A/N: This isn't going to be a typical rewrite of human nature with a bunch of dialogue ripped from the episode and everything running as the episode did. Quite frankly, while I thoroughly love the idea, I wasn't entirely thrilled with the episode itself. So I'm stealing the main concept and putting my own spin on things. If you recognize anything, then it's purely coincidental. I've literally only ever seen that episode ... once ... just once ...

And if you all groan and roll your eyes at the young lad's name. Sorry. I love it.

Disclaimer: Oh, and I don't own Doctor Who ... none of it. Wish I did, but I don't...

~~oooOOOooo~~

"The time evolution of the state is given by a differentiable function from the real numbers R," he muttered quietly to himself as he scrawled hasty notes in his notepad. "R, representing instants of time, to the Hilbert Space of system states. The map is categorized by a differential equation as follows." With a pink tip of his tongue seated in the very right corner of his mouth, he hastily scribbled a series of mathematical symbols inside a set of brackets, and then continued to narrate to himself the text he scratched into the A4-sized notebook in his hands. "…denotes the state of the system at any one time t, the following Shrödinger equation holds…"

He let out a happy giggle as he bounced in his seat and let his feet swing front and back underneath his chair. The equation was one of the first that he'd taught himself – at the age of three – as he browsed university course catalogues and online. He'd practiced it and perfected it, and could break it down to anyone who cared to listen to him do so…

…Which, sadly, was no one at this house of learning.

…If it could be so called, anyway.

He considered it a moment as he autonomously completed the equation without looking too closely at it. Was he truly in a house of learning, or had his mother enrolled him in a facility where learning was nothing more than a cultish data download of useless information he would likely never use again outside the classroom?

The small expression of his lips lazily pressed together and curled into a snarl of annoyance quickly fell into an expression of buoyancy as he looked back down at his equation and finished the work in his mind.

"Where H is a densely defined self-adjoint operator, called the system Hamiltonian, I is the imaginary unit and…"

"Gal!"

His little head popped up immediately at the worried tone of his mother's voice. It took a second for his wide-eyed look of surprise to fall into a happy grin, and then even less time than that to fall into an expression of absolute apology. He cast his papers off to one side and slipped off the chair. "Mum," he cried out as he skittered quickly along the corridor to collide hard against her belly. "Mum. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

Rose Tyler let out a sudden exhale as her young son crushed himself into her belly and quickly dropped into a crouch to look up at her distraught child. "Sweetheart? What's wrong, are you okay?"

He bit at his lip and nodded quickly as he gave his eyes a clumsy wipe with the back of his hand. He hummed his assent and swallowed hard. "I'm in trouble, mum," he admitted finally. "I'm so sorry. I know you told me to keep my curiosity in check here at school, but I couldn't help it. I just had to know."

Rose frowned at the apologetic sorrow in his voice, and pulled him toward her to clutch a comforting hug with her child. "Whatever you did, Gal, it can't be that bad, yeah?"

He sniffed and clutched his arms around her neck to bury his face into her shoulder. "Dunno, Mum. I just know that there's lots of really official looking people here and I'm scared."

Rose pulled back from the full embrace, but kept her arms around his lithe little hips. "Another experiment gone wrong, sweetheart?"

"Kind've," he admitted in a tiny voice.

That tiny little voice and the quiet way in which her only child answered her caused Rose Tyler's heart to thump worriedly against her chest. "What kind of experiment, Gal?"

"Uhm…"

He was saved from answering by the appearance of the Head Master. He looked down to Rose Tyler, crouched on the floor wearing the telltale pink serving uniform dress and apron of the local lunch house. "Miss Tyler, I'm glad you could make it here on such short notice."

Rose drew herself to a stand quickly enough that she succumbed to a sudden rush of dizziness and had the clamp her hand on her son's shoulder to maintain her balance. "I'll probably lose my job for how fast I ran out of there," she answered shortly. "But, yes, when I'm told that my child has been involved in an incident I will get here as fast as I can." She cleared her throat and took her child's hand in hers. "Mr. Keene. Please tell me what my son has been involved in. From the call I received from your secretary, I believed he was hurt."

Mr. Keene pushed the door to his office open and stood off to one side to allow them in ahead of him. "Be thankful that young Gallifrey wasn't injured. Had he been allowed to continue, it could've been disastrous."

Rose winced at the warning tone inside the principal's voice. "Oh Gal," she murmured to her child, who was plastered tightly against her hip. "What've you done this time?"

"I'm sorry, Mum. I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," she whispered in gentle assurance that was quickly swallowed when she took in the party gathered in the room before her. "Oh Gods no."

Mr. Keene indicated a pair of seats that were set front and centre of a semi-circle of chairs full of men and women who were obviously not members of the school faculty. He stood before them and watched as Rose took a seat and Gallifrey slid his chair closer to his mother before taking a seat himself. He practically hid behind her arm as he cowered helplessly at her side.

"Miss Tyler." He held his arm behind him to indicate the six other people seated ahead of them. "Allow me to introduce you to …"

"The police," Rose interrupted with a gasp as her hand flew to her mouth. "Oh Gal, what have you done…"

"Mum, I'm sorry…"

"It's okay," she breathed gently. She took his hand in hers and squeezed it tightly. "We'll get through this. Together, yeah?"

"Yep," he answered with a pop in his p and a glint in his eye.

Rose looked back to the gathering. "You'll have to forgive my shock. When I was told there was an incident with my son, I didn't expect members of the local constabulary and suited operatives of UNIT to be waiting for me."

A woman in a black suit – a dark-skinned lady with a tightly pulled back bun in her hair and shattering red lips that accented her blood-red camisole under her black blazer – sucked on her teeth and curled a perfectly manicured eyebrow at her. "Are you familiar with UNIT, Miss Tyler?"

"By reputation," she answered cautiously. She hooked her finger into a lock of hair that had fallen onto her cheek and shifted it behind her ear. Her other hand pulled from her son's and she began to trace lazy but deliberate circles against his palm. "Men in Black and all that."

"Indeed," the woman answered doubtfully. She rolled her head upward and let incredibly long lashes kiss at her cheek when she gave a slow blink of her eyes. "Your son, Gallifrey, isn't it?"

"Yes," Rose answered with a light narrowing of her eyes. "It's his name."

"And where did you come up with such a name?"

Rose feigned a look of absolute surprised that someone should ask such a strange question. "Does it matter?" She answered slowly. "I'm fairly certain that his name isn't the reason you're here."

"Oh," the unnamed woman said with a single exhaled laugh. "Let's just say that the unusual nature of his moniker has intrigued me. Gallifrey is a place is it not?"

"And so is Montana, Boston, Sydney, Bronx, and every other place that have had children named after them," she snapped in response. "Tell me, do you question the mothers of those kids about why they named them the way they did?"

The woman leaned forward to cradle her chin onto her steepled fingers. Her body language screamed out condescension. "If those children exhibited behaviours that warranted the investigation of UNIT, then quite likely I would."

Rose rolled her eyes. "Because that's getting' to the crux of the problem, isn't it? The name you give your kid determines his or her entire future."

"There's really no need to be facetious."

The circular motion of Rose's finger on her son's palm slowed and became much more deliberate. "It's where his father was born – where all of his family were raised," she suggested finally. "Somewhere in Ireland I believe."

"And speaking of his father…"

"He's none of your concern,' Rose snapped in interruption as she handed her son her cell-phone, which he took eagerly and began to play with it. "The only part of my son's life that man has had a role in was his conception – so let's keep 'im out of this, shall we?"

"He meant enough to you for you to name your son after him."

"What can I say," she uttered with a shrug. "I heard the name, I liked it. Now can we please get back to why you've called me from work to discuss my child?"

The woman licked at her lip with obvious annoyance and leaned back in her chair. She passed a look toward who Rose assumed was her partner, and folded her arms across her chest. "Tag in, Somerville."

Somerville, Rose thought to herself as the man leaned forward on a burly frame and pressed his elbows into his knees. She noted the pearlized white scarring on his pasty white-skinned left side of his face that could probably be attributed to a flash burn of some form, and swallowed sympathetically. "I won't answer questions about Gallifrey's father – no matter who asks," she clarified as she continued to draw circles on her son's palm. "So don't tag in or play good cop bad cop, because it won't work."

"Then perhaps," Somerville began on a dark, yet friendly tone, "perhaps you can explain to me just how and why your son has such intimate knowledge of nuclear fission.."

"Actually," Gallifrey interrupted meekly. "I was researching radioactive decay in order to experiment with the elemental limits to create a…"

"He used the school's computers to try to order a small amount of Plutonium-238," Mr. Keene interrupted quickly. "A purchase of that nature on the school account obviously alerted several policing organizations."

Rose had to hide her amusement as she looked down at her son, who looked up at her with large chocolate eyes full of apology. "And you thought to corner my son with six members of local law enforcement and the alien hunter organizations?"

"National security," Somerville corrected quickly. "Because there's no … such … thing … as aliens, are there, Miss Tyler?"

Her brow curled high. "No," she answered with the same deliberate slowness as Somerville. "I … guess … there … isn't." She cleared her throat. "National security, then."

"Yes. We are here for the security of our nation," he answered in what Rose would later describe as Dumbly. "And when we are presented with nuclear equations and online purchase attempts of a well known nuclear agent, then we will investigate a potential threat to our nation."

Rose looked back to the head master and sniffed. "You do know that he's seven, yeah?"

"Eight," Gallifrey corrected quietly without looking up from the phone. "It's my birthday today."

"You're seven until four-sixteen this afternoon," Rose answered back with a wink and a smile. "So right now, you're seven."

"He's seven," the woman commented dryly. "With an immeasurable IQ."

"Yes," Rose answered. "He's gifted. A Savant. A Protégé. So what?"

"It's unnatural."

"You'd better not be callin' my son a freak, lady," Rose snarled. "He might be smarter than your average kid, but there are plenty more smart kids out there jus' like him."

The woman leaned to one side to pull a manila folder from inside her laptop bag. She made a show of opening it on her knee and flicking through a couple of papers. "Tell me, Miss Tyler. Are you in any way related to the Rosalyn Tyler, heiress to the Vitex fortune?"

Rose looked down to what she was wearing and raised her eyes to look upon the woman with disdain. "If I was, do you think I'd be spending my days smelling like a grease trap and serving food to smelly truckers who like to slap my behind for minimum wage?"

"I asked you a yes or no question," the woman fired back. "I didn't ask you to explain your current working conditions."

"My name is Rose Tyler," she snapped back in annoyance. "Not Rosalyn Tyler. I'm a single working mum, not a Vitex trust fund brat."

She held up a photograph and compared the woman with the image. "Well you certainly do look a lot like her."

"We all have seven people in the world who look identical to us, thanks for finding one of mine." She smiled at the giggle against her arm. "One down, six to go, yeah?"

"Rosalyn Tyler," the woman continued. "Is wanted for questioning by UNIT." She looked down to young Gallifrey, who peered at her through a messy chestnut fringe around his mother's arm. "It's suspected that she bore the child of a…" She cleared her throat. "Of a person of interest to UNIT and her sister organizations. A person who's intelligence far surpasses even the most brilliant of men."

"If he was shaggin' that dumb blonde and knocked her up," Rose muttered indignantly. "Then he's not that brilliant, is he?" She rubbed her chin. "No. Then again. Trust fund and all that…"

"This man has been identified by a similar organization as being dangerous…"

"Torchwood," Rose offered darkly.

"Oh," the woman answered with exaggerated surprise. "You've heard of Torchwood, then?"

Rose snorted and shrugged. "I have the internet. I buy into conspiracy theories. Heck," she chuckled. "I even believe in aliens – I reckon I may've even been abducted by one when I was younger."

"And did you fall pregnant to this abducting alien?"

"Yeah," Rose moaned with a roll of her eyes. "Because his version of probin' didn't quite fit the stereotype of a rear entry." She then inhaled a sharp and deep breath. "Don't be so stupid. Gal's father – while none of your business – isn't a dangerous bloody alien." She took hold of Gallifrey's wrist and drew it up in display to the woman. "Does he look like 'e's got tentacles and green skin?"

"That's racist, mum," Gallifrey muttered distractedly with his focus still tight on the phone. "Not all aliens have tentacles and green skin you know."

The woman looked to the boy's hand, and the tight lock the lad had on the phone his mother had given him. His focus was such that when his mother lifted his left wrist, his right rose up along with it. He had to straighten his back and lift his head to see whatever game he was playing on the screen.

"So, then Gallifrey?"

Gallifrey's eyes shifted from the screen and settled on the woman in black with cautious curiosity. "Yes ma'am?"

"What do you know about aliens?"

Rose rolled her eyes and groaned. "Right. That about does it for us, then." She stood up quickly and dropped her hand down to offer to help her child to stand. "Come, Gal. I think lipstick looney toones and her boyfriend need to go back to their little white room with padded walls."

Gallifrey jumped to his feet and smiled a toothy grin to his mother. "Can we go for icecream?"

"Sure thing, baby," she cooed with a smile. She glared back over her shoulder. "For bein' terrorized by the big bad evil…"

"You can't just walk out of here," Somerville snarled.

Rose and Gallifrey paused at the doorway. Rose dropped her hand to clutch tightly at her son's and threw a look over her shoulder. "Am I under arrest?"

One of the police officers shook his head. "No ma'am," he replied quietly. "You're not under arrest. You're free to go."

Somerville boomed a negative and shot to a stand so quickly that his chair toppled backward behind him. "You aren't free to go anywhere," he snarled. "You and your son are here for questioning and we aren't anywhere near close to finishing up asking you our questions." He pointed a harsh jut of his finger at the chair. "Now sit your ass down and answer our questions before I have you dragged out of here in chains."

It was the young boy who responded as he slowly turned and levelled a glare at the man. His tiny little body locked rigid and his gaze hardened as he stared a glare of fury at the man. "Did you just threaten my mother?"

"Gal," Rose cooed softly. "It's okay, don't worry 'bout it."

"No it isn't,' Gallifrey growled as he stalked toward the hulking figure of Somerville. He snatched the back of a chair as he passed and dragged it along behind him. "Noone threatens my mum."

"Gal…"

Somerville looked down at big chocolate brown eyes with a sneer in his smile. "Such a brave little morsel, aren't you? What you gonna do; headbutt my knees?"

Gallifrey looked up at him a moment. He let one brow arch high and then dropped his head with a shake as he pulled the chair in front of him. He deliberately pressed the back of it against Somerville's thighs and climbed to stand atop the cushion. This position gave the young man an inch in height over Somerville and so he smirked as he set his hands on his hops and looked down at him.

"Hooligans headbutt and make threats on ladies," he answered back indignantly. "I'm a genius. Not a hooligan."

Somerville snorted a derisive exhale through his nose. "And what do geniuses do, then?"

Gallifrey grinned darkly and slowly raised his mother's cellphone as high as his shoulder. He rocked it side to side and grinned a threatening smile at the much larger man. "Geniuses do it like this." He dramatically pulled the cellphone in front of him and made an ostentatious display of pressing his finger against the screen in a specific sequence.

Immediately above and around them loud building alarms blared out through barely used and dusty speakers. Sommervile coughed lightly as he swept his hand in front of his face to clear it of falling dust jolted out of the speaker ports by the thumping voice coil pulsing against the dust cap of the speaker.

"You set off the alarms," he droned. "Well aren't you clever?"

Gallifrey quickly scrambled off the chair and kept his eyes to the ceiling as though expecting something further. "Yes," he blurted quickly. "I set off alarms that are reporting every known emergency at this building to every single emergency call centre in the city." He twisted his head and grinned at the organized thundering footfalls of his school mates being evacuated in the hallway past the office. "Every single department from Ambulance and Fire to Military are about to descend on this school." He tipped his head to one side and smiled. "Oh, and let's not forget the press. Oh. Hundreds of members of the press and UNIT vehicles parked right outside."

Somerville slowly clapped his hands in a darkly facetious gesture to the young boy. "Oh bravo. You're inconveniencing a few people. Well done…"

"Not quite," Gallifrey purred with a wink as each of the small glass bulbs in each fire sprinkler burst in a simultaneous pop above their heads. Immediately, every single sprinkler rained down tepid water. He grinned and looked at his watch. "Right on time."

Meanwhile, Rose stood quietly at the door, her hands on her hips and her eyes to the skies. She let out a slightly amused, but long suffering sigh. "Like father, like son."

Somerville pressed his hands down onto the back of the chair that Gallifrey had earlier been standing in and gave the boy a tired shrug. "That all you got, boy?"

"Nope," he sang with his father's heavy pop in his P. He cupped his hand over his ear. "Full evacuation of the school should be complete, and so.." A rumble shook the ground at their feet. He pursed his lips. "Ooh."

"Ooh is never good, Gal," Rose said quickly.

"Specially not this time," he whimpered as he shot across the room and took his mother's hand. "We might wanna run. Like right now."

The other persons in the room stumbled as the rumbling intensified. Somerville glared at the young boy. "What've you done?"

Gallifrey slipped his mother's phone into the back pocket of his uniform trousers and then pointed toward the Principal's desk – where a rather expensive UNIT-issue cellphone sat. "Actually I haven't done anything," he declared. "The signals that initiated this sequence … originated from that phone."

"What?"

"Oh, while you were talking alien probing and the siring of alien children, I was modifying the carrier signal on my mum's phone…" He paused as his wet little hand was tugged urgently by his mother. "Kay, mum. Be there in a tic." He tried to pull from his mother's grasp. "Using the donor signal from the internal rebroadcast antenna of your phone and reversing the polarization of the monopole…." He yelped as his mother tugged at him hard enough to almost pull his shoulder from its socket. "Mum!"

"We gotto go," she demanded when he looked up at her through a sopping fringe cascading tendrils of water from his eyebrows. "Never mind the gloatin'."

"But mum!"

Rose tugged at her child's hand and dragged him behind as she ran from the office and out into the school yard, which was now full of cheering and excited children unaware of the destruction that was about to befall their school.

She spun and pulled Gallifrey into her arms against her chest in a protective embrace as the school let out an almighty thundering roar and then collapsed onto itself in a cloud of red, orange, white and brown dust. She coughed and pulled her son more tightly against her as the dust cloud engulfed them all.

The cloud dissipated slowly, and so it was a very long minute or so until she could raise her head to look out at the damage her son had caused. She whimpered when all she could see ahead of her through the still-thick cloud of dust were two UNIT operatives, both drenched to their very core, and both very, very upset. She wasn't surprised at all to see both operatives aiming their handguns toward them both.

"Put your guns down," Rose warned loudly through the swirling winds and the cries and cheers of the kids surrounding them. "This field is full of young children."

The woman clutched at her weapon a little tighter. "And I'm protecting them against an obviously dangerous human hybrid. Hand over the boy, Miss Tyler, and we'll lower our weapons."

"You're not taking him," Rose shot back desperately. "He's my son, a child born on Earth. He's no more an alien than you and I." She inhaled a couple of deep breaths. "And he's all I have left. You're not taking him away from me."

"I'm afraid you don't have the choice," Somerville growled with a definite curl in his lip. "That hybrid freak of yours is coming with us."

"No," she growled in response. "You'll leave him alone. He's my son, not your play thing."

Gallifrey looked up at his mother's jaw, and the hard set of it as she battled her emotions against the threats of individuals who looked as though they'd be more than ready to fire a couple of bullets into her to get at him. He then passed a look toward the two agents, who had their attentions squarely focused on his mother. He could see the shift in their fingers that suggested immediate pressure upon the triggers if his mum was to make any movement at all.

"By the Gods," he murmured inside a wavering voice as he dropped into a crouch and rummaged through his backpack. He grumbled as he pawed his hands through waterlogged papers and stationery. "Where is it? Where is it? Whereisit?"

"You won't take him from me!"

"Step aside, Miss Tyler…"

He tried to ignore the argument raging over his head as he searched his waterlogged back pack for the one thing that he knew would save them both from this nightmare. He'd worked on it tirelessly for the past three months, ever since the last time his mother and he had to flee from their last home with Torchwood nipping at their ankles.

His mum bad barely made it out in one piece as they leapt aboard a moving train to take them out of London and deposit them somewhere in the Scottish moors. She was bedridden for almost two weeks, feverish and delirious, and too close to death. He nearly lost the most important person in the universe…

…He wasn't going to let that happen again.

He finally found his quarry and quickly strapped the device to his wrist. All wires, lights, crudely designed circuit boards and leather, he navigated a pathway with his fingers across a series of buttons to input some coordinates. There was the slightest buzzing and then burning sensation from the uninsulated join of two wires, but he paid it very little mind at all as he leapt up and threw his arms around his mother's shoulders.

"Hold on tight, Mum," he warned. "This might hurt a little."