Fic: My Empire Of Dirt
Title: My Empire Of Dirt
Author: alex_caligari
Beta: jellybean728
Characters/Pairings: Very, very slight Martha/Mickey, although that is not the focus.
Rating: PG? Off screen character death. Spoilers for End of Time.
Summary: In the aftermath of Broadfell Prison, UNIT calls in an expert.
Disclaimer: The puppets are still firmly attached to the strings of the BBC.
Author's Notes: Written for the DW Bingo created by the_tenzo, for which I received this card. This is another shameless example of my love of dialogue overkill.
Martha Jones did not believe in miracles. She had stood in the Earthlight, saved the world through a story, and watched a brilliant man be literally ripped apart by his love for a woman. Yet she did not believe in miracles.
She also did not believe in coincidence.
“Andrews!” she called through the rain. A small woman scurried up to her, clutching a mobile to her ear. “Any signs of life?” she asked.
“No, Dr. Jones,” Andrews replied. She clicked off the mobile. “They don’t think anything could have survived the blast.”
“Do they know what caused it?” Martha asked.
Andrews hesitated. “No. But they think it was a leak of some sort. A build-up of gas.”
Martha snorted. “They really have no idea, do they?” She glanced over the throngs of people gathered; police, firemen, paramedics, the odd bystander. “Once the area’s cleared I want our own experts to take a look.”
“Doctor?”
“This was the facility where Prisoner 536 was being held. No one except half a dozen people at UNIT knew she was here. And then it blows up. At Christmas. I don’t think anything as simple as a gas leak happened here.”
Andrews nodded and went back to her phone. She was a good woman, Martha thought. Doreen Andrews. Preferring to go by her last name and called Andi by her friends. Organized to the point of obsession and never without some tech to keep her connected. Beyond that, she kept to herself. At first, Martha didn’t think she needed an assistant, but as she took on more and more projects, her superiors appointed Andrews to make sure Martha stayed sane.
Martha quickly became grateful for the help. There were fewer and fewer people she could talk to about her work these days. Donna had been mind-wiped, Jack was gone, Torchwood itself disbanded, Tom...she didn’t want to think about Tom and the military coup. She talked to Mickey every so often but he was busy doing freelance. He kept trying to convince her to join him, said it was more fun than dusty old procedure. She always told him she’d had enough of freelance. She zipped up her coat a bit more and headed back to the UNIT tent.
Hours later, after dawn, the scene was finally clear of people. Martha was able to fully appreciate the destruction the explosion and fire had caused. Andrews led her to the epicentre of the blast. It had once been a room on the ground floor, but now was just a hole. Any remnants of the bodies had already been cleared away.
“It could have been a lot worse,” she said. “Hardly anyone was kept here. Sort of thing people wanted to forget about.”
“You can say that again,” Martha said. “You said there was something strange about the room. What is it?”
Andrews, armed with a palm pilot today, pulled up a plan of the building. “Not this room specifically, but what was missing from this one.” She zoomed in on a block of cells and pointed one out. “Prisoner 536 was supposed to be here. But there’s no body in that area.”
“Lucy,” Martha said quietly.
“What?”
“Her name was Lucy.” Martha sighed. “So, what does that mean? She wasn’t in her room; was this an escape attempt?”
“No, Doctor. There was a partial hand found. The fingerprints match Pris - Lucy. She’s definitely dead. There was evidence of at least eight other people in the room, maybe more.”
“Too many for an interrogation then.”
“Seems to be.”
Martha walked around the hole, examining it from different angles. “Why kill her?” she muttered. “She was hardly the brains behind the operation.”
“What makes you think she was murdered?” Andrews asked behind her.
“Just a hunch. Get the CCTV; find out who was here last night. Anything you find goes through me.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
***
Martha had returned to UNIT’s portable lab for the privacy of her office. She sat at her desk staring at her mobile, and had been for the last twenty minutes. Lucy Saxon was dead, for no apparent reason. Did that warrant a call to him? She had tried calling when the children were speaking in unison, but couldn’t contact anyone, let alone him. It had seemed trivial the first time she called him back to Earth, but it turned out much bigger than they thought.
No, Martha decided. They would continue their own investigation. If something they couldn’t handle popped up, then she would call him. Maybe.
***
“They just let themselves be seen like this?”
Martha was holding a printout of a still frame from the prison CCTV. It showed a grey sedan pulling up to the entrance. A woman was leaning out of the driver’s side towards the guard. She looked about forty, blonde, stern expression. She was turned towards the security camera and looking straight at it. The odd thing was that the camera was behind the vehicle, so she had to have looked at it deliberately.
“The registration even comes back authentic,” Andrews said. “It belongs to Edith Bentley. Unmarried, involved in politics. She was one of the deceased from the explosion.”
“Something’s not right,” Martha said. “She would only let herself be seen if she knew she didn’t have to worry about being caught. So, she either thought she would get away with whatever it was, or she knew she wasn’t coming back.”
“Suicide bomber?” Andrews asked.
“No, no, it’s not that.” The small office didn’t allow Martha to pace properly so she settled for tapping her pen against the desk. “This wasn’t an act of protest or terrorism. It had to do with Lucy Saxon.”
Andrews’s eyes widened at the name, but otherwise didn’t react. “So the rumours were true. About Mr. Saxon’s killer.”
“Somewhat,” Martha said. “It was complicated.” She let out a breath of frustration. “If they wanted to kill her, why move her? Why kill themselves as well? If they wanted to break her out, why the explosion?”
“A very bad break out attempt,” Andrews remarked dryly.
“There’s something we’re missing. Politics, you said?”
Andrews glanced at her palm pilot. “Yes. Mainly a backbencher. No one of influence.”
“Backbencher for who?”
Andrews frowned, a serious sign for her normally unflustered exterior. “She worked on Mr. Saxon’s election campaign.”
Martha was glad she was already sitting down. Of course. Anything with Lucy would involve ‘Mr. Saxon’ as well.
“Doctor?”
Martha found she was clutching her mobile hard enough to make her hand shake. She relaxed herself enough to say, “Get our people to the site. I want everything to be picked over and analyzed by every piece of equipment we have. If anyone objects, tell them the orders are from me. This takes priority over anything else. Got it?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
***
This definitely warranted a call. She really should call him. There was no reason not to now. It wasn’t about stubbornness or pride or a fear of getting dependent on him, so why was she hesitating? A former member of Saxon’s party visited Lucy and they’re both killed. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
She’d seen a lot of things that should have left her scarred and traumatized for the rest of her life. Somehow she had managed to put most of it behind her. Even that year spent running and hiding and hoping to God that the plan worked was a distant memory. Afterwards, when she had lived at home for a while, she realized how much more it had affected her family. She would sometimes hear Tish crying in her sleep in the next room. The year had been hard on Martha, but she couldn’t imagine what her family had gone through. They hardly spoke about it, and she never asked for details.
Which was perhaps why Martha hesitated in calling him. Because he had also borne the brunt of Saxon’s madness, then watched him choose to die rather than be kept prisoner. Things like that affected the Doctor strangely. Martha didn’t want to be the one to bring it all back.
***
She called Mickey instead. Stupid gesture, hardly worth it, since he wasn’t there for anything involving the Saxons. Stuck in another universe, she’d heard the Doctor explain, but was distracted by another name mentioned at the time. Martha managed to wheedle the entire story out of Mickey with Jack’s help, and a bottle of rye.
But she called him anyway. Mickey might have fished enough out of Jack in return to understand about the Saxons.
He picked up after the third ring. “Mickey Smith, Smith and Services. If it’s looking at you with more than six eyes, you’re on your own.”
“Give it up, I know you have caller ID,” Martha laughed.
“What can I do for you, Martha?”
Her smile faded as she spoke. “Broadfell Prison blew up.”
There was a confused pause. “Isn’t that where...?”
“Lucy Saxon was kept there, yeah. She’s dead, along with almost a dozen others.”
“Break-out?”
“That’s what we thought,” she sighed, “but nothing adds up. One of Saxon’s campaign managers was there. It looked like a gathering of something.”
“I assume you’ve got a crack team of UNIT specialists crawling over everything, right?”
“How soon can you be here?”
Martha could hear him grin. “I’ll be there tomorrow. I’m in Bath dealing with an infestation of Ntyx.”
“Those the ones that look like otters? Never mind, you can tell me when you get here.”
Mickey paused again, waiting. “Have you called...him yet?”
“No,” Martha said, and tried to lighten the statement. “I called someone who actually answers their mobile.”
“Right,” Mickey said, unconvinced. “See you soon.”
“Bye,” Martha said as she hung up. Yes, they did have a crack UNIT team, but Mickey would see the obvious thing that everyone else was too busy crawling over.
***
“Dr. Martha Jones!”
Mickey didn’t so much walk into her office as bowl through both the door and Andrews. He was never one for subtlety.
“Good to see you, Mickey,” Martha said as she stood to hug him. She noticed over his shoulder that Andrews looked faintly disapproving, like an old matron. But whether it was at Mickey’s entrance or Martha’s informal greeting, she couldn’t tell.
“You guys really need to change that password,” he said, holding up a bag. “I looked into your files on the train, all that about Bentley and the CCTV.”
“Mickey!” Martha chided. “You can’t keep breaking into UNIT servers like that.”
“Get better servers then,” he replied. He pulled out a laptop and settled himself at Martha’s desk. She had to make do with leaning over his shoulder. The laptop beeped to life and Mickey pulled up several emails. He turned in his chair to shoot her a smug look.
“Alright, what am I looking at?”
“Government emails,” Mickey explained, “going back almost three years, all between Edith Bentley and several people who were also involved with the Saxon campaign. They never gained much recognition. They were the people who put up flyers everywhere, that sort of thing. Before the thing with the Valiant, the emails are completely useless. Just general marvelling at what a leader Harry Saxon is going to be.”
Martha winced slightly. Only Mickey could refer to it as ‘the thing with the Valiant.’
He didn’t notice and continued. “It’s afterwards that it gets interesting. First ‘oh, what a tragic loss, the world will never see his like again,’ and whatever. Then Bentley mentions a book. Even capitalizes it, see? Only once says the full title: ‘The Secret Books of Saxon.’”
“Jesus,” Martha breathed. “They were hero-worshipping the guy?”
“Bigger than Manson, he was to them,” Mickey said. “Bigger than Bundy. Bigger than-”
“I get it,” Martha interrupted, “he walked on water. And?”
“It goes through all the steps of a cult, you know, recruitment, rituals, warped philosophy. Then, as if it wasn’t weird enough, there’s this.” He opened a window and leaned back to let Martha read it.
It was dated two months before the explosion, and contained only four words.
We found Lucy Saxon.
“How did they find her? Her entire personal history had been wiped from public record. She didn’t even officially exist anymore.”
Mickey not so convincingly coughed ‘servers’ into his sleeve. Martha hit him.
“Ow! Well, at least they didn’t make the same mistakes you did; they kept everything off the computers. The contents of the book are never mentioned, and there’s nothing online about it. It must just be printed and passed hand to hand. We have no way of knowing what was in it.”
“So it’s a dead end,” Martha said. She walked to the front of her desk to sit in the other chair.
“For now, yeah.” Mickey shrugged. “Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
Martha sighed. “No, it’s alright. This is good, maybe we can get somewhere with this.”
They sat in silence for a while, each musing over the possibilities.
“Why him?” Mickey asked absently. “Why start a cult about him?”
“He had a strange way about him, sort of mesmerized people. Fooled the whole world. Maybe it didn’t wear off for some.”
Mickey suddenly straightened up. “I’ve got it,” he said.
Martha leaned forward. “What is it? Got what?” Anything to help with the case.
Mickey copied her, so that they were both hunched over the desk. “We need...”
“Yeah?”
“To go to the pub.”
“Mickey!”
He leaned back in the chair. “What? You need to relax, you’ll think better. And what better way to relax than with a pint and an old friend?”
“You’ve picked up too many bad habits from Jack,” she said. But she grabbed her coat anyway.
***
“Did you ever meet his friend, the little fussy one?”
“I meet all of Jack’s friends, yes. Even the dead ones. Did you really drag me out here to talk about your brief stint at Torchwood, or was there another reason?”
Mickey totted at her and waved his half-empty glass in a mocking gesture. “You work too hard, Martha. You don’t have anyone to have fun with anymore.”
“Yeah, cause I’m having a riot now.” The pub had been Mickey’s choice, The Knocker or something, and was full of rough men alternating between shouting at the football match and shouting at each other. The more fashionable one down the street would be the one Martha would prefer.
“Nah, I love places like this,” Mickey countered. “Reminds me of my travelling days. All noise and people and other lives.”
Martha watched him as he looked over the crowd. He was never one to be taken at face value. He seemed straightforward and blunt, and he was, really, but he reached different conclusions than others.
“What was he like?” she asked. “The Doctor, I mean. When you met him.”
He smiled. “He was a different man. He would have fit right in at a place like this. Would never admit it though. He liked trying to be posh, even though he dressed like a dock man.”
Martha blinked. “Dock man? Not the suit and tie, then?”
Mickey laughed. “That’s right! I knew him before he became the science geek. Yeah, he looked different. He regenerated a few years back. Something to do with Rose.”
“Huh,” was all Martha said. That man and his blondes, she thought, but with exasperated affection rather than annoyance.
“It’s weird though, to think that he used to look different. That maybe we’ve passed him on the street and don’t know it.”
“Yeah, funny that,” Mickey said and drained his pint.
“It was the same thing with Saxon. You know, before the Valiant. We knew he regenerated, but not what he looked like.”
“Makes it hard for a cult following,” he said, glancing between the bar and his glass and clearly trying to remember if it was his round.
Something about it made Martha pause. “Secret Books of Saxon,” she muttered. “Do you think...?” Right there, Mickey had done it. Managed to point out something obvious that they should have thought of long before.
“Mickey,” she said urgently, “do you remember what you asked before? About why people would make a cult of Saxon? They wouldn’t. All people would remember is him promising an alien encounter and then assassinating the President. No one would know about the Toclafane, or the rockets, or any of it.”
“Okay...”
“No one should remember that Saxon is the Master. In some weird, twisted way, the Master is a better candidate for a cult than Saxon, right? More grandiose, bigger ambitions, better resources.”
“I’m not following.”
“He planned everything. He spent 18 months setting a trap for us. He would have back-up plans for back-up plans. This Book of Saxon wasn’t just invented by brainwashed followers; maybe he left it for them. Blended Saxon and the Master together. What if he left them everything they needed to know, even about Lucy?”
Mickey nodded slowly. “What did they need to know?”
She was hardly listening to him, too focused on her own logic. “They needed to find Lucy; she would know almost everything about the Master as well. Maybe she had some information about him that they were missing.”
“Slow down. Information for what?”
“I brought the Doctor back with a story. The Master hid himself in a watch to escape the biggest war in the universe. Maybe....”
“He’s dead, Martha. You said the body was burned.”
“He’s also a Time Lord,” Martha said. “How many times did we think the Doctor was dead?”
Mickey leaned in close, whispered, like he didn’t want someone to overhear. “Are you seriously saying that these nutcases were trying to bring him back?”
“The Doctor said he had been resurrected before. This was just another back-up plan.”
They stared at each other, Mickey disbelieving, Martha determined.
“This definitely needs outside help,” Mickey said, looking at Martha’s mobile.
Martha paused. “In the morning.”
“Martha-”
“I want to go over things with UNIT.”
“Martha!” But she had already grabbed her coat.
***
Why the hell was she avoiding calling him? He wasn’t some troublesome ex. Martha stalked down the street, trying to work out her reasoning in time to her steps. Trying to find a way her theory was wrong. Because she wanted so desperately to be wrong.
There was no way the Master could come back, it was impossible. And yet, she had heard that word used too many times before.
Mickey caught up with her outside a shopping centre but didn’t say anything.
“I forgot it was Christmas until now,” Martha said finally. “I’m surprised it isn’t deserted like before.”
It was true; last minute shoppers filled the streets carrying bags and parcels. Some were getting into the festive mood with Santa hats and reindeer antlers. They passed a brightly lit church where the sounds of singing and an organ playing drifted outside.
“In the other universe, aliens always appeared on Easter,” Mickey said. “Crazy, innit?”
“It’s a stupid idea,” Martha said, not listening. “It can’t be what they were actually planning. Just an overreaction brought on by too little sleep.”
Mickey looked surprised. “You’re not sleeping either?”
“Too much work,” she said offhandedly.
They walked on in silence. As they were crossing a road, Mickey paused. He gestured down the street to a hotel. “I’m staying here if, you know, if you need to contact me for anything.”
Martha smiled. “Thanks, Mick,” she said as she hugged him goodnight.
“I mean it,” he said as he pulled back, “anything at all. Not just work.” He shuffled. “We’re kinda the only ones left.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She paused, took a breath, paused again. “Do you think,” she started.
“What?”
“Do you think he’s found someone? To travel with, I mean.”
Mickey took a moment to answer. “I think that if he needs someone, he’ll find them. Or they’ll find him.”
“Probably crash into him like we did,” Martha laughed. She became aware how awkward the situation had suddenly become. They didn’t want to part, but didn’t know what else to do with themselves. “Goodnight, Mickey,” she said and leaned up to give him a peck on the cheek. “It was fun.”
He looked surprised but only said, “Yeah, goodnight,” in return before turning and walking down the street.
Martha went home to toss fitfully in her bed, waking from nightmares she couldn’t quite remember.
The next morning Andrews caught her before she made it to her office. “Dr. Jones, someone else gained access to the Broadfell CCTV yesterday. A private citizen called Joshua Naismith.”
“The millionaire? What was he looking for?” she asked.
“It’s not only that, Doctor,” Andrews continued. “He accessed footage after the explosion. We never looked at that because, well, what was the point?”
“Great,” Martha said, “Something else we missed. Call Mickey to take a look at it; I’ll give you his number.” She had reached her door and was about to sequester herself when Andrews thrust another note at her.
“Skeletons!” she said. “Three of them, found in an industrial park.”
Martha paused. “And they need me because...?”
“They were picked clean,” Andrews said. “And fresh.”
Martha sighed. “Oh, alright. Let me get my stuff.”
She was finishing packing her bag when Mickey walked through the door. His greeting to her was interrupted by him suddenly stumbling against the door, his smile turning into a grimace.
“You alright, Mickey?” Martha asked, going over to him.
“I can’t see,” he said, gazing around.
“What you mean-” Martha was cut short as a sudden vision of a man laughing filled her head. No, not a man.
Saxon. The Master.
“Oh my God, it’s him,” she breathed, blindly holding on to Mickey. She couldn’t see anything but his face, hear anything but his laughter. Then, mercifully, she couldn’t see anything at all.
Author: alex_caligari
Beta: jellybean728
Characters/Pairings: Very, very slight Martha/Mickey, although that is not the focus.
Rating: PG? Off screen character death. Spoilers for End of Time.
Summary: In the aftermath of Broadfell Prison, UNIT calls in an expert.
Disclaimer: The puppets are still firmly attached to the strings of the BBC.
Author's Notes: Written for the DW Bingo created by the_tenzo, for which I received this card. This is another shameless example of my love of dialogue overkill.
Martha Jones did not believe in miracles. She had stood in the Earthlight, saved the world through a story, and watched a brilliant man be literally ripped apart by his love for a woman. Yet she did not believe in miracles.
She also did not believe in coincidence.
“Andrews!” she called through the rain. A small woman scurried up to her, clutching a mobile to her ear. “Any signs of life?” she asked.
“No, Dr. Jones,” Andrews replied. She clicked off the mobile. “They don’t think anything could have survived the blast.”
“Do they know what caused it?” Martha asked.
Andrews hesitated. “No. But they think it was a leak of some sort. A build-up of gas.”
Martha snorted. “They really have no idea, do they?” She glanced over the throngs of people gathered; police, firemen, paramedics, the odd bystander. “Once the area’s cleared I want our own experts to take a look.”
“Doctor?”
“This was the facility where Prisoner 536 was being held. No one except half a dozen people at UNIT knew she was here. And then it blows up. At Christmas. I don’t think anything as simple as a gas leak happened here.”
Andrews nodded and went back to her phone. She was a good woman, Martha thought. Doreen Andrews. Preferring to go by her last name and called Andi by her friends. Organized to the point of obsession and never without some tech to keep her connected. Beyond that, she kept to herself. At first, Martha didn’t think she needed an assistant, but as she took on more and more projects, her superiors appointed Andrews to make sure Martha stayed sane.
Martha quickly became grateful for the help. There were fewer and fewer people she could talk to about her work these days. Donna had been mind-wiped, Jack was gone, Torchwood itself disbanded, Tom...she didn’t want to think about Tom and the military coup. She talked to Mickey every so often but he was busy doing freelance. He kept trying to convince her to join him, said it was more fun than dusty old procedure. She always told him she’d had enough of freelance. She zipped up her coat a bit more and headed back to the UNIT tent.
Hours later, after dawn, the scene was finally clear of people. Martha was able to fully appreciate the destruction the explosion and fire had caused. Andrews led her to the epicentre of the blast. It had once been a room on the ground floor, but now was just a hole. Any remnants of the bodies had already been cleared away.
“It could have been a lot worse,” she said. “Hardly anyone was kept here. Sort of thing people wanted to forget about.”
“You can say that again,” Martha said. “You said there was something strange about the room. What is it?”
Andrews, armed with a palm pilot today, pulled up a plan of the building. “Not this room specifically, but what was missing from this one.” She zoomed in on a block of cells and pointed one out. “Prisoner 536 was supposed to be here. But there’s no body in that area.”
“Lucy,” Martha said quietly.
“What?”
“Her name was Lucy.” Martha sighed. “So, what does that mean? She wasn’t in her room; was this an escape attempt?”
“No, Doctor. There was a partial hand found. The fingerprints match Pris - Lucy. She’s definitely dead. There was evidence of at least eight other people in the room, maybe more.”
“Too many for an interrogation then.”
“Seems to be.”
Martha walked around the hole, examining it from different angles. “Why kill her?” she muttered. “She was hardly the brains behind the operation.”
“What makes you think she was murdered?” Andrews asked behind her.
“Just a hunch. Get the CCTV; find out who was here last night. Anything you find goes through me.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
***
Martha had returned to UNIT’s portable lab for the privacy of her office. She sat at her desk staring at her mobile, and had been for the last twenty minutes. Lucy Saxon was dead, for no apparent reason. Did that warrant a call to him? She had tried calling when the children were speaking in unison, but couldn’t contact anyone, let alone him. It had seemed trivial the first time she called him back to Earth, but it turned out much bigger than they thought.
No, Martha decided. They would continue their own investigation. If something they couldn’t handle popped up, then she would call him. Maybe.
***
“They just let themselves be seen like this?”
Martha was holding a printout of a still frame from the prison CCTV. It showed a grey sedan pulling up to the entrance. A woman was leaning out of the driver’s side towards the guard. She looked about forty, blonde, stern expression. She was turned towards the security camera and looking straight at it. The odd thing was that the camera was behind the vehicle, so she had to have looked at it deliberately.
“The registration even comes back authentic,” Andrews said. “It belongs to Edith Bentley. Unmarried, involved in politics. She was one of the deceased from the explosion.”
“Something’s not right,” Martha said. “She would only let herself be seen if she knew she didn’t have to worry about being caught. So, she either thought she would get away with whatever it was, or she knew she wasn’t coming back.”
“Suicide bomber?” Andrews asked.
“No, no, it’s not that.” The small office didn’t allow Martha to pace properly so she settled for tapping her pen against the desk. “This wasn’t an act of protest or terrorism. It had to do with Lucy Saxon.”
Andrews’s eyes widened at the name, but otherwise didn’t react. “So the rumours were true. About Mr. Saxon’s killer.”
“Somewhat,” Martha said. “It was complicated.” She let out a breath of frustration. “If they wanted to kill her, why move her? Why kill themselves as well? If they wanted to break her out, why the explosion?”
“A very bad break out attempt,” Andrews remarked dryly.
“There’s something we’re missing. Politics, you said?”
Andrews glanced at her palm pilot. “Yes. Mainly a backbencher. No one of influence.”
“Backbencher for who?”
Andrews frowned, a serious sign for her normally unflustered exterior. “She worked on Mr. Saxon’s election campaign.”
Martha was glad she was already sitting down. Of course. Anything with Lucy would involve ‘Mr. Saxon’ as well.
“Doctor?”
Martha found she was clutching her mobile hard enough to make her hand shake. She relaxed herself enough to say, “Get our people to the site. I want everything to be picked over and analyzed by every piece of equipment we have. If anyone objects, tell them the orders are from me. This takes priority over anything else. Got it?”
“Yes, Doctor.”
***
This definitely warranted a call. She really should call him. There was no reason not to now. It wasn’t about stubbornness or pride or a fear of getting dependent on him, so why was she hesitating? A former member of Saxon’s party visited Lucy and they’re both killed. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
She’d seen a lot of things that should have left her scarred and traumatized for the rest of her life. Somehow she had managed to put most of it behind her. Even that year spent running and hiding and hoping to God that the plan worked was a distant memory. Afterwards, when she had lived at home for a while, she realized how much more it had affected her family. She would sometimes hear Tish crying in her sleep in the next room. The year had been hard on Martha, but she couldn’t imagine what her family had gone through. They hardly spoke about it, and she never asked for details.
Which was perhaps why Martha hesitated in calling him. Because he had also borne the brunt of Saxon’s madness, then watched him choose to die rather than be kept prisoner. Things like that affected the Doctor strangely. Martha didn’t want to be the one to bring it all back.
***
She called Mickey instead. Stupid gesture, hardly worth it, since he wasn’t there for anything involving the Saxons. Stuck in another universe, she’d heard the Doctor explain, but was distracted by another name mentioned at the time. Martha managed to wheedle the entire story out of Mickey with Jack’s help, and a bottle of rye.
But she called him anyway. Mickey might have fished enough out of Jack in return to understand about the Saxons.
He picked up after the third ring. “Mickey Smith, Smith and Services. If it’s looking at you with more than six eyes, you’re on your own.”
“Give it up, I know you have caller ID,” Martha laughed.
“What can I do for you, Martha?”
Her smile faded as she spoke. “Broadfell Prison blew up.”
There was a confused pause. “Isn’t that where...?”
“Lucy Saxon was kept there, yeah. She’s dead, along with almost a dozen others.”
“Break-out?”
“That’s what we thought,” she sighed, “but nothing adds up. One of Saxon’s campaign managers was there. It looked like a gathering of something.”
“I assume you’ve got a crack team of UNIT specialists crawling over everything, right?”
“How soon can you be here?”
Martha could hear him grin. “I’ll be there tomorrow. I’m in Bath dealing with an infestation of Ntyx.”
“Those the ones that look like otters? Never mind, you can tell me when you get here.”
Mickey paused again, waiting. “Have you called...him yet?”
“No,” Martha said, and tried to lighten the statement. “I called someone who actually answers their mobile.”
“Right,” Mickey said, unconvinced. “See you soon.”
“Bye,” Martha said as she hung up. Yes, they did have a crack UNIT team, but Mickey would see the obvious thing that everyone else was too busy crawling over.
***
“Dr. Martha Jones!”
Mickey didn’t so much walk into her office as bowl through both the door and Andrews. He was never one for subtlety.
“Good to see you, Mickey,” Martha said as she stood to hug him. She noticed over his shoulder that Andrews looked faintly disapproving, like an old matron. But whether it was at Mickey’s entrance or Martha’s informal greeting, she couldn’t tell.
“You guys really need to change that password,” he said, holding up a bag. “I looked into your files on the train, all that about Bentley and the CCTV.”
“Mickey!” Martha chided. “You can’t keep breaking into UNIT servers like that.”
“Get better servers then,” he replied. He pulled out a laptop and settled himself at Martha’s desk. She had to make do with leaning over his shoulder. The laptop beeped to life and Mickey pulled up several emails. He turned in his chair to shoot her a smug look.
“Alright, what am I looking at?”
“Government emails,” Mickey explained, “going back almost three years, all between Edith Bentley and several people who were also involved with the Saxon campaign. They never gained much recognition. They were the people who put up flyers everywhere, that sort of thing. Before the thing with the Valiant, the emails are completely useless. Just general marvelling at what a leader Harry Saxon is going to be.”
Martha winced slightly. Only Mickey could refer to it as ‘the thing with the Valiant.’
He didn’t notice and continued. “It’s afterwards that it gets interesting. First ‘oh, what a tragic loss, the world will never see his like again,’ and whatever. Then Bentley mentions a book. Even capitalizes it, see? Only once says the full title: ‘The Secret Books of Saxon.’”
“Jesus,” Martha breathed. “They were hero-worshipping the guy?”
“Bigger than Manson, he was to them,” Mickey said. “Bigger than Bundy. Bigger than-”
“I get it,” Martha interrupted, “he walked on water. And?”
“It goes through all the steps of a cult, you know, recruitment, rituals, warped philosophy. Then, as if it wasn’t weird enough, there’s this.” He opened a window and leaned back to let Martha read it.
It was dated two months before the explosion, and contained only four words.
We found Lucy Saxon.
“How did they find her? Her entire personal history had been wiped from public record. She didn’t even officially exist anymore.”
Mickey not so convincingly coughed ‘servers’ into his sleeve. Martha hit him.
“Ow! Well, at least they didn’t make the same mistakes you did; they kept everything off the computers. The contents of the book are never mentioned, and there’s nothing online about it. It must just be printed and passed hand to hand. We have no way of knowing what was in it.”
“So it’s a dead end,” Martha said. She walked to the front of her desk to sit in the other chair.
“For now, yeah.” Mickey shrugged. “Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”
Martha sighed. “No, it’s alright. This is good, maybe we can get somewhere with this.”
They sat in silence for a while, each musing over the possibilities.
“Why him?” Mickey asked absently. “Why start a cult about him?”
“He had a strange way about him, sort of mesmerized people. Fooled the whole world. Maybe it didn’t wear off for some.”
Mickey suddenly straightened up. “I’ve got it,” he said.
Martha leaned forward. “What is it? Got what?” Anything to help with the case.
Mickey copied her, so that they were both hunched over the desk. “We need...”
“Yeah?”
“To go to the pub.”
“Mickey!”
He leaned back in the chair. “What? You need to relax, you’ll think better. And what better way to relax than with a pint and an old friend?”
“You’ve picked up too many bad habits from Jack,” she said. But she grabbed her coat anyway.
***
“Did you ever meet his friend, the little fussy one?”
“I meet all of Jack’s friends, yes. Even the dead ones. Did you really drag me out here to talk about your brief stint at Torchwood, or was there another reason?”
Mickey totted at her and waved his half-empty glass in a mocking gesture. “You work too hard, Martha. You don’t have anyone to have fun with anymore.”
“Yeah, cause I’m having a riot now.” The pub had been Mickey’s choice, The Knocker or something, and was full of rough men alternating between shouting at the football match and shouting at each other. The more fashionable one down the street would be the one Martha would prefer.
“Nah, I love places like this,” Mickey countered. “Reminds me of my travelling days. All noise and people and other lives.”
Martha watched him as he looked over the crowd. He was never one to be taken at face value. He seemed straightforward and blunt, and he was, really, but he reached different conclusions than others.
“What was he like?” she asked. “The Doctor, I mean. When you met him.”
He smiled. “He was a different man. He would have fit right in at a place like this. Would never admit it though. He liked trying to be posh, even though he dressed like a dock man.”
Martha blinked. “Dock man? Not the suit and tie, then?”
Mickey laughed. “That’s right! I knew him before he became the science geek. Yeah, he looked different. He regenerated a few years back. Something to do with Rose.”
“Huh,” was all Martha said. That man and his blondes, she thought, but with exasperated affection rather than annoyance.
“It’s weird though, to think that he used to look different. That maybe we’ve passed him on the street and don’t know it.”
“Yeah, funny that,” Mickey said and drained his pint.
“It was the same thing with Saxon. You know, before the Valiant. We knew he regenerated, but not what he looked like.”
“Makes it hard for a cult following,” he said, glancing between the bar and his glass and clearly trying to remember if it was his round.
Something about it made Martha pause. “Secret Books of Saxon,” she muttered. “Do you think...?” Right there, Mickey had done it. Managed to point out something obvious that they should have thought of long before.
“Mickey,” she said urgently, “do you remember what you asked before? About why people would make a cult of Saxon? They wouldn’t. All people would remember is him promising an alien encounter and then assassinating the President. No one would know about the Toclafane, or the rockets, or any of it.”
“Okay...”
“No one should remember that Saxon is the Master. In some weird, twisted way, the Master is a better candidate for a cult than Saxon, right? More grandiose, bigger ambitions, better resources.”
“I’m not following.”
“He planned everything. He spent 18 months setting a trap for us. He would have back-up plans for back-up plans. This Book of Saxon wasn’t just invented by brainwashed followers; maybe he left it for them. Blended Saxon and the Master together. What if he left them everything they needed to know, even about Lucy?”
Mickey nodded slowly. “What did they need to know?”
She was hardly listening to him, too focused on her own logic. “They needed to find Lucy; she would know almost everything about the Master as well. Maybe she had some information about him that they were missing.”
“Slow down. Information for what?”
“I brought the Doctor back with a story. The Master hid himself in a watch to escape the biggest war in the universe. Maybe....”
“He’s dead, Martha. You said the body was burned.”
“He’s also a Time Lord,” Martha said. “How many times did we think the Doctor was dead?”
Mickey leaned in close, whispered, like he didn’t want someone to overhear. “Are you seriously saying that these nutcases were trying to bring him back?”
“The Doctor said he had been resurrected before. This was just another back-up plan.”
They stared at each other, Mickey disbelieving, Martha determined.
“This definitely needs outside help,” Mickey said, looking at Martha’s mobile.
Martha paused. “In the morning.”
“Martha-”
“I want to go over things with UNIT.”
“Martha!” But she had already grabbed her coat.
***
Why the hell was she avoiding calling him? He wasn’t some troublesome ex. Martha stalked down the street, trying to work out her reasoning in time to her steps. Trying to find a way her theory was wrong. Because she wanted so desperately to be wrong.
There was no way the Master could come back, it was impossible. And yet, she had heard that word used too many times before.
Mickey caught up with her outside a shopping centre but didn’t say anything.
“I forgot it was Christmas until now,” Martha said finally. “I’m surprised it isn’t deserted like before.”
It was true; last minute shoppers filled the streets carrying bags and parcels. Some were getting into the festive mood with Santa hats and reindeer antlers. They passed a brightly lit church where the sounds of singing and an organ playing drifted outside.
“In the other universe, aliens always appeared on Easter,” Mickey said. “Crazy, innit?”
“It’s a stupid idea,” Martha said, not listening. “It can’t be what they were actually planning. Just an overreaction brought on by too little sleep.”
Mickey looked surprised. “You’re not sleeping either?”
“Too much work,” she said offhandedly.
They walked on in silence. As they were crossing a road, Mickey paused. He gestured down the street to a hotel. “I’m staying here if, you know, if you need to contact me for anything.”
Martha smiled. “Thanks, Mick,” she said as she hugged him goodnight.
“I mean it,” he said as he pulled back, “anything at all. Not just work.” He shuffled. “We’re kinda the only ones left.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She paused, took a breath, paused again. “Do you think,” she started.
“What?”
“Do you think he’s found someone? To travel with, I mean.”
Mickey took a moment to answer. “I think that if he needs someone, he’ll find them. Or they’ll find him.”
“Probably crash into him like we did,” Martha laughed. She became aware how awkward the situation had suddenly become. They didn’t want to part, but didn’t know what else to do with themselves. “Goodnight, Mickey,” she said and leaned up to give him a peck on the cheek. “It was fun.”
He looked surprised but only said, “Yeah, goodnight,” in return before turning and walking down the street.
Martha went home to toss fitfully in her bed, waking from nightmares she couldn’t quite remember.
The next morning Andrews caught her before she made it to her office. “Dr. Jones, someone else gained access to the Broadfell CCTV yesterday. A private citizen called Joshua Naismith.”
“The millionaire? What was he looking for?” she asked.
“It’s not only that, Doctor,” Andrews continued. “He accessed footage after the explosion. We never looked at that because, well, what was the point?”
“Great,” Martha said, “Something else we missed. Call Mickey to take a look at it; I’ll give you his number.” She had reached her door and was about to sequester herself when Andrews thrust another note at her.
“Skeletons!” she said. “Three of them, found in an industrial park.”
Martha paused. “And they need me because...?”
“They were picked clean,” Andrews said. “And fresh.”
Martha sighed. “Oh, alright. Let me get my stuff.”
She was finishing packing her bag when Mickey walked through the door. His greeting to her was interrupted by him suddenly stumbling against the door, his smile turning into a grimace.
“You alright, Mickey?” Martha asked, going over to him.
“I can’t see,” he said, gazing around.
“What you mean-” Martha was cut short as a sudden vision of a man laughing filled her head. No, not a man.
Saxon. The Master.
“Oh my God, it’s him,” she breathed, blindly holding on to Mickey. She couldn’t see anything but his face, hear anything but his laughter. Then, mercifully, she couldn’t see anything at all.