As you may have surmised from the end of the previous chapter, we're about to jump into an adventure with a familiar foe! And just in case the continuity police are reading... yes, the Doctor is about to learn an important truth, way too early!
Enjoy!
TWO
Two time-travellers sat transfixed in the console room of their vehicle, watching a video of their friend, using a Timey-Wimey Detector in a cemetery in Wales. The apparatus had gone mad, spinning like a top and going ding repeatedly. Finally, Jack switched it off, and looked at the camera. "What the fuck?" he asked it.
"I wish I knew how to answer that," said the cameraman.
"Give it here," the voice of Toshiko said, approaching. The camera swung to the left where the woman was coming up the hill holding out her hand.
The change of the camera's position was everything.
In the TARDIS console room, three hearts momentarily stopped beating, and Martha jumped and yelled with a start.
"Oh, shit, Doctor, do you see what I see?" she asked breathlessly.
"I see it," he said. His scowl was deeply etched into his face, and its gravitas was terrifying.
Its gravitas upon seeing a Weeping Angel had always been terrifying.
There it was, in all of its horrible glory, six feet tall, blending in with the statues and stones and effigies all around, as though it belonged there. But the Doctor and Martha knew, it belonged nowhere. Nowhere in time nor space, and it made sure that everyone in its vicinity felt that way, too.
It was on camera, however, which meant that at the very least, the cameraman was looking at it.
Unknowing, Tosh took the Detector out of Jack's hands and looked at it as though it were dripping with goo. "I'm going to have to dismantle this thing and try to analyse the readings it took," and she began to walk back up the hill toward the black vehicle.
"Can you do that in the SUV?" Jack wondered.
"'Fraid not," she told him. "I don't have any portable equipment that can see the impact of what this thing just did. And we absolutely need to know what we're dealing with."
"Why?" the cameraman asked.
"Because we came here to find out why people are disappearing," she said. "Are you really going to tell me that there's this giant time anomaly here, and it's got nothing to do with the disappearances? Once we know what this weird little gem is trying to say to us, we can move forward with a hell of a lot more information."
"You've got to dismantle it to do that?" asked Owen, joining Tosh, the camera, and Gwen on the trek back up the hill.
"Oh my God, they're turning away from it," Martha said, watching with teeth gritted.
"It doesn't have a readout of any kind," Tosh told Owen. "Certain types could perhaps see the spin pattern, hear the pitch of the bell ringing and the frequency of it, and use it to feel out a time anomaly…"
"Certain types," Gwen said, moving forward. "I'm guessing, like a Time Lord?"
"Right," Tosh said. "Of which I am not one."
"Jack?" Gwen said, stopping, turning back. When she did, the camera turned back as well.
"Way ahead of you," Jack called back. "I'm texting him now."
The Doctor and Martha both gave a gasp-shriek then, and pulled back from the screen, because the Angel, now ten yards away, behind Jack, had moved. It had been facing northeast (according to the compass in the corner of the camera display which indicated that the camera was facing southwest), and was now facing north, uphill.
And none of them had noticed. Amongst the acres and acres of stonework, statues, other angels, effigies... no-one had noticed this one moving.
Jack was texting, presumably sending the message the Doctor and Martha had received on the beach early that day, the one that had pulled them out of their holiday, and brought them here.
"Oh God, Jack… turn around, turn around, turn around…" Martha muttered.
"As long as the camera is on it, the cameraman is looking at it," the Doctor reminded her.
"You can text him?" the cameraman asked. There was a tinge of snark in his voice. "After all the time you spent trying to find him, I'd have thought you'd have to summon him by thought mail, or telepathy."
"Don't be jealous, Ianto," Jack said. "There are just things a man can do with a Time Lord, that he cannot do with his Guy Friday. That's all"
"Oh, tremendously reassuring," the cameraman named Ianto said.
Jack chuckled a bit wickedly and smiled at the camera. Then he went back to his phone and said, "Besides, I'm texting Martha, not the Doctor directly. If she can't get a message to him, then something's gone terribly wrong, and the universe has bigger problems."
"Look, à propos of nothing, Jack, how long does it take to send one text?" Ianto asked.
"I'm not getting a signal," Jack said, beginning to move the phone around by sweeping it back and forth slowly with his arms, hoping for just the right position. "Damn – I'll try again once we get back on the road. This must be a dead zone."
"Clever," Ianto said, deadpan. "Very oblique. Bravo."
Jack laughed again, and began to walk up the hill. "I'll follow you," he said to the camera. "I like the view."
When the camera's view turned back uphill, it revealed that the others had already found their way to the SUV, and were inside.
"Also, I want to check out the Woodland Burial grounds before we head back to Cardiff," Jack said.
"Now that the Doctor's on the case, we've got time?" Ianto asked.
"Well, Toshiko is still going to want to upload the data we took to the Torchwood Archives, even if the Doctor IDs the culprit, but hopefully she'll agree she doesn't need to do it right this second. So, I'm thinking…"
And then the video ended.
For a few moments, it was oppressively silent in the TARDIS console room.
Then Martha spoke. "But… wait, how long do you think they were walking away from the Angel?"
"I dunno, five seconds?"
"Do you think Jack was standing there with his back to it the entire time, struggling with his phone?"
The Doctor contemplated this. "Well, probably…"
"Isn't five seconds more than enough time for the thing to chase down Jack? It cannot be more than six feet away from him."
"Yeah, you're right," he muttered. "It could have got him. Easily. Fifty times over. And the others as well. So why didn't it?"
"Jack, where are you?" the Doctor asked, before even saying hello.
"In Cardiff," Jack responded. "At the Hub. By the way, I'm sorry to pull you out of your little honeymoon…"
"When are you?" the Doctor interrupted.
"Can't you see the date stamp on this correspondence?" Jack asked his friend.
"Yeah, okay. But… is everyone on your team okay?"
"Yes, everyone's fine."
"All accounted for?"
"Yeah, why?"
"We know what's causing the disappearances in Oystermouth Cemetery," the Doctor said. "And by all rightful accounts, it should have disappeared one of you, as well. At least one, if not more."
"You know? Is it to do with the Timey-Wimey Detector going all wonky?" Jack wondered. "You did watch the video, right?"
"Yes, and yes. And I'm going to need you to find a way to cordon of that cemetery so no-one else dies."
"Dies? The disappeared folks, they're dead?"
"Well… yeah. Can you get me a list of the names of people who have gone into Oystermouth, and never come out?"
"I'll get Gwen on it," Jack said.
"Is she your police contact?"
"She's one of us. Ex-police. So, yes."
"Maybe she can help get the place shut down until we figure out how to stop this thing," the Doctor said. He looked laboured, hunched over the console. "But she needs to tell them to stay near the perimeter of the cemetery, and never go into the grounds, do you hear me? And they need to be in groups of two, or ideally three or more, if possible, at all times. No-one is to take their eyes off the perimeter. They need to pay vigilant attention to the stonework in the cemetery. In fact, if you can manage it, have them look for any other angel statues that…"
"Wait, what?" Jack wondered. "Doctor, slow down. You want the entire perimeter of the cemetery closed off?"
"Yes! And now I think of it, surveilled by human eyes twenty-four hours a day. Again, groups of three, just to be safe."
"Doctor, the Swansea police department is not likely to have the manpower to devote to something like that. Not without investigative proof, and…"
"They've got to!"
"Martha, are you there?" Jack asked.
"Yep. Right here," she answered.
"Do you understand this?"
"I do."
"Is he crazy, traumatised, or otherwise reeling from something heavy?"
"Oi!" the Doctor protested.
"Nope," she answered. "Not this time, Jack. This is real, and you've got to try and do what he says."
"Okay. This sounds nuts. What am I missing?"
"I'm coming to get you. Meet me in the Plass," the Doctor said. "And tell your people to stay away from Oystermouth until further notice."
Half an hour later, Captain Jack Harkness was standing once again in the TARDIS console room, leaning against the railing. He had his arms tightly crossed over his chest, and he was staring at the floor in contemplative consternation.
The Doctor and Martha watched him, waiting for him to say something. They stole a glance at each other, wondering what was going to happen next.
Eventually, he spoke. "So, quantum lock. You're telling me it's a real thing?"
"Yes, that's what I'm telling you," the Doctor answered, a little exasperated. He had explained the phenomenon of the Weeping Angels to Jack twice, and then answered a series of repetitive questions.
Jack looked at him. "I can hear the irritation in your voice. Sorry if you think I'm being thick."
"Well, it's not that hard to understand, Jack!"
"Not if you're a Time Lord! For the rest of us, it takes time to catch up!"
Martha chuckled. "Takes time to catch up. Weeping Angels. Tell me about it."
Jack went on, "It's just… almost two hundred years of life, a hundred and fifty of those with Torchwood, and everything I've learned suggests to me that quantum lock is a myth."
"Well, it's not," Martha said. "Believe you me. I've seen it for myself.
"It's just something that the older generations told stories about when I was a kid… and that was three thousand years in the future, and even then, they talked about it like it might as well be witchcraft, or special effects, or…Martha, you've seen it?"
"Yeah. The two of us got zapped a while back. Thirty-eight years into the past. Thank goodness we got zapped together or I have no idea how we'd have found each other again! I'd have had to live my life out from where I ended up. No Doctor, no TARDIS, just… starting over. And that's what everyone else has to do, when they get zapped. People who aren't us. Like everyone who's happened upon that cemetery in Swansea and disappeared," she told him.
"Wow," Jack mused. "That's… amazing. Our physicists – when we had physicists – could never manage to observe nor understand. Quantum lock couldn't be proven, so it was determined to be a myth."
"Of course they couldn't observe it. By definition, they can't observe it!" the Doctor reminded him. "Creatures that are quantum locked do not do anything observable while they're being observed! That's why it works so well!"
"Okay, okay, I get it. You know, a lot of people in the organisation still believed in quantum lock for that very reason, but because it couldn't be proven it was abandoned as a dead end. And then Dr. Verdrangen, the guy who was working on it with cameras, died – or at least disappeared – and no-one could ever get the math right, to demonstrate how it might happen on the quantum level…"
"If you want me to show the math, I can show you the math," the Doctor said.
"No, no, I believe you," Jack conceded.
"How did the Weeping Angels manage to elude Torchwood for all this time?" Martha wondered. "Aren't you lot supposed to be on top of all… I dunno, otherworldly phenomena?"
"Out of respect for you, I'm going to ignore this opportunity to make a joke about how in spite of Torchwood's best efforts, I've not been able to get on top of this otherworldly phenomenon yet..." Jack said, nodding toward the Doctor.
"Oh, thank God you didn't make the joke," she said flatly.
"...and instead, say that we're on top of this now. We learn something new every day, and apparently this is our day to learn about the Weeping Angels. Besides, in our defence, Miss Jones, from what you two have told me, it seems like they'd be exceedingly hard to study. No-one could get close enough to record any findings to pass along to future generations because they'd get… what zapped? Back in time? Did I hear that correctly?"
"Yep," the Doctor muttered. "The victims of Weeping Angels die in the present, and live out their lives in the past." It was the third time he had said it.
"And there's one in Oystermouth," Jack said, with a big nod and a show of finality. "Okay, how do we stop it?"
"Well, last time, we just fixed it so that they never stopped being observed," the Doctor said. "But I'd have to put the TARDIS in their path again, and I can't take that chance. Besides, if there's only one, that won't work."
"We could try to put it in the middle of Times Square," Martha suggested jokingly. "There's people there gawking at stuff pretty much twenty-four-seven."
The Doctor shook his head, not having caught the joke. "Putting them in the midst of humans is far too dangerous."
Martha looked at Jack, who had caught the joke, and he smirked. "Okay then," she said. "Let's watch the video again. Maybe you'll see something you've never observed about them before. Maybe some weakness of theirs will dawn on you."
"Couldn't hurt," the Doctor sighed, without really moving his lips.
The three of them moved over to the screen and the Doctor pulled up the video about halfway through it.
On the video, Jack could be heard asking, "What's beyond the Woodland Burial?"
Tosh answered the question, by way of suggesting where and how they might get CCTV footage from nearby residential streets. Jack put Gwen on the task, and they continued to walk deeper into the grounds.
They passed statue after statue, stone after stone, tribute after tribute. Martha had got an unpleasant sense memory of hiding out in a tomb in Paris the first time she had watched this section of the video. But now, knowing what they knew, the nervousness as her eyes scanned the stones came from a completely different place.
Jack and the Doctor each felt something similar, though no-one voiced any of their fears. They didn't really need to.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" the video said loudly. It was Jack's voice, and the cameraman searched around dizzyingly for the source of the ruckus.
"What?" Ianto asked from behind the camera. "What's going on?"
"Look at this thing!" Jack shouted.
The camera got closer to him, and zoomed in on the thing in his hand.
At this point, the Doctor paused the video and asked, "I've got to know: where did you get that thing?"
"Calcutta, 1947. You were there doing a thing. You left it behind."
"I was?"
"Or will be," Jack said. "Sorry – spoiler, I guess. I tried to find you, as always, and missed you, apparently by just a few minutes, but I picked up your apparatus. It's mostly been useless to us, what with the Rift and all, and no-one can read it but sometimes when we leave Cardiff, it's good to have. And it's yours, so…" Jack trailed off, and broke eye contact. "Sorry. Video?"
The Doctor had no idea what to say, so he unpaused the video. On it, the tape on the Detector's spool was spinning at an incredible speed, smoke was coming out of it, and it was making a repeated ding, that sounded like one long one.
Jack turned the thing off, and looked at the camera. "What the fuck?" he asked it.
"I wish I knew how to answer that," said Ianto.
"Give it here," the voice of Toshiko said, approaching. The camera swung to the left where the woman was coming up the hill holding out her hand.
And that's when they saw the Angel, behind Jack on the screen, eyes covered, facing northeast. The Doctor paused the video. "There it is."
Jack examined it. "Wow. It looks like it just, you know, belongs there. So innocuous. These people don't stand a chance, do they?"
"Nope," the Doctor said.
"Creepy," Jack whispered with a shudder.
"You haven't seen the creepy part yet," Martha told him.
They unpaused.
In the video, Tosh took the Detector from Jack and announced, "I'm going to have to dismantle this thing and try to analyse the readings it took," and she began to walk back up the hill toward the black vehicle.
What followed was a short exchange where Tosh answered the questions of her colleagues, who wondered why the thing needed to be dismantled back at the Hub in Cardiff, followed by everyone but Jack turning away from the angel and heading back up the hill to the SUV.
"Do you see, this is where everyone stops looking at it," Martha said, helpfully, to Jack.
The folks on the video then discussed the fact that a Time Lord could possibly interpret the Timey-Wimey Detector's findings, and the camera turned back to Jack, who was already pre-emptively texting his friends, with his back to the Angel.
When Jack saw it from the TARDIS console room, he jumped and shrieked, much as the Doctor and Martha had when they had first seen it.
"And it's moved," the Doctor said, sounding utterly exhausted.
The angel was now facing uphill, clearly in a completely different direction than it had been before. Clear as day, in all of its terrible largesse, eyes covered, weeping as always.
"Holy shit!" Jack shouted, then he paused the video. "Okay, until literally right now, I thought there was a chance you were yanking my chain!"
The Doctor half-smiled. "Wouldn't it be lovely if I could just say 'April Fool!' just now, and get on with my life?"
"Why didn't it zap me?"
"I don't know," the Doctor said. "I suspect it's something to do with your… you know, condition. But can't say for sure. Maybe there was something else stopping it, that we don't know about. As you said, it's been historically quite difficult to study them – so much about them is unknown. Maybe it chose not to touch you for some reason, like it wanted to be seen on camera? No, that doesn't make any sense. Or maybe it's as simple as, there was someone else in the cemetery looking at it, and you lot just didn't notice them."
"Let me see it again," Jack said.
The Doctor moved the cursor back a minute or so.
"Give it here," said Toshiko, and the camera swung to find her. And there was the Angel. Tosh continued, "I'm going to have to dismantle this thing and try to analyse the readings it took."
Tosh and the others briefly discussed her reasoning, walked up the hill while discussing how a Time Lord could interpret the data, and the camera switched to downhill.
There was the Angel again, having turned.
"Oh, my God!" Martha shrieked.
The Doctor quickly paused it. "What? What is it?"
"It's… moved!"
"Erm… yes. We knew it would do that. It's kind of been the topic of conversation in this room for the past forty-five minutes."
"No, I mean, look at it! It not only moved to face Jack when the others were walking away, but… Doctor, look at its hands!"
The Doctor pulled his glasses (probably unnecessarily, mostly for flourish) out of his breast pocket and threw them on. He examined the screen. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear," he said again without moving his lips. "That can't be good."
"What?" Jack wondered.
Martha said, "Jack, the first time we watched the video, the Angel had its eyes covered in both positions, before and after moving. Now…"
Jack's eyebrows shot up high when he realised it: the Angel had lowered its hands, and its eyes could now be seen. A chill ran down his spine. "Ohhhhh…. my God. What the hell does this mean?"
"Doctor, how is this possible?" Martha wondered.
"I'm not sure yet, but something tells me… well, just don't take your eyes off that screen," he replied.
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