I don't own Doctor Who, or any characters except the Guardian.
GD~GD~GD~GD~
The Guardian was awoken by a terrible shaking. She felt the other side of the bed, noting that it was empty. Now, that was impressive. Somehow, the Doctor had gotten out of their room without waking her.
The room shook again, making the Guardian roll towards the center of the bed to avoid falling off.
What in Rassilon's name was her husband doing?
If the other rooms in the TARDIS were shaking, then the console room must be a mess. She got up and made her way to the rocking and shaking console room, grabbing the railing to keep herself steady. "What's the emergency?" She asked the Doctor teasingly.
"It's mauve!" He ran around the console frantically pushing buttons.
The Guardian moved over to the monitor and saw that they were following a small spaceship. She began rapidly typing commands into the computer. In fifteen seconds, she had hacked into the ship's flight computer.
"Oh, you're brilliant!" The Doctor kissed her, then took her place.
"What are you doing to my brilliant work?"
"Slaving the TARDIS to it. Where it goes, we go."
She crossed her arms. "And you think that's safe?"
"Totally."
As if to protest the Doctor's treatment of her, the TARDIS's console began sparking and exploding.
"Okay, reasonably," the Doctor corrected him. "Should have said "reasonably" there—No! No!"
The Guardian shoved him aside, noting that the ship was jumping time tracks. She typed in more commands, trying to keep the ship—whatever it was—from crash-landing on the centre of London in thirty seconds.
GD~GD~GD~GD~
The TARDIS landed with a jolt. The Guardian straightened and kissed the Doctor. "I'll be right back."
She hurried down the corridor to their bedroom, needing to fix her hair and pull on more appropriate clothing, since the TARDIS had landed on Earth in the 1940s. While no one in the 21st century or later would blink at her camisole top and lounge pants, people from the 1940s would be scandalized.
Five minutes later, she joined the Doctor outside the TARDIS, dressed in her typical demin trousers, green shirt, and leather jacket and combat boots. The TARDIS had materialized in a dark alleyway.
"Don't humans use red as the color for danger?" She asked.
The Doctor chuckled, putting his arm around her waist. "Yes. Oh, the misunderstandings. All those red alerts, all that dancing." He looked around and sighed. "Do you know how long you can knock around space without happening to bump into Earth?"
"About five days. Or do you just pop in to pick up milk then?" This regeneration seemed to be quite fond of the Earth food, but… "All of the species in the Universe and it has to come out of a cow?"
He nodded sympathetically, then looked around—as if he could see anything in the dark. "It must have come down somewhere quite close. Within a mile, anyway."
"But it fell a month ago." The Guardian looked around also, feeling like something was watching them. "Let's slip back inside and run a scan for alien tech."
"Guardian, it hit the middle of London with a very loud bang. Let's just ask." He waved the psychic paper at her.
She slipped free of his arm. "You can run off and start asking strangers stupid questions, but I'm going to run a scan. I would prefer to know what I was getting into." She smirked. "Besides, I think you would appreciate the lack of distraction."
The Doctor glared at her weakly, well aware that more than half of the scrapes they had gotten into in the last three weeks were because he had been distracted by her. "Suit yourself."
The Guardian kissed him and walked back into the TARDIS. She ran the scan, which immediately picked up that there was a Chula warship tethered to Big Ben.
She shook her head. What was it with spaceships and Big Ben?
This ship had a much more complicated computer, but she still managed to hack into it and transmat herself on board. She settled into the captain's chair to wait for the ship's owner.
She wasn't disappointed.
Five minutes later, a dark-haired man transmatted on board. When he turned, the Guardian's eyes widened.
She knew this man.
GD~GD~GD~GD~
Using the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor broke into a nightclub through the back door. He made his way through the halls, following the sound of saxophone to a posh club. He took a spot just off stage to wait until the singer finished "It Had To Be You."
He smiled, thinking of the Guardian. Indeed, it did have to be her. Even a thousand years ago, it had to be her. He never really believed in the concept of soul mates, but how else could he explain who she, a Lady who had been raised within the strictest traditions on Gallifrey, had ended up as much of a renegade as him? Especially after what her father did to her, one would think she would want nothing to do with renegades.
Yet there she was, and she loved him, faults and all. Just like he did her.
He smirked. Though… he wasn't terribly fond of her habit of pulling a gun on him if he so much as breathed too deeply while they were sleeping, but that was fifteen hundred year-old reflexes in action. He hadn't even been able to get out of their room with incident when the TARDIS had sent him a telepathic signal, alerting him to the ship they had been following.
It seemed that the Guardian could also pull a gun in her sleep. He didn't want to find out how good of a shot she was asleep. Knowing her, she was just as good as she was awake. Fifteen hundred year-old reflexes and all that.
The Doctor glanced up again when he realized there was no music and plenty of clapping. He made his way up to the microphone when the singer stepped away.
"Excuse me, excuse me. Could I have everybody's attention for a mo?"
The clapping died away as everyone looked confused.
"Be very quick," the Doctor promised. "Hello! Might seem like a stupid question, but has anything fallen from the sky recently?"
Everyone was absolutely silent, but then they began… laughing?
"Sorry, have I said something funny?" The Doctor looked around, absolutely confused. He tried to speak over the near-hysterical laughter. "It's just, there's this thing that I need to find. Would've fallen from the sky a couple of days ago."
The long wail of a siren sounded outside. Everyone stood up, a few taking one last bit of their drink, and walked out of the room.
"Would've landed quite near here," the Doctor continued to try. "With a very loud..."
That's when he saw it. On the back wall, a poster showing a search light and planes, reading 'Hitler will send no warning!'
"...bang."
They had landed in the middle of the Blitz.
GD~GD~GD~GD~
"Who the hell are you?" The man demanded, grabbing a sonic blaster out of a holster under the cramped piloting console.
The Guardian stood. "Captain Jack Harkness. Time Agent."
"Former Time Agent," Jack snapped back, looking slightly surprised that she identified him, and fired.
GD~GD~GD~GD~
The Doctor ran back to the TARDIS. "Guardian! Have you done that scan?"
He stopped short, seeing the empty console room. He searched for her in his mind, but she was nowhere in the TARDIS.
"Where on Earth has she gone?" He muttered to himself. She did this a lot, actually. Just randomly disappeared on him, only to return with some highly valuable piece of information. It seemed that she was taking quite well to her new-found freedom to make her own personal choices. He walked over to the monitor, to see if she had run the scan for alien tech, but an entirely different sound stopped him.
The phone started ringing.
Slowly, he walked to the doors, stepping outside to open the little door that concealed the phone.
"How can you be ringing?" He asked the phone, even more confused than he had been earlier. There had been a logical explanation then, even if he didn't realize it. But now? "What's that about, ringing. What am I supposed to do with a ringing phone?"
He pulled out the sonic screwdriver. He'd just have to scan it.
"Don't answer it." He looked up to see a young woman standing in the alley. She continued, "It's not for you."
The Doctor walked closer. "And how do you know that?"
The young woman—more of a child, really—shook her head a tiny bit. "'Cos I do. And I'm telling you, don't answer it." There was more pleading her voice than threat.
"Well, if you know so much, tell me this: how can it be ringing?" He walked back over to the still-ringing phone. "It's not even a real phone. It's not connected, it's not—"
He looked up to see that the girl was gone. He frowned and, after a moment of arguing within himself, picked up the phone.
There was breathing and static on the other end.
"Hello?" He said. "Hello?"
Still nothing.
"This is the Doctor speaking. How may I help you?"
"Mummy? Mummy?"~
The Doctor froze at the child's voice, a note of desperation to it.
"Who is this? Who's speaking?"
"Are you my mummy?"~
"Who is this?"
"Mummy?"~
The Doctor frowned, growing frustrated. Surely a life form that could call a fake phone could have answered a simple question. "How did you ring here? This isn't a real phone. It's not wired up to anything."
"Mummy?"~
The call ended with a dull buzz.
GD~GD~GD~GD~
The Guardian smirked when Jack's blaster didn't work. She pulled the battery pack out of her pocket. "Weapons factory at Villengard." She sat down again in the pilot's chair of the tiny ship. "So, now that we've gotten that out of the way: what are you doing in London in the middle of the Blitz?"
Jack frowned at her, but lowered the useless blaster. "How about you first tell me who the hell you are, Red?"
The Guardian frowned at the nickname. "No one you know. But I happen to know a friend of yours." Well, 'friend' was not the word the man in the Doctor's memories would have used for her husband, but those had been extenuating circumstances.
"Can I at least get your name?"
The Guardian flashed the psychic paper that she had lifted off the Doctor right after he showed it to her. "Allegra Shannon, Time Agent. But you can call me the Guardian." She leaned forward. "Now, what are you doing here?"
GD~GD~GD~GD~
The Doctor followed a couple of young boys into the house. He could smell the home cooking, and the family who lived in the house was down in their air raid shelter.
He entered the room as the girl from before was speaking to a young boy. No one noticed him, so he was able to take a seat at the table as quietly as he could. It was fortunate that everyone was focused on the girl. The Guardian would have been much better at this.
The girl handed around a plate of meat that was far too plentiful and nice for this time. "One slice each, and I want to see everyone chewing properly."
The children passed the plate around, each taking one slice and saying "thanks, miss".
"Thanks, miss!" The Doctor grinned, taking a helping of his own when it was passed to him.
The children gasped and stood, all panicking.
"It's all right. Everybody stay where you are!" The girl called calmly over the scuffle.
The Doctor just pretended that nothing was amiss, hoping his lack of concern over their flight would help calm the children. "Good here, innit? Who's got the salt?"
"Back in your seats," the girl insisted. "He shouldn't be here either."
The Doctor watched the children settle down again. They were so young—most of them looked less than ten years old, and the youngest appeared to only be about four years old, yet they were on their own in a city at war. "So, you lot, what's the story?" He asked, tempering his tone so as to not sound confrontational.
"What do you mean?" An older boy asked.
"You're homeless, right? Living rough?" He thought he remembered the girl using that term. Unfortunately, he didn't have the Guardian's eidetic memory.
"Why'd you want to know that?" A younger boy demanded. "Are you a copper?"
"Of course I'm not a copper! What's a copper going to do with you lot anyway? Arrest you for starving?"
The children laughed with him, most of the tension now broken. The Doctor glanced at his watch. "I make it 1941. You lot shouldn't even be in London. You should've been evacuated to the country by now."
"I was evacuated," a third boy spoke. "Sent me to a farm."
"So why'd you come back?"
"There was a man there." He glance down spoke louder than his words as to why he came back.
The second boy pointed to the first one, the older one. "Yeah, same with Ernie. Two homes ago."
"Shut up," Ernie snapped, looking down at his food.
The Doctor looked at the children sadly. Did no one have respect for children? As if their younger age made them somehow less than their elders?
Despite their mental bond, he still knew very little of what the Guardian had endured early in her childhood, as she had deleted much of that information. Oh, he knew about the impossible training regimes that cost her many of her earlier lives. And he knew about the beatings when she failed.
But he didn't know whether her fear of movement in the dark was from years of attempts on her life, or whether there had been a darker reason. It wasn't likely, as that sort of abuse was unpardonable on Gallifrey, but so was beating a child to death because they didn't move fast enough through a training course.
It seems that far too many of Gallifrey's laws had been broken to make his wife the person that the High Council wanted.
And who knew what she endured after disappearing from Gallifrey and before appearing in his TARDIS. She didn't, so he didn't.
"Nancy always gets the best food for us!" The second boy interrupted the Doctor's thoughts.
"So, that's what you do, is it, Nancy?" Finally, he knew the girl's name.
"What is?" She glared at him.
"As soon as the sirens go, you find a big fat family meal still warm on the table with everyone down in the air raid shelter and bingo! Feeding frenzy for the homeless kids of London Town. Puddings for all—as long as the bombs don't get you."
"Something wrong with that?" Nancy snapped.
"Wrong with it?" The Doctor shook his head. "It's brilliant. I'm not sure if it's Marxism in action or a West End musical." He really did need to take the Guardian to West End.
"Why'd you follow me?" Nancy asked, shaking her head slowly. "What do you want?"
"I want to know how a phone that isn't a phone gets a phone call. You seem to be the one to ask."
Nancy looked away for a moment. When she looked back, her expression had hardened. "I did you a favor. I told you not to answer it, that's all I'm telling you."
"Great, thanks," the Doctor responded. He turned his attention back to all the children. "And I'm looking for a ginger in a leather jacket. A specific one, mind you—I didn't just wake up this morning with a craving. Well, I did, but she's my wife, I'm allowed."
The children laughed, but Nancy stood with a glare and walked over.
"Anybody seen a woman like that? You can't miss her."
Nancy took his plate away.
"What have I done wrong?"
Nancy stormed away. "You took two slices." There was something unconvincing in her voice, though the Doctor wasn't certain what it was. Now he really wished the Guardian was with him. She may not have been the most empathetic person the Doctor met, but she was far better than him at reading people.
"No gingers, no leather jackets. And thing else before you leave?" Nancy was nearly shouting at him.
"Yeah, there is actually. Thanks for asking." The Doctor began digging through his pockets, noting that the psychic paper was gone. So the Guardian had nicked it again. There went his plan to use the psychic paper to show the kids what he was looking for.
"Something I've been looking for," he continued, now searching paper and a pencil. "Wouldn't fallen from the sky about a month ago, but not a bomb. Not the usual kind, anyway. Wouldn't have exploded." He found what he need and began drawing a rough sketch. "Probably would have just buried itself in the ground somewhere, and it would have looked something like this."
He held up a rubbish drawing of the ship, now annoyed that the Guardian had taken his psychic paper. He glanced around, noting curiousity in the children's faces, but no recognition. But Nancy... her expression had frozen.
A knock made everyone jump.
"Mummy? Are you in there, mummy?" A voice called, someone pounding on the window glass.
The Doctor stood and went over to a window, pushing aside the blackout curtain to look outside. There was a little boy, about four years old, standing at the window, wearing a gas mask. Behind him, Nancy frantically demanded to know who was the last one in the front door, while the boy continued to call "mummy", just like on the phone call. The boy made his way to the front door.
The Doctor frowned when Nancy rushed out, and he followed her. She bolted the front door and backed away.
"What's this, then? It's never easy being the only child left out in the cold, you know."
"I supposed you'd know," Nancy snapped.
"I do actually. Yes." The Doctor replied quietly, smiling bitterly.
Every male heir of the House of Lungbarrow had been inspired at the Untempered Schism, until him and his brother. It seemed that being one of the ones who ran away was a mark of shame in their House, and everyone on Gallifrey knew it. How many social functions had he been allowed to attend only because of his position, and was then shunned at? His first wife, the Gentle, had been his only true friend growing up.
"It's not exactly a child," Nancy defended, even as the child outside continued to call for his mummy. She suddenly pushed past the Doctor and started calling for the other children to get out the back door.
"Mummy? Mummy?" The little boy continued to call. "Please let me in, mummy. Please let me in, mummy?" He pushed his tiny hand through the letter door.
"Are you alright?" The Doctor noted a fairly fresh scar on the back of the boy's hand.
"Please let me in."
A vase shattered agains the door beneath the boy's hand. He pulled his hand back outside.
"You mustn't let him touch ya!" Nancy shouted when the Doctor looked back at her.
"What happens if he touches me?" He snapped, angry at her harsh disregard for the little boy.
"He'll make you like him."
"And what's he like?"
"I've got to go." Nancy's voice caught, and she started to hurry away.
"Nancy, what's he like?" The Doctor repeated, firmer.
She stopped and turned back. "He's empty," she said sadly.
The telephone began ringing. The Doctor turned to it, then glanced at the door.
"It's him. He can make phones ring, he can. It's like with that police box you saw."
The Doctor looked back at the shadow on the other side of the door. How on Earth could the child do that? After a moment of hesitation, he picked up the phone.
~"Are you my mummy?"~
Before he even had a chance to reply, Nancy pulled the phone out of his hand and hung it up. He looked at her in surprise, but then the radio turned on in the dinning room.
Over the sounds of big band music, the little boy was asking for his mother to let him in. The Doctor fiddled with the dial. A clockwork monkey began moving, playing the same mantra.
"You stay if you want to." Nancy hurried away, out the back door.
The Doctor watched her leave, then glanced back at the front door. The little boy put his hand through the letter door again. The Doctor walked over and crouched just out of reach of the little boy's hand.
"Mummy? Let me in, please, mummy. Please let me in."
"Your mummy isn't here."
The radio turned off, making everything eerily silent.
"Are you my mummy?"
"No mummies here. Nobody here but is chickens." He glanced back at the door Nancy had fled through. "Well, this chicken."
"I'm scared."
"Why are those other children firghtened of you?"
The boy didn't respond. He just continued, "Please let me in, mummy. I'm scared of the bombs."
The Doctor froze, hearing the distant sounds of bombs exploding. Four years old. The boy he had glimpsed through the window couldn't have been more than four. The same age his youngest great-grandson had been when a Dalek attack murdered him and his mother early in the War. His father had been the first of the Doctor's grandchildren to die, as he had been driven mad with grief over his wife and son's deaths.
No child deserved to be left outside with bombs falling.
"Okay," the Doctor replied, slowly standing. "I'm opening the door now."
The boy pulled his hand out, and the Doctor unbolted the door and opened it.
The boy was gone.
He frowned and looked out onto the deserted street. Where had the boy gone?
GD~GD~GD~GD~
Eidetic memory or not, the Guardian still wasn't sure how Captain Jack Harkness had gotten her on top of the invisible Chula warship with a bottle of champagne. And that was concerning. She should have far more control over the situation.
"If we're going to talk business, I really should find my partner." She moved away from Jack, but he pulled her into his arms, trying to get her to dance.
"Why, is your partner the one who is authorized to negotiate with me?"
She resisted the urge to push him right off his invisible ship just for touching her. The Doctor would hardly approve of her killing the man. "No, I just choose not to do business without him."
"'Him'? Tell me, Red, when you say 'partner', how disappointed should I be?"
The Guardian noticed a slight wobble in his stance—probably from the champagne he was drinking—and slipped out of his arms. "First of all, don't call me 'Red'. Secondly, when I say 'partner', I mean 'husband'. And we're on our honeymoon."
Jack frowned. "I thought the Time Agency didn't allow their people to marry each other."
The Guardian smirked. "Who says our bosses know we're married?" She climbed back down into the ship, Jack following her. "So, what is it that you want to sell?"
Of course, it was going to be the ship that they had followed to this time, but she wanted to know what he claimed it was. Few would have recognized the computer as that of a Chula medical ship.
"It's 1941, the height of the London Blitz..." Jack trailed off when he saw the annoyed look the Guardian gave him. He sighed and typed something into the contraption strapped to his wrist.
A hologram image of the ambulance appeared. "It's a fully armed and equipped Chula warship. Last one in existence, and I know where it is, because I parked it. In two hours, a German bomb is going to fall on it and destory it forever. But if the Agency can name the right price, I can get it back before then. So, what's your offer?"
"Run a scan for alien tech, help me hunt down my husband, and then we can discuss payment." The Guardian leaned against a beam.
"And why would I agree to that?"
The Guardian smirked. "Because you're not a Time Agent anymore, you're a freelancer. You probably stole both of the ships you have hanging around London, so if you don't want my partner and me to turn you in to the Time Agency, you will do as I say." It was a complete lie. Last she heard, the Time Agency wanted her head after she had interferred in one of their operations a few weeks ago.
Jack sighed, believing her. "Fine."
GD~GD~GD~GD~
The Doctor followed Nancy to a shack beside some railway lines. In there, she hid something, probably food. He smiled as she stood up and saw him.
"How'd you follow me here?"
"I'm good at following me. Got the nose for it."
"People can't usually follow me if I don't want them to."
"My nose has special powers." Well, he couldn't exactly say that he had used the skin cells she'd left on his jacket when she grabbed him to have the TARDIS run a scan for her. could he?
A smile flickered on her face. "Yeah? That's why it's..." She trailed off.
"What?"
Now she was actively trying to hide a smile. "Nothing."
"What?"
"Nothing." She insisted, then blurted out. "Do your ears have special powers too?"
Not another one. "What are you trying to say?"
"Goodnight, mister." Nancy started to walk away.
"Nancy."
She stopped, but didn't turn.
"There's something chasing you and the other kids. Looks like a boy and isn't a boy, and it started about a month ago, am I right?"
Nancy turned back to him, her expression curious and confused.
The Doctor clarified. "The thing I'm looking for, the thing that fell from the sky, that's when it landed. And you know what I'm talking about, don't you?"
"There was a bomb," Nancy responded. "A bomb that wasn't a bomb. Fell the other end of Limehouse Green Station."
"Take me there."
She laughed weakly, shaking her head. "There's soldiers guarding it. Barbed wire. You'll never get through."
"Try me." If he could find the Guardian, who would no doubt be somewhere near, he should have no troubles.
"You sure you want to know what's going on in there?"
He nodded. "I really want to know."
"Then there's someone you need to talk to first."
"And who might that me?"
"The Doctor."
What? Was there another of him running around during the London Blitz?
GD~GD~GD~GD~
The Doctor walked through the halls of Albion Hospital yet again, but this time without the Guardian. He came to a dark ward. Every bed had a patient in it, each one wearing a gas mask, just like the boy. Each as still as if they were dead.
Ward after ward. Each one the same.
"You'll find them everywhere." An elderly man in a white coat spoke, walking into the ward. "In every bed, in every ward. Hundreds of them."
"Yes, I saw. Why are they still wearing gas masks?"
"There's not. Who are you?"
"I'm...er…" He hesitated. "Who are you?" A part of him desperately hoped this man was not a future version of himself. Never mind the paradoxes. He did not want to need a cane.
"Doctor Constantine. And you are?"
The Doctor gave a tiny sigh of relief. "Nancy sent me."
"Nancy? That means you must've been asking about the bomb."
"Yes."
"What do you know about it?"
The Doctor followed Doctor Constantine further into the ward. "Nothing. That's why I was asking. What do you know?"
Doctor Constantine stopped and turned back to him. "Only what it's done."
"These people—they were all caught up in the blast?"
"None of them were." Doctor Constantine's chuckle turned into a cough. He sat down in a chair at one of the desks in the middle of the room. The Doctor moved forward, but Constantine help up one hand to keep him back.
"You're very sick."
"Dying, I should think," Constantine corrected. "I just haven't been able to find the time. Are you a doctor?"
"I have my moments."
"Have you examined any of them yet?" When the Doctor shook his head, Constantine warned, "Don't touch the flesh."
"Which one?"
"Any one."
The Doctor walked over to the nearest patient and used his sonic screwdriver to examine the man.
"Conclusions?"
"Massive head trauma, mostly to the left side. Partial collapse of the chest cavity, mostly to the right. There's some scarring on the back of the hand and the gas mask seems to be fused to the flesh, but I can't see any burns."
"Examine another one."
The Doctor moved to the next bed and repeated his scan. "This isn't possible."
"Examine another."
Again. "This isn't possible!"
"No." Doctor Constantine agreed.
"They've all got the same injuries." The Doctor walked over to the other side of the room, looking at all the patients with gas masks on and a scar on the back of their hand, just like the boy's.
"Yes."
"Exactly the same."
"Yes."
"Identical, all of them, right down to the scar on the back of the hand. How did this happen? How did it start?"
"When that bomb dropped, there was just one victim."
"Dead?"
"At first."
The Doctor froze, remembering the last time he had encountered the undead. He wasn't terribly fond of the idea of having the Gelth return. Fortunately, this didn't seem like the Gelth's work. No blue gaseous creatures so far.
"His injuries were truly dreadful. By the following morning, every doctor and nurse who had treated him—who had touched him—had those exact same injuries. By the morning after that, every patient in the same ward, the exact same injuries. Within a week, the entire hospital. Physical injuries as plague. Can you explain that? What would you say was the cause of death?"
"The head trauma."
"No."
"Asphyxiation?"
"No."
"The collapse of the chest cavity?"
"No."
The Doctor was at a loss. "All right. What was the cause of death?"
"There wasn't one."
Again, the Doctor froze, desperately hoping Constantine's next words weren't going to be what he thought they would be.
"They're not dead."
There it was.
Doctor Constantine hit a waste basket with his walking stick and all the patients sat up. The Doctor backed away to the center of the room as quickly as he could.
"It's all right. They're harmless." Doctor Constantine spoke calmly. "They just... sort of sit there. No heartbeat, no life signs of any kind. They just… don't die."
"And they've just been left here? Nobody's doing anything?" The Doctor asked, growing furious.
The patients laid back down.
"I try and make them comfortable. What else is there?"
"Just you? You're the only one here?" How had he not transformed yet? He had to be touching the patients to make them comfortable.
"Before this war began, I was a father and a grandfather. Now I am neither. But I'm still a doctor."
"Yeah. I know the feeling." The Doctor replied quietly, sadly, thinking of the little boy who reminded him so much of his great-grandson.
"I suspect the plan is to blow up the hospital and blame it on a German bomb."
"Probably too late." And not likely to happen, considering that Albion Hospital was still there in 2006.
"I know. There are isolated cases." He coughed, his whole body stiffening.
The Doctor frowned, concerned.
"...Isolated cases breaking out all over London." Doctor Constantine was forcing the words out, but no longer coughing.
The Doctor moved closer.
"Stay back. Stay back!"
He stopped.
"Listen to me. Top floor. Room 802. That's where they took the first victim, the one from the crash sight. And you must find Nancy again."
"Nancy?"
"It was her brother."
So that was why the boy was following her.
"She knows more than she's saying. She won't tell me, but she might—m—m—" Constantine grabbed his neck, trying to fight off the transformation. "Mum..my."
The Doctor took a couple of steps back.
"Are...you...my...mum-my?"
The Doctor watched sadly as Doctor Constantine's face morphed into a gas mask, just like all the others. Once the transformation was complete, Constantine slumped against the desk, as still as the patients in the beds.
Behind him, the Doctor heard a distant but vaguely familiar voice calling, "Hello?"
GD~GD~GD~GD~
"Shush, idiot." The Guardian hissed at Captain Jack. A moment later, the Doctor hurried out of a door at the end of the hall. His face mirrored the shock that the Guardian sensed in his thoughts.
'He doesn't know who you are, Eltanin. Some sort of memory wipe. He thinks we're Time Agents.'
"Good evening," Jack offered the Doctor his hand.
The Doctor shook off his shock to accept the handshake.
"Jack Harkness. It's a real pleasure to meet you, Dr. Shannon."
The Guardian smirked when the Doctor glanced at her questioningly. Jack walked past them, into the ward.
'Don't you ever get tired of introducing yourself as 'John Smith'?'
'Nine centuries in, Amadahy. I'm coping.'
He switched to speaking aloud. "Where've you been with my psychic paper?"
The Guardian rolled her eyes and pulled the psychic paper out of one of her pockets. "No questions of where I've been with your wife?" She teased.
The Doctor grinned. "Alright, where have you been?"
"Well, I found a former Time Agent, who believes that we are current Time Agents, and he's trying to con us. Although, you could learn a little from him about camouflaging your ship. His is invisible and tethered to Big Ben."
"So how'd you find it?" He pulled her to himself, wrapping his arms around her waist.
"Scan for alien tech." She smirked up at him and laid her hands on his chest.
"You weren't kidding when you said you were on your honeymoon." They both looked over to see that Jack had poked his head through the door. "Care to explain?" He gestured inside the ward.
The Doctor released the Guardian, but took her hand, and they walked into the ward. While Jack nattered on about the impossibility of the patients, the Doctor explained everything to her telepathically.
When he had finished, he turned back to Jack. "What kind of Chula ship landed here?"
"What?" Jack stopped.
"An ambulance." The Guardian replied, leaning slightly back, against the Doctor's chest.
"How do you know that?" Jack asked, now nervous.
The Guardian rolled her eyes. "Please. I hacked into the ship's computer system. It wasn't that hard to find out it was an ambulance."
"What does it matter?" Jack snapped. "It's got nothing to do with this."
"This started at the bomb site." The Doctor was almost yelling. The Guardian straightened and moved aside, allowing him to walk towards Jack. "It's got everything to do with it."
"Fine!" Jack pulled up the hologram on the device on his wrist. "Yes, it's an ambulance. It's space junk. I wanted to kid you it was valuable. It's empty. I made sure of it. Nothing but a shell." He turned off the hologram. "I threw it at you. Saw your time travel vehicle—love the retro look, by the way, nice panels—threw you the bait."
The Doctor turned back to the Guardian. "You were right. He's a con artist now."
"Well, you're clearly not Time Agents." Jack responded.
"Nope," the Guardian joined the two men. She wrapped her arms around the Doctor's arm, resting her cheek on his shoulder to calm him down. "We're just some more freelancers. Also on the run from the Time Agency."
Jack looked slightly surprised, then shook his head. "Anyway, whatever's happening here has got nothing to do with that ship."
"Oh, really?" The Guardian lifted one eyebrow. "Human DNA is being rewritten by an idiot."
"How?" Jack asked, clearly frustrated.
"Some kind of virus is converting human beings into these things," the Doctor responded angrily. The Guardian released him so he could pace. "But why? What's the point?"
Suddenly, all the patients sat up, crying "mummy".
"Doctor," Jack said. "What the hell is happening?"
"I don't know."
The patients began to stand up.
"Guardian, don't let them touch you—you'll become like them."
The Guardian nodded once. "Alright." She pulled out a gun and aimed it at the nearest patient.
Her hands shook for the first time in fourteen hundred years.
"Mummy? Mummy?" The patients repeated their mantra. "Help me, mummy."
With a muffled cry, the Guardian lowered her weapon. 'I can't do it, Eltanin. They are too much like children.'
The Doctor nodded. He knew the promise that she made when she took on the name 'Guardian'—never hurt a child. Not like she had been hurt. And to shoot them while they cried "mummy"?
How many times had she longed for her mother to be alive as her instructors beat her mercilessly? Cried for her in the dark?
The patients cornered them against a wall, never ceasing their mantra.
"Mummy?"
GD~GD~GD~GD~
Sorry that this is a couple of days late... I completely forgot to post it.
So... the Doctor has a history with Jack? Hmm...
Next time: Fluff!