Das Wunderkind

Jenny

"You just – you shouldn't be here, okay?" Jack protested, "It's dangerous." Jenny turned around and punched him in the face. This turned out to be a mistake, because she used her right hand, and it send a shock through her wounded thumb and made all her fingers tremble. But this she hid behind her back and glared at him. In her left hand, she held a machete she had been using to slice down vines, much to Jack's annoyance, who wanted the machete for himself so that he could be all 'alpha male' about their jungle trek.

"You are the one who started this," she snapped at him angrily. She was sick of him, he'd been lecturing her for the last handful of hours they had been flying around the mountain trying to locate some kind of cave or entrance, and in the last thirty minutes they had been on the ground heading towards a rocky orifice once they did manage to find one. They were guessing blindly really, but Jack wasn't helping. "If you hadn't come after this stupid weapon of mass destruction in the first place, they might not have been able to steal the map from Pasznoxo, might not have been able to get to Rospaonus, and definitely wouldn't have been able to work out that whatever we're looking for is buried inside this mountain! Neither of you will be able to get to it without me helping, so if you want me to leave the pair of you had better come with me so that you don't get yourselves captured. You're the ones in danger."

"I have to disagree," said River, and Jenny turned a glare on her, "With the danger part, not the Jack being an idiot part. Jack can't die and I'm a hologram. You're the closest to mortal that we have here, and you're the only one the Conqueror wants."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but the Conqueror isn't actually up to much snuff," Jenny said, "The only one of them who isn't a complete waste of space is Ordov, and he's the one who could be bought off if it came down to it."

"What are you going to do? Bribe him with another Fabergé Egg?" River jibed, something which Jack didn't understand. They were all at odds now, the three of them, arguing in the middle of the jungle. But Jenny's ship was much faster and more manoeuvrable than anything Kasterborous might have up their sleeves, they were miles ahead by now.

"There's a Fabergé Egg stashed on the TARDIS, I've seen it, go give it to Pasznoxo if you're that bothered. I'm sure dad won't miss it," Jenny said, "Anyway, there are ways to stop people from hurting us without killing them."

"You mean by employing your favourite dirty tactic of breaking their ankles, knees and fingers? I always thought that was a bit cruel," Jack commented.

"Oh, alright, I'll let him kill me then, shall I?" she snapped, "Both of you need to shut up. We're here now and you need me because who knows that you don't also need to be a Time Lord to even get to this Singularity? And besides – you're acting like I'm useless, but I'm more useful than both of you combined." They did not continue to argue, because Jack sensed that if they did, she would continue to press him about why he wanted the stupid Singularity to begin with, and he did not want to give up that information. She barely even knew what it did, but knowing it was dangerous was enough for her to want to make sure nobody else got their hands on it. Especially Kasterborous. She slashed apart some vines blocking their path particularly aggressively after that.

"You know, I remember being on an expedition just like this once, with your father," River began an anecdote and Jenny sighed, "He had a bow and arrows and wouldn't let anyone else hold the machete, either." Jenny did not have a bow, though she had been meaning to get one. Or rather, she had been meaning to make one, as soon as she found good materials and some free time. Jenny did, however, have Josephine, her old hunting rifle and part of her bargain with Viola O'Hara, the same one that won her new coat and a Porsche 365. Josephine was slung across her back with a leather strap.

"What was my father doing with a machete and a bow and arrows?"

"Well, he didn't have any arrows, per se, he took the bow off somebody else to stop them from using it," River explained, "And with the machete he was doing the same thing you are now."

"You know what – have it," she held the machete out to Jack, who'd been itching to get it off her. He took it gratefully and went about carving them a path through the jungle. It was hot and there were black storm clouds brewing high above. It was the daytime still, technically, but they had very little light to go by with the trees so thick and the weather the way it was. They needed to get to the mountain before the storm picked up.

"It is strange you're so much like him when he didn't raise you at all."

"It's also strange that you think this is anything to do with you," Jenny said grumpily. River was prying into her life too much for her liking. If she wanted people to know things about her, she would tell them, she did not appreciate all this digging on Song's part. At least the Doctor didn't look into her history.

Lucky for all of them that they were saved by finally reaching the edge of the mountain, where the trees suddenly gave way to grey rock and slate which sloped upwards at an angle too steep to surmount without any equipment. It was just a case of heading right along the edge now until they reached the cave they had spotted from the air, and that didn't take long at all. While they walked Jenny occupied herself fidgeting with her rifle, making sure it wasn't jammed. The other two didn't pay her much mind until River heard her loading it.

"You've got bullets?"

"Of course I have bullets," Jenny said, "I've got about twenty .308 hollow point rounds."

"All set to shatter the joints of whoever gets on her nerves first," Jack said.

"Well, ultimately, I'm not going to shoot anybody who doesn't pose an actual threat, am I?" she argued with him, "So really, they only have themselves to blame for having their tendons destroyed. It wouldn't happen if they were just a bit nicer."

"Sounds like backwards logic to me."

"What's your problem?" she asked him. He turned around and she saw he was smiling. He was just trying to annoy her. She grimaced and went back to messing with the gun.

"Here we go," River said ten minutes later. An uneventful ten minutes of walking and sweating as they finally felt the humid drizzle begin above them. Maybe the storm would be the cover they needed to stop Kasterborous from gaining on them? Although, Jenny wasn't sure they would be clever enough to stay out of the hurricane. If she was right, they would likely suffer greatly for their stupidity.

What River had pointed out was that they were at the mouth of a cave, the cave they were looking for. It was easy enough to tell it wasn't a natural formation; maybe the entrance was crooked and had been eroded by the weather over time, but the deeper Jenny peered the more perfectly it formed. This cave had just been carved out of the mountainside, drilled in. It wouldn't even surprise her if the mountain itself was an artificial construct, an enormous vault of Gallifreyan design. They headed inside.

"Hold up a sec," Jack said, fumbling in his pocket. Along with claiming the machete, he had also claimed the map, though Jenny disagreed entirely that he was the only one who could keep it safe. It was probably least safe in his hands, but she hadn't been bothered to argue. Now, he drew it out, holding it between his fingers; it was vibrating. Then he lost his grip on it, it was behaving in such an aggravated manner, and it shot towards Jenny, who caught it reflexively in her free hand. When she was the one to touch it, it stopped moving and lit up again. But it was not the only thing. The walls around them became gold, her presence and possession of the map illuminating a string of old Gallifreyan symbols engraved into the cave walls to light up the passage.

"Remarkable…" River turned in a circle, in awe at the writing. Even Jack was stunned.

"What does it say?" Jack asked.

"It's a warning," River said.

"Bit of a bad warning, looks almost inviting to those of us who can't read Gallifreyan," Jack said.

"Considering only a Time Lord can make the messages appear, I assume the presumption is anyone exploring this place can read Gallifreyan," River explained, "That's their ego for you. Thinking no other species would ever be clever enough to work out where they keep their big weapon."

"You're a Time Lord," Jack pointed out to her.

"Yes, but not a Gallifreyan. I've only ever had the one heart. Exposure to the time vortex makes Time Lords, Jack, that's why those kittens are the way they are."

"Then what does that make her?" Jack nodded at Jenny, who raised her eyebrows at being referred to just as 'her' so callously. River smiled.

"Oh, I'd say Jenny is a real wunderkind. The Time Lords would have rejected her without a word, but it appears their technology isn't so up itself. That's the reason your father ran away, you know," River said to her, "They were obnoxious and… lofty. I'm sure he would be nothing but disdainful if he saw this. Would question how serious they really were about wanting to keep the Singularity locked away, if they made a map and a key to get it back. Presumably they liked to have it as their ace in the hole."

"One day, society will learn that doomsday devices never help anybody," Jenny sighed.

"I don't know. It's a deterrent," Jack said, "Maybe."

"A deterrent, he says to the girl who lived in Berlin in the 1960s. I think the Cold War would have eased up a lot if they had never invented nuclear weapons to begin with. And it isn't like this thing did the Time Lords much use. They're all dead now." She continued to move on down the corridor. As they went, the writing alongside them brightened while the writing behind them extinguished. Good. At least the giant golden writing wouldn't clue Kasterborous onto where they were, she hoped.

A door was illuminated in front of them, etched with patterns rather than any actual language, deep golden markings all seeming to point towards a circular opening right in the middle of the stone, an inset exactly the same size as the map in Jenny's palm.

"Let me put it in," Jack offered.

"I don't think it'll let you," River told him, "You think they'd build a vault like this without defence mechanisms? The entire mountain is probably booby-trapped." Jenny agreed, although couldn't shake that maybe the reason the Time Lords hadn't used the Singularity in the Time War was because everyone who tried to retrieve it died. How did they even know it was there, and this wasn't an elaborate test for the Time Lords to weed out greedy people? But no. She didn't know much about the Time Lords, just what she had heard from River and the Doctor (and Missy, a little), but she didn't think they were the sort to destroy something so technologically astounding.

With that in mind, she went and pushed the map into the door, and they all stopped to wait. Sounds of mechanisms shifting could be heard from beyond it, and she jumped and stepped back when it disappeared in a haze of atoms. It looked exactly like when Rose Tyler erased things and they evaporated. Perhaps they should have brought her.

"Does this look safe?" Jack asked.

"Most definitely not," said River, "Let's go." And she breezed right through, Jack and Jenny hastening to keep up. So Jenny was right, they did need her to get them in, they would have stood no chance without a biological Time Lord. River Song just didn't cut it anymore.

The door shimmered back into its place behind them, cutting off all the light and sealing them away from the storm on Rospaonus.

"At least we're not gonna be followed," Jack said, his voice the only tangible thing in the pitch darkness of the mountain.

But it didn't stay dark for long.

Using exactly the same mysterious technology that was being employed in the tunnel, their new location was illuminated as well, and it was enormous. A huge chamber, carved perfectly into the rock, the golden lines spreading over every surface and shining brightly. Behind them, a clatter, and they turned to see the door had spat the map back out at them. Jenny went to pick it back up in case they still needed it, but in doing so it began to open and project again. This time it did not project an image of Rospaonus, though, but more Gallifreyan writing.

"It says, 'for those who are worthy,'" River translated. She was translating unnecessarily, because Jenny could read it perfectly well too, but she let her have her fun.

"Look," Jack ignored her, his eyes fixed hungrily on something else. Jenny looked past the holographic writing and saw what he was staring at. It was a device, floating in the centre of the room with rings of gilded material spinning around it slowly like a gyroscope. Its golden core had vibrant dust swirling and moving like an hourglass within the transparent material. Jack went to step towards it.

"Stop," Jenny ordered him.

"It's right there," he said.

"It's a trick," she said, then repeated the writing, "For those who are worthy. They hid it away not just from other species, but from themselves. You think they'd let any old Time Lord in here to grab that thing? It could be a bomb for all we know."

"She's right," said River, "There's already been the test of species, this must be a test of character. Or tests plural." Looking at it, though, Jenny didn't think it was a bomb. It certainly wasn't the Singularity, either, but she thought she had worked out its purpose.

"You two stay here," she said.

"What? You can't – Jenny!" Jack exclaimed when she stepped down. She moved onto a different part of the floor, a large circular dip in the ground, in the middle of which was the new device. There was a creak when she set her weight upon it, and then nothing. "You can't go towards it!"

"You need to trust me," she said, putting both feet on the lowered floor of the cave.

"I'm just supposed to trust you when you step onto the weird-looking bit of the ground?" he questioned, "It looks like it's gonna collapse if you step on the wrong bit."

"Yes, trust me," she said firmly, and that was all she said, approaching the device very slowly and carefully. As long as she didn't touch it, she would be fine. River and Jack stayed where they were on the edge, ironically using her as the guinea pig when she was the only one of them in grave danger. They watched with baited breath. She felt like the only one who was keeping their cool.

"Don't touch it," Jack advised when she was right in front of the thing. "It could be a bomb, like you said."

"It's not a bomb," Jenny told him. She still didn't touch it though, she scrutinised it for a moment, and then crouched down slowly and pressed her palm to the ground beneath, a flat handprint. In the exact same way the door had vaporised before, so did the ground beneath her now. She heard Jack and River both yell for her to run, because they had not worked out what the floating orb-thing was.

When the ground collapsed and she flipped upside-down, floating in the air, she laughed.

"What did I say? Trust me. It's an anti-gravity field generator. If you tried to move it the centre of gravity wouldn't balance and you'd fall down into this pit." She didn't need to indicate the giant, dark pit that had opened up beneath her. "You'd both better get in, it's probably going to take us somewhere." She was right. The gravity intensified and she began to fall – though not nearly fast enough for the bottom to be a lethal splat at the bottom – and shouted for Jack and River to join her. They did not seem very confident in her as a guide, but didn't have any other choice than to jump into the void too if they wanted to find the Singularity.

They were spat out of the bottom onto cold stone after a brief period of free-fall, deep underground.

"Alright, fine," Jack muttered, hauling himself to his feet, "You win, I give up. We do need you." She wasn't listening to him, though. Like everywhere else in that darned vault, the new room was illuminated as well, but not around the walls. At first glance it looked as though they were in a chamber filled with lightbulbs, but open closer inspection all of these devices were hovering in the air (probably the influence of the gravity manipulator high above them.) They were definitely glowing, though, a hundred tiny glass orbs at varying heights, clumped together so closely it would be impossible to get out of the little clearing at the bottom of the shaft without touching them. That was a problem; firstly because Jenny suspected that whatever the orbs were, they were not mere mood lighting; and secondly because there was a tunnel beyond the things. To continue, Jack, Jenny and River would have to find a way through.

"This doesn't look very inviting," said River.

"I don't suppose you know what these things are too, do you?" Jack asked Jenny, "Use some of the old Time Lord intuition."

"Also known as a degree in advanced mechanical engineering from the future," she quipped, "But no."

"Well I don't think we should touch them," River said, "Does the map say anything? Like what they are?" Jenny held the map out again in her hand to see if it did anything, but it did not. It glowed, so it was detecting her, but there were no clues this time. Not that the last one was particularly telling.

"Well what's the worst they can do?" Jack asked.

"Apart from blow up and take us and this entire cave with it?" River said.

"Yeah, apart from that."

"Why are you so desperate to get this thing?" Jenny said, then sighed, fidgeting with the map in her hand, "Maybe we should have brought dad. He might have known what these things are."

"Okay, when did the whole 'dad' thing come about?" Jack questioned, which she thought was just his attempt at changing the subject. He still didn't want to reveal his true motivations for being so desperate to get his hands on the Singularity.

"Sorry, but I really don't think my life or anything else about me is actually any of your business," she said coolly, leaning close to one of the 'lightbulbs.' River touched her arm and pulled her away from it.

"Shoot one of them," she said.

"What?"

"Shoot one."

"No!" Jenny protested, "They must be dangerous. If they weren't dangerous there would be no reason for them to be here." River better not try to take Josephine from her and shoot an orb herself.

"They might not be, one of them could just… have a key in it," Jack shrugged.

"We've got the key," Jenny held up the device in her hand, "This is another test. See? You should have taken me up on my suggestion to bring the girl who can walk through solid objects." River Song, of course, could walk through solid objects, providing she changed back to being a soft-light hologram rather than sticking with her favoured hard-light state. But that wouldn't help Jack and Jenny, and probably wouldn't help River, since Jenny needed to be there to unlock the vault as they went.

"Okay, so assuming the worse, that they're all bombs, there must be a way through or a way to disarm them." This deduction from Jack was useless though, because there was still no way through the floating minefield. Unless some of them were bombs and some weren't? Jenny couldn't tell by looking at them, and she didn't think using a sonic screwdriver down there was a good idea. It might accidentally detonate them all at once.

They didn't do anything, just looked around uselessly for a while. This would be more bearable if they got along better with each other, Jenny thought. Eventually, however, Jenny felt the map vibrating again, and they finally did receive another message.

River read the large projection aloud again: "'Time is on your side.' That's all it says."

"We have to wait," Jack said, "Typical sanctimonious 'patience is a virtue' crap." He sounded angry.

"It's fine," Jenny said, "It's right, time is on our side. We can wait."

"But it assumes we're Time Lords. How long would you make a Time Lord wait? An hour? A decade? A century? And there's no way back up. We wait or explode? That's the options?" he asked.

"It won't be for that long," River said, "There's no temporal shift in this vault. If you ask me, the Time Lords would assume that the only time one of them would be given the key to get in here would be if they decided they needed to use the Singularity. So the designers will have presumed they need to get it quickly."

"But what's 'quickly' to a bunch of ten-thousand year old aliens?" Jack persisted angrily.

"There's no point shouting," Jenny told him, "It's not going to help us."

"Well I'm sorry but there's a whole lot of people up there also trying to find this thing," Jack said.

"And?" River questioned, crossing her arms, "They can't get in. There's no way, it's impossible. Maybe you should tell us why you're so desperate to get it?"

"Maybe I should take a leaf out of her book and start saying it's nobody else's business," Jack snapped, jerking his head at Jenny when he talked. "Besides, it doesn't matter now. You've got no choice, the only way is forward."

"Well that's not true," said Jenny, "I've got my teleporter. We can get back to the TARDIS."

"Then let's go back to the TARDIS and bring it down here!"

"Because the Time Lords wouldn't make their top-secret weapons vault TARDIS-proof, obviously," River said sarcastically.

"Excuse me for looking for a way out!"

"We know what the way out is! We have to wait!" Jenny shouted back at him.

"I've been waiting for too long already!"

"For what!? To get this stupid thing!?" she demanded. He nearly told her then, he nearly told her the truth about what he was up to, she was sure of it. But he stopped himself, growled and turned around. Jenny scoffed at him and shook her head. She didn't even care what was the matter, but she was sure she would ace this test of patience. As long as Jack didn't go charging off and get them all blown up.

She took out her phone.

"Don't do that," River told her quickly, "We don't know how unstable these things are. A phone might make one of them go off."

"Not to worry," she muttered, showing the screen to River, "It won't even turn on." Jack and River both checked their own phones now, and got the same result.

"If phones don't work, what are the changes a teleporter will?" River questioned. So they really were stuck down there.

"These tests are stupid," Jack complained.

"It's not like they're much harder than being locked in a shack and tortured for a week," Jenny told him, "If you want me to knock your teeth out to ease the boredom, though, I'll do it gladly."

"Well you're in a bad mood."

"I'm fine," she said, "I just… I haven't seen my girlfriend for a few days." And then Jack made his next mistake of laughing at her sentiment rather cruelly.

"A few days? Think how I feel."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

"You two," River interrupted, but she went ignored, Jack pacing back and forwards and Jenny with her arms crossed, watching him.

"No, come on. I'm dying to hear what your issue is now, considering you're the one who dragged us all the way out here, and you wouldn't have stood a chance of getting this far without me."

"I said nothing. Nothing you care about. Nothing that's your business."

"I said-" River was cut off again.

"Don't have a go at me just because you haven't got any right to know anything about my life anymore!" Jack laughed again.

"Jen, I don't give a damn about your life, get your head out of-"

"Don't call me that or I'll-"

"What're you gonna-"

"Don't even make me-"

"SHUT. UP!" River yelled. Finally she got through to them, the both of them at odds.

"What!?" they demanded. She was glaring, but she pointed, and what they saw quelled the argument immediately. The floating orbs were moving out of the way of their own accord, making a narrow passageway. So they hadn't needed to wait for that long, after all.

"Just keep quiet and come with me, I'm sick of you already." And they did keep quiet, River pushing Jenny so that she was at the front, then Jack the River last of all. It wasn't going to last, though, not when an explosion ripped through the air somewhere above them. The trio froze mid-step as dust fell from the ceiling, and they looked up.

"Uh-oh," said Jenny.

"Must be Kasterborous," said Jack, "I guess the Time Lords didn't bank on people using high-grade explosives to break in here."

"And neither did we," said River. They talked in whispers now, and stopped to listen. Eventually, River began, "I don't think they've broken-" A second, much louder explosion rocked the whole room, "…through." More than dust fell from above now, a chunk of stone did, the entire chamber cracking. The strange orbs were too close together for it to just fall to the ground, it bounced off four or five, four or five which quickly changed their colour from gold to mauve.

"The universal colour for danger," Jack breathed. They were armed.

"Run. Run!" River shouted. Jenny only took two steps before the orbs detonated, and their detonation triggered all the ones around them to do the same thing, like sea mines.

"GET OUT, GET OUT!" Jack yelled, and then he pushed Jenny hard in the back and she fell forwards onto the stone again, dropping the map in the process and scrambling to retrieve it. When she closed her hand around it the cave-in caught up with them. She heard Jack scream and she rolled over onto her back and sat up to see what had happened through the dust.

He was crushed. The lower half of him, at least. Crushed beneath the rocks and groaning, not dead yet. Jenny stared in shock, not knowing what to do. A second later River emerged, soft-light, phasing through the debris.

"Eurgh," she said, looking at Jack, then turned to Jenny, "Pull him out, would you? Give his legs a chance to heal."

"Right – yeah," she acted when ordered, staggering to her feet and going to grab his arms and pull. He screamed more as she wrenched him out, more rubble collapsing in the process, but she managed to free him without having to hack his thighs to pieces with the machete. "You deserved that," she told him.

"Shut up. I saved your life," he gasped. Now they were going to have to wait even longer until he could walk again. He flashed her a grin. "Fangs owes me one now."