[Manifest Lore Recap: December 2013, Rose and Tentoo and other members of the crew are briefed on the new superpowers crisis by Brigadier Kate Stewart and UNIT. They decide to go around UNIT and instead work with Sarah-Jane's gang for help, where they discovered the superpowers are because of a mutation to the adrenal gland caused by drinking spiked coffee from one, particular, shop. The formula for superpowers was created by one naturally-occurring Manifest, teenage genius Rian Simmonds. Simmonds was detained and given to UNIT like the rest of the Manifests after Clara and Rose 'contract' superpowers.
Oswin Oswald and Adam Mitchell's first 'date' revolved around them going and collecting blood samples from the Manifests in holding at UNIT, in the process release ALL the captive Manifests due to Oswin deeming the conditions inhumane. Sarah-Jane's gang were allegedly also involved, which led to them disliking Oswin (and Adam by association.) All of this happened 'off-page.' Later, Oswin, paranoid, drugs her own boyfriend with the Manifest coffee to give him superpowers, causing him to nearly die in Rapture of pneumonia.
By 2017, UNIT are trying to weaponise the Manifest formula and in the process create artificial 'werewolves.' London is separated into different zones to keep the Manifests locked up, especially the wolf-shapeshifters. Rose and Martha are captured by UNIT and in the process Martha gains her superpowers. Sarah-Jane's gang are, again, involved. Clyde and Rani are Manifests, but their powers have never been canonically established.
After the Beta TARDIS gets infested by a Xenomorph hive because a Queen accidentally got on board, the Beta Twelfth Doctor and Beta Clara have to stay on the Alpha TARDIS, during which time Beta Clara is enlisted as the ship's tea and coffee girl. For a joke, Twelve convinces her to use the coffee labelled "DO NOT USE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES", which leads to all eight of the humans on the TARDIS becoming Manifests, but not ordinary manifests, the strain corrupted by exposure to the Time Vortex, meaning they have extra, third mutations.
Later, the TARDIS Manifests find themselves trapped in Silverstorm Penitentiary for the Terminally Deranged in 2028, after being captured by the Hazard Control Corps on a visit to London and injected with a drug that identifies Manifests by making their eyes glow silver when they attempt to use their powers – a drug which (for convenience) no longer affects the corrupted strain, only pure Manifests. Silverstorm is a city evacuated after a Manifest accidentally turned the water supply into acid, converted into a prison with an impervious forcefield around it and with no running water. It is home to a vicious gang war between the Apexes and the Conduits, who are equally matched and equally amoral. The TARDIS crew escape and resolve to enlist Sarah-Jane's gang for help by the time they actually get around to resolving the Manifest Crisis.
Because of a failure to handle the Manifest Crisis, Kate Stewart was fired from command of UNIT and UNIT's authority on British soil was revoked by order of the Crown, UNIT's duties instead being divided between the Hazard Control Corps (specifically designed to tackle the Manifest Crisis and headed up by the illusive Dr Klein) and Undercoll, formed in lieu of Torchwood. As early as 2016, UNIT has next to no power in the United Kingdom anymore.
In 2029, Sarah-Jane's gang run a railroad for fugitive Manifests, helping them stay safe and hidden, operating out of an abandoned power station on the outskirts of London, nicknamed "the Sanctum" because of the sanctity it offers those escapees they harbour.
The TARDIS Manifests' powers are:
Adam Mitchell: Cryokinesis + Aura Reading, Mutation = Cryostasis
Amy Pond: Precognition + Persuasion, Mutation = Unspecified
Clara Oswald: Telekinesis + Intangibility, Mutation = Short-Range Teleportation
Donna Noble: Sonic Scream + Interdimensional Portals, Mutation = Unspecified
Martha Jones: Pyrokinesis + Super-Agility, Mutation = Causing Spontaneous Combustion
Mickey Smith: Technopathy + Breathing Underwater, Mutation = Unspecified
Rory Williams: Super-Hearing + Invisibility, Mutation = Unspecified
Rose Tyler: Time Vortex Manipulation + Super-Strength, Mutation = Changing Eye Colour at Will]
The Inner Sanctum
2029 Esther
"I still don't understand why you can't just tell us what you're doing here," Rani Chandra complained, "It's been two days, and nothing. You've got a house, and solitude, and safety; you're not in need of our help."
"I haven't asked for your help," Esther pointed out for the umpteenth time, but those days Rani had a real chip on her shoulder, especially when it came to the Sanctum. She didn't like Esther being able to get in and out of their secret stronghold in a flash or two, because it made her think there was a gap in their defences. There wasn't, Esther just happened to be phenomenal at infiltration.
"No, but you've helped yourself to our hospitality," she grumbled, glaring at the mug of hot tea Esther was holding out to her. A peace offering, because even if Rani did have a bit of an attitude, Esther still thought she should be a good houseguest. Or, abandoned-power-plant-guest, as the case may be.
"And you've helped yourselves to my electricity," she countered. She didn't mind giving up her overcharge for them, it was for a noble cause. Just because she wasn't a Manifest didn't mean she wouldn't do everything she could to help those of them on the run from the authorities. She knew about Silverstorm, she did still work in the business of intelligence, after all. She just provided information to less 'official' sources than the CIA, and had done for thirteen years.
"I thought I said coffee?" Rani questioned after finally, begrudgingly, taking the mug off Esther, who had a whole tray of them to hand out to Sarah-Jane's remnants. She didn't know an awful lot about Sarah-Jane Smith, just what she had dug up from UNIT's old files out of curiosity, but whenever the TARDIS crew mentioned Rani Chandra, Luke Smith and Clyde Langer, they were always referred to as 'Sarah-Jane's gang.'
"Uh…" Esther faltered, until Luke, doing something with one of the many computers in the control hub of the Sanctum they were situated in, came to her rescue.
"I told her you're not allowed something with that much caffeine at this time of night," he said. Esther felt horribly like she was in the way of things, even if she was supplying them with power. And they lived in a power station, for god's sake, so it was taking a lot out of her to do so. She was so drained she couldn't even flit. She didn't want to get involved with their operation and mess anything up, and knew that if she did anything without being asked first Rani would probably have her head, but simultaneously Rani was annoyed at her for not doing much of anything – except being the resident tea and coffee girl, apparently.
Rani glared at Luke, who wasn't even looking at her as he tried to fix something else Esther wasn't allowed to touch, and he proceeded to sneeze very violently all over the intricate insides of the computer.
"Rani!" he exclaimed, "What was that for!?"
"I didn't do anything," she lied, turning away so that Luke didn't glimpse the sliver of a smile Esther saw, and Rani smiling didn't happen very often. She was normally brooding about this or that. Luke sniffed and scowled and Esther went to hand him the box of tissues from one of the many desks. The room they were in used to be some sort of important control room, and now it was just full of computers and screens monitoring HCC comm feeds, CCTV, and police reports of potential Manifests. And Esther just sat there, useless, because Rani wouldn't let her help with anything at all.
"You're not allowed coffee," Luke just muttered, "Don't you remember when you had that espresso? You ran around the globe three times."
"Four times," she corrected him.
"How long'd it take?" Esther asked, and Rani met her eyes coldly. "What?"
"Didn't take as long as it would take you."
"Oh yeah? You know electricity travels at the speed of light," Esther pointed out.
"You're not electricity."
"Sometimes I am," Esther argued.
Luke, yet again, interrupted to try and diffuse things, "If you're angling for a race, Esther, there's no point. She'll never go for it."
"Only because she knows I'm faster," Esther joked, and Luke smiled, but Rani remained annoyed. She was very dedicated to being in a perpetually bad mood.
"I'll race you if you tell me what you're doing here," Rani offered an ultimatum, seizing an opportunity she thought she saw.
"I'd love to tell you what I'm doing here, but I don't know myself, I'm under orders," she explained. Rani narrowed her eyes and put down her mug of tea (but she didn't put it on a coaster, which bothered Esther; the tables were all covered in sticky old coffee rings.)
"Orders from who?"
"Above," Esther said cryptically. Of course, 'orders from above' could only mean one thing to all of them present. And it was something else Rani didn't like.
"God – what are we to them?" she asked resentfully, meaning the TARDIS crew, "Foot soldiers?" Esther didn't want to exacerbate anything, but she thought that was exactly what they were to the TARDIS crew. That and informants. Although, combining both of those kind of made them spies, which sounded a whole lot snazzier. Really, though, she didn't know why she was there, she had just been given instructions, courtesy of Oswin Oswald, that she had to be at that place at that time on that day, a good few years ago now.
Could there have been a worse moment for the three of them to hear that familiar, discordant thrumming sound coming from one of the empty hallways? Uh, probably not, come to think of it. Rani looked at Esther when they heard it as though the TARDIS showing up was her fault, and Luke was the first one out of the three of them to actually get up and go look for the blue box in question.
"Don't go running to them," Rani told him, but he ignored her, reaching for the door handle. Then he touched it and flinched away immediately, like he'd been burned. To add insult to injury (well, mainly just further injury to injury) the door then smacked him in the face when it was thrown open by Clyde Langer in feverish excitement. He must have heated up the handle by accident with those microwaves of his. They were even more volatile than Esther's bolts.
"Guess who's here," he said, grinning. Rani didn't like the TARDIS crew; Luke picked and chose who he did and didn't like based on how helpful or mature they were – but Clyde? Clyde thought each and every one of them was wonderful. Esther knew that he just loved getting visits from that ragtag group of elusive, time-travelling spacers. She didn't have anything against them, either, it was just tricky trying to figure out which point they were at in their lives.
Rani only met Clyde's eyes briefly before her whole shape became, for a split second, a blur of colour, and then she was gone from the room completely with wind billowing in her wake. And that was why she wasn't allowed caffeine.
"Don't you love it when she does that?" Clyde said, looking over his shoulder at the empty corridor she had just whooshed down at just under the speed of sound (sonic booms in enclosed, populated places were never a good idea.)
"I thought you wanted to race her?" Luke asked Esther wryly, Clyde holding the door open for the two of them to follow.
"She has a head start – she'll be there already. Besides, I could get there so fast it would embarrass her," Esther shrugged, "I got from Yorkshire to here in less than ten seconds," they were on the outskirts of London, "and I wasn't even rushing." Clyde seemed incredulous about that (but Esther was faster than Rani, even if Rani was a speedster.)
They found the TARDIS, Rani standing and waiting outside of it, right as the doors were thrown open and out stepped the usual suspects. Some of the usual suspects, anyway – Oswin was definitely someone Esther would classify as a 'usual suspect' aboard the TARDIS, and as everybody filed out she did not see the smartest girl in the universe among them. Rani crossed her arms sternly, Clyde was bouncing off the walls, while Luke remained somewhat indifferent and Esther smiled warmly. They were very surprised to see her, though.
"Esther?" Adam Mitchell, confused, asked. Asking about Esther apparently came before whatever the seven of them were actually there for, "Why are you here?"
"Your better half invited me," she joked, "Gave me a cryptic message, years ago, that I had to be here on this day in 2029."
"Wait – you're from the future?" Donna Noble questioned her. It looked like just all the Manifests had come along. Well, all of them except for Martha Jones, that was.
"You're in the future," Rani said coldly. Did Rani dislike all of them, or just a few? Maybe it was only Adam and Oswin she wasn't fond of. And Clara. A lot of people weren't very fond of Clara, who was hovering by Adam looking as ostracised as she always did.
Donna narrowed her eyes at Esther, studying her, "How come you look so young?"
"I've been dead for seventeen years," she shrugged. Then Donna scoffed indignantly.
"Does anybody age anymore these days?"
"That's not important – what's important is what the hell are you all doing here?" Rani demanded of them sharply. The way she spoke those days, you'd think she was military, "This is a sensitive area, and you're putting everyone in even more danger than they're in already by bringing that box here."
"We're here about that, actually," Rose came right back at Rani with an equally cold tone, holding a box full of bottles with a funny-looking, semi-translucent liquid in it that reminded Esther of paracetamol syrup people gave to children who couldn't swallow tablets properly.
"Oswin's created the cure, the cure for Manifesthood," Clara revealed, indicating the bottles.
Rani looked at them, studied them, then said, "There's not a lot of it."
"You dilute it with water," Adam said.
"If it's Oswin's invention, why isn't she here?" Rani persisted, trying to find some flaw with them to pick at. She appeared to think the TARDIS crew were remotely organised, when in actuality they were the least organised people Esther had ever met. Sally Sparrow knew what she was doing with her life more than any of them did – and that was saying something.
It then fell upon Adam Mitchell to explain what had happened that morning, since he paid the most attention to his wife's (were they married yet? Esther had no clue, but she thought it best not to say anything about that out loud) actions out of all of them. Oswin had synthesised the cure for Manifesthood out of Liam Kent's blood, and Esther was glad to hear Kent was good for something, aside from brining dead Torchwood agents back to life – he was very good at that, she thought angrily. When they had decided to come to find Sarah-Jane's gang in the Sanctum that day, Oswin had been persuaded to stay behind and get some rest, told she had done her bit to resolve the Manifest Crisis that they themselves had a fair few hands in creating. After he finished explaining, Esther proceeded to ask where Martha was.
"She stayed on the ship," Mickey said, the TARDIS still lingering behind them, making those funny, ambient sounds it always did, "Said she was tired, and she should stay to make sure the Time Lords are alright."
"What's wrong with them?" Clyde asked urgently, "Is the Doctor okay?"
"They'd just being drama queens, they've caught space flu," Clara said offhandedly. Wait – they were from that long ago? An entire thirteen years? It was a good thing she hadn't referred to Oswin as Adam's wife aloud, then – they were nowhere near that point if this lot were visiting from more than a decade back. Esther remembered having to help Ravenwood take care of Jenny when Jenny had been sick with her intergalactic cold.
"You can't just cure them," Luke began, getting them back on topic. Then he paused and thought, and resolved to say, "You'd better follow me, all of you…" he led them away from the TARDIS back towards the Sanctum's control hub, talking as they walked, Rani not whooshing off this time, "We're sure that Klein is making more Manifests, which means that you couldn't stop Silverstorm without stopping the HCC at the same time. Stop Silverstorm first and the HCC will be too well-armed and well-prepared to be infiltrated; stop the HCC first and the Silver Watch would hear about it and begin the Eradication Protocols. Think how they stop foot-and-mouth disease, only with more explosives."
"They'd just blow them up?" Rory asked in horror, "Prisons are one thing – but that's genocide."
"And they've got the authority to carry it out," Rani said.
"Do you have a plan already?" Amy questioned.
"We have lots of plans," Clyde explained, "But they'll be made a lot easier with you seven. And maybe it's a good thing you've got the Americans involved." He cast a wry look at Esther, who raised her eyebrows.
"Didn't see you guys complaining when we won World War One and World War Two for you." Luke then opened the doors to the control hub, filled to the brim with computers, Mr Smith mounted on one of the walls (they had had to vacate the house in Ealing a long time ago, now they were actually very wanted.)
"Both of these operations have to happen simultaneously," Rani said, getting straight to the briefing, "Although we've never been banking on a cure coming about, since the government haven't been able to create one for sixteen years."
"Well, no offence, but the government aren't my Oswin," Clara said, speaking highly of her sister as always, even if Rani did scoff in response. Although, Esther couldn't tell if Rani had scoffed because of the praise or because Clara had called her 'my Oswin' (Rose Tyler had made a similar, irritated noise as well.)
"I don't know how you would get it into their water supply," Luke said, "Silverstorm doesn't have running water; all their provisions get dropped in through containers resistant to the forcefield-"
"Can't people use the material those containers are made of to escape?" Adam interrupted, frowning.
"Yeah, they do, and we try to help them here," Clyde boasted.
Luke resumed, "Silverstorm exists because the city was evacuated after all the water was accidentally turned into acid – but the reservoir will still collect plenty of water from the rain the forcefield lets in. If you managed to fix that, you'd be able to get water back to the whole city."
"Doesn't sound so tricky…" Clara commented. Esther thought she spoke too soon.
"Clyde knows his way around Silverstorm," Luke said, smirking, "The forcefields still let liquids in."
"Liquids?" Donna asked.
"I can turn into a puddle," Clyde said flatly, "Go on, go ahead and laugh, but it comes in useful. Sometimes. Maybe once."
"If some of you go with Clyde to Silverstorm, and some of you stay to help Luke try to crack the HCC servers, the rest can come with me to get into the HCC itself," Rani said.
"You can't hack the HCC?" Adam asked incredulously, then he nodded at Mr Smith, "Even with him?"
"They have technopaths forced to create organic firewalls, you can't hack them, not just with technology, and even with a Xylok," Luke explained, then addressed Mickey, "But another technopath might be what we need to break in."
"Not to mention the creator of the CIA's antivirus software," Esther added, speaking of Adam.
"And me and Mr Smith," Luke said, "We'd be able to help you through the HCC if we got in, we don't have any information on their facility."
"All we know comes from intel through Kate Stewart," Rani said.
"Didn't Kate Stewart get fired?" Rose puzzled.
"Most of UNIT were transferred straight to the HCC to work under Klein when UNIT's UK presence was downgraded," Rani explained, "There are loyalists there who feed Kate information, and Kate feeds us information, too. The HCC are working on something called Project Crystal, and we want to find out what it is-"
"But because of the firewalls, we can't," Luke said.
"So we put in a team effort to get into the Hazard Control Corps and stop Project Crystal," Clyde continued.
"Which we think is the name given to the production process of new Manifests," Rani finished.
There was silence in the room, until Clara sighed, "And here I thought we might be back in time for lunch…"