The gasmask people were getting closer and closer. Kayla squeezed her father's hand, and without meaning to, latched onto the Doctor's. He made no attempt to pull away. Instead, he faced the crowd.
"Go to your room." He said sternly, like he was addressing a naughty child. The gasmask people stopped, hesitating. Kayla laughed a bit, causing Rose to glare at her. "Go to your room!" As one, the people crocked their heads to one side. "I mean it! I am very, very angry with you. I am very, VERY cross! Go-to-your-ROOM!" He roared, pointing in no particular direction. Kayla had to admit, very grudgingly, that this man was good, because the gasmask people had turned away meekly, heading back to their beds where they sat down on them, and then fell back into their sleeping state. "I'm really glad that worked. Those would've been TERRIBLE last words." The Doctor sighed in relief, and smiled at Jack, Kayla, and Rose, not noticing the blond's gaze on Kayla's and his still locked hands.
Rose sat by one of the beds, staring at the gasmask people. Jack settled down on a chair while Kayla stood nearby, not wanting to stand next to the gasmask people, who could just pop up whenever they wanted.
"Why are they all wearing gasmasks?" Rose inquired, and Kayla looked over at her.
"They aren't. Those masks, they're flesh and blood. That's they're head now. If we tried to get it off, then not only would we become like them, it wouldn't come off." She explained.
"Oh." Rose said in a small voice.
"How was this con of yours supposed to work, and how do you know about me being a Time Lord?" Both questions from the Doctor were directed to Kayla.
"Find some harmless piece of space-junk...let the nearest Time Agent track it back to Earth. Jack convinces him it's valuable, name a price. When he's put 50% up front-oops! I make a German bomb fall on it, destroying it forever. He never gets to see what he's paid for. Never knows he's been conned. Jack buys us all drinks with the Time Agent's own money, and we discuss dumb luck. The perfect self-cleaning con. As for the Time Lord thing, when we were running and you were dragging me behind you, I took the time to take your pulse. I was running through all the facts I knew about you during dinner, including your TARDIS, though the Chameleon Circuit must be broken, or it would have cloaked itself better." Kayla smirked at the Doctor, while Jack whistled lowly.
"Yeah, perfect con." The Doctor muttered quietly.
"The London Bliss is perfect for a self-cleaning con. Pompeii is nice, but it sort of makes you sad," Jack squeezed her hand.
"You also have to set your alarm for volcano day." He tried to joke, to cheer up his daughter, but it didn't work, even though he laughed, and Kayla loved his laugh for some unknown reason. His laughter died away when he caught the Doctor's stern look. "Getting a hint of disapproval." He said, watching as Kayla started to walk around the room, staring at all the people.
"Take a look around the room. This is what your 'harmless piece of space-junk' did." Kayla turned around quickly and stared at the Doctor.
"Don't blame Jack, I was the one who was checking the medical transporter. It looked empty, the scanner said it was empty, so I went with it. I was lazy, I should have run more tests…done something. It's my fault, not Jack's." The Doctor stared at her without comment before he turned away.
"Rose." He called to the blond.
"We getting out of here?" Rose wondered.
"We're going upstairs." The Doctor corrected, and the blond got up and followed him half-heartily like this was a regular occurrence. Kayla watched them go, her gaze lingering where the Doctor had stood, not noticing that the man was still standing at the doorway, or that Rose was still in the room.
"I did this, I'm going with them. You can go back to the ship if you want to." Jack shook his head.
"It's not your fault, it is never your fault." He reassured her, before turning to look at the leather clad man.
"I programmed the flight computer so it wouldn't land on anything living-it shouldn't have harmed anyone! I don't know what's happening here, but believe me-Kayla had nothing to do with it, she's too young for this kind of job, for this life. She had nothing to do with it, and I didn't either." The Doctor turned to face him.
"I'll tell you what's happening. You both forgot to set your alarm clock. It's volcano day." He told them scornfully, repeating Jack's failed joke. A siren went off in the distance, and Kayla ran out of the ward, startled.
"What's that?" Rose asked.
"The all-clear." Jack reported, remembering the list he had received when he joined the army.
"I wish." The Doctor and Kayla both muttered darkly, nether hearing the other, and the Doctor walked out quickly, leaving Rose, Kayla, and Jack to go after him.
Rose and Jack ran after the Doctor and…Kayla, who was surprisingly a quick runner, and was yards ahead, almost out of sight.
"Mr. Spock?" Jack called, using the Doctor's false name.
"Doctor?" Rose yelled.
"Kayla!" Jack yelled, unaware that Kayla was waiting for them by some stairs which they ignored, running past them and her.
"Have you got a blaster?" the Doctor called, suddenly next to Kayla, pocking his head around the corner. She jumped, but remain silent as Rose and Jack backtracked to meet them.
"Two. I have one and Kayla got one from the Time Agency on her fifth year with them." He told the Doctor. The Doctor, Jack, Rose, and Kayla ran up the stairs and found themselves faced with a locked door.
"The night your space-junk landed, someone was hurt. This was where they were taken." The Doctor explained, not noticing Kayla's wince.
"Jamie?" She guessed to the Doctor, who nodded.
"Appears so." He agreed.
"What happened to him?" Rose wondered.
"Let's find out!" the Doctor cheered, and then looked over at Kayla, who was right next to him.
"Get it open." She hesitated for a few seconds, and then pulled out her small silver blaster and pointed it at the door, and then paused for another few moments, feeling the Doctor step back next to Rose only to be replaced by Jack.
"Do you want me to-" Kayla quickly shook her head.
"No." She told him, and then used her blaster to shoot a perfect square hole around the lock of the door, and it squeaked open.
"Sonic blaster, 51st century. Weapon Factories of Villengard?" He asked Kayla, who shook her head.
"His is, the Time Agency made some too, gave it only to the best." She tensed some, and Jack watched as her mask went into place firmly.
"You were one of the best?" The Doctor asked.
"Yep, and it's not something I'm proud of either." She told him.
"Wait, you've been to the factories?" Jack suddenly asked, changing the subject off of Kayla and her past.
"Once." The Doctor agreed.
"Well, they gone now. Destroyed. The main reactor went critical. Vaporized the lot." Kayla winced and stepped into the room.
"Like I said-once. There's a banana grove there, now. I like bananas. Bananas are good." The Doctor said cheerfully, walking into the room behind Kayla, both of them listening to Rose and Jack flirt.
"That's a nice blast pattern, does yours do that?" Rose wondered.
"Yep, it's digital." Jack said proudly, and Kayla could imagine him taking his blaster out and showing it to Rose with pride.
"Squareness gun." Rose said.
"Yeah." Jack agreed.
"I like it." Rose smiled at Jack and went into the room, laughing. Kayla went over and turned on the lights, showing the ransacked room. Leaves and papers scattered the floor, and the window was broken.
"What d'you think?" the Doctor asked Kayla and Jack.
"SOMETHING got out of here..." Jack started.
"Yeah. And?" the Doctor inquired, no longer look at Jack but looking at Kayla, who was running a hand across the wall.
"Something very powerful, and horribly angry." Kayla spoke softly; her voice quivering as yet more guilt crushed her. It was her fault that Jamie got hurt, her fault that a monster was chasing the children. All the people lying in the wards, dead, had her to blame. Even poor Doctor Constantine was her fault.
"Powerful and angry." The Doctor agreed.
Jack looked over at Kayla, and sighed deeply, knowing her expression and that he couldn't do anything to her. He walked over to a door, and entered a room to the side. Kayla walked in afterwards, only to moan and lean against the wall, her back firmly against the many crayon drawing of women. All the walls and the floor were covered with drawings with different women on them. Hair colors were changed, eyes were too, the skin was blue or green or any other color. A few children toys sat in the corner of the room, untouched.
"A child? I suppose this explains 'mummy.'" Jack commented, looking around the room, his eyes landing on Kayla who was still leaning against the wall, her eyes fluttering closed.
"How could a child do this?" Rose questioned. Nobody answered her. The Doctor went over to a tape recorder and flipped it on while Jack went over to his daughter and held her hand, giving her as much comfort has he could.
"Do you know where you are?" Constantine's voice came from the recorder, causing Kayla's eyes to pop open and go stand next to the Doctor. Almost like she didn't know she was doing it, Kayla clasped onto the Doctor's hand, and he didn't jerk away.
"Are you my mummy?" the child's voiced.
"Are you aware of what's around you? Can you...see?" the elderly doctor asked.
"Are you my mummy?" the child repeated.
"What do you want? Do you know-" Constantine started, but the child interrupted me.
"I want my mummy. Are you my mummy? I want my mummy! Are you my mummy?" The child yelled rapidly, sounding like he was throwing a tantrum. Kayla studied the pictures, realizing that the child had drawn pictures of his mother, his mummy.
"Are you my mummy? Mummy? Mummy?" the child chorused.
"Doctor, I've heard this voice before." Rose stated suddenly.
"Me too." The Doctor agreed.
"And I have too. But what does this have to do with Jamie? How are they related? Jamie got hurt the night of the con, and a child was brought here." Kayla started to walk around, ignoring like everyone else, the child still chanting.
"Mummy?" Kayla turned to face the three people in the small room with her.
"Start talking, tell me everything you've noticed." She instructed them.
"Always, "are you my mummy?" Like he doesn't know." Rose voiced.
"Yes, there is that." Kayla agreed, still pacing.
"Mummy?" The child asked again.
"Why doesn't he know?" Rose wondered, and Kayla stopped pacing, listening to the child intently.
"Are you there, mummy? Mummy?" The child cried.
The reels continued to spin on the tape.
"Mummy? Please, mummy? Mummy?" He continued to chorus. Kayla had stopped her pacing only to have the Doctor start to replicate her, walking back and forth, thinking deeply while Kayla leaned against the wall, rubbing her temple.
"Doctor?" Rose questioned, casting a worried glance at him and then to Kayla.
"Can you sense it?" the Doctor asked.
"Can't you feel it?" Kayla inquired at the same time. They both glanced at each other for a few seconds before Kayla broke the stare, looking over at her father, feeling Rose's dagger like stares at her neck.
"Sense what, feel what?" Jack questioned, staring worriedly at his daughter, who was paler than normal, and she was quite pale as it was.
"Coming out of the walls…" Kayla started.
"Can you feel it?" the Doctor finished for her, following her thought process.
"Mummy?" the child asked yet again. The Doctor stopped and looked at Jack and Rose before glancing over at Kayla, who's back was still pressed against the wall. Very slowly, he pulled her away from the wall and into the middle of the room, the furthest point from the walls.
"Funny little human brains, how do you get around in those things?" He questioned the two. Kayla barley heard him, the only thing she heard was the child's voice, growing louder and making her head hurt horribly. The voice pounded, getting louder and louder. With a sigh, she fainted right into the Doctor's outstretched arms.
Jack stared at his daughter's closed eyes, shocked.
"She fainted." He said, stunned.
"Yes she did, now were was why?" the Doctor asked.
"You were insulting humans and their little brains." Rose told him promptly.
"Right! There are these children living rough around the bomb site. They come out during air-raids looking for food." He explained to them, reciting what Kayla and he had seen.
"Mummy, please?" the child wondered.
"Suppose they were there when this thing-whatever it was-landed? That's what Kayla was getting at! Jamie and the child were hurt on the same night!" He cried out in victory.
"It was a med-ship. It was harmless." Jack repeated, not sounding as sure of himself as before.
"Yes, you keep saying. 'Harmless'. Suppose one of them was affected-altered?" He inquired, still next to Kayla in the middle of the room.
"Altered how?" Rose voiced.
"I'm here!" The child said, the first sentence he had spoken so far that didn't contain mummy in any way.
"It's afraid. Terribly afraid, and powerful. It doesn't know it yet, but it will do." He gave a small laugh, and glanced down at Kayla, who was still out. He didn't know what, but something attracted him to her, something about her confused him, made him feel things he hadn't felt since Gallifrey. Rose was nice and all, but he would never think of her as anything but being his younger sister that he had to protect. Realizing that he had quiet for a long time, the Doctor rushed to finish his sentence. "It's got the power of a god, and I just sent it to its room." A loud crackling sound filled the room.
"Doctor..." Rose said, her voice failing because of her fear.
"I'm here. Can't you see me?" the child wondered, and the Doctor felt his self-satisfied smile fall off.
"End of the tape. It ran out about 30 seconds ago." He told her.
"I'm here, now. Can't you see me?" the child questioned again.
"I sent it to its room. THIS is its room." He spun around and faced the tape recorder where the child that he and Kayla had seen at the house earlier stood there.
"Are you my mummy?" the child cocked his head, considering Rose. "Mummy?" Rose swallows nervously.
"What about Kayla?" She asked softly, and then barley held back a scream as Kayla popped up and regarded the child coldly.
"Oh, it's you." She hissed.
"Okay...on my signal...make for the door. NOW!" Jack roared, violently pulling out…a banana, expecting it to be his blaster, and pointed it threateningly at the child. The Doctor grinned and grabbed the sonic blaster from his pocket and created a perfect square hole in the wall.
"Go! Now! Don't drop the banana!" He ordered Jack, Kayla, and Rose. Rose and Jack didn't hesitate while Kayla stayed with the Doctor only for them both to hop out quickly.
"Why not?!" Jack wondered.
"Good source of potassium!" the Doctor explained, and they were running, only to arrive back in the corridor, the child walking out of the room in front of them.
"Give me that!" Jack ordered, grabbing the blaster.
"Are you my mummy?" the child repeated.
"I dislike that question." Kayla commented as Jack put the wall back in place, their square hole gone.
"Digital rewind." He explained, tossing the banana to the Doctor. "Nice switch." He praised grudgingly.
"You shouldn't have done that." Kayla whispered to Jack, who shrugged.
"It's from the Groves of Villengard. I thought it was appropriate." The Doctor told him.
"There's really a banana grove in the heart of Villengard and you did that?" Kayla smirked.
"Nice." She praised.
"Bananas are good." The Doctor said simply. Their humor was short lived as the child pounded on the wall, creating cracks in it.
"Doctor!" Rose cried out in alarm.
"Come on!" the Doctor yelled.
Kayla, Jack, Rose, and the Doctor rushed down a short flight of stairs and down another corridor, before they encountered all the patients bursting out of the ward calling 'mummy.' They hastily backtracked, but they found the gasmask people coming from that direction too. They soon found themselves back at the point where they had started, where the Child was currently breaking through the wall.
"It's keeping us here so it can get at us." The Doctor warned. Kayla and Jack both had their sonic blasters, back to back, pointing them at opposite sides of the hallway.
"It's controlling them?" Jack wondered.
"It IS them. It's every living thing in this hospital." The Doctor corrected.
"Okay. This can function as a sonic blaster, a sonic cannon, and a triple-enfolded sonic disrupter. Kayla's can do all that plus it can explode like a bomb. Doc, what you got?" Jack questioned.
"A sonic, er...oh, never mind" the Doctor started.
"Disrupter? Cannon? What?" Kayla asked quickly, feeling the Doctor point something at the wall where the child was breaking out.
"It's sonic! Totally sonic! I am sonic-ed up!" the Doctor told them, not answering Kayla's or Jack's question.
"A sonic WHAT?!" Kayla screamed out.
"SCREWDRIVER!" Jack spun around, just as the child broke out, and Kayla pointed her blaster at the floor.
"Watch out!" She warned, just as the floor disappeared and they fell to the ward below where they landed in a messy heap. Kayla pointed her blaster rapidly at the hole above, putting the floor back in place.
"Doctor, are you okay?" Rose questioned, and Kayla didn't miss the angry glare from the blond as she rushed over to the leather-clad man.
"Could've used a warning...!" He complained, and Kayla rolled her eyes.
"What do you call, 'watch out?' I didn't yell it for my own amusement, that was a warning. And you're welcome, by the way. Or else we'd all have scars on our hands and become like them." She hissed, pointing her free hand at the ceiling.
"Who has a sonic screwdriver?" Jack questioned as they all got up, brushing themselves off.
"I do!" Kayla examined the Doctor's sonic screwdriver which she had stolen from him without him knowing.
"Light!" Rose called out, trying to find the switch.
"I sort of like it, it's slimming." Kayla commented, and the Doctor reached over to take it back, but Kayla held it out of his reach.
"Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks "oohoo, this could be a little more sonic"?" Jack scoffed.
"I'm thinking that right now." Kayla told him, and Jack rolled his eyes.
"What, you've never been bored?" the Doctor said, finally getting his sonic and placing it firmly in his pocket.
"There's gotta be a light switch!" Rose muttered, still pocking around for it.
"Never had a long night? Never had a lot of cabinets to put up?" the Doctor asked indignantly. Rose finally found the light switch, and the room flooded with light, waking up the gasmask people, all of whom sat up, chanting, 'mummy.'
"Door." Jack ordered. The four all ran to it, and upon finding it locked, Jack tried to shoot the door open with his sonic blaster. "Damn it!" he cursed. Kayla went in front of him and tried with hers, which sparked and flared dangerously, causing her to drop it.
"Mine's broken...again." She announced, and then moved aside for the Doctor to unlock it with his sonic screwdriver. When it didn't work, he whacked it angrily.
"It's the special features, they really drain the battery." Jack explained.
"The battery?!" Rose shouted, the people almost to them. The Doctor finally got the door opened, and he grinned, running through it with Rose, Kayla, and Jack after him. "That's so LAME." She told Jack as the Doctor slammed the door shut and locked it again, trapping them inside a storage room.
"I was gonna send for another one, but SOMEBODY'S gonna blow up the factory." He glared at the Doctor, not expecting Kayla to speak up.
"He didn't blow it up, I did. First mission for the Time Agency. Blow up the factories there. No warning, no anything, just blow it up. I didn't agree with it, but I did it anyways." The Doctor blinked, as did Jack and Rose, not sure of how to respond to that.
"Okay, that door should hold it for a bit." The Doctor said.
"The door?! The WALL didn't stop it!" Jack protested.
"Well, it's gotta FIND us first! Come on, we're not done yet! Assets, assets!" He ordered.
"Well, I've got a banana, and at a pinch you could put up some shelves." Jack said sarcastically to the Doctor.
"And my sonic blaster is going haywire and if I use it again tonight, it'll probably explode, like a bomb." Kayla deadpanned.
"Window-" The Doctor started.
"Barred, sheer drop outside. Seven stories." Jack stated.
"And no other exits." Rose added. Jack sat down comfortably in a large chair.
"Well, the assets conversation went in a flash, didn't it?" Jack told them. The Doctor eyed Jack, who eyed him back, and then the Doctor looked over at Rose.
"So, where'd you pick this one up, then?" He wondered.
"Doctor..." Rose said warningly.
"She was hanging from a barrage balloon, I had an invisible spaceship. I never stood a CHANCE." Rose looked uncomfortable, even more so as Kayla laughed.
"Oh, that's new. What was the last one, Pegasus…?" Her voice trailed off meaningfully, and Jack smiled at his daughter.
"Well this time it was a barrage balloon!" He roared excitedly.
"Okay, one, we want to get out of here. Two, we CAN'T get out of here. Have I missed anything?" Kayla looked at the Doctor, not noticing Rose glancing over to where Jack was.
"Yeah... Jack just disappeared." The Doctor spun around to face Jack's empty chair. Kayla groaned.
"I'm so gonna kill him." She threatened, and the Doctor believed her.
As you may have noticed, this is early. That's because I have no idea if I'll have internet on Saturday, my home has been attacked by an ice storm and it's about to strike again, so maybe no internet. Since I have some now, here's the chapter.
So Kayla passed out in the Doctor's arm.