Burning Cosmos {A Torchwood Story Three}

15. Reset

Evelina's POV

Martha starts to piece together research on one of the tables and I sit watching her, my legs swinging from the table.
"So, am I not part of the club anymore?" I ask Owen coyly, and he chuckles while looking at their work.
Martha glances between us, sly smile growing on her lips, and says, "What club?"
"Oh, nothing, just the Doctors Club," Owen replies as he walks over to me from the wall of the lab and lightly digs my waist, and I lean in for a kiss. He gratefully receives it and Martha laughs. "Oh, so you two are... are you?"

I laugh once, not sure of what to say. "We... have fun."
He looks to me then back at Martha. "Yeah, fun. Like we could have, Doctor."
She rolls her eyes. "Got another Jack, then, have I?" she asks with a grin, and tells Owen to fetch her some stuff.

Phew. Glad I dodged that bullet.

See, the thing is, we've all technically met Martha, but only Jack and Martha and I know that. I remember in the Year That Never Was just how strong and bloody brilliant Martha Jones was: braving the Toclafane, sneaking through the world, giving everyone the instruction that saved their lives. Sometimes I forget that nobody else remembers but us.

Currently, Martha is here investigating the body we found. She's found a pattern of people left for dead by toxic shock through a needle in the eyeball - nasty stuff. After a guided tour of the Hub and almost being blown up by Owen, we got a call from the hospital about another similar attack and we finally have more information. And that means it's time to experiment!

"Hang on, Evelina; move a sec," she says absent-mindedly, nudging me out the way to grab some stuff, and I bite my lip, eager to please her.
"Should I leave you two to it? I feel like I'm in the way here; or can I help?"
"Um... Could you set up the tech, actually - I've got a live feed coming through."
I nod at her request and link everything up, adding on my laptop a bank of photos of the latest attack victim as well as a suggested medical profile.

I think I'm gonna leave them to it, actually; I've got something else to do.

At my desk, I activate all my monitors and work across all of them to keep up with the running workings in my brain. If I compile all of the victims we know, then cross-reference all their recent locations via tracking, I could potentially find...

"Owen," I press my comm, "what do you know about The Pharm?"

~∆~

Aaron Copley of The Pharm is a fucking liar, and Martha's undercover camera feed is showing and recording it.

Until they turn off.

Toshiko presses keys rapidly on the blank screen, and I stand behind her panicking.
"I can't get her back," she says.
I rub my forehead. "Shit! We need to get in there."
"We can't, if we go in there we're putting her at risk!" Tosh protests.
"We can't just leave her there!" I retaliate, and Tosh stares at the screen.
"If you can't get her back in thirty minutes, we go in there."

I have to nod, but I can sense that we need to go now.
My worries are confirmed when the boys in the cells say across the comms: "Billy's dead; the larvae killed him."
It's now or never.

In the dead of night, we carry the Pharm's hired hitman into the SUV and strap his corpse into the driver's seat, and we run the speed limit to get to The Pharm. While Gwen, Tosh, and Ianto lock down the subjects area, Jack and Owen and I race to find Martha.

"Over here!" I yell at them as I locate her DNA sensor through my device, and I kick the door open and point my gun at Copley.
"Hands above your head!" Jack and I both shout, and the doctor raises his arms with a stony face.
As soon as Jack points his gun, I'm at Martha's side with Owen. She's writhing, hot to the touch; my panic rises like her body temperature. I rip the needles out of her skin as Owen tries and fails to unstrap her from the table they've tied her to, like she's not human. A cold, hard experiment. It angers me to my core.