Fic: There Was a Master in a Game (13/25)
Title: There Was a Master in a Game
Author: azriona
Characters: The Master mostly. This week’s guest stars are Jack Harkness, Lynda Moss, and K-9.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: Everything. The majority takes place after The End of Time, but there are references to events through the end of Season Five.
Betas: runriggers and earlgreytea68
Summary: Gallifrey wasn’t entirely lost when it went back into the Time Lock; it just got stuck. The Master wants out. Isn’t he lucky that the Doctor left him a way?
Chapters One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight ~ Nine ~ Ten ~ Eleven ~ Twelve
Chapter Thirteen: Diagonal Left
Lynda had forgotten what it was like to have her feet on the ground. The actual ground that was, not the imitation ground that existed above and only pretended. It felt springy under her toes, as if with every step, she could feel the dirt underneath become just that much more compacted. Lynda wondered, if Earth was so many hundreds of thousands years old, with so many humans before her having walked its surface, how the planet hadn’t compacted itself into the size of a tennis ball by now.
“Seventy-six Totter’s Lane,” said Jack, just in front of her, and he came to a halt outside the dilapidated garage doors, sagging in on each other. They might have been painted once, but now were just a dingy grey with flecks of blue. Or maybe red. It was hard to tell in the half light: one thing about Ground Level, it was dim. Lynda was thankful they’d remembered torches.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in centuries,” said Lynda. “This can’t be right.”
“It’s where K-9 sent us,” said Jack. He flashed the torch over the rest of the building, but there wasn’t any other indication of….well, anything. The building was exactly what Lynda might have expected to find on Ground Level; bits of old London popping up, built over centuries ago as the city traveled upwards, to get away from the sewage and smells and sickness that had always plagued it.
And the river. Somewhere, once, there had been a river. Lynda wondered where the river had been, exactly, and if it had come through Totter’s Lane.
“What’ s a Totter, anyway?” asked Lynda. “And why does it have a lane?”
“Funny question right now,” said Jack.
“I can’t help when I think of questions,” said Lynda, a bit annoyed. “Anyway, you’re the expert on Ancient London, Mr. I-Read-A-Lot.”
“I do read a lot,” protested Jack, and Lynda huffed in response. She forged on ahead.
“Well, let’s get on with it,” she said, determined. “Ground level’s not exactly the safest place to be these days.”
The garage doors were difficult to move. Lynda shoved against one for a minute before flashing the torch over at the hinges. It was nearly completely rusted over, and Lynda scowled. “Look at this - how could anyone make a phone call from here, there’s no way to get in or out.”
“There might be another entrance somewhere,” said Jack. “Why wouldn’t it be safe down here? There’s no one around.”
“That’s exactly why,” said Lynda grimly. “Here, help me shove this open. I don’t want to go exploring. I’m not fifteen anymore.”
It took two of them using every bit of strength they possessed. There was a dust cloud larger than an autocar before they finished, but one of the garage doors finally shoved just enough that Jack had a chance of slipping through. Lynda was still coughing when Jack knelt down to shine his torchlight through the opening.
“Well, it’s not empty,” he finally said. “There’s about half a dozen things right near the doors, but I can’t make out what anything is. Looks like whoever abandoned this place just up and left without bothering to take their things.”
“What kinds of things?” asked Lynda, her coughs subsiding.
“Furniture?” guessed Jack. “I’ll go first.”
“And leave me out here!?!”
Jack flicked the torch up to light his face. “Would you rather go into the unknown location with the unknown objects looking for the strange man who left a series of stranger messages on our voiceboxes, with only a torch to defend yourself?”
“Yes,” said Lynda.
Jack moved away from the doors, and turned his torch back to the entrance. “Your funeral.”
“Knock wood,” muttered Lynda, and Jack obediently leaned over to knock on the doors.
The first thing that Lynda noticed, after crawling into the warehouse, was the heat. She’d expected anything on the ground level to be cold, but instead, the little warehouse was like a sauna; damp and musty, with air that felt like dirt sliding on her skin. Before she’d even gotten to her feet, Lynda wanted to take a shower, and she rubbed her hands on her jeans. It didn’t help.
Jack was right behind her, and less concerned about the cleanliness of their surroundings. He stood up with a stretch, and ran the torch over the warehouse.
“Interesting,” he said, as the light fell on various cloth-covered objects.
“What’s so interesting about it?” said Lynda, a bit grumpy.
“Storage facility,” said Jack. “Except you’d expect one to be cold, not warm. The cooling units must be busted.”
“Makes sense for this to be a storage facility, I suppose,” said Lynda. “Out of the way, fairly secure in that no one’s coming down here anytime soon. Rent’s probably ridiculously cheap.” She poked at one of the cloth-covered objects. “Jack, there’s too much dust here for this place to have been inhabited. We’re probably the first people here in years.”
“That’s not what’s interesting,” said Jack. He started walking deeper into the building. “Why would anyone call us from here? It’s not exactly like you could just pop down here for a quick phone call. Unless whoever called us knew we’d follow him, and there’s something here we need to find.”
Lynda reached over and pulled a white sheet from a nearby object, revealing a moth-eaten dress form. “I don’t think this is it.”
“I suspect we’ll know it when we see it,” said Jack thoughtfully.
For the next hour, they wandered through the small warehouse, poking noses under dust cloths and trying not to breathe in the musty fumes, which smelled of mold and decay and some other scents Lynda didn’t want to name. “World wasn’t always so clean as up on top,” said Jack mysteriously, as if he’d actually know, and anyway, everyone really did know that the reason London went up was because the lowest levels had become so infused with disease and pollution that the only place to go was up.
“Half the fun of coming down here when we were stupid was the idea that we’d come back home with a communicable disease,” said Lynda as she found a wardrobe with a broken door, a mirror with a broken stand, and a sofa with a broken spine.
“You wanted a communicable disease?” Jack sounded amused.
“You got a week off from school and you were interviewed on the telly, and rumor had it that you would be given straight ones for that year’s classes,” explained Lynda. “You know, because of all the trauma associated with your recovery. First person to have a communicable disease in three hundred years? We thought it’d be a lark.”
“Young and stupid,” echoed Jack, and Lynda found a pile of broken suitcases.
“Maybe we’re meant to go on a trip and break something,” she said.
“That’d be nice, I haven’t gone anywhere in years,” said Jack.
Lynda flashed her torch across the warehouse, but didn’t see him. “Oh? Not even back to the States to see your folks?”
There wasn’t an answer.
“Jack?”
The warehouse was silent, save for the creaks and groans of an old building in the dark. Lynda could hear the blood rushing in her ears - or maybe that was the sound of Jack breathing, trying to scare her. It wouldn’t be hard; her nerves were already on edge. Lynda might have gone to the ground level when she was a stupid kid - but that was years ago. She wasn’t stupid anymore, she knew perfectly well what kind of idiocy it took to go down to the ground levels alone.
Not that she’d been alone. Until now.
“Jack, this isn’t funny! Where are you? Jack?”
Lynda flashed the torchlight across her path, and when she swept it towards the right, thought she saw something still faintly shining on her left. A closer inspection revealed a space between two of the covered boxes, and Lynda slipped through.
The warehouse here was slightly more open than the rest of the building, but not by much, perhaps ten feet square. Jack stood facing her, but staring at the ground in the center of the open area with a frown on his face. It wasn’t the frown that gave Lynda pause, however - it was the darkness in his eyes, the way he held his jaw, and the fists clenched at his sides, as if they alone were keeping him from spilling out onto the ground where he stared.
“Jack?” asked Lynda cautiously.
“The Doctor,” said Jack. His tone was even and angry; he bit the words out as much as he spoke them. Lynda’s skin rose in goosepimples, despite the heat.
“The Doctor?” she repeated, and Jack glanced up.
“A friend of mine, once,” he said. “I haven’t seen him in three years.”
“I don’t understand-“ began Lynda.
“Look,” said Jack, and he shone his torch on the ground, where there was a square on the floor, clearly visible since it was the only space that was not covered in dust or grime. “That’s the footprint of his ship, the TARDIS. He was here, and not too long ago, either, if the lack of dust in that square is any indication.”
“But - how’d he get in? We didn’t see footprints - and anyway, what ship could fit down here?” asked Lynda.
Jack looked up from the square. Something in his face was…different. “The TARDIS is a ship that travels through time and space,” said Jack simply. “The Doctor’s an alien. And I think this is what we were meant to find.”
*
The journey home went by in a blur. Later, Lynda couldn’t even remember if there were other people around them the entire time, although she was sure the closer they were to the upper levels, the more crowded the lifts and escalators and airbuses became. The only thing that Lynda really remembered were the words swimming in her head.
The Doctor is an alien. I read a lot. A ship that travels through time and space.
“I traveled with him for a few months,” Jack explained, but to Lynda, it was like she was hearing him speak on the other end of the ocean. She could hear the whirr of the engines, the rush of the wind, and somewhere in the distance, bells and whistles and other conversations, and under all of them, the sound of Jack trying to explain his lies.
“Went everywhere, we three did. Best time of my life. And then we ended up on the Game Station.”
Lynda woke up, briefly. “Game Station? You were there?”
Jack nodded. “In the thick of it, when the whole damn thing blew up in our faces. I was trying to hold the Daleks off, give the Doctor more time. He’d already sent Rose back home - time enough to do that, at least. She was safe.”
Something about it - but Lynda had read the reports of the Game Station’s destruction. She’d been obsessed with it for a while. She’d boarded the shuttle for Earth only twenty minutes before it had all shut down. For a week solid, her friends and family would stare at her with wide eyes, unwilling to say the obvious: If you’d stopped off at the loo, you’d never have been on that transport. You’d have been dead with the rest of them.
Still. Something rankled. Lynda blinked.
“Rose?” asked Lynda, not really caring about the answer, but having to ask anyway.
“I guess it worked,” said Jack, not hearing Lynda. His eyes were far away, probably back on the Game Station, she thought. “One minute I’m facing down the Daleks - but the next, there wasn’t anything around me but piles of ashes, and then I heard the TARDIS leave. Just…leave. He didn’t come back.”
Lynda swallowed. “He - this Doctor. He left you there? Alone?”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “Hell of a mess to explain when the rescue squads made it twelve hours later. I was starving and nearly dead of the cold - the heating went down when the systems failed.”
Lynda bit her lips. “I thought I was the last one out.”
Jack glanced at her. “You were, in a way. Last winner to leave before the whole damn thing fell apart.”
It came to her in a flash. “Is that why you found me?” asked Lynda. “Some sort of - solidarity?”
Jack shrugged.
“I thought…I thought you wanted me because of me, not because of what I represented,” said Lynda, unable to hide the hurt.
“Lynda-“
“Okay, fine, maybe it was the representation. But not for being the last of anything. You said you wanted me for being sweet and trustworthy, not sole survivor of a massacre.”
“That’s not-“
“You lied to me, Jack.”
“I didn’t lie,” said Jack quickly. “I needed your naivety and sweetness as much as your name.”
“Oh, my name!” cried Lynda. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the other passengers on the airbus begin to squirm - but she was past them now. “You let me go on thinking that you wanted me to represent how trustworthy and good-hearted we were. All the time - you had this great big secret about being the actual last-man-standing up there on the Game Station. How trustworthy is that? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t important!”
“It sure seems important now that the man who left you there is trying to send you a message.”
“He’s got nothing to do with why I wanted your help with the agency,” said Jack. “Let’s leave him out of it.”
But Lynda shook her head. “It’s got everything to do with him. He left you behind, and now he’s dragging us into some dangerous game on the ground levels. And I find out you’ve been lying to me-“ Lynda sucked in her breath. “What else have you lied about, Jack? You….are you even from Earth?”
Jack didn’t answer.
“Answer me!”
“No,” said Jack, and he fell back onto the seat and covered his face. “I’m from the Boeshane Peninsula. It’s about a parsec away. You should have colonized it several thousand years ago, but the Daleks got in the way. At the rate your scientists are going, you won’t discover it for a few more centuries.”
Lynda sat down heavily across from Jack. “C-c-centuries?” she stammered, her mouth suddenly dry.
Jack let his hands drop. “I can’t go home, Lynda. Unless the Doctor shows up one day - I can’t go home. It’ll be decades before the technology even exists on this planet. I don’t want to wait that long.”
Lynda closed her eyes. Her fingernails dug into her palm. “You….you don’t want to wait that long.”
Jack didn’t say anything.
“You…you could. That’s what you’re saying. You’re telling me…you….could.”
It was all making sense now. Jack’s injuries being healed so quickly. The things he knew that the rest of them didn’t. How he’d simply appeared out of nowhere one day, had to be shown how to operate the coffee machine, wasn’t sure how the monetary system worked, and the slightly off accent - not quite American, not exactly Canadian.
Still. She opened her eyes.
“You’re immortal. That’s what you’re telling me,” said Lynda flatly.
“I don’t know how it happened,” said Jack. He reached across the airbus to take her hand, but Lynda pulled her fingers away. “I just...woke up. Things kill me, but I don’t stay dead.”
Lynda’s laugh was hollow. “You’re telling me you’ve committed suicide successfully?”
“Multiple times, with one small hitch,” said Jack.
The airbus glided to the next platform, and Lynda jumped up. “I’m walking the rest of the way.”
Jack jumped up after her. “Lynda, we’re still ten miles-“
“Don’t, Jack,” said Lynda, blinking quickly. “Just…I’ll find you. But I have to walk now. Please.”
“Lynda, I haven’t explained properly-“
Lynda spun on the platform. Jack could barely see her - the entire airbus seemed to agree that this was the stop in which disembarkation was absolutely essential. Through the crowds of people, he could only see the fury on her face, and it was enough to make him back up into the airbus again.
“You’re still lying to me, Jack! Immortal? Sweet and trustworthy doesn’t always mean gullible and naïve!”
“I’m not lying!” protested Jack.
Lynda choked back a laugh or a sob - it wasn’t exactly clear which to either of them. “An immortal man? Who on Earth would believe that story?”
The doors to the airbus slid closed between them, and Jack watched as Lynda sped off the platform, somewhere to the city above. He closed his eyes, and let his head fall against the door.
The airbus began to move again.
“I would,” said a voice at the end of the car, and Jack looked over his shoulder to the slightly grubby man with the extremely wide grin. He wore a dark sweatshirt and jeans, and Jack might have dismissed him as simply another vagrant, if it weren’t for the small, familiar tin dog which rolled out from behind him, its antenna ears drooping.
“K-9?” asked Jack. “What are you doing here?”
“I am sorry, Master,” said K-9, lowering its head. “I was not given a choice.”
“What do you mean? Who is this man with you?” Jack took a step toward the pair. “How did you-“
The man’s smile widened. “I would most certainly believe in an immortal man. If that man was Jack Harkness, that is.”
Jack froze. “How do you know-“
“Oh, Jack,” said the man softly, “I know so much about you. But there’s a little more I’d like to find out….”
The man lifted a thin golden rod - Just like the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, thought Jack - and then there was a sharp whirring sound, and a dull pain in his head, and Jack...remembered everything and nothing at all.
Chapter Fourteen
Author: azriona
Characters: The Master mostly. This week’s guest stars are Jack Harkness, Lynda Moss, and K-9.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Spoilers: Everything. The majority takes place after The End of Time, but there are references to events through the end of Season Five.
Betas: runriggers and earlgreytea68
Summary: Gallifrey wasn’t entirely lost when it went back into the Time Lock; it just got stuck. The Master wants out. Isn’t he lucky that the Doctor left him a way?
Chapters One ~ Two ~ Three ~ Four ~ Five ~ Six ~ Seven ~ Eight ~ Nine ~ Ten ~ Eleven ~ Twelve
Chapter Thirteen: Diagonal Left
Lynda had forgotten what it was like to have her feet on the ground. The actual ground that was, not the imitation ground that existed above and only pretended. It felt springy under her toes, as if with every step, she could feel the dirt underneath become just that much more compacted. Lynda wondered, if Earth was so many hundreds of thousands years old, with so many humans before her having walked its surface, how the planet hadn’t compacted itself into the size of a tennis ball by now.
“Seventy-six Totter’s Lane,” said Jack, just in front of her, and he came to a halt outside the dilapidated garage doors, sagging in on each other. They might have been painted once, but now were just a dingy grey with flecks of blue. Or maybe red. It was hard to tell in the half light: one thing about Ground Level, it was dim. Lynda was thankful they’d remembered torches.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in centuries,” said Lynda. “This can’t be right.”
“It’s where K-9 sent us,” said Jack. He flashed the torch over the rest of the building, but there wasn’t any other indication of….well, anything. The building was exactly what Lynda might have expected to find on Ground Level; bits of old London popping up, built over centuries ago as the city traveled upwards, to get away from the sewage and smells and sickness that had always plagued it.
And the river. Somewhere, once, there had been a river. Lynda wondered where the river had been, exactly, and if it had come through Totter’s Lane.
“What’ s a Totter, anyway?” asked Lynda. “And why does it have a lane?”
“Funny question right now,” said Jack.
“I can’t help when I think of questions,” said Lynda, a bit annoyed. “Anyway, you’re the expert on Ancient London, Mr. I-Read-A-Lot.”
“I do read a lot,” protested Jack, and Lynda huffed in response. She forged on ahead.
“Well, let’s get on with it,” she said, determined. “Ground level’s not exactly the safest place to be these days.”
The garage doors were difficult to move. Lynda shoved against one for a minute before flashing the torch over at the hinges. It was nearly completely rusted over, and Lynda scowled. “Look at this - how could anyone make a phone call from here, there’s no way to get in or out.”
“There might be another entrance somewhere,” said Jack. “Why wouldn’t it be safe down here? There’s no one around.”
“That’s exactly why,” said Lynda grimly. “Here, help me shove this open. I don’t want to go exploring. I’m not fifteen anymore.”
It took two of them using every bit of strength they possessed. There was a dust cloud larger than an autocar before they finished, but one of the garage doors finally shoved just enough that Jack had a chance of slipping through. Lynda was still coughing when Jack knelt down to shine his torchlight through the opening.
“Well, it’s not empty,” he finally said. “There’s about half a dozen things right near the doors, but I can’t make out what anything is. Looks like whoever abandoned this place just up and left without bothering to take their things.”
“What kinds of things?” asked Lynda, her coughs subsiding.
“Furniture?” guessed Jack. “I’ll go first.”
“And leave me out here!?!”
Jack flicked the torch up to light his face. “Would you rather go into the unknown location with the unknown objects looking for the strange man who left a series of stranger messages on our voiceboxes, with only a torch to defend yourself?”
“Yes,” said Lynda.
Jack moved away from the doors, and turned his torch back to the entrance. “Your funeral.”
“Knock wood,” muttered Lynda, and Jack obediently leaned over to knock on the doors.
The first thing that Lynda noticed, after crawling into the warehouse, was the heat. She’d expected anything on the ground level to be cold, but instead, the little warehouse was like a sauna; damp and musty, with air that felt like dirt sliding on her skin. Before she’d even gotten to her feet, Lynda wanted to take a shower, and she rubbed her hands on her jeans. It didn’t help.
Jack was right behind her, and less concerned about the cleanliness of their surroundings. He stood up with a stretch, and ran the torch over the warehouse.
“Interesting,” he said, as the light fell on various cloth-covered objects.
“What’s so interesting about it?” said Lynda, a bit grumpy.
“Storage facility,” said Jack. “Except you’d expect one to be cold, not warm. The cooling units must be busted.”
“Makes sense for this to be a storage facility, I suppose,” said Lynda. “Out of the way, fairly secure in that no one’s coming down here anytime soon. Rent’s probably ridiculously cheap.” She poked at one of the cloth-covered objects. “Jack, there’s too much dust here for this place to have been inhabited. We’re probably the first people here in years.”
“That’s not what’s interesting,” said Jack. He started walking deeper into the building. “Why would anyone call us from here? It’s not exactly like you could just pop down here for a quick phone call. Unless whoever called us knew we’d follow him, and there’s something here we need to find.”
Lynda reached over and pulled a white sheet from a nearby object, revealing a moth-eaten dress form. “I don’t think this is it.”
“I suspect we’ll know it when we see it,” said Jack thoughtfully.
For the next hour, they wandered through the small warehouse, poking noses under dust cloths and trying not to breathe in the musty fumes, which smelled of mold and decay and some other scents Lynda didn’t want to name. “World wasn’t always so clean as up on top,” said Jack mysteriously, as if he’d actually know, and anyway, everyone really did know that the reason London went up was because the lowest levels had become so infused with disease and pollution that the only place to go was up.
“Half the fun of coming down here when we were stupid was the idea that we’d come back home with a communicable disease,” said Lynda as she found a wardrobe with a broken door, a mirror with a broken stand, and a sofa with a broken spine.
“You wanted a communicable disease?” Jack sounded amused.
“You got a week off from school and you were interviewed on the telly, and rumor had it that you would be given straight ones for that year’s classes,” explained Lynda. “You know, because of all the trauma associated with your recovery. First person to have a communicable disease in three hundred years? We thought it’d be a lark.”
“Young and stupid,” echoed Jack, and Lynda found a pile of broken suitcases.
“Maybe we’re meant to go on a trip and break something,” she said.
“That’d be nice, I haven’t gone anywhere in years,” said Jack.
Lynda flashed her torch across the warehouse, but didn’t see him. “Oh? Not even back to the States to see your folks?”
There wasn’t an answer.
“Jack?”
The warehouse was silent, save for the creaks and groans of an old building in the dark. Lynda could hear the blood rushing in her ears - or maybe that was the sound of Jack breathing, trying to scare her. It wouldn’t be hard; her nerves were already on edge. Lynda might have gone to the ground level when she was a stupid kid - but that was years ago. She wasn’t stupid anymore, she knew perfectly well what kind of idiocy it took to go down to the ground levels alone.
Not that she’d been alone. Until now.
“Jack, this isn’t funny! Where are you? Jack?”
Lynda flashed the torchlight across her path, and when she swept it towards the right, thought she saw something still faintly shining on her left. A closer inspection revealed a space between two of the covered boxes, and Lynda slipped through.
The warehouse here was slightly more open than the rest of the building, but not by much, perhaps ten feet square. Jack stood facing her, but staring at the ground in the center of the open area with a frown on his face. It wasn’t the frown that gave Lynda pause, however - it was the darkness in his eyes, the way he held his jaw, and the fists clenched at his sides, as if they alone were keeping him from spilling out onto the ground where he stared.
“Jack?” asked Lynda cautiously.
“The Doctor,” said Jack. His tone was even and angry; he bit the words out as much as he spoke them. Lynda’s skin rose in goosepimples, despite the heat.
“The Doctor?” she repeated, and Jack glanced up.
“A friend of mine, once,” he said. “I haven’t seen him in three years.”
“I don’t understand-“ began Lynda.
“Look,” said Jack, and he shone his torch on the ground, where there was a square on the floor, clearly visible since it was the only space that was not covered in dust or grime. “That’s the footprint of his ship, the TARDIS. He was here, and not too long ago, either, if the lack of dust in that square is any indication.”
“But - how’d he get in? We didn’t see footprints - and anyway, what ship could fit down here?” asked Lynda.
Jack looked up from the square. Something in his face was…different. “The TARDIS is a ship that travels through time and space,” said Jack simply. “The Doctor’s an alien. And I think this is what we were meant to find.”
*
The journey home went by in a blur. Later, Lynda couldn’t even remember if there were other people around them the entire time, although she was sure the closer they were to the upper levels, the more crowded the lifts and escalators and airbuses became. The only thing that Lynda really remembered were the words swimming in her head.
The Doctor is an alien. I read a lot. A ship that travels through time and space.
“I traveled with him for a few months,” Jack explained, but to Lynda, it was like she was hearing him speak on the other end of the ocean. She could hear the whirr of the engines, the rush of the wind, and somewhere in the distance, bells and whistles and other conversations, and under all of them, the sound of Jack trying to explain his lies.
“Went everywhere, we three did. Best time of my life. And then we ended up on the Game Station.”
Lynda woke up, briefly. “Game Station? You were there?”
Jack nodded. “In the thick of it, when the whole damn thing blew up in our faces. I was trying to hold the Daleks off, give the Doctor more time. He’d already sent Rose back home - time enough to do that, at least. She was safe.”
Something about it - but Lynda had read the reports of the Game Station’s destruction. She’d been obsessed with it for a while. She’d boarded the shuttle for Earth only twenty minutes before it had all shut down. For a week solid, her friends and family would stare at her with wide eyes, unwilling to say the obvious: If you’d stopped off at the loo, you’d never have been on that transport. You’d have been dead with the rest of them.
Still. Something rankled. Lynda blinked.
“Rose?” asked Lynda, not really caring about the answer, but having to ask anyway.
“I guess it worked,” said Jack, not hearing Lynda. His eyes were far away, probably back on the Game Station, she thought. “One minute I’m facing down the Daleks - but the next, there wasn’t anything around me but piles of ashes, and then I heard the TARDIS leave. Just…leave. He didn’t come back.”
Lynda swallowed. “He - this Doctor. He left you there? Alone?”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “Hell of a mess to explain when the rescue squads made it twelve hours later. I was starving and nearly dead of the cold - the heating went down when the systems failed.”
Lynda bit her lips. “I thought I was the last one out.”
Jack glanced at her. “You were, in a way. Last winner to leave before the whole damn thing fell apart.”
It came to her in a flash. “Is that why you found me?” asked Lynda. “Some sort of - solidarity?”
Jack shrugged.
“I thought…I thought you wanted me because of me, not because of what I represented,” said Lynda, unable to hide the hurt.
“Lynda-“
“Okay, fine, maybe it was the representation. But not for being the last of anything. You said you wanted me for being sweet and trustworthy, not sole survivor of a massacre.”
“That’s not-“
“You lied to me, Jack.”
“I didn’t lie,” said Jack quickly. “I needed your naivety and sweetness as much as your name.”
“Oh, my name!” cried Lynda. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the other passengers on the airbus begin to squirm - but she was past them now. “You let me go on thinking that you wanted me to represent how trustworthy and good-hearted we were. All the time - you had this great big secret about being the actual last-man-standing up there on the Game Station. How trustworthy is that? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It wasn’t important!”
“It sure seems important now that the man who left you there is trying to send you a message.”
“He’s got nothing to do with why I wanted your help with the agency,” said Jack. “Let’s leave him out of it.”
But Lynda shook her head. “It’s got everything to do with him. He left you behind, and now he’s dragging us into some dangerous game on the ground levels. And I find out you’ve been lying to me-“ Lynda sucked in her breath. “What else have you lied about, Jack? You….are you even from Earth?”
Jack didn’t answer.
“Answer me!”
“No,” said Jack, and he fell back onto the seat and covered his face. “I’m from the Boeshane Peninsula. It’s about a parsec away. You should have colonized it several thousand years ago, but the Daleks got in the way. At the rate your scientists are going, you won’t discover it for a few more centuries.”
Lynda sat down heavily across from Jack. “C-c-centuries?” she stammered, her mouth suddenly dry.
Jack let his hands drop. “I can’t go home, Lynda. Unless the Doctor shows up one day - I can’t go home. It’ll be decades before the technology even exists on this planet. I don’t want to wait that long.”
Lynda closed her eyes. Her fingernails dug into her palm. “You….you don’t want to wait that long.”
Jack didn’t say anything.
“You…you could. That’s what you’re saying. You’re telling me…you….could.”
It was all making sense now. Jack’s injuries being healed so quickly. The things he knew that the rest of them didn’t. How he’d simply appeared out of nowhere one day, had to be shown how to operate the coffee machine, wasn’t sure how the monetary system worked, and the slightly off accent - not quite American, not exactly Canadian.
Still. She opened her eyes.
“You’re immortal. That’s what you’re telling me,” said Lynda flatly.
“I don’t know how it happened,” said Jack. He reached across the airbus to take her hand, but Lynda pulled her fingers away. “I just...woke up. Things kill me, but I don’t stay dead.”
Lynda’s laugh was hollow. “You’re telling me you’ve committed suicide successfully?”
“Multiple times, with one small hitch,” said Jack.
The airbus glided to the next platform, and Lynda jumped up. “I’m walking the rest of the way.”
Jack jumped up after her. “Lynda, we’re still ten miles-“
“Don’t, Jack,” said Lynda, blinking quickly. “Just…I’ll find you. But I have to walk now. Please.”
“Lynda, I haven’t explained properly-“
Lynda spun on the platform. Jack could barely see her - the entire airbus seemed to agree that this was the stop in which disembarkation was absolutely essential. Through the crowds of people, he could only see the fury on her face, and it was enough to make him back up into the airbus again.
“You’re still lying to me, Jack! Immortal? Sweet and trustworthy doesn’t always mean gullible and naïve!”
“I’m not lying!” protested Jack.
Lynda choked back a laugh or a sob - it wasn’t exactly clear which to either of them. “An immortal man? Who on Earth would believe that story?”
The doors to the airbus slid closed between them, and Jack watched as Lynda sped off the platform, somewhere to the city above. He closed his eyes, and let his head fall against the door.
The airbus began to move again.
“I would,” said a voice at the end of the car, and Jack looked over his shoulder to the slightly grubby man with the extremely wide grin. He wore a dark sweatshirt and jeans, and Jack might have dismissed him as simply another vagrant, if it weren’t for the small, familiar tin dog which rolled out from behind him, its antenna ears drooping.
“K-9?” asked Jack. “What are you doing here?”
“I am sorry, Master,” said K-9, lowering its head. “I was not given a choice.”
“What do you mean? Who is this man with you?” Jack took a step toward the pair. “How did you-“
The man’s smile widened. “I would most certainly believe in an immortal man. If that man was Jack Harkness, that is.”
Jack froze. “How do you know-“
“Oh, Jack,” said the man softly, “I know so much about you. But there’s a little more I’d like to find out….”
The man lifted a thin golden rod - Just like the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver, thought Jack - and then there was a sharp whirring sound, and a dull pain in his head, and Jack...remembered everything and nothing at all.
Chapter Fourteen