Martha leapt up from behind a computer's keyboard in the workstation area. That sound! The TARDIS was materializing inside the Hub, not so far from the Rift Manipulator hidden underneath its water sculpture. Without much thinking Martha pushed back from the desktop and dashed out to meet the blue police box, switching from nothingness to existence in a rather confined space, only slightly less cluttered than the rest of the dilapidated hall.
Familiar squeak of the door, and an equally familiar head appeared in the gap. The Doctor's face, illuminated by amber and green light spilling out from the TARDIS, seemed immaterial, translucent like a countenance of a ghost. His wide-opened eyes quickly scanned the Hub.
"Doctor?"
"No! No – no – no – no – no – no – no!"
He slammed the door shut. Martha halted, instantly full of premonitions. Traditionally, such behaviour boded no good.
"Doctor?!"
The TARDIS began to hum and flicker, gradually disappearing from the Hub's time and space.
"Doctor?!"
The box dissolved in the air. Martha stood still for a while gasping quickly, expression of shock and worry on her face. For a brief moment she seemed to be on the verge of tears, but she only clenched her teeth and turned to Ianto. With the same alarmed expression, he was shifting his gaze from the space where the TARDIS had dematerialised a second ago, to the row of computer screens, and back again.
"O...kay..." said Gwen, leaning over the railing of the upper floor. "That was a brief visit, wasn't it?"
"Record-breaking," Jack confirmed, stepping out of his office and halting next to her. He adjusted his braces and slid both hands into his pockets. "Twenty seconds, more or less?"
"He promised he'd pop in." Mickey Smith crouched over the debris of mugs lying about in puddles of tea and coffee. He had dropped the tray when the TARDIS had appeared in the Hub.
"It... was quite weird behaviour," Gwen noticed. "Right?"
"Record-breaking." Jack rocked on balls of his feet.
"Eerm... well, no, don't exaggerate," said Mickey, picking up hot tea-bags from the puddle and arranging them on the tray. "You should have seen him straight after the regeneration. Now that was weird."
Ianto twitched suddenly, understanding dawning in his eyes. Pointing towards one of the screens, he turned to Jack, and said quickly:
"The Freezer!"
"Donna!" Martha picked up, running already. "Jack! It's Donna!"
Behind her back she could hear Gwen's voice and a clatter of Harkness, Mickey and Ianto's shoes. She did not stop, though, until she saw the TARDIS, materialised at a thirty degree angle, several inches above the floor, partially inside the Freezer's wall.
"Oh, my God!"
The Doctor was just rushing out of the box. In his arms he was carrying a monstrous tangle of wires, cables and small, flickering devices – organic-looking entrails of the TARDIS. He did not stop to say hello to Martha (just as he had not stopped to say goodbye earlier). It seemed that he did not even notice her. Something slid out of his arms as he ran, and went clattering across the stone floor. Martha pressed both hands to her lips, trying to suppress a scream. She knew this device. This horrible thing.
A Chameleon Arch. A metal circlet, able to transform the biological signature of a body. An ultimate camouflage device.
"Doctor!" Jack narrowly missed Martha in the doorway; he grabbed her by her shoulders and unceremoniously moved her aside. For a second there, Martha's feet lost contact with the floor. Ianto followed Jack closely, mixed emotions written clearly on his expressive face – in the Doctor's company there was always a shadow of anxiety, maybe even jealousy, present in his eyes. Mickey Smith wrapped his arm around Martha and helped her regain her footing.
"What's going on?" Gwen was the last one to barge into the room; dark hair flying, huge eyes even wider with curiosity. There was a little smile on her lips. For a brief moment Martha's thoughts drifted away from the Chameleon Arch and incomprehensible horror unfolding in front of her. "Rhys, even Jack, they have a rival."
"What is that?" Gwen asked.
"The Chameleon Arch," Martha whispered.
The Doctor shot her a glance form above the mess of tangled wires. His eyes were wide and absent, full of apprehension and of something that unnervingly suggested madness. Martha had seen similar looks in the past and feared them just like a little girl could fear the darkness sheltering the scariest monsters. On such occasions the Doctor would lose any resemblance to her dearest friend, becoming someone he actually was – a Time Lord, a being from an ancient, distant world; a being so absolutely alien and untamed, that it seemed to be bursting the prison of his apparently human body.
"Martha!" he yelled with morbid enthusiasm. "And Mickey Mickety Mick, my favourite protector of the Earth! Hello! How'r'you? Jack! Ianto! Oooh, hello, Gwen! Looking good, what month is it? If you don't mind me asking. And where's Rhys? You didn't fire him already, Jack, did you?!"
"Rhys went to..." Gwen started, but Jack would not let her finish.
"Can you explain this?" he asked, pointing at wires covering half the floor of the Freezer.
"Yes!" The Doctor switched on his sonic screwdriver and stuck it in the middle of the biggest knot of cables. "No! Not now!"
"This is the Chameleon Arch," Martha repeated with dread in her voice. "Doctor?"
"Mhumpsfihht," the Doctor announced through the sonic screwdriver he had put between his teeth to free his hands. He was fastening together two chaotic bundles of wire. "Aaught!"
"But it can only mask biological traits!" Martha shouted, pushing away from Mickey. "How is it supposed to help Donna? I don't understand!"
She remembered perfectly well the excruciating pain the device had inflicted on the Time Lord. Even now she would wake up sometimes with his screams ringing in her ears. The Chameleon Arch appeared in her nightmares more often than a Hath drowning in the swamp, or the Toclofane's spheres, bristling with blades.
The Doctor pressed his sonic to the tangle of wires again. He was running towards Donna's sarcophagus now, the horrible circlet hanging from his forearm, cables slung over his shoulder.
"No-no-no-no-no!" he yelled at a full dash. "Cause, you see, I've redeveloped the Arch; it doesn't mask the biological structure anymore, it doesn't have to, why would it do that for? And it doesn't replace the original memories with a set of new ones. It is more sensitive, precise, selective – yes, I guess that's a good word – selective! It can interpret memories; select memories; sift them and separate them from those she just shouldn't have, see?! The TARDIS has this slightly telepathic ability; she can get inside your head. She can extract anomalous set of memories; distinguish the gallifreyan signature from the terrestrial one, and divide them; separate those memories from everything that makes her Donna Noble!"
"But... You said it was impossible!"
"Impossible! Unheard of! Improbable! Except for the fact that I'm an improbability whiz!" The Doctor sent Martha a wide, completely insane smile. He was continuously on the move, his slim fingers constantly fiddling with the wires, weird devices and the circlet itself. "You can't remove those memories without damaging the basic personality matrix. No, you can't delete the memory of a first glance into an Untempered Schism; if it was possible, I'd do it myself; but if you look inside the Vortex it stays with you forever, burned, engraved in your brain, in your memory, in what describes you, in what defines your consciousness. But you can push it away, down into the subconscious mind, into regions usually unused, if you're not a Time Lord, that is; just..." He threw the screwdriver from one hand to the other. "...the subconscious mind has to be broadened. No, not even broadened. Awakened. Humans don't use much of their subconscious mind. It's simply present in you – a blank page, tabula rasa, terra incognita, an empty memory disc. All you need is a wee bit of technology. A speck of genius – that's me by the way. A good deal of cheating. Erm, a bit more than a good deal... A lot..."
And suddenly he froze, the sonic screwdriver, still singing on the verge of audibility, in his raised hand. His hair was dishevelled even more than usually, his face covered in streaks of dirt and grease. Martha noticed that the whole of the Doctor's body was trembling – almost indiscernibly, but constantly – as if he was vibrating in between two realities.
"Eeerm... Did anybody else get nowt of this?" Mickey asked uncertainly. "Or is it just me?"
The Doctor sent him a smile. Then he took a deep breath and pursed his lips in determination.
"Donna Noble saved the Universe," he said quietly and defiantly. "All the Universes. And all the Universes owe her something."
"What have you done, Doctor?" Jack asked, realisation dawning. "What have you done?"
That threw the Doctor out of his stillness.
"Aaaaah!" He reached the control panel of Donna's sarcophagus and began pressing icons on the touch screen. "I collected the debt."
A lid of the sarcophagus de-pressurized with a hiss of the air sucked inside.
"No!" Jack rushed towards the Doctor, determined to stop him. "I won't let you do anything that would put her in danger. You won't do anything, until you've explained..."
"A tad late for that." Disregard in the Doctor's voice was equally forced as his smile. "Believe me, Jack. I'm a 'too late', 'too early', 'untimely', 'on a wrong day' and 'in wrong order' expert. Time Lord, as you know perfectly well."
He lifted the lid of the sarcophagus.
"I've done it already!"
"Jack, stop him!" Martha yelled. "Mickey! Ianto!"
"But I've done it already, Martha!" The Doctor turned his radiant, mad face towards her. "Last of the Time Lords! If anybody can collect the debts of the Universe, it's me!"
He winked at her roguishly, tossed up the metal circlet of the Arch and caught it in the air – a spinning, silver circle of pain.
"But what?!" bellowed Jack. "What have you done?! Does it have anything to do with..."
"The Rift Activity? Probably. No, not probably. Undoubtedly. Without fail. Irrefutably. One hundred percent surely."
"Doctor," Martha gasped.
He just laughed, producing a large fob watch from within his pocket; ever so familiar device hidden under the lid engraved with mysterious gallifreyan symbols. His hands, holding the Chameleon Arch, disappeared inside the sarcophagus. Jack shouted indistinctly. Martha sprang up into run. Mickey, Gwen and Ianto stood motionlessly, as if fixed to the floor, not really understanding the spectacle developing in front of their eyes.
The Doctor moved away a bit, half-turned from the sarcophagus, facing the Torchwood team in that irritating pose of his. He seemed to barely touch the floor with his feet, as if suspended in the air. He stretched his hand to the side with a flourish, pointed the screwdriver, and flipped the switch.
Martha, still running at full pelt, heard a quiet melody of the sonic, activating the Arch, triggering a screechy, broken resonance in the mess of wires, a discord in the TARDIS's song. The entire Freezer shook up. A web of cracks and fissures appeared on the wall, in which the blue box was embedded. Martha could hear explosions in the main hall of the Hub, housing the Rift Manipulator. Lamps above her head brightened, as if receiving an electric current too high in voltage. One after another, the light bulbs started bursting up, spreading sparks and gradually drowning the Freezer in a semidarkness of emergency lights.
"No!" Jack yelled.
"Yes!" the Doctor yelled back. Before Jack could reach him, he switched off the screwdriver, tossed it up in the air and caught it, just as he had done with the Arch before – a smug (petrified) conjurer, presenting his best trick. Jack's fist connected with his cheekbone with a force that threw the Doctor against the sarcophagus. He bounced from its wall and pivoted, before slumping into the tangle of wires.
"Jack!" Gwen shouted. "No!"
"Doctor?" Martha wasn't sure if the Time Lord could actually survive such a blow. Jack pushed away Mickey, who was trying to stop him, grabbed the Doctor by coat's lapels and raised one hand for another blow.
"What... (a hit) did you have... (another hit) to sacrifice?!"
Mickey and Ianto stopped his fist before he managed to maul the Doctor completely.
"Yourself?!" Jack was shouting, twisting in their grip. "The Earth?! Us?! After what Rose's done?! After what she's done to me?!"
Mickey managed to pry his fingers from the Doctor's coat. The Doctor collapsed onto the floor, on his back, among the wires and leads, devices and subassemblies.
"Ow!" He touched his swelling cheek with one hand, and checked the state of his dentition with a tip of the tongue.
"What have you done?!" Jack hollered.
"Only what I had to," the Doctor answered, very quietly now, his voice breaking. "It was my decision, my choice. Don't you see it, Jack? It was my responsibility. Whose, if not mine?"
Jack's shoulders sagged.
"I hate you," he gasped. "I hate you right now. Even... even if it is some sort of miracle... Even if you are conjuring... some miracle... again... I still hate you. YOU'VE GOT A PHONE!"
The Doctor's mouth, opened for an answer, closed suddenly. Apparently he was at the loss for words.
"YOU'VE GOT A BLOODY PHONE! EVEN IF WE ARE OUT OF YOUR WAY! IF YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF SAVING SIX BLOODY GALAXIES! YOU CAN ALWAYS CALL! AND ASK FOR ADVICE! TELL US ABOUT YOUR PLANS! SAY 'HELLO'! SAY 'HELLO, JACK, I AM PRESENTLY CAUSING A PARADOX, THAT WILL SURELY TEAR THIS WORLD APART, THOUGHT YOU MIGHT WANT TO KNOW'!!!"
"I've missed you too," the Doctor answered from the floor. A drop of blood trickled from his cracked lip. "Would somebody, please, check on Donna?"
Jack, Mickey, Martha, Ianto and Gwen turned almost simultaneously.
Donna was sitting in the sarcophagus, both hands on its sides, wet stripy pyjamas clinging to her skin, the Chameleon Arch askew on her damp hair. She looked at them with round, uncomprehending eyes.
"Blimey," she said uncertainly. "The dream I had..."