009: Hunting for the Hunter [Visual]

[allthatlife.livejournal.com]

It had been a long and difficult night, but, at nine o'clock the next morning, Martha opened her surgery as usual. Despite the relatively low numbers of prisoners, she always had more than enough patients to keep her occupied. She treated Extras for coughs and colds and broken limbs and stomach bugs. She gave the young Extras their childhood inoculations. And, now, she treated them for vampire bites.

They didn't have vampires in her world, but her time on the TARDIS and her experiences at UNIT had taught Martha to trust her instincts and, occasionally, to improvise when treating non human patients or extraterrestrial illnesses. (There were no medical text books available for her line of work. There were just a few determined individuals - like Martha, like Doctor Elizabeth Shaw at Cambridge, like the Torchwood team - who always tried to do the best for their patients, no matter who or what they were.) The marks on the neck of the Extra that Fitz had rescued were real bite marks. The attacker had left bruises as well as bloody holes, not just the twin pinpricks that you saw in horror movies.

The Extra that had taken a seat in front of her desk - marched there by an Extra that, if asked, Martha would have guessed to be a concerned partner - had the same sort of wound. Which meant that this wasn't an isolated incident.

She cleaned and dressed the wound, prescribing lots of rest and fluid for the patient. (And he was a patient, whether he was programmed to be one of not. In fact, the idea that the aliens were programming illnesses and injuries to give her something to do was physically sickening. But she had to treat them. Leaving them would have been barbaric.) Then she washed the blood off her hands and picked up her tablet.

"It looks like last night's attack wasn't an isolated incident," she informed the people of the city, "I had an Extra with exactly the same bite marks in here this morning."

After a brief pause to give them a chance to digest that information, she carried on.

"Which means we've got two options. Either the aliens have created a vampire Extra to keep us on our toes ... or it's one of us."

She wasn't keen on either option.

Comments

[longaevus]

"A map, actually." If you didn't think that her world was odd as it was, you may now.

"The technology is advanced and within it is an in built defence - one to protect the technology against vampires, to keep the location of the city it holds within it secret." Helen paused, just briefly. "There is one problem, however. That protection also comes attached with a self destruct to it. Removing the vampiric presence from the sensors deactivates it."

And then came another pause, and a slightly uncertain look. "I can't actually activate the map without setting that off." Without the protection that Nikola had created, something that she would need to recreate first. Thankfully she had the plans for it, anyway.

[allthatlife]

It was strange, but Martha worked for an organisation that dealt with alien threats and had a research and design department largely based around making use of salvaged alien technology. She took the information in her stride.

"We can't even be sure this sort of vampire will be picked up by it. I'm not sure we've got enough evidence to justify activating a self destruct sequence."

Although the real question was how much damage the mechanism could cause.

[longaevus]

Helen had expected some question as to why Helen herself was unable to use the map without setting it off but she was a little thankful that Martha said nothing - it was a story for another time.

"We can't, although with a vampire here? It would be helpful to at least try something, to see if it was possible." Even with as risky as it was.

[allthatlife]

There could have been any number of reasons for Helen's inability to use the map without activating it, but that was a story for another day. They had other concerns at the moment. Martha trusted Helen, regardless of what secrets she was keeping to herself.

"If you give me instructions, I should be able to use it. It's better than nothing."

And, at the moment, nothing was all they really had.

[longaevus]

"Sadly it's not quite so simple." Or it was but Helen was a little protective - she trusted Martha but she didn't simply wish to give the map away, not with what it was, with what it meant.

"There are components needed to activate the map. It's holographic." The sensors in it activated themselves but turning the map off afterwards? Less simple - it couldn't simply be shut up.