note or something. He pulled out some half eaten food, a novel he guessed she'd been reading and Amy's iPod (of course) from the wheelchair. A quick flick through the novel confirmed there was nothing of interest there – hell, he couldn't even read most of it, it was in some alien language and the TARDIS translation matrix hadn't caught up yet.

He searched the bags – nothing interesting there either. Damn. His heart was starting to race – this was getting desperate. How the hell could he find them without any clues?

He was about to go back to that book again to search more thoroughly and even considered listening to her iPod to see if she'd left something there when he spotted something lying by a rock that wasn't supposed to be there. A black book with Amy's name on it.

Hello. What's this? If she'd left a note, it'd be here – but where did she get this from? Last he'd known her diary was TARDIS-blue. And given the wear on the page edges, the scruffiness of the cover and the, well, childishness of the handwriting when she'd written her name down, it looked as if it came from her childhood. Whatever – he wasn't worrying about that now. If he had to read through reams of dreary teenage girl angst, so be it.

He was about to start flicking through when a very familiar blaring siren pierced the air around him.

Shit. He'd lingered too long.

He pocketed the diary and ran for the TARDIS as quickly as he could.

"So what do you suggest I do?"

Amy had only just learned to walk again, but already she was pacing back and forth in her own imitable style. The idea that the Doctor – and herself too – had walked blindly into such a potentially obvious trap was unnerving at best. Not least because it would explain so many odd things about the place: the temporal anomalies. The TARDIS blocking most of her psychic abilities, so she could hide herself. That bizarre feeling that the Doctor was in terrible danger.

A feeling she now had for herself.

"Look, Amy, calm down. I don't have any evidence at all that it is a trap, just a weird coincidence, and whilst you're in my care you're safe. Unless, of course-"

He was interrupted, however, by a piercing blood-curdling shriek, and the crashing sound of a door being opened. Amy, energized instantly by the interruption, and suddenly finding herself in full control of her physical and psychic faculties, stood and spun in a flash, sonic in hand and pointing at a very familiar scene.

"Drop the weapon, Time Lord," the dark-suited, black-haired man snarled, "or I blow your friend's brains all over the wall." And with a handgun pressed against Katherine Broad's temple and his arm around her throat, it was no empty threat.

"The name's Amy and it's not a weapon, moron. It's a sonic screwdriver." Amy shot back, eyes darting up and down for an opening of some kind, trying to block out the sudden flood of other people's emotions that had been absent for days. She had to keep calm, and not herself be overwhelmed by everyone else's fear. The man's gun was very old-school by Earthsphere standards. Mechanical, not electronic. Damn. No jamming here, then.

The man leered at her. "It's as good as."

Iverson was standing behind her, edging ever-so-slowly to the cabinet where he kept Kate's blaster. "Look," he intoned calmly. "I'm sure that with a little calmness, we can-"

"Shut up! No talk. Either the Time Lady comes with us, unarmed, or you all die here and now. Your choice, I don't really care either way." He pressed the gun even more firmly into Kate's head to emphasise the point, drawing a breathless squeak from her.

"I'm a Time Lord. What's stopping me melting your mind from the inside?" Amy asked. God, I've forgotten how much I can do with my mind... but now was not a time to gloat. Her friend was in danger.

He grinned at her, lopsided and downright evil. "Oh, I'm sure you could. But I don't think you could do it before I put a bullet into your friend's head here, and I'm hardly alone now, am I?"

Shit. If he did have backup, then he was right. And there was no way she would let Kate die like this... but she couldn't see a way around it. Damn damn damn damn damn. She moved her intense emerald gaze to the blonde's liquid hazel. She could see the fear, the confusion... damn.

I'm so sorry. So, so sorry.

But as Kate's eyes found hers, something extraordinary happened. The shadow of a smile crept over her lips and her left eyelid twitched. Barely discernible, but unmistakable.

A wink.

And then...

I've got this, Kate told her wordlessly. Look at my arms.

Amy almost dropped the sonic. What the... how-?

Not a clue. We can work it out later, alright? Just distract him somehow and I'll give him hell.

Right. She needed a distraction... and glancing upwards to the ceiling, she found one. Perfect. Close your eyes, OK?

Done. To Kate's captor, it just looked like a cowardly expression of fear, but she knew better.

"Well?" He snarled. "What's your decision, Time Lord? Otherwise I'll just cap the tart and be done with it."

Amy just smiled. That same, bone-chilling smile she'd had the last time Kate had found herself in this situation. Of course, she'd called her Broad then, and she'd had been her worst enemy. How times had changed. "For the second and last time, the name," she told him, "is Amy Pond. And don't you goddamn forget it, sport."

She flicked her wrist upwards, pointed the sonic at the ceiling and activated it.

The flourescent tube above them exploded, producing a blinding flash and showering everyone in the room with shards of glass. Instinctively, Iverson, Amy and the dark-suited man raised their arms to protect their eyes from the glass and the dazzling light, but not Kate.

With the gun no longer against her temple and the grip on her neck momentarily loosened, she buckled her knees and, eyes still closed, drove her elbow straight into her captor's groin. As he crumpled with a high-pitched yelp, she spun and ripped the pistol out of his hands. She smashed the butt into the side of his head, knocking him out cold before he had even worked out what had happened.

"Idiot," the blonde spat, twirling the weapon in her fingers. "Didn't even bother to restrain me."

"So I guess that answers the question of a trap," Iverson remarked, now having retrieved Kate's blaster from the cabinet. He bent down to inspect the unconscious man. There were no identifying markings on his clothing or in his pockets. Nothing to hint at who or what he was working for.

Amy, meanwhile, simply stared at Kate with unconcealed shock. How the hell...?

"Geez, Amy, I was hoping you'd explain it, personally," Kate replied. "I don't have any idea what made me do it, but it seemed like a good idea."

"No, no – I get that. But, I mean, how..."

"I've got no clue, Amy. None at all. It feels seriously weird, so let's just save it for emergencies, alright? I'm still human, remember."

"Right."

"You two care to explain what you're going on about?" Iverson glanced up suspiciously.

"Later."

"Fine." He stood, having finished his inspection of the still-unconscious man on the floor. "You've got to get out of here. Use the fire exit, I'll hold the rest off." He pulled out a small key from his pocket. "My shuttle is just outside. You know which one it is. Get in and get the hell away from here."

Amy took it and the blaster with some trepidation. "Go where? And where will you be?"

"Not important. Just put as much distance between you and this place as possible. I'll catch up."

A groaning noise below them indicated the man was stirring again.

"Go."

This time Amy didn't argue.

How the hell can those things move so fast without legs?

Jack Harkness had absolutely no idea, and by the looks of things he wouldn't get a chance to find out before being killed it any number of unpleasant ways. He'd barely made it a hundred metres before the familiar, tall, red-eyed figures of the repticore had closed in behind him. So he did what came most naturally to him – he started shooting.

He'd felled two already, but another two just took their place. He was trying to run and fire behind him at the same time – not an easy task. For once, he wished he hadn't worn his greatcoat – it was bloody unwieldy. He tried to gun down the repticore closest to him, only narrowly missing a ten-inch long spine that sailed into a tree next to him. He missed, but in the process of turning, he overbalanced and tripped over a tree root running over the forest.

He tried to pick himself back up and get moving again, but it was too late.

The next spine hit him square in the back.

He cried out in pain, already feeling his vision blur and his limbs weaken. He knew he was done for.

His last conscious thought was that he hoped that these repticore didn't bury or eat their victims, as unlikely as that might be. He knew from experience that trying to dig himself out of the ground – or, worse, a stomach – took a bloody long time.

Time that his friends probably didn't have.

A quiet day in a hospital didn't quite have the same meaning as anywhere else.

Sure, there were no freak superbug outbreaks meaning that everyone had to go to work suitably attired to explore a nuclear meltdown, like last year. Nor were there any mentally disturbed patients who needed to be literally tied to their beds, lest they hurt themselves on the litany of expensive and sharp objects around them – that had certainly livened up the day last week. It certainly helped that the shift rotation meant he was out of the Emergency ward and up on the second floor today, where things were far calmer.

His first port of call was two girls in the spacious double ward on the far edge of the hospital – Mses. Amy Pond and Katherine Broad. The notes were unusually slim. Ms Broad was listed as 24 years of age, but had no recorded date or place of birth! Well, maybe the records had corrupted somewhere along the way, although that certainly would have been a first. Maybe he was an offworlder who hadn't been registered properly.

Regardless, her condition was hardly mysterious – shot by repticore spine. Mercifully, not a poisoned one or she would've been dead within a day despite the efforts of the finest medical technology in the known universe. Nor a tranquilliser spine, which could have some nasty side effects. Evidently the one that had shot her had been looking to kill and kill quickly, and ironically had saved her life in doing so. So everything seemed to be going well, and the things that weren't going so swimmingly – well, nothing that a professional doctor like him couldn't fix in a jiffy.

The other file was even stranger. All it had was a name, Amy Pond, and five words, scrawled in the handwriting of one of the higher-ups in management: "Time Lord. Do not treat."

Well. OK, then.

That was easy enough to follow, but it made no sense whatsoever. He resolved to find out upon meeting her what that was all about as he strode towards the ward. As he approached it, he could hear the sounds of shouting and... screaming?

Must be some commotion down in Emergency. Hardly unheard of.

He kept walking, reaching a fork in the corridor where the ward was.

"Good afternoon, ladies, I'm-" He shuddered to a halt, stopping mid-sentence as he looked up from his notes. The ward was empty, the only sign of its occupants an array of strange-looking objects on the table.

What the...?

He turned and left the ward to see if they were around the area and found himself staring straight down the barrel of a gun.

"What the-"

"Shut it," the gunman, dressed in an impeccable black suit, snarled at him. The shouts, screams and now the unmistakable report of gunshots drifted even louder now from the staircase. "Where is she? Where is the Time Lord?"

Surely that should be Time Lady...? But this was a terrible time to be a smart-alec. He tried to make his voice as calm and level as possible. "Look, buddy, I don't know who you're talking about, OK? Just – just let me-"

"Don't lie to me. I know this is their ward. They're wanted, so tell me now or I put a bullet in your brain!" To emphasise the point, the man pushed the gun towards him threateningly. A little ball of fear hardened in the back of his throat – this guy wasn't kidding. Or, it seemed, patient.

"Sir, I promise you-"

"Now!" The man pressed the gun against his forehead, clicking the safety off. He opened his mouth to respond, but a voice interrupted him.

An unknown, heavily accented girl's voice.

"Oi, idiot-face!"

Both turned to see a mass of dark crimson and brown leather jacket flying straight towards the dark suited man. He tried to twist, to switch his aim from the doctor to the incoming girl but it was too late. She slammed headlong into him in a rough approximation of a rugby tackle, knocking them both to the floor. The gun discharged harmlessly into the floor (eliciting yet more screams from below) and flew out of his hand as the pair rolled across the floor. The man landed on his back, his face twisting as he recognised the round face, the blood-red hair, the burning emerald eyes above him.

"You."

"Me," the girl replied. "Have we met?"

"You're the Time Lady," He grinned maliciously up at her. "How nice of you to bring yourself to me, MrsPond."

"I'm not married, sport."

"And when I give you to the Windcatcher, you never will be. He'll take care of-"

But he never said out what he'd take care of, because his voice died in a splutter, his eyes rolling up their sockets and his head rolling limply to the side.

The girl froze, clearly taken aback. She reached into her leather flying jacket and pulled out a silver cylindrical object, pointing at the immobile heap below her and flicking it up as if taking some kind of reading. A frown crossed her face as she read it.

She disentangled herself from the immobile figure and stood, dusting off her jacket. The doctor's heart skipped a beat when he finally got a proper look at her. She was slim and long-legged, at least six feet tall, with long, red hair that seemed to shine in the dull hospital lighting.

"Oi!" Another girl, this one shorter with shoulder-length wavy blonde hair, rosy cheeks and deep hazel eyes, came up the corridor behind the ginger. "There you are, what the hell are you doing?"

"Taking a shortcut," the ginger replied with her sharp accent. "I need to pick up my stuff on the way too." She bent down and placed two fingers on the man's neck, evidently feeling for a pulse.

"What're you doing now?" The other girl asked, agitated. "Come on, there'll be more of them soon."

"Trying to find out what happened to this guy."

The other girl only gave the heap below her a cursory glance. "Right. Now come on. The fire exit is this way." She tugged at the ginger's jacket without success.

"Didn't I tell you? We're taking a shortcut." She stood turned and caught sight of the man whose life she had just saved for the second time. "Oh. Hello."

He was still half in shock. "What – what the-"

"Oh, you know. Mercenaries from outer space." Her eyes met his for the first time as she spoke, vivid, sparkling emeralds – entrancing and as beautiful as the rest of her, but disconcertingly intense. He almost had to look away, so strong were the shivers that ran down his spine because of her gaze. She brushed past him into the room, stuffing the objects on the desk into a small bag.

"Can you find us a place to stay?" A sidelong glance silenced the other girl, who seemed ready to object.

He was completely unprepared for this. "Well – I-"

More gunshots from below. The redhead tapped her feet on the ground impatiently. "Come on. Yes or no? Because otherwise I'll have to do something crazy and I'd really rather not."

Something told him she wasn't joking, but still. He was a professional doctor. He had a job to do. "No. I have to stay here with the patients – there's going to be a huge mess once this is all sorted out, I need to be around to help them. Sorry."

The girl shrugged her shoulders. "Fair enough." She pulled out the odd silver device, pointed it straight at the ceiling and pressed the button.

Instantly, every single fire alarm and fire sprinkler in the hospital activated. Michael yelled in alarm, ducking for cover as the ceiling sprinkler drenched his overcoat.

"Sorry about that, but I need a distraction and I did kinda warn you," the girl shouted over the deafening alarms, turning the device towards the window and shattering the glass. "C'mon, Kate. Time to bail from this party." She made her way over to the now-open window and vaulted out and onto the pavement fifteen feet below.

The blonde muttered and shook her head as she followed. "Bloody show-off."

If Amy were being honest, she would've had to admit that she'd misjudged badly; she hadn't expected a fifteen-foot drop to feel that high. She'd never been afraid of heights, so when she'd hit on the plan to not use the fire exit – which she guessed would almost certainly have been guarded – she thought nothing of a mere fifteen foot drop. She'd once fallen a good kilometre or so into the mouth of a starwhale with no ill effects, for goodness' sake.

What she hadn't factored in was the fact that her legs were only just starting to regain strength, as she'd only just started walking again. So instead of gracefully landing on all fours and being ready to take off and hijack some form of transport, her legs crumpled instantly beneath her. Her body hit the asphalt hard, knocking the wind out of her and leaving deep scrapes and bruises all over her body.

A few seconds later, she heard a solid thump as Kate followed after her with infinitely more poise. She felt firm hands lifting her beneath her shoulders.

"That," Kate told her firmly, "was the worst shortcut in history."

Amy didn't feel like being honest right now. "Worked, didn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but it made you look like an absolute moron. How'd you not remember that your legs weren't working?"

"Oi, shut it," Amy warned as she dusted herself off. There were scrapes all over her legs and arms and a nasty gash on her right cheek that was starting to bleed. She bit her lip as the stinging began to bite. Kate let Amy wrap an arm around her shoulders for balance. "Come on. We need to get a shuttle."

"How the hell do those things fly?" Kate asked as Amy directed her towards one of the bus-sized silver machines that she presumed was a 'shuttle'. Having been unconscious (and not too far from death) on her first trip, she had no idea how they were supposed to fly. To her, they just looked like big metal boxes with no wings, engines or any other kind of obvious propulsion.

"Psychic energy," Amy replied, as if it was completely obvious. The sound of gunfire continued from within the hospital – clearly, someone had found out that the girls weren't where they were supposed to be. "Come on. We've gotta get out of here."

"Wait," Kate frowned. "You're telling me that we're about to jack someone's car?"

"Or someone's ambulance," a gruff voice called out behind them. They turned to see Iverson striding behind them, his upper lip puffed and bloodied but otherwise exactly the same as they last saw him.

"I thought you told us to go and that-"

"I'd catch up with you? Change of plan. You girls won't last out there on your own."

Amy narrowed her eyes. "I'm a Time Lady. I think I can manage, thanks. Besides which, it's best for all of us if we-"

Crack.

Kate would never be more thankful for her friend's super-fast reflexes. Amy, who had an arm around her back, had suddenly pulled them both down to the ground with astonishing speed just as the unmistakable whip-crack of a bullet flashed over their heads.

In the same motion, Amy had taken the Kate's gun which she'd jammed haphazardly into her pocket and fired in the general direction of where she thought the shooter was.

"Did you get them?" Kate asked breathlessly as the girls picked themselves from the ground.

"Dunno," Amy replied, wide-eyed and searching like an eagle for any suspicious activity. "I wasn't really aiming."

"Maybe you got lucky," Iverson suggested, running over to them and helping the girls make their way to the shuttle. "Whoever that was, I don't think they missed by much. I have no idea how you did that, Amy, it was if you knew where that shot was going before it was actually fired." He placed his palm on the shuttle door, which recognised his handprint and opened to let the threesome in.

"So have you changed your mind?" Iverson asked wryly as Amy clambered gingerly inside.

"I don't really like getting shot at," Amy pointed out.

The Windcatcher lowered the rifle from a rooftop half a mile away as he watched the shuttle disappear into the azure sky.

Damn.

It had all gone to plan. The goons he'd hired had done their jobs perfectly – namely, they'd completely failed to do what he'd told them to do. They'd caused sheer chaos in a working hospital as a result, but that was no concern to him. Of more annoyance was the fact that one of them had identified him, which was a crime that had only one punishment.

He'd thought his reputation would mean that none of the goons would be fool enough to say his name for fear of having their existence abruptly ended, but you could never insure against stupidity. A little flick of his glasses later, twelve grams of neurotoxin had been deposited in the offender's cortex from a micro-syringe he hadn't even been aware of. So that killed that little security blunder, quite literally.

Still. In the long term, that shouldn't have been a problem, since the Windcatcher was planning to end this here and now anyway.

Most importantly, they'd driven the Time Lord out into the open along with her friend. Just as he'd planned, she had decided to be too clever and exited straight out the hospital window rather than taking the fire exit, which whilst risky was more sheltered.

They'd even been unknowingly charitable and stayed still for him, talking to someone whilst he took aim.

All it would have taken was one well placed shot, and he could move in for the capture...

But the Time Lords were named so for a reason. Somehow, she had dragged her blonde-haired friend out of harm's way. Some impossible instinct had foiled him at the last second. In the blink of an eye, his plan had gone from perfect to ruined.

So be it.

He'd try again next time. He was, after all, dedicated.

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