Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Dr Who - What If ❯ Utopia ( Chapter 14 )

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The Doctor and Rose walked up the ramp to the console and started the time rotor; Rose stroked one of the coral struts.

'Oh it's SO good to have her back again,' she said.

'Yeah,' he said with a smile. 'Why don't you go and freshen up, while I'll go and rig a holiday competition and change the date of birth on Mr. Shipton's records.'

She kissed him on the lips, and went through to the corridor that led to her room. Twenty minutes, and a change of clothes later, she returned to the console room. The Doctor was just in the process of landing the TARDIS.

'So where are we?' she asked.

'Cardiff,' he replied. The TARDIS needed to replenish some of the energy the Weeping Angels had taken.

`Oh, a pit stop.'

'Exactly. Should only take twenty seconds . . . the rift's been active,' he said, deep in thought. 'Finito. All powered up,' he announced, and moved around the console. As he did, he saw a familiar figure running towards them on the monitor. He could feel the wrongness of Jack Harkness, and so could the TARDIS. He pulled down the materialise/dematerialise lever, and started the time rotor, looking up and smiling as it pumped up and down. Suddenly, there was an explosion on the console, and the TARDIS lurched, throwing them to the floor.

'Whoa! What's that?' Rose asked in a panic.

He climbed to his feet and braced his foot on the console as the TARDIS bucked. 'We're accelerating into the future. The year one billion . . . five billion . . . five trillion . . . Fifty trillion . . . ? What . . . ? The year one hundred trillion? That's impossible.'

'Why? What happens then?'

'W, w, w, we're going to the end of the universe.'

The TARDIS bucked and lurched, throwing them to the floor as it “clumped” to a halt

`Well, we've landed,' he told her.

`So what's out there?'

`I don't know.'

`Come again? That's rare.'

`Not even the Time Lords came this far . . . We should leave. We should go. We should really, really go.' He gave her a big grin and grabbed his long coat off the coral as he ran for the door. They stepped outside, and the Doctor pulled on his coat as they looked around.

Rose saw someone lying on the ground not far from the TARDIS. `Oh my God!' she called out, and ran over to see if she could help. She frowned when she saw the face of the unconscious man. `Jack? Oh my God, Doctor. It's Jack.'

`Hello again,' the Doctor said mysteriously. `Oh, I'm sorry.'

`But how did he get here?'

`I think he came with us.'

`How do you mean, from Cardiff?'

`Must have been clinging to the outside of the TARDIS all the way through the vortex. Well, that's very him.'

`But he's . . . there's no heartbeat. There's nothin'. He's dead.'

Jack suddenly gasped and grabbed Rose, making her scream.

`Jack. Jack. It's all right. Just breathe deep. I've got you.'

`Rose!' He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her into a hug. `It's really you.'

`Yeah. It's really me . . . and him,' she laughed as she helped him to his feet.

Jack looked over to the Doctor, and Rose noticed that they weren't happy to see each other.

`Doctor,' Jack said cautiously.

`Captain,' the Doctor said coldly.

`Good to see you.'

`And you. Same as ever . . . Although, have you had work done?'

`You can talk,' Jack said with a smile.

`Oh yes, the face. Regeneration. How did you know this was me?'

`The police box kind of gives it away. I've been following you for a long time . . . You abandoned me.'

`What?' Rose asked in surprise. Looking to the Doctor for him to tell her it wasn't true.

`Did I?' he said dismissively. `Busy life. Moving on.'

`You told me he stayed behind. Busy rebuildin' the Earth you said,' Rose said accusingly.

`Rose?' Jack asked hesitantly. `Just got to ask. The Battle of Canary Wharf. I saw the list of the dead. It said Jackie Tyler.'

`Oh, no! Sorry, she's alive,' Rose said with a smile.

`You're kidding.'

`Parallel world, safe and sound. And Mickey,' the Doctor told him.

`Oh, that's great news. I was so worried for you Rose.' He reached out and hugged her. Although he'd never met Jackie, he'd been keeping an eye on the family over the years, and he knew what a great mother she'd been to Rose.

`Thanks Jack. God I've missed you. You'll have to tell me what you've been up to.'

`How long have you got?' Jack laughed, which left Rose a bit baffled. She had no idea how long he had lived since she last saw him.

They walked through scrubland while Jack told her what happened to him Satellite 5. `So there I was, stranded in the year two hundred one hundred, ankle deep in Dalek dust, and he goes off without me. But I had my vortex manipulator.'

Rose thought about what Jack had said. The Doctor had told her she had used the Vortex energy to turn the Daleks to dust. She must have done it just in time to save Jack from being exterminated.

`You still using that? You're brave,' the Doctor said.

Jack ignored the jibe. `All right, so I bounced. I thought 21st century, the best place to find the Doctor, except that I got it a little wrong. Arrived in 1869, this thing burnt out, so it was useless.'

`Told you,' the Doctor said.

`I had to live through the entire twentieth century waiting for a version of you that would coincide with me.'

`Oh come on Jack. That makes you more than one hundred years old,' Rose said disbelievingly.

`And looking good, don't you think?' He winked at her. `So I went to the time rift, based myself there because I knew you'd come back to refuel. Until finally I get a signal on this . . .' He nodded to his backpack. `Detecting you and here we are.'

`But the thing is, how come you left him behind, Doctor?'

`I was busy.'

`No. I'm sorry Love, I don't buy that. We were friends. You don't just abandon friends, unless . . . You weren't jealous of Jack's friendship with me were you?'

`Jealous of Ja . . .' The Doctor was about to protest, when Jack cut in.

`Woah! Wind back a minute there . . . Did you just call him “Love”?'

Rose put her questions about Jack on hold. It would wait. She smiled at Jack and held up her left hand, waggling her fingers. `He finally made an honest woman of me.'

`Hah! You guys finally got it on huh? That is . . . unbelievable. Come here.' He grabbed them both into a hug and kissed them both. `Congratulations. When did this all happen?'

`A few weeks back,' Rose said. `November 11th 1990. It was brilliant! He arranged everythin', shipped people in . . .'

`You two!' the Doctor exclaimed. Jack would think he'd gone soft they way Rose was bigging him up. `We're at the end of the universe, all right? Right at the edge of knowledge itself and you're busy blogging! Come on.'

`Still as grumpy though,' Jack said, bumping shoulders and giving her his perfect smile.

They approached a cliff face, and looked out over a gorge that had a futuristic city built into it.

`Is that a city?' Rose asked.

`A city or a hive, or a nest, or a conglomeration. Like it was grown. But look, there. That's like pathways, roads? Must have been some sort of life, long ago,' the Doctor said.

`What killed it?' Rose wondered out loud.

`Time . . . Just time,' he said sadly. `Everything's dying now. All the great civilizations have gone.' He looked up to the black, starless sky. `This isn't just night. All the stars have burned up and faded away into nothing.'

`They must have an atmospheric shell. We should be frozen to death,' Jack reasoned.

`Well, Rose and I, maybe . . . Not so sure about you, Jack.' They looked at each other without speaking.

That comment, and the Doctor's reaction to Jack puzzled Rose, but she filed the question away. They needed to have a good talk about Jack later. `What about the people? Does'nt anyone survive?'

`I suppose . . . we have to hope life will find a way,' the Doctor said a bit unconvincingly.

`Well, he's not doing too bad,' Jack said, pointing to a man running away from a crowd carrying flaming torches.

`Human!' they hear the crowd leader shout.

`Is it me, or does that look like a hunt? Come on!' the Doctor said as he ran to help. Jack and Rose ran after him.

`Oh, I've missed this,' Jack told them with a smile.

They met up with the running man ahead of the pursuing crowd.

`I've got you,' Jack said.

`They're coming! They're coming!' The man said urgently.

Jack took out his revolver and aimed it at the tribes people.

`Jack, don't you dare!' the Doctor shouted.

Jack looked back over his shoulder at the Doctor and then fired into the air to startle and warn the pursuers. They stopped in their tracks.

`What the hell are they?' Rose asked.

`There's more of them. We've got to keep going,' the man said.

`I've got a ship nearby. It's safe. It's not far, it's over there,' the Doctor told him, looking up to the top of the cliff, where more tribesmen appeared. `Or maybe not.'

`We're close to the silo,' the man said. `If we get to the silo, then we're safe.'

`Silo?' the Doctor said.

`Silo,' said Jack in an “I'm in” tone of voice.

`Silo for me,' Rose said, raising her hand to be counted in the vote.

Inside the Silo, the Doctor was asking a dark skinned man if they had seen the TARDIS `It looks like a box, a big blue box. I'm sorry, but I really need it back. It's stuck out there.'

The man they had rescued was asking about his family. `I'm sorry, but my family were heading for the silo. Did they get here? My mother is Kistane Shafe Cane. My brother's name is Beltone.'

`The computers are down but you can check the paperwork. Creet! Passenger needs help,' the dark skinned man said. A young boy appeared with a clipboard, and the man who had introduced himself as Padra Toc Shafe Cane, went to him.

`Right. What do you need?' Creet asked Padra as they started looking down a list.

`A blue box, you said,' the dark skinned man confirmed with the Doctor.

`Big, tall, wooden. Says Police.'

`We're driving out for the last water collection. I'll see what I can do.'

`Thank you.'

Creet led them through a maze of corridors, where people had set up their homes. They had put pictures of their loved ones on the wall as they slept on the floor.

`It's like a refugee camp,' Rose observed.

`Stinking,' Jack said, and a man glared at him. `Oh, sorry. No offence. Not you.'

`Don't you see that? The ripe old smell of humans. You survived. Oh, you might have spent a million years evolving into clouds of gas, and another million as downloads, but you always revert to the same basic shape. The fundamental humans.'

`Kistane Shafe Cane?' Creet called out, searching for Padra's family.

`End of the universe and here you are. Indomitable! That's the word. Indomitable! Ha!' The Doctor put his arm around Rose's shoulders and pulled her close, kissing her head. She instinctively wrapped her arm around his waist and grinned.

As they walked past a bulkhead door with a flashing orange light, the Doctor stopped. A flashing orange light to the Doctor was like a bright light to a moth. Jack and Rose had gone on ahead, and Jack had found a handsome man to “say hello” to.

`Stop it,' the Doctor told him. `Give us a hand with this. It's half deadlocked. I need you to overwrite the code. Let's find out where we are.'

Together, the Doctor and Jack opened the door and the Doctor nearly fell into a deep rocket silo.

`Gotcha,' Jack said as he grabbed him by his coat.

`Thanks.'

`How did you cope without me?' Jack joked.

Rose looked down, and then up. `Now that is what I call a rocket.'

`They're not refugees, they're passengers,' the Doctor realised.

`He said they were goin' to Utopia,' Rose reminding them what Padra had said to the guard on the gate.

`The perfect place. Hundred trillion years, it's the same old dream. You recognise those engines?' the Doctor asked Jack.

`Nope. Whatever it is, it's not rocket science. But it's hot, though,' said Jack as they closed the door.

Boiling,' the Doctor agreed. `But if the universe is falling apart, what does Utopia mean?'

A short, grey haired old man hurriedly approached them. `The Doctor?' he said to Jack, and Jack pointed to the Doctor.

`That's me.'

He shook the Doctor's hand, and then started to drag him down the corridor. `Good! Good! Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good,' the little man said excitedly.

The Doctor looked back at Rose and Jack with a bemused expression. `It's good apparently.'

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

In a ramshackle laboratory the Doctor was looking at the professor's work. Rose was in the corner with chairs, a table and a drinks machine. She wondered what Jack's “Doctor detector” looked like so she had a peek in his backpack, and pulled out a transparent container with a hand in it.

'Oh, my God. You've got a hand? A hand in a jar. A hand in a jar in your bag!' Rose exclaimed disbelievingly.

'But that . . . that, that's my hand!' the Doctor declared.

'I said I had a Doctor detector,' Jack reminded him.

`Chan is this a tradition amongst your people tho?' Chanto asked with interest.

'Not on the Powell Estate it's not,' said Rose. 'What do you mean, that's your hand? Oh my God! Don't tell me that's the hand you lost in that duel with the Sycorax.'

'Er, yeah. That's the one, yeah.' He wiggled his fingers. 'Hello.'

'Might I ask, what species are you?' the professor asked.

'Time Lord, last of. Heard of them? Legend or anything? Not even a myth? Blimey, end of the universe is a bit humbling.'

'Chan it is said that I am the last of my species too tho.'

`Sorry, what was your name?'

The professor introduced the young alien to the Doctor. 'My assistant and good friend, Chantho. A survivor of the Malmooth. This was their planet, Malcassairo, before we took refuge.'

'The city outside, that was yours?' the Doctor asked.

'Chan the conglomeration died tho.'

'Conglomeration. That's what I said,' the Doctor reminded them.

'You're supposed to say sorry,' Jack informed him.

'Oh, yes. Sorry.'

'Chan most grateful tho.'

'So what about those things outside? The Beastie Boys. What are they?' asked Jack.

'We call them the Futurekind, which is a myth in itself, but it's feared they are what we will become, unless we reach Utopia,' the professor said.

'And Utopia is?' asked the Doctor.

'Oh, every human knows of Utopia. Where have you been?'

'Bit of a hermit,' the Doctor said, by way of explanation.

'A hermit with friends?' the professor queried.

'Hermits United. We meet up every ten years and swap stories about caves. It's good fun, for a hermit.' Rose nudged him in the ribs to behave.

'So, er, Utopia?' he asked.

The professor beckoned him with his finger and showed him a display on the gravitational field navigation system. 'The call came from across the stars, over and over again. Come to Utopia. Originating from that point.'

'Where is that?' the Doctor asked.

'Oh, it's far beyond the Condensate Wilderness, out towards the Wildlands and the Dark Matter reefs, calling us in. The last of the humans scattered across the night,' said the professor.

'What do you think's out there?' the Doctor asked, because he knew there shouldn't be anything.

'We can't know. A colony, a city, some sort of haven? The Science Foundation created the Utopia Project thousands of years ago to preserve mankind, to find a way of surviving beyond the collapse of reality itself. Now perhaps they found it. Perhaps not. But it's worth a look, don't you think?'

'Oh, yes,' the Doctor agreed, continuing to talk, whilst not realising that all the professor could hear was a drum beat in his head.

Dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum.

The Doctor looked at him with concern. 'You all right?'

The professor waved away the Doctor's concern. 'Yes, I'm fine. And busy.'

'Except that rocket's not going to fly, is it? This footprint mechanism thing, it's not working.'

'We'll find a way.

'You're stuck on this planet. And you haven't told them, have you? That lot out there, they still think they're going to fly,' the Doctor said.

'Well, it's better to let them live in hope.'

'Quite right, too. And I must say, Professor er, what was it?'

'Yana.'

'Professor Yana. This new science is well beyond me, but all the same, a boost reversal circuit, in any time frame, must be a circuit which reverses the boost. So, I wonder, what would happen if I did this?' He sonicked the end of a cable and pulled. Power surged through the machines.

'Chan it's working tho!' Chanto said in amazement.

'But how did you do that?' Yana asked.

'Oh, we've been chatting away, I forgot to tell you. I'm brilliant.' They started plugging cables into sockets as the Doctor sniffed one of the cables. 'Is this?'

'Yes, gluten extract. Binds the neutralino map together,' Yana told him.

'That's food. You've built this system out of food and string and staples?' It was just the kind of thing he would do. 'Professor Yana, you're a genius.'

'Says the man who made it work.'

'Oh, it's easy coming in at the end, but you're stellar. This is . . . this is magnificent. And I don't often say that because, well . . . because of me.'

'Well, even my title is an affectation. There hasn't been such a thing as a university for over a thousand years. I've spent my life going from one refugee ship to another.'

'If you'd been born in a different time, you'd be revered. I mean it. Throughout the galaxies.'

'Oh, those damned galaxies. They had to go and collapse. Some admiration would have been nice. Yes, just a little, just once.'

'Well, you've got it now,' the Doctor said with an appreciative smile. The smile was replaced with a frown when he thought about the design.

'But that footprint engine thing. You can't activate it from onboard. It's got to be from here. You're staying behind.'

'With Chantho. She won't leave without me. Simply refuses.'

'You'd give your life so they could fly.'

'Oh, I think I'm a little too old for Utopia. Time I had some sleep.'

A voice came over the intercom. 'Professor, tell the Doctor we've found his blue box.'

'Ah!'

'Doctor?' Jack called to him, indicating a monitor that displayed the TARDIS.

'Professor, it's a wild stab in the dark, but I may just have found you a way out,' the Doctor said.

As Yana looked at the monitor, the drumming in his head started again. Dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum.

A little later, the TARDIS had been moved into the laboratory and the Doctor was dragging out a power cable.

'Extra power. Little bit of a cheat, but who's counting? Jack, you're in charge of the retro feeds.'

Rose and Chantho entered the lab, having fetched another armful of circuit boards. 'Oh, am I glad to see the old girl again.'

Chanto looked at Yana with concern. 'Chan Professor, are you all right tho?'

'Yes, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Just get on with it,' he said tersely.

Jack looked over at Rose. 'Connect those circuits into the spar, same as that last lot,' he told her. `But quicker,' he added in mock annoyance.

'Ooh, yes, sir,' she said teasingly, flashing him a smile.

The Doctor crouched down in front of Yana. 'You don't have to keep working. We can handle it.'

'It's just a headache. It's just, just noise inside my head, Doctor. Constant noise inside my head.'

'What sort of noise?'

'It's the sound of drums. More and more, as though it's getting closer.'

'When did it start?'

'Oh, I've had it all my life. Every waking hour. Still, no rest for the wicked.'

Rose started chatting to Chantho as they put the circuit boards into the rack. 'How long have you been with the professor?'

'Chan seventeen years tho.'

'Blimey. A long time.'

'Chan I adore him tho.'

'Oh right, and he . . .'

'Chan I don't think he even notices tho.'

'Tell me about it. That was like me an' him till he saw sense and asked me to marry him,' Rose said, pointing at the Doctor over her shoulder with her thumb.

'Chan but I am happy to serve tho.'

'Do you mind me askin'? Do you have to start every sentence with chan?'

'Chan yes tho.'

'And end every sentence with . . .'

'Chan tho tho.'

'What would happen if you didn't?' Rose wondered.

'Chan that would be rude tho.'

'What, like swearin'?'

'Chan indeed tho.'

This reminded Rose so much of her chat about boys with Gwyneth in the scullery in Cardiff. 'Go on, just once.'

'Chan I can't tho.'

'Oh, do it for me.'

'No.' She and Rose burst into a fit of giggles.

'Now all you need to do is connect the couplings, then we can launch,' Yana told the dark skinned man on the screen, who he had called Atillo.

Atillo disappeared from the screen. 'God sake! This equipment. Needs rebooting all the time,' Yana said in annoyance.

'Anythin' I can do?' Rose offered. 'I've finished that lot.'

The Professor smiled at her kindness. 'Yes, if you could. Just press the reboot key every time the picture goes.'

'Certainly, sir. Just don't ask me to do shorthand.'

Yana turned back to the screen. 'Right.'

Atillo's face returned on the screen.

'Are you still there?' Atillo asked.

'Ah, present and correct. Send your man inside,' Yana instructed.

'We'll keep the levels down from here,' Yana assured him.

Atillo opened a heavy door for a man in protective gear to go inside. 'He's inside,' he informed the professor on the screen. 'And good luck to him.'

Yana looked to Jack. 'Captain, keep the dials below the red.'

'Where is that room?' the Doctor asked, looking at the screen.

`It's underneath the rocket. Fix the couplings and the footprint can work. But the entire chamber is flooded with stet radiation, Yana told him.

The Doctor frowned. `Stet? Never heard of it.'

`You wouldn't want to. But it's safe enough, if we can hold the radiation back from here.'

They watched the monitor which showed the man connecting up the equipment, when an alarm sounded.

`It's rising!' Yana called out. `Naught point two. Keep it level!'

`Yes, sir,' Jack replied.

The second connection was made, when the power started to fail.

`Chan we're losing power tho!' Chanto reported.

`Radiation's rising!' the Doctor shouted urgently.

`We've lost control!' Jack told them.

`The chamber's going to flood,' Yana announced.

'Jack, override the vents!' the Doctor commanded.

Jack pulled out two power cables. 'We can jump start the override.'

'Don't! It's going to flare!' the Doctor warned him.

Power surged through Jack as he held the live ends together, and he was electrocuted. Rose cried out in horror. 'JACK! Oh my God.' She ran to him. `I've got him.'

'Chan don't touch the cables tho.' She carefully moved the sparking cable away.

'Oh, I'm so sorry,' Yana said.

'Oh this is like the Hope Hospital again,' Rose said, as she tried to remember her CPR. She breathed twice into Jack's mouth, before starting chest compressions.

'The chamber's flooded with radiation, yes?' the Doctor asked the Professor.

Yana was explaining the hopelessness of the situation. 'Without the couplings, the engines will never start. It was all for nothing.'

Oh, I don't know,' the Doctor said. 'Rose, leave him.'

Rose was stunned. How could he be so callous about their friend? 'You've got to let me try.'

The Doctor could see how upset she was, and gently held her shoulders and eased her away from Jack's body. 'Come on, come on, just listen to me. Now leave him alone.' He turned to Yana. `It strikes me, Professor; you've got a room which no man can enter without dying. Is that correct?'

'Yes.'

'Well . . .' he started to explain when Jack gasped and returned to life. 'I think I've got just the man.'

'Was someone kissing me?' Jack asked.

Rose was shocked at first. She didn't think people recovered from electrocution, not without medical intervention anyway. But then her shock turned to joy. She rushed to his side and grabbed him around the neck, pulling him into a hug. 'Jack! I thought we'd lost you then.'

Jack returned the hug and gave the Doctor his perfect smile, and a cheeky wink to go with it.

The Doctor rolled his eyes, but couldn't hide the smile on his lips. 'Jack, when you two have quite finished, I've got a little job for you.'

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

'We lost picture when that thing flared up,' Rose told Yana and Chanto. 'Doctor, are you there?' She'd managed to get the sound back from the chamber under the rocket, but not the video.

'Receiving, yeah. He's inside,' he said, meaning Jack had entered the radiation filled chamber.

'And still alive?' Yana asked in surprise.

'Oh, yes,' he said with obvious pleasure.

'But he should evaporate. What sort of a man is he?' Professor Yana asked.

'He used to be just an ordinary bloke. Well, ordinary for Jack anyway. But now? I'm not too sure,' Rose told him.

And then she started eavesdropping on a conversation; she couldn't help it. She was, listening to a conversation between Jack and the Doctor, as Jack tried to connect the power couplings so that they could launch the rocket.

'When did you first realise?' she heard the Doctor ask Jack. She presumed he was talking about his inability to stay dead.

'Earth, 1892. Got in a fight in Ellis Island, a man shot me through the heart. Then I woke up. Thought it was kind of strange. But then it never stopped. Fell off a cliff, trampled by horses, World War One, World War Two, poison, starvation, a stray javelin.'

'Urgh,' she heard the Doctor suck in air in sympathy.

'In the end, I got the message. I'm the man who can never die. And all that time you knew.' She heard accusation and recrimination in his voice.

'That's why I left you behind. It's not easy even just looking at you, Jack, because you're wrong.' So Jack was telling the truth, the Doctor did abandon him.

'Thanks.'

'You are! I can't help it, I'm a Time Lord, it's instinct, it's in my guts. You're a fixed point in time and space. You're a fact, that's never meant to happen. Even the TARDIS reacted against you, tried to shake you off . . . flew all the way to the end of the universe just to get rid of you.'

'So what you're saying is that you're, er, prejudiced?'

'I never thought of it like that.'

'Shame on you.'

'Yeah.' She heard regret in that "yeah", as though he wasn't proud of what he'd done.

'Last thing I remember, back when I was mortal, I was facing three Daleks . . . death by extermination . . . And then I came back to life,' Rose heard Jack tell the Doctor. 'What happened?'

"Ooh, good question" thought Rose.

He answered with one word. 'Rose.'

“What did he mean by that?” Rose thought.

'I thought you'd sent her back home.'

'She came back. Opened the heart of the TARDIS and absorbed the time vortex itself.'

The Doctor had told her that she had absorbed the energy of the Time Vortex to get back to him on Satellite 5, and had used it to destroy the Daleks. He never said anything about bringing Jack back to life.

'What does that mean, exactly?' Jack asked.

'No one's ever mean to have that power, if a Time Lord did that, he'd become a god . . . a vengeful god . . . But she was human; everything she did was so human. She brought you back to life but she couldn't control it. She brought you back forever. That's something, I suppose. The final act of the Time War was life.'

'Do you think she could change me back?' Jack asked.

'I took the power out of her,' the Doctor said.

“Oh my God!” Rose realised that it was her fault that the Doctor had regenerated. He had sacrificed one of his lives to save hers.

'I went back to her estate, in the nineties, just once or twice. Watched her growing up. Never said hello. Timelines and all that.'

Rose gasped. Had she ever seen him and not known who he was? When she thought about it, she had sometimes had that feeling that someone was watching her.

The Doctor was continuing their conversation. 'Do you want to die?' he asked casually.

'Oh, this one's a little stuck,' Jack said, he must have been talking about one of the coupling controls.

'Jack?' The Doctor wanted an answer to his question.

'I thought I did . . . I don't know . . . But this lot . . . you see them out here surviving, and that's fantastic,' he said with pleasure.

'You might be out there, somewhere.'

'I could go meet myself.'

'Well, the only man you're ever going to be happy with.'

Rose snorted a laugh at that.

Jack laughed. 'This new regeneration, it's kind of cheeky,' Jack said in a flirty way.

'Hmm.' And then it was over. Jack had closed the final coupling and left the chamber, but Rose was grateful to him, because now she knew the truth; the truth of what had happened on Satellite 5.

Regeneration . . . Regeneration . . . Jack's words echoed over the drumming in Yana's head. There was something he should remember about regeneration.

Rose was trying to deflect Chanto's questions about the conversation they had just heard. `I never understand half the things he says,' she fibbed. She looked at the professor. `What's wrong?'

`Chan Professor, what is it tho?'

Yana had tears in his eyes as he gazed into the distance. `Time travel. They say there was time travel back in the old days. I never believed. But what would I know? Stupid old man. Never could keep time. Always late, always lost. Even this thing never worked.' Yana took an ornately inscribed fob watch out of his pocket.

Rose recognised it immediately.

[“Rose, this watch is me. I'm going to become human.”]

`Time and time and time again. Always running out on me,' Yana continued.

`Can I have a look at that?' Rose asked, trying not to sound nervous.

`Oh, it's only an old relic. Like me.' He held it out for her to look at.

`Where did you get it?'

`Hmm? I was found with it.'

`What do you mean?'

`An orphan in the storm. I was a naked child found on the coast of the Silver Devastation. Abandoned, with only this.'

`Have you opened it?'

`Why would I? It's broken.'

`How do you know it's broken if you've never opened it?'

`It's stuck. It's old. It's not meant to be . . . I don't know.'

Rose turned the watch over and gasped as she recognised the inscriptions.

`Does it matter?'

`No,' Rose said a little too quickly. `It's nothin'. It's . . . Listen, everythin's fine up here. I'm gonna see if the Doctor needs me.' She needed to tell the Doctor.

Why was a Time Lord hiding? It was either very good news, or very very bad.

Rose ran into the launch control room. `Doctor, it's the Professor. He's got this watch. He's got a fob watch. It's the same as yours. Same writin' on it, same everythin'.'

`Don't be ridiculous.'

`I asked him. He said he's had it his whole life.'

Jack looked over to them. `So he's got the same watch.' So what if he had?

`Yeah, but it's not a watch. It's this chameleon thing,' Rose tried to explain.

`No, no, no, it's this, this thing . . . this device, it rewrites biology. Changes a Time Lord into a human,' the Doctor explained to Jack.

`And it's the same watch!' insisted Rose.

`It can't be,' he said as an alarm sounded.

That means he could be a Time Lord. You might not be the last one,' Jack said hopefully.

`Jack, keep it level!'

`But that's brilliant, isn't it?' Rose asked him.

`Yes, it is. Course it is,' he said unconvincingly. `Depends which one. Brilliant, fantastic, yeah. But they died, the Time Lords. All of them. They died.'

`Not if he was human,' Jack reasoned.

`What did he say, Rose? WHAT DID HE SAY?' he shouted, making her flinch. Why was he so angry?

`He looked at the watch like he could hardly see it. Like that perception filter thing.'

`What about now? Can he see it now?'

Oh yes! He could see it now.