PLAGUE
TWENTYFOUR
Jack was on the phone with the President of the United States, for the fourth time in nearly three days. It was not an uplifting phone call.
They had succeeded in vaporizing the international space station and the attached shuttle. No one in government had questioned Jack's recommendation. The media on the other hand were a different matter and herding them had proven difficult.
Still, the fact was that every human on the planet was infested with nanotech and no one knew how to eliminate it, or what it might do next. All things considered, and no matter how unfortunate it seemed, most people were far more freaked out about the contamination than the loss of the space station.
Of course almost all of those same people were ignorant of the other, terrible tragedy – the deaths of thousands of sentient entities who'd just happened to have originated on a planet other than earth. For those creatures, it was a horrific case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The President was seeking reassurances that Jack could not in good conscience provide. What had happened was appalling and there was no guarantee it wasn't going to get worse. Much worse.
When Jack heard the familiar sound he exclaimed, "Gotta go!" and hung up the phone.
Owen was in his lab, asleep over his scanning electron microscope. He'd been having a dream, a relatively pleasant one all things considered, and his subconscious was trying its best to ignore the noise.
When the clamor finally woke him, he jumped hitting his head soundly on the SEM's sample chamber. "Shit!" he cursed as he knocked over his chair and ran out the door.
Rose and Ianto were in the meeting room on a conference phone talking to Tosh and Gwen. The news continued to be appalling. Apparently there wasn't a single non-terrestrial being left alive on the planet. Reports from contacts in Asia, Australia, Africa and the Americas were all negative. While the cause of death varied from race to race, the end result was always, depressingly, the same.
When Rose heard the sound she couldn't at first believe her ears. She looked for confirmation from Ianto, who smiled and nodded his head. She was gone before he finished nodding.
Jack was the first to see The Doctor emerge, disheveled, bespectacled, barefoot and endearingly geeky-looking in his loose-fitting scrubs; he couldn't help but grin at the sight.
From behind the Captain came a joyous whoop as Rose sped past him and straight into The Doctor's arms; he swung her through the air and laughed.
Jack was still watching the joyful reunion, and waiting, as Owen and Ianto came up beside him. The Captain's smile slowly started to fade as his eyes turned cold.