A/N: I have an order here for some copious Doctor Whump? :D

This story is 31 chapters in total, though this all gets sorted in just a few. Of course, there are repercussions for everyone... And a bit more whump :D

I LIKE WHUMP, OKAY :x

Chapter 24 – You've Got A Little Something In Your Brain

Ulysses took him back to the psychiatric unit, and secured him down with the straps to blood-stopping point, even though he quite clearly knew the Doctor was utterly no threat to him whatsoever, and never had been. The issue the night before had been his fault. He'd failed to anticipate the strong connection between father and son that would lead the Doctor to fly into an instinctual fight response to protect Alex.

But it had worked out well for him, in the end. Instead of altering the memory he had managed to erase it entirely while the Doctor had been unconscious in the psychiatric unit, thereby convincing everyone that it was a form of mental instability and psychosis, and he could justify securing the Doctor in one place; giving the Doctor the time to just lie on his own for a while to think things out and for Rose to start having reservations about him. And that had been all that was needed to trigger it.

But now Martha had done a brain scan, he only had a matter of minutes until they realised the truth. He had to finish the job, and force a regeneration. Which would be easy.

"Father?" a quiet voice came from the bed.

Ulysses looked up to see the Doctor lying there pale and weak, looking up at him tiredly. "Things will be fine, Theta," Ulysses told him gently, reaching for a glass of orange juice he'd prepared on the side table. "Here, this should help with your headache."

He forced it into the Doctor's mouth, and the Doctor gulped down a few mouthfuls before his face suddenly screwed up with disgust and he started coughing.

"Father, please, no more..." the Doctor gasped.

"Only a few more gulps, my boy," Ulysses said, tipping it up so what didn't go in his mouth went on his face and the pillow.

"My head," the Doctor whined. "It hurts so much."

"Just relax, Theta," Ulysses told him smoothly, setting down the empty glass on the side. "Here." He reached into his breast pocket, drawing out a slip of paper and the sonic screwdriver.

'REMEMBER' was the word on the paper.

The Doctor followed with unfocused eyes as Ulysses ignored the piece of paper and reached up with the sonic to his temple. Then he pressed the button, his headache eased slightly, giving him clearer thoughts...

REMEMBER

"It was mechanical failure. Very low-level Time Lord science. I could've done that with the sonic. Either one of them could have caused that with ease, timed it to you walking out..."

REMEMBER

He reached for his sonic... but it wasn't there. He patted down his pockets to no avail. He must've left it in the TARDIS...

REMEMBER

After the massive human tide had washed back out again, Ulysses checked him over. As ever, he hummed and harred, after which he put the sonic screwdriver down on the side table for the Doctor and left without another word...

"You," he whispered, staring at Ulysses.

Ulysses smiled sadly. "Well done, my boy. But you still cannot remember what I have done to you, can you? You worked that out knowing nothing. You were always far cleverer than your father, Theta."

The Doctor frowned. That was a strange sentence. "What?"

"That is to say, correct. Your father's world was always so small. He never let you do what you wanted to do, so you did it anyway. If he had got his way, you would be dead with the rest of Gallifrey. And secretly, although you killed the entirety of your race, you are very glad you did now."

"What..."

"Does your head hurt, Theta, my boy?" Ulysses wondered. "Is it still hurting? How is your headache?"

The Doctor looked at him in alarm, trying to raise a hand to his forehead but quickly realising he was still secured down. "What have you done to me?" he croaked.

"How about your throat, Theta? That's okay, isn't it? It's not feeling strange? Itchy, perhaps? Or like there's a lump?"

"Don't play mind games with me!" the Doctor yelled, because his throat really was starting to feel like there was a lump in it, before his mouth and throat became extremely itchy...

"Oh, I am not playing mind games now, my boy," Ulysses assured him. "Your face looks like it could be swelling up... and what's that rash?"

The Doctor looked at his hands, suddenly covered with an intensely itchy rash.

"Stop it!" he demanded. "I don't believe you, I deny this!"

"Not going to throw up, are you? How is your breathing?"

On cue the Doctor threw up over the side of the bed as suddenly he couldn't breathe properly...

"I deny this!" he yelled again in a wheeze, trying desperately to fight. "This is not happening to me, this is in my head!"

"I'm afraid it is very real," Ulysses said again, holding up the glass of orange juice and a box of aspirin.

"You..." the Doctor gasped, feeling very faint and dizzy. "You..."

He had to get out of here, find Rose... He needed help. He was in the midst of anaphylaxis and without treatment he would die and regenerate. And seeing as this thing impersonating his father was the one that gave it to him, he severely doubted he would help him.

He struggled to get up but he was completely bound down, the straps biting into him. He had to do something, anything. His eyes flickered around, frantic, before he saw the sonic screwdriver on the covers next to his hand and grabbed it, spinning it effortlessly to the correct setting and freeing his right hand faster than Ulysses could even process. He buzzed it over his left wrist, expecting some resistance from Ulysses but for some reason he wasn't moving...

He got his chest, hips, thighs and feet free very rapidly and stumbled to his feet, before remembering in the most painful way possible that his legs were still broken. Broken and rebroken for days on end, he realised...

He yelped and collapsed to the floor with the surge of agony that came with walking, absolutely helpless. He put his last energies into dragging himself to the door, wondering why Ulysses wasn't stopping him but determined to get out, to find Rose...

He made it to the door, howled in pain and tried to open it.

It didn't. It needed a keycode. A keycode he didn't know.

That was why Ulysses hadn't gone after him.

He glanced over at Ulysses, seeing the man getting onto his feet, making towards him.

The Doctor was suddenly petrified. He dragged his broken legs back across the floor to the bars, sticking out a hand and waving desperately.

"Rose," he gasped, tears streaming down his face. "Help me..."

But he knew this was it. Ulysses was standing over him now, and no one was coming to help. This man had cheated, lied and joyrided his way into everyone's trust. Even Rose's. Even though she'd been right about him all along.

And then the Doctor began to have a seizure.

The scan pinged on the monitor, and Martha took it. Rose, Jack and Penelope gathered around, waiting anxiously for the results.

Martha frowned slightly, then turned to Penelope. "You might be better at this than me, it's not like a human brain... What do you think?" she asked.

Penelope looked at it, and frowned. "Oh, that's very strange," she murmured.

"What? Is he brain damaged?" Rose asked anxiously.

"I'm not sure," Penelope confessed. "This part here," she pointed a piece out. "That's specifically for memory recall. It appears to be a bit... well, I'm not sure, I am not a physician like Ulysses. But it does not seem right at all. … Hold on, what's that?"

She pointed to a small black dot in the centre of the scan. Everything around it was fine, it looked like a scanner black-spot.

"Hold on, I'll zoom, might just be a fault," Martha said, and clicked a few buttons. It zoomed it, loaded the new image.

It still wasn't entirely clear what it was, but it definitely wasn't a fault or scanner black-spot. Because faults and scanner black-spots didn't tend to have two antennae and eight legs.

"Oh my god," Rose whispered, hand over mouth.

"What the actual fuck is that?" Jack croaked.

"Enhance the image," Penelope ordered in a sharp tone, and Martha did so, it zoomed in even more to reveal features, and Penelope identified it immediately.

"That's a zinox," she muttered.

"What's a zinox?" Rose asked anxiously. "And what the hell is it doing in his brain?"

"A zinox is a household pest... Tell me, have you gone anywhere infested by zinox recently, Rose?" Penelope asked her quickly.

"No..." Rose began, and then her face dropped, looking at Jack with wide, realising eyes. "Oh my god. Friz and Rix."

"What?"

"They were pest control!" she gasped. "Oh my god... what if they had some on board when they crashed? I found him tranquillised on the floor. Maybe one crawled in..."

Penelope nodded. "Yes, it seems likely..."

"What's this zinox doing to him?" Martha asked quickly.

"A zinox... It finds a host, usually while they're sleeping, crawls in through their ear and buries itself in the brain. It's intelligent... It sits in the cerebral cortex and accesses all areas to weaken its host, finding memories and thoughts to use against them, to weaken them physically and mentally, creating..."

Then she stopped, and completely froze.

"What?" Rose asked anxiously.

"Hallucinations, solid hallucinations. Hallucinations of memories of... people."

Rose stared at her. "You mean, you're..."

"A symptom of his disease," Penelope completed in a croak. "I was created to weaken him, but... The trouble was he remembered me... I mean, his mother, so fondly that she would never hurt him in anyway. So the parasite had to create another memory... One that he thought would hurt him."

"Ulysses," Jack realised.

"He was created to run Theta down, make him utterly miserable... So mentally weak that the zinox could eat his brain without resistance."

"Oh god," Rose muttered, realising what that meant instantly. "Ulysses did everything! All the stuff that's been happening!"

"But this doesn't make sense," Martha began. "It's not sitting inside his memory recall, why is that so damaged?"

Penelope paused, thinking it through. Then she looked up, and to Martha. "Memory alteration."

"What?"

"Ulysses is capable of changing the memories by accessing the memory recall area... So am I and Theta, in fact. Theta is so smart, he probably realised a long time ago what Ulysses was doing to him... but Ulysses had to cover his tracks, so he's been repeatedly changing Theta's memories, and this damaged the memory recall area through so much forced change..."

"But he definitely attacked Ulysses yesterday," Rose said quickly. "Is the zinox making him psychotic?"

"No," Penelope replied. "Ulysses told us he attacked him when he entered the room. We kept believing what Ulysses said. What if he didn't? Alex was there, was he not? What if Theta realised what was happening, Ulysses wiped his memory and then realised that Alex had seen him doing it and went for him?"

"The paternal bond," Rose realised.

Penelope nodded quickly. "He was protecting his son, and he doesn't remember because Ulysses wiped it. Ulysses told us he was psychotic and did it for no reason. We believed him."

"Wait, so, you didn't know this was in his brain, even though you were created by it?" Jack asked. "Maybe Ulysses doesn't know either..."

"Theta remembers his mother as pure, innocent. I didn't know because he thinks I would try to help him if I did. He's been attacking himself with his own mind. Everything's that's happened, the TARDIS, Alex, you, Rose... It's all been done by Ulysses because Theta thinks of those things as the worst possible to happen and that his father might be the one to do it. So the hallucination of Ulysses acted them out because Theta's brain told him to."

"And the nosebleed?" Martha asked. "Maybe he got so mentally weakened, the zinox took its opportunity and attacked..."

Penelope nodded. "It's started eating his brain."

"Wait!" Jack said quickly, realising something very serious. "Ulysses knows about the zinox. And he knows we did a brain scan. He knows he's only got a few minutes until we figure him out..."

"Oh my god!" Rose realised. "He took the Doctor on his own to the psychiatric area!"

Ulysses moved towards the Doctor, looking down at his son's writhing body with no expression on his face. The seizure continued for two minutes, but when it was over the Doctor just laid there shaking, blood gushing out of his nose.

Ulysses finally got down beside him cross-legged, taking Theta's upper half into his arms.

"I'm sorry, Theta," he said gently, holding his son caringly. "I'm so sorry. This wasn't me. It was you, you made me do these things, and believe me, I never wanted to."

The Doctor looked up at him, still shaking, barely able to focus. His father gazed down at him sadly, brushing back the stray hair from his forehead and cupping his cheek.

"That's it, let go," Ulysses told him gently. "Relax. I'm here. I'm not letting go."

The Doctor's face, throat and mouth were so swollen he couldn't get out a word or make an expression. He couldn't even breathe anymore.

"Everything is going to be fine," Ulysses said in a whisper, kissing his forehead.

Finally the Doctor closed his eyes, and fell limp. Ulysses sniffed, a tear running down his cheek for his son dying in his arms silently. He held him tightly, feeling the Doctor's double hearts beneath his palm, slowly failing. He was not his real father, he was not even real, but he felt as if he had created this man. This boy. His little boy. His son. And he had just killed him.

Then he heard the sound of small running footsteps. He looked up and was very surprised to see Alex running towards the room, tears running down his face. He got to the keypad and stretched up as far as he could reach and pressed in the right code instantly. The door buzzed back and he ran inside, grabbing his Daddy's arm and pulling him off of Ulysses with every ounce of strength he had until the Doctor was lying flat on the floor. He then put his hands on his Daddy's left heart, and used his entire body weight to push down in a version of CPR...

Ulysses just watched, waiting for the Doctor's mind to tell him what he was going to do about it. But he found himself just sitting there staring at the sight of the little boy trying desperately to help his Daddy.

Alex quickly decided it wasn't working, so he clambered up into his Daddy's chest, sat over his left heart and tried to do CPR by dropping his entire weight on him. He then moved to his right heart and did the same, before going to his Dad's head and pulling it back, pushing his nose closed with both hands, taking the biggest, deepest breath he could muster and blowing it into his Dad's mouth – but it was nowhere near enough. The little boy didn't despair however, he carried on as best he could, but he was very quickly becoming exhausted.

There was the sudden rush of footsteps coming down the corridor as Rose, Jack, Martha and Penelope rushed down the corridor to the room... Seeing Ulysses staring at Alex who was performing a rudimentary and probably mostly ineffectual CPR on an obviously nearly dead Doctor.

"Oh my god... What the hell have you done?" Rose gasped.

Jack ran in to pick up an absolutely distraught Alex as Martha checked the Doctor.

Ulysses' eyes connected with Rose. She was completely wrong-footed when she saw he was crying...

"Please stop me," he choked out. "Please don't let me kill him..."

Then Rose caught sight of the box of aspirin and orange juice. Her eyes widened in absolute horror. "You bastard!" she screamed, completely forgetting about Alex. "You absolute fucking bastard!"

"I'm so very sorry," Ulysses sobbed, and he meant it.

"Starting CPR!" Martha yelled. "Someone, get some epinephrine now or he's going to die!"

Penelope ran off in a shot as Rose stumbled down next to the Doctor, trying to comfort him. His face was so swollen he was barely recognisable...

"God, I should've known you wouldn't hurt anyone ever..." she gasped out, in tears. "I should've trusted you, I should've known, if I'd just listened... Please don't die, don't regenerate, please, we'll sort this, we'll get out the zinox. I love you so much, please forgive me..."

Penelope came rushing back with the epinephrine and administered it as Martha continued CPR. Alex was crying hard in Jack's arms, trying desperately to get out of his uncle's hold so he could go back to help his Dad, despite the fact he was obviously very exhausted from his previous efforts.

Suddenly the Doctor jolted into coughing, gasping in air though his face was still swollen badly. His eyes flickered open to look at Rose.

"My head..." he gasped as some blood came spilling out his nose. "Please help me..."

"We need to get out the zinox," Penelope said urgently. "It's still eating his brain... We have to get it out now before it's too late to save him. If he regenerates with it still in it... By Rassilon's beard, I do not even want to contemplate that..."

"How?" Rose squeaked. "We need brain surgery!"

"Just get him to the infirmary!" Martha yelled, grabbing his upper half as Rose took the lower, and they took him straight down the corridor to the infirmary, praying and hoping and begging gods they didn't believe in that there would be a way to save his life...