Chapter Thirty-One

Uh... hit writer's block again... :-(

Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood – if I did, there would be far more Janto and Rhys and PC Andy would play larger parts.

Martha and Toshiko were both sitting with the Doctor as he tried fruitlessly to persuade the nurse into letting him go.

"Look – I've got work to attend to! I can't stay here—"

"I'm sorry, Doctor Smith, but we can't allow you—"

"Martha! Tell them that I can go—"

"I can't do that, Doctor—"

"It's just a few tests, and then you can go. It's nothing to worry about."

"It's not that I'm worried, but—"

"Well then, this won't take a moment." The nurse picked up a needle from the tray and brandished it like a weapon. "Now, just hold still—"

Martha suddenly leapt to her feet. "Actually, I think it would be better if I did the check, sister."

The nurse raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Are you a professionally trained medic, too?"

Martha sighed and fished in her jacket pocket for her ID. She presented it to the nurse. "Here. Dr Martha Jones, UNIT medical officer."

The nurse smiled politely, handing Martha the needle. "Of course, then, Dr Jones – I'll leave you to it."

Martha breathed a sigh of relief once the doors had closed behind her. "That was a close one."

"Couldn't you have tried that earlier?" the Doctor complained. "Then we wouldn't have had to go through all of that."

"I didn't know that they'd recognise UNIT - they didn't recognise Torchwood," Martha explained wearily, placing the needle back on the tray. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to go and check on Ianto. Where's Donna?"

"Donna's with Gwen, talking to Mrs Applegate. I'll come to see Ianto too." The Doctor stood up and grinned at her. "Then—"

He was interrupted by a loud bleat from Toshiko's PDA, which Tosh nearly dropped at the unexpected noise.

"What was that?" Martha asked.

Toshiko shook her head. "I don't know – but somebody's tried hacking into our comms. I'm tracing the source now."

The Doctor whipped out his sonic screwdriver, and was quickly adjusting the settings. "Lemme have a look at it," he said, holding out a hand and wiggling his fingers encouragingly.

The petite Japanese woman handed it over, though not without a hesitant frown. "What are you going to do?"

"Just a few quick modifications," the Doctor replied absentmindedly, already fiddling around with the screen. The PDA emitted another bleep and the screen changed to show an intricate pattern of circles and hexagons. "There we go!"

Toshiko grabbed it off him in panic. "What have you done?" she gasped, staring at it.

The Doctor shrugged nonchalantly and slipped the sonic screwdriver back inside his jacket. "I temporarily re-routed it through to the TARDIS, so that we can get access to all of her controls. The TARDIS is far more powerful than anything else you could get hold of."

Tosh flicked through some screens, the frantic look in her eyes fading to adsorption. "Some of this stuff I've never even heard of."

The Doctor grinned and tipped his head to the door. "Coming, Martha?" he asked.

Martha just shook her head, a small smile curving her lips. She paused at the door. "We'll be back in a bit, Tosh," she said. "You OK for a while?"

Toshiko nodded, still fixated by her "upgraded" PDA. "I'll be fine – just working on tracking the— aha!"

"What?" Martha tried to read the screen upside down. "What have you found?"

Tosh's eyes widened as the information scrolled across. "Those aliens are up to their antics again," she said grimly.

Martha raised an eyebrow. "What aliens?"

"Didn't we tell you?" Toshiko frowned when Martha shook her head. "The aliens we were here after in the first place. The ones that ki— hurt Ianto."

"And nobody thought to tell me about this?" Martha demanded. "Or the Doctor?"

"We have been rather busy," Toshiko pointed out mildly. "I thought that somebody had already told you, anyway."

"The Doctor will want to know about this," Martha said. "He might know something."

"I hope so," Tosh agreed. "Because we're at a complete loss."

-T-

Gwen had bought a coffee from the vending machine downstairs and was sipping at it with an expression of revulsion on her face. There really was no going back after tasting Ianto's coffee.

Julia Applegate was sitting on the chair across from her, her tightly curled grey hair slowly drying off and springing up back into position. She was happily chattering away with Donna, a polystyrene cup of tea in her hands.

"...we took a trip to Venice in January – beautiful city, really lovely – and George bought me a pretty glass vase which they made specially in the factories there—"

"Was it expensive?" Donna asked curiously. She had taken off her brown jacket and slung it over the back of her chair.

"Well, it depends what you mean by expensive, dear, but it certainly set us back a couple of hundred!" Julia laughed. "I told him that he shouldn't have, but he said that I deserved something nice after such a year."

"Do you still have it?"

Julia shook her head. "No – it smashed a couple of weeks after we came back. A shame, really – I would have liked to show you it."

Donna made a sympathetic noise. "So do you have any children?"

Julia stiffened, and a flash of pain crossed her face. "My daughter, Clara, died six months ago," she said sadly. "She was only eighteen."

Donna was silent for a moment. She reached out and touched Julia's hand, looking regretful. "I'm sorry," she said. "You were obviously close."

Julia smiled. "We were. She was a bit of a surprise baby, y'know? I didn't expect to have any children after thirty-five, and then suddenly we had Clara!" She paused for a minute, lost in memories. "She used to tell us that she was talking to mermaids," she admitted. "Part of being an only child, I guess. But when she turned twelve and she was still talking about it..." Julia shook her head. "It made us worry. When your only child starts becoming nonsensical, it isn't good for the nerves."

"My mum's brother was schizophrenic," Gwen said, interrupting. "I know that my mum used to stress about him a lot."

Julia nodded. "The Doctor's didn't know what was wrong. They were just as clueless as everybody else."

"You said that she died of leukaemia?" Gwen probed gently, her police instincts taking over, propelled by her innate curiosity.

Julia looked down, tears swelling in her eyes. "That's right." She bit her lip, clearly fighting the urge to cry, to no avail. She buried her face in her hands.

Donna patted her shoulder awkwardly. "I'm sorry," she repeated. She glanced at Gwen uncertainly. "Have you heard from Jack about Ianto?" she asked.

Gwen checked her mobile. "No, not yet. He's probably forgotten."

Donna smiled. "He's had a stressful day. I'm going to the loo – be back in two ticks." She stood up and headed out the door, her heels clacking on the laminate floor.

Gwen pulled a packet of tissues from her pocket and handed one to Julia, absorbed in thought. What could Clara have possibly meant by mermaids? The time she had spent at Torchwood had already taught her never to dismiss such happenings or rumours – and this was something she doubted was a mental disorder.

A thought struck her like a lightning bolt out of the blue. She grabbed her mobile frantically and dialled Jack's number.

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