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It was a beautiful sunny day, but unfortunately the heat worsened the dreadful carbon monoxide poisoning in the stratosphere. The yellow sanded beaches glowed, the sun dappled the blue ocean, but unfortunately it was a Saturday and everywhere was swarming with mostly naked humans… The Doctor felt that he might have well gone to Brighton. What was the point of reclining on a beach if your head would be instantly crowded with pointless chatter and dreadful human obsessions? He spun away from the beach swinging his umbrella and headed for Little Venice.Left over hippies were giving out wilting flowers to bored clones. A man was yelling about Leviticus and Jesus’ salvation. He should have gone to Paris… At last, an inviting pavement - or sidewalk - café. Well, he suspected it could well be a little more that a café, but nothing ventured nothing gained.He sat down on the plastic moulded chair sticky in the summer sun. The Coca Cola red umbrella was hopelessly at the wrong angle and the July heat warmed the back of the Doctor’s neck. He tipped his hat back and put his feet up on the garish orange chair opposite. The colour scheme was more than a little eclectic to say the least. He closed his eyes and basked in the warmth, almost shutting out the buzz of the flies, the hum of the traffic in the distance, the aggressive Southern rant of the preacher, the murmur of people walking by.He was alone outside all but for a man in his seventies or eighties with a straggling grey beard and dark zoot suit, which had certainly seen better days. The man had been staring through the glass front at the young customers and the even younger waiters - mostly dressed in very little, tight jeans and cut-offs, 501s, white T-shirts and crisp white shirts, red bandannas around necks or hanging from pockets. The elderly human had turned his unrelenting gaze on the Doctor as soon as he’d sat down. A penetrating, expressionless gaze. His hands were hidden from view, in his lap under the table.With a sudden movement that suggested suppressed anger the Doctor pulled his legs and feet off the chair and away from the man turning his own chair so as his back was to the man’s table. He then removed his hat and wiped his forehead with his own red handkerchief. His wished he couldn’t sometimes overhear thoughts and emotions so vividly. He never could purposefully when he had desperate need, only when he wasn’t concentrating, when he was emptying his mind.Now studiously ignoring the elderly creep the Doctor put his feet up on the third, the yellow, plastic chair and closed his eyes again. He let the sounds of Little Venice wash over him trying to feel calm. He was on holiday. He should try to relax. Instead his mind drifted to Benny and Jason. He really felt Jason was perfect for her. Such as compatible couple, unlike… “Hi. What can I get you?”The Doctor’s eyes snapped open shining a brilliant blue as he abruptly sat up properly. “Tea,” he spat.“Iced?”“What?” He frowned. Perhaps he’d been dozing as nothing was making sense. The boy was looking at him the same way as the elderly bearded man. “I bet you’re English, right?”“No, not exactly…”“Scottish? Yeah, now I can tell.” The waiter’s gaze softened as he smiled a genuine as opposed to his professional smile.“Actually, I’m from Gallifrey.” The Doctor shifted uncomfortably in the purple chair, suddenly feeling small and lost in its American proportions.“That Ireland?”“No, it’s a planet in the stellar constellation of Kasterborous, near the galactic centre.” The Doctor stared nervously, daring the waiter to believe him, not sure if he wanted to be believed - accepted - or to scare the boy away.“Well, okay, if you say so,” he smiled down indulgently at the Doctor. “We still don’t do hot tea, the only Brits we get here ain’t looking for tea, honey.”“Oh?” Only a Californian would take the fact of is alienness - or plain craziness - at face value and ignore it. He didn’t particularly like being called honey, but he smiled at the waiter. He was tall, well built without being too muscled, with close-cropped bleached blond hair and a deep tan. Besides, it took a rare American to differentiate between English, Scottish, Irish and British. He realised he was just staring into the waiter’s dark brown puppy dog eyes. Bit like the Brigadier’s really.“So?” the waiter smiled. “No tea, okay.” He was smiling not so much that he thought his customer was a crazy Brit pretending to be an alien but rather that he was someone interesting…“What would you recommend?” The Doctor beamed up at him, fluttering his eyelashes in an offered apology for his earlier rudeness.The waiter gave a lazy, dirty smile. “Depends.”“On what?” The Doctor lowered his gaze, asking softly.“On whether you are an alien, honey. I could get you a menu, but you might not be able to read English.”The Doctor looked up again, through his eyelashes and smirked. “Oh, I can -” he checked himself. “So, what happens if I can’t?”“Then,” said the waiter, pulling a menu from the pocket of his very tiny apron, “I’ll sit here,” he sat down, spreading two long, lean naked legs out in front of him, “and go through it with you.”“That’s very kind of you.”“No problem. My name’s Andy Laninski.”“Oh?” He gave a nervous smile. “And I’m the Doctor,” he offered a hand. Andy took it in both of his and kissed the proffered hand.“I have visited Earth once or twice, I do know one or two social conventions,” protested the Doctor, withdrawing his hand hurriedly, the ghost feel of soft lips and prickly stubble still on his palm and wrist. Andy smiled. “You’re nuts, but you have incredible eyes. So, you never asked what the Brits come here looking for.” “Oh,” said the Doctor slowly, glancing down. He repeated it a little more softly as one sneakered foot slid up the inside of his legs. He instinctively pushed it away and pressed his legs close together. He bit his lip. “They come looking for a little gay fun,” explained Andy to his own question. “Yes,” replied the Doctor quietly, refusing to look up. “Didn’t you?” Andy gently put two fingers to the Doctor’s chin and tipped his head up. The Doctor brushed the fingers away and bit his lip again. He looked back down. “You know what?” Andy stared into those violet eyes. “I believe you.” “You’re humouring me,” the Doctor mumbled, now realising he wanted to be believed. He needed to be believed if he was to do this right. “I’m not a hustler, honey, I wait tables to make money. I’m an honest boy, Doctor, a soon to be doctor myself.” The Doctor looked up sharply. Andy laughed triumphantly. “Aha! You weren’t expecting that, right? I’m a post-grad student over at UCSF, a physics major specialising in parapsychology. You’re no crazy, so, ergo, you’re what you say you are. But,” Andy leant forward and touched the Doctor’s thigh dangerously close to his groin, “you’re still in this part of San Francisco for the same reason as the rest of male tourists.” The Doctor’s eyes widened, perhaps in denial and maybe surprise. “Aren’t you?” The Doctor hung his head. Andy stood up. “I’ll get you a cappuccino. On the house.” Andy returned minus apron, menu, pad and pen, plus a rucksack similar to that annoying one of Ace’s when she first joined him. The cut of Andy’s jeans were as tight - tighter - than the Doctor had anticipated. Not that he was one to wonder about such things… God, there was a lot packed into that denim… Andy had two cappuccinos, and a pastry for himself. “Finished for the day. Now, I really should get to the library, but it’s such a fine day and the company’s intriguing…” Panicked the Doctor made to stand up. This was a terrible mistake. He’d go back to the TARDIS and fetch Chris and Roz, take them to the theatre, check them into a hotel, something… “Be calm Doctor. I told you, I’m no hustler, and I don’t do instant sex, and you, my sweet alien, sure are scared. Man, are you jumpy.” Andy gently squeezed the Doctor’s hand. “If this is some anthropological field study, hadn’t you better get into the spirit of it a bit more?” This time the Doctor laughed genuinely. The thought of any alien on a field trip to the cruising grounds of nineteen eighties San Francisco! He tried to relax and pulled the chair close to the table again. “So, what do ya wanna do? Beach? Museums? I’d show you my thesis but it’ll be nursery stuff to you.” “How do you know?” Andy shrugged. “Confession time Doctor?” “What?” “I’ve met another Time Lord.” The Doctor’s eyes widened in shock. “Broke into the parapysch lab, stole some equipment. I tried to stop him but he had a gun - a weird fucking thing at that! Looked like a sex toy but it miniaturised the security guy…” Andy broke off and shuddered. “Took me hostage. FBI got involved… He got want he wanted, in the end.” Without realising it, the Doctor had put a hand over Andy’s, listening in silent, horrified sympathy. He felt sick, but he wasn’t sure what sickened him, the Master taking hostages and killing people or just the mere mention of him. There was certainly nothing new in the news of the Master’s behaviour. Up to his old tricks, as usual. It was just that his hearts seemed to still do back-flips whenever Koschei’s new name was mentioned, almost 800 years after he’d left him. Except he just felt sick and empty. He wasn’t in the turmoil he’d been when he’d stormed out of the TARDIS a few hours ago. He waited for Andy to continue, comfortable with the intimacy now it had a valid reason and then put his other hand to Andy’s wrist. “Then why do you trust me?” “Man, that bastard likes the sound of his own voice!” “Did he hurt you?” the Doctor asked softly. Andy looked deep into those troubled blue eyes. “No, certainly not the way you mean.” The Doctor bit his lip again and looked away. “You’ve heard of me?” “Forty hours it was, him and me in the parapysch lab, the FBI outside, that sick little doll corpse on the floor… enough to drive anyone crazy.” Andy snorted, losing all camp charm, becoming hard, bitter. “Unless you’re totally crazy already.” “It’s not my fault!” the Doctor blurted out. “No honey, it’s not. Look at you, little cutie. The guy’s a demon. If he were anyone human I’d say to do exactly what you did.” “What?” The Doctor was now completely confused. What on Earth had the Master said? Why was he talking about him at all? He was so bewildered he completely missed what he’d been called. “Do we have to talk about this Doctor? It was three years ago.” “What did he tell you?” “About you? Bits and pieces. He kept expecting you to show up, aid the FBI, rescue me, foil his plans yet somehow rescue him at the same time. He babbled on about that a lot so I tried to get him to open up, talk about you, since he was obviously so obsessed by you. I guess Earth owes you a few thanks. Did you know he’s played with Earth’s destiny merely to attract your attention?” “It’s not my fault,” repeated the Doctor, panicked “No, I never said it was. You left him, your choice, you’re not responsible. Just tell me one thing, how do you guys have children? Adoption? Test-tube stuff? What?” “It’s called a genetic loom.” “So what, both your DNA and a donor ovum?” “No, no. The loom breaks down its own meiosis from the mitosis. It provides its own plasma and nutrients.” “Okay. Fine. Are you really here looking for fun, or is something weird going on?” The Doctor put his head in his hands and sighed. “No…” “You lonely?” prompted Andy seductively. “Oh?” the Doctor buried his face in his hands again, thinking of how alone he’d felt since he’d said goodbye to Benny, since Chris had kissed Roz... “Yes…” He didn’t want to show weakness, he panicked as Andy touched his hair, his neck. “I mean no…” He felt a hand on his back, gently caressing. “Don’t…” “So you figured you’d go find a quick fuck to make you feel better, and now it’s not such a good idea?” Andy said this with a practised ease that alarmed and reassured the Doctor in the same breath. The Doctor shook his head, still hiding his face. Andy parted the Doctor’s hands and gently held his face. “Look honey, it’s okay. So, I fancied you and then you said you were Gallifreyan I was intrigued, and when you said you were the Doctor I thought… Hell! I don’t know what I thought… I guess we human faggots must seem pretty amoral to you guys considering you’re allowed to marry and have kids. Hell, that makes me green with envy! What exactly are you scared of? If I take you out, show you around, you can still say no… Oh! Look Doctor, like I said, I’m no hustler, and I’m no rapist. No means no means no. Did that bastard..?” “No, not the Master. It’s the one thing he hasn’t done.” “Okay then. Do ya wanna go with me?” “Where?” “How about getting a picnic and riding out of the city?” “Sounds, um..?” the Doctor chewed his lip furiously while staring at his hands. Andy cupped his chin and made him look up. “No means no, remember? However, whenever, wherever, okay?” Andy leapt to his feet. “Coming or not? If not I may as well get back to the library.” The Doctor looked again at his hands, then at Andy, then at the table. He readjusted his tie, fiddled with his hat then flipped it back on and looked at Andy again. He looked hopelessly small and lost in indecision. He leant forward to retrieve his umbrella from the ground and played the red question-mark handle across his lips and teeth while looking at Andy’s strong, lean legs, the tightly packed groin in denim cut-offs, his bare, muscled arms… Andy was smiling down at him, brown eyes friendly and warm. Of all the people, places, times, how in Rassilon’s name had he come across someone who had heard of him? He shouldn’t go. He mustn’t. Andy held out a hand. He mustn’t go, he really shouldn’t. He took Andy’s hand and allowed himself to be helped up. He trotted in Andy’s wake behind the café to a huge Harley Davison. The Doctor hesitated and pulled away from Andy, taking a step back and pulling his jacket about him. Andy smiled and took his wrists, pulling him across the tiny parking lot to a scrub of shaded grass behind the huge black and chrome motorbike. The Doctor wanted to ask if it was Andy’s, but the word died in his throat. His mouth was dry. He instinctively licked his lips, feeling nervous and a little bewildered. Mind quiet and still in indecision he allowed Andy to grab his arms, pull him upwards, kiss him roughly, fondle his buttocks outside then inside his linen trousers… No voice or impulse in his mind, bigger than he could ever be driving him on to care for the whole universe. At once just alone with himself, Time could do without her champion, he was no longer aware of her, or even cared… Andy’s hands slid further inside his white trousers, firmly caressing his thighs before sliding back up to his backside, pulling him awkwardly up on to his toes, squeezing aggressively… No means no means no.Andy pulled him apart, pushed in fingers, one, then two, then three. Still the Doctor’s mind was calm, quiet, still? . Pain? Pleasure? Can’t work this out. Oh! Pleasure! Can’t stand this… Body aroused, gasping, moaning, squirming in strong hands… No means no… Say no. Kissing back, hands moving downwards, unfastening jeans, hands enclosing the rock hardness, hips moving back to meet those invading fingers… No. Say no. Fingers pulled out, a growl in frustration. He’s allowing himself to be pulled further into the shadows. Hat gone, jacket pushed off. No tie, shirt unbuttoned… Say no. He’s falling to his knees, taking that huge erection in his mouth… Human muskiness, saltiness, clean, circumcised… Throbbing, deep in his mouth… No. But yet aware of Andy producing a tube of K-Y jelly, of Andy laughing, putting a hand to his forehead to stop his sucking. He’s releasing Andy, turning over, bending over, offering himself, pushing down trousers himself. He feels Andy kneeling behind him… No means no means no? Say no Doctor… Andy’s fingers, this time slippery with K-Y. Good. Feels good. Squirm to meet him, want more, want it all! Mind still, no memories, no trauma, no… Yes! Oh yes. Andy stretching him, filling him. Feels good. Move to meet him as Andy’s hands grip his hips, taking control, doing it at Andy’s pace… Mind is no longer still, seeking Andy’s, searching, needing the psychic contact as the physical, needing… Don’t want to be alone. Andy’s hand sliding from his hip, encircling his own hardness, matching rhythm. His breathing is laboured… Andy’s mind as strong as his body, won’t be invaded, laughing in physical pleasure and dominance, too strong for Koschei to… Don’t think of the Master… Andy’s mind an explosion of vivid reds, no personal contact… Good, don’t want or need close connections, don’t need to be owned, just need this, the physical… Andy moving inside, too much, not enough… Andy sits up, pulling the Doctor on to his lap, pushing in up to the hilt as he caresses the smaller body, running hands over tummy, the almost smooth chest, slight shoulders, lean neck, throat, his mouth, pushing in fingers… Back to the chest to feel both heartbeats pounding madly. He laughs out aloud in the Doctor’s ear, echoing the mental laugh in his mind, then pushes him back to his knees, increasing the pace, pulling out to the head, thrusting sharply back in to the hilt, and again, and again, hearing those moans turn to cries… He’s digging his fingers into those slender alien hips, sharply. No Doctor, don’t move, where do you think you’re going? Don’t say no, just squeal like that some more… No means no after all. A promise is a promise. Push into him harder, faster. God he’s so tight. Sweet little thing, he’s so loving it even as it hurts… Push him off his knees, lay flat on top of him, grind him in the grass, hear those moans of pleasure, for mercy… No means no? Safe with no, but don’t say no… Andy’s so heavy now, body weight increasing the intensity of the warm, throbbing inside filling so deep. Too close, everything is too close now… He hated this loss of control more than his need to give control away… Humans didn’t seem too feel this intensity… Going to lose control - Explosion of light! Loss of psychic control, reaching for Andy but he’s merely human… Andy was a few seconds behind the Doctor. He lay on top, heavy and awkward, panting heavily for breath, pressing his forehead into the top of the Doctor’s head, human sweat falling like tears on to the Time Lord’s face. “That was good,” he breathed at last in the Doctor’s ear. Roz is my friend, thought the Doctor, oblivious to Andy’s purrs of satisfaction. Chris is my friend. They’re companions! I am happy for them, I am…The feel of Andy’s arms about him, the weight of him was a strange echo of Chris holding him tight as he had fluttered into a half-consciousness. When he’d first recovered from the hypothermia Bernice had been there. He was safe with Benny, but Chris had felt so reassuringly masculine for a second he’d allowed himself to hope… Then Chris had leaned across him to put his mouth to Roz’s…Andy shifted, murmuring something sexual in his ear, licking his ear, then very gently began to pull out of him. The Doctor let out of little whimper, annoyed at the physical he’d so desperately wanted. Andy stroked his hair, misunderstanding him and stayed where he was. Benny had refused to understand why he’d burnt that house down. So, he’d been tortured and experimented upon at the hands of C19, but it hadn’t been that that had made him burn with an uncontrollable almost human rage… He was happy for Roz and Chris, he was… Chris is too young for her.Oh? And not for you Doctor? Hypocrite! Face it you’re a lonely old queen who’s merely attracted to Chris’ sheer masculinity. You are, as Benny and Ace have it, a tart. What would Chris see in you?“You’re beautiful,” Andy whispered in his ear, nibbling the lobe then running his tongue down the Doctor’s neck. The Doctor sighed and arched his neck, twisting slightly against Andy’s bulk. He wondered if Andy was serious. He must have snorted in disbelief because Andy murmured, “Beautiful, exotic, you smell wonderful…”The Doctor had a flash of memory of Chris holding him tightly, his face buried in his hair. When was that? Most certainly before Roz. But it’s not that! It’s the opposite. For Chris I’m a god, and you don’t fuck gods, do you? Well, not if you have a choice in the matter… What if Roz is second best? What if..? Momentarily panic-struck, the Doctor realised these gentle post-coital caresses were human lovemaking. He had wondered how he’d react if Andy had asked for money, now he realised he was more worried that he wouldn’t. And he wanted Chris… didn’t he..?Pathetic, lonely old queen, clutching at straws. All you really want, my dear Theta, is Koschei.Andy put his mouth to the Doctor’s temple and suddenly he was connected, could see the Master’s sneering expression, facing Andy down across the lab, feel Andy’s desperate fight against the hypnosis… There is a black psychic scar running through this boy’s soul put there by the Master. He thinks I can heal that. How can I? My scar runs the deepest. “What are you thinking Doctor?” Andy whispered in his ear. He sounded hurt and rejected. “Oh nothing much,” the Doctor made his voice light. “Are you still taking me on a picnic?” He tried to echo Andy’s hurt. It was better to stay a while, on holiday, away from the TARDIS, from them… Andy laughed. “You sweet thing! You think I fuck and run. Of course, if you want to.” With that he carefully withdrew and stood up, fastening his fly. He looked down at the small, slight form lying face down on the grass, legs splayed, white linen trousers still attached to one ankle, blue silk shirt pushed up his back to his shoulder blades, two tone brogues still on his feet, ass slightly opened, glistening with K-Y and his come. So beautiful… Andy felt himself begin to harden again at the sight of it. “Better get dressed quick, Doctor, or I’ll have to have you again.” “Oh.” The Doctor rolled over and struggled into his trousers. He tipped his head back and realised this scrub of grass in the corner of the parking lot was overlooked. They’d been watched? Oh well, he’d once told Benny that Time Lords had no shame. Funny lie to remember. It took him several minutes to collect tie, jacket, hat and umbrella and to reorganise himself. Andy watched from his Harley with detached amusement. “You wear far too many clothes Doctor,” he said at one point. Finally, umbrella hanging from top pocket, the Doctor walked up to the bike. “Oh, so she’s finally ready! If you don’t mind, I’d like to go home first and shower, then we’ll go where you like. But it is getting late, so maybe we’ll picnic tomorrow?” Andy leapt on the bike and kicked it in gear. He reved the engine noisily. Deciding it wasn’t worth the effort or pain to mount the bike properly, the Doctor perched behind Andy sidesaddle, and with one hand firmly on his fedora, he slipped his other arm about Andy’s waist. “You are so cute,” shouted Andy over the roar of the unhealthy engine, “I know exactly why the Master’s so obsessed by you.” The Doctor pretended he couldn’t hear. “It’s all a bit seedy,” apologised Andy as the bike engine quietened down. They were indeed in a seedy back alley, full of bins, rubbish and stray cats. He climbed off his Harley and looked at the Doctor, prim and neat, still perched sidesaddle. How had he stayed on, one hand on his hat, the other clutching his stupid umbrella? Still, if he were going to play the part of some medieval queen… well, perhaps he was entitled to, after all he was a lord from somewhere that allowed gay marriages and this guy was definitely the wife! Andy shuddered, thinking about those forty hours trapped with the Master. Battered and abused… Andy put his hands to the Doctor’s waist and attempted to lift him to his feet. The Doctor smiled coyly and looked up, expecting to be kissed. Suddenly there was a roar of engines and three bikes came tearing down the alley, skidding to a halt around them. Tensing, Andy span round, holding the Doctor behind him.
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Standing behind Andy the Doctor held his breath, waiting, as the three bikes came to a stop in a semicircle around the two of them. He could feel Andy’s contained anger and controlled fear through the fingertips tightly gripping his arms. He knew this had been too good to be true! Men climbed off bikes, removed helmets and strode leisurely toward them. “Who’s your new boyfriend then?” “Fuck off Ian,” replied Andy calmly. “You owe me.” This was both hateful and menacing, with no indication as to whether it was money or other that was owed. “Say’s who?” sneered Andy tartly, releasing the Doctor but checking the impulse to make a fist. The Doctor could sense a huge build up of hostility, resentment and fear in Andy that was almost tangible. He began to suspect he’d misread the young man, there was a violence bubbling underneath the camp, laid back, surface like a volcano about to erupt. “Pay up.” Ian was furious. This was personal. Andy seemed to soften. “I… I can’t. Not ’til next Friday.” Peering from behind Andy’s arm the Doctor couldn’t help notice a strong family resemblance. His brother? “No money, no more deliveries. And the bike back.” “Come on Ian. That’s not fair.” Andy took a step towards Ian. Ian shrugged. “Pay up then.” “I can’t…” “So, no more shit.” “Ian, man, I need that acid…” What was going on here? The Doctor had been rifling through his pockets for appropriate currency but stopped. “Andy?” he demanded, disapproval forcing his voice icy cold. Five pairs of eyes turned their attention to the Doctor. “How much do you owe? For what? ‘Acid’? As in lysergic acid diethylamide, the hallicigen?” Andy looked at the Doctor quizzically before speaking dismissively. “It’s none of your business Doctor.” He was terribly aware of those cold eyes on him, of the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. So was his brother, who was rubbing his neck looking bewildered. The others continued to stare, puzzled and aggressive at this sudden twist. They were here to get Ian’s money, not debate his brother’s habit. “Isn’t it?” The eyes and voice were still as quiet and authoritative. Suddenly Andy knew his easy little pick was not so sweet and endearing, as timid and gentle as the first impression. This was a sane, cold, rational version of the Master, hiding his arrogance and intellect behind a facade. Which of course, he was. Not human. “Is this LSD for you? I think not. What parapsychological experiments are you running for you thesis?” “Shut your boyfriend up!” snapped Ian, knowing far more than Andy was aware, including the quality and nature of the drugs, and who was supplying him. He felt threatened but was fed up with his little brother taking him for granted. He needed face in front of his thugs. “I need that money now!” “Oh, pay your brother,” exploded the Doctor, tired with the whole thing and realising his TARDIS was over forty miles away. Ian and Andy turned to stare at him. Nobody had mentioned their shared kinship. With a look from Ian one of the heavies stepped forward and grabbed the Doctor, twisting his arm tightly behind his back. “You were told to shut it!” “Garth!” protested Andy, realising he didn’t care that the Doctor was inhuman but did care that he was caught in his mess. “I’m pissed off with your delays,” Ian was saying. “You’ve had enough chances. Do you think because you’re my brother you can get away with this forever?” “Yes,” Andy said with mock sweetness. “Pay up!” snarled his brother, balling fists. “Fuck. Your. Self.” Ian nodded to the other two, so far detached and silent, who each grabbed an arm. Andy tried to shrug them off but was winded by his brother’s fist in his solar plexus. The Doctor watched helpless and horrified while Andy was beaten by his elder brother. He struggled painfully against Garth’s grip, but he seemed to find it amusing, checking the Doctor’s desperate attempt at a nerve pinch by pinioning his other arm. Finally Ian finished ‘teaching his brother a lesson’ and his companions let Andy drop to the ground semi-conscious and bleeding. They turned their attention to the slight, out spoken figure held by Garth. Ian pulled his head back by his hair. The fedora fell to the floor. Ian kicked it. “Steady on. That’s the only white fedora in all of time and space!” Ian looked over his head to Garth and said in the same languid, camp tones as his sibling, “She’s not scared. Why isn’t she scared?” “Didn’t like the acid?” sneered one of his trained apes. “A moralising faggot,” said the other, revealing more intellect than could have been guessed at. “Don’t make me sick!” He spat. “What is your brother doing with the LSD?” asked the Doctor, voice merely politely curious. “Why aren’t you scared?” demanded Ian, now more than a little afraid himself of this strange little man in the white linen suit and the almost British accent. The Doctor flicked his gaze briefly to Andy and the resumed his steady, even look on Ian. “Why? Should I be? I don’t owe you money.” “You don’t approve of acid, so maybe you’ll squeal to the cops.” “Will I? Really? I don’t have the time! This is a brief visit to your fine city and time.” The bikers were confused by this frustrated, patronising arrogance, as if they were merely troublesome children annoying him. Ian was so confused and unnerved he slapped the Doctor’s face. “Scared now?” A look of polite interested concern. It scared the hell out Ian. He punched the Doctor in the stomach. Now a little anger in those eyes, but still no fear. “Look, we can beat you up like your boyfriend,” hissed Garth in his ear. “Would that stop me going to the police? If, that is, I were going to the police, which I’m not.” “Or we could rape you,” continued Garth, breathing in his ear. At last Ian got the response he wanted. He smiled, seeing a tiny flicker of fear in those cold - frighteningly inhuman - grey eyes. “Great idea Garth. Flip a coin. Heads I go first.” “Wait a minute…” “Now she’s scared.” “I am not a she!” snapped the Doctor suddenly, sounding petulant and confusing his tormentors once more. “Look, I’ve only been on the planet four hours, I don’t intend to stay. Why would the police listen to me? Americans never do!” he spat out contemptuously. “They treat me like I’m an ‘illegal alien’ without ever believing I’m the genuine article, a real alien…” he tailed off, fixing Ian with an intense stare. He realised why hypnosis wasn’t working, he was babbling with desperation. How badly hurt was Andy? He hadn’t stirred. Was he just lying low? Would he continue to do so if they raped him? “I don’t even know if I’d want to go to the police, I first need to know what Andy’s project is…” He tailed away a second time and twisted his neck, trying to catch Garth’s gaze as he realised who was the gang leader here. “Do you believe me?” Garth nodded slowly and shook his head, as if to clear the confusion. Too weird. He looked at Ian, who shrugged. “What’s your name?” asked Ian. “The Doctor.” “That’s not a name!” spat Garth. “I’m sorry, but I beg to differ.” “All right,” said Ian with a wry grin of understanding, “it’s not a human name. Did Andy tell you what happened to him?” “Did he tell you?” “Obviously.” “Then yes.” “So, you’re this Master’s Doctor?” “Absolutely not!” spat out the Doctor with considerable feeling. “Thought so. Look after Andy.” Ian then bent down to check his brother. There was a whispered interchange, but the Doctor couldn’t hear it all. He caught an apology and Andy inquiring as to whether he - the Doctor - had been under any real threat. Then their voices dropped even lower. As he stood up Ian said coldly, “You know what to do.” “Take my bike as collateral. Tomorrow. I’ll have the money tomorrow.” “Make sure you do, man.” He turned to glance at the Doctor. “Let him go.” With that Garth, Ian and the heavies left, Ian on his brother’s Harley. Andy staggered to his feet and stumbled a few paces after his precious bike. He swayed and would have fallen if the Doctor hadn’t intervened, offering support. “Shit, my bike. Shit!” “Just tell which building, we’ll talk later,” soothed the Doctor, checking for broken bones as he spoke. When Andy opened his eyes he realised he was in his own apartment. He had no recollection of getting there. Concerned blue eyes came into focus, staring down on him. He was aware of a moist cloth being dabbed tenderly on his chin. He tried to sit up, but a firm, strong, hand pushed him back down on the couch with gentle insistence. He hurt. He hurt a lot. Oh yeah. He tried to sit up again, this time pushing the Doctor’s hand away. He absently noticed the blood soaked cloth in the Doctor’s hand, the red water in the bowl beside them. That and the fact the Doctor had his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up. Andy idly noted the way the blue silk set of the pale skin. “Wha - Where?” he tried. He put his hands to his mouth. Man, it hurt like hell! “They’ve gone now,” the Doctor reassured. “You’re safe.” Andy grabbed the Doctor’s wrist, noticing the purple swelling beside his left eye. “Are you okay?” “Absolutely,” beamed the Doctor. “How are you feeling? There’s nothing broken but you took an awful battering.” “Yeah, like when we were kids.” “How much do you owe him?” “About $5000.” The Doctor rolled his eyes and let out a whistle through his teeth. “A considerable amount for one lowly graduate student.” “Can I tell you later?” Andy reached up and touched the bruise, then ran his fingers lightly over the Doctor’s face and lips. “But you will tell me?” insisted the Doctor. “I promise,” murmured Andy, leaning forward to nuzzle the Doctor’s neck. He began to unbutton his shirt, unfasten the tie... “You worry me...” “Oh yeah!” Andy laughed softly, then lay them down and rolled them over, hand sliding between them to push down the Doctor’s trousers. “So, I will explain. It’s boring really...” He pushed his tongue in the Doctor’s mouth, silencing any further questions. As he did so he kicked off the linen trousers and pushed the Doctor’s legs apart with his knees. Squirming, the Doctor broke the kiss and turned his face away. “Is it licensed? Your research?” He broke off, sighing, “Stop it!” “Licensed and funded Doctor, I promise you. Do you really want me to stop?” “No... yes... Oh!” Andy sat up and grabbed the Doctor’s ankles, splitting his legs apart and pulling them up. “You know, you really are a paradox,” Andy said, unlacing one brogue. He paused, running a finger along the length of the considerable heel. He smiled momentarily, the frowned in seriousness. “Do you really care about my research? Do you really object to my use of LSD? I’m not researching on living human beings you know.” He pulled off shoe and sock and examined the Doctor’s foot thoroughly, as if expecting something other than the usual five toes. “You really have cute little feet,” he murmured lazily and then began to suck the big toe. The Doctor tried to escape but Andy tightened his grip on his ankle. “But - but - Oh! Stop that!” Andy did so, but turned his attention to the other shoe. “I’m researching the connections between latent human ESP, schizophrenia, and mind altered states induced by hallicigins.” He ran his tongue across the other foot, his hand sliding down the leg to inner thigh, crotch, sliding fingers and thumb up the shaft, over to coat with pre cum, then down, slipping off, then around, underneath, inside... The Doctor moaned, “No.” “Mean it?” Andy frowned, withdrawing his thumb. The Doctor shook his head, “No...” “Then don’t tease.” He grabbed the Doctor’s hips and pulled him closer, taking him in one sudden, long thrust up to the hilt, all the while staring into those alien eyes. The pupils widened considerable, the blue irises hidden. Andy withdrew and did it again, watching those beautiful eyes widen, the fuzzy eyebrows raise, the lips part into a deep moan. “Stop it... don’t...” But as he whispered the words his hands reached to Andy’s shoulders, trying to pull him down to kiss. “Stop this? When. You. Like. It.” Andy punctuated each word with a deep thrust. “Kiss me,” he sighed, pulling at Andy’s arms. “Yes,” purred Andy. “You like this. Don’t you?” “Kiss me.” “You want it -” “Please-” “- like this -” “- kiss -” “Don’t you?” “- me?” “No. I don’t think so.” Abruptly Andy pulled away and walked out of the living room. The Doctor sat up and hugged his knees, thinking about pride and dignity for all of two seconds before he leapt up and followed Andy. “Wait!” He found Andy in the shower. Pulling off his shirt he stepped inside. “I’m sorry.” “You should trust me. It was dangerous, antagonising my brother. We grew up in down town LA, he’s a dealer, a pimp, the usual hard, macho stuff, you know? I studied damn’ hard to get out. Dad was a scientist, you see, so it should have been easy...” He trailed off and looked into those deep blue eyes, so sympathetic and attentive. He sighed. “Dad was a refugee, came from Germany after the war, but he’s Russian, went to Germany to escape Stalin, only to face Hitler...” He shuddered. “No excuse. He’s a washed up alcoholic living in his glorious past. He killed Mom...” The Doctor pressed himself close, leaning his face into Andy’s chest, wrapping his arms around his waist. “Not literally, of course, that requires action. No, she got worn down with the poverty, the worry, the abuse...” He looked down and stroked the Doctor’s now wet hair. “You cold honey?” “Lower body temperature,” the Doctor murmured. “I’ll turn the heat up. Hell, do my bruises some good. My sister’s in a mental hospital, talks to ghosts, always has. They say she’s schizophrenic, she says the spirits are there...” “I don’t believe in ghosts.” “Nor do I, but I believe she’s sane.” “Interesting.” “Is it? Can you explain who she’s talking to?” The Doctor shrugged. “Not without meeting her. She may be a time sensitive, or talking to non-corporeal energy creatures, communicating with an alien probe...” he shrugged again. “Perhaps she really is mentally ill. I’m sorry.” “Are you? Yeah, I suspect you are. Your heart’s too big.” Andy laughed as he caressed the Doctor’s chest. “Or do I mean your hearts are too big! You have two, I can feel both beat. Hell, you’re cold baby. You weren’t this cold earlier on.” “I’m tired,” muttered the Doctor, barely audible. “Not too tired?” grinned Andy, pulling him on to tiptoe to kiss him deeply. The Doctor squirmed again and arched his back as Andy’s fingers once more slipped inside, pushing their arousals tightly together. The Doctor clung to Andy’s arms, digging in nails as he slid on the wet porcelain. He was too small now, too small... He felt himself fall, Andy release and catch him. “I’ve got you,” Andy reassured gently, “I’ve got you...” A voice from the past. Who was it? He’d had far too many lovers recently. No. Not lovers. Be honest. What would be an honest word? Client or victim? Offering himself time and time again to manipulate whatever powers that he need. Interesting how Andy denied he was a hustler. Andy did it for money, he did it for power, for control, for justice... Oh! Of course he did! But who was the voice in his mind? It was a lover’s voice though, smooth and deceptive as honey. He looked up at Andy and smiled, then sank to his knees, once more taking that impressive erection in his mouth, at last taking control. Here he knew from far too much experience he excelled. Again Andy stopped him by whispering endearances, swept him up in his arms, carried him like a bride to the bedroom, lay them down... Andy took his time, covering his entire body with kisses and tiny nibbles, licking off shower water, so gentle and tender... Would Chris be this tender? Was he like this for Roz? Did Chris know how he felt? Oh! He opened his eyes. Andy was no longer on top of him, but standing by the bed, going through a drawer. The Doctor rolled over and pulled a pillow underneath his stomach, all the while watching Andy through his eyelashes. He closed his eyes again as he felt Andy kneel between his legs, pushing his legs further apart with his knees on his thighs... Felt his fingers slip in, cold and slippery, then the tip, then the full hardness stretching him open, hot, powerful, strong... Felt Andy’s weight on his back, his legs pushed apart still further, hands on his buttocks, pulling apart even further, allowing deeper and deeper... Oh! Hands caress neck, throat, arms, hands, even as the powerful thrusts push him into the pillow, the bedding, the mattress... So vulnerable, such lack of control... His hair stroked, his face pressed into the pillow as the other hand squeezes his wrist then strays from his body to the edge of the bed, collects something... A sting on the back of his hand, a sharp scratch, a pinprick of pain... Oh! Open your eyes Doctor, open your eyes! Can’t. So heavy. Can’t Stay conscious...
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Roz felt so much better for her long sleep. She stretched luxuriously in the huge double bed the TARDIS appeared to have thoughtfully provided in their new room. She wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to give up her own space. Not just yet. She had felt so tired… tired, old, jaded, bitter. Now, after her sleep she felt a warm glow of something. Contentment, perhaps? If so, she welcomed it cautiously. She wondered where Chris was. Then, just as idly she wondered where the Doctor was. She looked for her wristcomp lying next to Chris’ beside the bed. The Doctor should be back by now. She yawned and stretched again. Oh well… The Doctor let out a long, painful wail. His head ached, his throat was so dry, he was so heavy and muzzy. With effort he opened his eyes. Andy’s bedroom came into a blurred focus. Trying to move he found his arms were constricted, pulled tightly together above his head. He rolled his eyes upwards. Tied to the headboard. He tried to kick his feet, but likewise, bound together attached to a bed leg. He really was stretched out painfully on his front. He bit his lip. “Welcome to the land of the living Doctor.” This wasn’t Andy. Panicked, the Doctor tried to locate the source of the voice in his very restricted field of vision. He recognised that voice, he was sure. He tried desperately to shake his dizziness and focus his mind. He knew he was under threat, if only he could grasp the significance... Wasn’t there a smell? Something he hated about Roz because..? “Well?” The bed rocked as someone sat beside him, behind him. He unconsciously flinched. “The same type as the Master. A Time Lord.” A hand leisurely caressed his chest, taking its time to check each heartbeat. The Doctor shuddered. “Two hearts,” the familiar voice confirmed. Who was it? If only he could remember! It sent a chill down his spine, whoever it was. “Seven thousand, as we agreed.” Andy’s voice. Cold. Oh Andy... A painful, stinging, humiliating slap to his backside. “Six thousand. You’ve been playing with the merchandise.” “$500 a time? My price has gone up! That will please Glitz, if no-one else...” Sometimes his ability for ill placed flippancy even surprised himself. His idiocy placed him in a dream, but the pain of the rope around his wrists and ankles confirmed it for the reality it was. “We agreed seven thousand,” Andy spoke as if he hadn’t. “Don’t try my patience.” The voice was cold, menacing. What was that memory? It had a disgusting smell. “Fetch his clothes and think yourself lucky we pay you at all Laninski.” Then the sound of a lighter being struck, the smell of gasoline, the nicotine and tar. The cold water shock of memory was like a hard slap. All residual muzziness vanished as the memory rocked him with terror and ghost-pain. It was all the Doctor could do to prevent himself howling out with the injustice of it to Time Herself. The fact he had some normal Gallifreyan cultural residue of faith and custom surprised the Doctor. He clung to the revelation like a drowning man. It gave little comfort. The Cigarette Smoking Man, or Cancer Man as Ace had – would – dub him. That evil Consortium agent. Of course they existed in 1981. The most evil, most dangerous... the bastard who had - who will - hurt Turlough. Who had had the Brigadier beaten so badly... No. He should be honest his reaction was selfish. This was the man who had violated him, hurt and abused him in the most cruel, evil... Just as he had also arranged for him to have already been used and hurt before he’d - no, will be… Oh God was he in trouble now. The Consortium must be licensing Andy’s research... Wait! His father was a Nazi scientist who came to the States? Did Andy say that? Was his sister..? No, he was confusing Andy with Dana’s friend. He felt so heavy it was hurting to think. Would the Consortium arrange to have Andy’s sister committed just to get Andy motivated to such parapyschological research? Probably, the Doctor decided, it seemed to be the way they worked. Maybe some good could come from this situation, maybe 1981 was early enough for him to uncover Samantha’s tracks? But if he found her should he tell Mulder? The Doctor felt so dizzy and sick. He shuddered again. That clammy hand on his back again, stroking creepily... cigarette smoke in his face... Oh no! He was so vulnerable now, weak from sedation, tied up... why was there was something about this incarnation that..? And he knew from previous experience that this man would… Don’t think of that! Hands moved down his back, fingers cupping buttock, caressing the crevice... Don’t scream, I won’t scream... The Doctor bit his lip so hard it bled. He heard Andy come backing to the room and throw his clothes down in a disordered pile. “Search the pockets.” The Doctor watched helplessly as a pathetic heap was made of his belongings, as Andy stared, mystified and confused by the eclectic collection of toys, sweets, and pieces of alien technology. He propped up two small stuffed bears, one blue the other yellow, before examining the sonic screwdriver curiously, as if it shouldn’t be there, and passed it to Mulder’s aptly named Cancer Man. “Is this a weapon?” The Doctor shook his head, he was concentrating too hard on not crying to speak. He stared hopelessly at Jasper and Stewart - as if stuffed bears could give moral support! “Did you rape him?” Andy was asked as the man’s hands were still idly playing on the Doctor. Andy snorted derisively. “Miss helium legs there! Do me a favour.” Cancer Man grabbed the Doctor’s hair and twisted his head back painfully. The Doctor grimaced, afraid he would lose his inner fight and start to cry. “Did he?” “No.” But you did! He mentally shouted, anger drowning the fear. “You’re not exactly what we expect of an extra-terrestrial.” “Of course not, Tzun and Zygons have no sense of fun!” he bit out, trying desperately to take back some control. “Whereas you do Time Lord? What about the Master? Is the chaos he caused fun?” The Doctor snorted. “The Master always had a very individual sense of fun.” He began to wonder what was negotiated for Andy’s release. He didn’t think Andy knew the entire story. Andy was obviously deciding the same thing, watching the two men on his bed with a horrified curiosity. He was playing uncertainly with a 1938 Matchbox Morris Oxford. “You’re not a child Time Lord are you Doctor?” The Doctor’s gaze met his and held it. He realised Andy was regretting his decision. Nevertheless he was still angry and not prepared to forgive. Not just yet. “I’m over a thousand years old!” he spat out. Andy picked up the yo-yo. “That doesn’t really answer the question.” The agent then slid his hand around to the Doctor’s groin and squeezed the scrotum. Hard. The Doctor screamed. “Seems biologically adult to me. Leave us. My associates will pay you the agreed $7000. Minus damages. Then stay out of our way.” Andy glared for a few moments as if deciding on something to say, then stalked to the door. The Doctor realised there was something he desperately needed to know. “Andrew?” “Yes Doctor?” His voice was now heavy with guilt. “What was in that needle?” “A straight forward anaesthetic.” “How long was I out?” “Twenty-one hours Doctor. I’m sorry. I never expected that.” “I told you to go,” snapped Andy’s employer. After Andy left he stood up and strode around the bed, coming into the Doctor’s field of vision. “Afraid of me?” “No,” the Doctor lied. “Good. We need your help.” “Then can’t you -” he was silenced as the muzzle of a pistol was pushed into his mouth. “I’m going to untie you. You’re going to get dressed. No desperate escape attempts or I will shoot you. Understand?” The Doctor nodded resentfully. When she stepped out of the shower Roz noticed another door to the bathroom. She was sure it hadn’t been there when she stepped in a few moments ago. Cautiously, she opened it to find the swimming pool. How - er thoughtful of the TARDIS. Chris was splashing about, playing with some inflatable toys designed to represent certain cetacean mammals long since extinct in their century. Roz decided since this was a holiday and they were in San Francisco, it might just be interesting to see some real whales and dolphins. Chris was leisurely backstroking toward her. “Hiya! Coming in?” “No, I don’t think so.” She took a step back, convinced Chris would make a grab for her ankle. “I thought we could explore.” She nodded to the toys. “Swim with some real dolphins.” “Yeah!” Chris pulled himself out of the water. Sometimes he was like a big, overgrown kid. He swept her up in his strong arms and kissed her. “I love you.” “Put me down.” Roz tried to sound stern, not to giggle. Jaded Adjudicators did not giggle. “Hey,” said Chris, suddenly serious. “Have you seen the Doctor?” “Like this?” Roz raised an eyebrow. She was naked. “I came here through our bathroom.” “Neat. Can we go back that way?” Roz shrugged and walked back the way she’d come. Chris followed, still serious. “He’s been gone over 24 hours, you know?” “He’s probably somewhere. Didn’t you get it? He needed to be alone. If we want to explore we’ll have to find him.” Chris made a face. “If he is back maybe we’re in flight, huh?” However, Chris didn’t feel that the Doctor was back. They paused to listen to the TARDIS’ constant background drone. It didn’t sound as if they were traversing the Vortex, but it didn’t sound quite right either. They were now in Roz’s bedroom. The TARDIS was being suspiciously co-operative about the arrangement of rooms. “I’ll go look for him,” said Chris, suddenly anxious. “Wait!” “For what Roz?” Chris snapped, his uneasiness growing. Roz couldn’t share Chris’ worry, not yet. It was too soon. “In just a towel?” she teased, smiling up at her squire. Chris looked down at himself and grinned a false smile for his beloved. He felt suddenly sick. “The Doctor won’t mind.” “I’m sure the Doctor won’t mind at all you walking in on him naked,” Roz said tartly, “But I would. I’d mind very much indeed Chris.” Chris looked at Roz, puzzled. Okay, so she thought he was worrying over nothing, but why this? “What?” he laughed uneasily. “You’re jealous of the Doctor!” He stared at her, worrying they were going to have their first tiff. As if there hadn’t been enough of that with Benny and Jason. “He’s a Time Lord!” Chris snorted. He smiled reassuringly, “And anyway…” “And anyway,” interrupted Roz, her back to him, dressing hurriedly, “he likes you Chris. He likes you a lot. I suspect he always has.” “Huh? The Doctor?” Chris stared blankly, the Time Lord’s possible disappearance forgotten. A dawning realisation covered his face. “Me?” he almost squeaked. Roz hadn’t planned to tell Chris what she’d guessed - after all, it was only a guess. Angry at herself and now infected by Chris’ worry she stalked out to look for the Doctor. In the corridor she listened again to the TARDIS’ hum. It sounded… Well, it sounded anxious. He was incredibly relieved to be dressed, even if the aptly named Cancer Man sat watching him with eyes as cold as deep space. The Doctor had really believed it was his turn to suffer as Turlough had. Or, if he were more honest with himself, afraid he would suffer as he already had in 1996. As if he hadn’t suffered that particular form of assault enough this incarnation. He was terrified one more time would send him mad, but some still point in his soul knew that he’d survive it again, if he had to. But he’d still rather not have to find out. He eyed the forlorn pile of his belonging wistfully. He looked toward this ‘Cancer Man’, who was watching him through a cloud of cigarette fumes with a predator’s gaze. “May I?” he asked softly, indicating his toys, sweets and battered 1950s Penguin edition of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. Of course, the sonic screwdriver, the temporal interference scanner and the ‘borrowed’ metabolic scanner built into the Sony CD Walkman that was really the Counsellor’s were already in the possession of one of the other Consortium agents. “Very well, but no tricks.” “How?” demanded the Doctor, wishing he knew of one that would get him out of a windowless room with one guarded door nineteen stories up. He crammed his belongings back into his pockets, giving the bears a surreptitious squeeze each first, and flipped on his hat. He turned to his captor, beaming. “I’m ready. Shall we go?” He was roughly grabbed by his arm and dragged him out of the bedroom. In the living room were the two Consortium associates, heavies in dark suits and shades. “Ah, here come the Men in Black...” The Doctor’s idiotic prattle was interrupted by a sharp slap. “Silence. Don’t speak until you’re spoken to.” “Really. Not at all?” “I said silence!” He turned to his men. “Cuff him, and if he speaks, gag him.” The Doctor’s confused, worried gaze flicked from the Cigarette Smoking Man, to his heavies, to Andy standing miserable and more confused by the window, then back again to his capturer. He bit his lip yet again so as not to cry out as his arms were pulled painfully behind his back. “Right. Let’s go. Not a word Laninski.” Yet another tug on his upper arm pulled him towards the door. The Doctor gave another glance to Andy. “There’s no need to hurt him!” Andy cried out, finding his voice. “You never used to be like this.” “Andrew.” Cancer Man, or Uncle John as Andy had called him as a child, turned with a soft an expression as he could manage. He lit another cigarette. “I do what I must. As your Father did. As you will.” He turned back round. “Take him.” “Wait!” Now by the door, four pairs of eyes stared at him, three with impatience, the fourth pair - almost purple in their blueness - burned with a little something like hope. Andy picked up the Doctor’s umbrella and went up to him. He hung the handle on the jacket pocket, straightened the tie and collar, and smoothed the paisley scarf under the jacket lapels. “I’m sorry Doctor. Really. But I needed the money, and my father would have been dead long before I was born if it wasn’t for this man.” He leant forward to kiss the Doctor lightly. “I’m sorry...” The Doctor said nothing, never having been particularly fond of being gagged. Uncomfortable and painful, terribly humiliating things they were. He did look up though, with a gentle, forgiving compassion which Andy could not bear. Roz checked the console room. She checked the Cloister, the rose garden and the libraries. She checked the kitchen and his bedroom. She checked a few unlikely places at random, but deep down she knew she wouldn’t find him. It was that anxious hum in her mind. Goddess! Couldn’t he even leave the TARDIS for 30 hours without blundering into trouble? She paused, Adjudicator imagination running riot. Suppose he hadn’t blundered into the sinister, the temporal, the monster, but merely the mundane? She knew full well he’d walked out of his TARDIS into the homosexual centre of the late twentieth century with jealous hearts and consolation on his mind. He was so little now, and contrary to Benny’s and Ace’s opinion, Roz had noticed he was vulnerable where men were concerned - nervous, even frigid… No, that was unfair, but… Besides, Roz reminded herself, by any standards, anywhere, anywhen - provided he’d planned the visit - he was financially loaded. Goddess! And as far as certain men went, he was so cute! Adjudicator Forrester knew the Doctor had left with an arrow over his head, a sign saying Victim: Rob me. Rape me. Frag! Two hours later, with appropriate clothing but full Adjudicator hardware and arms, Chris and Roz were walking the streets of San Francisco. The Doctor was sitting deep in thought on the edge of a small, low bunk, elbows on knees, head in hands, staring blankly at the clinical white room - cell - he was locked in. So far nothing had happened since he had arrived wherever they’d brought him apart from blood and tissue samples and another injection. Admittedly they had informed him they were going to perform a full medical exam. They being the Consortium medics and scientists, all of who had seemed eager for first cut… From the tone of their voices and the menacing pauses the Doctor had gathered they were threatening vivisection. He seemed to remember getting very angry and having to be restrained. He also remembered losing more self-control and pleading, begging, even tears… He hoped his capturer and enemy hadn’t witnessed that. The Doctor was certainly personalising all hatred and fear of his situation on that one man, that Cancer Man from his personal past, 15 years in the future. Then the injection. Now he was conscious after how many more hours he couldn’t tell, which was always something disconcerting for a Time Lord, but intact. Would Chris and Roz be missing him? If they’d bothered to emerge from the bedroom and notice… He was still dressed in his own clothes and perfectly unharmed. No surgical scars or incisions, not even any bruising. Even the bruise from Ian Laninski was gone. That was interesting in itself. He must have been unconscious for at least another eight hours. He leapt to his feet. He felt fine, if a little muzzy from far too much anaesthetic. He began to pace the small cell. It had a hospital feel to it. There were no windows, and of course the door was doubled locked and bolted from the outside. The fluorescent strip lighting hurt his eyes, but there appeared to be no switch or control. Presumably it was also on the outside. Apart from the bed there was a small cabinet and a sink, again giving the impression of a hospital room. The Doctor eyed the sink thoughtfully. He’d give anything for a bath right now. He felt polluted by Andy’s betrayal and desperately wanted to be free of all traces of sex. He glanced at the back of his left hand. There was no indication of Andy’s injection. He obviously knew what he was doing. Unconsciously the Doctor shuddered. He thought of Gilmore and then mentally screamed at himself to shut up. He didn’t really want a list of all his lovers who had betrayed him. It wasn’t helpful, and probably boring. A list of all those who hadn’t betrayed him might be better. But he had the feeling it started and ended with Jamie. Dear Jamie. He glanced up and noticed the camera. If he hadn’t been in such a dark mood, so worn down with human medication; if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with memories then of course he would have beamed up and tipped his hat at the intrusion. But it was as it was. He realised now to whom the report of torture and experimentation he and Mulder had discovered back in his fifth incarnation in 1997. Under any ordinary circumstances of captivity the Doctor would have looked up into that camera beaming, doffed his hat and said, “Hello, I’m the Doctor,” and then perhaps continued to prattle something idiotic designed to annoy… Under any ordinary circumstances, of course. But the Doctor had seen that report in his past without ever knowing whom the Time Lord subject had been. Now he knew. The Doctor sat back on the bed and curled up into a foetal position. He was terrified.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Why?” Chris demanded for at least the tenth time as they came out of yet another gay bar. “Why are we looking in these dives?”“People who love the same sex in this time have the same status as criminals, Undertowndwellers, and aliens in our time, that’s why,” snarled Roz at last. She stopped on the sidewalk and span round. “Will you shut up Chris. We’ve checked the police and the hospitals. Until we get a lead, what else can we try?” She tried to sound cutting but she was too tired.“I didn’t mean why are these bars so seedy, I mean why are we looking for the Doctor in them? Why not the museums, art galleries, parks, tea shops - the Doctor doesn’t drink!”“He wasn’t looking for drink in these places…”“No Roz, you’re mistaken…”“Oh Chris, how do you stay so innocent?” Roz said in a fair imitation of Benny.He, however, was frowning. He’d said something important. What was it? “Wait here.” He disappeared back in the bar. He was gone for about fifteen minutes.“Well?” asked Roz dryly. “Does my squire explain his line of inquiry.”Chris looked sheepish with embarrassment. “You’re too cop like. You’ve been putting people’s backs up. Besides, being a woman you stand out like a sore thumb. If you’re right - I still don’t think you are Roz - then it occurred to me that we should still look for teashops, right? Cafes and so on. Well, apparently from the beach up to Little Venice are a load of cafes that are pick up joints and sometimes even brothels. Popular with the Brits, I was told. Now, if the Doctor’s pretending to be human, he’s gonna pretend to be English, right?”Roz beamed. “You’re amazing. Okay. Let’s go.” They walked in silence until they got to the boulevard.“Chris?”“Yes?”“Did you flirt to get the information?”“No, I pretended I was looking for my boyfriend.”“Oh.” Roz managed to put several syllables and at least three meanings in the one oh.The third café they got lucky. A greying black man was locking up. He had a tired face and bored, disinterested eyes. A younger, stick thin man with shiny ebony skin and dressed only in cycling shorts was hovering behind him, carrying a bag of groceries.“A little guy in a white suit and a hat. Yeah. Weird guy. A Brit. You remember Sam?”“Not your boyfriend though,” the younger one said flatly, looking the well-built, tall, white man up and down with naked appreciation.“No,” conceded Chris. “We do need to find him. He’s a friend of ours and he may be in trouble.”Sam snorted. “Ooh, I doubt that!” He looked at his companion who smiled dirtily.“Hungry for it, wasn’t she?” The older man then squeaked a surprised gasp as the until then silent black woman had him pinned to the door, her fingers pressed lightly at his throat in some kind of nerve pinch.“Hey, hey… Chill sister, chill. Let Vic go, come on…”“I’m afraid my partner is a little annoyed. Let him go Roz.”Roz did so with bad grace. “Now,” she snarled, “have you seen the Doctor or not?”“That’s the little guy with the hat?” confirmed Vic. “Yes. Andy Laninski went off with him. We watched…” he tailed away with a sick look. “You cops or something? Don’t hurt me lady. I’ve got a weak heart. All my boys are strictly waiters, this is a quiet establishment…”“Goddess!” snarled Roz under her breath.“Just tell us about this Laninski,” suggested Chris.“He works here…” Vic tailed off.“He hit on your friend - if he is your friend? Is he wanted for something?”“Oh. Many things,” said Chris sweetly. “This Laninski?” he prompted.“He had him in our parking lot, then they left on his bike.”“I take it you know his address?”Vic sighed and unlocked the door. “It’s inside.” The Doctor still lay on the bed. How long he had lain there, curled up on his side hugging his legs, he wasn’t sure. He was losing all sense of time. How ironic. His eyes were screwed tight shut but the tears still managed to squeeze out. Why had the last entry to that report been missing? Had they succeeded in their objective? Was he going to regenerate? Would they let him go if he did, or would they then cut him up anyway? He couldn’t regenerate! He couldn’t! Not yet! He wasn’t ready, he had so much still to do, he didn’t trust himself if… Besides, he refused to be forcibly regenerated as a laboratory rat in a cage. He’d rather die! No! He didn’t mean that. He could almost hear Cancer Man, smell that foul smoke… If that is your choice Doctor, we can arrange your death… Did these arrogant, foolish humans think torturing him to the point of death would unlock the Time Lords’ secrets..?What if they failed in their task? Hopefully he was going to escape, that Chris and Roz were going to find him, that Andy would fine the courage… If only he knew from that report! He could cope with any amount of suffering if he knew it had an ending. He’d coped before, been his own willing sacrifice as part of a plan, as part of the game. So he would cope. Except part of the plan, the game, had always involved Ace or Benny gallantly charging in on a white steed… What if they used drugs or EEGs that caused his mind to create ripples, would Ace know it, feel it..? Did she care enough? Of course, he had no plan. This was not part of a scheme. He’d tried that in 1997 and was forced to choose between the hardest sacrificial pawn or backing down. Interesting. He now understood Cancer Man’s contempt. It wasn’t Turlough at all. It was him, an easy little tart hungry for human cock… Shut up! But why should Cancer Man respect him as Time’s Champion, the great manipulator in 1996, when here he was in 1981, a stupid alien queen so easily sold out by a hustler. Of course this time he had no plan. He’d had no suspicion, no indication… He’d not seen a thing in Andy’s mind. Strong boy, psychically. Very strong. What if the regeneration failed, or didn’t happen? What if they really were going to…use vivisection as a research tool? What if Chris and Roz never found him? What if… he died here, like a Tzun captive, in the hands of Cancer Man? What if..? He really should sit up, perhaps go to the sink and wash away the tears. He should definitely have a drink. His mouth still felt so dry. It must be all that anaesthetic. He would get up, in a minute or two. Perhaps… Just then he heard the sound of the door being unlocked. He sat up, involuntarily pressing his back to the wall, hugging his knees, waiting, staring… Two men in dark suits and a third in a white coat came forward. He was dragged to his feet and pulled to the door. Not a word was said by any of them. The way they looked at him he may as well been a laboratory rat. “What do you want? What are you going to do with me?” the Doctor wailed, panic struck. The only answer was a punch in the mouth. Still no-one spoke. The Doctor hung his head, closing his eyes as he tried not to swallow the copper-iron salt mixture of his own blood and tears. His feet barely touched the ground as he was dragged through corridor after corridor… Fifty hours without food, forty without a drink, two injections of anaesthetic…The Doctor was in a chair in a concrete interrogation cell. Two men guarded the door, another stood behind Cancer Man, who was seated at a desk. The only light shone in the Doctor’s face. The cigarette smoke stank, it made the dizziness worse. He wanted to vomit but it wasn’t just that his stomach was empty, his whole system was.“Well?”The Doctor realised he wasn’t playing for time, not using any confusing tactics or any at all, that it didn’t matter if he told the truth. He would tell the truth, only he genuinely couldn’t remember the question.“Well?”Cancer Man nodded to his associate behind him who stepped forward to slap the Doctor’s face.“Well?”The Doctor wanted to tell him he’s forgotten the question, that he needed a glass of water…He remembered the first time they’d used the mind probe. How his mind felt shredded, his body aching… He remembered waking up in the Ashbridge Cottage Hospital to seeing the Brigadier’s warm eyes without a flicker of recognition and the cold-water shock realisation that it hadn’t been a nightmare, he’d been forcibly regenerated… He remembered running from the House of Lungbarrow across the plains until he felt his lungs were going to burst, just having to escape his father…“Well?”He remembered them beating Koschei in front of him, overpowering him… Koschei’s cries… He remembered not realising the significance of why Koschei was so desperate until they threw him over the table and pulled his legs apart… of Koschei’s powerlessness in his mind as vivid as his own pain, terror and helplessness..Another slap to his face.“Well?”His head was pulled back by his hair.“Doctor?”He remembered pounding down the corridors of the Capitol, his ageing loom body screaming in protest, his granddaughter in his arms……But he couldn’t remember Cancer Man’s question, and now, he wasn’t even sure if he could remember English. He reached for the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits but she was too far, he was too weak…“He appears to have passed out,” the MIB who had been hitting him informed Cancer Man.“Is he faking this?”“I don’t know. Maybe. It seems pretty genuine.”“Call a medic. We’ll call his bluff.” Something, somewhere was ringing. Andy half staggered to his feet but slumped back down into the couch. Shit! He felt so bad. If only he could remember... Oh yeah, he was drinking to forget. He was such a bastard. He picked up the bottle of bourbon. Empty. He threw it against a wall. It made a resounding, satisfying breaking noise.But still the ringing.Andy staggered to his feet again, desperately trying to remember if he had any more alcohol in his apartment.The ringing had now stopped. Instead, there was a heavy thudding as someone thumped on his apartment door. Well, they could just go away again. He was too much of a bastard to see anyone.“Laninski? Andrew Laninski?” This was a male voice, gentle but insistent, shouting through the door.“Open up!” A female voice, more aggressive, tinged with worry.Swaying on his feet Andy grabbed the nearest heavy object - a desk lamp - and hurled it at the door. “Piss off!” he snarled. He didn’t care who it was.A couple of loud bangs and the sound of splintered wood and the door gave. An incredibly tall blond man pushed the door on its shattered frame and stepped into the room. Andy took an involuntary step back, drunkenly slipping as he did so. The big man had bounded over in an instant, catching his arm.“Hey, steady. Sorry about the door.” He smiled warmly, “Don’t know my own strength at times.”“We just need to ask you some questions.” This was the woman he’d heard. She’d followed the giant in, but hadn’t moved from the doorway, standing in front of it with one hand on her hip surveying the mess of Andy’s through-living room with a sardonic yet curious expression. She was slender but muscled and middle aged, with hurt eyes and cropped hair.“Whe - Wha -? Who?” Andy slurred.The man looked to the woman, seemingly to refer to her authority. Was she his boss? Who were they? They seemed to communicate something wordlessly. Then the man concluded, “I’ll make some coffee,” and picked his way through the debris of notes, papers, files and books Andy had thrown about in his self-hating, guilt-ridden drunken tantrums.The woman caught his other arm as he was still swaying unsteadily and guided him to a chair. She sat opposite.“I’m Adjudicator Roslyn Forrester and my partner in the kitchen is Adjudicator Christopher Cwej. Are you Andrew Laninski?”“Yeah. Yeah, so what? Who wants to know? You some kind of cops?”Her lips twisted into an ironic smile as she arched one eyebrow. “You could say that. We were once. Or we will be. One day.”“Huh?” He stared at her. Nothing about this pair was making sense in his confused state. Something was itching at the back of his mind. Roslyn and Christopher? Chris and Roz? Now, where had he heard those names before?“We’re looking for someone,” Forrester prompted, realising Andy had nothing more to say“Yeah?” Andy continued to stare blankly.Cwej came back in with some coffee and handed it to Andy. He took a sip and winced.“You’ve been on one serious bender,” Cwej said sympathetically. “Why?”“I can understand the Doctor driving anyone to drink,” added Forrester tartly. She looked up at her companion, who began to slowly circumnavigate the room. He pulled some unidentifiable form of electronic equipment from his pocket. The way he used it Andy hazarded the guess that it was a scanning device.“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Andy said, sobering up fast with guilt and fear. Now he remembered where he had heard the names. He should have realised the Doctor’s companions would miss him. To be honest, he’d forgotten, but surely the Consortium knew the Doctor rarely travelled alone. They must have accounted for this. He swallowed, remembering the cheque for $6000, already cashed and spent. He involuntarily glanced up at Chris Cwej, taking in all almost seven foot of broad, hard muscle and graceful panther like movements, the short curling naturally blond hair. He remembered the compassionate eyes and the gentle voice. If this is what he was a substitute for, he sure as hell didn’t measure up. Of course not. He’d betrayed the Doctor.“The Doctor,” prompted Forrester. “Small, white suit, white hat, stupid umbrella. He left your place of work with you.”Deciding she was probably guessing, Andy risked bluffing it through. “Look,” he protested with his best innocent little-boy look, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He watched Cwej go into the bedroom.“You’re not being very helpful!” Forrester stood up and began to pace in front of him. “We have two witnesses who told us that you left together on your bike.”Andy laughed nervously. Must be Vic and Sam. They must know what the cafe was, he could still bluff his way out. “Oh. Him. Cute thing in a white suit. I dropped him off at the beach after.”She turned on him. “You’re lying!”Andy pretended to be confused and indignant. “Why should I? Honestly lady, how am I supposed to remember every man. We’re talking about a Brit right? Short guy, about five-six, curly brown hair in a bob, linen suit, silk shirt..?” Was he being too specific? “Yeah?” he concluded lamely. “Yeah, I dropped him off at the beach at the end of the boulevard. I suggest you go back to Little Venice lady, and take your nosy stud with you! What you want him for anyway?”Forrester narrowed her eyes, her fists clenching and unclenching in an effort to control her anger. She obviously wasn’t buying any of this.“Roz.” Cwej spoke quietly, shock and worry in his whisper. He was by the bedroom doorway, his strange, small computer in one hand, hypodermic needle in the other. He indicated something to his superior and lover with his fingertips and she span round to give Andy one more particularly nasty glare before stalking over to join her partner. Andy could see a clump of soft, curling brown hair in Cwej’s fingertips. He felt sick. Everything took a long, long time to come into focus. He was no longer in that interrogation cell. It was certain that Cancer Man couldn’t be anywhere near as the only smell to assault his senses was the faintly antiseptic smell of hospitals. Why could he never scan for Cancer Man’s name? Had the man buried his own identity too long ago. A code name. A nick name. A service number. A cancerous scourge on humanity...He didn’t seem to be back in that small, white cell either. The smell was far more intense. He was staring up at a huge, white ceiling a long, long way up, covered in large, round lights. He was in a theatre, an operating theatre... Oh no!The Doctor sat up abruptly, feeling a stinging pull on his arm. His head snapped round, trying to locate the source of the discomfort. A saline drip. His eyes raked around the room. He was in some kind of ward, not a theatre at all. He allowed himself to relax and slid back down the bed. He closed his eyes again. “Do you want to try it again?” Roz snarled, waving the needle in Laninski’s face. She wanted to kill him. There was Gallifreyan DNA all over the scum’s bed, including...“It’s mine. Look, who said I was a good boy? I’m a hustler, a rent boy, right? With a habit to support! You expect me to remember every client?”Roz was finding his laconic, camp, affected, tones annoying to the point of violence. “Goddess!” she screamed in his face, thinking of the blood on the needle and the bed.“Just fuck off or I’ll call the real cops!” Andy screamed back at her.Chris just wanted to punch the man’s lights out for the mere suggestion the Doctor would use a prostitute. He refused to believe his own DNA analysis. However, he forced himself to be calm.“The Doctor was here, of that we are certain. I’ve found enough Gallifreyan DNA to confirm that. I doubt you bring your... clients home with you. Worse and more damning for you is the Gallifreyan blood and anaesthetic on that needle. Will you please,” Chris forced his voice steely cold and calm, “tell us where the Doctor is and what you did to him?”“I don’t know where he is!” Andy snapped. “And as for what I did to him…” He stood up and stared Chris down. “I fucked him!” he yelled in Chris’ face. “I fucked your precious Time Lord so hard coz she was begging for, okay? Fucked him so hard your precious Doctor could barely walk! Okay?”It was not okay. Andy was not in the least surprised and a little relieved when Chris’ fist connected with his face, followed by another, and another. He stood there and took it, nose and mouth already bleeding when Roz pulled her friend off him.“Now,” she snarled at Andy, holding him by the scruff of the neck, “You will explain. We know about the sex, but you tied him up and injected him with a primitive sedative.” She shook him. “Tell us where he is!”Andy began to cry. “I don’t know! I don’t know where he is. I didn’t want to. God, you’ve got to believe me, I really didn’t want to. They never gave me a choice. Why do you think I’ve been drinking since they took him away?”Roz released him and sank into a chair. Andy dived for his couch and curled up into a ball, gently rocking himself. Roz raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders, but Chris wasn’t looking up at all.“Who are they?” he demanded, voice thick with emotion. He was standing stock-still, apart from the other two. His head hung, defeated, his shoulders drooped. He was either controlling his anger, or ashamed of his loss of control. He couldn’t deny the evidence of - whatever had happened to the Doctor, whatever mess the Time Lord had got himself into now - what the Doctor had been doing. Roz was right about where to look. Ace and Benny hadn’t just been vicious. He couldn’t believe it. He felt overwhelmingly, overpoweringly jealous of Andy...“The Consortium,” Andy answered. “They’re scientists and military. They’re supposed to protect Earth from alien incursions, but they actually try to use and experiment with alien technology and biochemistry... even alien DNA.” He paused. “They fund my research.”“No,” Chris muttered, looking up. Roz and Andy stared at him. “I didn’t think you were a prostitute. All this -” he indicated the paper and plastic rubble. “It’s obvious you’re a physicist or psychologist.” No, if the Doctor did have an interest in... Well, he’d always choose someone intelligent. Goddess, what’s wrong with me? I love Roz, yet when I first knew the Doctor... I never considered men seriously, and I certainly never considered the Doctor. At least, not outside fantasies. Then, that’s all Roz was, a fantasy, for years...Chris barely heard Andy’s answer, “Or both.” He raised his voice in desperation. “You’ve got to get him away from them!”“Of course we will!” snapped Roz, one eye on her squire. What was going on in his head? Goddess, she was tired. “Chris, make some more coffee. And sort out some food. You - Laninski - If you’re genuine about helping, about wanting him found, then you’d better sober up fast and think about where they may have taken him.”“God, I wish I knew. I have thought about this, believe me -”Roz could sense the boy was going to yet again dissolve into drunken, self-pitying, tears. “Sort out your papers, it may focus your mind,” she snapped. She herself leaned back and massaged the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. Goddess, she felt old. The man lit another cigarette as he gazed through the glass at the unconscious Doctor. He was as unlike he had imagined as possible. For a start, he was unlike any of the physical descriptions in any of the Geneva or British UNIT files he’d seen. And it had been too easy, he’d come too quietly. His expected arrogance had been muted, he had seemed genuinely, alarmingly afraid of him. Not this, but him. He drew on his cigarette thoughtfully. He was, however, close to the description of Commodore Gilmore. A pretty, camp, angry, thing, Gilmore had once said, but patronising and arrogant, perhaps even contemptuous of humanity. That did not fit with the UNIT files, where he appeared as protector. Terrifyingly intelligent, Gilmore had said. Naïve and a little slow at times, the other Time Lord had said.The Doctor certainly looked vulnerable now, his face pale. His hair like a halo puffed around the pillow. Like a child asleep. As unlike he was in Laninski’s room as could be. There, also unconscious from anaesthetic and restrained, he had looked thoroughly debauched, a sexual victim almost inviting rape. It was disturbing. He could still see those bemused, frightened blue eyes as he interrogated him. Why? They had demanded, why?Klemper joined him, coming out of the ward, removing surgical gloves and depositing them in a bin by the door.“It’s malnourished,” he spat in German. “We’ll have to get its strength up before we begin the preliminary testing.” He sounded annoyed by the delay.The man dropped his cigarette on the floor. Uncomfortable with Klemper’s use of it to describe the Greys, he positively resented its use for the Doctor. He remembered the Doctor’s alarm at Laninski’s mention of anaesthetics, the 21 hour effect.“How do you know the drugs are safe? He’s the only subject we have, you can’t waste…”“Point taken John,” Klemper interrupted. “If you’re worried for it, you had better find out hadn’t you?” He was sneering at him, he felt sure. He narrowed his eyes, staring coldly, as he always did when issuing an order. “Do not damage my merchandise, I want no more delays.”The man lit another cigarette. “Very well, Intelligence needs to question him anyway.” He blew smoke in Klemper’s face before walking away, taking one more look at the angelic pixie face of the sleeping Doctor. He had a sweet smile on his face. What did Time Lords dream of, he wondered. Despite herself, Roz had fallen into another doze. They must have covered half of San Francisco on foot. She felt half-panicked as she came to, lost in the fading memories of a nightmare. It had been muddled, half false and real memories of Fenn Martle’s death, of alien scum in the Undertown, of Martle’s attitudes when she had first been squired to him. But the dream, as dreams do, had turned Martle into the Doctor. She’d watched him ripped open, tortured - no! She had killed him! She had killed the Doctor. She had driven him out of his own TARDIS, vulnerable and unprepared... Goddess! If humans in her century were not prepared to recognise other sentience, what hope had this one? If only, if only... What? She loved Chris. No she didn’t, not really, not like that. It was fun though, and she didn’t want to lose Chris as soon as she’d got him. But the Doctor was her friend. If it hadn’t been for him, she and Chris wouldn’t have lives in which to explore their feelings, their desires... What was she to do? A word echoed around her head, a strange, ancient !Xhosa practice, a patriarchal practice...Polygamy.Share Chris?Goddess, she was going crazy! What was she thinking? Besides, they had to find the Doctor first. Assuming they could. Then rescue him. Assuming he was still in one piece, and not carved up in some laboratory. Oh Goddess of Justice, let the Doctor be all right.Roz felt the tears well up behind her closed eyelids. Her fault, her fault... “Hi there! Going to join us in the land of the living? No use pretending, the white coats got you hooked up to so many monitors I know you’re awake.”This was indeed true. The Doctor could feel the gentle pull on his skin in so many places of electrolyte jelly and adhesive. His brainwave and heartsbeat patterns were being recorded, along with pulses and blood pressure. He was also still on the saline drip, by the feel of his left arm. He opened one sleepy eye. He felt so heavy and drowsy, it was a struggle to not drift. He began to doubt his previous recollection of consciousness. A young man with swept back black hair and a neatly trimmed goatee was smiling down at him with professional, distant warmth, which was more than he could say for any of the scientists, doctors, or interrogators he’d so far experienced. He focused past the smile to the beard. Drugged, panic washed over him. The Doctor’s other eye snapped open and he tried to sit up.“Hey, steady on there.” The orderly had a gentle Bostonian accent and a brisk, efficient tone of a carer. He was trying to push the Doctor back down into the pillow with one hand while balancing a tray with the other.“Go. Away.” The Doctor tried to sound forceful, but to his horror, he sounded to himself pitiful and tearful.The young Bostonian placed the tray on a stand next to a monitor and caught the Doctor’s shoulder with a tenderness that touched the Doctor. Everyone else had touched him as if disgusted by the thought of the feel of something inhuman - everyone but Cancer Man, and his touch was far more distressing that a xenophobic one.“Is that any way to talk to the guy bringing you food?” He perched on the side of the bed and plumped up the pillows. “Lean back and relax. Come on, be a good alien.”The Doctor stopped feeling quite so warm towards the boy, although the mocking tone seemed friendly rather than truly racist. He scowled. “Who are you?”“You can call me Mike. I’m just an orderly. I’m going to look after you while you’re here. Do you want some soup? It’s vegetable.”The Doctor looked sceptical.“Home made - well, made here by yours truly. Hand on my heart: no drugs, no poisons, no chemicals, no meat. Just fresh vegetables and a little handful of lentils thrown in.” He picked up the tray and placed it on the Doctor’s lap.The Doctor sniffed it suspiciously.“Just vegetables,” Mike reiterated. “Do you want to stay on that drip? Besides,” he lowered his voice, “they’ll force feed you otherwise.”“H'm.” The Doctor picked up the spoon and cautiously took a mouthful. It was rather good and he was very hungry.“You’ve been out of it a good while, you know? Well, in and out of consciousness. Talking too.”The spoon hovered midway between bowl and lips as the Doctor stared with an intent, questioning gaze.“Nothing of importance, although they taped it anyway. People talk in their sleep when stressed, you know. You screamed a lot, and shouted. French and English.”The Doctor let out a little sigh of relief. He didn’t want Gallifreyan on tape. The fact he had vocal nightmares was nothing new, Ace, Benny. and Roz had all been curious in their time. Chris, too, presumably. But, of course, he’d not tried to force the Doctor to talk about his dreams, his feelings. Benny had been the worse for that. He resumed eating.“In and out of theatre too. They’ve taken about every sample you could imagine.”The Doctor made a face and put down his spoon. He could imagine a lot. “Are you always so chatty to everyone?”“Uh-huh. Most in here are either memory-wiped or... well, or - So it doesn’t matter what I say. I’m only trying to be nice. Everyone is scared half to death in here, so I try to be nice. Someone’s got to be.”“You’re talking about humans!” The Doctor was horrified. He couldn’t work out why humans would be brought here, experimented on then have their experiences taken from them. It sounded like the Tzun. What was going on?“Try to eat more soup. You need your strength.”“Why?” the Doctor scowled up at Mike. “And why do you look like that?” he demanded, the head rush of carbohydrates after such a long fast making him dizzy.“Like what?” Mike raised both eyebrows in astonishment. He had dark, dark, eyes, and then the Doctor noticed his Indian heritage. He was half, perhaps one-quarter, Native American.The Doctor lowered his eyes, afraid he might blush, which was something he did not do. He was getting far too paranoid, suspecting Mike had been deliberately set up to remind him of the Master. It was ridiculous, Mike was essentially a good, sweet man, despite his choice of career. The Doctor looked hard and realised Mike had been seconded after Viet Nam. He couldn’t tell why. Something was badly wrong, he’d looked at a physical image alone, instead of the psyche. He was pumped full of anaesthetic and morphine. It hurt to breathe - For Rassilon’s sake, it hurt to think!“You look after humans, but you know I’m not?” He was speaking softly, trying to catch Mike’s gaze, but he wasn’t having it. Maybe he’d met the Master.“I’ve got to know who I’m looking after. You’re the first alien I’ve seen who looks completely human.”Oh. He hadn’t then. Then why was he afraid of hypnosis? Had he been warned? “Are you talking about the Tzun?”“Tzun? Oh, the Greys. Yep. Try to be nice to them too. They’re scared too, you know? Except most of them succeed in self-immolation. Don’t you go do that!” he waggled a finger at the Doctor, who rose his eyebrows in mock-shock: Who, me? Mike’s eyes met his and the Doctor understood what had happened in Viet Nam, and Mike sensed the Doctor’s shame and fear. He shook his head lightly. Telepathic. Interesting. He tried to bring his conversation back round.“The rest, they won’t talk to me. And who can blame them when the rest of the humans here do unspeakable...” he faded out, remembering this was an alien test subject he was talking to. “Eat your soup,” he said dismissively, “and you can have some cake with your tea, made by yours truly to my Mom’s recipe.”“I’m not a child,” grumbled the Doctor, but finished his soup. Mike was right, he would need his strength.“Good boy,” said this boy, patronising in the extreme when the Doctor had finished.“I am not a boy!” the Doctor snapped. “Do you know how old I am? Do you even know my name?”“If you want me to know your age I will have to report it to the research team, and as for your name. Even if you tell me, while you’re here all your have is a subject number and classification code.”He wanted to yell out he wasn’t a number, he was a free man, but felt the irony would kill him. Besides who would hear? Instead, he followed Mike’s causal flick of his gaze upwards. A camera above the bed. Oh.“I’ll get you some tea. Do you want some of my cake?”“It would only make me sick,” the Doctor replied sulkily. The sun was just setting. The room had been tidied, the desk and bookcases ordered. Roz looked down to the other end of the large living room, through the beaded room-dividers. Chris was laying the table, Andy was sitting at the dining table sipping coffee and staring into space. What looked like research papers were spread out in front of him. There appeared to be an uneasy truce between the two men.“Hey Roz. You awake?” Chris’ brightness was hollow, obviously false and empty. Roz felt so heavy.“Just.” She leapt to her feet, running a hand through her hair. “Why didn’t you wake me?”Chris emerged from behind the beaded strings and gave an entirely false smile. “Guessed you’d need your strength. Andy’s come up with a couple of ideas, and I’ve come up with one. Hopefully mine will work. Go through, I’ll fetch the food.”“What ideas?”“I’ll explain over dinner.”Goddess! Did he know how Doctory he sounded? Roz stomped into the dining area and sat opposite Andy, scowling at him.“I’m sorry,” blurted out Andy. “Like I explained to Chris, if I hadn’t been beaten up and desperate - and I didn’t think, not really. I thought they’d just question him. When they got here...” he broke off and shuddered.“Hmm,” Roz said unsympathetically. “Don’t waste your breath. I’m not interested. Just don’t let us down now. We need to find him fast.”Andy looked down, ashamed. “I know. I don’t know why I...” He looked up at her with wounded eyes. “He’s so beautiful, to think... Why did I waste..?”Roz glared at him. “I said shut it.”He hung his head again. Roz continued to stare at him. She examined Benny’s bitchy gossip in the light of fresh evidence. No, if the Doctor was so duped by one young hustler, how could he manipulate..? Prostitute..? Himself. No.Of course, Roz realised, the Doctor had no plans, wasn’t expecting anything. He’d materialised in a gay area of Earth looking for...a Chris substitute? Roz wondered carefully how she would have felt if the Doctor had beaten her to it, been the first to seduce Chris. I’m not worthy. Goddess, I’m not worthy... What on Earth would he have said to the Doctor then?Roz shook her head to clear her confused thoughts, grateful when she was interrupted by Chris coming in laden with food, breaking the tension. He’d surpassed himself with limited choices - a stir-fry, rice and salad, and a fruit salad for pudding. Goddess, how she loved him.Andy too was impressed with the fare that had amazingly been produced from his kitchen. Not only was Chris a looker, incredibly sexy, intelligent and compassionate, but a great cook too.“You’re a lucky lady Roz,” he said, trying to make peace.“Lucky? Oh yes, I see the Doctor has been free with his information. Yes, I am, but right now, I’d rather be unlucky. Unlucky and have the Doctor safe. The Doctor is my friend and my luck brought him to your treachery.”“Take it easy Roz,” said Chris, ever the peacemaker, as he ladled rice.“Easy? Easy! They could be dissecting him as we speak - as we sit down to this oh-so civilised dinner party with the scum who sold out the Doctor! I feel responsible!”“Responsible!” spluttered Chris. “Responsible! How do you work that one out? And as for eating, what good are we if we flake out with starvation?”“You’re right Chris, of course. I’m sorry.”Chris smiled and handed her a plate laden with rice and vegetables, then the salad bowl. Roz noticed the smile didn’t reach his eyes, that his eyes were puffy, he was pasty and grey. She hazarded a guess he’d been vomiting, his usual reaction to too much emotional stress, and no doubt the terrible possibility that Andy had injected the Doctor while making love. The thought of the Doctor at his most vulnerable, the thought of anyone betrayed in such a fashion...“I feel responsible too Roz, but should we talk about it here and now?” He indicated Andy with a little nod of his head.“Yes, let’s,” Roz barked. “Starting with Laninski. I’d like to know how you managed to tie him up and inject him without him suspecting a thing. He’s a shrewd judge of character, he’s not going to walk into a trap.” Not unless he’d planned to, but he’d have given us a warning, a message...“I tied him up after he was unconscious,” Andy stated primly. “As for the injection, it’s personal...”You bastard! You did do it when you were fucking him... Fucking the Doctor? Goddess!“When you say shrewd judge of character I take it you want to know how he didn’t see any plan in my mind, well, I’ve met a Time Lord before. I had to learn pretty quickly how to shield my thoughts concerning him.”“Who?” demanded Roz.“The Master, he called himself. So you see, I’d heard of the Doctor. I didn’t bring him back here with any plans to sell him to the Consortium...”“Sell!” exploded Roz with fury.“I wasn’t given a choice!” Andy yelled back. “I was attacked, threatened. God woman, he is beautiful! I brought back here because of that, because it was so precious...”“And you sold something beautiful and precious?” Roz arched an eyebrow disdainfully.“Andy explained this to me,” said Chris gently, ever the diplomat. Roz absently noticed he was merely making patterns with his food, giving the appearance of eating. He had been sick then. Chris went on, “His brother is supplying him with an illegal hallucinogenic he needs for his research. The Consortium aren’t going to officially condone its use, so he had to find the money himself. Or rather...” Chris shrugged. “He owed a lot of money.”“Hardly an excuse for committing a crime, Adjudicator Cwej.”Chris grimaced with embarrassment. “We need his help Roz.”Andy studied his food intently, feeling six years old.“His Dad was also a Consortium scientist, so his brother told him -”“His father?”“We’ll see him in the morning. He’s a no hope drunk, but he may have an idea where they’ve taken the Doctor,” snapped Andy. “And we need his car, as I expect the Doctor was flown out of here. He’s probably in New Mexico, New York State, Virginia...” Andy looked helpless.Chris looked thoughtfully at Andy, before turning to Roz. “It seems his brother also has connections. He told Andy to phone the Consortium about the Doctor. Is that right?” he turned back to Andy.“After beating me to a pulp, yes. But I thought they’d just question him, ask him to help on this long-term genetic project. I told them -”“What project?” demanded Roz.“It was called Operation Paperclip in my Father’s day. It’s been long since officially disbanded, but I happen to know it isn’t.” He shrugged.“What made you concerned that they may harm him?” asked Chris, voice carefully neutral.“Consortium’s CIA man. He’s an evil, sinister bastard...”
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“Ah. Hello Doctor. I see some sleep and food have refreshed you.” Cancer Man stood up from the desk, dropping his cigarette into a large metal ashtray. “I must apologise for my earlier treatment. I have been reminded that you are a... patient, as well as my guest.”The Doctor stared at the carpet and said nothing. This time there were no thugs in suits, no guns, no outside, obvious physical menace. He hadn’t been brought back to that concrete interrogation room, but rather, a plush office, with deep carpets, a sofa and coffee table, as well as a bar and coffee percolator. The formal desk was large, ornate. No windows though, still underground. Indeed, they had appeared to go down further in the unmarked lift Mike had brought him in, after leading him along a maze of corridors, some bare concrete and steel, some painted white, one insistent hand at his elbow. He hadn’t been given his own clothes, instead he was in a too large pair of white pyjamas and a white towelling robe several sizes too big. His feet were bare and his wrists were cuffed in front of him.“You’re very quiet Doctor, not at all like your reputation. Won’t you sit down?” Cancer Man had moved around the desk and gestured to the sofa. He gestured again. “Please.”Still not looking up, the Doctor shrugged as best he could and sat down. He brought his feet up and put his cuffed hands over his knees to hug his legs.Cancer Man lit a cigarette. “Are you frightened by me? I won’t hurt you. Indeed, I have been expressly forbidden to damage the experimental merchandise.”At that the Doctor’s head snapped up, his eyes burning with curiosity and resentment.“From now on you are merely an experiment, a classification, a subject.” He regarded the Doctor coolly, drawing in on his cigarette before exhaling in the Doctor’s face. The Doctor tried not to cough. He closed his eyes and lowered his head, involuntarily shivering. Yes, he’d known that really. His worst fears had been confirmed. He’d read the clinical progress reports in Virginia in 1997 and the summary reports on the MJ files in 1996.Cancer Man continued, “DX2141. Time Lord. Male. I expect I shall be the only person who will use your name...”Yes, now he had absolute confirmation. Back then he’d never known - never imagined - they’d referred to him. Now he knew.“... Theta.”“No!” The missing files referred to on the MJ files! Not just him, not just the Counsellor, but the Master too. Where else could he have..? Quite a family outing...“Very well,” said Cancer Man, pleased with the horrified, shocked reaction, pretending to misunderstand, “Doctor it shall be.”The Doctor was desperate to take back some control. “You’re not on the research team,” he whispered. He steeled himself to look up. Smoke was blown in his face and he coughed. “What do you want of me?”“Information, Doctor. You can supplement and fill in the gaps of the scraps gathered from UNIT at Geneva and Britain’s C19. I suspect you have much to add to our knowledge of the Master.”“Want me to tell you his name too?” the Doctor sneered.“Irrelevant Doctor, as was all information gleaned from him. I suspect this organisation owes much to the Master’s involvement 30 years ago.”Roswell. Kreer. Tzun, thought the Doctor dully. Ace had shot the Master back then, taunted him with it.“I also suspect my British direct superior has more knowledge of you than he cares to share.”Gilmore, thought the Doctor bitterly, no doubt he doesn’t.Cancer Man ground out his cigarette in the glass ashtray in front off him. He sat down next to the Doctor. “You were careless Doctor. I suspect we would never have caught up with you if you hadn’t been so.”The Doctor covered his face with his hands, wincing as he forgot the cuffs and scraped his knees. “Yes.” He had to go through with this, even if a way to escape presented itself. There was no way out for him. It had already happened, he’d seen the files, acted on them, used them. He couldn’t alter it now. Time was linear. Every experiment, every torture... There was no escape. Yes. But what did he, the Doctor, suffer here, in this office at the hands of this Cancer Man, as well as the recorded fate of Time Lord subject (male) classification coding DX2141?Cancer Man lit another cigarette and reached to pull the Doctor’s hands away from his face. The hand moved from the cuff to his wrist, then slid into the sleeve, caressing the skin. The Doctor pulled away, but the other hand moved to hold the back of his head. The Doctor quickly brought his knee up, trying to kick, but the hand moved swiftly to his ankle. The cigarette dangling from Cancer Man’s lips fell in the struggle, burning the sleeve of the towelling robe, then the Doctor’s hand. He cried out. Cancer Man calmly retrieved the smouldering cigarette and put it in the ashtray. The Doctor used this moment of confusion to throw himself on the floor, rolling towards the door.“You’ll find the door locked Doctor.”Although the Doctor believed him, he stumbled to his feet and tried the handle anyway. He turned round and pressed his back against the cold metal. How far underground were they, the Doctor wondered yet again.Cancer Man was advancing on him leisurely.“You don’t want information,” challenged the Doctor.“Oh. Don’t I Doctor?”“Then not just information.”“How perceptive.” He was now standing over the Doctor, seeming to tower. “Tell me Doctor, how many others?”“What?”“Lethbridge-Stewart. Gilmore. Laninski. How many others?”“What kind of question is that?” the Doctor tried to sound indignant and angry, instead of merely frightened, insolent, and camp. It didn’t work.“So. Commodore Gilmore did have you.”“What?”“Is that the information he is hiding from us? That he sodomised an alien.”“Shut up! Oh shut up!”The Doctor managed to duck under Cancer Man’s arm and run back to the sofa.“Really Doctor? What can you hide from us? We’ve taken samples from every part of your body, every bodily fluid... Do you think we can’t spot the odd bit of alien - alien, that is, to you - semen. What about Lethbridge-Stewart? Does the British MoD know about your past relationship? I believe the British armed forces are particularly intolerant of such liaisons.”He was walking towards the sofa as he spoke. The Doctor leapt up and jumped behind it.“You can’t hurt me, you’ve been warned.”“Come here.”“No!”“Come here Doctor.” He grabbed the Doctor’s arm and dragged him back to the sofa. “Sit down.”“You can’t -”“Shut up. There are ways to inflict pain without leaving a mark.” He sat down next to the Doctor and put a hand to his hair. “I won’t hurt you, not if you don’t want me to.” He began to stroke the Doctor’s hair, caress his cheek, his neck. Again the Doctor tried to pull away, again his head was held in place. “I can make things easy for you Doctor. Give me the information to ensure they don’t kill you accidentally. Do you have any allergies? Are there painkillers that will work on a Time Lord nervous system? They will cause you considerable pain Doctor. I don’t want you to suffer needlessly.”“Wh-why?”Cancer Man traced nicotine stained fingers across the Doctor’s lips. He shuddered in disgust. The other hand twisted fingers in his hair, tipping his head back.“Is there anything you want the science team to be aware of?” His voice was low, hypnotic, soothing in a disturbing kind of way. His breath, however, stank of stale cigarettes. The Doctor’s nostrils flared in disgust. “Anything here on Earth that may inadvertently kill you?”“Aspirin.” The Doctor was surprised that his voice was cracked, hoarse with fear. He coughed. “Aspirin will kill me, even half an aspirin,” he said more firmly.Cancer Man’s fingers slid from his hair and ran down his neck and spine as the other hand cupped his chin.“Anything else?”“Anymore anaesthetic and I’m going to be very ill. It’s weakening my biochemistry.”Cancer Man frowned. “Are you sure?”“Yes,” the Doctor whispered, confused by his own treacherous bodily responses to the unwanted caresses.“That is most unfortunate. Most unfortunate indeed, as it will increase your suffering considerably.”One hand was now pressed in the small of the back, the other caressing the Doctor’s throat.“And pain killers? What will work with your biochemistry rather than kill you?”“Aspirin is lethal, but unfortunately most others will - will adversely affect my hearts. I - I - I -” That’s three `I’s in one sentence Doctor, that makes you a... actually that makes me terrified. Oh God, get him off me...“Then you will suffer terribly,” Cancer Man said with an air of finality, then kissed the Doctor open-mouthed and aggressive.The Doctor tried to struggle, but he was so weak and vulnerable. He didn’t know it, but he’d had a lumbar puncture and bone marrow taken, as well as vast quantities of blood samples; yet more anaesthetics; tissue, hair, urine, faeces, semen and saliva; yet more blood samples, morphine and anaesthetics; as well as hormonal samples from both the pituitary and reproductive systems and lymphatic system... He had no idea that three days had passed since he’d passed out under interrogation.All the Doctor knew was he was sore, uncomfortable, muzzy, drugged, weak and frightened. Now, despite his best, weakened efforts at struggle and his own personal - emotional and rational - disgust at Cancer Man, his body was responding to the kiss. He stopped his struggling and allowed it to happen.Eventually Cancer Man broke the kiss and smiled a cold, self-satisfied smile that didn’t include the Doctor. He lit a cigarette.“You really are a slut, aren’t you? My sympathies lie entirely with the Master. If you were my... spouse, I’d want you dead, too.”“Really?” the Doctor sneered. “I’m nobody’s possession, no-one has the right to want me dead. I’ve no idea what insane gibberish the Master was ranting in 1978, but yes, in your simplistic terms, Time Lords can marry and yes, we were married, but haven’t any of you heard of divorce? In fact, to translate into your clumsy human tongue, I’ve been remarried and widowed since I divorced him. Is it my fault he’s a schizophrenic obsessive who refuses to acknowledge closure?”Cancer Man regarded him coolly through a haze of cigarette smoke. Eventually he said, “Have you finished your histrionics Doctor?”The Doctor hung his head.“Good. Now we make a deal.”The Doctor’s head snapped back up.“If you wish your fatal allergy to aspirin and your biochemical and cardiovascular vulnerabilities passed on to the appropriate team members then you need to pay for my services. Do you understand?”The Doctor could understand only to clearly. A particularly nasty form of blackmail. He knew how he was expected to pay. A thought crossed his mind. “The science team will know,” he spat out acidly, sneering viciously up at his tormentor.Cancer Man grabbed a handful of hair and stared down at him.“Then don’t swallow!”“What?”“Of course, the information could become garbled. Misunderstandings, wrongly worded messages...”The Doctor stood up and cut Cancer Man off. “Oral sex,” he stated coldly. “That’s all you want from me?”“For now,” Cancer Man replied coolly.“Otherwise what? Someone is going to give me aspirin by mistake?” he demanded acidly.Cancer Man smiled. “Mistakes can - and do - occur,” he replied in equally barbed tones.The Doctor closed his eyes. “Very well,” he snapped viciously. “Now?”“Now would be perfect. On your knees Doctor...” Three floors up and half the complex along a woman was busy in an empty ward. It looked very much like an ordinary hospital ward, except on closer examination one would notice the restraints on the beds, and perhaps pick up on the aura of despair, fear, and confusion if one could and believed in such things. The ward had obviously only recently been deserted, as the woman was busy stripping sheets, most of which were blood stained, some also urine soaked. Sighing, she then began putting on new sheets, humming Jerusalem quietly to herself. She never heard the other’s approach.“The new lot will be here in three hours.”She gasped and dropped the pillow she’d been plumping.“I didn’t hear you come in Mike. So soon? More HVs?”“Yes, but from overseas. Co-operation with our friendly CSs. And we finally have another DX. It tried to read my mind, but not hypnotise me. But thanks for the warning.”“He or she, Mike, he or she.”“He,” Mike corrected with good humour. “Although,” he grinned widely, “he’d obviously been recently buggered when he was captured.”“You’re sick,” she said mildly. “By a human?”“Seemingly.”“Excuse me getting picky, but a gay male Time Lord is still a he.”“Sorry. He’s very scared and ashamed, I think.”“What, of being gay?”“Of being here Julie.”She smiled. “I know that. Who can blame him?” She turned her back on Mike, thoughtful. “These flowers are dead,” she snapped, and stormed over to the table in the centre of the ward. “Three hours you say?”“Yep.”“I’ll be ready.”She stormed out, dead roses in her hands. Another DX… another Time Lord, she corrected herself. Liz’s? Surely not, he was officially attached to UNIT, as were her employers. At least, they gave the impression of being attached to the UN, although their funding was definitely business, not political. Or, so she had inferred. Multi-nationals, American, German, and Japanese, from what she could gather.She hoped to God he wasn’t Liz’s friend, but then, what did it matter, she hated what they did, be the victim Reptile, Grey, Time Lord, or one of her own. She shuddered, thinking of the poor abducted women arriving in less than three hours, women who, should they ever partially recover their stolen memories of what they were about to suffer, would believe it to have been performed by aliens. But no, it was for human profit… Julie shuddered again, and headed for the lift, fixing her mind on what she would bring to give the ‘HV samples’ some small comfort. Magazines, particularly the tacky picture ones - overseas, Mike had said, some may not read English - and candies and cakes for after they were out of theatre and allowed to eat. Plenty of chocolate, all women found chocolate comforting, didn’t they? And of course, some fresh flowers.Julie shivered and screwed up her eyes as she stepped out of the lift into daylight, surveying the dusty, dirty, farm track and ruined buildings. She wanted to be home, cool, lush, and green. But mostly she wanted to be away from here, from the Consortium. She wished she could escape, even expose them. She so badly wanted to tell someone official who would believe her and offer her protection. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? The Consortium would kill her first, and UNIT, the CIA, and the FBI would all buy into ‘Plausible Denial’. Julie was about to head for her car when the steel shutters slammed down in front of her, causing the ‘barn’ to lose all appearances of innocence. Shaken, she turned back to the lift, to the phone. Well, more than a little shaken, another couple of steps and she could have been sliced in half. Where were the alarms? As if answering her thought, ninety seconds too late, she heard the alarm. She snatched the receiver for the wall and punched in security’s number.“What in hell’s name is going on? You nearly killed me up here!”Julie listened as she was told about the piece of alien merchandise’s escape. Then she knew for definite. It was Liz’s Time Lord. Well, if he made it up here, he could have her car. She went to the steel shutter and entered her over-ride password. Mike had left the ward for the staff room on that floor, and was just anticipating a needed coffee and Danish when the alarm sounded. The last time there had been a breach in security was the last time they had a DX. Well, what did you expect? He peeped out of the door. All was quiet on his floor, except… Was that the fire door slamming? Carefully Mike tiptoed to the corner of the corridor.He wasn’t very surprised to see the Doctor slumped against the wall a little way from the fire stairs, looking very out of breath. That wasn’t surprising either, intelligence’s office was nine floors down and the poor little bastard had been through a lot in the past five days. How had it got away from intelligence or his guard? And since it had, why hadn’t it grabbed a gun. Now that was stupid.The Doctor seemed to recover his breath and straighten himself to his not so impressive height, appraising the corridor with very shrewd, intelligent eyes. Mike flattened himself against the wall, sure the Doctor hadn’t seen him. Well, almost sure. The Doctor smiled enchantedly in Mike’s direction and went off in the other. Curious, Mike followed at a distance. The Doctor crept cautiously into the empty ward. Suddenly his head snapped up from the workbench he’d been exploring, and a second later Mike heard it too - footsteps of marines.The Doctor’s head snapped up as he heard the fire door smash open and at least four pairs of booted feet run out into the corridor. He heard the orderly run away, he’d been aware of him for sometime, and had been on the verge of letting him know and asking for help. He had found nothing so far that would unpick these nasty cuffs. He hurriedly scanned the ward, and in desperation, hid under the furthest bed. As he lay there, starring unblinking at the entrance and trying to control his worried breathing, he reviewed his escape. It hadn’t been his most inspired, heroic of escapes to date. More his most embarrassing. The Doctor had sat, miserable, hugging his knees for what felt like an eternity, while that disgusting man sat at his desk writing up a report presumably on his allergies and vulnerabilities. The air was thick with cigarette smoke, but it was obliterated in the Doctor’s senses by the more overpowering scent-taste of unwanted human musk and semen. He wanted to throw up, but felt it would be too humiliating. The phrase, ‘then you will suffer terribly’ kept repeating in his head, along with remembered snatches of the DX clinical notes he’d appropriated in 1996.Eventually, the man stopped writing and picked up the phone. Then he’d stood up and unlocked the door. All this time - after he had got what he wanted - he had not looked in the Doctor’s direction. Not once. Nor did he speak again.The Doctor had been expecting Mike, and perhaps was a little disappointed when a bored looking young man in the compulsory dark suit entered. His superior handed him his report and told him to take the ‘little bitch’ back to the science team. The MIB leered at him as he grabbed his arm, and the Doctor sighed deeply, but didn’t resist. He had realised after day one it was going to be difficult to get anyone to talk to him. However, once in the corridor he did try.“I recognise you. Were you in San Francisco?”“Uh huh.” They walked in silence for a few moments before he added, “You sure were a pretty sight when we arrived.” He stopped and turned to look at the Doctor again. He grinned lasciviously.“Was I?” the Doctor asked with studied innocence, leaning provocatively against the corridor wall and gazing up through his eyelashes.“Sure. Tied up, naked, peachy little ass up. Sure looked like Laninski had you.”The Doctor smiled demurely and glanced down. “Perhaps.”The MIB tipped his chin to make him look back up. “So? You like it?”The Doctor smiled invitingly and brushed his fingers inside the man’s suit, slipping one finger in between shirt buttons and stroking his chest hair. “Maybe. Why, do you like me?”“Sure, but I ain’t helping you escape. I may be young but I ain’t dumb.”The Doctor swallowed, realising whom this was a younger version of. He seemed to be falling into so many temporal traps. Well, maybe it was time to smash the causal connection and break out of these temporal loops. Hang and stuff the consequences!“No, I know you’re not ‘dumb’, I know you can’t risk helping me escape, but…” The Doctor lowered his gaze again, softened his voice to a seductive purr and slid his fingers down to the waistband. “I’m lonely, I’m fed up with being treated like a laboratory rat.” He looked up again, smiling sweetly, “I need a little comfort. Do you understand my meaning?”The MIB the Doctor had now recognised as a very young Capey grinned widely. “Sure. Sure, I understand you.”“Oh good,” the Doctor said sharply, bringing he knee up very swiftly and firmly, connecting with hard groin. Capey crumpled to the floor, a swear word half articulated, a look of puzzled astonishment on his face. The Doctor didn’t wait to see anymore, he ran away, very fast. It had taken a long time for the Doctor to locate the fire door and staircase, first he had tried the lift, only to discover the key control. Cursing and wishing for his sonic screwdriver, he had run in a panic like a headless chicken for over ten minutes, corridor after corridor, listening to the alarm once Capey had hit the panic button. Surprising, he never saw Cancer Man - was this ignoring of the alarm a passive assistance or couldn’t he hear it in his little sanctuary?The stairs seemed to go on forever. He lost count of how many floors he’d run past, and eventually had to stop for a rest. This was Level Two, and he had been on Level Eleven. No wonder he was exhausted, with all that anaesthetic and morphine still swilling around his blood. His nanites were being given far too much to cope with. Whatever happened, he had done the correct thing in telling that disgusting man about Terran drugs. What was this? Defeatism! Never say die, Doctor, never! He would not get caught.The floor had no cameras and no threat but Mike hiding around the corner. Mike could easily overpower him, and had already proved he was beyond hypnosis. It therefore stood - probably - that Mike was no threat, but probably no help but of a passive kind. The Doctor began to suspect there was a lot of staff here like that, they would not help in an escape, but they wouldn’t hinder it either, unless it could be proved they stood by, in which case they would be forced to act against you. The Doctor walked off in the opposite direction to Mike, vaguely aware of Mike following him.He found a large ward, but unlike the one he had been on, it had a more used, homely, feel to it. Less experimental and scientific, more medical and human. It caught his curiosity. It had an aura of despair, of feminine despair, as if years of sick, frightened women’s feelings had been soaked into the very walls. There were three small operating theatres and a kitchenette leading off the main ward, and a small nurses station, plus six bathrooms. It was rather like a gynaecological and maternity unit in any hospital in any Level 4 society and above. Except Gallifrey, of course. They would have found that out with…Oh no!Somewhere like this, in twelve years time, they would bring Dana, another two on from that and they would have his daughter. The Doctor felt sick.Steeling himself, he began to search a workbench of tools, looking for something to unpick the cuffs. From his vantage point under the bed, the Doctor could only see feet, three pairs of military boots and some English brogues, Oxfords, and white training shoes - Mike’s? It felt like a very masculine kind of violation, macho soldiers tramping over this area of very feminine despair, like English sapiers in the purdah quarters of a Nawab. They looked in all the side rooms first. No one thought of the obvious to look under the bed. But finally he was found.A soldier in a UNIT beret dragged him out and threw him on to the bed. Capey strode over and, grabbing the pistol from the soldier, clipped the side of the Doctor’s head with the butt.“You fuckin’ teasin’ bitch. You’re gonna pay for that!”Capey made to grab the Doctor, but he leapt away. The soldier caught him, and held him down on the bed while Capey had a long, slow feel. The Doctor protested, loudly. The other two soldiers and Mike came running.“Enough!” A well build black man with kind eyes pulled Capey away and pushed the soldier back. He was a major. “This is an alien, belonging to the science team, what in hell’s name are you doing?”“The little alien bitch is a cock tease, Sir. Needs a fucking lesson.”“Not by you, Capey. Now, get out of my sight.” He turned to the other soldier. “Escort them outta here.” He turned back to the Doctor, offering him a hand in sitting up. “All right?”“Considering I so nearly escaped,” sighed the Doctor, “perfectly. Thank you for rescuing me from a fate worse than.”“Na,” the major shook his head. “Klemper’s a powerful man, no-one’s going to play with his merchandise.” He turned to Mike. “Come on, we’ll take it back to the science team.”Mike shrugged. “Sure.”
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Attachment 1
Subject DX2141
Clinical notes, Day 10
V. BenjaminAfter one week of basic medical observations, tests and examinations, the initial endurance tests began. Subject has been under enforced fasting until day 10 - fast began on third day of holding, but tests day numbering begins from the date of the fast. To all purposes of this team the fourth day of holding is day 1 (see below). It is understood that the subject was brought in under fasting conditions. As there is no way of discovering the time factor involved before the subject was brought to the facilities, any observations during those first three days are invalid.
I must note my objections to Intelligence’s obstruction during those first three days, when valuable research time was lost. The information gained from the Intelligent Officer regarding DX2141’s reaction the various medications could have been determined more efficiently and speedily by myself and the team. I am in concurrence with Spindler’s requests.Attachment 2
translation printout
MJ file entry: DX2141Medical examination - Initial reports
Team leader: Victor KlemperMean body temperature of 15 degrees centigrade; breath rate: four per minute; pulse and heart rate slow - mean average 43 beats per minute resting, up to 79 per minute thus far under physical stress. Twin cardiovascular system. Biochemistry and blood contain similarities to the HV, PS and CS groupings, but not the RSV. DNA pairings contain certain matches to both HV and PS groupings, but none to the RSV. DNA in strings of 55 base pairings, with seemingly an extra apparently redundant 45 pairs. At chromosomal level DX2141 is XY, thus male, indicating a basic reproductive biology common with HV, PS and RSV groupings. DNA and basic physical biology indicate subject to be mammalian, despite low body temperature, thus having more than just outward physical appearance in common with the HVs. However, initial sampling indicate subject most probably infertile, thus no further merchandise available for Operation Paperclip, although relevant DNA information has been passed on. Cf. Operation Paperclip. Information obtained matches that of previous DX test subject, DX2309. Some DNA pairings matches startling in their similarity, that the hypothesis of the two test subjects could possibly be siblings is offered. However, since no other DX subjects have yet been found, this data is very uncertain. This would also presumably be contradicted by Intelligence findings on the two DX subjects relations. Some form of extreme nano-technology found at micro-cellular level. Function and technology beyond current research capabilities. Subject DX2141 appears to be of any HV age between 35 - 55 yet claims to be 1007 Terran years of age. For the attention of V. Klemper - First 10 Days Report/Clinical Observations S. Spindler Subject DX2141: Time Lord/male 1. i. Basic deprivations - update report:
Following collapse of subject after 56 hours without water and his unobserved collapse under Intelligence interrogation following seven days without sleep, subject has now finally collapsed due to the enforced fast. Subject regained consciousness unprompted after three minutes, eight seconds, finding the energy to resist two lab. technicians. After 10 days and initial collapse, subject is still functioning under extreme physical stress and enforced exercise. DX2141 is fully mentally alert once again after 12 hours of permitted sleep on day 7, 67 hours ago, despite continuing lack of food. Sleep was agreed to be permitted on the seventh day due to subject’s obvious weakened condition and lack of full concentration. However, Intelligence took matters into their own hands, allowing subject to fall unconscious under interrogation. Subject permitted food from now on, day 10. 1. ii. Fitness and ability testing continued throughout the last 10 days. DX2141 A1. by HV standards. Subject able to sustain fast sprints for up to 5 miles, running for 30+ miles, and walking for up to 50 before exhaustion sets in. Abilities slowed and impaired day by day as effects of sleep and food deprivation set in. For detailed analysis: Cf. reports of A. Mickleweich, attachment 3. Subject collapsed at machine during enforced sprint in gym at 3:17 am, day 10. Subject became violent and panicked on regaining consciousness, possibly due to disorientation.
NB. It has been observed by research team, lab. assistants, lab. technicians and the orderlies that DX2141 apparently ‘loses’ the ability to speak and possibly understand English and reverts to what is presumably subject’s native language. This was not observed in the DX2309 tests. 2. i. Basic endurance test 1 : Suffocation This test was performed day 5. Subject able to function entirely without oxygen for four minutes before exhibiting normal signs of suffocation. Subject passed out and required resuss. after 7 minutes and 45 seconds. 2. ii. Basic endurance test 2 : Drowning Test performed day 7. As before, subject functioned underwater with no need for air for four minutes, 37 seconds before struggling against lab assistants to come up for air. Subject kept water out of lungs for a further two minutes, 35 seconds, thus staying under water for seven minutes, 12 seconds before requiring resuss. The Doctor lay on his belly gasping for air, his fingers clenching and unclenching as if he could somehow grab the tiles for support. Breathing was like sucking in razor blades, his chest was burning. He had his eyes screwed tight shut, his vision had been so blurred when he opened them he couldn’t bear to look. He heard the murmured voices of Spindler and Mickleweich, the reply of one of the lab. assistants. He thought it was Braun, in which case the hideous monster Prior was the one standing over him.The Doctor shuddered. His eyes stung. He thought he might be crying but he was so wet he couldn’t be sure. He flinched as he heard the echo of loud footsteps coming in, a curt order to the research team.He curled up in a ball; shocked that he must have uttered the pathetic whimper he’d just heard. He was beginning to worry again that he’d forgotten the language here. He was so tired, he felt he could sleep for a century. He began to drift. A sharp kick to his ribs brought him abruptly back to consciousness. The Doctor shrieked a startled “no” in Gallifreyan. It wasn’t the first time. A big, callused hand closed around his arm and dragged him up. The Doctor stumbled to his feet, desperately trying to focus as he stared at the two impassive MIBs in the doorway.For a few seconds the Doctor allowed himself the fantasy these MIBs were from the official UNIT, ignoring the facts of history and the Consortium’s UNIT blessings.Braun came up to him, handcuffed him while Prior still held him too tightly, then stroked his hair, pushing sopping wet curls from his forehead. Why didn’t they put him on a lead and be done with it? Mickleweich and Spindler were still discussing him, glancing up occasionally with clinical interest.Braun spoke. “Come on.” He took his arm gently, but managed to squeeze the new bruise Prior had just put there. That wasn’t the first either. The Doctor grimaced. “Nasty,” muttered Braun, smiling. “Bad Prior.” Always he spoke in the same gentle tone humans reserved for babies, toddlers, and animals. Braun was the sort of person to give a lab. rat a pet name, smuggle in cheese for it, then cheerfully wring its neck.Braun pushed the Doctor towards the MIBs with a little pat to his backside.“Off you go then.”Dripping wet the Doctor was then dragged naked through various corridors and lifts to the lower levels. No-one had bothered to give him any clothes or even a towel.“Ah Doctor. There you are.”The hateful intelligence agent stood with his back to him, smoke surrounding him, giving him the appearance of one possessed. He turned. The Doctor was almost surprised when the nameless agent’s usual cold eyes met his instead of vivid green ones. The Doctor choked painfully on the cigarette fumes, his chest and throat raw from previous ‘experiments’.“Yes,” he agreed uncertainly. No-one had used his name in ten days, not since he’d last been in this room. But he wasn’t going to think of that. Instead, to distract himself from the memory the Doctor tried to struggle to his feet from his knees. The MIBs had pushed him over roughly when they’d left.Cancer Man stared coldly at his struggles then regarded the damp puddle on the carpet with distaste.“Bit wet,” the Doctor muttered quietly.“Yes, you are, aren’t you?” He ground down his cigarette in the desk ashtray and then walked to a large cupboard at the back of the room.His vision finally cleared in time for the Doctor to make out two police evidence type of bags, one with his clothes, one with his belongings. He was amazed, comforted - particularly by the sight of his hat - and… and he turned his head away sharply, afraid he might drool at the sight of the white paper bag he knew contained peppermint creams. Food. Oh God, food!Cancer Man had found a towel, a large fluffy white one with a pharmaceutical company logo stamped on one corner. He stood over the Doctor, wrapping him in the towel and lifting him gently to his feet, arms holding him tightly across the chest.The Doctor didn’t care who this was, what he was, what he was going to do, he’d touched him as a person. After ten days of being treated somewhere between an experimental animal and a piece of space garbage it was almost too much to bear. Gratefully he savoured the touch, leaning his head back. He closed his eyes briefly…“Doctor! Wake up. Doctor…”Someone was calling his name. Everything was so heavy, and why was the room spinning? Who was that slapping his hand? Why did they smell of nicotine? And such a strong smell of human musk on top of the tobacco. Where was he? What had he done - been done to him now? He was so tired…“Doctor?” A hand in his hair shaking his head.The Doctor’s eyes snapped open. He was on that sofa, the one where he’d… Don’t think of that!“Drink this.” Cancer man held a glass of water to his lips, supporting his head.The Doctor drank greedily. Not enough, not enough… He was so hungry, and so tired…“Doctor. Wake up.” Cancer Man shook the Doctor violently.“Awake,” the Doctor muttered. “Am.”“I’ve been instructed to question you.” He seemed strangely apologetic.“Oh?” the Doctor struggled to open his eyes again. Cancer Man was holding his sonic screwdriver, waving it before his face.“What is this?”“Not mine. His. Other dimension. Other!” the Doctor exploded into hysterical giggles. “What was in that water? Hallucinogenic? Truth serum?”“Doctor!”“S-so cold. If you’re going to poison me Charles you could at least use a solution of aspirin.”Cancer Man stared curiously at the Doctor, but the Doctor’s dizzy, fuzzy gaze was growing more and more unfocused. He didn’t hear the eventual reply,“It was just water.” “Good morning.”The Doctor opened his eyes. A small woman in an orderly’s uniform was bustling by his bed, checking monitors, filling in report sheets, the picture of brisk efficiency. She had intelligent, bright, eyes and a short grey bob.“Can I get you some fresh water? Still no food, I’m afraid.”“Where’s Mike?” the Doctor demanded suspiciously, afraid he’d never see him again. Mike was the only one who had exhibited any kindness. Well, except for the agent, but that didn’t count, his kindness was a calculation, with forms of motivation and self-interest the Doctor couldn’t understand, couldn’t read, anymore than he could find his name.Or had he? If only he could remember, be certain… No! He wasn’t to think of, to remember that room, his sanity depended on it.“Hey, come back to us sleepy head.”“What?”“Did you hear what I just said?”The Doctor shook his head, almost smiling. “No, I’m afraid I didn’t. Have I been asleep?” “Twelve hours, hennie. I said it’s Mike’s day off. Actually, he’s got two more, then he’ll be back, so don’t fret yourself none. I’m Julie. Hi.”“Hello. I’m the Doctor.”She actually took his hand and shook it, a feeble, feminine, handshake, but definitely warm and genuine. “Hi Doctor. Do you want some fresh water?”“Please.”She bustled out. The Doctor looked around him. He was no longer in the ‘ward’ or the small white cell, but a larger private room.“Is this a cell?” he asked when Julie returned.She pulled up a chair and sat down. “As in jail? Yes, you could say that, but it certainly sounds nicer if you call it a side ward. But, alas, the door is locked and you’re still on camera. But you’ve got your own bathroom,” she added with practised optimism, pointing to a door.“Did you bring the flowers?”“Do you like them? They’re out of my garden.”This was the first time the Doctor had heard someone refer to a life outside. Indeed, he had gathered the distinct impression no-one had a life outside, particularly the so-called science team. He smiled again, remembering why he got on so much better with human females than the males. Women seemed so much more fully developed, with a greater capacity to grasp many concepts at once and still be able to have fun. Like him, most human women he’d known seemed to have several thoughts and tangents in their minds at any one time. He supposed it was because on Earth women seemed to have almost exclusive rights to the children, they grew responsible without ever forgetting how to play. Either that or it was the considerably thicker central cortex in the female human brain. Or maybe it was just a development of millennia of oppression? He’d been held now close to two weeks and in all the military, intelligence, and so-called science and medical personal he’d met and seen, Julie was the first woman. And she was a carer, a menial. Even the torture of extra-terrestrials, it seemed, had a glass ceiling! He giggled nervously, wondering if he were growing a little hysterical. He looked up.Julie was regarding him curiously. “All right?” she checked.He nodded his head, fixing his gaze back on the bowl of roses. Julie handed him one. It was yellow, with a delicate perfume. “I love them,” he muttered absently, remembering she’d asked him a question. He looked at her and beamed. “I love the flowers,” he said more decisively. “I haven’t met you before, to my loss.”Julie grinned, a little embarrassed. “I’ve been busy with the HV females, but they’ve all gone now. Poor loves. I brought you down the magazines and books I’d brought in for them.” She grimaced. “Mostly tacky women’s mags and romances, and a few detective novels as well - you know, ‘women’s fiction’.” She grimaced again. “There’s a few feminist magazines too, you know - Cosmopolitan, Ms, Metropolitan? I don’t get a chance to shop much, so when I do I just grab huge handfuls off the shelves. I can bring things from home, I’ve quite an extensive library. If there’s anything…”The Doctor stopped her prattle, which he suspected was designed to put him at ease. He was grateful. “Julie, I like you.”She blushed. “Oh? Oh good.” She smiled awkwardly. “I suppose romance is a bit - well, girlie for you?”If only you knew the stupidity that brought me here, the Doctor thought, enjoying the idle image of Chris in a tuxedo holding a huge bouquet of red roses and the biggest box of chocolate peppermint creams… Oh God! Food and Chris! He was torturing himself now. He grinned at her.“After nearly two weeks, reading anything will be heaven. I was reading Tom Jones but they took all my belongings away. I know that’s not quite romance… Besides. Why should I be above romance? Because I’m male or not human, mm?” he gave her an enchanting smile. “Thank you for the flowers.”She blushed. “Oh well, I do the same for the women abductees - I mean HV samples…”He frowned and reached out to touch her wrist. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. Oh.”Julie stared into his deep, ageless, eyes. She trusted him, truly trusted him, not the pseudo-trust the last DX subject had hypnotised into her. “I didn’t say above,” she said, trying to re-establish their banter, “I said - too girlie.”“I don’t object to being thought of as ‘girlie’, you know? Doesn’t it mean sensitive and compassionate? And thank you.”“For what?”“All of this.” He waved his hand to indicate the room. “Flowers, books, and… especially for my name. What’s your real name?” he asked, trying to put Julie back at her ease. She seemed troubled by thoughts of her past duties.“Julian Kennedy. It’s hideous! Imagine being given a boy’s name!”“Well, I should hope so.”She giggled nervously. “Little Miss Doctor has a sense of humour. Good.”“Julian was a woman’s name for centuries.”“Yeah. That’s what my parents said. But was being the operative word. Not in the twentieth, though. I miss them. My parents, I mean. My PhD was funded by US money - theirs - so, now - I’m stuck here. Says here you’re an alien, but you sound Scottish to me. I’m from Firth, my Dad’s family from real Highlands. Thurso. You know it?”“Very remote. I had a friend from the Highlands once.”“You like humans, don’t you? Where was she from?”“He. I can’t remember. Isn’t that awful, especially since I claimed to like romance. His name was James Robert McCrimmon - Jamie. He was from the seventeenth century, so would have had no objection to Julian for a girl. Well, he might have objected to such an English name. So tell me,” the Doctor beamed at her, “how does a nice bonnie Scottish lass have such an Anglo-Catholic name, and how did you get to be here? Indeed, wherever here is? Most of the science team appears German, and the Consortium is internationally funded, so I’m only surmising I’m still in the US?”“Oh Doctor, I break some rules, but not all of them.” She flicked her gaze up to the camera, then down to her feet, clicking her heels three times. “Ah, there’s no place like home,” she said. The Doctor silently mouthed a thank you while she went on, “My mother was an Anglican, English in fact, from Rye. My Mum toyed with being a nun for a while before she met my father. I’m named after a thirteenth century saint.”The Doctor nodded. “Julian of Norwich. I don’t think she’s ever been canonised, but a serene, wise, and mystical woman.” He smiled sadly. “All shall be well, and all shall be well…” he paused, choked, and continued, a tear rolling down his cheek, “…and in all manner of things shall be well.” He looked up at Julie. She squeezed his hand. “Will it?” he whispered. “Do you have a faith? The PSs do. As do the RSVs - at least two distinct ones.”The Doctor shook his head sadly. “I did, but I’ve seen so much suffering…”“Free will. God gave man - all sentient beings presumably? - free will. Better to suffer than be a puppet on a string.“Mm,” the Doctor agreed neutrally, too tired to enter into a theology debate. Unbidden he had the vivid painful memory of the Master offering him absolute power, a share in the ultimate power over all Time. No suffering, true, but… no, better free will. Julie also was a wise and serene woman. Why was she here?“I’ll see you later. It’s been decided to let you rest today, but remember -” she pointed to the camera in the ceiling. She raised one finger and mouthed one, then pointed to the bathroom door. “Oh, I brought down the selection of smellies too. Don’t tell me they won’t be too girlie for you!”“Better than the boring soap so far!” he smiled and mouthed another thank-you.“Well then, enjoy your bath.”“I will try,” he made a face with the back to the camera.“See you later.”The Doctor flopped back down and closed his eyes, imagining food, all manner of food, any food… He never before realised how important food was to him. 2. iii. Basic endurance test 3 : Strangulation Test performed day 9. As in previous two tests subject managed without any ill efforts for 4 minutes before requiring to struggle for air, futilely struggling against both lab. assistants. It took a further 90 seconds before DX2141 blacked out and required resuss.
Addendum: strangulation bruising completely healed within 25 hours.
Basic endurance test 4/recuperation speed test1 : Bruising Test performed day 9. DX2141 beaten severely about backs of legs until completely covered in bruising. Subject observed to attempt to disguise and control pain, biting lip to prevent crying out. After 15 minutes subject began to make noises of pain, and speak to team in a language presumably own. Begging speech patterns were taped and sent to appropriate linguistics research teams. Bruising has just completed full recovery cycle, 29 hours.
Addendum : medical exams following day 9’s experiments have indicated subject has been sexually violated while under team’s protection. Request full investigation into this matter before it gets out of hand. Two lab. assistants are suspected:
Braun has been warned about his over-familiar attitude to subject, including stroking hair and speaking to subject unnecessarily.
Prior has often been warned about over-familiarity of violent nature. Indeed, has been subject to previous disciplinary procedures concerning excessive force with test samples and merchandise.
It should be noted that subject is also out of team’s jurisdiction while under intelligence’s interrogation.
However, as condition of subject when brought to the facility indicates subject’s willing participation as a passive partner in anal intercourse, there is a query that subject maybe offering “favours” in an attempt at gaining help to escape. This behaviour is symptomatic certain HV female sample groups and suggests a possible line of psychological enquiry, as well as an alternative angle of investigation. Fitness testing 2 Day 10 had intended to see a further assessment of DX2141’s capabilities after intense tests and a 10 day fast, but subject collapsed, weak and disorientated, totally exhausted. No sleep has been permitted since the 12 hours day 7/8. For details of collapse, cf. Mickleweich.
Request two-day recess, in which DX2141 can rest and an investigation regarding excessive force and sexual violation can begin. These factors may be distorting the test results.
Also request some form of sedative as DX2141 has been becoming increasingly hysterical at times, particularly in the last three days. Possibly this is a result of the non-authorised rape.
S. Spindler, detailing V. Benjamin’s clinical on-spot observations.
For the attention of V. Klemper, c.o.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor murmured yet again. “S’sh. It’s all right,” Julie soothed. She was sitting on the bed cradling his head. A pile a dirty, vomit soaked laundry was on the floor. “Sorry.” “No, it’s all right. That’s what I’m here for.” “A Cambridge geneticist is not here to mop up alien vomit!” “Miss Doctor’s feeling a bit better, I hear. Try some toast, please…” “Do I have to?” “Although they deprived you of food until you can’t digest it, they are perfectly capable of force feeding you. Come on, sit up a bit.” She plumped up the bare pillows and helped him up. “And they won’t mind wipe me, there’s only two of us on the planet who know anything about Silurian DNA. Well, three presently, although he’s a little icky, h'm?” “Silurians? How -?” “My oft mentioned PhD Doctor. I was Doctor Liz Shaw’s star pupil. God, how I adored her…” “I always imagined Liz was heterosexual, although an incredibly tolerant one. No! I couldn’t…” he pushed her hand away. She was holding a plate of plain toast and peeled slices of orange. “A few mouthfuls, please…” Still sitting beside him Julie snapped off a piece of toast from the slice, placed an orange slice on top and shoved it in the Doctor’s mouth. She held his mouth closed. “Don’t think I’m so above the rest I can’t treat you like an animal too, you know. If you don’t swallow I’ll stroke your throat like I do my cat until you do. Actually, you remind me of a cat, a soft female one, but I wouldn’t like to see your claws bared. Now the last Time Lord, an arrogant, sleek tomcat. All black. You’re more of a fluffy little black and white queen. Good. Now try another piece.” Julie broke a second piece of toast, and again added an orange slice. The Doctor glared at her, then mumbled something indistinctly. “You will not be sick again, I promise. Eat it.” Glaring with more force, the Doctor chewed the toast defiantly. He pulled himself further upright and snatched up the plate. He took up the toast and bit into it noisily. “Satisfied?” he demanded, spraying her with toast crumbs. “I suppose you want to hear all about my cat, my unrequited love for Liz, and the RSVs now, don’t you?” “Yes please. RSVs are Silurians then, as HVs are humans?” Julie nodded. “PSs are Tzun - or Greys.” “The P’Sor Greys. CSs are the others, the Pures.” “And DXs are Time Lords. Is this really scientific?” “Were the genetic testings on Jewish twins in Nazi Germany scientific?” “They were barbaric!” “But were they scientific?” “I’m going to be sick again!” “Oh no you don’t!” Julie grabbed the Doctor and pulled him gently into the recovery position. “Over week ago,” she whispered in his ear as she appeared to briskly administer nursing duties of clinical reassurances, “a RSV merchandise package was appropriated from its facility in New Mexico. The thieves were a blond man and a black woman. Unfortunately, no files relating to this facility exist at any of the sites they visited. Twelve days ago, someone in the space of half an hour hacked into the mainframes of the UN Security Council, the US Defence Department, the CIA, and the FBI. After rescuing RSV merchandise and giving proper funeral rights to some PS wastage, I think the DX data may begin to make sense, don’t you think? ‘And all shall be well’?” “You’re wasting your time,” said a voice from the door. Julie sat up, startled, aware at how intimate she had looked. “DX2141 has been sick, I have been coaxing the subject to eat. I have full permission to be as familiar and intimate with all merchandise and samples.” She stood up. “Sir.” It was Klemper. “Intimacy with that one is wasted. Is it fit to be questioned?” Julie looked down at the Doctor who was staring with a burning curiosity at the aristocratic white-haired figure in the doorway. His pyjamas were sweaty and stained with sick, the bed wasn’t remade, and he’d had four mouthfuls of toast since he’d brought up his first meal. “No,” she said honestly. “Do not give too much away Dr. Kennedy. What if it escapes?” “He’s not human, what would he care for human politics Sir?” “You have not been fully briefed on this particular DX?” “I’m told what I need to know. Forgive me Sir, but the subject requires intensive nursing if he is to be questioned and the experimentation is to be continued.” “Then consider yourself informed that this Time Lord intervenes in human politics for its amusement.” Klemper inclined his head, then left, closing the door. “Shit,” mouthed Julie. “So, that was the man in charge?” “Yep.” “What have I done? Is it to do with..?” he shrugged, not daring to mention Chris and Roz. “And all shall be well? Doubtful. Do you feel well enough to have a bath?” “Well, I don’t want to smell of vomit, no. Please tell me I’m not going to be tortured, I’m just not in the mood. Can’t I have a note - please excuse the Doctor from all pointless torture today because he has an upset tummy?” Julie laughed. “Not the boss. There’s some form of investigation under way regarding unauthorised contact with you. No-one allowed to so much speak to you, you know, not without permission.” “What? Are you in trouble?” “Me? No! In absence of Liz, I’m needed by them all. I just bide my time, do my research, and try to make people comfortable. It’s all I can do! If I could expose them, stop them, don’t you think I would? But see how precious my Silurian knowledge would be should I choose to go rogue. I give myself thirty seconds, tops!” Julie was shaking with powerlessness and impotent rage. The Doctor sat up and reached out to her. She pulled away.“Where’s Liz?” he asked. Julie turned back to him and smiled sadly. “Nowhere on human Earth, that’s for sure.” The Doctor smiled back. “Have your bath Doctor, I’ll get you some more toast and tea. Jam?” “Er? I’m…” “How can you of all people in the cosmos be frightened of being sick?” His clear blue eyes met hers. Oh Doctor, she thought, it hasn’t even started yet. The Doctor lay back in the bath and closed his eyes wearily. He splashed at the bubbles for a while, then just lay inert. He couldn’t believe he’d thrown up so much. As if his whole throat didn’t burn with pain anyway. He’d been strangled, suffocated, drowned… Please not fire, he thought pathetically. He began to fret, torturing himself with possible maybes. He wasn’t sure of the exact details of every so-called experiment. It was, after all, over two centuries, relative to his own personal timeline, since he’d read the files, let alone the clinical notes. He tried to still his mind, but he couldn’t. He’d put up with anything else, but not fire, not fire… Talking about Liz just made the phobia more immediate, more terrifying, more… “Doctor? Are you all right?” His eyes snapped open and he sat up, splashing Julie. “Fine, thank you.” “You were screaming.” “I was? Sorry.” “Do you want to talk about it?” “What… What are they..?” He couldn’t continue, could tell by her expression she didn’t want to tell him, that she pitied him. “They plan more tests, fitness, endurance, recuperation, etc. More of the same. Sorry. I shouldn’t be telling you this, I’m supposed to treat you like a thing.” “Thank you,” the Doctor whispered. “Will this recuperation involve burns?” “Too difficult to control clinically, besides, we have enough with the Greys self-immolating as it is.” The Doctor closed his eyes, “Thank you,” he whispered again. “Do you want another try at some soup? And fruit?” “I do feel hungry.” “Good, because if you keep it down, I found some jelly babies in a mall a little way from here.” “Different incarnation, different tastes.” He was staring thoughtfully at her. “Really?” she smiled. He smiled back. “But some tastes remain constant.” “Such as?” He widened his grin. “Sweets and men.” When Julie left, the Doctor realised he wanted to burst into tears. Instead he tried to recall the feel of Chris’ arms around him. I’ll never leave you Doctor. And then he’d leaned across his head to kiss Roz. Slowly a tear trickled down his face, followed by another… He should have confronted them, told Chris how he felt, but then, this had happened, he had so carefully used this DX2141 in his fifth incarnation, never knowing he was condemning himself. He hadn’t cared, didn’t want to know who this DX might have been, anger and hatred of Time Lords, of Gallifrey, passion, lust, and hatred for the Master, the other DX, all bubbling under the sweetly controlled exterior, all waiting to boil over in a riot of an uncontrolled canvas of passion and anger: Him. No. Me. I refuse to escape into madness. The Doctor tipped his head back and floated, small enough now to do so in this long bath, letting the warm water relax his pained, exhausted muscles. He thought again of Chris, letting his imagination run away… he hadn’t stormed out, he’d stormed in to the bedroom. Roz had left, and he just pulled off his clothes, offering himself as she must have done. The boy was, after all, sex mad. As he fantasised, his mind substituted that damn intelligence agent for Chris, him not Chris pressing him down into a sofa not a bed, his sheafed cock not Chris’ naked one inside… No no! screamed a primal part of the Doctor’s mind. It didn’t happen! You just slept there! And he believed himself. Much later, fed and reassured by Julie of another day’s break, the Doctor lay on his back gazing at the ceiling. He was stretched out, one hand behind his head, the other on his stomach. An open book - Jane Eyre - lay face down beside, a half-eaten peach resting on the spine. After over two weeks of constant testing and torture, it was bliss to have this moment of peace. Escape was still impossible, he knew that. Hadn’t he already tried twice now since he’d had the strength? Even though he had known all along the attempts were pointless, doomed to failure. All they had done was sap his limited energy. He felt so drained. It wasn’t so much the disruption to the timelines, it was more the probable lack of disruption - i.e., he’d fail and then they may take it out on him in unrecorded ways. Particularly Prior. Then there was him. That agent. But he wasn’t going to think of him, it was imperative that he didn’t. He yawned and stretched, then curled over, hugging a pillow. He’d just fallen into a terrifying dream with Roz as the governess, and he as Chris’ mad boyfriend tucked away in the attic, when he was shaken roughly awake. “Wh - what..?” It was Braun. “Come with me.” “Why?” No reply. He hadn’t expected one. Instead he was pulled to his feet with Braun’s usual gentle insistence. He was pulled to the door, uncuffed, and led through the ward and up four levels. He hadn’t been taken up before. The office was similar to Intelligence’s, but much more austere in decor. Mickleweich, Benjamin, and Spindler were standing by a desk, Klemper seated behind. Braun pushed him into a chair in front of Klemper, then left, instantly dismissed. Klemper smiled. It was a cold, rational smile, the smile of someone trying and failing to fake warmth. “You are better than this morning.” It was not a question. He spoke with a heavy German accent. “Much better, thank you,” the Doctor replied in perfect German, taking a small victory in Mickleweich, Spindler, and particularly Klemper’s responses. “You speak German also?” “I pick up languages, it’s a knack. This is all very pleasant for a change.” “And the language when you fear and hurt?” demanded Spindler. “My own.” “Which is?” “No business of yours.” “Gallifreyan, perhaps?” suggested Klemper, picking up a pen and twisting it through his fingers. He faked the same icy smile, then looked up. “You may leave us,” he instructed his science team. “Actually, no,” the Doctor said in equally cool tones as Mickleweich opened the door. “When I said my own, it’s exactly what I meant.” He smiled at the team, all staring curiously, for once their curiosity addressed to him as a person not an experimental subject. “It’s called imagination, I expect you wouldn’t understand that.” Benjamin looked as if he were about to speak, but Klemper stood, curtly reiterating his order. His team left. Klemper walked around to the Doctor, leaning over him, hands on the back of the chair. “Who sodomised you?” he hissed in the Doctor’s ear. “What?!” “One of my team? Or Intelligence? The military? Someone is out of line. No-one so much as touches any of my merchandise without my say so.” He was pacing now, animated with anger. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Doctor whispered. “Did you offer yourself, or were you taken?” “What?” “Are all Time Lords deviant? Is it connected to your infertility? Are there Time Ladies?” “Well, no, no, and yes. Questions I understand, although I resent ‘deviant’, as if DX2141 isn’t bad enough, but -” “Enough!” Klemper slapped the desk. The Doctor flinched. “Someone here has had intercourse with you. I need to know whom. No-one damages my merchandise.” The Doctor stood up and leaned across the desk. “No-one’s been playing with your toys. I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.” “Enough lies! I have heard of your duplicity, Time Lord! Don’t think your lies aren’t as clear as crystal. Your last exam shows clearly the evidence of anal intercourse. Since you chose to lie, I must assume you are protecting someone. You’re as pathetic as the HV bitches brought in for harvest!” The Doctor flinched at the violence of his misogyny, and his realisation at what these women were abducted for, and the time span of such ‘harvests’. Poor Dana. He flinched again as Klemper again stood over him. “Did you think you could buy freedom? Or is it love?” he sneered. The Doctor tried to pull away, but Klemper grabbed his hair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he whispered again, hoarse with a desperation he refused to acknowledge. “You can’t deny it!” “I don’t remember! I really can’t remember!” the Doctor practically yelled. Klemper slapped him twice, hard, before turning his back and picking up the phone. He spoke curtly, saying he was finished. He sat back down and resumed twisting the pen. “Either you are emotionally attached and determined to protect your man. Or,” he paused, staring intently at the Doctor, “you were assaulted and have buried the memory?” The Doctor buried his face in his hands. “I can’t remember,” he whispered, “I really can’t.” He didn’t look up again until Braun arrived to escort him away. Once back in his cell the Doctor knew it was imperative he did not think at all about the interview. Instead he tried to read Jane Eyre, gave up and instead tried the article in Metropolitan by one Sarah Jane Smith, even though the witty description of May Week at Lady Julian College, Oxford, was cruelly exact, particularly one characterisation of the reputedly permanent nameless theologian, political scientist, and counsellor. He really found it difficult to focus his mind, even on the two pages of new, exciting things to do with potatoes in Women’s Realm. Instead he lay back again, hands on stomach, trying to concentrate on his breathing and listening to the murmur of Braun and Julie’s conversation outside the room.He began to despair again of never escaping, not even after all the experimentation described in the files were over, despite Julie’s news of the black woman and the blond man. He was only, after all, hoping they were Roz and Chris.However, thinking of Chris did provide an escape from his despair. He closed his eyes and recalled with vivid clarity Chris’ blue eyes, his blond hair, his broad chest, taut, hard stomach, his strong arms, muscular legs and, if he concentrated hard enough he could recall with absolute clear clarity the vision of Chris naked from the one and only time he’d seen him so. “Blimey,” Benny had said. Absolutely! The Doctor actually laughed. Having painted such a vivid picture no-one else could possibly be superimposed upon by his own torturous sub-conscious, the Doctor put himself there too, running his hands and tongue over stomach and thighs, kneeling at Chris’ feet, taking his impressive erection - because Chris wanted him too! - in his mouth, before changing his mind and discarding the image. His eyes snapped open. He frowned, his face creasing with self-censure and hatred. He stared at the ceiling, thoughtful, trying to block unwanted memories and the fears of what was yet to come. He had to think of Chris, now he had food, he had to have some escape in his mind. But not that, it was too mechanical; he would never prostitute himself before Chris. Naïve, beautiful, noble Chris. No. He closed his eyes again, this time dressing them both in tuxedoes, putting them at a candlelit table in his favourite restaurant at the Champ de Lyse, Paris, 1923. All right Christopher, he thought, seduce me. A clattering awoke the Doctor. He sat up abruptly, staring wildly at his intruder in his little sanctuary from torture and experimentation. It was Prior. He appeared to be drunk, having just pushed the books, magazines and jam jar of flowers from the table. “Stupid British geneticist been pampering you, eh faggot?” The Doctor blinked. “What crap,” Prior said, kicking the books. The Doctor stared, incredulously. Prior never spoke to him - nobody spoke to him except Julie. Not that it was the most friendly of openings, but still, he’d spoken. “What exactly is crap?” the Doctor asked, wondering if he’d get a response. “Get up!” Oh well, not exactly an answer then. “Why?” “Get on your feet, you fucking alien faggot!” There was something not quite right here, the Doctor decided. So far he’d been dealt with either clinically or officiously. Considering he had no choice thanks to the trap his previous incarnation had dug for him, the Doctor felt he had quite graciously resigned himself to the suffering. Time’s Champion would not tear apart crystallised time merely for self-interest. However, he certainly wasn’t keen to suffer anything outside the historically recorded DX and MJ files. “Why? I was told I had another day before any more of your so-called tests?” “Intelligence wants you.” “I don’t believe you. Shall I shout for help?” Prior was now bearing down on him. “Help!” the Doctor began to yell but a hand was clamped over his mouth. The Doctor bit his palm as he tried to push him away. Prior belted him across the face with the back of his hand. “Shut up, you filthy alien queer!” He had produced a gun, and now trained it between the Doctor’s eyes. “Of course. You’re the one with the gun. Aren’t you?” “And don’t think you can hypnotise me either, you little shit! Now move. Slowly.” Never taking his eyes from the gun, the Doctor carefully slid out of bed and acquiesced without another word to being dragged through the ward to the lift. He took no comfort from the fact that Prior wouldn’t survive long if he discharged the revolver. Prior knew that as well as he did, but seemed almost insane in his disregard for procedure, discipline, the cameras or little else. Prior took him to one of the lowest levels, the bare concrete and frightening vaults, full of locked doors and alien screams, the smell of decaying reptilian flesh. The Doctor had only glimpsed all this the once, when he had been barely conscious in his first few hours here. That first - and only - real interrogation by Cancer Man. At the end of the cold, hostile, corridor Prior pushed him into an empty and bleak grey cell. He locked the door behind him. The Doctor had stumbled and was struggling to get back on his feet the first time Prior kicked him. He rolled away, panicked. Prior stalked over to him, kicking out again. “Stop! Wait!” wailed the Doctor. Prior dragged him to his feet, pulling him up the wall until he was off his feet at Prior’s eye level, Prior holding him by the collar of the pyjamas. They stared at one another. “Faggot.” “Yes yes. But does this mean you’re queer bashing me? What about your superiors?” “Does nothing shut you up? The bastards hit you, wire you, drug you, drown you, and I see it in your eyes. A terrible arrogance that says you’re only here because it suits you.” “And that scares you, does it? As much as my sexuality seems to, or more?” “Mouthy queer shit! Shut up!” Prior slammed him into the wall then dropped him. “Tell me why!” the Doctor wailed as he covered his head with his arms to protect himself as the blows began again. “They said I fucked you! Disgusting perverts. As if I’d fuck an alien faggot piece of shit like you!” “What?!” “So who fucked you?” Kick. “Selling your ass to someone, alien?” Kick. “Or did some pervert rape you?” Kick. “Nobody!” shrieked the Doctor, wondering as he did why the accusation scared him more than the violence. “Nobody!” he reiterated between blows. “Fucking queer. Alien shit. Faggot!” Prior continued to yell, punctuating each insult with a blow or kick to the prone Doctor. The Doctor had lost all track of time. How long had been when Prior was dragged away from him he had no idea. Five minutes? Ten? Half an hour? One hour even? All he knew was he ached more than he had after anything the research team had put him through and he was having a hard fight to stay conscious. Someone had their hands on him, checking his pulses and for any broken bones. He opened his eyes. Three US Marines in UNIT berets were in the room. Prior was down, lying on his front, rifle butt pressed to his cheek, the rifle owner’s boot between his shoulder blades. A second marine was in the doorway, talking on a radio. The third, a sergeant, was knelt next to him. He had empty grey eyes and a severe crew cut of steel grey. He seemed to notice the Doctor’s wobbly stare. “Okay?” he demanded curtly. “As well as could be expected, thank you.” “And you are?” “The Doctor, since you’re asking so nicely. UNIT’s British contingent’s Scientific Advisor, as was, actually.” “UNIT is classified,” said the grey marine coldly. “Oh well, you can’t blame me for trying. I’m a Time Lord, and if you contact the medical labs above I suspect they’ll be wondering where one subject DX2141 has got to.” The marine stood, disinterested. He snapped to the marine with the radio, “Contact Klemper’s team. We have a rogue lab. tech. And a piece of their merchandise.” The cold empty voice sent a chill down the Doctor’s spine even as the open wound on the back of his head and the broken ribs pushed him unconscious. There was that word again. As consciousness slowly crept back to the Doctor he could hear the low murmur of voices. “Two unauthorised assaults on this merchandise John. This is unacceptable.” “Two Sir?” The Doctor shuddered at his recognition of the second voice. “He has been raped also.” “Surely not?” said this ‘John’ smoothly. The Doctor wanted to laugh at the practised glib delivery, but he bit his lip. He wasn’t to think of such things, he must remember to forget. “I am assuming the possibility of a connection, but if my other suspicion is correct I need you to look into it for me.” There was a heavy pause. “And stop it.” Another pause. “And provide me with a full explanation.” “Sir?” The Doctor felt the man’s eyes rake over his naked body. “Can you do that?” “Certainly Sir. I shall look into it for you.” “And John?” John!? thought the Doctor with disbelief. No, it is Charles. At least, that was what he saw in his mind. “Yes?” he - Charles, John, whoever - sounded further away. “Terminate Prior’s contract.” “I will see to it immediately.” The Doctor opened his eyes when he hoped he’d left. He was back in the main ward. He sensed Klemper look towards him, so instantly closed his eyes again. Julie had been beside him, but with her back to him. She’d obviously been cleaning him up and dressing his wounds. “Report Dr. Kennedy.” “Bruising and lacerations to face, head and torso, deep internal bruising to the abdomen and two cracked ribs.” “It is frustrating to have so many unauthorised, unrecorded, assaults. The first DX was as a caged tiger, proving useless. This is as like a lamb.” “The Lamb of God,” hissed Julie under her breath. “Kennedy?” “Nothing Sir.” “Observe and note the cycle, pattern, and speed of the recuperation. We can compare your notes on the trauma of a real assault to the clinical injuries. Record also it’s emotional responses. I will have the further recuperation tests delayed for an extra 48 hours. I suspect the DX by then will be as good as new.” “As you wish Dr. Klemper. May I make a request? Although I believe your team has made a similar request already…” “No. There must be no risk of biochemical or neurological damage. There must be no possible impairment to its natural regenerative process.” “I had thought if we were to extract dopamine from Tetra- Hydrogenate Canabal..?” “I will consider it, but his emotional responses are also being recorded during each experiment. Now, have it transferred back to the side room. It must not be observed by the PS and CS groupings.” “Why?” blurted out the Doctor, sitting up. He’d forgotten he was pretending to be asleep in his concern for the Tzun. He was not particularly fond of the Confederacy or their practices, but no being should suffer this Nazi science. Klemper stared at him with a combination of hostility and contempt. The Doctor pushed on. “Why am I not supposed to meet the Tzun? H’m? Divide and rule? Don’t want them to know you have a Time Lord?” Klemper turned on Julie. “Keep it quiet!” he snarled. “I will consider the request for medication. In the meantime, gag it if necessary.” He turned heel and strode out of the ward. The Doctor looked to Julie and was about to reiterate “why” yet again when the burning of internal bruising and cracked ribs cried out for his full attention. He bit his lip, his pupils dilating considerably. “Lie back,” instructed Julie, putting a hand to his forehead and pushing gently. “Close your eyes. You’ve been in the wars.” “At least a straight forward queer bashing makes a twisted sense,” he muttered. “Very droll, Little Miss Doctor,” Julie said dryly. “Now relax.” “What about these ‘recuperation’ tests?” “Hush now. Don’t think about it.” “I can’t help but -!” began the Doctor in misery and despair. He didn’t want to wait another three days, he wanted it done now, out of the way! Julie put a hand to his mouth. “Quiet now DX2141, or I will follow my orders and have you gagged.” Julie hated herself, but she had no choice, the ward was under constant surveillance. She hoped the Doctor realised that. The Doctor stared at her with utter betrayal and rejection. It broke Julie’s heart. The Doctor turned his face away from her, a solitary self-piteous tear rolling down his face. “I’m sorry. You must understand why I had to,” Julie said for the fifth time. She’d been sitting in the Doctor’s cell for an hour, trying to engage him in conversation, make him understand why she had been cruel earlier. She hated it, she was his only human - sentient, she corrected herself - contact. So long being treated like an animal must be harmful to mental health, particularly, she thought, a Time Lord’s mental health. She really didn’t think the Consortium knew what they were playing with. So far they had only captured two renegades, but she was sure if ever they were to come across a Time Lord on Earth for officially sanctioned research… Well, Heaven help them! At least she tried to do everything in her power to make him feel respected and sentient. The first thing she had done was to give him some pyjamas and his robe. She knew how much he hated being naked. However the Doctor continued to ignore her, staring at the ceiling with blank eyes. “Julie?” said someone from the door. Mike poked his head round. “Mike!” the Doctor sat up, beaming. Mike looked alarmed, his alarm increasing at Julie’s scrutinising stare. “It wasn’t me!” he blurted out to her. “I have to take it down to Intelligence.” He came further into the room. “You’re back early.” Mike shrugged. “Called in, as you’re replacing Prior in the labs. Looks like you’re stuck there for a while now. Is it true? I heard that they’d… that they?” “Terminated Prior’s… uh, contract? Yes, it’s true.” “Oh Jesus…” Mike sat down on the end of the bed. The Doctor’s eyes had widened, flicking from Julie to Mike. “You mean killed him? They killed him! He didn’t deserve that! He was a deeply disturbed man, cruel yes, but he didn’t…” He tailed off, aware of Mike and Julie staring intently at his beaten face. “I’m sorry Julie, it’s me who should be apologising.” “What’s this about?” asked Mike, looking from one to the other. “Oh, I sent Julie to Coventry.” “Uh?” “An British phrase,” explained Julie, “It means the Doctor wasn’t speaking to me, because I used his subject number not his name.” “Yeah but…” “But nothing, it’s something I never do.” “You don’t expect me to?” “Follow your own conscience Mike.” “Okay. Okay Doctor, I’m sorry, but I have to take you down to Intelligence. Are you okay to walk?” “Fine thanks,” the Doctor said, smiling at Mike as he struggled painfully and awkwardly to his feet. He threw his hands up in a gesture obviously intent on keeping them distant as both auxiliaries moved to help. He limped slowly to the door.“Well, come on then,” he snapped. Mike shot Julie a worried look before leading the way out to the ward. “Ah Doctor. Come in.” That retched man was seated causally on the sofa, jacket and tie off, hip-holster slung on the table, where there was also a tray with tea and a plate of scones. Mike withdrew after a look then he stood and gestured to the sofa next to where he’d been sitting. “Sit down, please.” The Doctor just scowled and remained where he was. “Prior did make a mess of your pretty face, didn’t he?” He walked over to the Doctor and brushed the bruised cheek gently with the back of his fingertips. The Doctor turned his angry scowl up to him, which was not the right move, as the fingertips slipped to his chin and cupped it, tipping his face up to kiss him. The Doctor had no idea why he responded, putting his arms up to the agent’s shoulders and pressing himself close, returning the surprisingly gentle kiss. Eventually his reason caught up with his instinct and he pulled away. Instead of pushing his nameless lover away, however, he allowed his hand to be held as he was slowly led across the room to the sofa. Once sitting he curled up, glaring with annoyance and powerlessness. “Tea?” “Mm?” The Doctor turned his attention to the table. A silver tea service, scones and cream, jam, and almond slices. Was he being bribed? Compensated? Paid? Or merely spoiled? He rather thought it was the latter. Suddenly the memories of before overwhelmed him. The intelligent agent wraps him in the fluffy towel, holding him gently as the Doctor tips his head back, relaxing in his arms, safe from the science team. The Doctor turns and slides his arms around him, pressing himself close, tipping his head up to kiss him, his lips, chin, neck, murmuring encouragement… Not resisting as his led to the sofa, certainly to resisting but insisting…What had he done?Well, there was nothing for it now but to continue with the pretence. At least he was safe in this room, he knew now Cancer Man would never deliberately do him any harm. He felt so tired, so drained. He’d felt so relieved when Julie told him about the break in the so-called experiments, but being mostly alone in that room, knowing he was on camera, even in the bathroom… Alone with his imagination and Julie’s literature. It had been unbearable. His mind filled in the blanks, photographic recall now of the DX and MJ files his fifth incarnation had read, that he had read and used, supplemented with knowledge of Nazi scientists treatment of Jews and generic human treatment of aliens for a millennia beginning now. For all the evil and scheming one could attribute to this man’s future, xenophobia was not one of them. What he did he did was for the good Earth as much as the Brigadier, even if the outcome usually seemed cruel and violent. The Brigadier, if truth was faced, had killed more aliens than he’d assisted. But Cancer Man seemed to treat human, Tzun, and Time Lord alike with the same passive disinterest. Well, there was nothing passive in his interest in this particular Time Lord. The Doctor could feel his eyes on him, a mixture of horror, compassion, and desire in the face of his injuries. He could not stand it, felt deeply ashamed of his own behaviour... feelings… so covered his face with his hands.How could he have given himself to... to this monster! “You know you are safe with me Doctor... I was kind to you, helped you even...”Or something like that, the Doctor couldn’t remember very clearly what had been said to him, what will be said to him, he had been to busy backing away, not believing it, not understanding, and if he were honest with himself, afraid, so afraid...The Doctor was overwhelmed with memories he really didn’t need.He stood in the doorway of the gym, uncertain if he had the right address. Was this the place they’d been playing stupid spy games to get him to? He’d been expecting a research facility, a medical centre or a university building, in fact anything but a seedy downtown gym. The air was heavy with beer and sweat, a man approaching him in that patronisingly arrogant manner that typified men’s behaviour since his regeneration. If only he could figure out why...The whole vivid memory, physiological as well as emotional, hit him like a huge wave, crashing him over into a hideous, embarrassing, whimper. Not now, not now, he didn’t have flashbacks any more, he had dealt with it, he had, he...The Doctor came to himself as he felt strong arms wrap themselves tightly around him and lift him into a lap. He was cradled and rocked, a hand gently eased away his from his face, yet he didn’t unscrew his eyes. The cuddle was a comfort, he didn’t want to look at who it was, the same man who will rape him in 1996, who will authorise the sexual torture by his men... No! He should be fair, this man had known nothing about the MIBs in the gym, had felt only rejection and hurt by his seemingly irrational behaviour. Maybe it had been irrational, maybe he should have realised the temporal loop earlier, if he had been honest, told him about the gym... Had he been provocative? Hard to tell, but: “... even helped...” ? Was Cancer Man going to get him out of here? Help?“Help me escape,” he murmured softly, opening his eyes to gaze up helplessly - this time deliberately helplessly - in to Cancer Man’s frightenly gentle eyes.“We’d never make it up two levels alive, let alone reach the surface.”“How far underground are we?”“Why do you want to know?”“I know I’m in Kansas.”Aha! That shocked him.“We’re in a 1950s nuclear bunker built originally for the State governor, but when UNIT seconded it in 1963, it was considerably added to, it goes two miles deep in places, there are 17 levels of research, medical, holding and training facilities.”“Why 1963?”Cancer Man smiled at him and stoked his hair. “You don’t know?”“No,” he caught himself smiling back, “no. Contrary to popular belief, I am not omniscient and I don’t know every alien incursion into Earth’s space.”“Kreer returned to Roswell, initially, fuelling the already dangerous climate of Cuba in ‘62.”“Kreer? You mean the Master?”“Yes, I do, don’t I? The tea’s getting cold.”“Mm,” agreed the Doctor absently, wriggling into an upright sitting position but not leaving Cancer Man’s lap. He surveyed the laid coffee table once more. Well, if he was being spoiled, he may as well enjoy it. “Shall I be mother?” he asked tartly.“I understand you always are,” replied Cancer Man with equal bite.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The Doctor wasn’t aware of falling asleep, but he supposed he must have dozed as he fuzzily came to. He was curled up of his side, his ‘partner’s’ arms and legs loosely wrapped about him, his cheek pressed against his bare chest, the hair tickling his face, the frightening, dreadful bronchiole rattle of the lungs and the much too quick human heartbeat in his ear. He sighed softly. He realised he should feel disgusted with himself, but this man provided a disturbing kind of comfort against the traumas of experimentation. Strangely, this feeling of comfort/abuse, affection/fear reminded of him of something in his past. Something so far back it went beyond adulthood, predating the Master. He snorted gently. No-one was before Koschei, only family, and they simply were not worth remembering. The feeling was frightening, and best not pursuing, he decided. He had enough to deal with. He thought with bitter irony it was better to be prostitute that a lab. rat. The Doctor sighed softly again. He ached where the bruises were, despite Cancer Man’s gentleness, his surrender to him had aggravated the injuries. He had for days been trying to remember what other ‘tests’ had been listed in the MJ files and DX notes, but his own subconscious and memory retrieval systems were proving uncooperative. Probably out of a misguided sense of compassion, he supposed. But what he suddenly remembered was the unlocked cupboard containing his clothes and belongings. It couldn’t hurt to see his hat and umbrella, could it? And give Jasper and Stewart a little cuddle each. They’d been prisoners in a plastic bag for some time, it couldn’t be healthy for a stuffed bear to be so neglected, bagged up and shoved in a dark cupboard. He remembered reading an article about the physical and mental health problems of Edwardius Brunii. Neglect was a big problem. Did he really remember or was he going mad? Did it even matter? It would probably be useful to see his sonic screwdriver again, to smuggle it out. It fact… Cancer Man was now snoring in his ear, the rattle in the lungs more pronounced that ever. The Doctor twisted his head up and looked at the sleeping face, totally relaxed and devoid of all deviousness and double and triple standards. Gently, the Doctor disentangled himself from the sleeping man. Cancer Man snorted in his sleep, and shifted, but didn’t wake. Eagerly, the Doctor quickly crept to the cupboard at the back of the office. As he remembered, the door was unlocked. He suppressed a little giggle as he took down the two evidence bags. He smiled briefly and hugged his hat, then flipped it on. His face had creased into a frown of concentration and he again took in the sleeping form of Cancer Man, the gun and bunch of keys on the desk and the sonic screwdriver among his belongings. A more devious, intelligent smile crossed his lips, and in a missed gesture, he brought the handle of his beloved umbrella to his lips. Now was a very good time to leave. The Doctor frowned again, looking at the snoring Cancer Man. He lay there on his back, shirt undone, jacket, hip-holster and tie flung over the desk chair, shoes off and fly undone. It wouldn’t be fair to leave him like this, in case he was found before he awoke. All said and done, the Doctor couldn’t risk this man’s ‘contract being terminated’ on his behalf, firstly because he had, after a fashion, been kind, and secondly, was to important to future history. He put down his umbrella and took off his hat, then went slowly to the sofa, working out a plan to save the man and still escape. Firstly, the Doctor wandered around the sofa and coffee table, then went back to the cupboard and emptied the bags, laying out his clothes by the desk but out of Cancer Man’s vision. Secondly, he took Cancer Man’s clothes from the back of the chair and placed them by the sofa. Then he rearranged the crockery on the coffee table. Only then sit he gently climb back on the sofa and, taking a deep breath, straddle the sleeping man’s hips and bend to kiss him gently. Cancer Man stirred and smiled up at the Doctor, a hand sliding to his bottom. “No no,” the Doctor said hurriedly, hoping he didn’t sound desperate. This wasn’t what he expected, and the last time he had said no… Cancer Man just gazed up, stupefied by sleep and sex. “No?” he queried quietly. The Doctor bit his lip, the smiled. “I was a little worried by you sleeping like that. Someone may walk in.” He began to button Cancer Man’s shirt, then reached for the tie. He dressed him as gently and as seductively as possible, allowing the agent to caress him as much as he wanted. Then, sitting once more straddling his hips the Doctor smiled enticingly and offered to make more tea. “Sounds perfect,” murmured Cancer Man, slightly more awake. “Oh good,” the Doctor replied softly, smiling sweetly as he picked up the teapot. Then he smashed it down on Cancer Man’s head. “I’m sorry,” the Doctor muttered, checking his head for serious injury. “You’ll live,” he reassured the unconscious form before leaping up and hurriedly dressing. Then he quickly placed all his belonging into various pockets, giving Jasper and Stewart little reassuring squeezes. The Doctor then regarded again the unconscious Cancer Man. He bit his lip, feeling slightly guilty. In a manner of speaking, he had just used the same tactic Andy had pulled on him. He checked the man’s head again. No permanent damage. The Doctor then went to the desk to pick up the keys and the gun drew his eyes. No, he decided. Then he picked it up nervously, then put it down almost instantly. He hesitated, then picked it up again, weighing it inexpertly in his hands. He replaced it on the desk. Decisions, decisions… The Doctor walked to the door, paused, then swiftly went back for the gun and nervously put it in his pocket. This time he would make it! No-one was in the corridor, fortunately. He made it to the lift unseen and untroubled, then took out the keys, all the time his eyes darting about the three ways of the intersection of corridors. He got the right key third attempt. In the lift he first took his can of spray paint and coated the camera before it had travelled to his location on it’s little axis rotation. Then he inserted the key and looked at the controls. The top option was G, he was on 11b. Naturally he selected G, but no sooner as the lift had begun to rise, it juddered to a standstill then begin to fall, fast. The Doctor began to furiously jab buttons, and then ripped out the panel, trying desperately with quick fingers and then his sonic screwdriver to get the lift to rise. But nothing was any use, the lift had been over-ridden and was determined to complete its programmed destination. It stopped at Level 17c. The door began to open slowly, as if by manual assistance. Shaking with fear, the Doctor braced himself by pushing his back against the back wall. Level 17, the floor of concrete, the smell of fear and alien bodies, the scent of Tzun blood and the sounds of Earth Reptile screams. Desperate, he pulled out the revolver and held it out in front of him with both hands, rather like the heroes of those dreadfully violent American movies Ace used to insist he watch with her in the TARDIS cinema. They used to chuck popcorn at each other, or feed each other. Thinking of Ace gave him courage, lots of it. The Doctor stopped shaking and held the gun as steady as he was able, steady enough to make Ace proud of him. The doors finally opened, revealing both the black major and grey sergeant, along with several young soldiers standing behind. All automatically trained their guns on the Doctor. The officers narrowed their eyes and stared hard. The Doctor pushed his back further against the wall and held out the gun, his hands now shaking. His eyes betrayed fear, fear of using the gun. There was a moment of tense, heated silence. “You won’t use it,” said the major gently. “Now put it down.” The Doctor tried to steady his shaking aim. “Are you sure?” “Drop your weapon!” barked the sergeant. The major looked to his sergeant with annoyance. “Don’t alarm him. He won’t use the gun.” He turned back to the Doctor, taking a step toward him. “Will you?” He took another step, putting out an arm slowly, eyes on the Doctor’s terrified luminescent ones. There was an explosion of sound - a gunshot, a bullet ricocheting of the metal floor of the lift and a terrified, surprised, cry. “At ease!” instructed the major, neatly stepping between the line of his men’s gunfire and the Doctor. He took the gun from the Doctor’s now limp hand and put his arm around his shoulder. “An accident,” he said to the sergeant. Drawing the shaking Doctor closer, he pulled him out of the lift. He gave the revolver to the sergeant. “Dismiss the men,” he instructed. The Doctor couldn’t stop shaking, he felt as if he were about to cry. This time he’d been so close to escaping. He could with sudden clarity remember the rest of the DX files he’s read and just couldn’t face it. Having realised he was unable to shoot at even armed men, the gun had seemed to go off at its own accord, followed by an embarrassing scream. Now, with this insufferably kind officer’s arm squeezing him reassuringly, the tears too came against his will. “It’s okay, it’s okay. Poor bastard,” he muttered over the top of the Doctor’s head, having put his other arm around him, pulling his face against his shoulder. “He’s looks so human, it seems wrong, somehow. The others, it doesn’t effect you, but this one…” He shook his head. “Poor little faggot,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder which is worse,” mumbled the Doctor into the major’s shoulder, “homophobia or xenophobia, but I still can’t decide. I think it merely depends on which I’m experiencing.” “Well, er, yeah, I guess,” replied the major. He looked intently at the Doctor who was now looking up at him. The Doctor smiled thinly, remembering when and where he was as he read the front of the man’s mind. He hid his homosexuality well from his superiors, but to come so far, he’s put up with an incredible amount of racism in his twenty years in the U.S. army. The Doctor thought of Roz, and her contempt, fear, and hatred of the alien. How was she coping in this racist century, he wondered suddenly. Would it help overcome her prejudice? Why should it? He answered himself instantly, 1919 didn’t, the eighteenth century didn’t… “Sir,” snapped the other. The Doctor looked at him, he was as steely and as blank as he remembered him. “Respectfully remind you this is escaped merchandise to be returned to the med. labs., and belongings to intelligence.” “I’m well aware of our orders.” The sergeant returned the Doctor’s look with his iron-cold, grey stare. “Take your clothes off,” he instructed. The Doctor pulled away from the major, backing off and tugging his jacket about him. He shook his head. The sergeant made a grab for him. The Doctor was horrified by the power and pitch of his own shout : “NO!” “You stupid, insensitive… Okay, okay… It’s all right.” The gentler officer walked slowly towards the Doctor as he backed away. “You’re safe… Well, your safe from what you’re afraid of. Klemper wants you back in the condition you, well… And intelligence wants your belongings, so…” The Doctor had stopped backing away and stood stock-still. “All right,” he said tersely, “but I’ll do it.” The major made a show of turning his back and instructed the other officer to do likewise. “No way, the alien shit might make another run for it.” “There’s nowhere for him to go.” He stared intently into the cold grey eyes of his junior. “He’s scared of rape, you only have to look at him,” he spelt out. “I am fucking normal!” he snapped back, turning around and folding his arms. Shaking, the Doctor had listened to this interchange. Still trembling, he fumbled with his clothes then stood, shivering, his clothes, hat, and brolly in a neat little pile in his arms. He coughed slightly. “Right,” the major smiled widely. The Doctor mutely hugged his belongings. “Okay.” He took of his uniform jacket. “I’ll swop you.” While the Doctor wrapped himself in the large jacket, which came almost to his knees, the major handed the clothes to his sergeant. “Return these to intelligence and tell them to get this elevator back on-line.” “Sir.” Klemper himself had come out of his office to meet the lift. With him were Braun, two of the marines seconded permanently to the ‘ward’ and, hovering nervously in the background looking guilty, was Mike. Klemper looked furious. “What’s this?” he snapped, plucking at the jacket sleeve. He glared at the major and as he did so, without once glancing in the Doctor’s direction, had wrapped a leather strap around his neck. “He - he was cold Sir,” stuttered the major, failing to hide his shock. The Doctor was trying to pull the biting leather away from his neck, choking. To the major there was some pathetic dignity in his helplessness, as there had been in the lift. Without waiting for another word, he took back his jacket and returned to the lift. He wanted no part of this. He even found it hard to believe the Doctor was alien, yet more that he or his species posed some kind of threat to Earth. Wasn’t that what this project was for? To understand the enemy? Klemper turned his stare to Braun. “It must be punished this time.” He dragged the Doctor through the corridor and ward to his side room by the strap by his neck as if he were a recalcitrant puppy, never once speaking at him or looking in his direction. Braun and the marines followed, but Mike had disappeared earlier. Out of the corner of his eye the Doctor saw him. He was sitting on a bed, a dressing on his forehead. The Doctor mouthed ‘sorry’, but the man just shook his head sadly. Klemper threw the Doctor into his room and the locked the door after following him in. The marines and Braun waited outside. Klemper finally spoke. “You lied.” The Doctor looked up from the floor where he sat from being thrown, trying to get his breath back. “You still deny it!” shrieked Klemper, dragging the Doctor to his feet by the leather strap. He pulled the choking, protesting Doctor into the bathroom and pushed him against the mirror. “Look at yourself!” He rubbed the dried stain on the Doctor belly then grabbed at his buttocks violently and pushed him over the bath. “You still deny the sodomy?” The Doctor was trying to struggle against Klemper’s bulk and strength, but the leather just tightened around his neck. His vision began to blur. “ I knew it was John, he’s always been a pervert. And his alien bitch repays him by violence. Fitting.” He had dropped his hold of the Doctor as he spoke, not really aware. The Doctor sank gratefully to his knees, breathing deeply. “I suppose he’s finished with you now, and it’s got you nowhere.” “Nor you,” the Doctor hissed in German, “The American government, UNIT, nor you employers are going to let you gas their best field agent.” Klemper kicked him, then pushed back into the side ward. “Look at this! If I had my way you’d be in a cell between testing, but no, because you look human, because of American pathetic humanitarianism, they pamper you. You’re nothing; scum. You shouldn’t come to Earth, this is our planet.” He choked the Doctor again, this time to the point of actual strangulation, then threw him on the bed. He fastened cuffs around the Doctor’s wrists and ankles. He’s been so busy, so deeply under, fighting Huitzilin with every ounce of psychic strength; his nanites and immune system so occupied with clearing out the LSD that he’s hardly been aware… But sometimes he had been. Every time he fluttered into consciousness there had been the cuffs, biting into ankles and wrists, men in white coats peering at him, a forerunner of this place… The Doctor screamed ‘no’ repeatedly. Klemper slapped him. “Scum. Even if you were human you’d deserve no better.” Stoltz slapping him as he was chained, upright, the world spinning, his breath laboured with pain and spextrox poisoning, afraid he was about to regenerate, afraid he wouldn’t… “Deviant. You’re an aberration of your own people; no doubt that is why they threw you out. I would launch all the deviant, the sick, into space if I could, create a pure humanity…” “You’re the aberration Klemper,” the Doctor found the anger and strength to yell, “the deviant. Do what you like to me, but it can’t change History - your brand of fascism will be obliterated from humanity. I left my home because I cared about equality, justice. I’ve been fighting fascists like you for more centuries that you can imagine, and I’ve won. Compared to some monsters I’ve fought, you’re a child, pathetic. You have no power here, you pretend to your superiors to have recanted!” Boiling with rage, Klemper hit him again, and again, then grabbed a cloth and pushed it in the Doctor’s mouth. M’Kabel and Albinex standing over him watching him writhe, sweating, against the sheets as she pushed into his mind… And they’d chained him hand and foot to a bed for three weeks, a curious alien specimen to be prodded and poked… He burnt in down. They closed it down. But that cottage, C19, the Glasshouse, all nothing, nothing at all compared to America. What was it for? Why? Three weeks then, chained to a bed, fighting Huitzilin. He’d been so afraid, so so afraid… but they’d won, despite… Half crazy the Doctor had struggled enough to spit out the makeshift gag. He was screaming again, no longer ‘no’ but, “Ace! Ace! ACE!” And Klemper hit him again, punched in the mouth. Blood tricked out down him chin as Klemper this time gagged him properly with surgical tape. Then he left, turning out the lights, leaving the Doctor alone with his thoughts in the dark. Left helpless in the dark, afraid and in pain. He’d been so frightened he was going to die, he was too young to regenerate. He couldn’t walk, she’d beaten him so hard he couldn’t stand. Was it permanent? Would he be crippled forever? People weren’t disabled on Gallifrey. He stifled his sobs, his grandmother mustn’t hear him, she’s be angry again. He couldn’t be found by Glospin, either, nor his brothers or cousins. He wanted his father, he wanted Innocet, but she was locked up in a cupboard for being rude, and their father was at the Capitol. He had to stifle the tears, he had to… Just curl up in a ball and become invisible. Why was life so unjust? Was there justice anywhere in the universe? The Hermit talked of universal truth, but it never made… Mustn’t think of that! Concentrate on your breathing, slow your breathing Doctor, you must be calm… He couldn’t take one more second of this, chained hand and foot, he screwed up his eyes, willing Ace to find him, but he didn’t know where he was himself… He burnt it down, paid them back for the pain, burnt out other emotions, deep, frightening emotions that belonged to Koschei : jealously. Cold, so cold, in pain, Chris cradled his head then leaned across to put his mouth to Roz’s… Jealously put him here. Stupid little Theta, still curled up afraid… NO! He had to do this, he will stop this torture, he must… At least in 1996 he’s got so many Tzun and other aliens away from these… these bastards. He tried to expose them, took them on and lost… Held over the exercise vault, held down, pinned down as if he were chained, arms and legs in vice-like grips, Capey leering down, his hands… Not understanding Koschei’s desperation until they made him watch… watch as his consort, as he, Koschei’s consort was raped… Screaming, he was screaming… before those Capitol guards, in that gym, in his head, always… nothing else mattered. The lost souls on The Ship had beaten him so badly, over and over, to take out their frustration and powerlessness, but he never stopped trying to escape, to get to Ace, to get her out. He had been afraid, hurt, injured, it had affected him, but always as they beat him it was relief, sheer relief they only wanted to beat him… It was like a room he always returned to, the gym, the guards, the boy in the hall, so beaten he couldn’t walk, accused of all kinds of things he didn’t understand, he didn’t want to… NO! The whimpers through the gag sounded out in the dark. A small, reasonable part of the Doctor’s mind seemed to hover, a rational astral body, watching the physical suffering, listening but not feeling the uncontrolled torrent of memory, of anguish. His reason knew; he had lost. The Doctor was lost; he was utterly, completely lost. The normal script of his life would have found a way for him to escape, to be oh-so-clever, to have over-ridden the lift, to have hypnotised Mike or Braun, for Chris and Roz to have come charging in, knights to the rescue, indeed, Knights Adjudicator of the Goddess of Justice no less. He tried to think of Chris, his true knight, but… He had never felt so powerless or afraid, held down on that vault, he who had been imprisoned by the best, the worst, of the universe, tortured, interrogated, even threatened him with rape. He had always sneered, come out on top, victorious. Was he losing his touch? Since this regeneration… A constant threat in Paradise Towers, that Nazi Wolff tormenting him, but… that gym, when he thought… Back on Gallifrey, where gender identity and sexuality blurred, where he was, to simplistic human understanding, wife and mother… Gang -raped and his mind shredded… The Doctor tugged futilely at the cuffs. He had to get out of here. He was going stark, staring mad! The phone rang out in the dark. Julie fumbled for the receiver. “Hello? I’m off duty.” “Dr. Kennedy?” It was that creep, cigarette-smoking bastard. “Oh, John, what in hell’s name are you doing ringing me..?” “It’s the Doctor. Klemper has a crazy idea of punishing him…” “Why?” “He tried to escape, but…” “How?”Julie could never figure out this man in a million years, he sounded pleased and proud as he answered, “He smashed a teapot over my head and stole my keys and weapon.”“Right. Is he all right?”“No. Klemper has him chained up on the bed, with strict instructions to the science team and orderlies to leave him alone.”“Well, I can’t over-ride Klemper, John. I’m in tomorrow, testing begins again.” She hung up.It took a lot to get back to sleep. A few hours later the phone rang again. Very groggily she snatched it up. “I told you, I can’t…”“Julie, it’s Mike. It’s the Doctor, he’s…”“I know, tied up…”“He’s feverish, he’s been sick. I had to remove the gag, but no one will give me the keys to release the cuffs. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s got gastric flu or something. He’s running a temperature, and cuffed hand and foot in his own mess. Klemper’s off site and no-on will authorise…”“I’m on my way.” She sat up, already reaching for her bra. “Fuck,” she muttered with feeling. Having got the keys, she had Mike clean up the Doctor, put him in warm pyjamas and robe, clean up and change the bed, Julie then stormed into the science team’s office. Mickleweich was on duty.“What in fuck’s name is going on? When is Klemper allowed to take petty revenge on merchandise, interfering with clinical controls, and where in hell did he get the flu?”“Klemper is our boss, Dr. Kennedy. We can’t have merchandise running riot. I admit the punishment was extreme. The gastro-enteritis and the influenza are the first results of biological testing from another team’s work. It has been consistently exposed to all common human viral and bacteriological infections. It’s taken over two weeks to get a result. We suspect those nano-machines in its bodywork in tandem with its immunological system, giving it a high immunity. We must have broken it down.”“Why wasn’t I informed?”“You’ll have to take that up with Klemper.”“Oh don’t worry, I shall.”
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Recuperation Speed Test 2 : Broken bone recovery. Test performed Day 27. For details of enforced recess. and Dr. Kennedy’s observations of unauthorised injuries recovery rates see Supplement 3. For results of viral testing see Supplement 4 and Operation Sunshine’s bacterial/viral research files, logged on the MJ addendum.For comparison with Supplement 3 and for easy management a small, unobtrusive break was selected… Tired and disorientated, the Doctor was led naked by Julie back into the main lab., somewhere he’d not been for several days, days where memory and imagination had magnified the horror and the pain of the room. He took several involuntary steps back as Julie led him through the door, an instinctive reaction to the sight of Benjamin and Spindler. He contemplated making a run for it, for unlike Mike, Braun and the now “terminated” Prior, overpowering Julie shouldn’t be impossible, even in his weakened condition. “It’s all right,” Julie whispered in his ear, but even as the Doctor foolishly relaxed in his trust of her, she ordered Braun over. The moment Braun put his hand around the Doctor’s shoulder, fingers biting with Braun’s usual gentle insistence, panic washed over him. He began to struggle futilely against Braun’s bulk, trying to hit as his wrists were pinned to his sides. He screamed in Braun’s face and tried to kick at his shins and knee him in the groin but was grabbed by a second pair of rough hands about his hips, then ankles as he was lifted in the air and on to a bench face down. He continued to struggle loudly and pointlessly, the feel of the leather padding under him and now three pairs of hands on his naked body forcing those unwanted memories to the surface once again. As he was turned over, he could make out Julie’s voice, but not the words. She seemed to be talking to Benjamin and Spindler. She turned her attention to the men holding the Doctor. They secured him with cuffs then withdrew. The Doctor’s panic subsided as Braun and the two men - soldiers in UNIT berets the Doctor now realised - were no longer touching him. Instead he turned his attention to Julie, angry and betrayed. What he had felt after she had referred to him by classification number a mere shadow of his current feeling of betrayal. “I trusted you!” he spat out, ignoring the others in the room. “Interesting how it trusts the female,” commented Spindler. “Another parallel with the HV samples.” The Doctor heard Julie sigh deeply, but she didn’t reply. He reminded himself yet again she had no choice. Although he understood, his subconscious argued one always had a choice. Even if the choice led to death. He pulled against the metal cuffs until they bit into his ankles and wrists, trying to sit up and locate Julie. “S’sh.” Suddenly she was above his head. “Don’t struggle, you’ll only hurt yourself.” “Kennedy!” Benjamin’s voice, harsh and detached, came from closer to the Doctor than before. “Do you want anymore unnecessary delays? My methods may be considered unorthodox but they do get results. Now tell me Professor, has there yet been authorisation for any sedative or analgesic?” “No.” Julie put one hand on the Doctor’s cheek and began to smooth his hair with the other. She sighed again. “The man’s a fool,” she muttered. “I don’t like this, and I want my objection on record.” “So noted. Shall we proceed?” The Doctor stared up at Julie, who suddenly looked down, catching his stare with equal emotion as she slid her hand away from his cheek and then moved around to hold his chin. Tightly. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed silently. She stopped her gentle stroking of his hair and pressed down on the top of his head, preventing any movement. She glanced up and then looked back into the Doctor’s eyes deeply. “Keep looking at me and concentrate on your breathing,” she whispered. “When we’re ready Dr. Kennedy?” snapped Benjamin, drowning out the Doctor’s quiet question to Julie. “Very well. Proceed Braun.” Recuperation Speed Test 2(con.)Subject DX2141’s left collarbone broken at 0921 Day 27. Clean break.For no as yet understandable reason this is the first time DX2141 has shown signs of extreme pain and emotional response to discomfort beyond subject’s growing general hysteria. Immediately on clinical break DX2141 blacked out for 18 minutes, the longest subject has been unconscious during clinical trials or unauthorised assault (cf. Supplement 3). When DX2141 regained consciousness subject was disorientated and in extreme agony. Any attempt at examination was met with inhuman howls of pain and panic.Note extreme primal response indicating, despite postulated extreme advance of DX group to HV, instinct at deep mammalian level exists in the DX.Addendum: X-rays and thermal imaging scans show a small cluster of higher nerve endings balled together, function unknown. Exploratory surgery and thus the use of anaesthetics have been requested for further examination. Julie watched with horror as the Doctor twisted, screaming, on the bench, pulling against the cuffs, bruising and cutting wrists and ankles. She tried to release him while holding him still, but it proved impossible. Weakened though he was, hysterical due to pain, he was stronger then her. She looked up to her team, panic-struck. Braun stepped forward to help hold him while she stroked his hair. Braun began to make soothing noises, to stroke his shoulder. Someone, at least, had some common humanity. “I want analgesics authorised now!” she snapped. “Impossible,” replied Benjamin smoothly. “Any clinical progress is impossible with the merchandise like this,” she shouted in their ‘language’. “Now, dismissed, all off you. I’m heading this team now, and we will investigate the cause of this pain once the DX is calm.” She looked to the marines. “You too. Piss off. No, you stay Braun.” As soon as they were alone she told Braun to stay put keeping the Doctor as calm as possible. “Where are you going?” “To get the only drug not forbidden.” “What?” “I’m going to chloroform him.” The Doctor was first aware of his surroundings 24 hours after his collarbone had been broken. He opened his eyes on a bowl of yellow roses by his bed on the stand. His vision was blurred with exhaustion and the biting ache of his collarbone, the roses and copper bowl pretty yellow smudges, the room around a fuzzy white. He blinked twice, trying to pull the world into some focus. He could see Julie seated on an easy chair, her jacket draped over her shoulder, a blanket tucked over her lap. A file lay in her lap, her hand loosely still holding it. As if aware of his scrutiny, she opened her eyes and smiled. “Are you feeling better?” The Doctor shifted, the effort bringing tears to his eyes. “No, not really.” Speaking was an untold exertion; he closed his eyes with a whimper, aware of the tears running down his cheeks. He remembered The Ship, green vines pushing into him, pain like this, but for a purpose. He remembered Ace watching with horror, holding him.“Ace?” he whispered.“No, it’s Julie Doctor.”She was standing over him, feeling his pulse, smoothing damp hair from his face, wondering at the change. In a month of being held here he had never needed to shave, had never smelled anything but a sticky sweet odour however feverish or troubled, however ill. Now he had stubble, smelt muskier in his fever.“The nerve cluster we damaged, it allows you to control your own endocrinological system, doesn’t it?”“Da-damaged?”“Last x-ray three hours ago showed the beginnings of neurological repair. We’ve been x-raying every four hours since the break.”Each second awake seem to be increasing the discomfort. He was having difficulty following Julie. He began to pant in an effort to control the intrusive ache, clutching at the sheets.“What did you give me, before?” he whispered, his mouth growing dry and painful.“Chloroform. I’ve put in request after request for something else believe me…” She broke off. “Do you have authority to be here?”“How is he?”The Doctor would have given anything not to have his hearts do a little leapt at the sound of his voice. He was not in love, the man was nothing to him but a raping bastard, a… a - what did Mulder call him? A cancerous scourge on the face of humanity. Perhaps that was a bit harsh.A hand smoothed his hair, gently rubbed at his stubbled cheek. “Are you okay Doctor?”The Doctor moved his hand from the sheet to clutch at the man’s strong hand instead. “No. They nearly killed me. I can’t…” he broke off, afraid he was going to howl with the pain. He couldn’t cope, he couldn’t…“Klemper still won’t authorise analgesics or sedatives.”“We’ll have to do something about that, won’t we.”Julie watched as his eyes flicked up to the camera, then he smiled a calculated, contemptuous smile before stooping to kiss the Doctor lightly on the cheek.“You’ll hear from Klemper before the end of the day,” he promised her. Clinical observations, Dr. Julian KennedyThis isn’t really very clinical, but following the observations of hormonal changes in DX2141 after the damage to the unknown nerve cluster, I wish to pose the question: why? Why, if DXs can control their own hormonal levels to the extent of keeping themselves in a semi pre-pubescent state, why do it? DX2309 did no such thing. Why, when DX2141 seems to exert a vulnerable, flirtatious sexuality over certain men, why does he also use a child’s pheromones? Are these men attracted subconsciously to the child as much as the submission/feminine manipulation? Or is it just that he can’t be bothered with shaving? God knows, if I could control my adult hormones at will, I’d be a child hormonally rather than have periods! N.B. I continue to object to the lack of permission for any form of medication. My use of chloroform has now been forbidden. This enforced suffering of DX2141 is unnecessary and inhumane. Klemper could not believe the audacity of the military’s agent. He had stormed in, threatened him, presumed to know more about xeno-biology, all for his pathetic alien catamite. In the end, Klemper had to concede to his arguments, but not without a fight. What kind of weak government and military had the Americans, that any officer could sneer at his threats to expose him as a homosexual? The same kind that put a nigger in charge of the marines, a woman in charge of science, an unnatural woman at that. If he had his way, this consortium would be entirely reorganised. But he was here, safe in the U.S., when so many colleagues had faced ridiculous mockeries of trials for so-called war-crimes.John had threatened him, threatened him, when he had evidence of the man’s sodomy with a piece of merchandise. If he didn’t authorise the use of morphine immediately to alleviate the DX’s injury then his initial reports from the interrogation would be passed on to both their superiors as well as Dr. Kennedy, along with reports of the ‘cruel, inhuman, Nazi punishment’ of a week ago. Thus he had been forced to concede that the report stated prolonged and continuous use of morphine and anaesthetics would seriously damage a DX’s nervous system. Such drugs had not been used for almost a month. A week’s use could be comfortably permitted. Three hours after John had left, permission arrived for the use of morphine to treat DX2141. Julie almost cried with relief, and was closer to tears as she watched the Doctor’s face relax, the twisted creases of his pain-wracked face melt away with the agony. He fell into a more natural sleep. The following X-ray showed increasing signs of repair. The last one had been torture, with nothing at all allowed; he had struggled and howled, the dreadful pain taking away his reason. They had had to restrain him to prevent the healing break from opening.Julie stayed with him a second night, arguing with Mike who tried to insist she went home and get some proper sleep. She must have fallen into quite a deep sleep at some point, however uncomfortable the chair might be. The following morning she found the Doctor much better in himself, thanks for the morphine, and tucked up bedside him, one on each side of the pillow were two small teddy bears, one blue, one yellow. When he was awake he drowsily introduced them as Jasper - the yellow one - and Stewart, and informed her they were part of his confiscated possessions. He didn’t explain their presence, but Julie rather suspected intelligence had paid another unauthorised visit. Recuperation test 4/Intrusive injury 2 : Shooting. Test performed Day 36, following 2-day recess. to allow subject to recover from shock of intrusive injury 1. Knife wound in left flank still inflamed but bleeding finally stopped for 20 hours ago. Injury monitored throughout this test. Subject shot through right shoulder. Bullet went through cleanly. Blood loss and signs of shock are comparable with humans. Subject blacked out with shock for 16 minutes, more than for the stabbing test. Bleeding stopped with pressure pad, but still weeping. Both intrusive injuries still not yet fully healed.Permission has finally been granted for surgical examination of nerve cluster found under left collarbone. No permission for any analgesics, sedatives or anaesthetics granted. The team is divided on whether to continue with surgery with no medication of any kind. This amounts to vivisection, to which several team members have expressed humanitarian concern or moral objection. DX2141 may not be human, but he is sentient, and unlike subjects in the PS and RSV groups, appears externally human. Throughout all tests he has shown extreme patience and even, at times, exhibited humour and compassion. The team is also divided on whether to press on with the examination of the nerve cluster while the right shoulder is healing from the bullet wound and the left flank has still not yet fully healed from the knife wound. As ultimately injury and trauma up to but not including brain death are desired and will need to be inflicted on the subject if the team is to force a Time Lord regeneration under clinical conditions, three of us, the primary team excluding the team leader, feel vivisection while subject is still recovering from intrusive injuries would be an ideal situation in which to experiment with forcing subject to regenerate, as well as discovering the function of the nerve cluster.Matters have been taken temporarily out of the science team’s purview as instructions to intelligence from the British section have kept subject under interrogation. The Doctor lay curled up on his side, staring at the wall, thinking, or rather, recalling yet again the MJ files he’d read in his fifth incarnation. He didn’t think there was anything left to endure. Well, apart from an enforced regeneration, or death, non-regenate. Unless he did escaped? A glimmer of hope welled up, a little ball of butterflies tingling in his stomach. Escape. There certainly was no reason not to try again, no more was he obliged to follow temporal law or morality here. Except, of course, how? How could he escape unaided?He closed his eyes and hugged his knees tightly to his chest. Ribs bumped against knobbly knees. At one point, half mad with pain he’d thought for a second he had regenerated. His hands had looked different, larger, fingers longer. But only because his wrists were so thin, his fingers too. He had lost a tremendous amount of weight. His nerve relay had repaired itself, but since then he had begun to really suffer the weeks of torture and experimentation. He could feel so tired just getting out of this bed. He just wanted to sleep, but then the dreams came. Nightmares far, far too horrible to remember. Nightmares that were memories, memories of home.However, he couldn’t stay here, wallowing in his own self-pity, he had to escape. He could deal with any emotional fall back from the consortium and John at his leisure once he had escaped. But how?“You know you are safe with me Doctor... I was kind to you, helped you even...”John was the key.
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Chris opened his eyes, and waited for his breathing to subside. He was an adjudicator for Goddess sakes, he had seen worse in the Undertown.Yeah, right, a traffic cop who spend one case with Roz, saw a few dead bodies, then travelled with the Doctor, saw a few more... Every night now, it was the same. For an entire week. He sat up. Andy lay snoring in the other twin bed. He only slept due to large quantities of whisky. His father was an alcoholic, his brother a heorin addict, his sister in a mental institution. Chris thought perhaps he should stop Laninski’s slow decline into addiction and illness, but then, he remembered this bastard had seduced the Doctor and then betrayed him. Why should he care? Except he had grown to like and respect the young scientist in their travels, if not quite forgive him. When did he get to feel so old? Roz still saw him as her greenhorn squire, innocent and child like. Benny treated him like a giant toddler, a joke. He and Roz hadn’t so much as kissed since they found the Doctor missing. Hence his sharing a twin room with Andy. He heard a creak and a thump in the room next door and then the sound of a struck match and the smell of nicotine drifted under the crack in the bottom of the door. Roz had found her own addiction. She knew from history what a dangerous poison she’d found, too. Obviously she couldn’t sleep too. He thought about getting up and talking to her, but decided not too. He closed his eyes and all he could see was the piles of dead Earth Reptiles, emaciated and peeling scales, naked and abandoned. It had been such unimaginable horror, probably like something out of the Wars of Acquisition. Something his parents generation turned their backs to, something his denied. Even Roz had been horrified, but travelling with the Doctor had changed her outlook on aliens. Besides, they weren’t aliens. It looked as if they had only revived the whole nest to be experimented on, and then the bodies dumped. Elderly and hatchlings too. Horrific. It had been him that built the funeral pile in the ditch he’d dug. Roz had smoked and cried and Laninski drank himself into a stupor and passed out. But later, at the abandoned facility, they had found several bombs that had been keyed to a timer detonator, along with several files of documentation of the research carried out at the facility. They had debated whether to trigger or defuse the bombs, but in the end, they were defused by Roz and then disassembled, to save accident. “Decent humans of this era need to find them,” Roz had decided. Chris had thought it better to destroy the lot, but he could see her point. But he couldn’t remember anything about this era having any human contact. He’d seen films since in the TARDIS, and they were obsessed, sure, but that was all invasions or contact with super benign beings coming to save humanity from itself. Roz hated those. Benny used to argue it was important social history, and as the TARDIS seems to be forever taking them to the twentieth and twenty-first century, it was important that they learn how these violent, primitive people of over a 1000 years ago, from Chris’ perspective, thought. Andy had left them to it and, taking a canteen of water, had wandered off into the New Mexico desert. He came back sick, but wouldn’t talk to them. The files had led them here, though, to Kansas. They were in a motel on the outskirts of town, waiting... For the weeks they had been travelling, Andy had been leaving answer machine messages on the only phone number he had of his contact in the Consortium, the one he had given the Doctor to, each time leaving their current motel number. He had not told either Chris or Roz this, as if they had known, they’d have got rid of him, as all he possibly was doing was letting this sinister shadow para-governmental organization track them. It turned out though that the man had not been home and he’d rung that morning. He was having second thoughts... The Doctor sat back down at the small table and surveyed the chess pieces. “Forgive me,” he muttered. “My fault. The cake was too rich for you. It is I who must ask forgiveness.” “Won’t they wonder, the vomit, in your waste bin?” “I’ll deal with it myself Doctor. It was your move.” The Doctor moved his Knight. The game continued in silence for a while. As the Doctor calculated that he would be checked in three more moves the Man spoke, “I was suspended by Klemper. I had to pull rank, but it took me three days.” “I wondered why I’d not seen you.” He countered the Man’s Queen with a reckless move that would sacrifice his Bishop. “And now I’ve been called to Washington for a full report of my interviews with you. I have nothing to give.” “I’ll type you something after the game. Of course, it will be nothing but invention, but it should take them months to unpick, if not years. You never know, I may even throw in some truth to shake them up a bit, prevent them from tinkering with human DNA and experimenting on visitors.” The Doctor’s voice was flat; he had practically given up hope. He wondered if the report of the interrogations he would write would be those his younger self saw. He suspected yes. In which case, he hoped he could remember. He had better hide any hint that the hapless Time Lord about to be experimented to death, about to suffer vivisection and a forced regeneration, was not him, but some innocent on research... “Check, by the way. Your game if off Doctor. After all I’d heard of you, I expected a more challenging game.” “Sorry. I’m a little preoccupied.” “Don’t give up hope Doctor.” The Doctor looked up coldly, blank eyed, scrutinizing the Man. He tipped his Queen over, “Mate in one more. And talking of mating, I’ll write this report for you, then you can have your wicked way. It’s why I’m here. Isn’t it? “Not only. Not at all. I enjoy your company Doctor.” “What are we waiting for?” Roz demanded of Andy over breakfast. Chris was glad they were in a public space. He suspected she wanted to hit him. Again. “He said he’d be in touch. I don’t know!” “Fine!” she snarled. “It wouldn’t hurt if you and I did a little digging, see if we can find the actual location of the facility, scope it out, make some preparations, would it?” Chris asked. He felt the weight of the world on his shoulders, as if he had aged decades, not weeks on this useless wild goose chase all over America. From Roswell to Washington to Albany on to Virginia and then back to the wilds of the New Mexico deserts, via Nevada, never gaining anything but a few clues as to what this group was up to or where they might hold the Doctor. The didn’t even know he was still alive... Klemper and Spindler watched as Julie and Mike performed a full set of obs and took his weight. “I’m sorry,” Julie mouthed. “He’s fit enough. No more molly coddling, Spindler,” Klemper spat out. “You and Benjamin will begin the final experiment at 0900 tomorrow. I will observe.” With that, he span on his heels with a click and walked briskly out of the ward. “You heard. Make sure it’s ready. I will assign extra security. I don’t trust it now it’s stronger!” Spindler ordered, before he too left. Mike and Julie looked at each other, horrified and powerless. The Doctor hung his head, perhaps in preparation, or hopelessness, or prayer to forgotten Gallifreyan deities. “Sit rep,” Roz barked, as Chris returned. Andy was in the motel lobby, taking a call. “Unmarked van with blacked out windows obtained. Site is an underground bunker with a lift in a burnt out farm building. Surveillance cameras and guards hidden as soon as you enter the abandoned farmstead. You?” “I hate flying. Anywhere. Anywhen. Space flight or primitive plane. I have a frelling headache. But...” Roz picked up a small blue and black holdall she had found in the TARDIS console room waiting for her. She unzipped it, and like Mary Poppins off to battle, pulled out their uniforms, body armour, and both side arms and large laser rifles, along with a cash of stun grenades and smoke bombs. Finally stun pistols and tasers, “I thought we’d at least go prepared not to kill, it’s what the Doctor would want. And I don’t want to kill one of your ancestors.” “Fairly certain mine are all in Norway, Europe at least,” Chris shrugged. “If we kill every bastard that hurt the Doctor and all those Earth Reptiles and aliens, I’m not bothered.” “There were more, in Nevada and New Mexico,” Andy said from the doorway. “What the hell is that? Planning to go to a comic book convention?” “A what?” Roz demanded as Chris said, “It’s our armour and hardware.” “Best be prepared,” Roz shrugged. “With the visors and voice coders it should scare the primitive bastards, they’ve not met a proper aggressive alien or they wouldn’t be playing with their DNA for profit.” “We still have a problem though, you saw the state of the security and the locks on the lifts,” Chris said. He had distracted the guards with the lost tourist act while Andy ducked into the barn. Chris had hacked into the cameras and taken them out for four minutes as he approached the gate in the hire car. “What did you mean, more?” “You don’t want to know. I hear your nightmares.” “You’ve said it, you might as well tell us,” Roz said. “Forget that, don’t you wanna know what the call was?” “Do tell,” sneered Roz. “My Uncle John, he’s coming with a security pass and master key. He says we have to act tonight; we have until 0800 at the very latest, if we want to get the Doctor out alive.” “Right. Food. Sleep, if we can, then we leave at 0300. Did you find a good place for the meet with the van?” Roz said. Chris nodded. “I’ll get takeout and return the hire car and bring the van over to our rooms,” Andy said. “Any preference?” “Chinese or Thai,” Chris replied, heading for the shower. “See you in ten?” he asked Roz. “What?” “You need a shower!” Roz smiled at her squire, or ex squire, her lover, or ex lover, “Are you saying I stink?” “Well, I wasn’t going to mention it,” Chris smiled back. “Yes, there are rituals. I’ll eat, and then wash before I put on my robes, alright?” The takeaway lay heavily on Chris’s stomach and he slept fitfully, dreaming his reoccurring dream he’d been having for weeks. He was with the Doctor, they were dressed in twentieth century formal attire, white tie and tails, on a rooftop cafe in Paris, the Eiffel Tower backlit behind them, a string band playing as they danced, they waltzed, Chris leading, and then they span and span and the street lights and stars began to whirl like the vortex and he and the Doctor were in bed, naked, entwined, he on top of the Doctor as they rolled, laughing and the Doctor was on top, sitting and straddling and Chris felt his sleeping form blush as the Doctor flew away and Chris was standing naked in a bright, empty white space. The Doctor appeared; wearing the hideous question mark pullover he’d thankfully stopped wearing. He doffed his white fedora at Chris and looked down to his feet, where he was wearing women’s shoes, red sparkling pumps, which he clicked together several times and faded, as he did so he said clearly, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home...” A small black dog bounced across the white space, yapping, and Chris woke up.... “No, wait! Come back!” Chris’s shouting woke him up. He was tangled in his sheets, and they were damp. Again. What must all the motel maids think of him? He felt himself blushing again. “I said you should stay with Roz,” Andy said quietly, from the other bed, lit eerily by the outside streetlight. “Did I wake you?” Andy shrugged, just as the 0230 alarm went off from Chris’ wristcomp and he leapt up to put on robes and armour and tool up. The Doctor lay back on the sofa in the Man’s, in John’s, office, the wave of the physical pleasure washing over and dissipating, allowing for a few moments the primitive pleasure of orgasm deaden his thoughts, his fears, the very present danger... John looked up from between his legs and smiled a sad smile, not reaching his eyes. “Alright?” No. I’ve trapped myself. “Very pleasant.” Bad Doctor! That sounded sarcastic, like he was still speaking to an enemy. Another temporal trap. The Doctor faked a beamed. “Lovely. Come here,” he opened his arms for a hug and John slid up the large sofa and folded his arms around the Doctor. Any news, the Doctor thought but did not say anything, just enjoyed the far more simple feeling of a hug. His eyes scanned the room. John’s jacket lay over his desk chair, his gun holster barely covered by it underneath, on the seat of the chair. Andy dropped Chris and Roz a couple of clicks from the deserted farm and sped off in the van, ready to meet them at the rendezvous in three hours. It was dark, very dark, many tens of miles from the nearest human habitation. A moonless, cloudy night, a fine drizzle and the occasional gust of wind scudding dust under foot and into the armour. Chris was glad he had kept up the training, using many of he programmes left by Ace. Roz tried to cover her coughs and cursed her age and her stupid cigarette fetish. A night animal shrieked in the night air as they jogged, guns at their sides banging into thighs. Fair is fair and turnaround, the Doctor took his turn pleasuring the Man with his mouth on his knees, his eyes more and more skittering to his left, to the desk, to the gun in the holster... So far the codes of Andy’s contact worked. They got through the security perimeter and into the barn and then lift without a problem. As they entered the lift Roz had sprayed what looked like paint spray over the camera, but it was an old one of Ace’s, containing an analogue/digital viral hybrid, designed to bring down most security eyes across centuries and species of spy ware. They went down rapidly, Chris counting off the underground floors. The contact had promised Andy he would have the Doctor moved from his holding area to his own office and have the floor clear, but he had given them a tight window and couldn’t guarantee it. “Nine... Ten...” Chris counted. “Now.” Roz hit the override to stop the lift as instructed and it shuddered to a stop, the door opening on an ordinary looking corridor. It looked deserted. Both Adjudicators flipped down visors and switched on voice coders and internal coms. The Doctor got back onto his knees, pushing the gun into the Man’s hand. “Please. Please, shoot me, in the head. I won’t let them tear me apart limb by limb, organ by organ Please, if you have any feelings for me...” The Doctor put the gun into position into the Man’s hand and placed his finger on the trigger, bringing gun and hand to his head. “Please...” “You can’t ask me that Doctor. You have to hold on. It will be alright. I promise I won’t let them kill you.” “It’s the bits before the killing that bother me!” the Doctor snapped. “I won’t kill you. I... I... I love you...” “Then if you love me, if you love me, please... please don’t let me suffer any more...” “Straight down and turn left, door forty two.” Chris’s voice sounded as if it were in her own head. It had been a long time to be in full gear like this – riot and raid set-up. Roz doubted Chris had ever experienced it. As they turned left they saw a young man in a suit carrying a folder. He looked up, panicked and tried to run. Roz failed to stun him before he hit the alarms.... The Doctor’s head snapped up as the alarms began to sound shrill, breaking the intense eye contact between the agent, the horror, that had declared love for him, and his own suicidal despair. The gun was still in the Man’s hand where the Doctor had placed it as the door was kicked in violently... Chris saw the Doctor on his knees, naked, held at gunpoint by an equally naked man and raised his gun.... “I... I wasn’t....” their contact stuttered, standing from the sofa as Roz lowered Chris’s weapon. “Save the power packs, we have to get out of here.” The Doctor stood slowly and stared, unblinking at his rescuers, his knights in shining thirtieth century Adjudicator armour, not believing what he was seeing. “Hi, did you miss us?” Roz quipped as the agent was hurried pulling on pants and shirt as he hopped over to a cupboard. Chris watched him with suspicion. “Turn around and drop your arms slowly,” a voice instructed. Chris and Roz turned to see three men in suits with side arms in the doorway, at least seven soldiers with larger primitive arms behind them. “No,” she said, “Don’t want to. You’ve hurt my friend and a hell of a lot of other people,” she added as she tossed a stun grenade. “Roz,” the Doctor said warningly, “you better not have killed them.” “For Goddess sake, Doctor, after all they’ve done to you!” Roz snapped as she turned to face him. He was dressed. Properly dressed in his linen suit and blue shirt, loading his impossibly large amount of possessions back into the small jacket pockets. “It’s not about me. It’s about Time. I will meet some of them again in the nineties, when I was younger. This is all about the casual nexus you know.” And he beamed, a real beam. “And a missing page.” He flipped his hat on to his head, rolling it up his emaciated arm, then turned to his agent. “I’m sorry. So sorry.” He stood up, leaning on tiptoe, to take the Man’s face between his hands to kiss him deeply and tenderly. “Sorry,” he whispered again, before stepping back. Chris’s shocked and jealous noise came through the voder making him sound like a Dalek with a hiccup. “Shall we,” the Doctor said to Roz, indicating the doorway with his umbrella before hanging it from his breast pocket by its red question mark handle. “Ladies first.” “Particularly those heavily armed, eh Doctor?” “Oh absolutely. You can’t know how pleased I was to see you. I was prepared to die rather than experience vivisection and forced regeneration.” “They were going to...?” “Later. Chris. Good to see you to dear boy. Now, can we go? There is a whole army to get through and many floors. I do hope you have enough stun grenades.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
EPILOGUE Young Agent Skinner had been monitoring the blue box, the strangely appeared out of place 1950s British Police Box, the TARDIS according to the X-files he had found locked up deep in a basement in the FBI building in Washington. Nothing had happened for weeks, for months even, although he had taken a sabbatical leave to monitor it. But today, as he watched, a cab pulled up and three figures got out and walked towards the box. The shortest of the three, in the middle, was a middle-aged man with dark hair; a white hat perched on top of the wavy hair in need of a cut and style. He produced a key from his pocket to unlock the door, leaning heavily on the younger, much taller, blond man. The black woman stood aside from the two men, watching the street suspiciously. He pulled out his camera and hoped he wouldn’t be noticed. He managed to get one photo before they all disappeared into the box, and then that, too, disappeared, accompanied by a hideous grating noise.... Tired after the long flight and the stress of living on the run from the Consortium for months, Andy followed blindly the stream of people through customs and passport control, numbly wondering if he was jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Once his meagre luggage was collected he exited, seeing immediately the most beautiful man in the 1940s Army greatcoat holding up the sign for him:DR. ANDREW LANINSKI “That’s me. Hi. You must be Torchwood.” The man smiled a lazy, sexy, smile. “Hey there. I’m Captain Jack Harkness. Shall we?”