Notes: Torchwood try to put the pieces together in the aftermath of the Caxtarid operation.
The Doctor and Rose take care of the dead, with unexpected help from the TARDIS.
Chapter 13
Torchwood Head-of-Departments were sitting around the large round table in the briefing room with their reports in front of them. Pete called the meeting to order.
"You all have the various reports in front of you," Pete started. "I'll give a brief summary and then we'll discuss the outstanding issues. Feel free to jump in with any additional information you feel is relevant."
He used the remote to bring up images and reports on the media screens. There was the Caxtarid complex under Porton Down producing a biological weapon to turn the human race into dead soldiers.
He told how the laboratory technician Linda Thomas, for reasons unknown, had stolen a sample of the pathogen and then had it stolen off her by Nicholas Fisher. Then Fisher had inadvertently infected himself when examining the contents of the stolen bag.
Thomas's brother, Peter Coyne had gone to visit her that evening and caught Fisher in the middle of a burglary where he had been bitten and consequently infected.
Coyne was having an affair with Janet Parkes, an employee at the bank. They'd had sex in the privacy of the safety deposit vault, where it is presumed Coyne succumbed to the infection and died. Parkes must have panicked and fled the scene, leaving Coyne's body locked in the vault.
John explained that Thomas and Fisher had done the world a favour by stealing the sample, as it alerted them to the conspiracy. Without that stroke of luck, the whole world would have been infected before anything could have been done.
Pete had found out from President Jones that Kerra-Kashinkai, posing as Professor Jenkins had secretly requested that all the samples be returned to Porton Down. Presumably this was a delaying tactic so that the Caxtarids could carry out their plan before being discovered.
John explained how their covert surveillance of the Biological Research lab had gone wrong and that they had been captured by the soldiers on the base, who had no idea about the secret complex below ground.
Andy described the rescue mission when Rose's emergency beacon had been activated, and how the extraction team had been reassigned to intercept the contaminated Vitex drinks.
As deputy Director, Jack was at the briefing and explained how John had disabled the auto destruct sequence and saved most of Britain from certain disaster.
"So as far as I can see," Pete said. "We have three outstanding issues. A Caxtarid commander on the loose, a missing lab technician with four samples of a pathogen that could devastate the planet, and a collection of zombies in a secure warehouse. Any suggestions?"
Chrissie Anderson spoke first. "Regarding the fugitive Caxtarid, I have been looking at one of the shimmers that John brought back. I think that with John's help I should be able to build a device to block the shimmer and reveal the user in their true form."
"Good, get straight on that would you. From what John tells me, this Kerra-Kashinkai is a nasty piece of work and needs to be stopped," Pete said.
The head of Microbiology explained about the zombies. "The zombies will eventually rot and fall apart. The bacteria can be destroyed with normal antibacterial methods, heat, powerful antiseptics or radiation."
"There might be a public outcry with some of those methods," Pete said. "Remember the five million Cybermen that people wouldn't let us destroy? It caused a whole ruck of trouble in the parallel universe."
"I might have an idea about that Pete," John said. "If we get them into the TARDIS, she can eradicate the pathogen from the bodies and the grieving relatives can have closure by having the bodies back for a funeral."
"That would be an excellent solution," the Psychology Head announced.
"Okay, thanks for that John. I'll leave you to liaise with UNIT on that," Pete said.
Jack had been wondering about the psychic shimmers. "John. These shimmers, do you know if they are generally available, say like a mobile phone, or are they restricted like a bugging device?"
"That's an interesting question Jack. In the old universe, they were special forces issue for covert operations. Why do you ask?" John said.
"Well, the Jathaa on Wimbledon Common had one, that they traded for the quantum tunnel diode. I thought the Jathaa were couriers, not secret agents?"
"That's right, they're…." John suddenly went silent as his brain put all the pieces together. "How in the Vortex did I miss that? Damn this part human body! Too many distractions…. Although some of them are rather nice," he said with a wistful smile.
His face went serious again. "See what I mean? Right, focus. Linda Thomas didn't steal those samples, it was a Jathaa courier using a shimmer," he said.
He looked at Jack. "Did you actually see the faulty quantum tunnel diode? Because I'm betting there was nothing wrong with it. They needed a reason to wait while their crew mate recovered the stolen sample and brought it back."
Jack shook his head. "No, they took the new unit and their engineer fitted it herself."
"Ah-ha, I knew it. They had a job on. Someone knew what the Caxtarids were doing and wanted some of it for themselves. They hired the Jathaa to acquire a sample and deliver it."
"But who?" Pete asked.
"Ah, now that's the question. Find the customer and you find the samples…. Or, find the samples and we find the customer."
"Okay people, let's get moving. Chrissie, start your team working on the anti-shimmer device. Jack, look back over the movements of the Jathaa Sunglider, see if we can get any clues," Pete said.
He looked at John. "I'm afraid you've got the gruesome task John. Take whoever and whatever you need to help you," Pete said quietly.
Chrissie had gone to the Technical Support Department, where she had her office. John had given her a quick run down on the shimmer, the theory, principles and practical implementation of the technology. Her team of experts had hooked one of the shimmers up to an array of sensors and were running a series of tests. It appeared that the device emitted an interference pattern that distorted reflected light off a person and produced a kind of holographic representation of the users choice.
Each engineer thought of a person and pressed the button on the shimmer, turning into the person they were thinking about. The shimmer also affected the pitch and timbre of the voice to complete the illusion. As long as the shimmer was in close proximity to the user, such as in a pocket or a shoulder bag, then it would work.
The number of different attempts gave them a broad range of data that allowed them to find a common interference frequency that was present for each use.
"If that's the case, I should be able to detect that interference pattern and locate the Caxtarid fugitive," she said to herself. She moved over to her computer console and started recalibrating the detectors on a geostationary satellite over Britain.
Ten minutes later, she had a 'hit' on the monitor. "Damn I'm good," she said with a self satisfied smile. She picked up the phone and called the Director.
"Pete, it's Chrissie, I've found him. He's back in London."
"Good work Chrissie. Feed that to Andy and let him deal with it would you?"
"Sure thing." Just then, Dispatch had a call from John, who was with Rose over at UNIT.
"Chrissie, Pete, sorry to cut in on your conversation, but I think you had better come and see this. John is sending a video stream from the warehouse, I'll put it on the media screen in Operations," Danny Walton said.
Jack sat at a console in the Communications Centre and started reviewing satellite images and data from the last few days. He saw the Sunglider as it landed on Wimbledon Common, and then just sit there. He zoomed in and enhanced the image, watching again for any small clues.
There were some dog walkers, where the dogs appeared to bark or howl at the spaceship and then run away. The police came and cordoned off the ship with tape, and then Black Watch arrived. Later, Jack saw himself and Gwen arrive, and then later still the technician arrived with the spare part for their star drive.
Jack remembered the police officers escorting them to and from the ship through the cordon, while keeping the public back at a safe distance, and he could see that on the replay.
Soon after that, the Sunglider started to rise up and climb into the sky, heading north as it went. Jack presumed it achieved orbit and went on its way. 'Presumption is the mother of all cockups', he heard Doc saying in his head.
"I suppose the devil is in the detail," he said to himself and started going over it one more time, almost one frame at a time. He reached for his mug of coffee and lifted it as he took a slurp. When the mug came back down something caught his eye.
It was one of those moments that happened occasionally, where you do something at the right time and it makes a difference. He didn't know what was different, he would have to rewind and look again, and again until he spotted it.
And there it was. Mathematics, pure and simple. How many people does it take to change a lightbulb? How many police officers does it take to cordon off a Jathaa Sunglider? Three apparently, until you get four, and where did that fourth officer come from? Out of thin air!
He started playing backwards, following the mysterious police officer.
"Oh that's interesting," he said to himself. The officer seems to have been a member of the public, a mysterious woman.. He followed her back across the common to her point of origin, to a car parked in a side street. A blue Renault Clio.
He went back to CCTV footage and to the photographs taken by Julia De Graaf. There was the blue Renault Clio, parked in the same side street, the one owned by Linda Thomas, a.k.a, a police officer, a.k.a, a Jathaa courier.
He could see the scenario playing out in his head.
Find a laboratory technician who lived off the base, one week there, one week at home.
Use a shimmer to take her place, steal the samples and return to her home.
Leave the car and everything there and travel to the nearest open area for extraction, i.e, Wimbledon Common.
But it didn't work out like that did it? They didn't take into account the opportunist nature of your honest to goodness London thief. 'God bless 'em', Jack thought with a smile. Salt of the Earth and saviours of the world.
"So where are you now Linda Thomas?" he asked out loud. He doubted that the Jathha had killed her. From what he knew and what Doc had told him, they weren't the brutal psychopathic killers that the Caxtarids were. Once they had got what they wanted from her there was no reason to kill her.
He closely followed the movements of people to and from the Sunglider, but apart from that police officer, everyone was accounted for until the ship took off. He left the video running while he finished his coffee, and as before it headed north.
But then it did something odd, it put down in the Eastern Highlands of Scotland. Near a little village called Tomintoul in Glenmore Forest Park in the Cairngorms, before heading out of the atmosphere and into deep space.
It was time to call Archie McTavish at Torchwood Two in Glasgow. He was a one man operation up there, but had hundreds of mountain rescue volunteers and university professors who acted as agents and consultants for Torchwood.
Jack headed for Dispatch in the Operations Room and asked Danny to put a call through to Torchwood Two.
"The Haggis!" Danny said with a laugh. "Good luck with that one."
"Yeah, I know. He was the same in the other universe."
"Hello?" this thick Scottish accent said over the speaker.
"Director McTavish, I'm Jack Harkness, Deputy Director of Torchwood One. I wonder if I could have a minute of your time?"
"Aye laddie. What can I doo f'yer?"
"A couple of nights ago we tracked a Jathaa Sunglider from here in London to the Glenmore Forest Park where I believe it may have released a kidnapped woman before heading out into space."
"Would that have been 20 miles south east of Inverness by any chance?"
"Yes, that would be about right."
"One of the lads out there filed a report on the server. I'll get the local constabulary to make some enquiries fer yer."
"That's great Archie. Thank you."
"Nay problem Jack lad. Speak t'yer soon."
"You're not doin' this alone," Rose told him as John explained about dealing with the zombies.
"It's going to be unpleasant Rose, I didn't want you to feel as though you had to come."
She held his hand and smiled. "Hey, we're a team, remember? Shiver and Shake?" She kissed him on the cheek.
"Come on then, let's get this over with." The TARDIS was on its landing pad in the Operations Standby Room, where they had flown in directly from the mansion that morning.
While they were in the TARDIS, they put on the orange Haz-Mat suits and smiled at each other through the visors of the helmets.
When the Time Rotor stopped pumping, they walked down the ramp and opened the doors. Rose jumped in surprise when she saw two dozen grey faces staring blankly at them. There were UNIT soldiers in the warehouse who were also wearing Haz-Mat suits.
"John," Rose said quietly. "I know this place." She had a feeling of deja vu which made her shudder. how could she know this warehouse? And then it hit her.
"Oh no. This is where we built a time machine to send Donna to her death in that alternate time line, y'know, when she had that beetle on her back.
"Hey, it's okay," he told her. "That never happened, remember? You fixed it. She never really died because you were brilliant."
"Yeah, I know, but seein' it again makes it feel real."
"I know, it's one of those wibbly wobbly moments."
One of the UNIT soldiers approached and saluted. "Captain Lewis. You must be Dr. and Mrs. Smith."
John flinched. "Please don't salute, it makes me want to run away as fast as I can." Captain Lewis looked puzzled.
Rose laughed. "Don't worry, my husband has issues when it comes to authority." She glanced quickly at John and then added. "Except when it's me of course."
The Captain wasn't quite sure how to respond to that. He'd been warned that these two were a bit 'unusual'. "So how's this going to work then," he asked as his men started to erect portable screens either side of the TARDIS doors.
John picked up his tablet and switched it on. "I'll get them to walk forwards using this." He held up his tablet. "The screens will corral them into the TARDIS, where I will give the command to lie down. We close the doors and the control room is flooded with ionising radiation for 30 minutes that will kill all the bugs."
"Isn't that level of radiation going to affect the whole area?" the Captain asked.
"No, the TARDIS is shielded. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out," John said with a hint of pride.
"And is it true what they say, that it's bigger on the inside?"
Rose grabbed the Captain's hand and pulled him forward to the doors. "Have a look before we start."
"Good Lord! I thought I was having my leg pulled," Lewis said.
"Okay, stand back. I'm giving the walk command."
The dead walked, moving forward and funnelling into the TARDIS. Rose could hear a sad, haunting Gallifreyan song in her head
"John?"
"I hear it. It's the TARDIS, she's singing a lament for the dead."
Rose cried out and gasped as she saw children, who had been hidden behind the adults, walking in through the doors. Her vision blurred with tears that she couldn't wipe away because of the helmet. They trickled down her cheeks.
John gently placed his arm around her shoulder as the last of the dead passed through the doors. They saw Fisher, Coyne and Jenkins walk past, and recognised Janet Parkes from the bank CCTV camera.
He used the tablet again and all the dead lay down on the floor. He silently closed the doors on the macabre scene. A final touch of the tablet screen, remotely activated the TARDIS ionisation chamber. There was a low hum and the light on top of the police box started to flash
The atmosphere in the warehouse was grim, even the UNIT soldiers felt the oppressive mood of the TARDIS. A number of the soldiers had tanks of bleach on their backs with which they sprayed the floor. Other soldiers had brooms that scrubbed the bleach across the floor, sterilizing the area.
While they were waiting, Rose had been thinking about what he had just done with his tablet PC and the TARDIS.
"John, y'know how yer just activated the TARDIS with your tablet?"
"Yeah?" he replied, wondering where this was going.
"Well, I've been thinkin'. You had 'emergency programme one' that got the TARDIS to take me home that time on Satellite Five."
"Yeah?" He was still wondering.
"I still haven't given you the slap ya deserve for pullin' that stunt," she said. "But anyway, when you lost the TARDIS on Krop Tor, don't you think it would have been useful to have a remote emergency programme that you could have activated to call the TARDIS back to you?"
He stood there looking at her, dumbfounded. 900 years and he'd never thought of that. There was that time with Martha as well, on that ship that was falling into the Torajii Sun. The TARDIS was stuck in area 30 that was too hot to enter.
And then again on the Titanic, the one in space, not the one in the Atlantic. He saw his TARDIS drifting past the window outside, and no way to get to it. On that occasion it followed it's default programming and landed on the nearest centre of gravity, the Earth. Why not add some extra programming? New TARDIS, new protocols.
"Rose, how do humans make these ideas seem so easy?" he asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
"I guess we're just better at seein' the obvious. Y'know, seein' what's under your nose."
With ten minutes left to go, John noticed a lightening on the TARDIS's mood. He looked at Rose, a questioning look on his face. Rose looked at him with wide eyes. She'd felt it as well.
"It must be nearly over," he said. "The dead must be at rest, that must be why her mood has changed."
When the sterilization had finished, John felt that the mood from the TARDIS could almost be called 'smug'. Something wasn't right and he wanted to get inside to find out what was going on, and to let the soldiers move the corpses into the temporary mortuary.
When the hum and the flashing light stopped, he went to put the key in the lock. Rose let out a small scream as the door opened on its own.
"What in Kasterborous?" he said as a man stood in the doorway.
"Excuse me?" the man said, looking confused and concerned at people in Haz-Mat suits looking like astronauts. "Can someone tell me where I am and what's going on?"
"What?!" John said. "What?"
They could hear voices coming from inside and children crying, wanting their mothers. John opened the other door and they could see two dozen men, women and children milling about in the control room.
"Oh TARDIS. What have you done?" These people had been dead. They were supposed to stay dead. The TARDIS should know this. "You can't do this, you can't interfere like this."
Rose touched his arm and looked in wide eyed wonder. "But John, isn't this like Albion Hospital with the gas mask people? They were dead, living dead, and the nanogenes brought them back to life."
"Yes I know Rose but that was diff…." He stopped in mid sentence. "Nanogenes! TARDIS, have you used nanogenes?"
He walked into the control room and clapped his hands hard. The air sparkled with bright gold dust. "Ha-hah!" he laughed out loud. "Nanogenes. You clever girl. Rose, you clever girl as well. She used nanogenes to fix everyone, just like you said."
He was jumping up and down now and he grabbed Rose in a spinning hug. "Just like back then Rose, everybody lives. It was just that once, and now it's twice, everybody lives." He was overcome with his human emotions.
For centuries he'd had to see people die who he couldn't save. Occasionally he would be able to save the odd one or two, but usually at the expense of many more. Days like this didn't happen to him very often, and now when they did he could really appreciate them with his 'inner Donna'.
