DAY 141

Crazy Equals Genius

Martha

It was five AM. Martha Jones was not asleep. She had gone to sleep at eleven and woken up at three, and since then had just been laying there in bed staring at the ceiling, aching but fining it wholly impossible to return to unconsciousness. Either she stared at the ceiling, or she stared at the clock and its angry, red, digital writing next to her. 5:14, it glared. There was no great issue on her mind to stop her from sleeping, she wasn't poring over some problem in her personal life. When she thought about it, she couldn't think of any problems at all, she couldn't think of anything amiss, except for this newly-born insomnia and her new partiality to the sort of food Clara Oswald thought constituted a balanced diet. She knew, deep down, that Lucky Charms and Skittles-flavoured milkshake for dinner was appalling*, but it didn't stop her from being in awe of the dish itself, and it didn't stop Mickey from being disgusted.

Mickey was snoring. She was used to his soft snores by now, after years of them, and it didn't really bother her. In that moment, at least, they were somewhat of a comfort to her, that he was there, even if she didn't see it fit to wake him up. What would she say to him if she did? She couldn't sleep? She didn't know why she couldn't sleep, and she didn't see the point in putting him in a bad, exhausted mood as well. He would most likely tell her she was still subconsciously worrying about the wellbeing of the Time Lords, anyway. She wasn't worried about the Time Lords; all four of them were recovering quite adequately.

At 5:17AM, somebody knocked on the bedroom door. For a moment, she thought she had imagined it, perhaps she had fallen asleep after all and this was a dream, because who on Earth would be knocking on her door at five o'clock in the morning expecting her or Mickey to actually answer. However, it turned out it wasn't anybody from Earth at all, rather, from Titan. When they knocked again, louder, Martha decided she might as well answer, before Mickey got woken up.

When she saw that it was Oswin Oswald harassing her at that time of night, it all made sense. Oswin could probably do anything and people wouldn't question it, would just put her behaviour down to her damaged psyche. This occasion was no exception. Oswin was borderline delirious when Martha opened the door to talk to her, ravaged by a kind of excitement which rendered Martha uneasy. She didn't think anything that would get Oswin into this kind of fervent frenzy was entirely a good thing.

"Oswin?" she asked, confused, stepping out into the Bedroom Circle and leaving Mickey to his dreams behind her.

"Shh, shh," Oswin hissed, putting a finger to her lips. She was frantic, "Can't wake anybody up until I know for sure…"

"Know what…?" Martha asked carefully.

"I need your help with something," she said, and Martha narrowed her eyes, "Medical help. Specifically. Medical. Has to be… very… professional."

"Are you okay?"

"Shhh!" Oswin said, pacing frantically back and forth. Then she stopped and turned to Martha, grabbed her shoulders, "Martha," she breathed, "I'm a genius."

"Alright… do you think that maybe you and I should go speak to Clara…?"

Oswin's face fell. "Why?"

"You're behaving erratically," Martha told her. She laughed.

"Erratically," Oswin repeated, amused, "I told you. Medical help. You're perfect. I'm so clever. Come on, Dr Jones." She was being erratic, and Martha thought they would both benefit from a visit to Clara or Adam Mitchell, perhaps. Even Flek.

"I was asleep," Martha lied, Oswin tugging on her arm to drag her out of the Bedroom Circle, away from their cohabiters, and into the empty Nerve Centre.

"No you weren't," Oswin said, "You would've asked me why I woke you up if you were asleep. I wonder what you've been up to, lying wide awake? Nothing so productive as me. Do you know I'm the smartest girl in the universe? The whole universe?" Martha wanted to pull her wrist free of Oswin's steel grip, but she couldn't manage it, and wasn't sure trying to burn a hologram enough to make her flinch and let go was a valuable use of her time.

"Can't you just go get Flek? If you need medical help?" Martha asked.

"Flek? No. We're not talking. She'd be proud of me, though…" Oswin said vacantly. They still weren't talking since that argument after the incident with Squidzilla? Really? "You don't get it yet. Wait until you see what I've done." Martha, while being pulled through the console room and past an unconscious, charging Nios, was very wary of this thing Oswin had done which she, of all people, needed to see. She hoped Oswin hadn't been building bombs again.

Martha was dragged all the way up the stairs and into Oswin's lab, Oswin fumbling to get a key-card out of the pocket of her boyfriend's borrowed, too-big dressing gown for a second. Martha didn't like this idea Oswin had that she didn't know how to walk in a straight line herself without being forced like a child, but really didn't know if arguing was the best course of action. She was not one of the people able to tell how to act around this girl at any given moment, she didn't know what state of mind she was presently witnessing, or what Oswin was liable to do.

"I've been at this for days – Mitchell's sick of it," Oswin began, finally relinquishing Martha to go and do something with a computer. She rarely saw the inside of Oswin's laboratory, but thought it might be messier than usual. She also thought she spied little splotches and stains of blood on this surface and that, a streak of red on the wall. There were chunks of complex machinery about the place, as usual, and the big blue screen of Helix's main interface looming from one of the bright walls.

"What's with the blood…?" Martha asked carefully. For a split-second she thought Oswin was going to kill her. Instead she clapped, made Martha jump, and grinned.

"The blood! Exactly! That's the question, isn't it? What's with the blood?" While she said this, she picked up a little test-tube full of blood from the table in front of her, holding it up for Martha to see like this was the answer to the question. "I thought it would be futile, you know?" She didn't. "And Fyn's been going on about dad – but I don't want to think about that, had to do something, to take my mind off it all. And that's a hard thing to do, to take my mind of something, but Martha. Martha, Martha, Martha, Martha! I'm a genius."

"I'm going to go get Clara," Martha decided.

"No! Not until you check," Oswin argued, "Come on, look – Helix! Show Martha, uh, recording, um…" she faltered, and thought, "Bio-recording Z-17, Experiment six-dash-four. Adrenal pathology inversion, K-Batch." Helix's mainframe began to load something up. "It's K-Batch, Marth – it's the answer we've been looking for."

"The answer to what?" Martha asked slowly, glancing between Oswin and Helix's screen.

"It's cellular, alright?" Oswin said, watching, yes, a load of cells on the screen, "Look, look, look," she implored. So Martha did, struggling for a few seconds to realise what she was seeing. But there it was, some third-party substance being introduced, which proceeded to warp the cells until they reformed. Observing, she winced a little, sensing that such a transformation would be very painful to go through. "That's after the jumpstart."

"Jumpstart?"

"Adrenaline, Marth. It's the key, the key to K-Batch, and K-Bath is the answer," Oswin said, "It's – you know – repairing, and-"

"You have to slow down," Martha told her, "I don't know what you're trying to tell me." It was almost as though Oswin had forgotten how to speak English.

"This is the cure," Oswin said after pausing and thinking, "That's Kent's blood. Liam Kent's blood. Before the Spooks handed him back to Elliott, I took samples, I've been analysing them for days, just on a whim – untainted, Manifest cells, the original mutation without exposure to the time vortex. Not like you, you lot are… blech. Ew. That's what. But Kent? His cells are pure enough that this could be reversed."

"Oh my god…" Martha stared at it. Oswin was right, she was a genius.

"But it's not ready."

"What do you mean?"

"It's untested," Oswin said, "I've tested all the samples, K-Batch works in every sample, and in Helix's simulations."

"Give it to Clara, she heals," Martha shrugged.

"No!" Oswin nearly shouted, "I just told you – exposure to the time vortex! Wouldn't work. You're too far gone. I need more blood samples, and a legitimate test subject. I need Liam Kent, and I need a doctor to observe, in case things… go south. But it has to go through a human testing phase, it has to – this could end the Manifest Crisis, it could bring down Silverstorm, and-"

"Then you'd better call James Elliott and get us into Undercoll, hadn't you?"

The joys of living in a machine that existed simultaneously across all of time and space was that, when it was five o'clock in the morning and you desperately needed to go to the secret base of a clandestine government organisation to carry out genetic, blood-based experiments on unwilling serial killer participants, you could be right there within minutes. Martha had never met Detective Inspector James Elliott, or, ex-Detective Inspector, she supposed. Not until then. Oswin was well enough acquainted with him, but all Martha really knew was that he was allegedly cute and that he had a major thing for Sally Sparrow.

"Yeah," Oswin had been saying to her, "Esther told me he totally kissed her after that whole thing with Kent the other week. Apparently she doesn't reciprocate. Maybe she's in love with my sister." Martha highly doubted that Sally was in love with Oswin's sister. At least Oswin had enough tact not to bring up Elliott's forlorn infatuation while the boy was actually there. Well, either that or she was just too excited about her 'K-Batch' to do so ('K-Batch' which Martha had been enlisted to carry, holding a box of samples and syringes in her arms.)

Undercoll's base was… fancy. There was Torchwood, operating out of an abandoned underground station which was almost always freezing cold and was a very crooked place to be in. Then Undercoll, which, while hidden underground in some industrial estate in an anonymous, London borough, was far, far sleeker. It didn't even feel like the same thing at all, though, she supposed, it wasn't. Undercoll was not Torchwood. It appeared to be better funded, while equally short-staffed.

It was as though they were carrying out an inspection, she and Oswin, being shown around by James Elliott, led through a glass, automatic door into a very clean and well-lit space with a lot of funny lights. It reminded Martha of a spaceship. Maybe that was what they were going for, it might confuse the aliens they captured if they thought they were in orbit somewhere; some expensive, Earthling vessel drifting between the planet and the moon. Neither of them were all that fussed for introductions, and neither of them were properly dressed, but introductions were what they got. Though, one member of the small 'team' didn't need any introduction at all.

"Nice of your lot to finally send us over some ambassadors," a tall, broad-shouldered and all-round domineering woman commented, the tallest of all of them. She was wearing a funny hat not dissimilar to the sort of headgear Napoleon Bonaparte wore in portraits, and a long-ish coat that reminded Martha of pirates. She left her other four cohorts and came right over to shake hands. Martha had to try very hard not to accidentally burn her, and she grabbed Oswin's hand with such force Oswin nearly fell over (though, Oswin Oswald was generally a rather enfeebled person.) "Admiral Aurelia Darling is the name, I'm the leader here at Undercoll. But you can call me Darling." And then Admiral Aurelia Darling (was she a real admiral?) winked at Oswin. Martha didn't know whether to be offended or not that she hadn't received a wink from this woman.

"Oh my god, where did you find a female version of Jack?" Martha asked a semi-serious question, wishing they had brought Esther Drummond along to see this.

"Harkness? I spit on him," Darling said, and then she did spit. Or, she mimed it.

"Nice," Oswin commented, "We're not really ambassadors, we're just here to experiment on one of your prisoners. Wasn't any need to call your whole crew to arms."

"That's nonsense – and I hate nonsense. Of course there was need," Darling said. She held herself like she was military, but who knew for sure? Martha would definitely be enlisting somebody to run background checks on this lot, just out of curiosity; she wanted to know if Darling, too, was an immortal time traveller from the future. "You've met Elliott," Darling began introductions, motioning to Elliott, "Ex-detective, handpicked because of his run-in with the Doctor, and you, so I hear," she said to Oswin. She was focusing on Oswin quite a lot, but Oswin had not noticed. "This is Jacob Lowe, our computer expert; Dr Cohen, she practically lives in the morgue; and I believe you've already met-"

"We have," said the fifth and final member of their little team, none other than the Lady Christina de Souza herself, standing there in all her leather-clad, adrenaline-junkie glory, reminding Martha somewhat of Catwoman. Fitting, since she was a thief.

"Do the government employ thieves to work for them, now?" Oswin remarked, "And does Jack know what you're doing with your time?" Christina had a certain level of infamy aboard the TARDIS, with people blaming her for Jack and Jenny's second breakup and subsequent 'divorce' (even if she had kept his name.)

"Don't talk to me about Jack," Christina scoffed, "He keeps calling me when he's drunk hoping for a hook-up, and texting me the next morning saying I'm a homewrecker, regardless of the fact I never answer. I don't like being used to make other girls feel angry. And in answer to your first question, yes – I'm no longer a wanted woman, as long as I stay with Undercoll."

"What an odd collective of experts," Oswin said. Clearly, she was unimpressed. So was Martha. Back in her day, alien experts really were alien experts, a ragtag group of crime fighters led by Captain Jack Harkness (or the Doctor, on one of those rare days he got involved in Torchwood's affairs and tried to steal command.) "Would you mind showing us to Liam Kent, now? I have to run some tests on him."

"Cohen!" Darling barked, making the young girl wearing a lab coat and some rather large glasses jump, "Take the lady to see the psycho." Cohen mumbled something that may have been a yes, and then motioned for them to follow her, tottering off down a staircase. "You're welcome here any time," Darling added as they followed Cohen. Darling, again, appeared to be addressing everything she said to Oswin. Elliott came with them, but the other three stayed behind. Good, Martha thought, they didn't need an audience. Seeing Oswin, one of Clara's Echoes, would most likely rile Kent up a great deal anyway. Did he not still deserve some privacy, even after his crimes?

"What's with the welcome banners being rolled out, then?" Martha inquired, glancing between Elliott and Cohen. Cohen, though, did not seem up for answering. "You'd think we were famous."

"You practically are famous, to us," Elliott said in his Welsh accent, "We're just a load of phonies, compared to you. You know I was only hired because of the stuff with those brain jars."

"If you're anything like Torchwood, I'm sure you'll do fine," Martha assured him.

"I thought almost every Torchwood agent died?" Oswin asked, and Martha gave her a look, and she realised, "Not – not died in a bad way… there's nothing wrong with being dead. Esther's dead, and she gets along just fine. In fact, she was just telling me earlier about-"

Undercoll's cellblock was not dissimilar to Torchwood's. It was just six, glass-fronted rooms in a corridor, and Cohen had buzzed them into it. But Oswin had been too preoccupied trying to make up for her own tactlessness about mortality to notice where they were, so she was interrupted halfway through her sentence and startled by a body throwing itself against the glass wall behind her, shoulder first. She actually shrieked.

"How is my creation doing?" Kent drawled, leaning his full weight on the glass, forehead pressed against it. The man was a mess. Blond hair unkempt and straggly, wearing a dirty straightjacket, padded walls surrounding him on three sides. Martha was shocked, even appalled, at the state he was in, chained by his ankles to the soft floor.

"Oh my god – this is inhumane!" Martha exclaimed. Oswin didn't finish her sentence, nor did she answer Kent, she just stared.

"What do you suppose we do?" Elliott challenged her, "He used to scratch off his skin and bang his head on the walls."

"Drummond was my greatest failure, you know," Kent continued, grinning maniacally, "I'd love for one of you to ask me what my greatest success is."

"Shut it," Elliott ordered him, but Elliott didn't really command a lot of authority. He was too sweet-sounding. Oswin couldn't bring herself to say a single word, she just stared at Liam Kent in his cell.

"Success?" Martha frowned, and Kent laughed.

"I wonder what's the matter with Clara's hidden favourite?" he jeered, eyeing Oswin, who looked strangely as though she was going to be sick. She didn't even meet Martha's eyes, but was staring into space for a few seconds until turning and leaving the room, muttering something unintelligible. Kent laughed as Martha watched her go.

"Is somethin wrong with her?" Cohen asked quietly. She flinched when Kent cackled a moment later.

"Too many things to count," Martha said, then she forced the box of K-Batch into Cohen's hands, "You're the doctor here, right? It's this vial, he needs to be injected with it." She pointed out the compound to the girl, who was taken aback.

"But what if it doesnae work?" she asked.

"It'll work, Oswin wouldn't ever risk killing anybody," Martha assured her. While Oswin's mental stability might be constantly brought into question, the one thing about her that wasn't was her intellect. Oswin was clever, and she was not reckless. Even Liam Kent, who had mercilessly slaughtered Clara's Echoes, her 'sisters', would not perish by Oswin's hand. Martha's, maybe, if he didn't shut up raving about his success.

"Under the name of Jo-ones," Kent called after Martha in a singsong voice as she left to follow Oswin. No doubt he was just taunting her, so she ignored him. A success under the name of Jones? And Esther was the failure? But she didn't have time to go solving the riddles of a lunatic. She just trusted that Elliott and Cohen would do well enough injecting him with the cure for Manifesthood.

"What's wrong?" Martha asked Oswin urgently when she found her, lingering by the door, out of earshot of Undercoll's other three members. It was nearing six in the morning. Oswin didn't say anything, she stared emptily into space, looking very gaunt. Martha hoped she hadn't just been forced into one of her 'slumps' by Kent's mockery, especially not when Clara wasn't there. "Oswin," Martha waved a hand in front of her eyes and, to her relief, Oswin blinked.

"It's nothing," she said stiffly. They could hear Kent yelling, presumably as Elliott restrained him, through the door, "It's just… that was me."

"Sorry?"

"Chained up in a padded cell, totally insane," she said, "Locked up in the Dalek Asylum. A murderer."

"You're not a murderer," Martha said, even though she knew the words would have no effect. Nothing ever had any lasting effect on Oswin and her moods.

"I ought to be locked up, too. Or at least stop pretending. I'm sick of this leg."

"I'm sure it's hard being an amputee, but-"

"Not that one."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Martha asked seriously, Oswin crossing her arms, very involved in whatever she was thinking about. Her good leg, she meant, she was sick of?

"Nothing. You wouldn't like it if I told you. Forget about it. Focus on Kent. I should call Flek later…"

*chapter 986

AN: So, I sort of have time to write, so I'm coming off break, but I don't know how regular updates will be. I'm gonna aim for 2-3 a week, but my Christmas holidays are right from the start of December and are like six weeks long, so expect regular, daily updates again within the month. Also, remember to review and to read and review the new chapter of Spook Watch as well, please.