Chapter 10
The Tables Are Turned
The small group were gathered outside the doors of the Standby Room whilst Andy ran through the final checks with Rose and River.
'Okay. So, are you ready?' Andy asked them. He was putting his life in the hands of these strangers, and he hoped his judge of character hadn't abandoned him.
'Yeah. We're ready Boss,' Rose said with a lopsided smile. She knew if she used his nickname it would give him more confidence in her abilities.
He nodded and positioned Gray and Harris in front of the doors, with the two rifles in their backs. Yvonne was standing by the side of him. He prodded the rifles into their spines and urged them forwards. The double doors pushed open and they strode into the Standby room. As the doors closed, they were held open slightly by River's boot.
The UNIT soldiers looked around and immediately raised their weapons. Mace looked surprised to see them. 'What the devil? What are you doing here?'
Andy walked right into the middle of the room so the soldiers would surround him. The members of the Watch stood up, ready to act if needed.
'SIT DOWN!' Mace ordered.
The Watch looked to their commanding officer, and he nodded for them to comply, but also used his eyes to cast a glimpse at the floor, indicating that he wanted them down as low as possible. Their expressions told him that they understood and they sat down.
'Director, what is the meaning of this?' Mace asked Yvonne.
'What is going on,' Andy answered. 'Is that I am taking back control of the watch, and placing you under arrest along with the director.'
Mace laughed derisively. 'You and whose army, Captain. In case you hadn't noticed, you are surrounded and outnumbered. You are no longer in control of the Watch Captain, UNIT is. By order of the Prime Minister herself.'
'Even the Prime Minister isn't above the law Colonel,' Andy reminded him.
'Quite so. But the hand that rocks the cradle,' Mace quoted.
'Is the hand that keeps the child asleep so that it can't see what's going on,' Andy finished for him. 'But I'm still alive, wide awake, and keen to find out what's going on.'
'As I said before Captain, you are outnumbered. Put down your weapons and you may live to see another day,' Mace said.
Andy looked around at the UNIT soldiers, before looking back at Mace. He lowered his rifles and looked down. 'Oh look. One of my bootlaces has come undone.' He dropped down onto one knee to apparently fasten it up again.
"Zap, zap, zap-zap-zap, zap, zap."
Had Colonel Mace had the time to look at Andy's boots, he would have seen that they were both laced up. He didn't have the time however, because the Standby Room was full of blue-white energy bolts flying from the doorway, across the room, and striking the members of his patrol.
When Andy had mentioned his bootlace, the members of the Watch had rolled off their seats onto the floor, knowing what was coming next. This was a special forces technique that Andy had trained them in for engaging with an unknown force in the theatre of war.
One member of the team would take point and go and speak to a patrol. He would engage them in conversation to ascertain if they were friend or foe. If they were friend, he would take them back to the team. If they were foe, he would either mention his bootlace, or offer a packet of cigarettes which he would drop. When he stooped down, shots would fly over his head from his team and take out the foe.
Andy stood up and looked around at the unconscious soldiers with a satisfied smile. He looked back to the doors to see Rose and River coming into the room. 'Nice shootin' Tex.'
Rose and River grinned, looked at each other and blew imaginary smoke off the front of their stun guns. Without being asked, the members of the Watch moved to the soldiers and took their weapons. Mace stood in stunned silence, trying to comprehend what had just happened. Yvonne just looked around at the downed soldiers with mild interest.
'Sit-Down!' Andy said to Mace and Hartman, in a cold, threatening voice that left them in no doubt of what would happen if they didn't comply. Mace and Hartman sat side by side on one of the sofas.
'By the authority granted to me as a Torchwood Special Operations Agent, I am arresting you for conspiracy to commit murder. Conspiracy to overthrow a duly elected government, and conspiracy to commit treason. You do not have to say anything. But, it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand the caution?' Andy said with some satisfaction.
Mace and Yvonne just glared at him. 'I'll take that as a yes then. So, let's get straight to the point. Who are you working for? Who's pulling your strings?'
'Andy. What has happened to you? Why are you doing this? Jeopardising your illustrious career?' Yvonne asked, acting as his employer.
'You know, it's ironic. Because me and the Doctor were going to go once we'd fixed the power,' John interrupted. 'We're not big on goodbyes, just sort stuff out and go. That's us. We'd sorted the Zygons and the power, and thought that was it.'
'However. You then called in UNIT on the pretence of conducting a search and disarmed the Watch,' Eight said. 'Then you did something really stupid. You tried to eliminate the leader of the Watch. Apparently because he'd freed a lot of people who were arrested for being different.'
'Now why would you do that?' John asked. 'Why would you disarm a force defending the planet when they've just proved that you need them? Unless . . .'
'Unless the Zygons weren't the only threat,' Eight said.
'What? You mean there's another invasion comin'?' Rose asked.
'Yes. And they've been planning it for a while,' John explained. 'It started weeks ago when they took over Parliament to introduce new legislation which gave Torchwood new powers to arrest suspected aliens and hold them without trial.'
'That was on the internet,' River remembered. 'So it wasn't the Zygons?'
'No. The Zygons came and copied the copies of the humans. The question is, who are the original copiers?' John said.
'So who are Yvonne and Mace?' Lucie asked.
'Well. We don't know yet, do we?' John answered.
Eight rubbed his chin as he thought. 'Well, there are a number of shape shifters we know of. The Kymbra Chimera for instance.'
'Hmm. But they're no good at copying clothing. It appears fused to the flesh,' John recalled. 'What about the Brancheerians from the planet Sirus?'
'Yeah, they could hold the copy, but it's not really their style. They've always been a friendly bunch,' Eight said.
'Oh yeah. You're right. The Gizou could have done it,' John said and took out his sonic screwdriver to scan Yvonne and Mace. 'Nah. no proteus particles.'
'What about the Gwanzulum?' Eight asked. He went over to Yvonne. 'Are you an energy leech? Is the real Yvonne dying somewhere in this building?'
'Oh. Hang on, hang on!' John suddenly had a flashback to the old universe. He went over to Mace and sniffed him. 'Nah. Testosterone . . . What is that aftershave . . . Paco Rabanne?'
'John? What are y'doin'?' Rose asked.
He held his hand up in a "just a moment" gesture, and started sniffing Yvonne. 'Garnier shampoo . . . Chanel cologne. But what is that masking?' He took Yvonne's hand and looked at it, sniffed it, and . . .
"No", Rose thought. Surely he wasn't going to.
But he did. He licked the back of Yvonne's hand. Yvonne pulled her hand away in disgust, and John stuck his tongue out and pulled a face as though he had just licked the sourest lemon you could imagine.
'Yeuch! That's . . . That's . . .'
'Disgusting,' Rose said, meaning his habit of tasting things.
'No. Well, yes. It was disgusting. A sort of fishy, cheesy disgusting. But the other thing it is, is alien!'
It may have been talking about Donna Noble earlier that had triggered it. But he recalled when Donna had first met Martha Jones. 'Andy. Is there somewhere here in the building where you keep specimens secure? I know you've got the warehouse for the big stuff, and the vault for the smaller stuff. But what about the living, organic stuff?'
'Yeah. The Biological Research Facility,' Andy informed him.
'Take us there.'
'John. Is this where I think it is?' Rose asked as they stopped in front of a big, ochre yellow door with strengthening mouldings embossed into it.
'Yeah. The "Sphere Room",' John confirmed.
'What's the sphere room?' Eight asked.
'In our old universe, it was a room that held a void ship which had punched its way into our world from the void,' John explained.
John and Eight looked at the complex lock to the side of the door. It was a copper coloured disk on a black plate, held away from the wall on a column which had a number of rods projecting outwards.
'You wouldn't like to open it for us would you,' John asked Yvonne. She gave him a withering look. 'Didn't think so.'
He put his brainy specs on and looked at the lock. 'So what do you reckon?' he asked Eight.
Eight joined him and leaned forwards to inspect the lock. 'Hmm. Deadlock seal. How long do you think it will take to break the deadlock?'
John took his sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. 'On my own, probably five or six hours.'
Eight took his sonic out. 'And together?'
'Ooh, I don't know. Five or six minutes,' he said with a smile.
'Then let's do it!' Eight said.
Eight started firing a stream of pulses at the lock's software architecture to initiate a response. John detected the response pulses and stored them. After a few minutes, he'd recorded the encoded signals of the locks combination. He then fed those signals back to the lock's software, where Eight modified them to become command functions. In electronic terms, they were turning the tumblers on the safe.
There was a clunk and a rumble as the door slid back into the wall, revealing the room inside. There was no sphere though, just several beds with naked bodies strapped to them, each wearing an electronic headset. But it was the object at the far end of the room which caught John's attention. A big, copper coloured block with a cylindrical tunnel cut into it, big enough to stand in. There were horizontal slits cut into the cylinder, lit with purple light, and two white strips either side. On the right hand side was a control console.
John ran up to it. 'Ah-ha. I knew it!'
'John, what is it?' Rose called to him.
'It's a teleport,' he replied.
'But teleports don't work inside Torchwood,' Rose remembered.
'Not those bracelet ones, no. They're open broadcast transceivers. If the destination is inhibited, the transmitter can't send. But this . . . This is a closed circuit. There is always somewhere to send and receive, even within an inhibitor field.'
'Who's is it?' Eight asked.
'Sontarans,' John told him with a cold voice. They both knew that meant trouble. 'I came across this in the old universe with Donna and Martha. Martha was cloned, but I spotted that straight away.' He rubbed his nose. 'This nose of mine isn't as good as it used to be. Or maybe it's because I knew Martha's scent from her travels in the TARDIS.'
He gave a cheeky, open mouthed smile. 'Nothing wrong with the tongue though, eh Rose?' He clicked his tongue and gave her a wink. She immediately blushed at the thought of what he did to her with that tongue.
She tried to put that thought to the back of her mind and recover her composure. 'Who are the Sontarans?' she asked. That was one species she'd never encountered in her travels with the Doctor.
'Angry little Hobbits. Imagine Mr Potato Head with an attitude and a huge inferiority complex. A warlike clone race that just want to kill anyone who is taller than themselves. Which is why I'd better do this.' He sonicked the control pad, which flashed, banged, and emitted a shower of sparks, causing the lighting strips to go out. 'That should stop any uninvited guests.'
The rest of the group had moved over to the beds and were looking at the people strapped to them. 'Oh my God! That's Harriet Jones again,' Lucie exclaimed.
John went to join her. 'Oh yeah,' he smiled, and then pulled a face. 'And she's got no clothes on.' He put a hand up to the side of his face so that he couldn't see her body.
River on the other hand was giving her an admiring glance. 'Mmm. Not bad. A surprisingly fit body for her age.'
Eight was at another bed. 'And I believe he's the Secretary of State for Defence.'
Andy had a gun trained on Yvonne, and he moved her over to another bed. 'Recognise her?' he asked her. Lying on the bed was a naked Yvonne Hartman.
'Ah, awkward,' John said as he approached the bed. 'I'm so sorry,' he said to the Yvonne who was standing by the bed. He reached for the headset.
'NO. Don't. Please,' the standing Yvonne pleaded.
John's brown eyes were full of sadness. 'I'm sorry, I must. You're just a copy, and believe me, I know how that feels. But you've been made to steal her life, and now it's time to give it back.' John lifted the headset off the real Yvonne, and the false Yvonne cried out as she fell to the floor.
The real Yvonne's eyes opened wide as she gasped. She tried to sit up but couldn't due to the restraints. Rose and Lucie started to unbuckle the straps. 'Where am I? What's happened to me . . . There were these dwarves with heads . . .'
'We know Yvonne,' Andy told her. 'It's okay, you're safe.'
River was on one knee, using her scanner on the false Yvonne. 'Her heart has gone into atrial fibrillation. Multiple organ failure . . . She's dying.'
Yvonne sat up as Rose pulled the bed sheet out from the edges of the bed and wrapped it around her. She was staring at the dying copy of herself lying on the floor. 'Who is she?'
'She's you,' John told her. 'Well, a clone of you. But all she's ever known is being Yvonne Hartman. That headset was keeping her body in sync with yours. Memories, emotions, biorhythms, everything. Once the headset was removed, everything went out of sync and into catastrophic failure.'
River was looking at the other people who were being freed from the beds and wrapped in sheets. 'John. Am I missing something? There isn't a body for Colonel Mace here.'
'Ah, yes. You won't find any for Gray or Harris either. They weren't part of the executive invasion committee. They're just the "grunts" who carry out the orders. The Sontarans will be using mind control to give them those orders,' John explained. 'And I think it's about time we had a word with them.'
