Chapter Twelve: Leverage

Jenny sat on the sofa, resting her head on her arms on the back and staring out of the window as all the uniformed kids made their way down the road.

She missed school. Funny, she never would have predicted that, but she did. It was nice and normal, and now just seemed like another world. Well, it was, sort of. It wasn't like she really belonged on this planet, after all.

Turning her memories over in her mind for the millionth time, she realised she missed her friends. She thought about all of them, and her teachers, and everyone else she knew before yesterday. No-one would know what had happened to her; she'd have just disappeared, leaving two robots behind, as well as all her possessions, except the notebook in her pocket. The only souvenir of a life that wasn't real.

Jenny thought back a few years, remembering people she'd known in Mill Hill—schoolmates, neighbours. Were they even real people? If she hopped on the bus now, would she be able to find any of them, and if they were, would they know her? Or did nothing in her life exist till she came to Ruislip?

Someone entered the living-room, and Jenny turned to see Sarah Jane looking at her. "Rani left these for you. And you're free to use the shower; it's upstairs on your left."

"Thanks," Jenny said, looking at the fresh clothes and tugging on the skirt of the dress she'd been wearing yesterday. She hadn't even thought about changing till now.

Rani had lent her some jeans, a couple of t-shirts and some pyjamas, and had also brought her an unopened toothbrush, a packet of underwear and a washbag, all with the tags still attached. Jenny was touched, although she took it as an omen that she might be staying with the Smiths a while.

Jenny showered, making full use of Rani's presents, politely declined Sarah Jane's offer of something to eat and lay down on the sofa in front of the telly.

A hush fell over Thirteen Bannerman Road. The Doctor was in the TARDIS, busy trying to work out how to stop the Master—as much as he was desperate to turn Jenny back, have her finally recognise him, it had to take a back seat with his old friend on the loose. The Doctor didn't buy into the Master's demand; he would have known the Doctor would never just hand the TARDIS over, there had to be more to it. But what was the other Time Lord up to?

Clyde and Rani, after being filled in, had headed to school with Luke. Jenny, who was obviously exhausted, had fallen asleep on the sofa before breakfast. Sarah Jane used the quiet to do some work, and at lunchtime decided to rouse the sleeping girl.

"Jenny?" She gently shook her shoulder. "It's lunchtime; you must be hungry. Jenny?"

Jenny's face was flushed, and her breathing didn't sound good. Sarah Jane shook her harder, alarmed. "Jenny!" She pressed a hand to the girl's forehead; it was burning.

"DOCTOR!" Sarah Jane hollered upstairs as loudly as she could, and apparently her call could penetrate two flights of stairs and the TARDIS walls, for a moment later there was the sound of footsteps clattering down the stairs.

"What's wrong?"

"Jenny's ill."

The Doctor shot into the living-room at a hundred miles an hour and knelt down by his daughter. He took her temperature, winced, took her pulse, winced again, and pulled out a stethoscope. He muttered something in Gallifreyan that Sarah Jane took to be a swearword, and laid a gentle hand on Jenny's cheek. "Sweetheart, you need to wake up."

"She wouldn't wake; I did try."

The Doctor lifted her in his arms and carried her up the stairs, into the TARDIS and through the winding passages to the medbay, where he lay her on a bed and drew a blood sample.

"Doctor," Sarah Jane said as she watched him.

He gave a non-committal sound in his throat.

"It's … it's him, isn't it?"

He didn't answer, but Sarah Jane knew what he was thinking. If the Master had engineered this, then it had to be something that a Time Lady would survive, but a human wouldn't. And the timing was far too much of a coincidence for it to not have been him.

"She'll be fine," the Doctor said after several minutes examining his sleeping daughter, but Sarah Jane knew he was only trying to reassure himself. "She'll be fine."

She was suffocating.

As Jenny slowly woke up, she couldn't draw breath; she half-gasped, half-coughed, desperately trying to suck air into her painful lungs. For the longest few seconds of her life she thought she was going to die.

Then relief came; oxygen was pumped down her throat, and a hand took hold of hers and squeezed it comfortingly. She drew in one shaky breath, and another. Every breath hurt. There were voices around her, but her head was still groggy and it sounded like her ears were underwater. She felt feverish and nauseous; the room was spinning.

Jenny's eyes struggled open, and the Doctor came into view above her. His mouth was moving, he was talking to her, but she couldn't tell what he was saying. The hand holding her stroked the back of her hand with a thumb, and she gave it a weak squeeze to say, thank you.

How long she was like this, struggling to breathe, to see, to hear, she didn't know. It felt like an eternity. The hand was still holding hers, while deft fingers adjusted the thing over her face that brought the wonderful oxygen. Her vision slowly became clearer, and she could make out her father's face clearly; there was no expression she could identify, but his eyes gave away fear deeper than anything she'd ever seen.

He met her eye, and now she could identify the expression: compassion. He reached for something, squeezed her hand before letting go. Jenny wanted to cry 'no', tried to hang on, but he had slipped through her fingers. She couldn't tell what he was doing, but after a long moment he took her hand again, something cold brushed her arm and then—pain, followed by drowsiness.

Jenny was just drifting back into unconsciousness when she felt someone kiss her forehead.

The Doctor breathed a sigh as the sedative took effect. He didn't like doing it without being able to tell Jenny what he was doing, but she was clearly in a lot of pain and better off asleep for the time being.

Sarah Jane stood beside him in silence, handing him the things he asked for and he was glad she was there. Not because she was helping, but because as long as she was around he was able to keep himself under control. He knew, deep in his hearts, that this couldn't end well; and he knew that had he been alone, he would have fallen apart, rendering himself useless.

"Anything?" he said, breaking the silence.

Sarah Jane was still watching the scanner like she had told him. "Nothing's come up yet."

That wasn't a good sign, but the Doctor wasn't going to let himself be deterred. Jenny's breathing more stable, he moved to examine her manually.

After a while, he found the answer.

There was a rash on Jenny's shoulder. The little hope left in the Doctor's hearts was crushed into atoms.

It was a very distinctive rash. One he'd seen before, on hundreds of humans. It was a purple-green hue and swelling up before his eyes. He knew from memories of autopsies that the same was happening in Jenny's major organs, on a much larger scale.

Of all the viruses for Jenny to have … it had to be this one. Of course it had. It was checkmate. The Master had won.

TBC …