"Mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy..." The relentless call of the mindless creatures reached for her and filled her with dread.

Fingers scrabbled in the air, almost brushing her hair.

Rose saw the instant that the calm calculating mask dropped over the Doctor's face, and suddenly there was peace.

"Go to your room!" The Doctor pointed at the hoard of gas mask clad beings with a stern finger. His hand shook almost imperceptibly as he kept the faint tremor out of his voice.

All at once the figures ceased moving, several tilted their heads at the Doctor inquiringly.

Jack let out a relieved breath while giving the Doctor an incredulous look. "Go to your room. I mean it. I'm very, very angry with you. I am very, very cross. Go to your room!" The Time Lord himself seemed surprised when the figures hung their heads in a facsimile of sadness and shuffled away.

"I didn't know you had such strong maternal instincts." Rose managed to choke out.

"Damn." Jack whistled.

It took them all a moment to calm down. They all cast nervous looks at their previous assailants in their beds before exiting the hospital ward. Rose laid a hand on the closed door and tried not to peer through the glass back at the disturbing figures.

"What's with all of the masks?" Rose asked eventually, "Are their faces disfigured underneath?"

Jack shook his head, strangely solemn, "Those are their faces." Watching Rose shiver he reached out a hand to comfort her before noting the not so subtle glare the Doctor threw at him; his hand withdrew through the air rapidly.

They began to walk down a narrow corridor. There was so much white everywhere. Rose supposed it was meant to be seen as calming, yet somehow the overall effect gave her the strange impression that they had somehow entered purgatory.

"How was your con supposed to work?" The Doctor's voice was drenched with distaste.

Jack shrugged, he looked oddly small in his amidst the folds of his long grey coat. "You know, find some harmless piece of space junk, let the nearest Time Agent track it back to Earth, convince him it's valuable, name a price." He rattled the explanation off quickly in a low monotone as if reciting a list of bullet points. "When he's put fifty percent upfront, oops! A German bomb falls on it, destroys it forever. He never gets to see what he's paid for, never knows he's been had. I buy him a drink with his own money, and we discuss dumb luck. The perfect self-cleaning con."

"What, and no one's asked to see the goods first hand before paying?" Rose asked sceptically.

Jack gave her a practiced charming smile, "Normally, getting up close and personal with it in the time vortex is good enough." He shook his head, "You're just persistent."

"Or your clients are just thick." She muttered.

"And look at the mess left behind from your 'self-cleaning con.'" The Doctor challenged him.

Jack rolled his eyes, "I'm not responsible for this, it was a burnt-out medical transporter, I even programmed the flight computer so it wouldn't land on anything living."

The shrill ringing of an alarm cut through the trio's bickering. Rose cast a panicked look at the doctor who seemed equally grim.

"Hope you have a plan, Captain Kirk." Jack's eyes darted from side to side to each of the doors leading to various wards. The only path was forward if they wanted to avoid the gas mask people.

"That is not my name." He responded flatly.

They increased their pace, shooting past the stairs they headed for a solid metal door, the glint of the flickering overhead light upon the metal seemed to be mocking them, illuminating the dead end.

"The night your 'space-junk' landed, someone was hurt. This was where they were taken." The Doctor determined, giving the door a wary look, "Make yourself useful and get it open." He practically barked at Jack.

"Can't you just use your screwdriver?" Rose asked.

The Doctor shook his head dismissively, a slight flush of colour entering his cheeks. Jack pulled out an almost comically large gun, one that seemed an incongruous size compared to the pocket it was removed from. Aiming it at the door a solid bar of blue light shot out. The lock disappeared, along with the metal around it as if someone had taken an eraser and rubbed it out violently.

"From the factories of Villengard!" Jack looked triumphant as he pushed the door open.

"Isn't there a banana grove there these days?" The Doctor asked, keeping his voice light and too innocent in a way that seemed unnerving considering the previous tone of voice he used to address Jack.

"It looks powerful," Rose commented. It hadn't escaped her notice that the Doctor seemed reluctant to utilise weaponry himself. As dangerous as the sonic screwdriver could be in the wrong hands, in the wrong situation it was hardly what Rose would term a weapon, it wasn't like it was laser-powered or anything.

"I pack quite the punch." Jack beamed at her; he honestly seemed relieved that one person wasn't treating him with hostility.

The room they entered looked like it had been ransacked or a small localised tornado had recently blown through. Filling cabinets were tugged open and papers littered the ground like an obscure mosaic. In the corner by the window, there were some fragments of broken glass.

"Something broke out of here, something powerful, powerful and angry." The Doctor's eyes scanned the room, they softened as they rested on a crude crayon drawing of a child with their mother.

"This is a child's room," Jack whispered, he wasn't quite sure why he was whispering but there was something about the seriousness of the situation that warranted that level of quietness as if to reduce the blow of the revelation.

"Do you know where you are?" Came a low raspy voice. Rose was startled; her heartbeat calmed down quickly when she released the voice was just a recording from a tape machine.

"Are you my mummy?" The voice sent shudders down her spine. It was the voice of the child she had followed onto the roof, the one who stared at her blankly as she flailed in the air desperately.

The voice continued, over and over again, asking the same question.

"That voice..." Rose started.

"You've heard it too." The Doctor shot her a worried look. He tilted his head upwards, closing his eyes briefly, he sucked in a deep breath. "Can you sense it?" He directed the question more at Rose than Jack.

Jack shook his head, "Sense what exactly?"

"Coming out of the walls." He continued in a frustrated voice, he started to pace rapidly. "Can you feel it?"

Rose didn't know what he was talking about, nevertheless, she tried to understand. She shut her own eyes, feeling a bit foolish. It was hard to sense anything beyond her own thundering pulse and too solid awareness of her own fragile mortality. She tried to see past it, like when she sought the name of the Slitheen homeworld. Her hand reached into her pocket, her fingers curled around warm metal. There was a sense of safety and comfort in routine.

Now she really thought about it, Rose was alarmed that she could have missed something so obvious. The atmosphere around her was heavy, oppressive. She had shrugged it off as her own fear. It was more than that, there was a taste of power to it, like the air before lightning strikes.

"Mummy?" Chimed the recording.

"You really can't feel it?" The Doctor gave a derisive snort. "You can, can't you Rose?"

Rose nodded hesitantly, "I think so, it doesn't exactly feel malignant, it's more like a relentless force...with a single-minded will."

The Doctor tilted his head thoughtfully, mulling over her observation. "Single-minded..."

"Oh, and what does it single-mindedly want?" Jack mocked, "Aside from replicating a knock-off zombie holofilm."

"Presumably it's mummy." Rose snarked back.

The Doctor raised his hands, seemingly irritated by their arguing."Suppose when that 'med-ship' landed, there was a child there. What if they were affected somehow?"

"It was empty." Jack hissed, "Even if it did land on someone, which it didn't, it wouldn't affect them in any way."

"I'm here!" Called the saccharine voice of a child.

The oppressive feeling increased in intensity, now Rose was focusing on it it was near impossible to blot out. There was a faint rustling sound in the background.

"It's afraid. Terribly afraid and powerful." The Doctor realised, "It doesn't know it yet, but it will do. It's got the power of a god, and I just sent it to its room."

Rose's eyes widened, "We're in its room." Her eyes landed on the source of the rustling noise. "The tape..."

"I'm here. Can't you see me?"

Three pairs of alarmed eyes turned to the window; the child moved forward towards the door at a sedate pace, completely unconcerned by the looks of horror on the faces of the room's other inhabitants.

"Are you my mummy?" It regarded them hollowly, "Mummy?"

"Doctor?" Rose couldn't keep the sound of fear from creeping into her voice.

Jack breathed heavily next to her. "Okay, on my signal make for the door." His hand reached for his left pocket, Jack stared at the child intently. In one swift motion, he pulled an object free from his pocket. "Now!"

Rose jumped slightly, her eyes landed on the banana clutched by Captain Jack, he stared at the yellow shape in his hands with bemusement. She saw the Doctor reach into his own belt, pulling free the same square-nozzled gun from earlier. He aimed it at the door and with a bright flash of light a smooth square-shaped hole appeared in the wall.

Seeing that there was no avenue of escape through the door, Jack gave Doctor a look somewhere between bewilderment and outrage as he followed the other two through the hole, still clutching the banana.

"Don't drop the banana." The Doctor called behind him. He reached for Rose's hand, urging her along the new pathway. Rose squeezed his hand gratefully, grasping it as a lifeline as she hurried along with him.

"Why not?" Asked Jack.

The Doctor cast a look back at Jack, who had now caught up with them. "It's a good source of potassium." He shrugged.

Jack rolled his eyes and tossed the banana behind him, in one quick movement he yanked the blaster away from the Doctor. His fingers caressed the metal gently as if apologising to it for allowing it to fall into the Doctor's hands.

"Mummy. I want my mummy." The child called after them. It hadn't previously given any indication that it was particularly fast but Rose didn't want to take her chances with it by wasting time.

Jack twisted a dial on the blaster and aimed it back at the wall. It repaired itself neatly with nary a crack or chip in the paintwork. "Digital rewind." He proclaimed, satisfied. "Nice switch by the way." He admitted.

A rare grin crossed the Doctor's face, "It's from the groves of Villengard. I thought it was appropriate."

"I wonder how a banana grove ended up there." Rose mused.

"Oh, I wonder..." Jack echoed, faux menacingly.

Their light conversation was halted by the sound of plaster splitting; a long crack ran down the wall recently replaced, with small tributaries splitting off in all directions. They headed away from the wall, only to be confronted by a pair of gas-masked figures in long dressing gowns, there were patients everywhere, and they seemed to be waking up again.

Rose looked around frantically but there was no visible exit anywhere.

"Mummy. Mummy. Mummy." Moaned the patients.

"It's keeping us here till it can get at us." The Doctor stated, grimly.

"The child's controlling them?" Jack moved closer to Rose, protectively. His eyes landed on Rose and the Doctor's still tightly clasped hands, a small grimace crossed his face, briefly.

"It is them. It's every living thing in this hospital."

"Okay," Jack collected himself. He started to rummage through his pockets, "I've got a sonic blaster, a sonic cannon, and as a triple-enfolded sonic disrupter. Doc, what you got?"

The Doctor screwed his face up at the nickname. "I've got a sonic..." He trailed off, "Never mind."

"What?" Jack called, edging closer towards them and away from the crowd slowly enclosing them.

"It's sonic, okay?" The Doctor replied in frustration, his hand let go of Rose's, she immediately missed its warm comfort. "Let's leave it at that."

"Disrupter? Cannon? What?" Jack shouted back, in irritation.

The Doctor pulled his sonic screwdriver free, he waved it in the air dramatically. "It's sonic! Totally sonic! I am soniced up!"

"A sonic what?" Jack's brow furrowed as he looked at the slender metal shape.

"Screwdriver!" He hissed back in embarrassment.

The wall gave away, a small hand reached through the cloud of plaster dust. Rose could not die here, she refused to be converted into one of them. Her eyes landed on Jack's gun, still hanging out of his pocket, reaching for it she aimed it at the ground, the only available surface she could aim for. "Going down!" She yelled, the only warning the other two had before they were falling with her.

They fell in a heavy pile on the floor below. The child peered down at them through the hole where light flooded through into the darkened room they now found themselves in. Rose aimed the blaster back at the hole and repaired it.

Jack gave her an admiring look, "Good looking, telepathically interesting and handy with weapons." He grinned, "I may just have to keep you."

Rose gave him a sheepish smile. She didn't consider being able to see through psychic paper all that interesting.

The Doctor glowered at Jack, "Yes, thanks to my companion, we were able to avoid your mess."

"Sonic screwdriver?" Jack teased, "I'm sure that's real helpful."

"It is!" The Doctor insisted gruffly.

Rose ignored their bickering and attempted to find a light switch; her fingers came across a familiar shape in the dark and tugged the cord. The light pinged on; Rose rather wished she couldn't see what was in the room with them. They were in another ward filled with beds, the figures sat up, not betraying any sign of tiredness from their slumber.

"Mummy, mummy." They called out.

Jack reached for the fallen blaster aiming it at a wall, when no light came out he smacked the side of the weapon he had previously treated so kindly. "Damn it!" He groaned. "It's the special features. They really drain the battery." He explained.

With a somewhat vindictive look of glee the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and aimed it at a storeroom door, they rushed inside as fast as they could. The room was cramped with few supplied, there was a tiny window reinforced with iron bars. The Doctor locked the door behind them gesturing to his screwdriver smugly.

"Don't look at me like that." Jack put his hands on his hips, "You said screwdriver, how was I to know it did more than put up shelves."

"Oh, ye of little faith." The Time Lord returned. "That should hold for a bit." He slammed his palm against the door.

"Really, the wall didn't do much good," Rose stated dubiously.

"Well, it's got to find us first."

"We didn't exactly go very far, "Jack backed her up. "We need a plan." He frowned at the window, "Barred. Sheer drop outside. Seven stories. Not much chance of escape through there."

Rose swallowed, "So we have to go back out there," She gave the door a wary look.

The Doctor didn't seem pleased by their pessimism, "So, where'd you pick this one up, then?" He gestured at Jack dismissively.

Despite not being the person addressed, Jack answered instead. "She was hanging from a barrage balloon, I had an invisible spaceship. I never stood a chance." He smiled fondly at her.

The Doctor screwed his face up in distaste.

Rose didn't know what to make of Jack, he was obviously charming and he had saved her from splattering onto the streets of London in a gory death. That counted for something in her books, even if the Doctor clearly hated him.

In her opinion, the Doctor's reaction to Jack was a bit dramatic. Sure, he may possibly be responsible for an outbreak of zombies in gas masks but it's not like he meant it, he was only after profit. Profit at the expense of human life, may not be the most moral recourse but Rose could understand it.

"Okay. One, we've got to get out of here. Two, we can't get out of here. Have I missed anything?" The Doctor rattled off.

Jack was looking more and more like a caged animal, he seemed to be the most affected by their enclosure in the storeroom. He shot an apologetic look at Rose before twisting a dial on his watch and disappearing into thin air, or more specifically the musty air of the claustrophobia-inducing room.

"Jack's gone," Rose commented blandly.

It was funny really, whenever the Doctor disappeared, even if it was something as mundane as splitting up temporarily it caused her to feel the undercurrent of panic. Jack's disappearance didn't elicit any such emotions in her. Jack for all his dastardly criminal ways was simple, not of mind but of existence in relation to her. There was no complicated dream woven feeling of fate, no sense of expectation.

"Great." The Doctor sighed.

"Don't act like you had high expectations of him, to begin with." Rose chided.

A dusty radio in the corner of the room crackled to life. "Ouch, that really hurts Rosie." The voice was filled with static.

Rose's eyes narrowed, "Jack?"

"Hey guys, I'm back on my ship." He paused for a moment, "My emergency teleport is security-keyed to my molecular structure. Sorry I couldn't take you with me."

The Doctor raised his sonic to the radio suspiciously, "How're you speaking?"

"Om-Com." His voice crackled, "I can call anything with a speaker grill."

The Doctor frowned, "So can the child, they can Om-Com too."

"How can they do that?" Rose puzzled, "They can't be emitting radio waves."

"Brain waves." The Doctor corrected, "Originally I don't think it was strong enough. Now with all of those patients," He gestured to the sealed door, "It has hundreds of voices to bolster its own."

Rose wondered if the Doctor could make the radio speak using his own telepathic abilities, maybe she could too. There was something oddly appealing about being able to project your thoughts onto something, to make it react as you willed it to.

"And I can hear you. Coming to find you. Coming to find you." Came the mellifluous voice.

"Didn't take him long," Rose commented.

"I'll try to block out the signal. Least I can do." Jack's voice, cut through the child's crooning. Jack's voice disappeared for a moment, just when the child's incessant speech became unbearable it was replaced by a familiar piece of music.

"Ah," Rose spoke quietly.

The Doctor gave her a questioning look when he noticed the recognition on her face, his piercing eyes returned to the radio regarding it in a way that was not dissimilar to a bomb disposer might look at explosives.

"Remember this one, Rose?" Jack teased.

"It was less than an hour ago." She protested, "I'd be hard-pressed to forget."

"It was rather unforgettable for me as well." Jack continued gleefully. "Our song."

Rose flung herself into a nearby wheelchair and tried to ignore the Doctor's bristly silence. He went over to the window, he had to stand on the table to reach properly and examine the bars over the window; his screwdriver moved back and forth in a regular pattern. Jack was silent on the other end, Rose hoped he was working on a way for them to get out of here, from the Doctor's behaviour he didn't seem quite so hopeful.

She felt restless, she had no tool of her own to help the Doctor and she wasn't sure if he would be keen on accepting her help. Obviously picking up Captain Jack had been a poor decision, the Doctor was treating him like an Adam 2.0. She wasn't even trying to use Jack like she used Adam, it wasn't her fault that the Doctor was so aggravated.

Rose genuinely liked Jack, he was humorous and cunning. Dancing with him had felt nice, in an empty sort of way, like drinking wine to cool the flames of her anxiety. She wondered what it would be like to dance with the Doctor, if it would feel the same way or better. But all of her feelings relating to the Doctor were complicated anyway, assassination attempt notwithstanding.

If felt good when he hugged her, she felt calm and safe. It should be absurd that his presence could elicit feelings of safety given that disaster seemed to follow him so eagerly.

"What are you doing with those bars?"

"Trying to set up a resonation pattern in the concrete, loosen the bars." He replied, not looking away from his task.

"What good would that do? Jack said that we're seven stories up."

He looked at her finally, "I wouldn't put so much stock in everything Jack says. Besides, I can't just do nothing."

"Why don't you like Jack?" If the Doctor was so keen on outright honesty then he had to accept a little give and take.

"Why do you like him so much?" He returned instantly.

"You mean aside from saving my life?"

"He did that so he could attempt to later steal your hypothetical money." He reminded her.

Rose shook her head, "We've met worse."

"I think you're setting the bar of trust too low."

"He feels safe, you know, like you." She flushed slightly seeing his pleased expression. "He's expressive and talkative without saying anything at all. He certainly enjoys dancing."

"Dancing?" He raised an eyebrow, "When did you have time to dance?"

Rose started to rock her wheelchair back and forth, the front left wheel was broken and made a screeching noise as she moved. "It was when we were discussing 'business,' we were on top of an invisible spaceship, I'd just been rescued from falling through the air." She paused thoughtfully, "To be honest, at the time I wasn't sure what he would do if I declined his offer."

"Did he threaten you?" The Doctor asked flatly, there was a storm brewing behind his eyes.

"No, no, nothing like that. I was just a bit shaken, I wanted to be cautious." Rose listened to the quiet thrum of the music in the air, drowning out the voice of the gas-masked child. "It wasn't so bad, he was a good dancer."

A flicker of humour crossed the Doctor's face as he jumped down from the table. "Is dancing ability an important criterion for deciding whether or not to trust someone?"

Rose tapped her chin thoughtfully, "Now you mention it, you've never proven your ability either way. Maybe you're not so trustworthy yourself after all."

He shot her a look of mock offense, "Who says I can't dance?"

"I've seen no evidence to suggest you are a good dancer." She sniffed.

The Doctor put his hands in his pockets; he cocked his head to the side and regarded her with an indecipherable expression for a long moment. "Nine hundred years old, me. I've been around a bit. I think you can assume at some point I've danced."

"But can you dance well?"

"Well, I've got the moves but I wouldn't want to boast."

"Hmm," Rose went over to the radio and turned up the music. "It doesn't look like we're going anywhere." She wasn't exactly sure what she was doing, goading the Doctor into dancing wasn't a productive use of their time. But, she was curious, she wanted to compare how it felt to dance with Jack and how it felt to dance with her possibly ill-fated friend.

Maybe this was okay, the Doctor was her friend, friends do fun things like dance together. Surely dancing with him would be a distraction from plotting his murder in whatever vile part of her mind concocts such ideas.

She held her hands out to him. The Doctor sighed in exasperation and moved forward. "I was trying to resonate concrete."

"Yes, because that would be a viable means of escape." She smiled at him, "Maybe Jack will pull through." She knew bringing up Jack would irritate him.

The Doctor's face darkened, "Are you sure you want to taint the memories of your little song with Jack by dancing with me?"

"What's the worse that could happen."

"Famous last words." He murmured in a defeated manner. He reached for her hands grudgingly, Rose's heart fluttered nervously as he made contact with her skin, even though he had held her hand many times in the past. He inspected her palms with a furtive look. "Barrage balloon?" He asked suddenly.

Rose blinked, thrown out of her reverie. "What?"

"You were hanging from a barrage balloon."

"Sure. What about it?"

He tutted, "I've travelled with a lot of people, but you're setting new records for jeopardy friendly."

"Yeah, a great place to pick up men apparently." His grasp on her hands tightened.

"Hanging from a rope thousands of feet above London. Not a cut, not a bruise."

She squeezed his hands back with her own unblemished ones. "Jack fixed me up with his nanogenes."

The Doctor looked puzzled, "Nanogenes?" Seeing that Rose wasn't going to volunteer any more information he decided to pick apart the other part of her statement. "We're calling him Captain Jack now, are we?"

"That's what he introduced himself as."

"He's not really a Captain, Rose."

"It hardly matters what he calls himself," Rose argued, she was beginning to feel uneasy standing there under the Doctor's scrutiny for so long with him clutching her hands so tightly. "Is this how the Time Lord's dance, I have to say, I've seen better." She attempted to add some levity to the situation.

He ignored her comment. "If ever he was a Captain, he's been defrocked."

It was then that Rose stumbled upon a realisation of her own. The Doctor's continuously snide comments were not a reflection of his inbuilt bullshit detector, he was jealous of Jack. Rose wasn't quite sure what he had to be jealous of but was keen to test her theory.

"Yeah? Shame I missed that." Rose watched the Doctor's eyes take on a steely glow at the implication of her enjoying the Captain's company in a less than PG fashion. Her heart started to hammer faster in her chest, she was sure that the Doctor could feel her elevated pulse in her wrists where his hands held her too tightly. The Doctor's mouth twisted into a displeased expression, still, he did not relinquish her hands.

"Actually, I quit. Nobody takes my frock" Interrupted Jack. She spun around, and the Doctor broke his iron-clad hold on her hands as well as her attention. Rose blinked in surprise, they were aboard Jack's ship it seemed. "Most people notice when they've been teleported. You guys are so sweet." He cooed. "Sorry about the delay. I had to take the nav-com offline to override the teleport security."

"It's fine." Rose blurted out, "Both of us were fine."

"You both sure looked fine." Jack grinned, his merry blue eyes glinted, "I'm almost sorry I interrupted."

"This is a Chula ship." The Doctor commented.

"Yeah," Jack let out an annoyed huff, tired of the Doctor finding ways to accuse him, "Just like that medical transporter. Only this one is dangerous.

The Doctor snapped his fingers and a golden glow enveloped his hands, he met Rose's gaze, "Nanogenes."

"They're what healed me up before." She nodded.

"Sub-atomic robots. There's millions of them in here, see?" He raised his left hand, "Burned my hand on the console when we landed. All better now. They activate when the bulk head's sealed. Check you out for damage, fix any physical flaws." He turned to Jack, deadly serious, "Take us to the crash site. I need to see your space junk."

"Sure, sure, just let me get the nav-com back online. Make yourselves at home." He smirked, "Feel free to carry on with whatever it was you were doing."

"We were talking about dancing." The Doctor insisted.

"It didn't look like talking." Jack challenged.

"It didn't feel like dancing," Rose added.

0o0o0o0

After recounting a sad tale of memory loss and sworn vengeance against the Time Agency, Jack lead them to the crash site of the Chula ambulance. The night air was cold, the kind of cold that left you breathless and exhausted. The surrounding barbed wire made for a very foreboding sight.

"There it is." Jack gestured grandly, "Hey, they've got Algy on duty. It must be important."

"We've got to get past him." The Doctor decided.

Rose pulled a face, "I don't feel like playing the distraction."

Jack patted her shoulder, "Don't worry, I've got this." Rose shot him a curious look, "I've got to know Algy quite well since I've been in town. Trust me, I make an enticing distraction. Don't wait up." He started to jog over to uniform-clad soldier, he wasn't so far away that Rose couldn't make out the waxy pallor of his skin under the dim lighting.

"Quite the flexible dancer you've picked up." The Doctor commented, "That's the fifty-first century for you, your lot have spread out across half the galaxy by that point."

"Dancer?"

"So many species, so little time." He smirked at her surprised expression.

"So, that's what we do when we get out there? That's our mission? We seek new life, and, and..."

"Dance." He finished.

"I suppose there are worse objectives."

Rose and the Doctor approached Jack and his companion cautiously, unsure if their presence had been sufficiently explained by Jack.

"Jack? Are you my mummy?" Rose froze at the eerie words that the poor man choked out. She saw Jack recoil as the soldier doubled over and retched, choking around something she couldn't see, the rough material of a mask forced its way through his flesh as his newly masked head hung limply.

Jack backed away and ordered the other nearby soldiers to stay away. He turned worried eyes to the Doctor, both of them now too familiar with the sight of those hollow creatures.

"The effect's become air-borne, accelerating." The Doctor theorised. The loud wail of a siren started up in the background, if they were trying to avoid detection then the nearby screeching wasn't a good way to go about it.

"We may already be infected," Rose whispered. Her hand went to her throat. She didn't want to imagine how it must feel to choke on those transplanted words of the child, to feel material and rubber join with flesh and to lose a grasp on her own mind. "Isn't a bomb supposed to fall here and destroy the ambulance?"

"It's too late for that, if the contaminant's airborne now, there's hours left." The Doctor answered, gloomily.

"For what?" Jack hesitantly looked around, noting that there were figures in the distance moving closer.

"Till nothing, forever. For the entire human race." His voice was bitter, a slight frown creased his forehead for a moment as he tilted his head to the side, "Can anyone else hear singing?"

They decided to split up and look for the source of the sound, there was a nearby warehouse, used to store weaponry and goods that had been converted into a set of rooms. Rose didn't like splitting up with the Doctor and Jack but it was only for a moment and it wasn't like the warehouse was that big anyway.

Rose entered a room at the end of the corridor, she could see was a desk, piled high with food rations. Rose warily edged further into the room and peered behind the desk. There sat a man in a dark blue suit, the blank face of a gas mask adorned his head grotesquely. Stepping back Rose headed for the door without hesitation, only to see it was now locked.

She clenched her hands into fists, her nails bit deeply into her palms. She tried the door handle again but it wouldn't budge. She didn't want to make too much noise getting it open in fear it would rouse the figure in the chair from its restful state.

"Not so funny when you're the one trapped on the wrong side of the door is it?" Asked a scathing voice. Rose turned to see a woman in a long green silk dress and a white feather boa, her hair was teased into an array of soft golden curls around her face.

Rose didn't know how she could have missed the women on her first sweep of the room. She was getting tired of people appearing and disappearing without warning. "Who are you?" Her throat caught when she noticed the device on the woman's arm, it was similar to the one her future self had worn in the church vestry.

"You ruined everything." The woman spat at her with such venom that Rose could almost feel it burn her.

"Look, I don't know who you are or what you think I've done but it's not safe in here." Rose tried to reason, keeping her voice low to avoid attracting the seated man's attention.

She gave Rose a sardonic smile, "That's rather the point. I didn't expect to find you here, not with how young you are." She waved a hand at her, "Gosh, I bet you think you're innocent in all this. Rose noticed she was also wearing long combat boots, an incongruous addition with her choice of outfit.

"Shut up." Rose snapped, she was surprised by the ferocity in her own voice. "I'm so sick of people telling me that there's something wrong with me when I've done nothing to them."

The woman narrowed her eyes, "Maybe you should listen to them."

"If I'm such a problem then what are you going to do about it." She injected as, much false bravado into her voice as she could. "I'm not here alone."

"Yes, the Doctor." A look of sadness crossed her face. She toyed with the ends of her curls before fixing Rose with a nasty glare, "You'll ruin him, make him into something he isn't." She pulled a large white gun out from the back of her boot, "I could kill you now, but you still have your uses yet." Then she pressed a button on the device on her arm, her body warped and twisted in the air before disappearing, leaving Rose locked in a room with a gas mask zombie.

Why does this always happen? Why is everyone out to get me specifically? She had spent so much time hated herself for some possible future offense, but what if they were all wrong? Her future self had said that the Doctor's crimes were numerous, maybe she had a legitimate reason to go after him.

She didn't want to think about it. It was much easier to compartmentalise all of her emotions and not think of the uncertain future. What mattered now was escaping the room the psycho blonde had trapped her in.

It appeared that she had been shoving at the door too loudly in an attempt to escape. The man stirred from his apparent slumber. Its stiff body straightened unnaturally as it headed for her in deliberate shambling steps.

"Mummy?" It asked her.

"No, no, no," Rose muttered. She refused to believe that this would be what killed her, the women in the green dressed had confirmed that this wasn't an attempt to kill her, in which case it was just meant to frighten her. If that was so then the woman must have believed she was capable of getting out of the situation.

She had now taken to standing at the opposite side of the desk of the man, when he shifted left on his side she mirrored him, climbing over the littered table seemed a bit too advanced for it, she noted to her own relief. It was like an insane parody of playing tag as a child, except the consequences of being tagged where much more severe.

Rose curled her hand around her watch, her good luck charm. The warm metal almost seemed to thrum like a heartbeat under her fingers. Her head was besieged by drums da da day dum...

The answer was clear. Rose tried her best to make eye contact with the man, meeting the hollow gaze of enlarged circular glass panels. "Stop." She whispered. The figure halted. At that moment she understood, this man was but a hand of a far greater being. A hand could easily be grabbed by another and redirected even if it belonged to the mind of another being.

Her breath came out shakily and her head throbbed in agony. "Open the door." Rose wasn't entirely convinced it would listen, maybe it's stopping was just a fluke. But the figure moved past her towards the door, it tried the handle but stopped when it met resistance. Her head felt so strange, like she was there but not there, her concentration felt stretched beyond its natural limits. "Again." She commanded, barely recognising her own voice. The man stared to throw his shoulder against the door in great heavy thuds, the door groaned and metal bent as the door was at last shoved open.

The figure stood off to the side of the door, its head bowed slightly as if awaiting another command, Rose moved past the doorway giving another look to the figure inside. All at once clarity returned to her, her mind didn't feel spread thin and the hungry pain in her head faded.

The soldier had opened the door. This much she was certain. Her mind started to become foggy when she tried to focus on the particulars No, she had to rememeber! She forced past her own inhibitions and denial, she remembered telling it to move, telling it to open the door, and it had.

She didn't know why it had listened to her.

The patients in the hospital had left the room at the Doctor's command, perhaps telling a single person to open a door wasn't too abstract a response to expect.

No. It was more than that. She kept looking for excuses to rationalise the strange things that happened around her. She had told it to act, and it had. That wasn't normal. It was with a welling sense of dread that Rose recalled what she had said to Adam and the oddly empty way he repeated her words, how his behaviour had changed.

Am I doing this? Am I making people act against their will?

Had she always being able to do this?

Rose left the warehouse and found the Doctor pacing outside with Jack and a young woman. They were in front of the barbed wire fence talking amongst themselves, as Rose approached the Doctor's face softened.

"You took your time." His brusque comment didn't hide the undertone of worry in his voice. "Never mind, this is Nancy," He gestured to the girl. "Her brother's the one in charge of the gas mask people."

"It isn't his fault!" Nancy snapped. She pulled on her plaits agitatedly. More and more people in gas masks drew closer to the gates, "We need to get inside."

Entrusting the screwdriver to Rose, Jack split off to fortify the gate whiles he and Nancy began to reattach the barbed wire to keep people out. The Doctor returned to the centre of the bomb site to inspect the ambulance itself. It hadn't escaped Rose's notice as she held the screwdriver in her frozen fingers that the Doctor had given no directions on how to use the screwdriver, simply trusting that she could.

She worked silently with Nancy beside her, she was young and afraid. Rose hated to think how she would react if someone she cared about turned into one of those things. After making the repairs they joined the other two in front of the ambulance, it looked as though one of them had managed to open it.

"It's empty. Look at it." Jack gestured to the vessel.

The Doctor gave him a condescending look. "What do you expect in a Chula medical transporter? Bandages? Cough drops."

The image of Jack's own Chula shipped flashed through Rose's mind, "Nanogenes."

He nodded grimly. "It wasn't empty, Captain. There were enough nanogenes in there to rebuild a species."

Jack's face grew ashen in horror. "Oh, God."

The wail of the siren continued, it felt like it was boring a hole into Rose's skull, figures pressed against the wire, waiting.

"Getting it now, are we? When the ship crashes, the nanogenes escape." The Doctor clenched his hand into a fist, " Billions upon billions of them, ready to fix all the cuts and bruises in the whole world. But what they find first is a dead child, probably killed earlier that night, and wearing a gas mask."

"Why would it bring him back as that?" Nancy cried, "What kind of a twisted version of life is that?"

Doctor looked at her pityingly, "These nanogenes, they're not like the ones on Jack's ship. This lot have never seen a human being before. Don't know what a human being's supposed to look like. All they've got to go on is one little body, and there's not a lot left." He added, not trying to sound cruel, "But they carry right on. They do what they're programmed to do. They patch it up. Can't tell what's gas mask and what's skull, but they do their best." He fluttered his fingers, his voice adopting a faux-sweetness as if reciting a fairytale, "Then off they fly, off they go, work to be done. Because, you see, now they think they know what people should look like, and it's time to fix all the rest. And they won't ever stop. They won't ever, ever stop. The entire human race is going to be torn down and rebuilt in the form of one terrified child looking for its mother, and nothing in the world can stop it!"

"I didn't know." Jack gritted his teeth.

The patients beyond the wire began calling out once again, their voices were hauntingly innocent.

"The ship thinks it's under attack. It's calling up the troops. Standard protocol."The Doctor continued, unsympathetic of Jack's turmoil.

"They are all limbs of a whole, waiting upon the brain, their leader," Rose added, knowingly.

"The child's a fully equipped Chula warrior." He seemed surprised by his companion's assessment, "So much power, all in the hands of a hysterical four-year-old looking for his mummy."

Jack moved agitatedly, his hands searching for an item in his pocket as if preparing to fight his way out of the masses of patients surrounding them. "Why don't they attack?"

"Good little soldiers, waiting for their commander."

"The child?" Asked Jack, his hand faltered as if momentarily worried at the prospect of fighting a child.

"Jamie." Nancy corrected, sharply.

"What?" Jack turned his head to her distractedly.

"Not the child. Jamie." She repeated.

"Maybe we can reason with him." Rose offered.

Nancy nodded enthusiastically, "Yes, we don't have to fight. He's just a little boy I can't-"

"You said it yourself." The Doctor interrupted, "He's what's left of Jamie, there isn't enough of him there to reason with. All he has is the single minded-will to find his mummy, a will that will rip the world apart."

Nancy's face was red and her eyes watered with unshed tears, "This is my fault."

The Doctor responded immediately, "No."

"It is. It's all my fault."

"How can it be your..." He trailed off, he listened to the voices crying out mournfully, always asking. "Nancy, what age are you? Twenty? Twenty-one? Older than you look, yes?"

There was a faint whistling sound in the air and Jack kept casting nervous looks at the sky. "I can't...the bomb's going to be here any second."

"Then teleport us out," Rose demanded,

"I can't!" He gazed at Rose worriedly, "The nav-com's back online. Going to take too long to override the protocols."

"Just do what you have to do." The Doctor replied dismissively.

"I'm sorry Rose." He murmured before vanishing once again.

It was fine, Rose didn't need Jack. She had the Doctor, and if the Doctor turned out to be someone she couldn't trust in the end then she had herself and whatever freaky telepathic powers she had begun to manifest.

"How old were you five years ago? Fifteen? Sixteen?" The Doctor pressed on, giving no indication that Jack's desertion bothered him, "Old enough to give birth, anyway. He's not your brother, is he? A teenage single mother in 1941. So you hid. You lied. You even lied to him."

The bomb site door swung open with a grating screech, a small figure stepped forwards, dishevelled blonde hair stuck up from the top of the mask. They drew closer and closer. "Are you my mummy?"

"He's going to keep asking, Nancy. He's never going to stop."

"Mummy?"

Nancy started to sob, she hid her eyes behind her hands as if looking at Jamie was too painful for her.

"Tell him. Nancy, the future of the human race is in your hands. Trust me and tell him."

Nancy took a wobbly step forward toward her son. Rose didn't think she'd be able to take on the will of the driving force behind the gas-masked zombies herself but she was willing to give it a shot if the child came too close to her.

Rose's head thundered loudly, the blood in her ears drummed, da da day dum...she would burn his mind, set fire to it with horrors its tiny brain couldn't imagine. Rose roughly forced the horrifying imagery from her head. Of course, she wouldn't do that, this was still a child...she wouldn't even be able to do that if she tried...right?

Rose was thrown from her dark thoughts by the alarming image of Nancy embracing her child, murmuring over and over again, "I am your mummy." The child continued to ask the same question uncomprehendingly. "I am your mummy. I will always be your mummy. I'm so sorry. I am so, so sorry." Nancy whispered into his hair. A cloud of Nanogenes surged around them, covering them in a golden haze.

"Come on, please. Come on, you clever little nanogenes." The Doctor begged, his face tense with anticipation, "Figure it out! The mother, she's the mother. It's got to be enough information. Figure it out."

"Do you think it will be enough?" Rose asked cautiously.

The Doctor turned to her, "Nancy has the superior DNA...if we're lucky...come on... Give me a day like this. Give me this one."

Nancy's arms gave out as she crumpled to the ground, Rose immediately feared the worst. With careful hope in his eyes the Doctor moved forward to Jamie, he grasped the straps of his gas mask and removed it. He discarded the mask and picked the child up with an elated smile and spun him around.

"Ha-ha! Welcome back! Twenty years till pop music - you're going to love it." He crowed.

"What happened?" Nancy wiped away her tears, beaming at her child. The Doctor placed them back onto the ground next to her, her hand immediately sought out Jamie's clutching it tightly.

"Your DNA was the parent DNA. They didn't change you because you changed them! Ha-ha! Mother knows best!"

There was still a nagging feeling that there was something wrong. Her alarmed eyes met the Doctor's joyful ones, "What about the bomb."

With a self-satisfied air, the Doctor glanced skywards, "All taken care of."

"Jack..." He hadn't abandoned them after all.

"Basic psychology." He responded.

The bomb began to hurtle towards them, its size grew as it became closer, merely a moment away from hitting them. It was caught in the same cerulean light that had captured Rose as she had fallen through the London night sky. Jack himself was perched astride the bomb in an exceedingly hazardous position. Rose wondered if he had thrown himself through the air at it, relying on is ship to save him.

"Doctor!" Jack hollered.

He gave Jack a grudging smile. "Good lad!"

"The bomb's already commenced detonation. I've put it in stasis but it won't last long." He warned.

"Change of plan. Don't need the bomb. Can you get rid of it, safely as you can?"

"Did you ask him to do this?" Rose asked in disapproval, frankly, a part of her was impressed that the Doctor managed to guilt-trip Jack into throwing himself onto a bomb in a stasis beam.

"It's alright Rose." Jack addressed her, "Got to clear up my own mess, right?" Rose wasn't sure how exactly Jack intended to deal with the bomb but going by his sorrowful expression it wasn't so pleasant. "Goodbye." He flickered out of existence for a moment before returning to her surprise. "Rose?" He asked, with a deadly serious expression.

"Yeah?"

"By the way, love the tee-shirt." He waved at her, wobbling unsteadily on top of the bomb and disappeared once more in a burst of light. The ship above sucked in the beam of light and flew away.

The Doctor snapped his fingers like he had back in Jack's ship. A golden haze surrounded his hands. Rose wondered whether the nanogenes were drawn to friction or if they had been programmed with awareness of human social cues, like the snapping of fingers indicates a plea for attention.

"Don't tell me you burnt your hands again." Rose puzzled.

He chuckled, "Oh no, this isn't for me. This is a software patch. I'm about to email the upgrade." His eyes fell upon the hoards of patients still awaiting a command that wouldn't come. "You want moves, Rose?" He asked mirthfully, "I'll give you moves." He threw his arms open, showering nanogenes ahead, they surged through the air reaching their targets. One by one members of the crowd started to remove their gas masks and looked around at their surroundings in bewilderment.

"Everybody lives, Rose." He told her in amazement, "Just this once, everybody lives!" He cried out.

In spite of her joy over their victory, and she suspected that the Doctor saw few victories as wondrous as this, Rose couldn't help but feel sick. Her back up plan had been to attempt to take over the mind of the child, to drive it him mad and incapable of fighting and by extension do the same to the rest of his army. In comparison to the victory before them, her method seemed disgusting, vile. The kind of thing a monster would come up with.

Rose didn't know where her supposed telepathic abilities came from, but she had the sinking feeling that the rest of the world would be far better off without them.

"And everybody lives, Rose! Everybody lives! I need more days like this." He threw his arms around her. Rose tried to stifle her surprise, she curled into the warmth of his jacket focusing on the security of his grip as if it could ward off the musings of her sick mind.

"What about Jack?" She managed to peel herself away. She was eager to focus on something less happy, given his last words it didn't seem like he was expecting to see them again.

0o0o0o0

Rose laughed lightly as the Doctor attempted to twirl her. She couldn't believe her ears when the Doctor had brought up the subject of dancing again, given that he was so disinclined to engage with the subject the last time it was mentioned. Moonlight Serenade was playing again. Rose personally felt that this was a spiteful jab at Jack by the Doctor, as if he was trying to erase her own experience with him by replacing Jack.

Jack peered through the door of the TARDIS incredulously. He looked back at is doomed ship as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"Are you sure you know how to dance?" She teased him.

Now that Jack was stood in the TARDIS her previous worries while not nullified were somewhat diminished. The Doctor seemed inclined to leave Jack to the fate of being trapped in his ship with a bomb in failing stasis. It was by her own will that Jack was here now, alive and with them. Sure it wasn't on par with saving the human race from a progressive disease converting them into gas mask zombies but her own individual actions lead to saving a life. She took her victories where she could get them.

"I'm sure I used to know this stuff. Close the door, will you? Your ship's about to blow up. There's going to be a draught." The Doctor chastised Jack, who swiftly shut the door still in disbelief that he was still alive.

A part of Rose knew that the Doctor wouldn't be so petty as to leave Jack to die just because he disliked him. But, she liked to believe it was her insistence that convinced him, that she was responsible for saving someone. She was not a monster; she'd prove the psycho with the gun wrong.

"Welcome to the TARDIS." He drawled lazily, one of his hands was still laced with her own from his failed attempt to spin her around.

"Much bigger on the inside," Jack commented, delighted eyes roved the interior of the ship.

She felt the TARDIS give a warm pulse of affection in Jack's direction. The Doctor seemed disgruntled by his ship's silent acceptance of Jack. "You'd better be."

Rose pulled her hand away from the Doctor, "Since this one's hopeless do you want to dance?" She asked Jack.

"Rose!" The Doctor blurted her name loudly. "I've just remembered!"

She jumped in surprise at his eagerness as he flicked a switch in the control panel of the TARDIS. The music playing through the speakers switched to a more upbeat rhythm. "I can dance! I can dance!"

"Can you?" She asked sceptically. She watched him swing his hips and click his fingers with amusement. She gave Jack a helpless look, "With moves like those how can I resist?"

He smirked at her, "I'll wait my turn then." He even shot the Doctor a fond look, "I'm not sure which of you would be more fun to dance with."

Ignoring his blatant innuendo she returned to the Doctor, she startled slightly as one of his hands fell to her waist. He swooped her around the consol room jauntily. When he went to dip her, his arms cushioning her, heat flooded her chest unexpectedly. Dancing with Jack had been like drinking a fine wine. Dancing with the Doctor was ecstasy itself, running through her veins with every throb of her heart. It was safety with an undertone of danger, adventure.

And in that moment, Rose knew that in spite of her dubious future, having whatever this was with the Doctor, these feelings that made her blood surge and her mind race, that this was enough for her.