Mayflower Surrender
The Doctor was marched into the 2nd Massachusetts camp, past a makeshift barricade composed of foliage, tyres and crates stacked up in winding rows, creating narrow paths. The group fell into single file, a rifle butt nudging the base of the Doctor's bruised spine. Those manning the barricade eyeballed the Doctor with blatantly hostile curiosity. A boy, about thirteen years old, with a grubby, chubby face and greasy brown hair falling over bright blue eyes, emerged from behind a hedge, accosting Hal, who said tiredly, "What's up, Jimmy?"
"We holding? Who'd we lose?" Jimmy demanded
"Captain Jameson, Jerrod's cousin, a bunch of guys I didn't know," Hal said wearily, leading the group up some steps.
Jimmy faltered to a halt. "Jameson's dead? Who's gonna command the 2nd?"
Nobody answered him. When the Doctor brushed past him, Jimmy stared at his retreating back in confusion, calling after the group, "Whose the guy in the suit?"
The Doctor was taken into some sort of outdoor holding, the place crowded and crushed, the wounded being lifted onto stretchers, others queuing up at an impromptu counter made of crates where unappetizing looking food was being doled out. Tom stopped, looking around, searching for somebody, his gaze finally falling upon a little boy with his dark eyes. Hal joined the end of the soup line, winding his arms around the waist of the blonde standing just ahead of him, his lips finding the nape of her neck, the blonde batting him away with mock modesty.
The group continued without them, the Doctor being hurried on, led through the curious crowd, then across a suspended catwalk into a cramped dimly lit workroom filled with dusty old sewing machines, the windows smashed, the glass looking like broken teeth. The Doctor ran his tongue over his own, wincing at the taste of blood. Teeth were still all there though.
"I told Reed small arms only. He had those AT4s. I guess he used them and pissed them off," Porter replied, looking put out.
Weaver pursed his lips, looking like he wanted to say a few choice words about Reed, only respect for the dead preventing him from doing so. Porter looked at him for a long moment, before turning to one of his companions, leaning down and whispering something in his ear. The man nodded, before saluting, turning smartly on his heel and leaving the workroom, barging past the Doctor as he was shoved into a corner, two of the rear guard training their rifles on him, the rest standing to attention behind Weaver. Porter's gaze flickered over the Doctor, taking him in from top to toe.
"Who's this?" Porter asked.
"Caught him down the back of an alley up near the Colton Street barricade. Was cradling a dying Skitter in his arms like it was his firstborn child. Never seen anything like it in my life," Weaver said, face disgusted.
Porter gaped at the Doctor before catching himself. "Well... well, was he on his own?" Porter stuttered, eyes round as saucers.
"I believe he had a... female associate. Vivien or something. But she got blown up with the rest of South Boston, thank the Lord."
The Doctor lunged forwards, the room exploding into uproar, men shouting, raising guns, those already raised having their triggers almost pulled.
"AT EASE! AT EASE!" Porter bellowed, waving his arms like a windmill. "PUT DOWN YOUR GODDAMN WEAPONS! NOW!"
Reluctantly his order was obeyed. Porter stepped in front of the Doctor, almost like a human shield. "This man is not to be harmed, do you hear me?" he intoned, looking round at their mutinous faces.
"It's a bit late for that, ain't it, Colonel?" one of the men sneered, motioning to the Doctor's battered visage. "If you want though, we can finish off what we started" -
- "What did I just say, soldier?" Porter said dangerously.
The man bowed his head, shoulders hunching, eyes resentful.
Weaver stepped forwards, ready to take up the rebellion, but Porter halted him with his hand. "Knowledge is power, Dan," Porter said, eying the Doctor as though he was a slice of cake he'd very much like to eat, "and this man might prove very useful in terms of intel."
Weaver bit his lip, struggling to choke down his subversion, pissed off at Porter's plans and his cliché comments. But he held his tongue all the same, respecting the chain of command as every good soldier should. A timid knock disturbed the silence, making them all turn around, only to see Tom standing the doorway, knuckles hesitantly half raised over the wooden doorframe.
"Come on in, Tom," Porter said, beckoning him in.
Tom entered, glancing nervously at the Doctor despite himself.
"You've met then?" Porter said, noting the way the Doctor was watching Tom.
"Sort of," Tom replied.
"Well, he's not to be harmed, do you hear me?"
"What, you want us to question him?" Tom hazarded.
"Obviously," Porter said, all but rolling his eyes.
"But if he doesn't talk..."
"And you don't want us to lay a finger on him..." Weaver said, catching up the tail end of Tom's sentence, making Tom glare at him for twisting his words. But Weaver ignored him, his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides, making Porter look sharply at him.
"You're not getting the point," Porter said, sounding at the end of his tether. "We can't fight the aliens unless we know how."
"He could just tell you a pack of lies," Tom pointed out tentatively. "In fact, bringing him back here might have been a huge mistake. There could be a bunch of Mechs heading our way right now because of him."
Porter just looked at Tom like he was an imbecile. "When he talks, I want you to listen," Porter said impatiently. "Whatever he says might just be the answer we're seeking."
"We don't need an answer," Weaver snapped. "We need to fight and we already know how to."
"No, we don't," Porter said, "nobody does, and that's the problem. This man could be the weak link in the chain, the opening we've been searching for. But we can't place all our bets on the one horse. So that's why we're going to split up - we're gonna run, and we're gonna hide, and we're gonna survive. The food stores have been marked on the maps. As of last week's recon, they were all intact and secure. So we'll be moving out in the morning, going to ground somewhere around Acton, and that's the end of it. I won't brook any more arguments."
"I hear you, sir, but like I said" -
"What did I just say, Weaver?" Porter said coldly, stepping forwards.
Weaver's jaw tightened, but he finally held his tongue.
Porter studied him for a long moment, before turning away, addressing the whole room instead. "He's in protective custody until I see fit to change that status. Anybody who lays a finger on him without an ironclad reason to do so, will be court-martialled. Is that understood?" He looked round at them all, face stern. They all nodded, albeit unwillingly. The Doctor was then led out from the room, disliking the gleam in Porter's eye as he watched him leave.
"So the Continental Army are fighting the English again?" Dr. Anne Glass asked, eying the Doctor with some distaste, before almost but not quite flirtatiously raising an eyebrow at Tom as she finished cleaning the blood from the Doctor's face. His nose wasn't broken and there were no missing teeth, only the barest hint of a black eye, the rest of him merely bruised and battered, his lip already starting to heal. He seemed hardy to Anne, and peculiarly so. The kind of beating Tom said the stranger had undergone back in the alleyway should have led to a few broken ribs at least.
"There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow!" Tom declaimed sarcastically. "Talk about history repeating itself," he added darkly, gaze travelling over the Doctor sitting before him, hands bound, face unreadable. Back at the alley, he'd tried and failed to stop the men from beating the Doctor into submission, only obeying Weaver's order to stand down. The fact they had refused to acknowledge his authority only added to his unease over being promoted to second-in-command of the 2nd Massachusetts, making him wonder if he was capable of such an undertaking.
"You have no idea," the Doctor said quietly, staring ahead at some unseen point. Tom and Anne exchanged a glance, and then Anne pulled out her stethoscope, slipping its buds into her ears. Stooping down, she checked the Doctor's chest, frowning slightly. She moved the small disc along the front of his suit, eyes widening, all the blood draining from her face. She slowly stood up, removing the buds from her ears, staring at the Doctor as though he'd just sprouted horns.
"What is it?" Tom said, alarmed.
Anne turned to face Tom, her body swaying slightly on the spot. "His heart," she whispered. "His... hearts."
Tom stared at her, before snatching the stethoscope out of her shaking hands. Anne backed away, crashing into the table as she went. Tom hastily thrust the buds into his own ears, falling to his knees as he pressed the small disc to the Doctor's chest, hearing the echo of another heartbeat. His own heart now beating hard in his chest, he slid the disc as Anne had done, over the front of the Doctor's torn suit, following the echo back to its source, the beat now steady and loud. And all the while, the Doctor sat there, unmoving, uncaring.
Tom looked up at Anne, his face now resembling a corpse's. "He's... he's not human," Tom managed to choke out.
"But how?" Anne whispered, collapsing down onto a chair.
"Some - some sort of new alien experiment?" Tom hazarded, trying and failing to get to his feet, his legs having been reduced to jelly.
"I'm not the by-product of some experiment," the Doctor said, sounding insulted, a spark of life returning to his eyes. "I was born this way, as Lady Gaga so wisely said."
"But how?" Tom asked, echoing Anne's earlier words. "You... you look human."
"We came first," the Doctor shrugged.
"Who came first?" Anne demanded, recovering her nerve. "Who the hell are you?"
"I'm the Doctor," he said, eyes now dancing with a devilish light, "that's who."
Potion delirium, mayflower surrender
In the dark no one knows who you are
Taxidermy play dead, and best of all
I wasn't laughing at anything in particular
"Do you not realise what we've just done!?" Weaver exploded as Porter circled the Doctor now sitting on a stool in the middle of the heavily guarded workroom, surrounded by soldiers and sewing machines long silent. "We've brought an alien into the heart of our camp! An alien, Jim, a goddamn alien!" He was beyond angry, beyond protocol, losing all sense of proper formalities.
"Yes, an alien," Porter said, his eyes shining.
Weaver turned away from the sickening sight of Porter gloating, before suddenly veering to the left, hand flying to his chest, eyes scrunching up with pain. Tom grabbed his arm, worried, but Weaver shook him off, muttering something incomprehensible. Tom retreated, still feeling like his world had been turned upside down.
"It's like Mason said, there could be a bunch of Mechs heading our way right now," Danner argued. "That - that thing could bring the Skitters down on us. Hell, it might have been a trap laid for us, a complete set-up!"
"There is no trap," the Doctor said coldly, glancing contemptuously around the workroom, all too aware of their fearful thoughts. Only Porter was unaffected by the storm unfolding, looking like the cat that had got the cream. Any minute now, he would start licking his moustache, Tom thought darkly.
"If he's an alien," Anderson asked, stepping forwards, "how come he looks so human?"
The Doctor burst out laughing. "As if!" he said, sounding incredulously insulted, startling them all.
"He said he was an alien, born and bred," Tom explained after a brief pause, shaking himself back into semblance.
"But that could be a lie, something to throw you off the scent," Anderson said, shooting the Doctor a wary glance.
"What do you mean?"
"This could be a new alien offensive," Anderson explained. "Another way of harnessing, except for adults this time."
"But he's not harnessed," Tom said slowly, looking like he was struggling to reconcile two colliding viewpoints. "Not as far as we know. Certainly he doesn't have any of these things on his back. And he seems to be acting on his own will, not another's. He's his own man." As soon as he said this, Tom could have bitten out his tongue.
"That's no man, Tom," Weaver growled.
"It doesn't matter," Porter said, stunning them all.
"Excuse me?" Weaver sputtered.
"This... this being," Porter said, inclining his head at the Doctor almost politely, "is not to be harmed, do you hear me?"
Weaver just gawped at him.
"We can't keep him here, Jim," Tom said, unable to believe what he was hearing. "He's an alien; he was caught helping a Skitter for chrissake" –
- "It was frightened," the Doctor spat. "Frightened and dying."
"It and its kind are destroying this planet," Tom spat back, "enslaving our children" –
- "I bear your species no ill-will," the Doctor retorted. "I have no intentions of harming anyone, human or otherwise."
"Told you he was a beatnik," Weaver muttered, returning back to life.
"And I tell you, he could be lying," Anderson reiterated, turning on Porter.
"I'm surprised you haven't heard of me," the Doctor said with a frown to Porter, ignoring Anderson. "I've had dealings with the Yanks before. Surely there must be a record of me somewhere?"
"Nothing of that kind exists anymore," Porter said, "none that we have access to anyways."
"But aliens, surely that's nothing new?" the Doctor pressed.
"What, before the current conflict?" Porter said frowning.
"Daleks. Cybermen. Ring a bell? Ding-a-ling?"
"Any previous suspected alien contact was either faked or created by hallucogenics administered by terrorists on a mass scale," Porter explained. "Until now, we have always believed we were alone in the universe."
The Doctor almost laughed in the old man's face before catching himself in time. It wasn't the human's fault he believed such fairytales spun by his superiors. Those high-up had hidden the truth, probably for what they considered the greater good, protecting humanity from the unknown, yet look where it had gotten them, on their knees.
"Why do you speak with an English accent?" Tom asked suddenly.
"What, finding it hard to get your head around an Anglo-Saxon alien?" the Doctor said, waggling his eyebrows, enjoying himself now. "And there's me thinking, 'the rebels are not the despicable rabble too many have supposed them to be'."
"For 'they never showed such conduct, attention, and perseverance as they do now'," Tom finished, looking taken aback. "General Gage, yeah?"
"Lovely man," the Doctor reminisced. "Even lovelier hat."