Winnie whipped her head up to look at the Doctor who was looking at the patients - who had stopped - dead-seriously and just repeated his words, "Go to your room. I mean it. I'm very, very angry with you. I am very, very cross. Go to your room!"
The patients hung their heads, all at once, and slouched away like sad children. Winnie hung her jaw, "You told them off. Like they're children. Like they're all the- the child."
He grinned down at her, "I'm really glad that worked. Those would have been terrible last words."
Winnie released the breath she was holding and loosened the grip her hand had on his. She breathed unsteadily for a few seconds and the Doctor kept looking at her, waiting, until her breathing had normalised. Then he smiled at her, more gently than before. He squeezed her hand shortly and then led the way out of the ward.
Rose stared at them in shock, having analysed the scene. Then she smiled to herself. She pushed out a breath and went back on topic, "Why are they all wearing gas masks?"
"They're not", Jack popped up next to her as they both followed the Doctor and Winnie, "Those masks are flesh and bone."
"Wait", Winnie halted her steps causing everyone else to do the same, "You knew? And you haven't done anything?"
He opened and closed his mouth a couple times, stuck in a breath, until he said, "Well- What was I supposed to do?"
Winnie scoffed, "American."
"Hey!"
"How was your con supposed to work?", the Doctor interrupted.
"Simple enough, really", he was smiling now, proud of his work, "Find some harmless piece of space junk, let the nearest Time Agent track it back to Earth, convince him it's valuable, name a price. When he's put fifty percent up front, oops! German bomb falls on it, destroys it forever. He never gets to see what he's paid for, never knows he's been had. I buy him a drink with his own money, and we discuss dumb luck. The perfect self-cleaning con."
"Yeah. Perfect", the Doctor rolled his eyes.
Winnie snapped her index finger against Jack's forehead. He put his hand against his forehead and yelled, "Ow!"
"Your harmless piece of space junk created zombies with gas masks of flesh and bone! And it's contagious! You complete nutter", she yelled at him.
"How was I going to know?", he yelled back.
Winnie's eyes widened as she raised her brows in shock, "That is, like, not the lesson."
"The London Blitz is great for self-cleaners. Pompeii's nice if you want to make a vacation of it though, but you've got to set your alarm for volcano", he laughed a little bit, then he noticed that their faces still held the same look, "Getting a hint of disapproval."
"I wanna hit him", Winnie pursed her lips and tightened her grip on the Doctor angrily, "Can I hit him?"
The Doctor pulled her back, "Take a look around the room. This is what your harmless piece of space junk did."
"It was a burned-out medical transporter. It was empty", he said as if that excused him.
The Doctor and Winnie looked at each other with hard faces, then they walked away from him, "Rose."
"Are we getting out of here?", she followed.
"We're going upstairs", the Doctor told her.
Jack quickly caught up, "I even programmed the flight computer so it wouldn't land on anything living. I harmed no one. I don't know what's happening here, but believe me, I had nothing to do with it."
"Well, I don't believe you", Winnie shrugged.
"I'll tell you what's happening", the Doctor stopped the group to stare Jack down, "You forgot to set your alarm clock. It's volcano day."
A siren blared in the distance and Rose looked around in panic, "What's that?"
Jack still looked at the Doctor when he replied, "The all clear."
"I wish", the Doctor muttered and turned to keep walking again.
"Mister and Mrs Spock?", Jack called after them as they ran up a flight of stairs, the duo far ahead of Jack and Rose. Winnie rolled her eyes.
"Doctor? Fred?", Rose called as well.
"Have you got a blaster?", the Doctor asked.
"Sure", Jack ran up to them and he and Rose finally caught up when they all halted in front of a secure metal door.
"The night your space-junk landed, someone was hurt. This was where they were taken", the Doctor explained and gestured to the door.
"What happened?", Rose asked.
"Let's find out", the Doctor grinned, "Get it open."
"What's wrong with your sonic screwdriver?"
"Nothing", he shrugged as Jack blasted the door lock with his square gun, "Sonic blaster, 51st century. Weapon Factories of Villengard?"
"You've been to the factories?", Jack seemed impressed.
"Once", he winked at Winnie, "We went there when Rose slept off a hangover from a red alert she wanted to 'help'."
"Oi, I didn't know back then", Rose furrowed her brows and crossed her arms, "You went without me?"
"Well, they're gone now, destroyed", Jack frowned, "The main reactor went critical. Vaporised the lot."
"Like he said. Once", Winnie smirked, "Didn't you say there was a banana grove there now?"
The Doctor nodded and grinned, "I like bananas. Bananas are good."
"Nice blast pattern", Rose chimed in.
"Digital", Jack told her, showing off the gun.
"Squareness gun", she commented.
"Yeah."
"I like it."
The inside of the room was a mess. There was some old fashioned electric equipment like a tape recorder, some filing cabinets and papers all around, including some childish drawings.
"What do you think?", the Doctor asked Jack.
"Something got out of here", he analysed.
"Yeah. And?"
"Something powerful. Angry", he furrowed his brows.
"Powerful and angry", the Doctor repeated. Winnie let go of his hand and crouched in front of the wall, getting a closer look at the drawings and picking up the teddy bear.
The Doctor looked at her pitifully, seeing the sadness in her void eyes. She bit her lips and then whispered, "He was just a kid."
"A child?", Jack blurted out, "I suppose this explains 'Mummy'."
"How could a child do this?", Rose asked, crouching next to Winnie and putting a comforting hand on her back.
"Do you know where you are?"
Winnie and Rose jumped up with a gasp at hearing Doctor Constantine's voice, turning to find that the Doctor had turned on the tape machine. They breathed out and glared at him. He shrugged apologetically but focused back on the machine.
"Are you my mummy?", the child responded on tape.
"Are you aware of what's around you? Can you see?", Constantine tried.
"Are you my mummy?"
"What do you want? Do you know-"
"I want my mummy. Are you my mummy? I want my mummy! Are you my mummy? Are you my mummy? Mummy? Mummy?", as the child chanted his questions the group exchanged sad looks.
"I've heard this voice before", Rose spoke up.
"Me too", the Doctor replied, looking at Winnie.
She looked up, feeing his gaze, and analysed, "It's like he doesn't know. He doesn't know his mummy", she swallowed harshly and shrugged timidly, "Nancy would know."
Rose looked between the two as they seemed to have a telepathic conversation by how caught up they were in just staring at each other. But it genuinely wasn't just their infatuation that lied in those looks. It was the worry for Nancy and the child, the confusion over what had happened to him and, what Winnie didn't know yet, a theory that began forming in the Doctor's head.
"Doctor?", Rose finally interrupted when she got an eery feeling.
"Can you sense it?", he asked, not taking his eyes off of Winnie.
"Sense what?", she whispered, knowing exactly what he meant.
"Coming out of the walls. Can you feel it?", he tore himself away from Winnie's attention and touched the walls, ripping a picture of two stick figures - a child and a woman - off of it, "Funny little human brains. How do you get around in those things?"
Winnie's trance was broken at those words and she shook her head, telling Jack, "When he's stressed he likes to insult species."
"Winifred, I'm thinking."
Rose chuckled, "He cuts himself shaving, he does an hour on life forms he's cleverer than."
Winnie smiled gently at her sister.
"There are these children living rough round the bomb sites. They come out during air raids looking for food", the Doctor ranted, "Suppose they were there when this thing, whatever it was, landed?"
"It was a med-ship. It was harmless", Jack repeated.
"Harmless to the species it came from. Like how we need certain acids for our gut health, but it will melt a Raxacoricofallapatorian", Winnie pointed out.
The Doctor pointed at her, "Exactly. You keep saying it's harmless. But suppose one of them was affected, altered."
"Altered how?"
There was a click each time the kid said something on the tape, "I'm here."
Winnie furrowed her brows.
"It's afraid. Terribly afraid and powerful. It doesn't know it yet, but it will do. It's got the power of a god, and I just sent it to its room", the Doctor let out an insincere laugh.
Winnie slowly turned around to the tape machine to see the child standing next to it. She gripped the Doctor's arm, "This is his room."
"Doctor", Rose whispered in fear, "What's that noise?"
"End of the tape. It ran out about thirty seconds ago."
"I'm here now. Can't you see me?", the child asked.
Winnie swallowed harshly and nodded.
"I sent it to its room", the Doctor now deduced as well, "This is its room."
"Are you my mummy?", they all turned to see the child Winnie had been watching, "Mummy?"
"Doctor?", Rose asked in fear.
Jack stood in front of them all, "Okay, on my signal make for the door."
"Mummy?"
Jack pulled out his gun, that was a banana, "Now!"
He looked at it in shock, but before he could question it the Doctor had shot a square whole in the wall behind them, "Go now! Don't drop the banana!"
"Why not?", he pocketed the banana and followed Winnie and Rose out.
"Good source of potassium", the Doctor followed.
"Give me that", Jack pulled the gun out of the Doctor's hand and restored the hole before the child came, "Digital rewind. Nice switch."
"It's from the groves of Villengard", the Doctor explained, "I thought it was appropriate."
Jack replaced the banana with his gun and returned the banana to the Doctor, "There's really a banana grove in the heart of Villengard and you did that?"
"Winifred picked them over raspberries."
"Raspberries are too furry", Winnie scrunched her nose.
Jack widened his eyes at the pair but their conversation was broken when the wall started to crack.
"Doctor", Rose called out again.
"Come on", the Doctor grabbed Winnie's hand and ran one way where patients were now coming chanting for Mummy, "It's keeping us here till it can get at us."
"It's controlling them?", Jack asked in shock.
"It is them", the Doctor countered, "It's every living thing in this hospital."
"Okay. This can function as a sonic blaster, a sonic cannon, and as a triple-enfolded sonic disrupter", Jack explained, "Doc, what you got?"
"I've got a sonic- er, oh, never mind."
"What?"
"Before you start judging, your three words all sounded the same to me", Winnie raised a brow, "Your gun shoots holes and restores them, which we want none of that because there's still hope that they're human underneath it all. Right?"
Jack and the Doctor looked at her and Jack went back to questioning the Doctor, "Sonic what? Disrupter? Cannon? What?"
"It's sonic! Totally sonic! I am sonicked up", the Doctor yelled in panic.
"A sonic what?", Jack yelled back.
The child broke through the wall. Winnie took Jack's gun, "Screwdriver", then she aimed the gun at the floor, creating a hole for the group to fall through. As her companions landed harshly she quickly caught herself and aimed the gun up, repairing the hole again.
She turned back to the group who were all getting up now. The Doctor groaned, "Could've used a little warning."
"Could've used a little gratitude", Winnie retorted, rolling her eyes, "Right. Lights."
"God, you guys must be married for a long time", Jack furrowed his brows.
"They're not", Rose replied and started to help Winnie look for a light switch, "They're not the Spocks, they're just my sister and the weirdo with a time machine."
The Doctor was about to complain but didn't find the words, and his face showed that he just gave in to the statement.
"Who has a sonic screwdriver?", Jack turned back to the Doctor.
"I do."
"Who looks at a screwdriver and thinks, ooo, this could be a little more sonic?", Jack mocked him.
"What, you've never been bored?"
"I mean", Winnie spoke up, "We are in the middle of World War Two, and now there's aliens rewriting humans. And this is our life. When are you bored?"
The Doctor rolled his eyes, "Never had a long night? Never had a lot of cabinets to put up?"
Rose found a light switch and now they could see they were in another ward, where all patients now sat up, gas masks as faces, chanting, "Mummy. Mummy."
Jack bolted for the door and aimed his blaster, which didn't do anything, "Damn it! It's the special features. They really drain the battery."
"The battery?", Rose asked, eyes wide, right next to him, "That's so lame!"
The Doctor managed to open the door with his sonic, landing them in a storeroom. He closed the door and sonicked the lock once more to keep the patients out.
"I was going to send for another one", Jack glared at the Doctor, "But somebody's got to blow up the factory."
"Oh, I know", Rose brushed him off, "First day I met him, he blew my job up. That's practically how he communicates."
"Okay, that door should hold it for a bit", the Doctor concluded.
"The door? The wall didn't stop it", Jack complained.
"Well, it's got to find us first! Come on, we're not done yet. Assets, assets!"
"First, can we stop calling him 'it'?", Winnie asked, clutching the teddybear to her stomach, "Haven't we agreed that the boy is Nancy's brother? So, his name's Jamie."
"Yes, but what we're running from isn't the boy", the Doctor was about to go on a rant about what was happening but when he turned to see the young woman, tired, sad, clutching the teddybear, he couldn't do that, "Sorry. We're not looking for Jamie. We're trying to find out what turned a little boy into- er, 'it'. And then, hopefully, reverse it."
He smiled encouragingly but she didn't smile back so he sighed and leaned against a table. One could think she was the mum Jamie was looking for with how much she cared for him. And she didn't even know the boy.
"Well", Jack spoke up, breaking the uncomfortable silence, "We've got a banana, and in a pinch you could put up some shelves."
"Helpful. Thanks", Winnie gave him a sarcastic half-smile.
Jack rolled his eyes and the Doctor looked up, finding a, "Window."
"Barred", Jack said, "Sheer drop outside. Seven stories."
"And no other exits", Rose stared at the door.
"Well, the assets conversation went in a flash, didn't it?"
"So, where'd you pick this one up, then?", the Doctor made small talk.
"Doctor", Rose warned.
"She was hanging from a barrage balloon, I had an invisible spaceship", Jack shrugged and looked at Rose, "I never stood a chance."