Silencing the Drums

IN WHICH JACK AND THE DOCTOR VISIT NEW YORK


"I can't believe you're keeping him in there. I mean, what's the security like? A cabinet? Really?"

Jack was a man not given to fits, but he was pacing the TARDIS's control room now as though he was, far too agitated to be still. He'd thrown his coat over the railings and let his suspenders hang against his legs, perhaps to combat the feeling that he'd walked into a trap. This was madness, truly, to keep the Master inside a vessel like the TARDIS, in which he could cause enormous quantities of mayhem if he wished.

"And naked? Nothing but that tracker collar and, soon, a leash. You told me not to jump to conclusions, Doctor, but I find that I can casually walk up to them, even, and they're still there. Tell me you're not keeping him for-"

The Doctor slammed a hand down on the TARDIS's console and turned an uncharacteristic glare on him. "I'm not. I told you, I found him outside the TARDIS – I don't know where he came from or how he got there. I'm not sure what else you expect me to do with him. It's not as if I can drop him off on the nearest habitable world and wish him the best."

Jack held his hands up in an apology. "Alright, okay. I get it. You've got a tiger by his tail, and you're doing the best you can with him. Still, it's just not decent." He laughed, slightly uneasy. "The least you could do is give the guy something to wear."

"We need the lead first," the Doctor shrugged. "I don't want him wandering about in here. Too many things he might break, or touch. Though the two are synonymous, I suppose. And he's hungry."

Jack raised a brow. "Hungry? That sounds a little ominous."

"Mmm. The last time he came back, he ate a couple of homeless blokes, and time knows what else. Nearly ate Donna Noble, I think, but she was too clever for him. Or I was too clever. Either way-"

"He ate people?" Jack took an involuntary step back, his face a mask of disgust. "He seems so much more charming every minute you spend talking about him."

The Doctor fixed him with a withering gaze, then turned back to the console. He knew Jack was right, and that the Master was an incredible liability – but what else was he to do with him? For the time being, the only thing he could see to do was to keep him caged. A solution was sure to present itself. It always did.

"Look, if you have any ideas, I'm all ears," he said at last, turning to face Jack again. "I certainly don't. Not yet. I'm working on it, but for the moment the best I can do is keep him locked up in my spare room behind a cabinet. He's getting bored, and that is extremely not-good. The sooner I have the lead, the sooner I can start to work with him."

Jack considered him silently, then gave a single, slow, grudging nod. "You really think you can fix him, don't you?"

"Well, I am the Doctor," he replied with a fleeting smile. "I have to try."

"New York, then," Jack said, moving to stand opposite the Doctor, brushing his hands lightly across the console. "Try for 2009 or so. Maybe later. Lower East side. You want help parking this thing?"

"I suspect I'm going to get it, whether or not I say yes." The Doctor peeked around the central pillar with a smile. "Just don't touch the parking break." He felt a little tension leave him with Jack's resistance, and was happy not to be left alone with the Master. There was still the matter of Amy and Rory Pond, but he had a time machine – he could afford to leave them be for a while. It wasn't safe yet.

With Jack's help, they managed to make a reasonable landing in a small, urban park in roughly the middle of 2009. Even better, they were right on target for time of day – it was 11:30pm on a Wednesday evening and quiet as the grave. As the TARDIS's trademark whistling, whirring landing echoed across the empty playground, not a single thing stirred, save for a homeless man who suspected he was too drunk for this nonsense. Even he looked up for only a moment, and then forgot that he'd seen a blue police box land not ten yards from his favorite bench.

It was hot and humid, sticky and unpleasant, and both men left coats and jackets inside the TARDIS. Jack breathed in deeply and huffed a satisfied sigh at the mingled smell of garbage and Chinese food, then turned an exuberant grin on the Doctor.

"I always wonder how I would've done as a New Yorker, you know? Anything goes in this town. Well, except Torchwood – but I heard rumors that they might try starting up again in a few years. Their last captain had a strong fondness for cats. He was a little eccentric."

"That sounds familiar, doesn't it?" the Doctor asked, quirking a smile. "So, tell me about this former Torchwood weapons cache. Seems a busy city like this would be a terrible place to hide anything. People always moving, always poking their noses in – noplace more than this city."

"No wonder they kept rebuilding it, eh?" Jack chuckled. "Always sort of wondered what they saw in Old York."

After taking a moment to get his bearings, Jack set out south down the small, mostly residential street with the Doctor in tow. He'd had little cause to visit New York in recent years, but during his tenure at Torchwood he'd made plenty of trips to restock his collection. The Manhattan branch of Torchwood had failed spectacularly in the 70's during a particularly violent weevil outbreak, and once UNIT had cleaned the mess up they'd disbanded the entire organization. The deep underground complex had been fumigated and locked, but that hadn't stopped Jack fro excavating one of their small, secured bunkers. The labyrinth of tunnels, pipes, basements, and transit lines kept the installation carefully hidden – it was almost impossible to get an accurate scan of the place, even for alien tech.

Jack brought them to a massive brick building on the corner of Grand Street and Pitt, not five blocks from where they'd parked the TARDIS. The Doctor had to admit, grudgingly, that it was indeed easier to land in a particular time and place with more than one pilot. At first, he'd intended to drop Jack off somewhere safe and entertaining – a planet full of sexy people, perhaps – but now he was reconsidering. Having an ex-Time Agent along was dead useful, and if it came to a fight, he didn't have to worry about Jack's health and wellbeing. If Daleks, toclefane, and the Devil Himself couldn't keep Jack down, nothing could.

Jack brought them around to a back door and gestured proudly at the blank, uninviting brick wall. "Abrons art center. Former theater, current performance space, with the catacombs mostly abandoned – though this year I think they're hosting some kind of haunted house down there." He pressed his ear to the door for a moment, then stepped back and waved at the lock. "If you wouldn't mind?"

The Doctor obliged, and had the door open in short order. The Screwdriver felt awkward in his pants pocket, and Jack made an indecent remark as he passed him by, which the Doctor obstinately ignored. The building was completely black inside, windowless and empty. Jack had thought to bring a flashlight, and once illuminated it became clear that the theater was far from abandoned. Footprints traced paths through the dust on the floor, and someone had left a rain slicker hanging from a peg by the door. They were facing a long, whitewashed hallway which turned the corner into what might've been a small green room, but was not cluttered with theatrical cast-offs.

"You always pick the strangest places, Jack," the Doctor said, peering over a pile of old stage lights. "Though I must say, this is less conspicuous than Welsh monuments and Big Ben. Good job."

"It wasn't me, it was Torchwood," Jack replied. "If it'd been my choice, we would have build this right under the Empire State building. Where better to hide something than in plain sight?"

"Ah, Time Lord technology," the Doctor smiled. "I shudder to think what you would do with a TARDIS."

They moved steadily downward from there, past the creaking backstage floorboards and catwalks of the theater to the catacombs beneath the stage, and then further still through a trapdoor hidden beneath rotting sandbags. Someone had done their homework, though – dusty and decrepit though the rout was, it was well-laid and well-hidden. This was clearly a back entrance or bolt-hole, and spent quite a long time pretending to be an old sewage line or maintenance tunnel.

Eventually they reached a series of locked steel doors, each with a different key mechanism. Jack knew the codes and combinations to each of them, and shortly they reached the final door: a tall, heavy oak affair with a simple lock made entirely of wood. This was damn clever – they'd anticipated sonic, which was no mean feat.

By the time they finally broke into the old bunker, both men were drenched through with sweat, shirts sticking to them. The Doctor was regretting his hair, now plastered over one eye. Worse yet, the bunker was completely airless, its ventilation systems long since shut down or clogged with debris. It was like living in a rat-infested oven.

"Hurry up and find it," the Doctor grumbled. "After this, I'm taking us to a planet made entirely of ice. I always enjoy the hospitality of the Neural Mastodons of the Undying Star. They made fantastic snow-cones. Of course, that's all they make, but, well. That's what you get when you live on an undying star, I suppose."

Jack rummaged through the boxes and bags strewn around the edges of the room, plucking a few small items here and there to keep for himself. He'd left his squareness gun here several years ago after the battery had died, having no way to power it. The Doctor was sure to have a power pack for it somewhere aboard the TARDIS, and it was his favorite weapon.

"Ah, gravity forceps! Always handy in a pinch," he said, stuffing the small implement into one of the smaller, empty bags. "Ground area-scope, completely useless here, but handy to have along. Ballistic auto-knitter… maybe not this time."

The Doctor paced impatiently. "The lead, Jack, before we melt into a permanent feature of this timeforsaken bunker."

"Alright, don't get your suspenders in a twist. Just revisiting some old toys, is all. Ahah, here we are-" Jack straightened up and held out a palm-sized red disk. "The Atraxian lead. Extendible version, for convenience." He flipped it over and held it out to the Doctor to inspect. "See, you program it on the back here – pull this little tab to attach it to your subject. It's got a twenty-foot retrieval range, and I'm pretty sure you can program the entire TARDIS as 'home'."

The Doctor turned the disk end over end in the light, checking it once with the Screwdriver to be certain it still worked. The Atraxians had been as practical as ever in its design, and it was ideal for his purposes. While the subject was inside whatever space had been designated as 'home', the lead functioned just as an ordinary dog leash would, though it was impossible to remove without the proper key and came fully loaded with shock settings. Once the subject moved a predetermined distance from 'home', however, he would be teleported immediately back inside the boundary, unless his keeper was holding the other end of the lead. In other words, while the Doctor would need to keep a hold on the Master while they were inside the TARDIS, he would be unable to leave without an escort.

"Jack, you're a lifesaver," the Doctor grinned. "This is perfect. Come on, let's get out of here. We'll need to pop by a butcher on the way out – do you know of any night-butchers in the area? Preferably, we'll need someone who sells entire goats."

Jack decided it would be best not to ask. He merely smiled and nodded, and explained the geography and layout of Queens.