A Question of Time

“Rachel…” the Master turned to look at his daughter. “What did the Carrionites mean?”

Everyone on the TARDIS was too tired to take Martha Jones home without taking some time out to sleep. But right after Martha Jones had left for the temporary room the TARDIS had created for her, Rachel had found herself staring at her parent’s trying to figure out what to tell them.

Rachel sighed, running her hand through her hair, looking so much like the Doctor that Jack couldn’t help but smile. “He’s like my uncle, why shouldn’t I worry about him?”

“Her heart cries and moans, for she fears in Cardiff lies a bag of blood and bones with the name of Ianto Jones.” The Doctor’s face was blank as he repeated the Carrionite's words, and Rachel found she could not contain the shiver those words sent through her.

“Dad, I don’t know yet,” she practically whispered, seeming to drift back towards the corridors. “I promise ---the moment I know, I’ll tell you.”

And like that she was gone, quickly making her way back to her room… leaving the Doctor, the Master and Jack standing in the control room in silence.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next morning, and the doors of the TARDIS opened on to Martha Jone’s flat. It was the morning after they had picked up Martha… which meant Miss Jones had been gone from the ship in less then twelve hours. The Master seemed uneasy… as the Doctor said goodbye to Martha the rest of the family were sort of poking their heads out of the TARDIS, since the flat wasn’t exactly all that large.

The Doctor was about to say his final goodbyes when Martha’s phone rang… and her mom started talking over the answering machine.

“Martha, are you there? Pick it up, will you? All right then, pretend that your out if you like. I was only calling to say that your sister’s on TV. On the news of all things, just thought you might be interested.” Martha blinked and picked up a remote, flicking on her tiny TV.

On the screen was News 24, with Martha’s sister standing next to an elderly man who was giving some sort of speech. “The details are top secret… but I can tell you that tonight, I will demonstrate a device which will…”

“She’s only a PR for some research lab… why would she be on the news?” Martha asked herself.

“…with the push of a single button,” the man continued, “I will change what it means to be human.”

Although Martha seemed to write the man’s announcement off as some sort of scientific techno-babble, those words had grabbed the attention of the Time Travelers.

“Change what it means to be human?” Jack blinked, turning towards the Master. “Did he really say that?”

“But what does that mean?” Rachel asked, biting her lip as she thought about it.

“I don’t know…” the Doctor admitted. “But I think we best find out.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was later that night, and the inhabitants of the TARDIS were walking down the street towards the Press Conference that Richard Lazarus was holding.

“But how are we going to get in?” Martha asked. She was wearing a dark red dress that went down to her knees.

The Doctor held out a piece of paper in a little leather holder. “Psychic Paper. Just think about what you want to say and poof! It says it.” He flipped the holder closed before flipping it back open. “And now we’re a group of investors and scientists!”

“That’s how you get into everything?” Martha blinked.

“We used to use Rachel’s cuteness as a distraction… but she grew out of it.” Jack laughed and ducked Rachel’s playful swat. Like the Master and the Doctor, Jack was wearing a plain enough suit…

Rachel, on the other hand, had gone for a sort of eccentric scientist look. She had black dress shoes, not high heels but something she could run in, and a pair of black jeans. She was wearing a purple shirt that had a turtle neck and had a black sweater on over it… and of course her “brainy specs”. “As I’ve said before… walk around like you own the place and people think you should be there.“

Eventually the group reached Lazarus Laboratories… in the center of a large room was some sort of device that was (roughly) the same size as the outside of the TARDIS… completely white, it had four pillars set around it and numerous cables which snaked back to a sort of control station.

“Oh, look, they’ve got nibbles!” The Doctor smiled, snatching one from a passing waitress. “I love nibbles.”

The Master laughed softly at his mate while Martha greeted his sister… who unfortunately had glanced over the list of guests. “Are they with you?” Tish asked her sister, frowning in confusion.

“Doctor John Smith is an investor in my Laboratory.” Jack stepped forward, a charming smile on his face. “I’m sure you’ve heard of it? TARDIS Enterprises?”

“I’m not sure I have…” Tish almost stammered.

“Jack Harkness, co-founder… along with my lovely daughter Rachel.” Jack leant to kiss Tish’s hand, drawing a blush from the poor woman. “And of course you’ve heard of Harold Saxon.”

Tish’s eyes shot over to the Master, who nodded in greeting. “The Minister of Defense,” Tish almost whispered.

“Not any longer… now I find myself heavily involved with TARDIS Enterprises,” the Master replied, throwing a glance at Jack and Rachel. “They are doing some quite amazing work…not unlike your Lazarus.”

“Oh, I just work for Professor Lazarus, I don’t pretend to understand any of this.” Tish admitted.

“Well, it looks like it might be a sonic micro-field manipulator…” the Doctor remarked, looking at Lazarus’ strange device.

“The Doctor may only be an investor, but he’s a true science geek,” Jack said, drawing a laugh from Tish before she walked away.

“Science geek?” The Doctor looked over at his human mate. “What does that mean?”

“That you’re obsessively enthusiastic about it.” Rachel said, before covering her mouth to hide her smile.

“Oh, nice!” The Doctor smiled, not noticing the laughter that was threatening to overtake Jack, Rachel and Martha.

At that moment, Martha Jones’ mother walked in the door, with Leo, Martha’s brother, next to her and immediately the questioning started. Martha’s mom wanted to know where she had gone last night and Martha’s mom kept looking at the Doctor out of the corner of her eye.

“Oh…” Martha turned to the Time Traveling Family. “This is a friend of mine, the Doctor. He’s invested in TARDIS Laboratories, which Jack and Rachel founded.” She gestured to each person in turn as she struggled to remember their story. “They’re here with Harold Saxon.”

“Harold Saxon?” Leo stared at Martha. “You know Harold Saxon?”

But before Martha could say anything, the lights in the room dimmed and a spotlight shown dwn on Lazarus.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am Professor Richard Lazarus… and tonight I am going to perform a miracle.” Cameras flashed as the Professor spoke. “It is, I believe, the most important advance since Rutherford split the atom… the biggest leap since Armstrong stood on the moon. Tonight you will watch and wonder… Tomorrow you will wake to a world that will be changed forever.”

“I’ve heard this speech before,” the Doctor whispered. “Far in the future… it didn’t end well there either.”

Lazarus entered the machine, which began to turn and shake around him, emitting a sort of blue glow, extremely similar to the Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver… but something went wrong and an alarm began to sound.

“It’s overloading!” the Master realized and, as if they shared the same mind, the Doctor and the Master leaped over to the controls and began to try and stop the machine.

“Someone stop him!” an elderly lady cried. “Get them away form those controls!”

Rachel rushed over to help her fathers while Jack and Martha stared at the machine in front of them. “If this goes up, it’ll take the whole building with it!” She yelled at the woman. “Is that what you want?”

The three managed to stop it and Jack rushed forward with Martha, pulling it open to reveal Richard Lazarus, reborn into a younger body. The Doctor, the Master and Rachel realized what had happened, while Jack and Martha could only guess.

“We have to talk to him.” The Master whispered. Rachel and the Doctor nodded in agreement. The group quickly made their way over to Lazarus, who was working his way through all the food he could get a hold of.

“Energy deficit,” Rachel noted. “Always happens with this kind of process.”

“You talk as if you see this every day… Miss?”

“Rachel Harkness,” Rachel replied. “You probably know Harold Saxon… he and the Doctor have invested in my father, Jack Harkness’ laboratory, TARDIS Institute.”

“We don’t see it every day,” the Master replied. “But I have some experience with this kind of transformation.”

“Forgive me, Mr Saxon… but that’s not possible.” Lazarus laughed slightly.

“Using hypersonic sound waves to create a state of resonance… it’s inspired actually,” the Master continued, enjoying the look of surprise on Lazarus’ face.

“You understand the theory, then?” Lazarus asked.

“Enough to know that you couldn’t possibly have allowed for all the variables.” The Doctor answered for his mate.

“No experiment is entirely without risk,” Lazarus said, trying to write the Doctor’s arguments off.

“That thing nearly exploded,” Jack replied, crossing his arms. “You might as well have stepped into a blender.”

“And before you object, yes we are qualified enough to say that,” the Master added, glaring at Lazarus’ female partner.

“If we hadn’t stopped it, it would have exploded.” The Doctor almost spat out the words.

“Then I thank you, but that’s a simple engineering issue.” Lazarus smiled. “What happened inside the capsule was exactly what was supposed to happen, no more, no less.”

“You have no way of knowing that until you’ve run the proper tests!” Rachel objected.

“Look at me!” Lazarus gestured to himself, a smug smile on his face. “You can see what happened! I’m all the proof you need. Humans can evolve, can change.”

“This isn’t about improving, this is about you and your customers living a little longer.” The Master remarked, glaring at Lazarus and his partner.

“I’m afraid we have to go.. But in a few years, you’ll laugh and look back at how wrong you were.” Lazarus extended his hand but the Doctor, the Master and Jack didn’t take it… however Rachel stepped forward, blinking in surprise when Lazarus kissed her hand.
She turned to her confused parents. “DNA sample.” She smiled.

“Then let’s do our own tests!” the Doctor laughed. “There must be hundreds of labs here!”

“What about me?” Martha asked and the group turned to stare at her.

“Thanks for everything Martha… but you can go back to your life now.” The Doctor smiled at the dark haired woman before he took off… his family following him.

Only Rachel, the last to turn to follow her family, saw the look in Martha Jones’ eyes. She alone saw the darkness that Martha was throwing out towards Rachel, Jack and the Master… and the look that she threw at the Doctor, the longing, the fear and anticipation. Oh what horrible teeth you have… Rachel blinked, shaking the thought out of her mind as she ran after her parents.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The entire family was crowded around a monitor, studying Lazarus’ DNA. “I’m no Doctor… but it looks normal enough to me,” Jack remarked, resting his head in his hands.

“Amazing…” Rachel whispered and Jack turned towards her.

“What?” he asked, before looking back at the screen. “Looks like regular old DNA to me…”

“Look at it!” The Master urged Jack… and in front of his eyes something happened.

“Did it just change?” Jack asked, peering at the screen. “But isn’t that impossible?”

“Impossible or not… it happened,” the Doctor remarked.

“That’s two impossible things we’ve seen so far tonight,” the Master said, leaning back slightly and smiling. “Don’t you love it when that happens?”

“So Lazarus has changed his own molecular patterns…” Rachel thought out loud, her eyes slipping closed.

“Hypersonic sound waves to destabilize the cell structure,” The Doctor started.

“Then a mutagenic program to manipulate the coding in the protein strands,” the Master added.

“So basically, he hacked into his own genes and instructed them to rejuvenate,” Rachel finished.

“Like a Time Lord’s regeneration?” Jack asked, looking between his two mates.

“Sort of, but human genes shouldn’t be able to take that without…” the Doctor trailed off, staring at the screen. “Of course! They’re still mutating.”

“He couldn’t account for all the variables,” the Master realized. “Now something in his DNA has been activated and won’t let him stabilize.”

“So he’s still changing?” Jack asked, and the two Time Lords nodded as Rachel just stared at the screen. “Into what?”

“I don’t know,” Rachel shivered slightly. “But we need to find out!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

By the time they reached the upper levels where Lazarus and his companion had gone, they were too late. The elderly woman was lying on the ground, looking like a mummy. “What happened to her?” Rachel asked, staring down at the remains.

“All the life-energy was drained out of her…” the Master whispered.

“Like squeezing the juice out of an orange,” the Doctor shivered. “And he’ll probably do this again!”

Rachel suddenly turned around, sensing something. “Hide!” she whispered, and her family did just that.

“I thought I’d take you up the roof… the view is rather extraordinary.”

It was Lazarus and he had Martha with him. “He’s taking her away from everyone…” Jack whispered.

“He’s going to eat her too,” Rachel realized.

“Then we better stop her!” the Doctor said as he jumped to his feet and took off running once again.

When they reached the roof Martha didn’t want to step away from Lazarus, thinking she’d gotten lucky. Eventually Jack had to dart forward and pull Martha away… as the Doctor and Lazarus spoke.

“One lifetime hasn’t been enough for me to get done everything I would have liked…” Lazarus remarked. “Imagine how much more I’ll get done in two, or three, or four.”

“It doesn’t work like that,” the Doctor stated, the pain clear in his eyes. “Some people live more in twenty years then others do in eighty.”

“It’s not the time that matters…” Jack added, looking over at the Doctor and the Master. “It’s the person.”

“But if it’s the right person... What a gift that would be,” Lazarus smiled, thinking himself ‘the right person’.

“Or what a curse,” the Master replied. “Look at what you’ve done to yourself!”

“Who are you to judge me?” Lazarus spat out, glaring at the Doctor, the Master and Jack.

“We’re old enough to know that a longer life isn’t always a better one,” the Master replied, his hand reaching out for the Doctor’s.

“In the end you just get tired… Tried of the struggle, tired of losing everyone that matters to you,” the Doctor whispered, clutching the Master’s hand.

“Tired of watching everything turning to dust,” the Master shivered.

“If you live long enough…the only certainty left is that you’ll end up alone,” Rachel finished for her parents, and Lazarus began to change, to mutate in a level that went way beyond just genes.

Lazarus ended up looking like some sort of scorpion… and he was chasing the Time Travelers, who had headed down to the main level with Martha… while the building went into lockdown procedure.

“Rachel, Jack!” the Doctor shouted as they ran down the stairs. “Setting 54!” He tossed his sonic to Jack and Rachel pulled out her own. “Get the doors open. Martha, get everyone out, that includes yourself.”

“What about you?” Jack yelled back as they split up.

“We’ll deal with Lazarus!” the Master replied, heading towards a lab with the Doctor close behind him.

Thanks to a little taunting from the Doctor and the Master, Lazarus was soon chasing the two Time Lords as Martha ran out with her family, the young woman was too terrified to notice that Rachel and Jack were heading back into the building.

“I must be in the best shape of my life!” Jack laughed as they ran, a smile on his face. “On an ordinary day we run ten miles!”

“Or more!” Rachel smiled as they slid behind a counter, listening to the sounds of Lazarus running through the lab. “They’re going to come this way,” Rachel realized, hopping up on a table and fiddling with one of the lights.

“What can I do?” Jack asked.

“Open up all the gas you can,” Rachel told her mother, looking up just in time to see as the Doctor and the Mastere entered the room.

“Brilliant!” the Doctor laughed and started to help Jack as they hid behind the counters from Lazarus, all the while moving back towards the doors.

“Why don’t you come out and face me?” Lazarus hissed.

“Looked in the Mirror lately?” the Doctor asked, popping up to stare at Lazarus. “Why would I want to face that, hmm?”

As if a starter’s pistol had been fired, the family took off, turning on the lights on their way out, causing the room to explode. “Did we kill him?” Jack asked.

“I think we just annoyed him!” the Doctor yelped as they found themselves going around in a circle and the Doctor having to duck into the regeneration machine in order to escape Lazarus. The Master, Jack and Rachel found themselves hiding behind the control panel to the machine… and trying to sneakily adjust the settings.

“What are you doing?” Jack whispered as Lazarus started to circle the main part of the machine, trying to figure out a way to get the Doctor out of it… he’d only see the Doctor hide, not the others.

While Jack, the Master and Rachel dashed over to the control panels. Rachel and the Master throwing switches. “What are you doing?” Jack asked.

“The Doctor's setting it to reflect instead of receive,” Rachel explained. “We multiply the effect and it should kill him dead.”

“When I tell you to, hit that button,” the Master told Jack before moving on to another section of the machine. “Ready? Now!”

There was a fantastic explosion and a sort of light show… and the Doctor stepped out, looking back at the machine. “Really shouldn’t take that long just to reverse the polarity,” he muttered.

“Must be a bit out of practice then,” the Master replied as they walked over to Lazarus, who had mutated back into a human form.

“This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper,” Rachel whispered as the Master leaned down next to Lazarus.

“It’s not over yet,” he replied, looking back at his mates and his daughter. “His DNA is still mutating, he may seem dead but he’ll come back to life.”

“Then how can we stop him?” Jack asked, taking a step back from Lazarus.

“Master…” the Doctor whispered and his mate nodded.

“I’ll need your sonic,” the Master said, holding out his hand.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked.

“Modifying my Laser Screwdriver,” the Master said, pointing the Doctor’s Sonic Screwdriver at his own Laser Screwdriver. “Increasing the settings, so instead of a stunning effect---”

“It will kill him?” Jack guessed and the Doctor nodded.

“If we didn’t kill him, he would just keep on sucking the life out of people,” Rachel noted. “He’s the sort of man who thinks that he’s better than anyone else.”

“It’s the only way to stop him from killing,” Jack realized.

The Master nodded and extended his arm, pointing the Laser Screwdriver at Lazarus, who was beginning to stir. He glanced at the Doctor and the rest of his family once last time, before he hit the button. A stream of red light shot out of the Laser Screwdriver and smashed into Lazarus. The Man turned Monster convulsed one final time and lay dead.

“It’s done,” the Master whispered as he re-set his Laser Screwdriver’s settings.

“Lazarus is dead, for good this time.” As the Doctor said this, Lazarus shifted back into his aged human form.

“Should we say goodbye to Martha?” Jack asked.

“No.” Rachel turned to her parents, a sort of hollow look in her eyes. “We need to leave…”

“Why?” the Doctor asked, placing a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “Rachel… what’s wrong?”

“It’s just a feeling I have.” Rachel leaned into her father’ s arms. “As if all the stars were going out one by one. When Martha is around ---it gets worse.”

TBC