Chapter Text
14th September 2007, New York
Martha crouched in the dark, waiting.
The stench of sweat, fuel and sea water sunk to the back of her awareness, less important to her survival than the sharp tang of alien metal and the snip and whir of impossible blades. She pressed her back against a container, forcing herself out of the shaft of bright moonlight falling over the dockyard.
Her breath caught. Was that a footstep? A dark figure passed her by almost silently. A smuggler perhaps, or a desperate thief searching for supplies. They didn’t see her, passing out of her line of vision.
She checked the time on her vortex manipulator. All that power and technology, and all she could use it for was to tell the time. She’d been tempted, so many times, to try something more when her transport had failed, when her journey grew by another day, another week. But the thought of ending up in a different time, a different world, abandoning the Earth to The Master. It wasn’t worth the risk.
Two hours had passed. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d lost a contact. A message not getting through. Another death on her conscience.
She started. A soft tapping on the adjacent crate. Two short, three long, then a distinct staccato rhythm. She swallowed, took her life in her hands, and tapped out a response. A figure rounded the corner before her. They normally sent her men. Ex-military, ex-security, sometimes doctors who were licensed to travel. But muscles and testosterone never stopped the bullets. Or the toclafane.
Martha eyed her new contact. About her height, probably female, but hard to tell in the shadows with her hood pulled up. The figure jerked their head at her, and Martha followed, wending a crouched path through the crates, avoiding the moonlight and ducking through a fresh gap in the barbed wire fence.
They walked the silent streets of Brooklyn. Darting across roads and alleyways, pausing to let patrols pass, staying upwind of the rats and wild dogs that roamed the streets. Her companion never spoke, never hesitated. Martha had met enough soldiers by now to tell them apart from those, like her, who were just doing what they had to to survive.
They stopped in the shadow of a blown-out shop-front. Her companion crouched, lifted a man-hole cover and gestured for Martha to enter. Her stomach clenched and she braced herself for the stench. The ladder was smooth and well-used. Water splashed as she landed, and tried not to think about what she was wading in. Her companion replaced the manhole cover and landed silently beside her.
“Martha Jones, I presume?” Her voice was anonymously American, with a hint of something, possibly eastern European, that Martha couldn’t quite place.
“Yes.”
Her companion nodded, “Natasha Romanoff. The spheres don’t come down here much, but best to keep quiet.”
Natasha moved forward through the tunnel. Martha tried to copy her movements, slipping through the water, rather than splashing against it. She was quieter than she had been, but couldn’t achieve the near silence of the other woman.
The air was damp and stale, the smell of human waste sharp at the back of her throat. Her backpack weighed heavy on her and her eyes itched with tiredness. She didn’t sleep well at the best of times, but the last ten days at sea had been some of the worst. She’d had no-one to keep watch, jerking awake at every sound. Which a cargo ship had plenty of. The ground still swayed beneath her and she risked losing her balance with every step.
Natasha turned around ahead of her, scrutinising her in the darkness.
“I can take your bag.” Her voice was low.
Martha shook her head, her hand reaching for the strap and gripping it tight to her, “No, thanks. It’s fine.”
She shrugged, “Fine. But if you collapse, I’m not dragging you out of here.” She turned back again and walked onward.
The tunnels were endless, but Martha dragged herself on. They reached a section of wall in poor repair, bricks crumbling away. Natasha stopped, shifted a few loose ones and created an opening just wide enough for the two of them to squeeze through. Martha pushed her bag ahead of her and hauled herself to the other side. She tumbled out inelegantly, bracing for a loud splash and water soaking through her boots. But the other side was dry.
Natasha replaced the bricks behind them, smirking at Martha’s open mouth, and jerked her head forwards, “This way. Nearly there.”
This tunnel was dry and clean. The stench faded quickly as they got further from the opening. Natasha paused a few hundred yards along, tapping at part of the wall. A door swung open, light spilling through a crack.
Martha blinked.
Her eyes adjusted to the new light source and the trick became clear. The door was painted, textured to feel like brickwork. In the dim light, it was almost impossible to make-out.
“Nice work.”
Natasha smirked at her again.
What was this place? Surely, they couldn’t have built this in the scant few months since the president was assassinated. It must have been here before. A nuclear bunker, or an old wartime hideout? Her American history was sketchy at best.
Martha ducked through the door into a warm entryway. It was stone and brick, but made cosy with carpets and blankets and a wooden table stuffed in the corner. A boy was lying on the sofa, eyes widening with fright as the door opened. He spotted Natasha and settled back down into slumber. The room’s only other occupant was a woman sat at the table, her hand in an unruly mass of dark hair as she studied a pile of papers spread in front of her.
She looked up as they entered, “You took your time.” The words were sarcastic, but there was a bite of fear beneath them.
Natasha heard it too. She raised an eyebrow.
“Caleb went to find Lucy. I couldn’t stop him.” The woman said.
“Shit. Where was he going?”
“Over by Borough Park. There’s a watch-house there. Nat—”
“Don’t wait up.” Natasha was out of the door before Martha had even noticed her move.
The dark-haired woman put her head in her hands, “Fuck.”
Martha stood there. She’d walked into the middle of something, as she always did. The entire world was in crisis, and all she could do was stay long enough to tell a story and then move on. Leave everyone else to deal with the consequences. That reminded her very much of the Doctor.
She removed the perception filter hanging on a string around her neck and hoped to God that she was expected.
The woman at the table blinked, “You must be Martha Jones. You’re as bad a Romanoff. That woman needs a bell.”
Martha nodded, “Yes. I am. Martha Jones, I mean. As for the other part—” She wrapped the string of the Tardis key around her hand, gesturing at is before stuffing it in her pocket, “I have some help.”
The woman huffed and stuck out a hand, “Rosa Diaz.”
Martha took it and shook. The other woman’s gaze was calculating.
“Come on.” Rosa stood, heavily favouring her left side, and walked down the passage leading off the rear of the room. Martha squinted in the dim light to make her out, dressed in a dark woolen jumper and cargo pants, her boots hitting the ground unevenly. A few paces along the passage, they ducked into a kitchen,brightly lit, with cabinets along one wall, a table against the other and a sink in the corner.
“Sit.” Rosa gestured at the table.
Martha pulled a chair out and sat, her backpack held securely in her lap. Rosa eyed it suspiciously.
“What are you packing?”
“You what?”
“Weapons, firearms. What do you have?”
“Nothing.” Martha didn’t know why she sounded so unsure. It was the truth. But her exhaustion and the room still rocking and Rosa’s gaze drilling into her made her doubt herself.
“It’s fine if you do. But we need to lock them away. Too many kids around.” Martha swallowed. Kids, anyone below the age of about twelve, were becoming fewer and farther between. If they couldn’t work, if the factories couldn’t find a use for them, then they were playthings for the spheres. She bit back a sickening memory, focused on the now, on this moment in front of her. Rosa was still speaking, “If the spheres get in here, we’re dead anyway. Weapons or not.” She held out a hand expectantly.
“I don’t carry weapons.”
Rosa raised a disbelieving eyebrow. “Bullshit. You’ve crossed halfway around the world with him after you.”
“It’s not bullshit. I run and I hide and I don’t let them notice me.” Martha leant forward on the table, letting out a laugh, “Look, I’m five foot two and I’ve not touched a gun in my life. It wouldn’t do me any good.” She didn’t mention the alien blaster in 1913. That didn’t seem relevant.
Rosa set her mouth in a thin line, “You want something to eat?”
“No, I’m fine. I ate earlier.” Her stomach gurgled traitorously. She was starving, but so was everyone else. She only took what she had to.
Rosa looked at her sceptically, “You’ve been hiding out on a cargo ship for a week and a half.”
Martha shrugged.
Rosa sighed, “We have plenty. This place was stocked for a nuclear holocaust.” She opened a cupboard and Martha’s eyes widened at the rows of tins stacked inside. Rosa took one down and rifled through a drawer. “So I’m going to heat this tin of beans. And if you don’t want to eat it, I will.”
Her mouth salivated at the thought. She contemplated. Rosa wasn’t rake-thin like the survivors she’d encountered elsewhere on her travels. She smiled, “Thank you.”
Rosa huffed her acknowledgment, poured the beans into a saucepan and set them to heat on an electric ring.
Martha frowned, looking up at the light fitting swinging from the ceiling, “Do you have a generator here?” She couldn’t imagine how they could, this far underground. But nowhere had grid power anymore, unless it was a factory or designated work-camp housing. And this was definitely not that.
“No. We’re siphoning of the grid. Very carefully, apparently.” She shrugged.
Martha’s hackles rose. The food and the power. Nowhere was this well-provisioned anymore. Nowhere that wasn’t on the take from him. She inched her hand towards her pocket.
Rosa noticed, her eyes narrowing, “Chill. It’s not like that.” She poured the beans into a bowl, clunked it down in front of Martha with a bent spoon, and sank into the chair opposite. Her face was pale and sweat beaded along her forehead. Guilt pooled in Martha’s stomach. Betrayal or not, she was clearly in bad shape.
“The whole place is Romanoff’s. She was CIA or something. Hell, she could have been a Russian spy for all I care. But she’s the sort of person who expects disaster and apparently the only one who was prepared when it came.”
Martha swallowed. If she didn’t trust, she’d never complete her mission.
She dug into the beans. She used to hate them. The sight of them swimming in a cooked breakfast, mixing with her eggs and contaminating the whole damn plate used to make her want to wretch. She stopped thinking about eggs and bacon as fast as she could, and focused on the salty, sweet, hot food currently making it’s way down her throat.
“Careful. You’ll make yourself sick.”
Martha forced herself to slow down, chewing carefully and pausing deliberately between spoonfuls. Normally, questions were being fired like bullets by now: what was her story, where was she going, what was she planning? Even before her legend had spread through Europe, people were desperate for news. Or, they told her everything about themselves. Their whole lives: tragedy and terror and hilarity and joy spilling out at her feet. Rosa didn’t speak. She gazed at a point just to the left of Martha’s head.
Martha eventually finished the bowl. Valiantly resisting licking out the bottom of it, she stood to wash it up.
“Do the taps work?”
“Give it here, I’ll do it.”
“It’s fine, I can do it.” She smiled in a away she hoped wouldn’t be taken as patronising.
Rosa scowled, “I need to keep moving.” Martha wasn’t easily intimidated any more, not after the daleks and the pig slaves and a face-off with a living sun, but there was something in this woman’s expression that brokered no argument. She silently handed the bowl over and sat back down, watching Rosa’s progress across the kitchen with a critical eye.
“Can I take a look at your leg?” Martha asked when she returned to the table.
Rosa’s eyebrows rose.
“I’m a Doctor.” It wasn’t quite true, not yet, but Martha had given up qualifying it. She was as good as most people had nowadays, and it wasn’t nearly good enough.
“It’s fine.”
Martha eyed her sceptically, watching her hands turning white as she gripped the back of the chair for support. “Clearly.”
“It’s. Fine.”
She didn’t press the issue. It wasn’t the time (there was never enough time). She couldn’t fix everything, and she hadn’t forgotten the missing Caleb, the mysterious Natasha out alone in the dark.
“Our contact said you needed to visit the work-camps tomorrow.” Rosa’s eyebrows were quizzical.
Martha nodded, “Yes.”
“Fine. You’ll leave at midday, to arrive at shift change. Romanoff’s going with you. You should get some sleep.”
“I can wait up, if you like. She’s not back yet…”
Rosa let out a short, humorless ha. “She’s fine. I can—” Her fingers tightened on the chair, and her voice constricted, “I could handle myself. But she’s something else.” Her lip twitched, like she was laughing at an internal joke. She gestured to the room across the passage. “There’s a free bed in there. Milly snores though.”
“I’m sure I’ll sleep through it.” Martha grabbed her bag and picked her way through to the empty bed at the end. She looped an arm through the strap and lay down. Despite the strangers surrounding her, the still gnawing suspicion and Milly’s truly unbelievable snoring, she was asleep almost instantly.