Perhaps the Doctor had gotten sidetracked in his search for Lana. But only once, with Agatha Christie, who was just as brilliant as he thought she'd be. After Donna's slept and the Doctor hasn't, he starts up the controls. "Right, so, she's going to be in the twenty-first century."
"That woman said Torchwood, didn't she? What is that?"
"Do you remember what happened at Canary Wharf, a few years back?" He says, keeping his tone light.
Donna shrugs. "Yeah, I heard about it. Missed it, obviously, you know me. You're saying that they—"
"Yeah. A British intelligence agency started by Queen Victoria after an encounter with an alien werewolf. Well, maybe it wasn't always quite so bad, but it went sideways after decades of human greed. I thought it had been wiped out after that battle."
He stares at the console screen for a moment too long and shakes himself out of it. "I suppose some of them must have escaped and started it up again." He pauses as an idea hits him. "Hold on."
The Doctor runs underneath the console and digs through the containers, ignoring Donna's irritated expression. She hates it when he doesn't explain things, but sometimes he doesn't have time.
"Where did I put it... Ha!" He pulls out an ancient flip phone and dials the only number in it as he takes the stairs back two at a time.
The phone rings twice. "Yeah?" A familiar voice on the other side says.
The Doctor grins widely. "Hello, Jack."
The TARDIS lands with a wheeze in Cardiff, and the Doctor steps into the sunlight, Donna behind him in a pink t-shirt and overalls. In front of them is a small cafe near the docks with a view of the water. "I remember this place. Good choice. I had a different face at the time, though. And we can refuel the TARDIS."
He strolls in. There are a few people sitting in various booths. "Who are we meeting?" Donna asks.
The Doctor opens his mouth just as a man sitting by the nearest table stands up, beaming. "Doctor, you rascal, come here."
He runs over and the Doctor holds out a hand to shake. "No kissing." He reminds him, feeling that dull ache of wrongness in his time senses that always comes with a walking, talking, humanoid fixed point in time.
Captain Jack Harkness shrugs. "Have it your way, then." He grabs the Doctor in a bone-cracking hug instead.
Donna clears her throat. "Doctor, aren't you going to introduce me?"
Jack releases the Doctor and turns. "Hello, I'm Captain Jack Harkness, and you are?" He grins that grin of his at Donna.
The Doctor groans. "Oh, don't start!"
"I'm just saying hello!"
Donna smiles. "I don't mind. Donna Noble—pleasure." She holds out a hand for him to shake. Jack kisses it and winks.
"Stop it!" The Doctor says. His annoyance is mostly affected at this point—Jack will always be Jack, after all. Jack rolls his eyes and saunters into a booth. The Doctor and Donna follow.
Jack leans across the table. "So, how've you been?"
"Oh, you know. The usual." The Doctor says vaguely—he's not here for a catch-up.
"Right, and where'd Martha end up? She finally realize she's too good for you?" He says it as a joke, but the Doctor takes too long to laugh.
Jack frowns. "She's alright, isn't she?" He gives the Doctor a look, his eyes showing how old he really is.
"She's fine." Donna says, either not seeing how the moment has turned heavy or ignoring it. "Married to someone lovely. She works at UNIT."
"Aw, if I knew she was looking for work I would have invited her to my group! She's worth ten of anyone from UNIT."
"That's actually what I was here about." The Doctor says, leaning forward. "Your little gang."
Jack's eyes narrow at the Doctor's sudden change in attitude. "What about it?"
"Still calling yourselves Torchwood?"
Jack sighs. "Yes, but we only kept the name. We're not up to the... things that they were. Look, I know that they're a sore subject for you, but—"
"It's not about that." The Doctor cuts him off before Jack can bring up topics that the Doctor tries to avoid. "Well, not really."
"We found this little girl." Donna puts in, glancing at him—maybe picking up on his tight tone. "In the Foster Centre in Canterbury—"
"What were you doing in Canterbury?"
"Besides the point. She'd been fed on by Seculmites for three years." The Doctor finishes.
Jack's eyebrows shoot up. "And she's still alive? How old?"
"Only eight." The Doctor says. "We came back to find out how she survived, and, well—"
"He mucked up the time." Donna continues. "Two years later and she'd been taken by a group called—"
"Torchwood." The Doctor says. Jack's face pales.
"So, I want you to look me in the eyes, Jack," He rests his arms on the table. "And tell me they've got the wrong Torchwood."
Jack straightens. "Doctor, you know I would never do something like that. If it's been done in my team, it's been without my knowledge or approval, I swear."
The Doctor breathes an inward sigh of relief. He hadn't really thought Jack would, but he's glad for the confirmation anyway. "Good, just had to check. Do you have any leads on anyone who might be calling themselves Torchwood? People who've left your group, maybe?"
Jack leans back, considering. "I don't know of anyone like that, but we have been investigating Tower Hamlets. There's a building there shipping in some suspicious technology that could be used for human experimentation."
Donna frowns. "Sounds like something to look into anyway, right Doctor?"
"Oh, sure." The Doctor agrees. "I've got ideas for other ways to narrow it down, too."
He waits for Donna to finish her lunch, and even tolerates Jack's flirting with them both. He catches himself falling into old habits, the friendly banter with Jack before Bad Wolf and the Master added painful memories.
Grief settles over him like a heavy blanket and he jumps up before it starts to linger."Right, well, should be off." Donna pauses in the middle of her sentence and gives him a concerned look—he swears that she can sense one of his moods almost before he can.
"Things to see, people to do, eh?" Jack says, grinning. "Me too."
The Doctor sighs. "That's not the saying."
"Oh, I'm pretty sure it is." Jack winks exaggeratedly.
The Doctor tries to shake hands with Jack, who instead pulls him into one of those back-slapping hugs that human males do sometimes. They walk to the TARDIS and he's about to go in, but he hesitates on the boundary of the door. "D'you... want to come with, Jack? Could always use you." He'd tolerate the pain in his time senses. He gets used to it after a while anyway, and for a moment he lets himself hope...
But Jack considers it, then shakes his head. "I've got a good thing going down here, Doc, but you can always call on me if you need anything, all right?"
"Likewise." The Doctor nods.
"Keep me posted on what you find." He smirks at Donna and kisses her cheek dramatically. "I'm always around for you as well, Donna."
Donna laughs. "You'd just be a rebound. My last fiancé turned out to be working for giant spiders, you know."
"Hey, the Racnoss know how to have a good time."
Donna shudders. "Consider me turned off, pretty boy." She ruins the effect slightly by winking, though—and the Doctor rolls his eyes.
"Okay, that's quite enough. Come on, Donna." They walk back to the TARDIS and the Doctor waves without turning around.
The TARDIS found Lana the first time, so it stands to reason that the TARDIS can find her again.
"We're going to try something kind of... temperamental." The Doctor walks down the stairs, swinging himself off one of those long root-looking yellow things that stretch up into the ceiling. He's certain they serve a better purpose than the circle white things from his first face.
Donna follows him cautiously.
"Telepathic circuits. The TARDIS is literally going to track our memories of Lana." He explains.
He tells her what to do, and after a few exclamations of disgust, they both concentrate on the girl. The Doctor focuses on how she felt, her psychic presence, and asks the TARDIS to take them where they need to be.
The ship shudders around them, and the familiar wheezing starts. "Keep focusing!" The Doctor shouts. "Don't let anything distract you."
There's a thud as the TARDIS materializes. "Right." They pull their hands out of the telepathic tubes. "Let's see if it worked."
He swings the doors open.
A teenage girl is kneeling in an alleyway, brown hair falling over her face, clutching her wrists, her face pulled tight in a silent rictus of pain. Tears are streaming down her face, but she doesn't make any sound. Her eyes widen at the sight of them.
Donna moves toward her slowly. "Are you okay?"
The girl throws herself backward like a feral dog from a master who's beaten it. "Go—go away!"
"We're not going to hurt you." Donna says. The Doctor moves closer and the girl yells, clutching her head.
"I—I don't want to go back, I'm not going back, don't make me—!" She lurches forward, moving as if pulled by strings, and the Doctor starts to think that this isn't simple insanity.
"Where are you running from?" He asks her, moving closer but telegraphing his movements so as to not startle her.
She eyes him in a hard way that seems familiar. "You wouldn't believe me." Her gaze flicks to the TARDIS behind him. "Did that just—"
"Yeah." Donna says. "Doctor, I think—"
She's cut off by a hastily stifled yelp from the girl, who brings her wrists up to her face. The Doctor sees a momentary flash of metal. In a flash of suspicion, his hands dart out to catch her wrists.
She freezes, quivering.
"What are these?" He demands. He pulls out his psychic screwdriver, absently still holding on to her with one hand, when Donna yanks them off.
"Doctor, look at her, you can't just touch her like that!"
He looks at the girl, whose eyes are glassy like she's somewhere else. "And besides," Donna says, a little gentler. "I think the better question is what her name is."
She bends down to the girl's level on the cement. "Can you tell us your name?"
She blinks. "My name is Lana."
"That's impossible." The Doctor says immediately, wincing in sympathy as the teenager flinches at another surge of pain. "That's—I would have sensed her psychic signature immediately, there's nothing here."
"Are you sure?" Donna asks.
The Doctor reaches out to touch her then thinks better of it. "I'm going to touch you again, alright?" He warns her, then lays a light hand on her shoulder.
There's nothing, no psychic impressions. In fact, it's almost odd, the vacuum around her. Even when he touches Donna there's a slight impression of emotions, a stray thought, anything. But this girl...
He looks down at the bracers on her wrist, rubbed raw and red inside her skin.
"They're psychic inhibitors." Lana breathes, still frozen like she's afraid one wrong movement will move his hand. "I was fitted with them when I was nine. I can break through them, sometimes..."
The Doctor feels a sudden, unsubtle pulse in his mind. It's there and gone in a moment, but it leaves enough of a signature that he's certain. He'd felt Lana's touch only days ago, and a person's psychic signature never changes at its core. But there's none of the subtlety and finesse he'd felt from her as a child, just a short sharp punch, almost like something was... breaking through.
He breathes out a curse.
Lana's staring at him with wide eyes. "It's you." She looks at Donna. "You look—exactly the same!" She bends over, face ashen grey.
"It's those braces." The Doctor realizes. "They're hurting you."
"Apparently they fitted a fail-safe in case I ever escaped." She says through gritted teeth. "I can't take them off."
"Well, that's a quick fix." The Doctor says briskly, pointing his sonic. "I'll just change this setting and—"
"No!" She shouts. "If you take them off it'll sever my radial nerve. I'll be dead in seconds."
Something hard and cold settles in his stomach. "How do we shut them down?"
She shakes her head. "I don't know, I had to get out before they rebooted the power, but maybe if I'd had a few more minutes on their servers—" She bends double again.
"Right." The Doctor flips his screwdriver and stows it in his jacket. "There's something I can do about the pain, at least. I'll be right back."
He runs back into the TARDIS and down a hallway, trusting his ship to lead him to what he's looking for. The Doctor turns and there's the medical wing. He pulls open the supply cupboard, tosses some things out until he finds a faintly glowing blue liquid. He hesitates for a moment, remembering where it came from, but shakes his head and pours it into a syringe.
He's back outside in a flash. Donna looks up from her crouched position next to the girl and scowls at the needle. "What's that?"
"This is a numbing agent to telepathy specifically." He says shortly. "There was a time when the er, the enemies of my people would use a method of psychic torture. We used this—" he shakes the bottle. "—to numb them until we could fix the damage. It'll dull her pain for a short time. It's likely they've turned her abilities around on her, making her pain sensors think there's something wrong."
"That's a pretty big needle." Donna turns to Lana. "You good with this?"
"Give me that." Lana says, holding out her hand.
The Doctor hesitates again. "I'm not sure if there'll be any side effects to humans—"
"It'll make the pain stop?"
"Yeah."
"Then I don't care. I've had bigger needles stuck in me. Where do I put it in?"
He points to a spot just above her elbow, sighing. He's about to put it in when she flinches so hard her whole body moves, and she snatches it from him to do it herself. She stabs the syringe in the correct spot with barely any hesitation, not flinching as the liquid drains.
Donna shudders, as Lana breathes deeply. The Doctor watches her closely, but there doesn't seem to be any adverse effects. She opens her eyes, sharp gratitude in them. "It's gone." She whispers. "Thank you."
The Doctor stares at the empty bottle on the concrete and its swirling Gallifreyan letters.
"Of course." Donna says. She nudges him a little. "You all right?"
He takes a hard breath. "Yeah, 'course. Now, I'm thinking that the next order of business is to check up a bit on Torchwood. I'm sure they missed me."
Lana stands up, looking shaky but clearly trying to seem confident. "What's that?" she asks, looking at the TARDIS. "How'd it just appear here?"
"That's my ship." The Doctor says proudly. "Come on in." He goes in first, then Donna, flashing Lana a smile. He waits for the usual protests that it's not big enough, but Lana just narrows her eyes and steps in gingerly.
Her eyes go huge as she looks around. She lays a hand on one of the spires, then ducks her head out to do a quite look outside. The Doctor waits for her verdict.
Lana knocks her hand against the spire. "Are these things growing?"
Donna snickers, then turns it into a cough in her hand when the Doctor eyes her. "That's a new one." He mutters and looks around. "Do you know... I don't really know. I don't think so."
Donna elbows him. "Can I say it? Can I say the thing?"
He sighs. "Knock yourself out."
"This, Lana, is called the TARDIS." Donna says grandly. "Time And Relative Dimension In Space."
The girl takes a few steps up the stairs, peers into one of the monitors. Her eyes turn a bit faraway. "There was a place like this." She says slowly. "Where I grew up... where they pulled on me."
The Doctor snaps his fingers and the door shuts. "That'll be the Seculmites' ship, yeah. Mine's much better than theirs, though."
Her eyes clear, and she looks around as the Doctor pulls the levers. He's honestly surprised she went with him so readily, when she's clearly got trust issues. He wonders if it's the lingering memory of when they met, years ago for her. It's clearly made an impact.
"Where's their building?" He asks.
"London."
"Right, yes, I know, anything more specific?"
She shrugs. "I never went outside. I don't really know anything, but it's northeast of the airport."
"You were heading to the airport?" Donna asks.
"Trying to get away from here." she says vaguely. The Doctor is sure she had a specific destination in mind but doesn't yet trust them enough to tell them.
She describes what she saw when she left, any landmarks that could help. She remembers a surprising amount, speaking to an almost eidetic memory. Then again, it was her first glimpse of the outside world since she was eight, he supposes it makes sense that it's seared into her brain.
Still, though. An almost fully successful escape attempt from a place like that, all on her own. And she didn't succumb to the brainwashing they were likely trying to put her through. It's all very impressive.
While they're disappearing and materializing, the Doctor grabs his phone to make some calls. They arrive directly in front of the building—the TARDIS must have been helping. Donna opens the doors and Lana practically runs out but stops short when she sees where they are.
The Doctor follows them, quietly shutting the door behind. Lana's hands are shaking, her face white. "Why are we here?" She says. "I was trying to get away. They're going to find me again and I'll be right back where I was and it's going to be even worse and I'll never get out, they'll use the Distributor until I die—"
The Doctor strides up to her and looks her in the eyes, grabbing her shoulders. "Hey, hey, hey, look at me. Can you look at me, Lana?"
Her chest heaves but she tries to do what he says, her eyes occasionally darting to the side to look incredulously at the hands on her shoulders.
"You're never going to be in there again, you hear me?" The Doctor says. "I won't let it happen. Can you breathe with me?"
Her brown eyes are wild, but she starts matching his breathing.
"Do you want these things off?"
"More than anything." She breathes.
"Then we're going to get them off." He says matter-of-factly. "And you're going to have your freedom."
"But—"
"Do you trust me?" He asks. She inhales and searches him over, then closes her eyes.
"I don't know."
There's a momentary sinking feeling, but he brushes it off. "That's okay. You're going to by the end of this." He lets go of her shoulders and goes to stand level with Donna, the cold London breeze ruffling his hair and coat.
"Right." He rubs his hands together. "How do we feel about blowing it up?"