Damn. O_o A lot of you have a tumblr...
AND to all my anon/guest reviewers...guuuuyyyss, I can't respond to guest reviews XD MESSAGE ME ON YOUR ACCOUNTS SO I CAN LOVE YOU. And answer your questions.
Rose pinched the bridge of her nose, leaning with her back against the counter. She'd been silently listening to the two people with knowledge about molecular structures talk back and forth about the old-ish man with funky DNA, unable to provide any decent input, and just barely following along. They kept firing off terms she might have learnt once years ago when she was in school and then promptly forgot, and some she was sure she'd never heard outside one of the Doctor's ramblings.
"So, let me get this straight." she interrupted, needing some clarity. "He hacked into his DNA like computer and told them to wind back the clock?"
"Yep, looks like," the Doctor said. "This kind of thing has never succeeded. In the future they manage to slow aging but never reverse it. Not in humans, anyway."
"And his genes are still mutating now." Martha pointed out.
"Why?" Rose asked. "He's young again. Is he going to keep getting younger 'til he's a baby?"
"No," the Doctor murmured, watching the screen register another mutation. "He missed something in his tests. Something in his DNA has been activated and won't let him stabilize. Something that's trying to change him."
"Fantastic," Rose muttered. "This day just keeps getting better and better and we haven't even had lunch yet. What's he going to change into, Doctor?"
"I dunno but I think we need to find out."
"Well, the cow said they were going upstairs."
"Then let's go!"
Leaving the computer up—perhaps as a warning to anyone who happened along—the Doctor loped out of the lab. Things had barely started and they were already running and Martha was regretting choosing to wear heels. She was beginning to understand why Rose chose to wear trainers, boots, and flats. You just never knew when you'd have to start running when you traveled with the Doctor. The lift was waiting for them when Rose pressed the button. They rode up to the next floor then had to switch to another elevator that would take them to the executive offices.
Lazarus's office was on the very top floor. The elevator opened to a large dark room. The Doctor pressed a button on the wall and the lights came up, revealing a professionally furnished room that must've encompassed almost the entire floor. Several screens displayed the company's logo decorated the walls, along with several photographs and the desk on the far side had a small statue on it.
"This is his office, alright," Martha muttered.
"So, where is he?" the Doctor wondered.
Rose shrugged. "Maybe he and the cow popped out for a quick fag."
"No." He shook his head. "He's a smart man. Even if he smokes he'd no better than to introduce harmful substances to his body so soon after that kind of process."
"Must've gone back down to the re…ception." Martha's voice hitched and the Doctor looked at her in alarm. Rose gasped when she noticed the skeletal pair of legs wearing heels poking out from behind the desk. The Doctor followed their horrified gazes then they rushed over to shrunken remains of a finely dressed woman.
Rose put her hand over her mouth and Martha gasped. The Doctor kneeled down by the corpse.
"Is that Lady Thaw?" Martha asked, kneeling as well.
"Used to be," the Doctor said grimly. Rose made a face but remained standing. She'd had no fondness for the woman but she hadn't wanted anything like this to happen to her. A nice verbal lashing would've been sufficient. Maybe a cup of ice water or wine dumped on her head. But not this.
"Now she's just a shell," he went on. "Had all the life energy drained out of her… Like squeezing the juice out of an orange."
"Did he do this?" Rose asked.
"Could be."
Martha's eyes were wide. "So he's changed already?"
"Not necessarily. You saw the DNA. It was fluctuating. The process must demand energy. This might not have been enough."
"He's gonna do this again?" Rose half-yelled. "What are we standin' here for then, c'mon!"
They left Lady Thaw where she was. She could be dealt with later. Right now they had several dozen living people who had no idea how much danger they were in to worry about, including Martha's family. Down the private lifts and around to the public ones, Martha pressed the call button half a dozen times in her hurry. The lift arrived and they clamored in, the doors shutting just before the adjacent lift opened and deposited its two passengers. The moment the reception room became visible through the clear elevator walls, Martha, Rose, and the Doctor moved to different sides of the elevator to scan for Lazarus. The door opened and they walked briskly out past the food tables and string quartet into the crowd.
"I can't see him." Martha said.
"Nor me," added Rose.
"He can't be far." The Doctor craned his neck to see over the heads. "Keep looking."
"Hey, you all right, Martha?" Her brother Leo stood near the machine with a wine glass in his hand and an amused look on his face. Martha stopped in front of him and Rose, realizing she'd stopped, paused as well. "I think Mum wants a word with you."
"Have you seen Lazarus anywhere?" Martha asked him. The Doctor turned and walked back towards them.
"Yeah, well, he was getting cozy with Tish a couple of minutes ago."
Rose's face twisted in disgust. "Oh, that's just gross."
"With Tish!" Martha told the Doctor frantically just as her mother arrived.
"Aaahh, Doctor—" she began but he cut her off.
"Where did they go?" he demanded.
"Upstairs, I think. Why?" Leo said and the Doctor was moving before he even finished speaking. He pushed past Francine, spilling her drink on her, and made for the lift.
"Doctor—I'm speaking to you!" Francine shouted after him as both girls rushed past her.
"Not now Mum!" Martha hissed over her shoulder.
The ride back upstairs seemed to take forever and no time at all. Marta shifted her weight from foot to foot, her hands curling and uncurling in agitation, and she shook with barely restrained terror. A thousand terrible thoughts ran through her head. What if they were too late? What if he'd already killed her? What would Tish look like as a desiccated corpse? What would she say to her Mum? How could she tell her Mum?
The Doctor put his hand on her shoulder to steady her and she nearly jumped out of her skin. When the lift arrived at Lazarus's office they were scrambling through before the doors had even fully opened. Martha looked around wildly for any sign of her sister or Lazarus but the office was empty.
"Where are they?" she cried.
The Doctor reached into his jacket and withdrew his sonic screwdriver. "The fluctuating DNA will give off an energy signature. I might be able to pick it up." He adjusted the setting and flicked it on. The tiny sonic device pulsed to life and he slowly scanned the room. It started beeping, faster and faster, and he lifted his arms. "Got it."
He was pointing to the ceiling.
"But this is the top floor!"
"They're on the roof." Rose realized. The three of them exchanged horrified looks, the Doctor shoving the sonic back into his jacket, and they made a beeline for the stairs.
They practically flew up the stairs. Martha snarled threats under her breath about what she'd do if that madman had hurt her sister. Rose and the Doctor silently agreed to help her or at the very least let her. They slowed to halt just in front of the door outside. The Doctor held a finger to his lips, motioning for them to be silent. It was probably best not to burst out there in case spooking Lazarus somehow set him off.
He eased the door open and they quietly crept out onto the roof, shutting the door as quietly as possible. Tish and Lazarus were standing with their backs to the door. Tish was asking him if it was like he'd expected and, thankfully, didn't appear to be hurt.
"I find that nothing's ever exactly like you expect." Lazarus replied evenly. "There's always something to surprise you…. 'Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act—'"
"'Falls the shadow'," the Doctor finished, effectively announcing their presence.
They turned, Lazarus's eyebrows lifting in mild surprise. "So the mysterious Doctor knows his Eliot. I'm impressed." He smiled darkly.
"Martha, what are you doing here?" Tish asked.
"Tish, get away from him." Martha ordered.
"What? Don't tell me what to do."
"Wouldn't have thought you had time for poetry, Lazarus," the Doctor said. "What with you being so busy defying the laws of nature."
"You're right, Doctor." Lazarus agreed. "One lifetime's been too short for me to do everything I'd like. How much more I'll get done in two or three or four."
"Doesn't work like that. Some people live more in twenty years than others do in eighty. It's not the time that matters. It's the person."
"But if it's the right person," he countered, "What a gift that could be."
"Or what a curse." The Doctor's voice lost its edge and became soft, pleading with Lazarus to see why this was wrong. "Look at what you've done to yourself."
But he only managed to make the man angry. "Who are you to judge me?"
"Over here, Tish," Martha beckoned, motioning to her sister to come, which she did, thankfully.
"You have to spoil everything, don't you?" Tish demanded. "Every time I find someone nice, you have to try and find fault."
Behind them, Lazarus's mouth opened, his face lifting like he was about to sneeze, and he sucked in a breath.
"Tish, he's a monster!" she exclaimed, looking behind her sister.
He grunted in pain as his back arched, his arms curving, and crumpled to the ground.
"I know the age things a bit freaky but it works for Catherine Zeta-Jones." Only then did she seem to realize that none of them were looking at her. An inhuman growling caused her to turn. Tish wasn't exactly sure what she'd expected to see but it wasn't what she that.
Rose thought it wasn't unlike watching the man transform into the werewolf in the cellar of the Torchwood Estate, just a lot more disturbing. His body was contorting into something inhuman, skin stretched, ripped, mended itself in some places and didn't in others. Limbs lengthened and reshaped, new ones appeared in places they shouldn't. Every single one of his ribs was visible above a gaping hole where his guts should be. A long armored tail extended from his back. The end effect was a monstrous scorpion-like creature with Lazarus's face at the end of a long neck.
"What is that?" Tish demanded.
The monster reared up on its hind legs and looked down at them, arms lifted in a threatening manner.
"RUN!" the Doctor shouted.
They ran.
The Doctor sealed the lock on the door with the sonic while the girls fled down the stairs. No sooner had he succeeded did the monster start banging against the door, roaring and snaring. Rose stopped at the bottom of the stairs and waited for the Doctor to come down. He grabbed her hand as they passed and nearly pulled her arm out of its socket in his hurry to get them both away.
"Are you okay?" Martha asked Tish.
"I was gonna snog him."
If Rose didn't happen to be in love with an alien that was well over nine hundred she would've had something to say about that. But as it was she couldn't think of any way to belittle the woman for her stupidity without possibly scaring off the Doctor as well.
Above them, the thing that used to be Lazarus continued to bang on the door. He finally did it one time too many and tripped the high-class security system and an alarm began to blare. A computerized voice repeated "Security breach" over the PA. The lights around them went off, immediately replaced by dimmer ones as the building went into lockdown, switching to the backup generators to power the lights.
"What's happening?" Martha whispered.
"An intrusion," Tish responded almost mechanically. She closed her eyes and tried to focus. "It triggers a security lockdown, kills most of the power, stops the lifts, seals the exits."
Another roar and bang above them and the four of them looked back the way they came.
"He must be breaking through that door." the Doctor realized. Another loud bang against the door and the Doctor turned around, his eyes alight. "The stairs! Come on!"
They hurtled themselves down the stairs, hanging onto the railing to avoid falling in their haste. Rose was silently thanking the TARDIS for her nice selection of flat shoes while Martha inwardly cursed herself for not having followed Rose's lead and gone without the heels. She was also silently wondering why she was even considering spending an indefinite amount of time living with these two if they couldn't even go to a party without having to run for their lives. Then again, they'd all known going in that something would be amiss. She should've expected something like this to happen.
From above came the sound of the door clattering against the wall as it was forced open, followed by a monstrous roar. They all froze for a moment, looking up in horror.
"He's inside!" Martha shouted.
"Come on!" the Doctor called, a flight below her. "We haven't got much time."
"Oh my God, we're gonna die!" Tish wailed.
"No we're not! Keep running!"
When they sprinted into the reception hall they found all of the guests just standing about in confusion like sheep without a shepherd. The Doctor looked around, trying to count how many people were here, calculating how much damage Lazarus would cause when he arrived, and trying to work out some way to stop him. First things first, though, he had to get the humans out before anyone got killed. The lifts were out and those stairs only led up.
"Tish, is there another way out of here?" he asked.
"There's an exit in the corner." She pointed in the general direction of it. "But it'll be locked up now."
He pulled out the sonic screwdriver from his pocket and tossed it to Rose. "Rose, setting 54. Hurry!" She caught it with a nod and hurried towards the door with Martha and Tish. That was his companions safe and out of the way, now for the rest of them. He leaped onto the stairs around the machine.
"Listen to me!" he shouted to get their attention. "You people are in serious danger! You need to get out of here, right now!"
A woman near the front of the group sneered. "Don't be ridiculous. The biggest danger here is choking on an olive."
Why does no one ever listen?!
Jus then from the direction of the stairs came a loud shattering noise and the sound of heavy footsteps. The Lazarus-monster appeared on the loft above them and reared up. He let out a guttural roar and people stared in horror. The Doctor quietly cursed in his native language and Lazarus jumped down onto the floor below, crushing a table beneath him. People began to scream and scatter in panic. Those who'd overheard Tish flocked towards the door and most of the others followed suit.
Most of them.
The woman in the gold dress remained where she was out of disbelief or perhaps she was just paralyzed with terror. In any case she was still frozen when the Lazarus-monster loomed over her, his jaws splitting and gaping wide. But he didn't eat her. He swung his tail forward. The end of it uncurled into what looked like some sort of straw and the Doctor realized what he was about to do.
"NO! Get away from her!" he shouted.
The woman screamed her last and the Lazarus-monster pierced the top of her head with it's straw. There was a single, almighty slurp and she was reduced before his eyes into a withered husk that looked like it'd been dead for decades and not nanoseconds.
Then the Lazarus-monster turned towards the closest pair of humans, which just so happened to be Martha's mother and brother. It advanced on them, growling, and the Doctor was filled with rage. He could barely tolerate when people tried to hurt his companions, but when they went after his companions' families, that just crossed the line. His companions accepted the risk when they chose to come with him, their families didn't. In the past their families usually never even really knew. He'd become familiar with Rose's family and look at what had happened to them—trapped on one side of the Void with her on the other.
Martha would not lose her family as well. He simply wouldn't allow it.
"Lazarus!" he shouted and the monster rounded on him. "Leave them alone!"
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Martha and Rose kneeling beside Francine and Leo and the Doctor prayed that Rose would not try to follow him.
"What's the point?" he demanded. "You can't control it. The mutation's too strong. Killing those people won't help you."
The Lazarus monster growled at him.
"You're a fool," he said quietly and the monster's face twisted angrily. "A vain old man who thought he could defy nature. Only nature got her own back, didn't she? You're a joke, Lazarus!" the Doctor shouted. "A footnote in the history of failure."
That did it. The Lazarus-monster reared up to attack him and the Doctor ran.
"Doctor!" Rose shrieked and started to follow him, but Martha caught her before she got too far. "Let go of me!"
"Rose, you're only gonna get yourself killed." Martha told her, glancing momentarily at the terrified guests trying to escape. "We have to get these people out!"
Rose continued to struggle for a moment more, threw one last desperate look at the way the Doctor and the monster had gone, then allowed Martha to pull her towards her family.
"What's the Doctor doing?" Tish asked.
"He's trying to buy us some time. Let's not waste it." Martha said. She put her hands on either side of her brother's face and lifted his head. "Leo, look at me. Focus on me. Let's see your eyes. …He's got a concussion. Mum, you'll need to help him downstairs." She moved over to the table behind them and grabbed a few ice cubes from the pale and wrapped them in a cloth napkin. "This will keep the swelling down."
Francine took the napkin, placing it gently against her son's temple, and started to help him down the stairs. "Go, I'll be right behind you." Martha said then grabbed her sister by the arms. "Tish, move. We need to get out of here."
Tish went but Rose didn't even move except to back at the reception hall. He wasn't entirely hopeless without her, she knew, but he would probably need his sonic, and what if something happened to him because she wasn't there to help?
"Rose!" Martha shouted and she jumped, startled, looking down at the hand gripping her arm. "Move!"
"If he dies I'll never forgive myself for not goin' after him."
"If you die he'll never forgive me for letting you go after him!" Digging her nails into Rose's skin, she pulled the stubborn blonde down the stairs with her.
On the main floor the crowd of partygoers were crowding around the doors, banging and pressing futilely. Martha's family stood in the back of the group, Leo leaning heavily on his mother.
"We can't get out!" Tish cried. "We're trapped."
"No we're not," Rose said, flipping the sonic screwdriver in her hand.
"Those doors don't have locks like the one upstairs."
"There must be an override switch." Martha said. "Where's the security desk? Tish!"
"There!"
Rose ran towards it and Martha followed. Rose pushed herself onto the desk and slid across and bolted for the panel against the wall. She pointed the screwdriver at the controls and turned it on. A moment later the lights came on and the terrified people were able to push the doors open. They spilled through the doorway and ran screaming down the steps.
"You did it!" Martha laughed and Rose smiled grimly back at her. She pushed herself back across the desk and followed Martha towards the doors where people were frantically filing out.
Francine smiled in relief when she saw her daughter had returned unharmed. And she supposed it was good that the other woman was fine, too. She had gotten them out, after all. "Come on, let's get out of here," she said.
Rose stopped, pressed her lips together in deliberation for a moment, and then shook her head. "No."
"What?" Martha spun around. "What do you mean no?"
"I'm going back. I have to Martha."
"You can't! You saw what that thing did." Francine protested. "It'll kill you!"
"She's right. Please," Martha pleaded.
"I have to. This is what everyone else before me has always done." Rose said quietly so Martha's family wouldn't overhear. "He has to survive no matter what, even if it means we don't. So that means you run headfirst into the thick of things and you risk your life to keep him alive, 'cos your life means nothin' next to his."
Martha stared at her somberly.
"And if you can't understand that then you should probably just stay here with your family." Rose gripped the sonic tightly in her hand and backed away from her.
Martha licked her lips and bit the bottom one. Rose waited. Finally, she nodded. "Right. Let's go."
Tish spoke up from behind her. "He was biding us time. Time for you to get out too."
"Doesn't matter," Martha said without turning. "You get out. We're going back."
"What did you say to her?" Francine glared at the young blonde who was trying to lead her daughter into danger.
Rose's eyes glinted and she met her gaze evenly. "I told her the truth."
And Francine Jones could do nothing but watch helplessly as the girl led her daughter back up the stairs until Tish pulled her out the door.
See this kitty sitting here next to me? Her name is Layla. She demands you all give me reviews. It is unwise to disobey the kitty.