SEVEN
But though he forced his mind to retreat from that particularly painful memory, he was perfectly able to dive into that of the TARDIS. No interfacing had been done to her – nothing unauthorised anyway. It was a simple malfunction that had caused the secret to leak. He knew now what had happened to Martha and why, but not how to fix it. But this is where the adrenaline began to pump. This was the bit he did best!
He resolved to wait until he received a ring from Jack to tell him what he had discovered. Enough had been said on the subject today, and he could see that Jack was exhausted. And besides, the Doctor wanted to know what else was going on in Martha's brain... what other twisted "memories" she harboured about him. He wanted to know what kind of damage control he'd have to face once she got her sanity back, because she was definitely going to remember the dark side of things, and he wanted desperately to repair their relationshipwhen the time came.
He retired to his bedroom for the night, but didn't sleep much. Visions and memories clouded his brain, problems and possible solutions, images from hundreds of years ago, the faces of other companions lost to time or space...
And in another part of the city, Jack wasn't sleeping either. It seemed that for friends of the TARDIS, the nightmares were contagious. The Doctor's cryptic looks were weighing heavily on his mind. When he had left the Jones household that afternoon, he had been sure that the Doctor would never do anything to hurt Martha, that all of her visions contained wholly unjustified, malevolent versions of the Doctor because some evil alien was trying to sabotage the Doctor, or Martha, or both. He hadn't ruled out some minion of the Master. But now, the Doctor was being all creepy and secretive. What did he know, and more importantly, why wasn't he telling?
When Jack looked at the clock, frustrated and unable to fall asleep, it was four-eighteen in the morning. However, he must have drifted off at some point because when the alarm sounded at seven, he was startled awake. He estimated that he'd gotten, at the most, two and a half hours of sleep. It would have to suffice.
He showered, shaved, dressed, grabbed his intergalactic briefcase, and went out. He decided to walk to the Jones house today, and stopped at a Starbucks near Hyde Park for a pulse-poundingly strong coffee. As he walked, he thought about what he would say, and built up a story. He knew she'd fly off the handle and never allow him near Martha again if she knew he'd summoned the Doctor last night. He'd just have to fall back on his Torchwood team once more.
"Morning, Francine," he said as the exhausted woman opened the door.
"Hi Jack," she said. "Thanks for coming round again."
"No problem. Has Clive gone to work?"
"Yes, just a few minues ago. Some tea?"
"No thanks, just had some ridiculously strong coffee and I'm rarin' to go."
"Well, was your team able to find anything concerning the vision from yesterday afternoon?"
He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Yes," he said. "Can we sit for a while?"
In lieu of an answer, she gestured into the living room and followed Jack in. They sat across from one another on separate sofas.
"First of all," Jack said, extracting once again his dictophone. "Listen to this."
He pressed play, and Francine listened with puzzlement to the array of foreign images that Jack had seen in Martha's mind. By the end, she had her hand over he mouth, no doubt picturing the horrible scene of Martha having turned to stone, and the Doctor screaming random threats. But she did not cry. Jack guessed that the story was too muddled to bother her, and that she was more confused than anything.
"Hm," she said simply as Jack turned off the tape. "What do you lot make of it?"
"Well, according to our search on the (ahem) ethernet, the images are not archetypal," he told her. "However, there was a distress signal broadcast from a different galaxy from a ship called the S.S. Pentallian. Apparently, a nearby sun possessed some members of the crew and tried to pull the ship into its gravitational field. The report filed later suggests that two travelers, a man matching the Doctor's description, and a woman matching Martha's, just magically showed up on the ship and helped release them from the sun's gravity. Now granted, this report gets filed in the year 5086, but our technology is more advanced than most."
"Okay," Francine said. "I think I follow. What else?"
He was happy that he was now able to tell the truth. "I came across a blog last night from a guy here in London called Larry Nightingale. He writes of a DVD Easter Egg. Do you mind if I look at your DVDs for a sec?"
"No, go right ahead," Francine said. She watched in wonder as Jack searched through her collection.
"Okay, here we go," Jack said, extracting a little-known art house film. He put the disc in, turned on the television, and found the old 1969 film of the Doctor speaking his half of a conversation with Sally Sparrow.
When Francine saw his face upon the screen, she was shocked. "What is this, Jack?" How is that on my DVD?"
"It's on seventeen DVDs currently in circulation. It's a long story. Just watch."
"This is madness," she exhaled. But when Martha's face came into the picture, she gasped. "Oh my God!" Now she was on the edge of tears. It had been so long since she'd truly heard Martha's voice, she wasn't sure whether to weep or rejoice.
On the screen, the Doctor finished his explanation of the weeping angels, and issued his stern warning, don't blink. Once he finished, Francine was up to speed. "Her experiences are mixing in her mind," she said.
He switched off the television and DVD player. "Exactly," he told her, sitting down.
"So what does that tell us?" she asked.
"Not much," he admitted. "We still don't know why this is happening, or why the Doctor is in her visions as a dark figure. But what we do know is that she is still anchored, on some level, to reality. That's useful because if we can pinpoint the source of the memory, then we might be able to use the space-time coordinates to get rid of the vision." He was careful to make the distiction between memory and vision, attempting once again to convince Francine (and himself) that what actually happened is totally different from what's going on right now in Martha's mind.
"So what's the next step?"
"I'd like to spend more time with her, see what else is in there. Can I do that?"
"She's upstairs where you left her," Francine sighed.
Today, she was wearing a turquoise tee-shirt that appeared to have come from a fundraiser walkathon some years ago. Jack marveled at how lovely a colour it was for her. In another time, another place and under different circumstances, this could have been a striking turquoise ball-gown, as dazzling as Martha herself. In any case, it was different from what she had worn yesterday, and he was reminded of the love and caring that Martha was receiving, and it made him feel slightly better, in a sad sort of way.
Martha's vision this morning was mild in comparison. Obviously, he wasn't able to make any sense of it, but in it, the Doctor did nothing more than ignore her for the better part of it. She scrambled for his attention as he flaunted his love for someone called Joan, and then tossed Martha to the alien adversary as bait. And then he seemed to murder a school teacher, but that was as bad as it got.
Jack realised at some point that if he kept on this way, just stumbling by and watching whatever horror story Martha's brain happened to be fixated upon at the moment, he might never get to the bottom of it. He needed to provoke her, cause her to re-live whatever had caused her fear of the Doctor, and he thought he had a good solution. Well, at least a solution that would be less inflammatory than the alternative.
He picked Martha up and brought her downstairs. She weighed almost nothing. He knew her family at this point was only feeding her to keep her alive, because she had had a beautiful, robust body before. Now he could feel that she was skin and bones.
He put her in a chair in the living room, facing the television. Francine was surprised to see this, but went along with it. She was very, very reluctant to do ask Jack asked, but he explained his reasoning, and she relented. Besides, she'd rather tie her own daughter to a chair than watch someone else do it.
While Francine secured her daughter's wrists, ankles and torso, Jack prepared the DVD Easter Egg. The violence with which Martha reacted to the Doctor's grainy image on the screen made Francine's composure crumble. She stood in the doorway and sobbed, "My baby, my baby." The chair quaked and threatened to give way as Martha's body twisted and she screamed in terror. The track ran for no more than one minute before Jack paused it, and took his place in front of Martha, and fitted them both with the Consciousness Visor. And there it was, in all of its horrible glory: the lurid, twisted half-memory which Martha harboured of her first night with the Doctor... and, he suspected, another, unrelated journey. He'd have to consult the Time Lord himself about that later on.
When he retreated from the vision, Martha was still squirming and twitching, and her eyes were rolled back. He had come prepared with a mild sedative, and wasted no time sticking it into her arm. Mercifully, she went to sleep, and he untied her and laid her down on the sofa. He covered her with a blanket, feeling that a lucid Martha would not be happy to be showing off her knickers in such a way.
He had also come prepared with a brand-new mini-cassette for his dictophone, and once again recorded every detail as he had seen it. He suggested that Francine leave the room, and she complied, trusting that Jack knew when she wasn't ready or able to hear something.
As he walked down the front stairs, he placed a call to Martha Jones' old mobile. When he arrived at the hotel, the Doctor was already there, leaning against the doorjamb.
"How was your day?" asked the Doctor.
Jack exhaled heavily. "I've had better."
