It was true that the weather in the mountains up there was changeable. It seemed to be surreal as the storm had raged on and then suddenly it had stopped. The sky above them was no longer heavy with clouds but became a brilliant blue. The air was cool and the snow that had fallen made it difficult to push the hut door open. They had to dig a path over to the helicopter and then clear the snow off the skis. Four hours of storm had delayed them. They were well into the evening and the light would be failing them very soon. The helicopter needed to get them to the ship and then back to land during the daylight. They had to go.

The storm must have been affecting the satellite communication links because the small group ready to intervene and attempt to rescue the Doctor had no way of gaining an update from UNIT or from Torchwood. They were on their own. They had the coordinates of the last known position of the ship where they hoped the Doctor was being held and the helicopter pilot took them there.

The flight out over the ocean in the chopper was just over half an hour. They located the ship. Jack got them to fly low over the ship so they could view the deck and see if there was anyone out there going to cause them resistance. There was no identifying marks on the vessel visible and there was no one out there. They looked right into the bridge of the ship and there was no one their either. Thick chains hung off the bow of the ship indicating that it was anchored, but there didn't appear to be any crew? At least that made boarding the vessel easy.

The sea was quite rough and the ship was rocking back and forth on the waves so it was too dangerous for the helicopter to actually touch down on the deck. It hovered twenty feet above it. The UNIT soldiers were the first ones out. They abseiled down onto the deck comfortably and then they took defensive positions holding their weapons primed and ready to engage if they came under fire. Jack was the next one to abseil down. He did it easily, and then waited at the bottom of the rope to assist Donna as he knew she had not done it before. She shrieked as she rode the rope down a bit too quickly, but Jack caught her and it was only about ten feet as the ship rose on a wave as if to lessen the distance. Martha came down last. She unclipped herself from the rope and the helicopter hovered for a few minutes before setting back off to land. They would call it back when they had investigated the ship and determined whether the Doctor was there or not.

Jack used his wrist computer to scan. The ship was deserted in all areas that he could scan, but there was a section under the deck at the rear of the ship where he couldn't. It was several levels down and he could not get any accurate scans of it. Considering the ship appeared to be an old cargo vessel it was unlikely that there would have been any shielding built in to it. The shielding had to be related to the aliens and it was where they were going to be heading.

Jack led the way down. He was used to leading a troop of men and the UNIT soldiers had no issue following his orders as he gave them directions to check and clear rooms on the way down. They were secured as they went, making their way down under the deck and toward the shielded area. There didn't appear to be any defences. Whatever the species was that had taken the Doctor they did not seem to be as prepared as they could be. They clearly didn't expect them to be able to track them or to be able to find them. They thought they were safe out to sea in amongst floating ice, but they weren't. They had been boarded and as of yet there was no indication that they even knew.

They met no resistance at all as they made their way deep into the belly of the ship. Jack knew not to get complacent. He had Martha and Donna at the rear of the group save for a single armed soldier who made the trip backward to maintain security behind them. Within a large empty cargo hold that could have taken a hundred full sized containers there was a metallic looking box. It was massive. It was twenty foot long and fifteen foot wide and ten foot tall. There were all kinds of different wires and tubes going in and out of it. There was what appeared to be a window in the side of it and a door. There was light coming from inside the area.

"What is that, Jack?" Martha asked him. "Have you seen anything like that before?"

"I have," Jack confirmed. "But it does not make sense."

"Why, what is it?"

"It looks like it is a field lab," Jack advised.

"A field lab?"

"They are self-contained laboratories with all kinds of different air and energy feeds. They are dropped down into the field usually from orbiting vessels in order to study and examine and carry out scientific work in hostile environments."

"What, so there is like a lab in there?" Donna checked with Jack.

"If it is what I think it is, then yes, it is a field lab," Jack confirmed.

"And the Doctor is in there?"

"I can't scan in there," Jack reminded her. "Stay here," Jack instructed Donna and Martha. He took the UNIT soldiers forward in order to secure the field laboratory building that had been deposited in the belly of an old cargo ship anchored 75 miles off the coast of Alaska. Someone definitely didn't want anyone to find out what they were doing in there. It set Jack off thinking about the knowledge the Doctor had. Had they got the Doctor working for them under some kind of duress?

The door to the laboratory was secured with an electronic keypad. He couldn't scan inside the actual device but he could scan the lock. He expected it to have several thousand different combinations to make it hard even for his wrist computer, but it was a basic key code no more difficult to crack than a basic three digit code on a storage locker. Jack ran the scan and got the three digit number. They definitely weren't too worried about security as the key code was simply 098. He pressed the buttons and the lock sprung back. It clicked but it didn't set any alarms off. It seemed their lack of complacency had been an overkill in the face of the complacency of the people who had taken the Doctor. Did they really not think anyone would come for him? If they had him working on something he didn't want to be working on? If they had tortured him anyway? If they had hurt him? Then they were going to have him to deal with.

Jack pulled the door open slightly. He had his gun out and it was ready with the safety off. He looked in half expecting there to be someone there ready to kill him or some kind of booby trap or alarm, but there was nothing. He pulled the door open fully. There was a huge man in the first room, but he was lying on a bunk and appeared to be sleeping. Jack indicated toward him and crossed his wrists together in an understood motion. The first two UNIT soldiers ran in. They immediately had him on his knees on the floor with his hands secured behind his back and a gun against his head before he had even woken up.

Jack moved forward with the rest of the UNIT. There were two other aliens in the middle room. They were wearing lab coats. Jack was right. It was a laboratory, but his assumption had been wrong. They were not making the Doctor work for them. His stomach turned and he felt himself pale. They were working on the Doctor.

"Fucking stand away from him!" Jack yelled as anger rose within him. "I'm warning you! Put your hands in the air and stand away from him!" he pointed his gun at the tallest one and then at the shorter one, not sure which one to shoot simply for doing whatever it was they had been doing. "Secure those bastards!" Jack exclaimed and the soldiers came forward and secured them. They didn't put up any resistance. "What have you done to him?" Jack asked.

"Don't worry, he's not human, he is not one of you," one of the alien's advised.

"That man is my friend and if you have done anything to damage him, I swear it, I will kill you where you stand," Jack warned coldly. "What have you done to him?!"

"He is our subject," one of them advised. "You would not understand."

"What species are you?" Jack asked them. "Where are you from?"

"We're Bylaxian," the taller one advised.

"Bylax?" Jack puzzled. "What are you lot doing here? Why have you hurt him?"

"It is necessary."

Jack swung the butt of his gun into the face of the taller one who was being so blasé about the Doctor and what they had done to him. He then turned to the other. "I am going to ask you once. What have you done to the Doctor?"

"We have infected him with a virus."

"Why?"

"It is affecting many on Bylax and we do not have a means of a cure or a preventative. Those it does not kill it leaves barren. Hundreds of thousands of people have died and twice as many will never bear children. It has decimated almost the entire Northern Islands. We have only been able to slow the progress of the illness and to minimise the effect of the worst symptoms for a period, but it is virulent and we cannot stop it. Our medical sciences are failing us. Our immune systems simply cannot cope with the nature of the virus."

"And you brought it to Earth?!" Jack demanded.

"It only affects two hearted species. The human race is safe. Our biologies are significantly different but it is deadly to species with a binary cardiac system."

"And that is what you gave to the Doctor?" Jack checked.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He is a Time Lord. It is known he has a superior immune system. We have given him a massive dose of the viral cells and we have been witness to the affect. His body is fighting the disease. I don't know how long he will be able to keep on doing so, but while he is fighting we have been able to draw off antibodies. We are closer to being able to treat this in our species than we have ever been. We may be able to develop a cure or a vaccine for our children to protect them. It really is a remarkable breakthrough and…" the shorter of the two was halted as Jack punched him as hard as he could in the face. He then indicated to the soldiers to secure him alongside the other two that had been moved out of the lab and into the cargo area of the ship again.

"Martha!" Jack yelled for her. "You better get in here."

Martha didn't like the sound of the urgency in Jack's voice as he pulled the screens to one side and revealed the Doctor. He was lying on the bed. He seemed to be unconscious. He had a tube down his throat and he had several tubes running blood and different fluids into him. Martha and Donna hurried into the room.

"Oh no?" Donna put her hand over her mouth. "What have they done to him?" Donna approached the side of the bed. "Oh Doctor?"

"Jack?" Martha was almost as horrified as Donna. "But she couldn't afford the fear. What have they done to him?" Martha checked. "Do you know?"

"They have given him a virus that is deadly to species with two hearts and they have been drawing antibodies off him as his body fights the virus in the hope that they can use what he produces to create some kind of cure for their own species. They have two hearts."

"Do we know what the virus does?" Martha asked as she approached the Doctor. He had some monitors already attached to him and she could see that he was definitely experiencing the effect of the virus but she didn't know what they were putting into him or taking out of him. She got her kit and pulled out her stethoscope. She listened to his hearts and they matched the too fast rhythm that was showing on the monitor. The machine wasn't malfunctioning or reading the double heart rate wrong, it truly was that fast. She caressed his head. His hair was soaked with sweat and when she felt him he felt warm to the touch. Considering his body temperature was much cooler than a humans for him to feel warm to Martha meant his fever was raging.

"What can we do?" Donna asked Martha. "Is he going to be okay?"

"He is under a lot of stress," Martha commented. "Jack, I need information from the people who have done this to him. I need to know what to expect from the virus, what it is that they are giving him, and what these things are doing?" she offered.

"I'll go and get one of them," Jack advised. He went back out. The tallest of the men had regained consciousness after being pistol whipped by Jack. He flinched as the Captain went to him. Jack dragged him up by his cuffed wrists, not caring that the action would have caused the metal to bite into the flesh of his forearms painfully. He marched him back through into the area where Martha was trying to make some kind of assessment on her very sick friend.