Glenn is trying hard to stay on the straight and narrow, as it were, and Jack is trying hard to help him, in spite of their past. And the Doctor discovers that what he had suspected is true: Glenn's particular powers will be extremely useful when it comes to aiding those who have been zapped by the Weeping Angels! With a little help from Martha and Harry Potter, of course. :-) Enjoy!
EIGHT
"I'm interfacing you with the TARDIS. It's the only way we're going to be able to read what you've absorbed from the Angel. I hope," the Doctor had said to Glenn.
Glenn looked at Jack with concern. The latter said, "It's all right. I'm right here," and he put his hand on Glenn's shoulder. "I won't leave your side. If you feel yourself slipping, just communicate, okay? Tell us, do you hear me?"
Glenn tried to explain his addiction to the Doctor and Martha, and the possibility that once he got inside the TARDIS, he wouldn't be able to keep himself out of trouble, as it were.
"Do you really think there's a danger?" the Doctor asked, seriously.
But Glenn just didn't know. He was in no way confident…
Jack reassured him. Martha urged him to think of his family. And the Doctor gave the instruction, "Just be passive. If the TARDIS asks you a question, so to speak, answer it. And nothing else. She doesn't need you to reach out, just to let her in. All right… here we go."
Glenn put his hands into the slots indicated, and immediately, they began to glow, and the TARDIS began to hum.
Martha asked, "What's it doing?"
"Priori Incantatem," the Doctor answered. "Extracting and reading the last energy transfer. He did it to the Angels, and now the TARDIS is doing it to him. And I hope it's the right being passed from one source to the next, and I'm not just hinging all of my hopes upon a plot device in Harry Potter."
After about two minutes of silence, Martha and Jack watching intently, Glenn with his eyes shut, and the Doctor with his eyes on the screen, Jack asked, "Doing okay, buddy?"
"Yeah," Glenn answered, from seemingly far away. "I'm staying passive, like the Doctor said. Just… standing here. She's reading me…"
"No pangs?" Jack said.
Glenn squeezed Martha's hand hard. She whispered to Jack, "There are pangs."
"Well, good news," said the Doctor. "The energy he absorbed was, in fact, time energy, and little smattering of the kinesthetic… but it's good. Strong."
"And that means?" Martha asked.
The Doctor turned the screen momentarily to face her. Gallifreyan symbols were moving about all over the screen like mad, and she could see that the TARDIS was calculating. "Not sure yet," he said, before turning it back to himself.
Another minute passed, and Glenn said, "Oh, Jack… talk to me! Tell me about your recovery."
"Really?"
"Yes, please," Glenn said. "It will help distract me."
Jack spoke uncharacteristically demurely. "Well, I was feeling guilty because my selfishness, which I had thought for so long was not really hurting anyone, caused a truly bizarre plague to grip an army camp, a hospital, and sections of London. And a bomb nearly obliterated said camp and said hospital. It was… just badness. But after running with the Doctor for half a day, I realised that all problems can be fixed, and it wasn't a good nor healthy life I was living. So I trapped the bomb with my transmat beam, and took it onto my ship."
"Did you know how to disarm it once it was on your ship?" Glenn asked.
"Nope," Jack said. "I just figured, save people first, and ask questions later. Like the Doctor would do."
Martha looked at the Doctor and smiled. Something passed between them there – an understanding. Martha had previously called the Doctor a philosopher. One major "philosophy" of the Doctor had just come out of Jack's mouth in his only-Jack way, and it was oh-so accurate.
"You disarmed it?" asked Glenn.
"No, I resigned myself to my fate," Jack said. "I thought it was my penance for causing so much havoc. But the Doctor saved me at the last second. Interestingly by interfacing the TARDIS with my ship, and cutting off the connection just in time for me to hop aboard."
"Wow, that's cool," Glenn sighed. "I'd like to hear the whole story sometime. The con, and everything."
Jack chuckled. "I'm not going to give you ideas!"
Glenn also chuckled. "No, that's not why!"
Martha smiled at the interplay between the two. Most of what Jack was saying, she hadn't specifically known. She, too, thought she might like to hear the whole story someday.
"Okay, we've got what we need, at least for now," the Doctor announced. "Glenn, I'm going to have the TARDIS withdraw from you. Five, four, three, two…"
The glow and the hum stopped, and it was just the four of them standing about once again, looking at each other.
"That was weird," Glenn said, solemnly. "Thanks for the distraction, Jack."
"Well, apparently, that's partly what I'm here for. Now," said Jack. "Doctor, what did you find?"
"Glenn managed to pick up time energy, yes, and some kinesthetic data from the Angel on how they move and whatnot," the Doctor said, staring at the screen. "But also a human energy signature. We can use all of this in tandem to find out who was taken, and where they went. The TARDIS tells us that last zap was to April of 1980, in Norwalk, Connecticut, USA."
"We now know that?" Martha asked, amazed.
"Yep. Thanks to your idea," he told her, smiling.
"Why there?" Glenn wondered.
"No idea," the Doctor responded. "No-one knows."
"That's fantastic!" Martha shrieked. "Doesn't that mean we can start to rescue people?"
"Yes, it does."
"Then why aren't you more excited?" she wondered.
He smiled weakly. "It's just daunting, is all. So much work to do. Philosophies to ponder, if you will."
"What philosophies are there to ponder?" she asked, confused. "Save people, ask questions later, right?"
Jack's phone pinged in his pocket, cutting across the weight of revelation and uncertainty in the room. He pulled it out, and said, "A text from Gwen. She's got a list of the people who've gone missing from the cemetery over the past four weeks."
"Good, can you send that to all of us?" the Doctor asked.
"Yep," Jack answered. A few seconds later, the other three phones pinged as well.
The Doctor examined the list. "Tamara Litzinger, a professional photographer, disappeared three days ago, just before the images were published to social media. I'd bet she's the one who took the pictures."
"We should be able to get all these people back, shouldn't we?" Jack asked.
"It would seem so," said the Doctor. "But we have to draw the line somewhere."
"What? Why?"
"Well, theoretically, we could work backwards and have Glenn draw energy signatures and time stamps from every single Angel, and presumably, every single image of an angel that has crawled out of the internet and zapped anyone. But first of all, there's the danger to Glenn's psyche and energy stores."
"It's all right, I can handle it," Glenn said, though the Doctor wasn't convinced.
The Time Lord looked at him with tedium. "Are you not feeling a little sapped? More so than if you'd drawn something from a human? Or any other kind of Ephemeral being?"
"Yes," Glenn admitted, sheepishly. "It was harder than any other extraction I've ever done."
"That'll happen when squeezing blood from a stone," the Doctor said. "And I'm not risking… unravelling you in any way. Not with your history - no offence. You're still new at this."
"Actually Glenn, that's sensible," Jack said.
The Doctor continued, "So, there's that. Plus, we cannot save them all – we just can't. The ripples across time would be too great. There are too many people, there's already been too much displacement. It would cause little bits of damage that couldn't be foreseen or controlled. Too much of it would have…"
"Consequences," Jack finished. "We get it."
"No we don't," Glenn protested. "So what are you saying?" He was trying to hold fear and anger in check.
"I'm saying we're going to limit this to the Oystermouth disappearances from the last four weeks, and your family, and that might be it," the Doctor said. "There are bound to be far more disappearances via social media than we can handle anyway. The best thing to do about them would be, well… work out what to do about the spread of the images. Get the word out? Shut down Casey Dreyer's account?"
"That would be like sticking your finger in a dam about to burst," Jack said.
"I know, I know," the Doctor growled, burying his hands in his hair, and pulling. "But it's all I've got right now. And well… I guess we save people first, and ask questions later."
"Well said. So, have you got a plan for finding out if it's Tamara Litzinger's energy signature we've actually found?" Jack asked.
"Of course I do," the Doctor shrugged.
"Hi, can I help you?" asked the man at the front door of a house in Bristol. He was a barrel-chested, balding man, with bright blue eyes, who looked at least a decade older than his thirty-three years.
"Are you Jay Litzinger?" the Doctor asked him.
"I am," he answered.
The Doctor flashed the psychic paper. "I'm Detective Inspector Smith, and this is my associate, DS O'Keeffe," he said. "May we come in?"
"Is this about my wife?" asked the man. "I've already spoken to the police."
"We've been newly assigned to the case, and we feel we should get fresh information directly from you, rather than relying upon our colleagues' notes, and the filter of what they believe about you, and your situation," the Doctor said. "Do you disagree?"
"Does that mean I'm still a suspect?" the man asked.
"The spouse is always a suspect, I'm afraid," the Doctor said. "O'Keeffe and I, however, do not happen to believe you guilty of any wrongdoing… strictly off the record, of course. Your cooperation could be integral."
Jay Litzinger stepped aside to let the Doctor and Glenn into his home. He offered them a cup of tea, which they declined.
Ordinarily, of course, the Doctor would have much preferred to bring Martha with him, but as a group, they decided that it might be prudent for the four of them to pair off with the two guys immune to the Angels in separate teams, for safety's sake. If the Angels decided to pursue, as they had in the past, then in a pinch, Glenn or Jack could act as a barrier. And he'd have liked to bring Jack, but frankly, the Doctor didn't fully trust Glenn to be alone with Martha yet. She was clever, but her intellect might not be a match for a man with supernatural abilities, and a slightly evil streak that was not yet fully quelled.
Plus, there was one thing that Glenn could do that literally no other human (nor Time Lord) in existence could do. It might be rather helpful in this instance, even though the Doctor had his own tools.
"Mr. Litzinger, do you mind if my associate takes a look at yours and your wife's bedroom while you and I have a chat?" the Doctor asked.
"Whatever for?" the man wanted to know. "She disappeared from Oystermouth cemetery! Her camera was found there!"
"Yes, sir, but DS O'Keeffe's specialty is as a profiler," the Doctor vamped. "By examining her living space, he may be able to discern something about your wife's patterns, that could lead us to her whereabouts."
"Yeah, fine, okay," Litzinger sighed. "I've got nothing to hide. It's the second room on the left. Look in the drawers, cabinets, whatever you've got to do."
"Thanks," Glenn said, as he walked up the stairs.
The Doctor caught a slight chill as he watched the formerly (recently) villainous, half-Eternal man who had once attempted to wreak havoc upon their lives, disappear up the stairs with the sonic screwdriver in his pocket.
Glenn's task was simple: to see whether the energy signature in the room, on Tamara's side of the bed, was a match for the energy signature he had extracted from the Angel, a sample of which was now stored in the sonic screwdriver.
He chuckled for a moment at the irony of the Doctor pulling out all the stops a few weeks back to keep him and Candenna from continuing use of an Ipographus Lector to read people's energy signatures, when he himself was now using the exact same tactic to problem-solve.
He supposed that part of his recovery might be to mention it to Jack, in secret, but never really take the Doctor to task for it, as clearly, the Doctor's motivations and methods were diametrically different. Was that also part of becoming a "companion" to the Doctor? He thought it bore more contemplation…
He looked at the two night stands on either side of the bed. One of them had a stack of paperbacks, an array of mystery novels, sports statistics, and crossword puzzles. It also had a pair of glasses, a bottle of aspirin, and a bottle of "personal" lubricant.
The other side had a book about weight loss, a little dish full of rings and earrings, a squeeze-tube of lipgloss, and a vanilla scented candle.
It didn't take a man who could absorb energy to see which side of the bed was the wife's.
And it didn't take the sonic screwdriver to know that the energy signatures matched. As soon as Glenn sat down on the bed, in the space where Tamara Litzinger usually slept, he could feel a certain symmetry, a harmony that resonated with something within him – it was her. He had read her energy from the Angel in the cemetery. He was certain that it was she who had been taken to Connecticut, 1980.
To satisfy the Doctor, he followed instructions and buzzed the sonic to be sure. The sound it made indicated what Glenn already knew, and he felt, again, a sort of triangulated harmony within his body. Then he did as directed, and waited five minutes before coming downstairs. He thought perhaps he ought to do what he had told the husband he had come to do: inspect Tamara's things, try to discern something important. He wasn't a profiler, but he could literally read people, so what harm could it do?
The Doctor asked the sort of questions an investigator might ask of a man whose wife had disappeared: When had he last seen her? When did he realise she was missing? What was their marriage like? Did she have any enemies? Was she unhappy, or showing signs of distress before her disappearance? He also asked about her work and her interests, because he thought it might be a handy way of finding her in 1980.
"She's into photography, of course," said Litzinger. "Used to paint. Keeps a rose garden, mostly for photographing – quite the green thumb there."
The Doctor actually did jot down the answers, just in case, even though this "interview" was really just a diversion.
It was almost precisely five minutes later when Glenn O'Keeffe came down the stairs. The Doctor got to his feet and thanked Mr. Litzinger for his cooperation and time, and promised to be in touch.
"Did you see anything up there that you can use?" asked Litzinger, of O'Keeffe.
"Did you tell the detectives before that your wife has a history of mental illness?" O'Keeffe asked, holding up a red leather book with gold polka dots.
"No, I didn't," said the husband, breaking eye-contact. "I hoped it wouldn't be relevant."
"It could be very relevant," the Doctor said, surprise written all over his face.
Glenn indicated the book in his hand. "Since you gave me permission to look in drawers and whatnot, I did, and found a journal. I didn't read the whole thing, clearly, but on the first page she mentions…"
"Yeah, being released from the nuthouse," Litzinger said.
"Nice," the Doctor said, with a scowl.
"Those were her words, Doc… DI Smith," O'Keeffe said. "In the journal, I mean. Sir, what was her condition, may I ask?"
"Acute depression and anxiety," the man shrugged. "All very common stuff… but it got real bad for a while. Thought she might try to hurt herself. But don't get me wrong – I don't think that's what happened here!"
The Doctor said, "Well, let's hope not, but in the future, we may need to know more about her hospitalisation, and the doctors she worked with."
"Sure," the man said. "Sorry I didn't share it before. It was something I had hoped we could put behind us."
"We understand," said the Doctor. "We're taking the journal, if that's all right."
"If you think it'll help," said Litzinger.
"Thanks. O'Keeffe? Ready?"
"Yeah," answered Glenn.
As they were walking out the door, the Doctor noticed a framed photo of Jay Litzinger, and a woman.
"Is this Tamara?" the Doctor asked.
"Yeah," the man sighed.
"When was this photo taken?"
"I dunno, three months ago?"
"May we have this, as well? We will return it," the Doctor said. "We need a new image for her file."
"Yeah, sure."
The two of them thanked Mr. Litzinger, and left, with an energy signature, a photograph, and a journal.
"So, what's the verdict?" the Doctor asked, after the door was shut.
"It's her," Glenn answered. "Without a doubt."
"Okay. Let's go find her."
They began to walk back toward the TARDIS where Jack was attempting to translate the data from the TARDIS, and get a more specific lock on the date and locale of Tamara Litzinger's Angel-zap. Having a month and town were a huge boon, but it was still thirty days, and a whole city.
"How goes it in here?" the Doctor asked, as he and Glenn swept through the TARDIS door.
"All we could get was a date," said Jack. "Couldn't get a better lock on the locale. Sorry. I'm not you."
"So is it her?" Martha asked Glenn.
"Definitely," the half-Eternal responded. "I didn't even need the sonic to know it. Though I did use it to verify."
The Doctor looked at him with surprise, and a touch of nervousness, but decided not to voice it. Instead, he said, "We've also got an, er… artefact that may help us locate her, in the absence of more intel from the TARDIS."
"Great, what is it?" Martha asked.
Glenn held up the journal. "A chronicle she apparently began when she was released from a psychiatric hospital."
"Oh!" Martha said, with surprise, and she reached out for the journal, which Glenn gave without hesitation. "What was her diagnosis, do you know?"
"Her husband said acute depression and anxiety," said Glenn.
Martha opened it, sat down on the navigator's seat, and began to read. The other three were silent, and waited.
Eventually, she said, still with her eyes on the page, "Okay, it says she began writing in this book on the day of her release from the mental institution, on the advice of her doctor. He suggested she begin a 'rigorous honesty diary' and track her moods and triggers daily."
"A rigorous honesty diary?" the Doctor asked.
She looked up at him. "Yeah," she said. "According to this, it seems like one of her anxiety triggers is not being believed."
"Blimey, I know how that feels," he muttered.
"When she says she's ill, when she says she wants to hurt herself, when she says she hears voices… people don't believe her, or they want to sweep it under the rug, and it makes things worse," Martha continued, turning pages, comparing a few passages.
"So, she feels gaslit. Like a lot of people in her position," Jack commented.
Martha nodded. "Seems as though her husband was one of the big culprits."
"Not too surprising, given that he didn't even mention it to the investigators, and doesn't think it could be part of what happened to her," the Doctor commented.
"Well, it isn't," Glenn pointed out, rather rashly.
"Yes, we know that," the Doctor said to him. "But he doesn't. And if your partner had disappeared, and had a history of being institutionalised and wanting to harm themselves, wouldn't you at least entertain it as a possibility?"
"I suppose I would," Glenn conceded. "Unless I was too distraught to be able to let my mind go there." He fell silent then, and everyone in the room was reminded that they were still dealing with his family's disappearance, and the burden of a grieving Glenn.
"Well, this is good," Martha commented, reading from the journal still. "Her doctor insisted that being 'gaslit,' if that's what we're calling it, not make her less honest about herself and her condition. She wrote here, 'Dr. Ventnor says that part of my sanity and recovery is not mincing words about who I am, and what I feel. And that's why I have this journal.' I have to say, as a medical semi-professional, I think this is sound advice. Or has the potential to be, anyway."
The Doctor smirked. "This is the second time in just a few weeks you've had occasion to comment on the psychiatric end of medicine. Well done, you."
"It is?" she asked.
"The Pleasure Vortex gave you cause to ruminate over the nature of addiction and its connection with pleasure centres and dopamine," he reminded her.
"Well, psychiatric was one of my favourite rotations," she said. "I was far better at it, better equipped for it, than internal medicines, where I was when you met me."
"You're well-equipped for all of it."
"Thanks. I hope you're right," she said, quickly graciously. And a little flirtatiously. Then, she went back to the journal. "I mean, I assume that a lot of work was done in therapy on the concept of rigorous honesty and making room for the shadow within, and all that – she wouldn't just do this overnight if she was living with a mental illness that she was perhaps trying to suppress at different times. And I'll assume that pharmaceuticals are involved. Which… yikes, she's probably not getting now."
The Doctor sighed. "Or else she is."
"Oh… blimey," Martha groaned.
The Doctor took a deep breath an announced, "If Tamara Litzinger is walking around in 1980, having been zapped twenty-eight years into the past, being rigorously honest, then… well… she's making waves somehow, and we need to get her out of there."
There was a long silence while the implications of the information gathered in the last few minutes sank in. Then, Jack said, "So, we set a course to Norwalk, Connecticut, 1980."
"Things being what they are, I think we might need to materialise there a few months after Mrs. Litzinger's arrival there."
Our inquiry into the Weeping Angels has taken us in yet another direction... rescuing the zapped! That is, if they can be specifically found.
If you're reading, and especially if you're enjoying, please leave a review. I looooooove hearing from folks. Thank you for the read! :-)