Disclaimer: Not my intellectual property, no gain, etc, etc.

Author's note: Dear readers, I am very sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out. I had more than ten pages written when my computer restarted and autosave glitched out. I am now saving my work with a higher frequency. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

Rose planted the raffle ticket at Donna's office the day before she was supposed to be let go then checked herself into the Royal Hope Hospital under the name Marion Wolfe. The causal nexus she was working with was fragile and if it shattered, everything would end, not revert, and Rose was supposed to be dead. She'd heard all about the incident at the Royal Hope and was reasonably certain she could solve the problem without colossal loss of life. Martha had said the Doctor checked himself in with stomach pains, but Rose was a woman, which meant the doctors would all assume she was pregnant, so she decided on dizziness and headaches.

It was enough that they kept her overnight, monitoring her condition with little machines and doing all sorts of scans. It wasn't so bad, even when she had to pretend to pass out.

Bright and early the next morning, Martha Jones trailed into the ward in the flock of med students following the head doctor, Dr. Stoker.

"Miss Wolfe, checked in last night with inexplicable dizziness and headaches. Let's see, Jones, amaze me." The older man said gruffly.

Rose smiled brightly at Martha, who hesitantly stepped forward. Martha pulled out her stethoscope and listened to Rose's heartbeat. Rose smirked, remembering the way Martha described her confusion over the Doctor's hearts. The trainee doctor gently pressed on Rose's skull, around her ears, and down the sides of her neck.

"Um, some overly tense muscles in the cervical region could be causing tension headaches?" She said.

"Unlikely to be causing dizziness though. And you rather failed basic techniques by not consulting first with the patient's chart." He said, reaching for the clipboard at the end of the bed and receiving a nasty shock.

"That happened to me earlier." One student exclaimed. Murmurs of agreement rose up and were cut off by Dr. Stoker, who explained that it was just static from the building thunderstorm and the group moved on.

It was around lunch time that Rose noticed the rain reversing. She pulled the curtains tight around her bed and changed back into her clothes. She sat back down on the bed and braced herself for the shaking that started not long after she finished. Around her, screams of panic and sobbing bubbled up into a crescendo.

"Alright everyone, back to bed, we've got a bit of an emergency but we'll sort it out soon enough." Came the calm and efficient voice of Martha Jones. Rose smirked, that was why the Doctor took her as a companion. Intelligence, practicality, and an immunity to panic. Rose drew back the curtains and walked lightly over to the window where Martha and a fellow med student were gazing out at the lunar surface.

"But the windows aren't exactly air tight, if the air was going to get sucked out, it would have happened straight away, but it didn't. So how come?" Martha reassured her companion even as she tried to understand the situation.

"Fair point." Rose said softly from behind the two women, causing both of them to jump as they hadn't noticed her approach. "Jones, yeah?"

"Martha, Martha Jones." She stuck her hand out to shake Rose's.

"So, Martha, want to see what's happening?" Rose asked with a grin that came close to being real.

Martha's eyes narrowed with suspicion but she nodded. "Yeah, sure." She said, finding herself agreeing before she realized what she was doing.

The other student sobbed and clutched at Martha's sleeve. "Don't leave me!" She begged, slumping to the floor.

Rose knelt next to her and looked her straight in the eye. "Hey, you're training to be a doctor, yeah? There are patients here and they need your help. Be a doctor." She stood and addressed Martha again, "Right, balcony in the patient's lounge?" Then she took off down the corridors at a trot.

They stepped out and stood in the dark of space, staring at the Earth.

"We've got air." Martha breathed. "But how?"

Rose picked up a rock from a potted plant and hurled it away from the hospital. It struck something solid, causing a colored rippling in the air. "Force field." She said and glanced over at Martha who still looked a bit overawed. "Doing alright?" She asked.

"Yeah, it's just, it's beautiful. But we might die any minute."

Rose grimaced. Right on cue the Judoon ships started to descend.

"What's that?" Martha asked.

Rose raised an eyebrow, "What do you think?"

Martha gulped. "Aliens."

"Let's go." Rose flashed Martha a grin and jogged back into the building.

They watched as the Judoon assimilated the language and started cataloguing.

"What are they?" Martha asked.

"Judoon. Intergalactic rent-a-cops." Rose replied. She wasn't just relying on Martha's information for that, she'd had her own experiences with them in Pete's world. "C'mon." She said and slunk away from the veranda.

"Why?" Martha wondered, already tailing her, "And how do you know what they are? Did they bring us here?"

"Always the questions, Martha Jones! First, they're searching for someone and we need to find him or her first. Second, I've had some dealings with them in the past. And thirdly, yes, they did. The moon is neutral territory, they can't officially go to Earth except in emergencies."

"Alright, let's say I believe you, where are we going?" Martha asked. "Why can't we just let the Judoon find whoever it is they're looking for? Are they looking for an alien?"

"Yes, and the Judoon are not at all clever and they'll assume that the hospital is harboring their fugitive, and therefore guilty."

"What happens if they think we're guilty?"

"They'll execute everyone here." Rose said stonily. "I'd prefer for that not to happen, so let's find Dr. Stoker, shall we?"

"Why Dr. Stoker?"

"He might know something!" Rose called over her shoulder, a bit frustrated by the endless questions, but also knowing that he was probably going to be dead before they got there. She burst into his office and an older lady straightened to stand, a straw pursed between her lips. "Oops, sorry. Wrong room." She said and darted out, grabbing Martha's hand to pull her along. Thundering footsteps followed them. Without a sonic screwdriver and an immunity to certain kinds of radiation, Rose couldn't fry the slabs with an x-ray, they'd have to hide instead. She ducked down a hallway and hauled Martha into the open door of a storage room. They huddled behind the door, leaving it open to avoid suspicion.

"So, we found the aliens? What were they doing with Mrs. Finnegan?" Martha hissed after the echoing footsteps faded.

"She's the alien, those things work for her. She's a shape changer, once she drinks the blood of a species, she takes on their shape. She can hide in plain sight." Rose said and slipped back into the main hallway. "Where's the MRI room?" She asked Martha.

"Erm, down the hall and around the bend." Martha said, "Why?"

"Because she's clever!" Rose said as she took off again. She slid to a halt only seconds later as she came face to face with a Judoon platoon. "Oh." She said, "I know who you're looking for and where she is, I can assist in her capture." She said in her best Torchwood voice. The Judoon ignored her, instead scanning her and Martha with the blue lights.

"Non-human." The lead Judoon grunted and withdrew a weapon from his belt.

"Oops." Rose said and sprinted off in the opposite direction.

Martha was starting to breathe a bit heavily behind her. "Non-human?!" she nearly shrieked.

"Yeah well, I wasn't entirely sure what their scanners would find." Rose said, skidding around a corner.

"Then where are you from? What planet?" asked the incorrigible Martha.

Rose sighed. "Earth, I'm from Earth. Just, things happened and my DNA got a bit scrambled."

The Judoon were catching up but the MRI room was in sight. Rose stopped turned to Martha who panted to a halt next to her.

"Right, I'm going to need you to delay the Judoon a bit, just a sort of, stall." Rose winced.

"How am I going to do that?"

"This will save lives, I swear. Other than that, it means nothing, honest. I don't swing that way." Rose said in a rush before soundly snogging Martha Jones. She stepped away, wiping her mouth and ran into the MRI room.

Martha stood stunned, her mouth hanging open in shock. The Judoon rounded the corner and approached Martha.

Rose opened the door to the MRI room carefully and stepped inside. She was committed to her purpose but that didn't make her like what was going to happen next.

"Oh, sorry." She said to the alien preoccupied with the destruction of the earth, "Are you busy with something? It's just, there's these space rhinos out there and they're frankly terrifying."

Mrs. Finnegan narrowed her eyes as she looked at the girl in front of her. "I saw you earlier, didn't I? What are you doing here?"

"Hiding. Those rhino things said they're increasing their scans and I didn't like the sound of that. Could be radiation or something." Rose did her best to act paranoid and close to panicking. The panic wasn't much of a stretch.

"Increasing their scans? Why is that?"

"I dunno. Only they said they couldn't find anything non-human, so they have to look harder."

"Well, that's bad news for me, but rather worse for you, my dear." She pulled out the straw.

"Why's that?" Rose asked, backing away.

The little, old lady matched her, step for step. "Hold her." She ordered the slabs and they seized Rose by the arms. "I'm afraid this is going to hurt a bit, but the dead don't tend to complain." And she stuck her straw into Rose's neck.

The pain was intense. A sort of searing that shut down mental functions for a few blissful seconds then Rose regained awareness of the world and the pain. She fought against the slabs but her muscles were losing strength quickly.

The door burst open suddenly and the Judoon entered. The slabs quickly let go of Rose and Mrs. Finnegan hid her straw. Rose slid to the ground in a heap.

"No!" Martha cried, but her path forward was blocked by the Judoon.

"Now see what you've done," Mrs. Finnegan said reasonably, "This poor girl just died of fright."

"Confirmed. Deceased." The Judoon prepared to leave.

"No, she killed her!" Martha said desperately. "She drank her blood!"

"The crimes of humans are not our jurisdiction. Case closed." The Judoon said.

"But she's not human!"

"Oh I am, I'm as human as they come. I've been scanned." She held up her hand with the telltale black 'x'.

"No, she just used the blood to seem human! Hang on, blood, you drank her blood." Martha seized the scanner and shined the light at Mrs. Finnegan.

The Judoon took care of the slabs and Mrs. Finnegan before exiting to save themselves, Martha screeching at them to fix the MRI machine. Soon enough though, she returned to the problem at hand and started CPR.

Rose came to with a gasp. Martha knew she was feeling the effects of the lack of oxygen when she saw a gold glow from the other woman's eyes.

"The machine…" Martha murmured and keeled over.

Rose crawled to it and unplugged it. The hospital shook and Rose sensed the change in space. She stood carefully and carried Martha out to a room with a window where the oxygen would diffuse into the building more quickly. She sighed with relief as the other woman took a deep breath. There were reporters on the scene, as well as UNIT.

Rose sat in an armchair near the window with her legs curled up next to her. Was it like this for the Doctor? She wondered. She knew most of the events were the same, thanks to Martha, and there were very few deaths. Rose would certainly never forget 1941 when the Doctor was ecstatic because just once, everyone lived. So there was a sense of triumph from saving lives, but Rose had also died. She could very nearly feel the emptiness of her blood vessels but her body was a bit more resilient than most and was replenishing her blood cells already.

Martha stirred and sat up with a groan. "We're back!" She exclaimed, seeing the bright blue sky through the window.

"Yup. Thanks in large part to you. Martha Jones, you're a star." Rose said with a gentle smile.

"You never said, what's your name?"

Rose smiled crookedly at her. "Better not. Names have power. Right. People are waking up all over this hospital and they'll need help."

Martha wasn't used to being dismissed but something in the honey-brown eyes of the mysterious savior told her that she wouldn't get the answers she craved. "Thank you." She said instead, leaving Rose to her thoughts.

The UNIT soldiers began to enter the hospital. Rose assumed that they wanted to check that everything alien was gone. She wasn't, but she figured this was as good a time as any to meet up with UNIT. After all, they had the Tardis.

She heard them coming from well down the hallway.

"Clear." They called to one another as they swept through the building.

The footsteps drew nearer and stopped outside her room. "Ma'am, are you injured?" The soldier asked from the doorway. "My name is Ross Jenkins, I'm here to help."

Rose turned a dazzling smile towards him. "Nice to meet you Ross, I do need help. I need to talk to Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge Stewert." His jaw, and that of his companion, dropped.

Rose was ushered into the Brigadier's office by a pair of stone-faced UNIT officers who had taken custody of her at the entrance of the Tower of London.

"Well, my men seem very confused as to why a young woman is asking to see me. I'm not exactly well known in the civilian world." The Brig said from behind his massive, mahogany desk and gestured for Rose to sit facing him. He stood and fetched a decanter and three glasses from a hidden liquor cabinet next to the bookshelf. "So, please, who are you?" He asked as he sat down again.

Rose shook her head. "I can't tell you that, sir. I am someone you can trust though."

"And why should I believe anything you say?" He said, pouring the three glasses of brandy and passing one to Rose.

"Because I know who the third glass is for."