DAY 6,574

Metal Gear Solid

Jack

"How about another cup of tea for the big, bad wolf?" Jack offered. Rose Tyler was sitting in one of the armchairs in Mickey and Martha's living room, the house empty aside from the two of them. Smith and Jones themselves had whooshed away nearly two hours ago, as soon as Jack had given away his vortex manipulator. Everyone else had stuck around for a while, waiting, seeing if they returned. But they hadn't. Even Ten and Donna had left to go and use the TARDIS to do something substantial; suffice it to say, none of them were obeying the strict instructions not to get involved in Matilda's disappearance. Everybody was trying to do something, even if he and Rose were the only ones still in the house. Esther was off searching the ends of the Earth, stopping by to drink about a litre of water every half-hour to replenish her energy.

"Yeah, go on then," Rose sighed, picking up her empty mug and holding it out to Jack. She was trying to commune with the time vortex to pluck out Matilda's location, the issue being that the time vortex was not very forthcoming with information. It often told Rose things she would need to know at one point or another but mining it for something specific was enormously difficult. In the last two hours she had suffered no fewer than four nosebleeds from the effort, the floor around her surrounded by bloody tissues.

"You're gonna hurt yourself," he warned her again as he rinsed her mug.

"I can't just do nothing. I have all the information in the universe at my fingertips, I just have to access it."

"Like you did the first time? When you committed genocide and brought me back to life permanently?"

"That's different, I can control it now."

"It's hurting you."

"I heal as well, you know," she pointed out.

"Within reason – don't let it burn you up, Rose."

"She's my goddaughter. Our goddaughter-"

"And as your god-husband, I'm just looking out for you as well. We've got other methods in play – even the Gutkeleds are doing… well, I don't know what they're doing, some kinda blood ritual."

"A blood ritual?"

"Believe you me, I'm not thrilled about the idea either. If only the Eleventh Doctor hadn't thrown the damn Singularity into the Eye of Harmony – that's the kind of thing we could really use right now."

"It has all the powers of the time vortex, just like me. If I can just get it to cooperate… not having those vampires try to rescue her. I don't trust them. Well, I suppose Other Clara's not so bad, but I wouldn't trust Sally to even make me a coffee without trying to kill me. Besides – how could they rescue anybody when they have to be invited in everywhere?"

"It's a fair cop," said Jack, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter.

"Look at you, being domestic, making tea."

"Ha, ha."

"Where's Ianto?"

"At home. Trying to feel useful, looking through UNIT's archives. Hasn't found anything yet."

"Esther must have searched the whole planet by now," Rose sighed, leaning back in the sofa as the kettle steadily boiled behind Jack. "I don't understand how they could have taken her like that, with none of us… it's like she just stopped existing."

"Maybe Mickey and Martha have found something. They went to talk to the Shadow, he knows all kinds of stuff," Jack continued to comfort Rose. Like he himself didn't want to be doing everything in his power to rescue Mattie as well – though he couldn't very well let her kill herself in the process. What good would that do? None. And besides, his first idea would have been to take the vortex manipulator and interrogate the Shadow as well, or maybe try and work out where the Master was hiding those days. Mickey and Martha had stolen his vortex manipulator, and he'd opted to keep an eye on Rose rather than slide his way onto one of the TARDISes. Good that he did, too, watching her as she closed her eyes again to try and extract information out of the tight lips of the universe like a rotten tooth.

He finished making Rose her fresh cup of tea and tapped her on the shoulder when he handed it over so that she would open her eyes.

"Thanks," she said quietly. "Sorry for snapping. It's just – I'm so worried about her, you know?"

"Yeah."

"And they were right, I should have done something." She sniffed and drank her tea, a bead of blood underneath her nose. Jack handed out yet another tissue, especially when she froze and made a weird face.

"…Rose? Are you gonna sneeze? That tea's hot and you'll get nose-blood in it." She said nothing. "Rose? Okay, how about I just take that…" he lifted the mug carefully out of her hands, then she gasped deeply and did an almighty sneeze into her hands, covering them in blood and spit. Jack was glad he took the tea away.

"I know where she is," she announced.

"Where who is?"

"Matilda! Why are my hands covered in blood?"

"Because you just sneezed into them and you have another nosebleed, here," he forced her to take the tissue, "What did the time vortex tell you?"

"It doesn't tell me things – how many times do I have to explain it? I just know. And right now I know that Matilda is behind the moon."

"What!? You're kidding me! Is it the Nazis?"

"Excuse me?"

"The moon Nazis. Have they taken her? Classic Nazis…"

"No, not – is that a thing? Are you making it up?" He began to talk but she cut him off, "Actually, I don't care. She's been taken by Daleks."

"Oh, thank god."

"Thank god?"

"I thought the moon Nazis would have her. Daleks is a relief. We know how to fight Daleks. I mean, this is 2031, they've been on the dark side of the moon for ninety years, who knows what kinds of technology they could have?"

"I literally don't care – we have to go," she stood up and dashed over to the sink so that she could wash her hands properly before they embarked upon their rescue mission. Jack picked his coat up from where it had been draped over the back of one of the chairs. "Ship full of Daleks? And just Mickey and Martha against them? Not to mention, what do Daleks want with Mattie?"

"And how did they take her right from under our noses?" Jack added while Rose scrubbed the snot from her palms. He drew his gun from the inside of his coat to check if it was loaded.

"What good's that gonna do against a Dalek?" she questioned him.

"It's just a little security. Not all of us can punch through solid Dalekanium like it's made of wet tissue paper." Rose rolled her eyes and shook her hands, wiping them dry on her jeans rather than using a tea towel.

"Don't think bullets can get through Dalekanium either."

"Well… are you gonna teleport us or not? That's our little girl out there in space with a bunch of one-eyed salt shakers." Rose rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm.

Jack still wasn't used to Rose Tyler's particular brand of teleportation, having not been subjected to it very often, but it was a damn-sight more pleasant than the vortex manipulator he'd been wearing on his wrist for thousands of years. It was more like time and space moved around them rather than them moving through time and space, which was always quite violent because time generally resisted things moving through it. Mickey and Martha's house disintegrated into the same golden particles which curled off Rose's skin like embers in a fire, and then reformed just as quickly into the bronze and sickeningly familiar interior of a Dalek ship. Polished floors, bronze walls, they were dropped into the middle of an empty, quiet corridor.

"Right then," Rose began, putting her hands on her hips. Then she looked expectantly at Jack, "What next?"

"Finding a map would be good so we know the layout. Probably don't need to go hunt for weapons since you're the Bad Wolf and I can't die. I suppose the main question is whether we want them to know we're here or not?"

"Might make them get desperate and do something to Mattie if they know I'm coming after them. Stupid things are more scared of me than the Doctor."

"With good reason; the Doctor can't wipe entire species from reality with a thought. What do you think? Left or right?"

"Probably…" Rose paused to think, then frowned. "Can you hear that?" He strained his ears, and picked up on high-pitched, electronic noises. He drew out his gun again. "Would you put that thing away?"

"That's what she said."

"Unbelievable."

"Sounds like Daleks," he said, not putting the gun away, "Sounds like a whole bunch of Daleks. Sounds like a whole bunch of Daleks heading right this way…" They were wailing, screaming something – though Daleks did have a habit of screaming everything – and coming right towards Jack and Rose.

They rounded the corner, flashing, shrieking, going as fast as their little wheels would carry them.

"ESCAPE!"

"ESCAPE!"

"ESCAAAAAPE!"

Jack and Rose backed against the opposite walls to get out of the way of the Daleks, who didn't seem remotely interested in drying to exterminate them. In fact, with their appalling peripheral vision, Jack would say they didn't even notice them at all. He pressed himself against the wall, Rose copying, as half a dozen Daleks rushed past and went off down the other end of the corridor, disappearing.

"Were they saying 'escape'?" he asked Rose, stepping out into the open again, perplexed, still holding up his revolver.

"It did sound like that. What could scare a Dalek that much? Apart from me. Or the Doctor."

"I, uh… think we're about to find out…"

A monster rounded the corner. A gigantic mech, a body at least twice the size of an ordinary Dalek suspended on six huge, metal legs. It crawled towards them, eyestalk waving chaotically as well as what he recognised as a very powerful photon cannon situated centrally on its body, rather than the typical exterminator and plunger. And it was fast, a terrifying, robotic Dalek-spider, hardly even fitting in the corridor with them.

"Oh, shit."

"Sounds about right," nodded Jack, "I think we should, uh?"

"Escape?"

"Yep."

They took off. He'd run from a lot of alien threats in his time, but few things scared him more than a gigantic Dalek with spider's legs. It was pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel and made him glad he didn't need to sleep. If he did he would certainly never sleep again. It twisted and turned, crawling on the walls, the ceiling, clinging to everything, chasing them in a circle across every available surface. Rose was right about his gun being absolutely useless; he fired a handful of bullets but they ricocheted off the body dangerously.

"HURRY UP!" Rose yelled at him, "IT'S RIGHT BEHIND US!"

"WHY ISN'T IT SHOOTING!?"

"I DON'T KNOW! BUT I DON'T WANT TO STOP TO ASK IT!" The photon cannon wasn't even active. If he managed to find himself a photon cannon he'd blow that thing right out of the water, blast it into a million pieces. Why was a Dalek attacking other Daleks though, he wondered? Why chase them and not kill them? And didn't Daleks love themselves so much that destroying each other was basically a war crime?

"TURN LEFT, TURN LEFT!" They veered left and saw, to their horror, the troupe of fleeing Daleks still shrieking their intention to escape. "NOT LEFT, NOT LEFT!" They turned back, faced with the Dalek spider almost on them, then changed course completely and headed to the right, Rose knocking into Jack and almost slamming him to the floor because she didn't know her own strength. Unfortunately, the Dalek troupe knew their own ship a lot better than Jack and Rose did, because they found themselves at a dead end. And the spider-mech didn't go for the others, who were running further and further away, it came for he and Rose.

"This isn't good!"

"Oh, really!? 'Cos I thought it was bloody brilliant! I love being chased!" Rose yelled at him.

He ran right up to the wall with no alternative, no other doors built deceptively into the walls, no hidden passages, no conveniently-situated air vents. And what would Daleks do if they got their hands on him? They could drain his blood for their own nefarious purposes, just like what had happened with the Blessing only a million times worse if used to immortalise the scourge of the universe.

"Some Bad Wolf energy would be really helpful right about now, Rose," Jack said, getting desperate.

"If it gets any closer I'll rip that cannon right off it," Rose promised him, though she looked about as scared as the Daleks in the face of this killing machine. But it didn't come any closer, it stopped moving completely. The eyestalk waved up and down and side to side ridiculously, but the lights above didn't flash and it didn't make a sound. "…Maybe it's just malfunctioned…?"

"Go and do something about it before it works out how to shoot us with that cannon," Jack hissed at her, "I don't know if you've ever been vaporised into a tiny pile of ash and had to regrow your entire body, but I have, and I'm really not in the mood to do that today."

"Alright then, Dalek-thing," Rose began, attempting to sound like she knew what she was doing, waving a fist like an old man shooing kids off his lawn, "I'm the Bad Wolf and the wife of the Doctor, and you're in for a world of pain, so-"

"-the speaker on!" it said suddenly, making Jack and Rose both jump. "What? Oh, bloody – Rose!"

"Martha!?" they both exclaimed.

"Yes! Sorry! It's a nightmare trying to get this thing to work."

"Oh my god," Rose said, horror-struck, "Martha, have they…? They've turned you into one of them! Just like they did Oswin! They'll pay for this, I promise-"

"No, no. We're just inside it. It was empty," said a second voice, Mickey Smith.

"Looks, uh, kinda cramped in there," Jack commented, "Don't suppose either of you are feeling hard objects in all the wrong places?"

"Shut up," Rose elbowed him with such force he slammed into the wall.

"Stop doing that!"

"What are you doing here?" Martha asked.

"Trying to find Matilda, obviously," said Rose, ignoring Jack completely, "Took me this long to get her whereabouts from the time vortex, we literally came here just a few minutes ago. What about you two? How'd you get here?"

"Talked to the Shadow, the Shadow told us where to find the Master, interrogated her at gunpoint until she got bored," Martha explained.

"She has something to do with this?" Jack asked, "Shoulda known…"

"No," Mickey began, "She said that she was on the run from this group of Skaro Degradations hiding behind the moon who have been looking for a Time Lord for months. Said she kept trying to warn Thirteen about it but Thirteen ignores her and never calls her back."

"What's a 'Degradation'?" Rose asked.

"Bad news," Jack explained, "Mutant Daleks, hell-bent on military prowess and developing superweapons. They're a lot angrier and crazier than the regular kind who are just plain evil. These ones are twisted. Hence the big mech here. Can you imagine how dangerous this thing would be if they put a Dalek in it? So dangerous the other Daleks ran away when it went rogue."

"Not if they can't even make it shoot," quipped Rose.

"I'm working on it," Mickey argued, "Alien telepathic controls are tricky."

"Have you found a map in there?" Jack asked. Silence. "You know that all their technology connects to one big, hive-mind mainframe? So you should be able to access some kind of floorplan, work out where Mattie is?"

"Doesn't Rose know?" Martha asked.

"I got us to the ship, I'm not a miracle worker."

"You're the god of the entire universe."

"Yeah, well the universe doesn't want to play today. It took a lot of effort to get here and I just want to help you get Mattie back. We both do. And you've definitely got more of a chance with Jack and I here."

"The Daleks said they need her alive for the 'harvest'," Mickey said, "We don't know what that means, but it's definitely bad."

"They probably want her regenerations, or the regeneration energy. Work out a way to mine it or replicate it for themselves. Pretty basic Dalek scheme, trying to make themselves as durable as the Time Lords are," shrugged Jack.

"Not artron energy?" Rose asked.

"They could get that from any rogue time traveller, wouldn't need Mattie."

"Like when you woke up that Dalek and made it heal, or when I accidentally activated the Genesis Ark," Mickey addressed Rose from within the mech.

"Exactly," Jack nodded, "The Daleks will know we're coming after them by this point, so those ones who ran away have probably gone to stand their ground near the last hope for Dalek regenerations. Meaning we should follow them. And you guys should really work out how to use the big photon cannon."

"Speaking of cannons," Mickey began, then fell quiet. The front compartment on the mech opened up slowly to reveal them both crammed right in a frankly tiny pod. Martha lowered herself down carefully, not risking the big drop now she was getting on a bit in years (which Rose still often forgot), holding an enormous particle gun.

"Here you go," Martha held it out to Jack, "Have a proper gun."

"Holy…" Jack breathed, taking it from her, "This is one powerful piece of equipment, rips things to atoms and scatters them never to reform. Brutal. I got shot with one once. Don't you need it?"

"I can make things explode with my mind," Martha reminded him, "I really don't need a compensator. Now, can we please save my daughter? I can't imagine the hell she's going through."