Ten Lords-A-Leaping

A Quantum Leap × Doctor Who Crossover fic
by Ashe P. Kirk

Summary

What if, during the events of Blink, while the Doctor and Martha were trapped in 1969, another time traveller happened to cross paths with them; one who strove to put right what once went wrong?

The timey-wimey detector, after all, goes ‘ding’ when there’s stuff.

And what exactly happened to all the other victims of the weeping angels over that two year period they were active at Wester Drumlins?

Set during the events of Blink (Doctor Who) and shortly before Mirror Image (Quantum Leap).

Content Warnings

This story contains precious little graphic violence or sexual content, but be aware there are references to sexual assault, off-screen sex, references to murder, suicide, a scene with cocaine use, and one scene where someone is shot.

Contains fairly frequent canon-typical innuendo from such characters as Al Calavicci, Ziggy, and River Song.

With that out of the way, please enjoy this mostly silly romp.

Chapter 1

Oh Boy

When Sam Beckett’s vision cleared of the blue light, he was staring down into his hand, upon which a number of unfamiliar coins were scattered. In his other hand, a coin purse—the kind with one of those snapping clasps he’d last seen his mother use.

He dared to glance up, and realised he was at the counter of a store of some sort, and there was something or other wrapped in newspaper sitting there that smelled kind of appetising. The cashier, a teenage girl with dark mascara and large hoop earrings, was looking at him expectantly.

“Sorry, how much was it?” he mumbled, giving the cashier an apologetic look.

“Two shillings,” she said, her cockney-accented voice laced with boredom.

Sam licked his lips, as he peered into his hand at the strange coins. He’d never seen these things before. He was in the UK, he assumed, but it was before the switch to decimal currency.

He extended his hand. “H-here, take what you need. I, uh… forgot my glasses.” It was almost too easy to come up with lies to cover up his confusion these days.

The girl selected some coins from his hand, and sprung open her cash register.

“Thanks,” she said distractedly. “Next please!”

Sam quickly put away his remaining money, and scooped up the warm paper parcel. He scurried away, and stepped out of the store to find an extremely English-looking street. He wouldn’t have been able to describe what made a street feel this English until now—the narrow street, the telephone boxes, the cobblestone underfoot and the mixture of Edwardian and Victorian architecture of the terraced buildings. Even if he hadn’t already known he was in Britain before, he knew it now. And, judging from the vehicles and the mixture of hippie and mod fashion, it looked to be somewhere around late sixties. Sam recalled scenes from old Beatles movies that reminded him of the environment before him.

Sam didn’t know exactly where in England he was, nor what he was doing here, but he had a delicious-smelling bundle of what must have been food in his arms, so he headed for the nearest place to sit—which turned out to be in a nearby park called “Russell Square.” Across a small road from the square was a corresponding subway station, confirming Sam’s suspicion that he was, in fact, in London.

Taking a seat on a bench, he tore open the parcel, revealing a piping hot serving of what he could identify as fish and chips. The fish was battered and deep fried, and the whole meal left large grease patches on the paper. Hungrily, he took one of the chips and chewed. It was coated in vinegar, and it tasted pretty good, though he figured he had a big enough appetite that most things would have been just fine.

The authentic London experience. He grinned, but the smile faded the more he thought. I sure hope there’s nowhere I need to be right now. Normally there would be.

As he savoured his meal, he scanned the newspaper that encapsulated the food, and spotted a date of July 12th, 1969.

“Huh…” he mumbled to himself. “The moon landing’s soon.”

Although, he figured, that assumed that the newspaper used to wrap this food was recent enough.

As he chewed thoughtfully on the fish, watching pigeons fight over some scraps left by picnickers, he heard some raised voices nearby.

“What do you mean you don’t have it?” A woman’s voice.

“I mean it’s not here, Martha. They took it—or rather, they’re trying very hard to take it—and dropped us here without it. Crafty beasts; I’d be impressed, if all my stuff weren’t in there. What’s worse is that if we want to go anywhere, we’ll have to take the tube. Oh, that’s grim, it is.”

Sam turned his eyes to the direction of the conversation, and watched the woman in a shiny red jacket frowning at the tall man in the long brown coat. Neither of them seemed to fit well into this environment, though he couldn’t quite pinpoint why.

“Left ’er on Neutral, too,” the man continued, speaking as if he was on fast-forward. “Blimey, what a waste of energy. We’ll need a good pit stop in Cardiff after we get it back, I’d say. Not so keen to go back there—and before you say it, it’s not because it’s in Wales—Wales is lovely. Cardiff is lovely. Well, it was. Has an ‘off’ smell to it these days. Nah, not smell, exactly—” The man looked troubled for a split second, before he cleared the expression from his face in favour of a large, toothy grin. “Point is, we’ll get ’er back and be off again in a jiffy. Relatively speaking.”

This guy sure can talk, Sam thought, amazed.

“Um, in case you hadn’t noticed, Doctor,” said the woman, “we’re stranded here. How are we going to even get back to it now? Wish really, really hard and click our heels together?”

The man laughed, and turned around, walking backwards to maintain eye contact with the woman. Sam squinted at the shoes he was wearing—high-tops? They didn’t look period-appropriate. Was he wrong about being in the sixties?

“Martha Jones,” said the man cheerfully, “you wouldn’t think I’d let this happen without a way back, now would you? Never play chess against me; I’m always forty-three moves ahead, give or take a dozen.”

He spun back around, reaching into his coat. He pulled out—Sam’s jaw dropped—a thick file full of papers.

How was he hiding all that in that jacket?

“Don’t you remember this?” the man continued, almost skipping along the pavement.

The woman—Martha—grabbed the file from his hands, and looked it over.

“Wait, so that woman—she knew this was going to happen?”

“And she had all this ready to hand over when we were passing through. Isn’t that brilliant? You lot do have some very very good ones among you, don’t you?”

“Okay, so what do we do with all this?” she asked, flipping through the pages.

“Well, I’m afraid we’ll need to faff around here for a bit until we trace the next angel signature—” he raised a finger, “—speaking of which, I have a timey-wimey detector to build.”

“Ay, what do you mean, ‘faff around for a bit’?” Martha tugged on his billowing coat. “Doctor, we’re homeless now. We need money, food, shelter.”

The man paused, looking back. “Good point,” he conceded, and rubbed his chin for a moment. “You go find a job, and I’ll go find us a place to live. Meet back here in an hour. Allons-y!”

And he frolicked away, his coat flapping behind him.

Martha stood frozen, watching him with a stormy expression. “How easy do you think it is to find a bloody job?” she called out—but he was already out of earshot. She deflated, and glanced around.

Sam, whose mouth was full of battered fish, locked eyes with her across the park, and gave her a sheepish smile, attempting to convey some sympathy.

Feeling sorry for her, he held out what remained of his meal to her. “Hungry?” he asked, though it was muffled due to the food stuffed into his cheeks.

Martha wandered up to him cautiously. “How—how much of that did you hear?”

Sam sent her a crooked grin. “Enough to know that guy’s a bit strange. And that you might need some free food.”

Martha chuckled. “Right on both counts, I’d say.”

She flopped down onto the seat beside him, and plucked a chip from the pile.

“Thanks,” she said, biting it in half and chewing thoughtfully.

“So I can’t say I understood most of that conversation,” he confessed. “My best guess is that you were living in some kind of motorhome and it was… stolen?”

Martha swallowed her mouthful, and quirked a smile. “Close enough,” she said, eyes dancing. “And now he wants me—a black woman in the sixties—to find a job inside an hour. The bloke’s a genius until he’s trying to understand everyday human life, then he’s out of his sodding depth.”

Sam suppressed a laugh. That almost described him—before he started leaping, anyway.

“Have any specialities? Qualifications?” Sam asked.

Martha took another chip. “Not yet. I’m studying to be a doctor—though at this rate it might never happen…” she rolled her eyes, and popped the chip into her mouth.

“You called that guy a doctor, right?”

“Yeah, but it’s more an honorary title for that one. He’s brilliant, but his education wasn’t exactly standard.”

Sam gave her a puzzled glance, before shrugging. “Well… I’m a doctor, too. If you need to brush up on anything, I could help.”

Martha looked him up and down. “A doctor? You…? You look twelve!”

“I do?” Sam bit his lip. He hadn’t looked in a mirror. In fact, he had no clue who he was right now, other than he had a purse with an assortment of coins in it.

Martha cocked her head. “Well, I s’pose looks can be deceiving. You could look thirty-five and actually be nine hundred years old.” She spoke the words like they were a simple truth.

It was Sam’s turn to cock his head. “Uh… sure.”

She held a hand out. “Anyway. I’m Martha.”

He took her hand, and then realised the only name he had to give her was his own. “S-Sam.”

“Hi Sam. Now, I have to go beg for work. So, um, nice meeting you.”

She took one final chip, and strode away, leaving Sam wondering what he’d just got himself involved in.

“Oh, Sam, she could come work for me any day…” came the leering voice of Al Calavicci from behind Sam.

He didn’t turn around. “Al, what year is it?”

“It’s ’69.”

“Thought so… huh…” Sam couldn’t get the sight of those shoes out of his mind.

Al phased through the bench to the other side to meet Sam’s gaze. “Today’s Sunday, thirteenth of July—a week before the moon landing. You’re in London—”

“I can see that…”

Al shrugged. “Yeah. Your name is Charlie Ward, but we haven’t got much more out of the weird kid in the Waiting Room.”

“What? Why?”

“Because he keeps telling us he was born in 1990, and—get this—he time travelled to 1969 from the year 2007.”

Sam glared at Al, jaw slack.

“Go ahead and say it,” Al quipped, lighting up a cigar. “I know you want to.”

Sam grimaced. “Oh boy.”

Chapter 2

Future Boy

Sam stood from the bench, staring the amused hologram in the eye. “Are you serious? 2007?”

“Come on, Sam,” Al said with an irreverent snort. “You don’t really believe the kid’s a time traveller, do you? He’s obviously a nutjob, or maybe his brain’s all mixed with yours and he’s confused.”

Sam shook his head. “I’m reserving judgement. Get some more details and see if they check out.” He scrunched up his depleted meal. “There’s something that smells fishy about this leap,” he said, holding up the bundle. “And it’s not this.”

He crossed to a trash can, or ‘bin’ as his memory told them they were called here, and threw away the screwed up paper.

“What do you mean?” Al said, following behind.

“I just saw the weirdest guy wearing a pair of Chucks, and I swear they were modern design.”

Al squinted one of his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe it’s nothing.”

“Chuck Taylors have been around since before I was born, Sam.”

Sam frowned. “I didn’t know that.” He ran a hand across his face. “Look, maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Does Ziggy know anything about this guy Charlie? Where he lives would be a start.”

Al punched in a query on the handlink.

“Nope. Absolutely no verifiable records of him ’til 1970 when he opened a bank account. Made a big opening deposit, too: four hundred pounds.” Al’s eyebrows rose as he read the handlink. “In fact, most of his deposits after that were big sums like that. And he made a killing in the eighties on the stock market. Hasn’t worked an honest day since.”

That’s pretty lucky.

Sam thought about his little purse full of small coins, and folded his arms in puzzlement.

“So there’s nothing before that?”

“Well, ‘Charlie Ward’ isn’t exactly a one-in-a-million kinda name—we have records; maybe too many. But nothing we can pin down to the kid.”

“God, he could live anywhere,” Sam lamented. “You gotta get that out of him at least. And does he work? If you work the time travel angle—act like you believe it—maybe he’ll be more receptive to the questions.”

Al gave him a weak nod. “Alright, I’ll try, Sam. Try not to worry about this time travel shtick. The kid’s probably just got an overactive imagination.”

“Hmm. Like me, right?” Sam smirked.

“Hey, you had the brains to back up your crackpot theories.”

“Just get going,” Sam said, shooing him.

Al opened the Imaging Chamber door, a glowing portal in the middle of Russell Square. “Alright already, I’m going. Go see London Bridge or whatever it is tourists do around here. No sense sitting around.”

The door slammed shut behind him, and Sam was left alone, with various passers-by pretending they didn’t just see him talking to thin air.

*        *        *

Charlie was staring intently at his reflection in the table when Al entered the Waiting Room.

“Righto—now I’m an old guy. Can’t half wait for the next weird thing to happen,” he remarked in a surprisingly nonchalant tone. He glanced up at Al, his expression resigned. “Am I in a spaceship?”

Al paused. “A spaceship? No, kid.”

“I only ask because of all the alien invasions lately,” Charlie continued, still talking in a blasé manner. “One time I near-on jumped off a building. Bit afraid of heights since then, I must say.”

Okay, yeah—this kid’s had one too many LSD trips or something, Al thought.

“Listen, you’re in the year 1999,” Al said slowly. At this, the boy perked up.

“No bull? Look—I’ll take it, I don’t even mind having to live through dial-up again. Let me out of here.”

Al felt himself do a double take. “What did you just say?” He narrowed his eyes.

“Just give us an internet connection… I miss MySpace. Okay—so that probably doesn’t exist yet, but a chat room… Neopets… anything…”

Well, I didn’t expect this.

Al tapped a finger to his lips as he began to reassess the possibility that this kid might actually be from the future. Or at least, not 1969.

“Okay… how about you tell me everything you remember about travelling in time, and answer all my follow-ups, and maybe I could get… some kind of laptop in here. Strictly monitored, of course.”

Charlie beamed. “Well, better than nothing. Where do I begin?”

“Why don’t you start with how you went back in time?”

“Thing is, I don’t know. Me and the other Seniors were having a piss-up, right? Yeah I know—underage, shouldn’t have been doing it. Anyway, Geoffrey dares me to go into this old ruined estate and take a selfie with one of the creepy statues in there. Next thing I know I’ve got the worst hangover of all time and it’s the sixties. I’ve never touched another pint since, that’s for sure.”

Al rubbed his temples; this wasn’t helping a whole lot.

“And what happened when you got to the sixties?”

“It was pretty rough, I’ll tell you what. Had to be a beggar for a bit, scrounge up enough pennies for food. Had trouble getting used to shillings and crowns and the like, and had to sleep on the street for a while. Then I started watching the football and remembered the outcomes to all the games I was watching—paid to be a die hard Arsenal fan. Made a few bets and started coming up ahead. Now I have a flat in Haringey. Not starving. Things are going okay—but I miss my family. And the internet.”

Bingo. Al smiled. “And what’s the address of this place of yours?”

*        *        *

Sam unlocked the run-down door to Charlie’s attic apartment in South Tottenham, and it creaked open, the sound echoing off the wooden walls and floor. It was dingy and it smelled of damp. Sam walked up the rickety staircase, a noise following him at every movement.

“Well it ain’t much, but it’s better than my old orphanage,” Al remarked, as he centred himself inside the studio. “And it’s better than the street, which is where the kid had to sleep at first.”

“So you believe him now?” Sam looked back to Al with a questioning smirk.

Al waved his cigar around noncommittally. “Well, Ziggy did find birth records from 1990 that match his story, and he was begging for internet access. So—sure, I admit it: it’s plausible. But his story of how he got thrown back in time makes no sense.”

“You said he snuck into some old derelict building and just… got transported here?” Sam asked, brows knitted.

“That’s what he told me. But by the sound of things, he was three sheets to the wind, so anything could have happened.”

Sam mulled this over as he took in the apartment. His eyes gravitated to a corner of the room where Charlie had hung a bed sheet. A single chair stood in front of it, with an acoustic guitar leaning against it. And before the scene, a tripod with a Super 8 movie camera.

“Wow, I haven’t seen one of these since MIT,” Sam said, as he trotted up to it and looked it over. “What do you think the kid was filming?”

“By the looks of things, bad teenage guitar-playing,” Al said, and took a deep puff of his cigar. “Maybe he was trying to pass off some future songs as his own. Bit of pre-plagiarism. He’s an enterprising kid, you know. Lot of his money came from breaking one of our cardinal rules.”

“Well, can you really blame him?” Sam grinned, and began to remove the camera from the tripod. “I’m gonna get this film developed.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” Al said, “because there’s a Kodak outlet two doors down from where Charlie works.”

“Which is where?”

“It’s a record store in Covent Garden. Hope you like The Beatles, ’cause Charlie’s sick to death of them.”

“Of course I like The Beatles,” Sam said, indignant. “Has, uh—Abbey Road come out yet?”

“Nah, not for a couple months. Still, you’ve got some great tunes on the charts as we speak. Number twelve this week: ‘Living in the Past’ by Jethro Tull.”

Sam gave Al a disbelieving look. There was no way God or Time or whoever would be so on-the-nose.

“I’m not kidding!” he said, holding up his handlink. “It says it right here!”

“Well I’ll be,” Sam murmured as his eyes glimpsed the readout, and he shot a glance upward. “Very funny.”

Sam crossed to the small fridge in the cramped kitchenette, and peeked at the contents: a glass bottle of milk, a couple of cucumbers, some eggs, and four bottles of white wine.

“I thought you said he gave up drinking?” Sam said.

“Well, technically he said ‘pints’. You ever heard of a pint of wine?”

Sam shook his head—both in response to the question, and to indicate his disapproval of the seventeen-year-old’s choices.

“Has Ziggy figured out what I’m here to do? It can’t just be to get rid of this wine. Do you think we need to help him get home?”

Al cringed as he tapped at the handlink. “Ziggy’s really not sure. Helping Charlie has a tentative likelihood of 38%, but she doesn’t have the data to make that figure go any higher.” He slapped a hand against the gizmo, causing it to squeal in response. “Come on Ziggy, that’s nonsense.”

“What?”

“She’s giving a 72.4% chance you’re supposed to find a doctor.”

“I am a doctor.” Sam tapped himself on the shoulder. “There, I’m found.”

Al’s brow was thoroughly furrowed. “Wait, no—it says the doctor. Who the hell is the doctor?”

“Someone with the title of ‘the doctor’…” Sam blinked, a sudden bewildering thought coming to him. “I—I think it’s the guy with the shoes.”

Chapter 3

It Goes ‘Ding’

On Monday morning, Sam, with a film canister under his arm, disembarked from the Piccadilly Line train to find Al waiting for him on the platform of Covent Garden station.

“Any leads?” Sam whispered as he was whisked along by the crowd.

“No—I don’t even know where Ziggy got this ‘doctor’ thing from. She won’t even tell Gooshie.”

“I told you yesterday, Al—it’s fishy! Everything about this is.”

“Enough with the fish…” Al said with an eye roll. “I’ll meet you up on street level,” he added, and blinked out with a tap on the handlink.

Several minutes later, Sam reached the top of the stairs with a relieved breath, and emerged onto the street, where the conversation continued.

“Alright, where do I go from here?”

Al waved a hand down the road. “Head thataway.”

As they walked, Al continued tapping at—and getting screeching responses from—the handlink.

“Ziggy sounds upset,” Sam remarked.

“‘Defensive’ is more accurate,” said Al, bashing the link. “She’s angry that we keep asking her what the deal is. And she threw up a security lock on the data she used to get the prediction.”

“A security lock? Against you and Gooshie? Who’s authorised to see it, then?”

“Nobody,” Al grumbled. “Just Ziggy, as far as we can tell.”

Sam’s mouth opened as he tried to understand this. “She can’t do that, can she?”

“Well I sure didn’t think so, but here we are.”

“Unbelievable.” Sam shook his head with exasperation. “Guess if I can ever find this guy again, I’ll need to pry as much out of him as I can.”

“This city has seven and a half million people in it right now,” Al said, pulling a cigar from his jacket, “How do you think we’re gonna find this guy? Talk about a needle in a haystack.”

Sam chuckled. “I never understood that phrase, you know. You only need a strong magnet to find a needle in a haystack, right? It would take work, but you’d find it.”

At this, he spotted the camera store, and headed in to put in the film, leaving Al outside to absorb his physicist’s wisdom.

“People aren’t magnetic, Sam…” Sam heard him say as the door shut behind him.

*        *        *

In a cosy basement, not too far from Covent Garden, the Doctor switched on his newly constructed timey-wimey detector, and it immediately went ‘ding.’

That, Martha had been told, meant there was ‘stuff.’

“Already?” she asked, looking up from the job listings in the paper. She was still without work, but at least the Doctor had psychic paper that allowed him to bluff his way into all sorts of perks, including accommodation, apparently. The old woman upstairs thought he was chief scientist for the Queen. Why she thought he’d need to commandeer her basement under such credentials was anyone’s guess, but the Doctor was lucky like that. Could talk his way into—and out of—almost anything.

“Have to say,” the Doctor said curiously, “I didn’t expect it to go ‘ding’ right away. That’s exciting—love it when I don’t anticipate something.” He looked up with a grin. “Shall we go find what it’s tracing?”

Martha returned the grin. “Now you’re talking,” she said, discarding the newspaper, and jumping to her feet.

*        *        *

An hour into his shift, Sam was bored out of his mind, as he sat among boxes upon boxes of records, slapping price stickers on each one.

When Al had told him he’d be working in this shop, he’d neglected to tell him he would be cooped up in a back room with only the muffled sounds of Give Peace A Chance to keep him company. He didn’t know where Al had gone to—he’d wandered off a while back—but he couldn’t blame him; Sam’s current activity was undoubtedly more boring to watch than to do.

At least if he’d been on the sales floor, he could keep his eyes peeled. But here… well, all he had been witnessing from his vantage point were what he thought might have been drug deals between the owner of this place (his name was Ralph, Sam had learned) and some shifty-looking people. It made him terribly uncomfortable, and he wondered if he should do something about it.

He decided just to get this tagging work all over and done with as quickly as possible—he was told he could go on break when these boxes were done.

After a little while longer, he heard a barely perceptible female voice speaking with Ralph.

“Def Leppard? Never heard of ’em, love,” he said gruffly. “You mean Led Zeppelin?”

Sam raised an eyebrow, and leaned over past his stack of records to see who he was talking to.

“Is there anyone else here that might know them?” asked Martha Jones.

It’s her!

“I doubt that very much, sunshine.”

Sam jumped to his feet, knocking over the stack in the process. It made a horrendous crash as they hit the floor, and both faces turned to him as he stood, flushed, and holding some of the records that he’d managed to catch on their way down.

Martha’s mouth was hanging open, but curled into a smile of recognition.

“Uh… hi, Martha,” Sam croaked. “Fancy seeing you here. Did you say …uh—‘Def Leppard’…?”

Martha nodded slowly. “I did.” Her eyes darted to his name tag pinned to his shirt. “…Charlie…” Her eyes moved back to meet his, and she gave him a questioning look.

In this moment of tense eye contact, Sam’s heart was like a jackhammer. He was almost certain that Def Leppard was a band from the seventies or eighties—wasn’t it?

Say something!

“Uh, I don’t think this place has the obscure sort of music you’re looking for,” he said, placing the records haphazardly on the desk and moving out of the room as fast as he could move. He gently pushed Martha away from Ralph. “You know, I think I can point you to a less mainstream music store that might have that kind of… niche… music.”

He kept moving, with Martha seeming to go along with it, until they were both out the front door.

A moment passed as the two of them stared each other down, and then Sam opened his mouth, slowly and deliberately taking a breath.

“You’re not from… here—are you?” he said quietly. Martha did not betray an emotion, but continued to look him in the eye.

“I’m from London.”

“Sure, but I meant… you know…” Why was it so hard to say?

“Go on…” She was challenging him.

Sam clenched his teeth. “1969.”

“There you go!” Martha said with a grin. She gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Fancy meeting you in the park like that and neither of us had any idea. Bloody good to see someone else around here who’s been through it too, eh?”

“Uh—yeah.” Sam was still pretty lost for words; there were still a few things this Martha didn’t know about him, weren’t there? But, he felt the tension in his chest beginning to release now. He wasn’t alone. And now he could find this doctor.

“So which is it?” Martha asked.

“Which is what?”

“Is your name Sam, or is it Charlie?” she flicked a finger across his name badge.

Sam glanced down and let out a nervous chuckle. “Uh—it’s Sam. Charlie…”

But, he wondered, how was he going to explain that he and Charlie from 2007 were two different people?

“…is just the guy I am in 1969,” he explained, bending the truth a little.

“Oh, I get it.”

The two shared an awkward, smiling pause for a moment, before Sam turned back toward the shop. “Listen, can you wait here for maybe a half hour? I have a break once I’m finished pricing up records, assuming I didn’t break them all in a fit of clumsiness.”

Martha laughed. “Uh, yeah, I can be back here then. But I’ve just got to run off to check if the Doctor’s got himself in hot water tracing the other energy signature… thing.”

“Other… what?”

*        *        *

Al wandered through the shopping crowds of Carnaby Street, admiring the drop-dead gorgeous women in their miniskirts and bob cuts, platform boots and bright make-up.

Appreciating beautiful ladies was both his most refined skill, and his greatest weakness. Five wives and countless one-night-stands later…

The women he watched now had a look that reminded him vaguely of his first wife, and that deep empty chasm in his gut had begun to overpower the feelings that had brought him here to begin with.

And just before he made the decision to leave the Imaging Chamber, he spotted a man in a pinstripe suit and long coat—wearing high-tops and carrying a gadget of some sort in his hand. A gadget that looked a little advanced for the sixties. And he was coming this way.

“So this is the doctor?” he muttered, and made the decision to follow him so he could report back to Sam.

Ding!

The little device in the Doctor’s hand chimed, and almost in response, the handlink made a whistling noise.

The Doctor’s machine made another noise, and then the handlink. It was as though Ziggy was playing Marco Polo with the other machine.

“Gooshie!” Al shouted. “What’s Ziggy doing?”

The Doctor came to a halt right beside Al. He was still staring down at the machine, a look of consternation on his face.

“What’s here?” he said to nobody in particular, glancing up and right through Al.

Oh jeez, has he got some kind of a track on me?

Al stepped back a few paces.

The Doctor’s machine went ‘ding’, and he stepped towards Al until he was exactly as close as before. The strange man looked up again, squinting. Then he held out a hand, which passed into Al. He held it there for a moment, before retracting it, and then placing it back there.

“Hmm…”

Al didn’t like where this was going. He pushed the button on the handlink to open the door, but nothing happened.

“Hey!” Al called out to the ceiling. “Gooshie, Ziggy’s not opening up!”

He turned his head back down just in time to see the Doctor leaning towards the hologram and attempting to lick him—or at least, that’s how it seemed to Al.

“Admiral, Ziggy won’t let me override,” came Gooshie’s panicked voice.

The bizarre licking interaction ended as the Doctor drew back, and smacked his lips, concentration etched into his face. Then he reached into his coat, and produced something that looked like—a pen? No, it was too large. He pointed it towards Al, and pressed a button. It made a whirring noise, which the handlink, once again, seemed to respond to with its own series of chirps.

The Doctor held the long, slim object up to his face, reading something on the side.

“Well well…” he said under his breath, and looked pointedly in Al’s direction.

“Hello? Is someone there? You don’t have to hide, you know. Well, unless you’re spying on me, in which case you should probably know I’d need to put a stop to that.”

Al took another few steps back, frantically whacking the traitorous handlink. “Gooshie! If you don’t get that door open, I swear—”

The Doctor continued, taking another step towards Al. “And, by the by, if you mean me or anyone around here harm, then frankly I’d hate to be you, running into me of all people.”

Al took off running. “Saaaaam!” he hollered.

Chapter 4

What The Hell Is A Quark?

Sam felt guilty abandoning the very important work of swiping a pricing gun against EP sleeves, but he was worried about Al.

He was following Martha through the streets towards Leicester Square—the general direction the Doctor had been heading, according to Martha.

Apparently, he’d traced two ‘temporal signals:’ one leading to the record store—clearly Sam—and another close by, which Sam could only guess had been Al. But, Al would have checked out at the first sign of trouble, right?

It was at that moment that Sam caught a glimpse of Al emerging through the wall of a building, and running towards him at a speed Sam wouldn’t have thought Al capable of achieving.

In the same moment, the Doctor rounded a corner, running at a decidedly faster pace. He had a hand extended out with an odd device in his hand.

“Sam,” Al cried out, between gasps for breath, “this guy’s chasing me!”

“Oi, that’s cheating, going through walls!” The Doctor shouted, “I have to abide by the laws of physics! It’s a bit rubbish, really.”

Martha tensed up. “Doctor, what are you running from?”

“I’m not running away, I’m running after,” he shouted back.

Al reached the pair, and ducked behind Sam.

“Kick his butt, Sam,” Al wheezed.

“What?” Sam exclaimed, turning to face his friend. “No, I don’t think he’s our enemy…”

“No, the Doctor definitely isn’t—” Martha began, turning to Sam and cutting herself off when she saw him looking back, away from her.

“Then why’s he chasing me?”

“Why don’t you just leave the Imaging Chamber?” Sam asked, face screwed up.

“—Are you… talking to someone?” Martha probed.

“I can’t! Ziggy’s locked me in, and I don’t know why.”

At this point, the Doctor finally reached them, and stopped. Sam turned to him, and realised he hadn’t broken a sweat, while Al was puffing and wheezing in a way that betrayed his decades of cigar-smoking.

“Oh, ’ello,” he said to Sam in a high-pitched voice, before pausing, and audibly sniffing. He leaned toward Sam, hovering his nose over his cheek and breathing in deeply. “You smell American,” he declared.

Sam leaned back, away from the apparently quite accurate nose of the Doctor, and glanced in confusion at Martha. Martha shrugged back—she seemed unsurprised by the behaviour, but equally clueless on how he was translating smells into nationality.

“Uh, this is Sam,” Martha said. “I think the angels brought him here too.”

“Angels?” Sam asked. He felt just a little out of his depth in this conversation so far.

“Good to meet you, Sam, but I need you to step aside a moment,” the Doctor said, his speaking speed accelerating, “there’s a sub-atomic agitation of carbon quarks behind you and I need to find out what it’s doing here.”

Sam stared, wide-eyed, at the man. “I—”

“I told you he’s chasing me,” Al said weakly.

Sam glanced back at the cowering hologram, lost for words. He felt the Doctor’s hands gently guide him away from Al, and he complied silently. In the following moment, he stood watching the Doctor move some kind of whining probe over Al’s form. It was definitely not something out of 1969, that was for sure.

“Do something, Sam!” Al begged. But Sam wanted to see what would happen next, so he did nothing.

“Looks like it’s got a neurological signature,” the Doctor mumbled as he took his readings. “Someone out there’s got the right brainwaves to see who, or what’s, there…” The Doctor turned towards Sam as he barrelled on, his face turning serious, “…And my first guess would be you, Sam, considering it’s using you as a human shield.”

Sam held up his hands defensively. “Wh-what?”

“Sam,” Al pleaded, “he’s gonna do something to me, I just know it!”

Sam straightened, and stepped between the Doctor and Al. “P-Please don’t hurt him.”

The Doctor’s stony face melted away, and became a curious smile. “Wasn’t planning on it, but thanks for confirming my theory there. So, the question remains: who are you, really?”

“This guy is a basket case,” said Al. “Be careful, Sam…”

Sam frowned at the Doctor, who was placing a pair of glasses on his nose and studying Sam’s face. “I could ask the same of you…”

He stole a pleading glance at Martha, who was glaring at him with guarded suspicion. “Listen, I haven’t told you any lies! My name really is Sam. I’m a doctor. And I—I know Def Leppard.”

“Def Leppard?” Al and the Doctor both said in unison, in equally puzzled tones.

The Doctor pointed his probe towards Sam and began circling him, the device’s noise filling his ears like a particularly irritating cicada.

“Hold still, it’ll be faster.”

“What is that thing?” Sam asked, shrinking from the blue light.

I hope this thing isn’t dangerous.

“Just a sonic screwdriver,” The Doctor mumbled, as he completed his third circumnavigation of Sam’s body. He glanced at the reading. “Are you wearing a Shimmer, Sam?”

“A what?”

“One more—” said the Doctor, pacing around him with the sonic device yet again. Then he stopped in his tracks. “No, not a Shimmer—it’s a bit tougher. Oh!”

His mouth drew into a grin as he looked at Sam. “Are you from the twenty-second century, by chance? Wasn’t ’til then that I first saw this kind of reality-warping aura field on Earth.”

Sam’s eyebrows drew together. “I’m from the twentieth century,” he asserted.

“Noooo, no, surely not,” the Doctor said, dropping his gaze away from Sam and pacing. “Because it would take a genius of quite immense proportions to invent something like that in the twentieth century, unless—”

He stopped and squinted at Sam. “Unless you weren’t from Earth.” He pointed a finger. “J’accuse!”

Sam stood frozen with complete disorientation, his eyes flicking between the Doctor and Martha, trying to find some way these two could be playing an elaborate prank on him.

He was certainly not going to get into the specifics of the leaper aura—and not just because that part of his memory was swiss cheesed to hell.

“Okay, listen—I lost track of this conversation somewhere around the ‘sonic screwdriver’ part,” Sam said, almost laughing at the absurdity. “So unless either of you want to have a real, normal people conversation, I’m going to go back to my job. There’s unpriced vinyl that desperately needs my help.”

He spun around, beckoning to Al. “Come on, Mister Agitated Carbon Quark. Let’s go.”

Al straightened and joined him in walking away. “So uh, this some kind of strategy, or what?”

“Not really,” Sam confessed, “I just feel like I stepped into a fever dream and I want it to end.”

“Wait…” Martha’s voice called out, and she hurried after Sam, grabbing his shoulder. “We both want to go home, don’t we?”

Sam stopped walking. “Yeah, you have no idea how much I want that,” he said, bowing his head.

“Well, the Doctor can help you. But we have to be able to trust each other.”

Sam turned to face her. “Then I’ll need more than just honorary titles. Who the hell are you people?”

Martha gave him a gentle smile. “Let’s find somewhere a smidge less public, shall we?”

Chapter 5

Of Auras and Chameleons

As the Doctor strode into the record store, Sam, who was on his heels, watched him produce some kind of ID wallet, which he flipped open and held up to a tense Ralph.

“Morning, sir, my name’s D.I. John Smith,” he said with a remarkable amount of confidence, “and I have reason to believe you might be in possession of certain substances prohibited by the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1964.”

He leaned over the counter, and snatched up a bag of white powder from the underside in a smooth, quick movement. “And here it is.”

Sam swallowed hard, locking eyes with Ralph, who glared back with betrayed fury.

“Ooh, he doesn’t look happy,” Al commented, as he phased through the door.

The Doctor leaned in to the middle-aged man with a wink. “Listen, I’ll let you off this once—long as you get rid of the stash, and hire my friend here.”

He pulled Martha by the wrist towards the counter, and she waved awkwardly. “Hello.”

“That sounds a bit crooked,” Ralph said, crossing his arms. “Are you having a laugh, or what?”

“Sir, would the City of London Police joke around?” the Doctor said, indignant. “But I’ll take you into custody if you’d prefer—”

“No!” Ralph winced. “Fine, I’ll hire the bird…”

“Molto bene,” the Doctor proclaimed. “Now, I’ll just need that back room of yours to write up statements, if you don’t mind.”

Without hesitation, he ploughed his way past the counter, beckoning Sam and Martha back into the room where Sam had been pricing albums earlier. Once they were all inside, he shut the door and ran his sonic screwdriver over it, which caused it to click locked.

Is there anything that thing can’t do? Sam wondered, finding himself with the urge to take it apart.

Al stepped into the room through the wall, and turned a suspicious eye towards the Doctor. “Don’t turn your back on this weirdo, Sam.”

“Alright, Sam,” the Doctor said, turning around, “let’s confabulate—ooh, where did that word come from? I like it. Confabulate.”

“Where do we even begin?” Martha asked him before turning her eyes to Sam. “I mean—I suppose I’ll start; my story is simple enough. My name is Martha Jones. I’m a human from planet Earth, and I come from 2007.”

“Planet—?” Sam said, brow heavy over his eyes. “Why do you feel the need to specify you’re from Earth? Is that optional in 2007?”

Martha exchanged a look with the Doctor. “If he doesn’t know about aliens, maybe he really is from the twentieth century.”

“Aliens…?” Sam tilted his head as he recalled seeing a UFO on a leap not so long ago. He met Al’s eye. “So Charlie isn’t a kook after all?”

“Or maybe they’re all kooks,” Al said, rubbing his forehead.

“You go next, Sam,” said the Doctor with a grin. “So, we’ve established you’re not the fellow your name badge suggests, but you seem to be wearing his likeness like a Halloween costume. Tell us how that happened, Doctor Twentieth-Century-Human-From-Earth-Named-Sam-Who-Knows-Def-Leppard.”

“Oh boy,” Sam sighed, “that’s a long story.”

“We have time,” Martha coaxed.

“Yes, a bit too much, truth be told,” the Doctor added hastily. “Let’s hear it, then.”

Sam sent a hesitant glance to Al.

“Don’t look at me, Sam. Ziggy’s giving me the silent treatment, and we’re off the map in terms of the rules right now.”

Here goes nothing.

“Well, okay. Can’t be that dangerous to tell time travellers from 2007 about my time travel project in 1999, right?”

The Doctor leaned against the table, eyes lit up. “Time travel project? Are you absolutely, positively sure you’re a human?”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Last time I checked.”

“You don’t have any fob watches lying around at home, do you…?” he said, examining Sam’s face once again.

“What? Look, are you going to let me explain, or just ask me irrelevant questions?”

“Not irrelevant,” the Doctor muttered, “but… go on.”

“Okay,” Sam said, sitting at the desk and clasping his hands. “My name is Doctor Sam Beckett, and I’m, uh, human. From… Earth. Indiana, USA.”

“I smelled that,” said the Doctor, grinning goofily at Martha.

“Why have you got an English accent?” asked Martha.

Sam rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, I don’t—”

“That’s part of the aura,” the Doctor interjected. “It’s very clever; tricks the world into perceiving a different person. It’s like a primitive Chameleon Circuit.”

“Oh! Then maybe Sam can fix yours,” Martha said with an impish grin, and winked at Sam.

“Oi, enough about the Chameleon Circuit,” the Doctor snapped, before turning back to Sam. “So, Sam Beckett—not the playwright Samuel Beckett; you know I wanted to meet the fellow once, but he never showed—why have you cloaked yourself? Are you hiding from something?”

“No, it’s just the way my technology works. It’s called Quantum Leaping—me and someone in time trade places and live one another’s lives.”

“And you came up with that yourself, Sam Beckett?”

Sam nodded.

“They didn’t call him the next Einstein for nothin’,” Al chimed in.

“Blimey,” the Doctor said thoughtfully, “perhaps you are a genius of immense proportions after all.” He frowned. “Being too brilliant can be dangerous, though. Tell me, did you come here for a reason?”

Sam bit his lip. “There isn’t a straightforward answer to that. Technically yes, but I don’t know what it is. I didn’t come here by choice.”

“So this was pure chance?”

“Well no—wherever I leap to, there’s always some mistake I have to correct before I can move on.”

“Huh,” the Doctor said quietly, and began to pace the small floor area in the room. “That would suggest an intelligent entity is choosing where you end up. Maybe you’ve come into contact with an alien after all, or—something else. Who knows. Big ol’ universe out there.”

“Well, whoever it is, they’ve put me here now.”

Martha piped up: “And what about this invisible man? Where does he fit into all this?”

“He’s—” Sam started, only to be cut off by the overzealous monologuing of the Doctor.

“Neurological hologram technology—am I right? If I had to guess, I’d say he’s back in 1999 remotely connecting to you through your brainwaves, which is why you can see and hear him.”

Sam’s jaw slackened, and he took a moment to form words. “…Uhhh, yeah. Got it in one.”

“You’re a very clever man, Sam Beckett. Very, very clever. Not as clever as me, of course—but for a human—wow, am I ever impressed.”

“Uh… thank you?” Sam squeaked. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘for a human’…?”

The Doctor opened his mouth to answer, but it was Martha’s turn to steal the opening.

“He’s an alien. He has two hearts, he’s from the planet Gallifrey, and his species are called Time Lords.” She sent a mischievous smirk to the Doctor, who gawked at her, offended. “What? Does it make you upset to be pre-empted, Doctor?” She stifled a laugh.

I like you, Martha, Sam thought, smiling at her.

“An alien?” Sam looked the Doctor up and down. “What, did your planet’s dominant species also evolve from simian ancestors? Why do you look human?”

“Why do you look Time Lord?”

“That’s essentially the same question.”

“Oh, we’ve been through this one, Sam,” Martha said with a sigh, “once he starts answering questions with questions, it’s over with, so don’t bother.”

“What makes you a ‘Time Lord’ anyway?”

“Mainly because that’s what we’re called. That, and staring down the barrel of the Untempered Schism.”

Sam opened his mouth to ask what that was, but Martha shook her head.

“Thing is, we Time Lords—we’re very good with time. We were the first people to master travelling through the Time Vortex.”

“Time Vortex…” Sam murmured. “Is it like a weird void with bright lights whooshing past?”

“So you’ve been through it,” the Doctor said quietly.

“I guess,” he said. “I don’t usually remember the trip…”

“Fascinating…” The Doctor stood abruptly. “Well, Sam-Beckett-The-Human-But-Not-The-Playwright, you’ve certainly piqued my curiosity. How would you like to be my lab rat?”

“Doctor, you can’t just ask someone to be your lab rat and expect them to agree,” Martha admonished.

“Hmm, you’re right,” he mumbled, and turned back to Sam. “Does ‘guinea pig’ sound nicer? They’re adorable!”

“What did you have in mind?” Sam asked warily.

“Oh, a few tests, a lot of fun gesticulation, and maybe even some maths. If it sweetens the deal, I reckon I’d be able to get you back home by next week—give or take thirty odd years.”

“R-really?” Sam pulled himself to his feet. “I’m in.”

In the corner, Al let out a groan. “Be careful, Sam…”

Chapter 6

Angel Investigations

As Sam watched the Doctor and Martha dash away, off to “gather supplies,” he stepped cautiously out of the back room to face Ralph. Al moved out onto the shop floor and lit a cigar.

“So…” Sam said, putting on a relaxed demeanour, “you might be wondering why—”

“Why you left work for twenty minutes and came back with a copper to bust me for me side business? Yeah, I’d say the thought had crossed me mind.” Ralph opened a drawer of the counter and rummaged around. “Now you’ve cheated me out of money and I’m having to hire the bird…”

He pulled out an envelope and handed it to Sam. “Here, take your pay for last week and bugger off.”

“You’re firing me?” Sam reluctantly took the envelope and peered in to see a handful of pound notes were inside.

“What did you think was going to happen, Charlie? I promised that crooked bastard to hire her, but he never said nuffin about you. In with her, out with you.”

Jeez. Sorry, Charlie, Sam thought, letting out a breath as he counted the last of the kid’s money. There’s no pay slip here, though.

“You’ve been paying me off the books…” he said quietly, and glanced to the side at Al with a rising smile.

“So that’s why Ziggy had no record of this job,” Al said through a haze of smoke.

“Bloody right I am,” Ralph ranted, “and it’s lucky for you I’m generous to even give you that now you’ve crippled me flippin’ income. Now get out of my sight.”

“Are you sure you want to let me go?” Sam lifted his head to his boss with a smirk. “You wouldn’t want the authorities hearing about this tax evasion, surely?”

Ralph’s pale face flushed red. He clenched his teeth, and turned on his heel, stalking to his office, and slammed the door behind him.

Sam pocketed the pay packet, and sent Al a sheepish look. “I just made this workplace a little toxic, didn’t I?”

“Well, sure—blackmail’s not exactly kosher, but then again, neither is that nozzle in there,” Al said philosophically, jabbing his cigar towards the office. “So I’d say it evens out.”

“Well, as long as it meets your high moral standards,” Sam joked, and wandered over to the store’s record player. He pulled off the King Crimson album currently in rotation, replacing it with something new.

Al watched with curiosity as Sam dropped the needle, and burst into peels of laughter as the upbeat chords of ‘Taxman’ by The Beatles filled the store.

Sam looked back with a wink, and the two of them danced to the song together, a moment of levity on one of the stranger days of Sam’s life.

As the song came to a close, a glowing white door opened up in the record store, and Al let out a loud, relieved cry.

“About time, Gooshie!” he called out, and made a beeline for his exit.

“Oh—wait a sec…” said Sam, causing the hologram to pause mid-step. “Can you find out the location of that old estate—the one Charlie mentioned? I want to go check it out.”

“You got it,” Al said, striding out of the Imaging Chamber. As the door vanished, the strings of ‘Eleanor Rigby’ filled the shop, and Sam mopped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

*        *        *

“Well, this place sure looks creepy,” Sam said as he stood before the gates of Wester Drumlins. Vines curled around the iron fence, framing a hair-raising view to a large, old mansion. The summer sun was still hours from setting, but it was technically evening.

“Yeah,” agreed Al, “just as creepy as the house that belonged to that vampire you leaped into. Remember that?”

“He wasn’t a vampire,” Sam snapped, pointing a warning finger at Al. “He was just out of his mind.”

“What, you’ll believe in alien time travellers, but not vampires?”

“Oh, would you just help me get in, Al?” Sam studied the gate, looking for a latch.

“Too bad you’re not still the vampire, you could just turn into a bat and fly over the fence,” Al said unhelpfully. Fortunately, Sam found the latch at that moment, and pulled it open with a squeak. He opened the gate, giving Al a disapproving look.

The lead-up to the front door was overgrown, as if the place was already abandoned—but Al had assured him that some lady still lived here—alone. Sam was fairly certain that Al wouldn’t spend a night here if he was paid to, but Sam figured it must just be a regular house most of the time, even if some people who came here apparently ended up displaced in time.

The main issue was that Sam didn’t know what he was looking for. It occurred to him that the Doctor might have a better idea of what was wrong here, and it might have been a mistake to come alone. Still, he’d come this far.

He tapped on the door, his mind racing to find some reason he could give to be here. After a few minutes, the door swung open, and a very small woman with white hair peered up at him through thick glasses.

“Oh, hello,” she said with a smile. Sam opened his mouth to speak, but she continued: “are you one of the decorators?”

Sam exchanged a look with Al. This was a stroke of luck. “Uh, yeah!”

“Oh, good,” the woman said, stepping back. “They’re in the sun room doing the wallpaper. I do wish you’d all finish up before supper time.”

“I’ll be sure to tell them,” Sam said, heading into the house. “What are we looking for?” he muttered under his breath to Al.

“Beats me. All I know is he came in here to take ‘selfies’ with creepy statues. I’d say that describes every statue in this haunted house.”

“What’s a ‘selfie’?”

“Kid says it’s a photo you take of yourself.” He mimed holding a camera out and posing. “Becomes more popular after the switch to digital cameras—don’t have to wait for the picture to develop before you find out if it turned out lousy.”

Sam climbed a staircase, looking for some kind of a balcony where he could see a better view of the estate. He passed through what must have been the old lady’s bedroom, and out a set of glass doors.

The balcony on which he found himself overlooked a garden that hadn’t had much love in years. He could see a birdbath with a tiny cherub statue below, but nothing else.

“What creepy statues was he—” Sam turned around to face Al, but he wasn’t there. “Al?”

What was there, however, perched atop the roof, were two life-sized angel statues. Sam got a chill looking at them.

The two crumbling statues were on opposite sides of the roof, face-to-face, their hands outstretched as if they were reaching for something. One of them was missing a wing, and the other had lost its arm. Both were cracked and growing moss.

It might have been psycho-synergy, but Sam had an idea of them in his mind as clean and restored—which made little sense, since this place had only gone downhill after this point.

“Al, where are you? Don’t tell me you got scared,” Sam remarked, as he climbed onto the flat marble balustrade, and hoist himself to the tiled roof.

He carefully inched to the nearer of the statues, and studied it closely. It had wide eyes and… sharp teeth?

“Okay, now I get what he meant by ‘creepy’…” Sam said to himself. He would have said it to Al, but Al was nowhere in sight.

He turned to look at the other statue. Its hands covering its face, in silent mourning. But—

No, that thing definitely didn’t have its hands over its face before.

He turned back to the one he’d been studying, and jumped back, seeing that it too was now covering its eyes.

“Oh boy—”

A panicked Sam scrambled down from the roof, and closed the balcony doors behind him.

He ran to the hall, and ploughed straight into the decorator, whose bucket of—white paint?—spilled all over them.

A whiff of the stuff made Sam realise that it hadn’t been paint at all—it was glue.

“I’m so sorry, I—”

The sound of laughter cut him off, and he cleared the glue from his eyes to see the Doctor and Martha, both similarly covered in goopy glue.

“Well look at that, Martha,” the Doctor said cheerfully, “I do like it when I keep running into someone interesting. Per’aps we should just ‘stick together,’ eh?” He paused, mouth open, as if to wait for laughter.

“What are you doing here?” Martha asked, getting to the point the Doctor was neglecting.

“Uh, well, I was checking something out,” Sam explained clumsily. “See, Charlie—the guy I leaped into—has this story about being here and somehow being sent to the past, and…”

The Doctor glanced at Martha with a grin. “Another inquisitive type.” He brushed a gob of glue from Sam’s shoulder. “But don’t fret—there’s nothing here that can hurt us. Not yet. Well, except the angels on the roof, but only if someone breaks their view of one another, and that isn’t going to happen ’til about 2005 if Sally Sparrow wasn’t fibbing.”

Sam’s mouth dropped open. “Breaks their… view?”

“Oh, by the time I finish explaining the Weeping Angels, this glue’ll be hard,” the Doctor said with the wave of his hand. “Let’s go clean up.”

“It’s just…” Sam said quietly, “I think—” He shook his head. “Maybe my mind was playing tricks.”

The Doctor was no longer his normally irreverent self. Now, he had wide eyes and drew in close to Sam.

“Sam… what did you see?”

“I was on the roof checking them out, and—”

“They… they moved, didn’t they?” said Martha.

Sam nodded.

The Doctor rocketed to his feet, and through the bedroom, dripping glue as he ran. He burst out of the doors and turned, looking up toward the roof, mouth agape. Sam had never imagined the Doctor could get scared like this, but there was palpable fear in his eyes.

“They’re gone…”

Chapter 7

Chance of Showers

The Doctor whipped shut the balcony doors and ran his sonic screwdriver over them.

“This is very very not good,” he breathed, taking a few steps backward, his eyes trained on the outside. “It’s not your fault—you didn’t know, I should have warned you, but then I had no idea you’d be showing up here. No use laying blame, I suppose. But now—”

“Sam! Can you hear me?”

Sam spun around to see Al flicker and fade in before his eyes.

“Al! Where were you?” Sam cried.

“Is Al your invisible friend?” Martha asked, turning her gaze to what she perceived as an empty space. Sam nodded distractedly.

“Where was I? Where were you?” Al barked. “I lost you for a few minutes there. I think Ziggy shut down the hologram.” He tapped furiously at his handlink, cigar clenched between his teeth.

“Shut down the hologram?” Sam repeated, half for the benefit of those unable to hear Al’s words. “That may have been the worst possible time she could have done that. Why?!”

“I don’t know, Sam!” Al snapped. “She says it was some kind of safety protocol that you programmed in the day you…”

“The day I what?”

“The day you first leaped, Sam.”

Sam’s brows knitted. “What? Why would I—”

“I do hate to break up the transtemporal conference call,” the Doctor cut in, “but we have a bit of a situation at hand. We need to get somewhere a teeny bit safer than here, because those angels are going to be hungry, and a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord and a man who’s been through the Vortex in a quantum energy state multiple times are probably going to look like an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

Jeez, he really is nine hundred…?

“So those statues…”

“Weren’t statues—keep up,” said the Doctor, brushing glue from his coat. “I’ll explain once we get somewhere safer. Now come on; keep your eyes peeled, and if you see one, tell me, and don’t under any circumstances look away. And don’t blink.”

“What statues, Sam?” Al asked. “What’d I miss?”

The Doctor ran a hand through his wild hair. “We need to go somewhere there aren’t a lot of statues; make it easier to pick them out. But also somewhere indoors, where I can secure the entrances and exits. Ohhhh, why don’t I have my TARDIS, it’d be so much less bother…”

“I have—I mean, Charlie has—an apartment in South Tottenham,” Sam offered.

“South…” the Doctor looked at him with his face screwed up. “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever wanted to go to South Tottenham before. Always a first, though. Does anyone have a taxi fare?”

Sam pulled the pay packet from his pocket. “Yeah, I guess I do. But who’s going to stop for three people covered in wallpaper glue?”

“Oh for God’s sake,” said Martha, “can’t we just take the tube?”

And so, three glue-covered time travellers and one well-dressed hologram stepped onto a London train, checking every few minutes that their hands weren’t stuck to the railing they held.

*        *        *

“Well, here it is,” Sam announced, opening the creaking door upon the attic with a flourish of his hands. “I’d, er, tell you to wipe your feet, but there’s no doormat.”

The Doctor skipped up the staircase. “Well, it’s small, but it’s open. That’s a plus. No corners for anything to jump out from.” He ran his sonic screwdriver over seemingly every surface.

“In what sense is that thing a screwdriver anyway?” asked Sam, watching him studying his readings.

“Well, I did just tighten about twelve screws in your frame. It won’t keep out a determined angel, but at least you’ll have about forty percent fewer frightening noises in the middle of the night.”

“Uh, thanks.”

“Can I use your shower?” asked Martha.

Sam looked at her funny. “Of course. We’re all gonna need one.”

The Doctor nodded. “We’re safest in a group, though, so be snappy.”

Martha nodded, and closed the door of the small bathroom, leaving Sam and the Doctor in the main studio. Sam opened his mouth to speak, and hesitated as the Imaging Chamber door opened up.

“Have you figured out what that safety protocol is for? Why it made the hologram shut down?”

Al shook his head.

“Safety protocol…” the Doctor muttered, brow furrowed.

“Ziggy’s clammed up again. I don’t know what the deal is with her this leap, Sam. All I got was the comment at the top of the subroutine.”

“Comment? Something I wrote?”

Al looked, confused at the handlink. “I doubt it, Sam.”

“Well, what does it say?”

“‘Hello sweetie’…”

Sam stared at Al in utter bafflement. “Hello sweetie?”

“Good evening, darling,” the Doctor interjected, looking just as confused. “Alright, I have a few things to explain about this situation, if you’re done interfacing with your chum there. It’s vitally important.”

Sam sent Al an apologetic glance, and turned his attention to the Doctor, whose attention had suddenly turned to the film setup in the apartment.

“Oh, so this must be where…” he said to himself, before shaking his head a moment, and returning his eyes to Sam. “Look, those things out there, they are unimaginably dangerous, and we’re a couple of sitting ducks. But with any luck, they’ll be drawn to the pair of us and leave the rest of London be. Blimey, I hope that’s the case.”

“What are they?”

“They’re called Weeping Angels. They’re the reason Martha and I are in 1969 without my time machine, you see. And it must be the reason that boy you’re wearing got here, too, if I heard you right earlier.”

A weak-kneed Sam pulled a chair under himself. “They’re time travellers too…?”

“Not themselves. But they lay a stone cold finger on you, and you get hurled back in time. That’s how they feed. But they can’t move as long as they’re being observed. They’re—”

“Quantum locked?” Sam said, his head swimming.

“Very good!” the Doctor said, grinning. “I should have known you’d be quick on the uptake. When observed, they are stone. But if you look away, they can move faster than the rotation speed of Jupiter.”

“Twenty-eight thousand miles an hour?” Sam blurted.

“Ah, you know your planet speeds, I see. Well, now that you mention it, that might be an exaggeration, but believe me—they’re fast. Just a blink is enough to be at their mercy.”

“So we can just point a camera at it or something, right?” Sam said, gesturing to the Super 8 camera on the tripod.

“Oh, I like that—but no. They might be stone while observed, but they can emit an electromagnetic field that will interfere with such things, I’m afraid.”

“If Ziggy hadn’t shut down the hologram…” Al grumbled, “we might not even be in this mess.”

Sam frowned. He was probably right—but that safety protocol… why would he have set something like that up? And safety against what, exactly? He wished he could remember anything about that day he leaped.

The Doctor paced the attic, hand cradling his chin. “I only saw them from a distance—did you get a solid look at them, Sam?”

Sam nodded. “Up close and personal.” He shivered.

“What condition were they in?”

“They were pretty damaged. One was missing a wing, the other was missing an arm. They looked ancient.”

“That’s good—well, not good, because they will want to feed as soon as possible, but it also means they’re weak. Slower than your average angel, which frankly doesn’t help us a whole lot, but…” He snapped his fingers. “Oh! the one-winged angel—not Sephiroth, but the one you saw—that one’ll be more vulnerable. Won’t be able to attack from above, you see. And the one-armed one will have more trouble striking and hiding its eyes—and Martha’s been in there a while, hasn’t she?”

Sam blinked at the sudden direction change of the conversation. “Al, can you check—”

Al wasn’t there.

“Al…?”

“Safety protocol…” the Doctor said quietly, wide eyes meeting Sam’s. “Of course! If he disappears, that means they’re close!” He beamed. “Oh, but that’s brilliant! We have a system of detection!”

“Doctor…” Sam said, “doesn’t that mean the fact he’s gone now—”

The two men’s eyes shot to the bathroom door, and they bolted for it.

“Remember not to blink!” the Doctor cried as the two of them pulled open the door.

Martha looked up from towelling her hair. “What?”

“Oh thank God,” Sam said, leaning against the wall with a relieved sigh.

“I was ten minutes,” Martha said, giving the two a curious look. “Who’s next?”

“Al’s still—” Sam started, before realising Al was just behind the bathroom door. “Al! Get out of there—I can’t believe you!”

“What?” Al said, strolling out of the room, “she’s clothed! I was just keeping an eye on her, since the two of you seemed pretty wrapped up in your angel talk.”

Sam wasn’t so sure of that story, but he was too relieved to continue pushing the issue.

“Okay—Al, please stay in my sight for the time being, would you? The Doctor thinks you can act as a detection system.”

“That means I gotta stay in the Imaging Chamber all night, doesn’t it?”

“Sorry, Al. I know you probably have some rendezvous with Tina, or Brenda, or—”

“Brenda? I haven’t slept with Brenda in years.”

“Well, whoever it is this time, send them my apologies.”

“You know what this means though, Sam…” Al said, giving him a nervous look.

“What?”

“If I can’t leave your line of sight, and you need to shower…”

Sam rubbed his forehead. “Just get in the bathroom.”

Chapter 8

Ways of Seeing

“You can turn around now,” Sam said, tightening the drawstring on Charlie’s shorts and picking up a comb from the vanity to run through his wet hair. The young face that stared back at him in the mirror—barely growing a few whiskers of facial hair—made him pause a moment, and it occurred to him just how out of his element this kid must have been, having been born twenty-one years after 1969.

Al, who had been facing the door during Sam’s shower, dared a glance back.

“See? I didn’t peek once,” he declared, “and I would have done the same for Martha if she hadn’t already been covered up. Honest!”

“Sure thing, buddy,” Sam said doubtfully, checking his hair one last time and heading out of the bathroom.

As he re-entered the studio, he saw that the Doctor was in the process of emptying out the pockets of his coat. The small dining table was piled with objects: the sonic screwdriver, the device he’d used to track Al, a ball of yarn, a small wind-up mouse, a bar of soap, a piece of chalk, a bowling pin, the file of papers Sam had seen on the first encounter he’d had, and a variety of other random items.

“Dare I even ask how he keeps so much in that coat?” Sam asked Martha quietly.

“Best not,” she replied with a knowing grin.

The Doctor reached down elbow-deep into one final pocket, pulling out a single orange-coloured fruit.

“Look at that, my lucky satsuma,” he said, turning it in his hand, “I didn’t even know I kept this. And I even had the foresight to suspend it in time so it didn’t rot.” He tossed it on the pile on the table. “Well, now I can give this old coat a good wash.”

He balled up the glue-blemished coat and shoved it under his arm as he headed for the bathroom.

Sam took a seat beside Martha on the beaten-up sofa that faced a similarly beaten-up television. Al sat himself on a slightly less tangible seat in the Imaging Chamber, which left him looking like he was sitting in thin air beside the TV.

“So…” said Sam, eyeing Martha, “I told you what I was doing at that old estate, but… why were the two of you there putting up wallpaper?”

Martha slapped her hands down on her lap. “We had to leave a message to the future,” she said, standing up. She crossed to the table, and pulled the file, waving it. “See this? We were given this in 2008, and it’s basically everything we need to know to get back the Doctor’s time machine.”

“2008?” Sam stared at the file with surprise.

“See, the 2007 half of things has technically already happened, so we just need to fill in the parts that will ensure nothing gets changed about that.”

“How can 2007 have already—?” Sam asked, but cut himself off when he realised that it was no different to Al knowing what had already happened in any given leap, though usually Sam’s mission was to change it rather than fulfil it. “You know what, I think I get it.”

“Oh, good,” Martha said with a grin, “that makes one of us. I’m still sorting it out up here.” She tapped her temple. “So anyway, it says in here that a woman named Sally Sparrow found a message underneath wallpaper in that room in 2007, specifically addressed to her. So we just had to create that message before covering it up.”

Sam was silent for a moment as he mulled this over. He glanced at Al. “Didn’t we do something like that once? Mailing a letter? I can’t recall why.”

Al shifted in his seat, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “Maybe. I don’t remember.”

“At any rate,” Martha continued, “we’re stuck here for a bit, and now we have more angels to contend with.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how we’re expected to stop these things, truth be told.”

“Now now, Martha,” the Doctor said, emerging from the bathroom, soaking head-to-toe in his pinstripe suit—evidently, he’d showered fully clothed— “I’ll think of something, I promise.”

He didn’t look as sure of that as he sounded.

Dripping, he crossed to the sofa, and crouched in front of Sam. “Do you mind if I borrow your brainwaves, Sam?”

“Borrow my—?” Sam screwed up his face.

The Doctor reached out his hands, hovering them over Sam’s temples. “I’d like to see your friend. Promise it won’t hurt.”

Sam shrunk from him. “What are you going to do?”

“Just have a quick looksee into your head. Just surface-level. You can keep your secrets, though I doubt there’s anything juicier than what I know in there.”

“Sam…” Al said warningly.

Sam sighed. “Do what you’ve gotta do.”

The Doctor grinned, and Sam felt the fingers touch his head. His eyes closed involuntarily and the peculiar sensation of hands reaching into his brain overcame him. They poked and prodded at him from all angles, and Sam found each probe threw up long forgotten memories at random, none of which had context or made much sense to him. And at the same time, he began to feel very, very small. Like an insignificant speck of dust in the ever expanding limits of the universe. The sheer vastness of the cosmos seemed to bleed through those probing hands into his mind, and it was both wonderful and terrifying.

And then it stopped, as the fingers pulled away.

“Phwoar, that brain of yours is a bit odd,” the Doctor said, tilting his head. “There are so many holes, I’m surprised you remember your own name.”

Sam blinked a few times, recovering from the intense experience. “I, uh, did forget that one time,” he admitted.

“Well, I got what I intended, anyway,” the Doctor declared. “Just need to…”

He stood up, and began slapping himself repeatedly on the forehead, and after about twenty seconds of that, he gave his head a violent shake, and turned his attention to Al.

“Ah, there you are. ’Ello! Al, was it?” he said in a chipper tone. “Nice suit. Reminds me of some of my louder choices of outfit in lives past. Very retro chic.”

Al frowned, and Sam could tell he felt exposed. “Uh, what’s up, Doc?” the hologram reluctantly said, before sending Sam a look of disapproval.

The Doctor looked to Sam, smiling. “Oh, I like Al. Not short for Alonzo, I assume…?”

Sam gave him a puzzled look, and shook his head.

“Of course not…” The Doctor looked terribly disappointed about that for some reason.

“Doctor, what about me?” Martha said. “It’s a bit off-putting to see everyone having a chat with someone I can’t see or hear.”

“Martha Jones, I didn’t forget you. Come ’ere,” the Doctor held out his fingers, and Martha stood to meet them.

Sam was in awe of the absolute trust she seemed to have in the Doctor, and he watched as she closed her eyes and allowed him to feel around in her brain just as he had Sam’s. A moment later, he let go, and she opened her eyes, which flicked immediately to Al with a delighted look of surprise.

“Lovely to finally see you, Al,” she said with a mock curtsy.

Al responded with a tight nod. “How’re you doing, sweetheart?” He stuck a cigar in his mouth and lit up.

“Don’t worry, you can’t smell the smoke,” Sam reassured her when he saw the way she reacted to the sight. “And it’s no use asking him to quit, either. Believe me.”

“Duly noted,” Martha said, giving a wry smile.

“Glad we have that straightened out,” Al commented, smoke pluming from his lips. “Now, what’s your plan to deal with… whatever these angel things are?”

The attic was silent for several tense moments, as each of the four looked at one another.

Sam broke the quiet. “They can’t move as long as someone is looking… does that mean any living creature?”

“Anything with eyes to see them,” the Doctor confirmed.

This elicited a snort from Al. “Are you telling me if we just let a few flies in here, we’d be safe? They don’t blink, right? “

“It can’t be that simple…” Sam began, but the stunned look on the Doctor’s face made him trail off.

“Blimey Al, you might be on to something,” he said, half laughing. “This is why I love humans. Always coming out with strange, brilliant ideas.”

“‘Humans,’” Al repeated, shaking his head and taking a deep drag on his cigar.

Chapter 9

Time Lord of the Flies

Sam felt exposed as the three corporeal time travellers stepped out into the inky night. But, he told himself, as long as Al was visible, they weren’t in immediate danger. And Al was set starkly against the dark street with a self-illumination that marked him as an unmissable beacon to those tuned in to him.

“Alright, find yourself a dustbin and open ’er up,” said the Doctor, and paused a moment to turn to Sam with a smirk. “Or should I call them ‘trashcans’ for your benefit?”

“I’m an American, not an idiot,” Sam said with a pout.

“Right—of course, I keep forgetting there’s a difference,” the Doctor replied with a twinkle in his eye, before opening the metal lid of the bin in front of him with an almost musical shink.

Sam crossed the quiet road, and raided the bin in front of another house, pulling out a soggy trash bag. Al had followed him, and watched with disgust.

“Sorry I suggested flies,” he said, grimacing. “So much for the shower, huh?”

“Yeah…” Sam heaved the bag, aiming his nose away from it as he took it back across the road. “Al, what kind of leap is this? I’m supposed to fix things, not make them infinitely worse. What am I doing here?”

Al gestured broadly. “Wish I knew, Sam. You know Ziggy’s not playing ball—”

“And that’s another thing!” Sam groaned, reaching the kerb, where he paused, looking Al in the eye. “What is going on with her? There’s honest-to-god aliens, and Ziggy’s taking the day off? This is ridiculous, Al.”

Sam dropped the trash bag and began to pace, one hand on his forehead. “This whole day has felt like some kind of nightmare on steroids. I’m about to spread garbage all over the street, to attract flies, in order to stop time-bending alien statues from throwing me further back in time than I already am. Be honest, Al: am I going nuts?”

“You’re not going nuts, Sam. And believe me, I’ve been asking the same questions,” Al said grimly. “All Ziggy will give me now is the message: ‘awaiting timeline resolution’ over and over.”

“Oh, sounds to me like massive temporal flux due to the sticky situation we’ve got ourselves into,” the Doctor remarked, approaching Sam with his own sack of trash. “Not unusual when I’m around, I’m afraid. Future’s a bit uncertain right now. Too turbulent to nail down from moment to moment. I expect that computer of yours will be a little under the weather until we’ve contained this problem.”

He lifted his garbage bag. “Until then, let’s stink up the place until Beelzebub himself is jealous of our insect collection.” With that, he tore open the bag and started pouring out the putrid contents onto the path that led up to Charlie’s building entrance.

“God that’s disgusting,” Martha said as the fumes spread through the immediate area. “This had better work—that’s all I have to say.”

The Doctor looked into the night with a pensive sniff. “Well, if it doesn’t, we’ll have a bit of a paradox on our hands, which is never good for the fabric of spacetime. Who’d have thought the fate of the universe would rest in the eyes of a few houseflies?”

Sam drank in his words with alarm. “Are you saying that if you don’t fulfil what happens in 2007, something catastrophic will happen?”

“That’s generally how fixed points work, yes. And this one’s a doozy of a fixed point.”

“Oh boy.”

*        *        *

Al was holding a pillow and blankie when Sam returned from his second shower of the night.

“Slumber party?” Sam asked with a playful quirk of a smile.

“Yeah, a real girl’s night in, this is,” Al said drily, and shrugged. “Tina passed these in to me.”

“That was nice of her.” Sam took a seat on Charlie’s single bed, and glanced at Martha, who was already sleeping on the sofa.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was running his sonic screwdriver over the thing he called his ‘timey-wimey detector.’ He had his glasses on again, and seemed completely unaffected by the fatigue that had overtaken the rest of them, given that it was one in the morning. Must have been an alien thing, Sam decided. A thought that made his mind rebel against what had apparently become his reality now.

Sam shook his head, and laid on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Al took a place on the floor between the sofa and television, and Sam wondered if he was comfortable. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d snoozed in the Imaging Chamber, but these circumstances were a little different.

Sam’s brain, while tired, was still racing. It had really only been a day and a half since he’d arrived here, hadn’t it? And his entire world was upside down.

Sam closed his eyes, hoping he could get a wink of sleep in the middle of this unprecedented crisis.

“Oi, Sam—wake up.” The Doctor’s voice cut through the swirling clouds of Sam’s busy mind.

“I’m awake,” Sam said, eyes still shut. “What is it?”

“Well, you were snoring a second ago, so—anyway, I have a present for you.”

Sam squinted as he opened his eyes, and was startled to see that the light of morning was streaming into the single window in the attic. He really had been asleep, apparently. And standing at the foot of his bed, the Doctor was holding a jar filled with a number of flies.

“Oh. You shouldn’t have,” Sam said flatly, as he sat up and accepted the jar.

“Keep it close, alright?” the Doctor advised. “It seems our gambit was a smashing success.”

Sam was fully awake now. “What do you mean? Did you see them again?”

The Doctor trotted down the steps and thrust open the door. “See for yourself.”

Sam followed the Doctor, and his heart caught in his throat as he saw the angel statues standing motionless on the front lawn of the building, among the garbage, the stench of which had only increased under the rays of the summer sun.

“They’ve been there for the past four hours. Not exactly your standard lawn ornaments, but they’ve a certain rustic charm—if they weren’t planted in a sea of refuse.”

Sam stared at the things, hardly believing it. They were each covering their eyes, but Sam could see some flies buzzing around them, seemingly keeping them at bay.

Sam turned his eye back into the apartment to congratulate Al on a great idea, but he was no longer in sight. The reason he wasn’t there hit Sam a moment later, and he shivered.

“So what do we do now…?”

“This won’t last forever—maybe not even all day,” the Doctor admitted. “But for now, you can breathe. Think you and Martha have a job to get to. Just keep your new pets close. I’ll hold down the fort here for now. I have an idea of how to make this more permanent.” He winked, and smiled broadly. “Leave it to me.”

Sam was perplexed at the idea of just going to a job like it was nothing after the day he just had. But he couldn’t stay here—not with those things interfering with Al’s signal.

“Well, okay…”

Chapter 10

Business As Usual

Sam was silent as he sat on the crowded morning train, trying to pretend everything was fine and normal. Martha sat squeezed in beside him, holding the jar of flies. The other commuters were pointedly not looking at the jar. That seemed like a very British reaction: minding their own business.

“How are you holding up, Sam?” Martha said in a low voice. “Bit of an unusual situation for you…”

Sam snorted. “You could say that.” He studied her remarkably calm expression. “Is this just a normal Tuesday for you?”

“I mean, every day is different, but yeah. This is the usual amount of weird when the Doctor’s around.”

Sam laughed nervously and rubbed his tired eyes. “I’m pretty used to adapting to new situations, but this—this is somethin’ else.” His eyes fixed on the flies crawling around the base of the jar. “To think when I first got here, my biggest concern was working out what a shilling looked like.”

“Oh, I’ve got a cheat sheet,” Martha replied with amusement, and reached into her jacket, pulling out a folded-up piece of paper. She handed it to him, and he peered at it. It had detailed notes on pre-decimal currency, along with tracings of each coin shape.

“Oh, I see…” Sam mumbled as he studied it. “Twelve pence to a shilling… two shillings to a florin… five shillings to a crown… four crowns to a pound. Multiples of twelve… okay—got it.”

He handed it back to her.

“You should keep it,” Martha said, refusing his attempt to pass it off.

“It’s alright,” he said, “I only need to read something once. Photographic memory.”

Martha regarded him sceptically. “The Doctor said your memory was—”

“Yeah, I know. It’s… complicated.” He pushed the cheat sheet towards her again. “But trust me, I won’t need this again.”

Martha accepted the paper, nodding slowly. “You know, I may be carrying a jar of flies to ward off living statues, but I think you’re the most unusual thing I’ve encountered lately.”

Sam wasn’t sure whether or not to take that as a compliment. “What do you mean?”

Martha squinted as she thought a moment, before glancing around the train carriage to see if there was anyone paying attention to the two of them. She leaned in towards him and spoke her next words quietly.

“Well, you’re not from the far flung future, you’re not an alien, and you’re not, as far as the Doctor could tell, using alien technology. You’re just a really clever guy who’s doing something way ahead of its time. So to speak.” She smiled at him. “That’s pretty fantastic, I think.”

Sam shrugged. “Yeah, well it’d be even better if I could go home at the end of the day.”

“Well, maybe that’s what brought you to cross paths with the Doctor. Once he gets his time machine back, I know he’ll be able to get you back home.”

Sam wondered if maybe—just maybe—she was right, and this really was the ‘Big Guy’ actually throwing him a bone. Of course, he wasn’t exactly making it easy.

*        *        *

As the pair climbed their way out of the tube station, Al was waiting for them. The sight of him made the tension in Sam’s shoulders ease.

“Al, thank God…”

Al looked tired—a common thread among the three of them—and was holding a mug of coffee.

“Boy am I glad to see you two,” Al said, “I take it the flies worked?”

Sam nodded. “Like a charm. The apartment smells like a dump, but I guess it’s better than the alternative. You had a great idea.”

Sam turned toward where Martha had been a moment ago, aiming to point out the jar to Al, but she wasn’t there. Sam stopped and turned in a circle, before spotting her across the road, studying some kind of blue box stood by the kerb.

He caught up with her, and looked up at it. “Police box?” he read, and gave Martha an inquisitive look. She glanced at him with an unreadable expression.

“These things are all over the place in this era,” she said, running a hand over the box. “But only one is a time machine.” She snorted as she noticed the expression on Sam’s face. “Yes—the Doctor’s time machine looks just like one of these things. It was for… camouflage.”

Al circled the box, eyebrow raised. “A little more compact than the Accelerator, eh Sam?”

You’ve got that right… Sam gazed at the thing, wishing the genuine article was in front of him so he could find out how it worked. The thought of the data he could get from such a thing made his heart flutter.

“A time machine in a phone booth…” Sam plucked a vague memory from somewhere in his mind. “Oh! Like that movie—uh, Bill and Fred?”

“I think you mean Bill and Ted,” Al corrected.

“That’s it,” Sam confirmed, and bit back a chuckle.

“Not quite as basic as that,” said Martha, grinning. “It’s a little nicer inside than your average phone booth. I won’t say more—it’ll spoil the surprise when you get to see it.”

“Assuming I do ever see it,” Sam said quietly.

“You’ll see it.” Martha met his eye and gazed into it intensely. “It might take time, but I promise you’ll see it.”

Sam very nearly believed her.

*        *        *

The music store was moments before opening when Martha and Sam made their entrance, with Martha hiding the jar behind her back. Sam wasn’t sure how it would go over if Ralph caught a glimpse of the strange artefact. Al was tagging along behind, having promised to stay within the sight of one or both of the two for safety purposes.

The shop was filled with the music of The Rolling Stones, and Al’s foot was tapping as Sam approached the counter.

Ralph was in the process of filling the cash register for the day, and he glanced up at Sam and Martha with a hostile sneer.

“Oh, it’s the copper’s lady friend and the extortionist. Here I was hoping yesterdee had been a bad dream.”

“You’re not the only one,” Sam muttered. “Look, I understand hating me, but Martha’s innocent in all this—she didn’t ask to be a bargaining chip, and I think you’ll find her highly competent.”

“Good, then I’ll let her be the eye candy. And you, Charlie, had best go start scrubbin’ the cornices of my office. I left you a toothbrush.”

Sam glared at him a moment before making the humiliating trek to the man’s office. This was going to be a long day.

“Chin up, Sam,” Al said, following him into the room, “Long as you’re in here, maybe you can snoop around for even more blackmail material.”

Sam looked at him, wide-eyed and incredulous. “Don’t you think I’ve done enough? I’m lucky this is the worst he’s doing to me.”

“Okay, okay. But you might as well look. Maybe you’ll turn up the reason you’re here.”

Sam frowned. “Well, you might have a point there. You’ll need to keep a lookout, though.”

“About that…”

“What?”

“Well, when the Imaging Chamber was down, I had a talk with Gooshie, and I think it might be best if he takes shifts in here. I can’t be here twenty-four seven, you know. I need to eat. And shower. And have… you know…recreation time.”

“Gooshie… oh.” Sam frowned. “Have you solved the issues since last time? I can’t have him flickering in and out and thinking those things have come back when it’s just a bad connection.”

“Well, I’d ask Ziggy, but she’s incommunicado.”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “Terrific. What else can go wrong?”

“Don’t say that, Sam,” Al admonished. “You’re practically inviting bad things to happen when you say that!”

“I don’t think bad things wait for a specific series of words before they decide to happen, Al.”

“And I bet you step on cracks and don’t even think for a second about your poor mother’s back—don’t you?”

Sam took up the toothbrush, giving Al a deadpan expression before facing the wall. “Go bother Martha for a while, would you?”

“Alright, but I bet you’ll be missing me when Gooshie’s talking your ear off about software integration.”

“I like talking about software integration. Especially with Gooshie.” Sam couldn’t actually recall such conversations; he just wanted to prod Al.

“Well, fine then. Great.”

“Great. Can’t wait to see my good friend Gooshie.”

In Sam’s periphery, he caught Al giving an obscene gesture as he left the room, and Sam chuckled quietly to himself.

Chapter 11

Shift Change

“…And so, with the new short-form commands, I improved the efficiency of Ziggy’s data-gathering processes by six percent,” Gooshie explained through his fuzzy audio.

“That’s great, Goosh,” Sam said, working the toothbrush against the cornice. Al had been right—this wasn’t the most fascinating of conversations in the world. “She’s still unresponsive now though, right?”

Gooshie nervously dabbed at his forehead with a handkerchief. “Y-yes,” he confessed, “but I still carved out adequate processing resources to keep the Imaging Chamber usable.”

“And that safety protocol, obviously…” Sam muttered.

“Yes, the safety protocol is still operational. It’s counted as one of Ziggy’s essential processes.”

Sam looked up at Gooshie, questioning. “Have you always known about it?”

“The ‘Sweetie’ protocol? Well, sure. I first noticed it when we were setting up the Imaging Chamber for first use way back, just after you went in the Accelerator. Never understood what it was for, until it activated yesterday. Well, I still don’t understand, but now at least I know it’s there for some purpose.”

“And you’re sure I put it in there?”

Gooshie scratched his nose. “Well, I don’t know who else could have. It was under your credentials. I’m sure you just swiss-cheesed the memory, Doctor Beckett.”

“Well, that’s the most likely explanation…”

Still, Sam couldn’t help wondering about it. He decided to shift gears for now, however. “I suppose Al briefed you about my situation… in full?”

Gooshie’s eyes went wide. “Well—he did, but—I’m not sure I quite grasped what he was trying to tell me.”

Sam laughed joylessly. “It’s not easy to explain, I’ll tell you that much. You remember that time I saw the UFO?”

Gooshie nodded.

“Well, let’s just say I’ve had a few closer encounters this leap. And it’s all been a little weird.”

Gooshie’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets, and his cheeks flushed red. “Don’t tell me you got probed?”

Sam glared at him. “Gooshie—! My God, does everyone at the Project have such dirty minds?” Sam paused for a moment, and felt his own cheeks warming. “In a manner of speaking, maybe I technically got… ‘probed.’ But not that way, okay? Now you just take that mental image and put it away!”

“Yes, sir…” Gooshie’s eyes were looking anywhere but at Sam.

Okay, maybe I miss Al after all.

There was a light tap at the office door as Sam was finishing up. It opened a fraction, and Martha poked a head inside.

“Ralph’s gone to lunch—it’s safe to come out,” she announced, before fixing her eyes on Gooshie’s wavering, unstable image. “Who’s he?”

Gooshie stepped back as he realised she was seeing him. “Oh, um… h-hello Ma’am.”

“This is Gooshie,” Sam introduced. “He’s standing in for Al for a few hours.”

Martha nodded a greeting. “Well, hi there. I like the lab coat.”

Gooshie looked down at his plain white clothes, seemingly puzzled by her compliment. “Uh, thanks?” He leaned towards Sam. “Why can she see me?” he whispered.

“Because of the probing,” Sam said with a smirk. Gooshie stiffened, and looked at Martha with an anxious shifting on his feet. Martha just looked back with a polite smile, oblivious to the prior conversation.

The three of them moved out onto the sales floor, and Sam was greeted with Paul McCartney’s throaty voice singing ‘Get Back’. It made him homesick.

“So…” he said to Martha, “what else do you need to do to get that time machine back, exactly? Can I help?”

“You probably can,” she said brightly. “Because I saw that camera in your flat, and we just so happen to need to record a video.”

“Huh…” Sam rubbed his chin. “That’s convenient.”

Martha grinned. “It could be that you were meant to be part of this all along. In which case, maybe we needn’t be worrying so much.”

“Or maybe Charlie was meant to be a part of it,” he countered, “and I’m getting in the way. After all, I’m usually here to change history, not to make sure it happens.”

“That isn’t true on all counts, Doctor Beckett,” Gooshie piped up. “For example, do you remember inspiring Buddy Holly to write a song you already knew?”

“No, I—wait! Yeah, I do. ‘Peggy Sue’, right?”

Gooshie nodded. “Precisely! And that turned out to be the entire objective all along for that leap.”

“Huh…”

“Wait a second, you really inspired Buddy Holly to write ‘Peggy Sue’?” Martha stared at Sam, her eyes dancing. “Now that sounds like something the Doctor would do.”

Sam gave her a bashful shrug. “It was originally about a pig. I just suggested changing the subject matter.”

There had, in fact, been a number of moments Sam could recall that seemed to fulfil things Sam could already remember having happened. It was a mystery as to why sometimes that was the case. Or maybe his memories of the fact were merely retroactively altered. A bit of a chicken and egg scenario, really.

He wandered over to the A-Z album racks, and rifled through them until he found some Buddy Holly records. The first one he picked up, he returned with a private smile as soon as he saw the opening track was ‘Oh Boy’. The second one had the track he was after, and he set it on the record player.

Sam studied Martha, thinking there must be more to it than just using Charlie’s camera. “So you have to record a video—what else? The Doctor built that ‘timey-wimey’ thing for a reason other than chasing down holograms, right?”

“W-what now?” Gooshie blurted.

“Nothin’ buddy, don’t worry.”

“The angels are going to send another man here sometime soon, I think. The Doctor built that device to let him know when and where that happens.” Martha frowned, and added: “Bloody hope it’s not today.” She shook her head. “He’s got the worst luck of us all: he has to wait out the years, ’cause he has a long term job to do in order to get Sally to the right place at the right time. And because he’s part of the fixed point, deviating from that will tear the universe a new you-know-what.”

Sam glared at her. “So he’ll never get home?”

Martha gave her head a solemn shake. “He’ll end up back there by going the long way, but then he’ll die. It isn’t fair.”

Sam rubbed his forehead. “All that just to get the time machine back? Doesn’t seem worth it.”

Martha shook her head. “You don’t understand. It’s either that or let the angels have it, and if it’s in their hands, that’s a danger to us all.”

Sam hung his head. This put things into perspective; it was reminiscent of the prospect he had faced after his first leap, before he understood what would trigger the next leap. He thought he’d be stuck living as someone else the rest of his life, having to return to 1995 the long way around. Of course, it had sort of turned into that anyway in the end, hadn’t it?

Sam leaned against the wall, arms crossed. If there really was nothing he could do to change things for the better, what was the point of his intrusion at all? If he was meant to get home, why didn’t he just leap there instead of going through all this?

What was the point?

Chapter 12

Lending A Hand

That evening, as Sam and Martha were walking back to the apartment from the tube station, they heard the Doctor before they saw him.

“Oh yes!” he shouted, followed by the sound of a loud, thunderous ‘thump’, like something heavy hitting the ground.

The returning workers rounded a corner to see the Doctor in front of one of the angels, holding its detached arm aloft in triumph. He was laughing, and Sam wondered if the guy had had any sleep yet, and if the lack thereof would make the manic man even less predictable.

“Doctor!” Martha called, and he turned to meet her gaze. His face was beaming, and he took the arm and high-fived the hand as Sam approached. Sam noticed he was wearing thick gloves.

“Martha Jones and Sam Beckett, perfect timing,” said the Doctor, now using the arm to scratch his back. “You get to see me do the other one.”

“You mean to tell me we could have just taken a sledge to these things all along?” Sam asked, studying the arm stumps of the angel.

“Oh no, nothing that primitive, I’m afraid,” the Doctor said. “And I can only get through the extremities using this method—which is enough, at least, to render these old things benign for now. Just have to get them staring at one another without these arms in the way, and we’ll be right as rain. We were lucky enough to snare them before they fed, which would have made the stone too tough. I could tell it was possible at the current state of decay, otherwise the both of these wouldn’t have already had missing pieces.”

The Doctor flipped his sonic screwdriver in his hand. “Just took me a combination of the right chemical solution and the correct resonant frequency of the stone to weaken it well enough to break.”

“Chemical solution?” Sam repeated, curious. “Like an acid?”

The Doctor nodded. “Hydrofluoric to be exact. Wouldn’t have done it alone—which is where my sonic friend came into play. Watch and learn—though don’t get too close, this is nasty stuff.”

He stepped up to the one-winged angel, which still had both of its arms attached, and produced his bottle of the harmful chemical. He poured it carefully over the bicep area of the angel’s arms, before aiming his sonic screwdriver and activating it. It didn’t have the normal cicada whine; this time it was low and thrumming. Sam watched as the acid-affected stone began to tremble, and soon a crack formed around the two limbs.

“Okay—both of you, take a wrist and put all your weight into pulling it down.”

Sam and Martha grabbed at the wrists of the arms which were held up in the ‘weeping’ gesture, and began putting downward pressure on them. The Doctor worked the elbow region with his gloved hands, and after a moment, the arms tumbled to the ground with a thud.

“Molto bene!” the Doctor announced, “Now we just need to get them back where we found them.”

“And how do we do that?” asked Martha, frowning. “You got a truck in a pocket of that coat, Doctor?”

The Doctor grinned. “Would that I did, Martha. That would save us a bit of trouble. But no, we’ll need to hire one. How’s that job coming along? Made some money?”

Martha rolled her eyes. “It’s been one day, Doctor.”

“Is that a yes…?” the Doctor asked, making Sam burst out laughing.

“He really is an alien, isn’t he?” he whispered to Martha, who giggled, nodding mirthfully.

“What?” the Doctor asked, looking between the two of them. “What did I say?”

*        *        *

The attic apartment still smelled of rotting garbage, which wasn’t ideal—but somehow, the buzzing sound of flies no longer held the same ire that they once did.

Sam placed a Kodak-branded plastic bag on the dining table, and opened it up, retrieving the freshly developed film reel.

“I’d like to take a look at this,” he said to Martha. “It’s a film Charlie made before I showed up. I think there’s audio tape somewhere in the apartment to go with it.”

“Ooh, movie night, is it?” the Doctor cooed. “Got any popcorn? It’s unseemly to watch a film without popcorn.” He reached into one of his pockets and slapped on a pair of old-fashioned 3D glasses.

“Don’t think there’s popcorn, but there’s plenty of wine,” Martha said with a stifled giggle.

Sam snorted. “Help yourself, if you want it.” He opened a cabinet near the television, and pulled out a film projector. Tucked in behind it was a reel-to-reel tape recorder. “Here’s the tape…”

After a short time, the reels were set up—and synchronised, with help from the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver—and the three of them sat back to watch the footage, as Sam reassured himself that Ziggy could easily have done that too.

Martha had, in fact, opened a bottle of wine, and Sam was sipping at a glass she’d offered him. They’d both needed to relax a little, after the last couple of days playing havoc on their respective nerves.

The film began with a shaking start, out-of-focus on the chair. Charlie had enough sense to adjust the focus until the chair was semi-sharp, before he entered the frame—first his torso, then shrinking as he moved further to the chair with the acoustic guitar in hand, and took a nervous seat. He was smiling, but Sam noticed something very sad in his eyes.

“Um, hello,” Charlie said meekly, and waved at the camera, “my name’s Charlie Ward. I’m recording this message to the future, in the hopes that it will like, um, explain to my family where I went.”

He shifted in his seat, looking momentarily away from the camera, before licking his lips and continuing.

“In April 2007 me and the boys had this piss-up, right?”

The story echoed Al’s retelling, except that it contained a little more detail, which was to be expected, since the version of Charlie they were watching was not swiss-cheesed from the leaping process.

As he completed the story of his time displacement, he pulled the guitar to his lap and his eyes dropped to the neck of it, as he moved his hand into position.

“Mum and Dad—I love you. I know that’s weird for me to say ’cos we don’t talk about our feelings and whatnot. But I figure if there was any time to say it, it’s now.”

He sucked on his lower lip as he gave his guitar a strum.

“And Caitlin, I know you look up to me and everyfin, ’cos I’m your big brother. But you’re gonna have to carry the family torch from now on, yeah? Listen, I was practising this one to play on your sixteenth birthday, because I know it’s your favourite song. But I won’t make it there now, so here, let me do it now.”

He began to play his guitar with clumsy motion, a tune Sam had never heard.

“Hey there Delilah, what’s it like in New York City—” his singing was competent and better than the guitar-playing. “—I’m a thousand miles away but girl, tonight you look so pretty, yes you do…”

Sam felt his heart break as the kid poured his heart out into song.

“Hey there Delilah, don’t you worry about the distance, I’m right there if you get lonely, give this song another listen—”

Sam stood, stepping into the bathroom where he looked into the mirror through tearful eyes. He wasn’t sure if the sadness he felt was his own or Charlie’s, but boy was it potent. Through the thin door, he heard the singing continue.

“Hey there Delilah, you be good and don’t you miss me, two more years and you’ll be done with school and I’ll be making history—”

That verse seemed to hit him like a sucker punch, and he ran water to splash on his face, and brushed the tears aside to get a better look at the face.

“Charlie, I’m gonna get you home,” he told his blotchy-faced reflection. “Okay? I promise. Whatever it takes.”

Chapter 13

Leaping Angels

“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect,” the bespectacled Doctor said into the camera, his hands demonstrating the straight line, “but actually—from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint—it’s more like a big ball of… wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… stuff.”

Sam watched on curiously as the Doctor filmed his predestined side of a conversation with a woman thirty-eight years in the future, Charlie’s TV repurposed into an autoprompt with the help of the very useful sonic screwdriver.

And when the filming was completed, Sam slipped out of the apartment quietly, aiming to take a stroll outside the hologram-dampening range of the angels and have his own chat with the future—a little less roundabout than creating a video to be secreted onto DVDs (which Martha had explained were the digital successor to VHS), but just as baffling to the casual observer.

A few blocks from the unsightly view of the trash-ridden lawn, Sam took a seat on an old stone wall in front of a small church and waited for Al or Gooshie to show.

In the meantime, he looked in at the dark graveyard behind him, ancient epitaphs marking the final resting place of people centuries ago. And he wondered about his own mortality, then: he couldn’t leap in and out of such dangerous situations forever. One of these days, his luck would run out, if he didn’t get home before he could let that happen.

“Sam, what are you doing in a spooky graveyard at night?” Al’s gravelly voice cut through the quiet night.

“Waiting for ghosts to show up,” Sam retorted, just as Al stepped through the stone wall. “And here’s one now.”

“Don’t you think this is kinda dangerous, being out here on your own? And I don’t mean ghosts, or even vampires this time—though that’s not to say they’re not worrying me too.”

Sam folded his arms, looking at the hologram smugly. “The angels are back at the house, so I just came somewhere you could connect to me,” he explained. “I’d say it’s more dangerous there than here. At least here they couldn’t sneak up on me, right? I’d know as soon as you disappeared.”

“If you say so, Sam,” Al said, frowning as he stared out upon the darkness-shrouded gravestones, and squinted his eyes with suspicion. “But you know, if I was an evil angel statue, you can bet your behind I’d hide out in a quaint little English cemetery by a church. It’s the perfect camouflage if you ask me.” Al jabbed his cigar towards the more elaborate grave markers, which featured some carved stone figures.

Sam followed Al’s gaze and got a sudden shiver. Maybe he was right about this one.

“Okay, let’s walk and talk, then.” Sam stood from the wall, and began heading down the street. “So has Ziggy come out of her state of confusion?”

Al hurried to catch up. “Well, it’s funny you should say that, because she did—for about twenty minutes, that is. And you might not like what she said.”

“Oh, great. What is it?”

“The records from before, about Charlie’s bank account and investments? They’re gone. Charlie disappeared from history sometime between now and March, 1970.”

Sam stopped in his tracks. “Are you serious?”

“Think positive, Sam,” Al reassured. “That doesn’t mean he died. Maybe those angels got him… for the second time, I mean.”

“That’s no comfort!” Sam ran a hand through his hair, as a thought struck him. “Wait a second—what if that means the Doctor got him back to his time?”

“Yeah, there you go—that’s always a possibility,” Al said cheerfully.

“But I’m still here,” Sam said, rubbing his chin. “So I guess I need to make sure that only one of those possible outcomes come to pass, and it’s—”

Turning, Sam realised that Al was no longer in his line of sight, and a feeling of dread began to rise in his chest.

“Al…? Oh boy.”

*        *        *

“No no nonono!” Al bashed the handlink as the hologram in the Imaging Chamber once again flickered away, leaving him in a white void. “Gooshie!”

Gooshie’s wavering voice came through the intercom: “Admiral, it must be the safety protocol…”

“It can’t be, ’cause then that means…” Al trailed off, as the implications hit him.

And as he chewed the butt of his cigar anxiously, a solid, urgent chime came through the handlink for the first time in days. He looked at the data readout and gulped.

“Sam just… leaped?”

“That seems to be the case, Admiral,” Gooshie confirmed. “The visual feed of the Waiting Room indicates that Charlie Ward has leaped back to 1969. Perhaps Doctor Beckett completed his objective?”

“He thought that was a possibility, but… I don’t like this, Gooshie. What if it was—”

“Sir, there’s nothing we can do until Ziggy’s next lock-on.”

Al stood silent in the cavernous room for a moment, before nodding silently, and opening the door to leave.

Sam, I hope you’re okay—wherever you are now.

*        *        *

Sam was feeling severe vertigo when he found himself on solid ground again. That was not a normal leap, he was sure of it. His heart was pounding, and he felt like he’d just woken up from a nightmare.

But, instead, he seemed to be standing in a kitchen in front of a frying pan, a set of tongs in his right hand, as he breathed in the greasy aroma of bacon. In his left hand, a suddenly-very-appealing mug of coffee.

He couldn’t help but feel the last leap had been important—maybe even urgent—somehow, but now it just wasn’t coming to him. This was not unusual when it came to leaping, but boy, it really unsettled him this time and he wished he knew why.

Well, might as well finish cooking and think about it while I eat.

He raised the coffee mug to his lips.

“Dad, what about the beans?” came a voice. Sam almost choked on his coffee at the interruption, and he glanced to the doorway of the kitchen. A teenage girl was standing there, looking at him with disdain. “And the Cumberland sausage? You can’t just fry up some bacon and expect the girls to be satisfied.” She peered behind him at the kitchen counter, and frowned. “Have you even made any toast? Dad, you promised to take care of breakfast! I don’t want to do everything…”

She’s British, Sam realised, and felt his heart miss a beat. There was something important about that fact. But what?

He watched the girl raiding the fridge and pulling out a variety of breakfast items.

“R-right. Sorry… honey,” Sam managed to say, as he turned the bacon in the pan and took it temporarily off the gas burner. He put down his mug and held a hand out to his apparent daughter.

“Here, give me that stuff. You go relax. I’ll call you when it’s ready. I promise it’ll be a veritable feast. Okay?”

“Okay…” the girl gave her armful of smallgoods to Sam, her lips a straight line. “I’m trusting you to do this right, okay? I could just as easily have done this at Mum’s place.”

“You, uh… can count on me!” Sam said, giving her a salute with his tongs and favouring her with a wide smile.

Please just go, he thought, hoping somehow his thoughts would translate into action on her part.

The girl rubbed her mouth, and made a show of sighing. “Alright. Just… try and make sure it’s all ready at once so things don’t go cold.”

“You bet.”

She nodded, and turned to leave, as Sam let out a held breath, and threw himself into making the best English breakfast he knew how—though to be fair, he didn’t really know how.

And the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach was only getting worse.

Chapter 14

Boomerang

When the breakfast buffet, in all its amateur glory, was set out on the kitchen table, Sam dared poke a head out of the kitchen, and noted a living room with a bay window, filled with six girls about the same age as the girl who’d called Sam ‘Dad’, chatting away. It appeared that they may have slept the night, as they were all in nightwear. The radio was playing some tune Sam couldn’t recognise, but if he had to guess, it was something from the sixties—which turned his stomach once again.

“Breakfast is served,” he announced, and all faces turned toward him. Sam felt the uneasy sensation that he’d better move out of the way of the impending stampede, and he took the opportunity to escape the kitchen and look for the bathroom.

He took a staircase to a second floor, where a carpeted hallway promised the room he sought at its end.

But it was the photo frames hanging in the hall that made him pause. An old photo of a family of three smiled out at him—a small girl who Sam could pick out as a child version of the teen who’d admonished his cooking, and her parents.

I know that guy…

Sam dashed for the bathroom and peered into the mirror.

“Oh boy…” he said under his breath. “Hello, Ralph.”

Vague details of Sam’s last leap ebbed into his mind. This man had been his boss. A record store? Yeah, that was it. But somehow, he didn’t feel like that was the important part of the leap. But what was?

And now, what was he here to do that he couldn’t before? He guessed he’d better ask Al when he showed up. For now, he figured he had better find out a few more details about when and where he was.

He poked a head into each upstairs room—master bedroom, guest room, a closet. And finally, what was clearly Ralph’s daughter’s room, filled with pillows and overnight bags. A poster hung on the wall; a promotional shot of a band that made Sam tilt his head.

“The Dingles?” Sam was sure he’d heard of that band, and the men in the poster looked awfully familiar. But he couldn’t think of any of their music.

A girl’s laugh fluttered behind him, and he whirled around to see one of the girls from the slumber party, carrying a hair brush.

“That’s a bit outdated, innit?” she said of the poster, and moved past Sam into the room, where she opened one of the bags on the floor and begun rummaging through it.

“What do you mean, outdated?” Sam probed.

The girl shrugged. “Well it’s just—they changed their name last year.”

“They did?”

The girl looked at him with a raised eyebrow, and Sam realised that she must assume he knew all about this band—being the owner of a music store.

“I mean, of course they did,” Sam corrected himself, and squeezed his eyes shut as he turned away from the room.

You always have to put your foot in your mouth…

“Can’t wait to see them today,” the girl said cheerily. “You must be so excited to be chosen.”

Sam turned back to her cautiously. “Oh, uh, yeah. Very excited.”

Chosen?? My God, just throw me a single scrap of useful information—please!

“I hope the shop’s not too packed to see them,” the girl continued. “I have four albums for them to sign.”

Sam pieced together the evidence the girl had provided, and from what he could discern, Ralph’s store may have been hosting an autograph session today for this band, which was once—but no longer—called The Dingles.

Sam glanced down at his wrist, where a watch told him the time was now twenty past nine. Did he need to get to work? What time was the session?

Sam gave the girl a polite smile, and headed down the stairs hurriedly. The other girls were sitting around the dining table, cutlery clinking against plates. Sam snatched up the last slice of toast in the stack, and laid a couple of bacon strips across it.

“Well, I’d better get moving,” he said to Ralph’s daughter, who he sure wished he had a name for. “I’ll uh, see you there later?”

“Okay Dad,” the girl said, smiling at him for the first time. “You did a good job,” she added with a wink. “Thanks.”

Sam put an affectionate hand on her shoulder for a moment, before heading for the front door. Before leaving, he spied a set of keys in a bowl, and snatched them up.

And when he reached the driveway, he took a moment to drink in the sight of the strange three-wheeled car that awaited him there.

“Bloody hell,” Sam blurted out, and his hand shot to his mouth as he realised that phrase was a little more British than his usual fare.

*        *        *

Behind the wheel, Sam had found himself on autopilot: driving on the left side of the road, through roads he’d never seen before, to the shop in Covent Garden, and parking in the reserved parking space behind it. It was clear that there was some level of psycho-synergy happening with Ralph, and it made Sam a little nervous, knowing how much of a vindictive grump the guy was.

The record store was bustling with customers, and staff members he didn’t recognise, but Ralph’s influence told him they were weekend workers. Using this knowledge, he deduced that it must be a weekend of some sort. A deduction that was confirmed when he saw the promotional posters on the walls that advertised an autograph session for King Thunder—Aha! That’s what they changed the name to… now why do I have a weird feeling about that band?—scheduled for 2pm, Saturday the 19th of July, 1969.

Huh. Day before the… moon landing.

Sam stiffened. His last leap was just before the moon landing too, wasn’t it?

He rubbed his temples and headed for the quiet of his office—Ralph’s office. He just needed a moment to think. To remember what he’d been doing here the last time.

As he opened the door, he found a pair of gangling legs sticking out from under the desk, and he squinted in confusion.

“Uh… hello?” he said, rounding the desk to the chair side and leaning to see who was there.

Lying on his back, toothbrush in hand, was Charlie. Sam nearly fell over in surprise, but the chair caught him on the way down and he slumped into it, mouth ajar.

“Charlie…” was all he could say, as memories of seeing the young face in the mirror flooded into his mind.

“Mister Macmillan, I didn’t know you’d be in this early,” Charlie said nervously, scrambling out from under the desk. “I’ll get out of your hair, sir…”

He pulled himself to his feet and headed for the door.

“Charlie—wait a minute…” Sam said, wiping the flop sweat that was beading on his forehead. Had he ever met a former leapee before? This was surreal.

Charlie turned back to him, biting his lip. He was clearly terrified of Ralph. “Y-yes sir?”

“Are you doing okay?” he asked tentatively. Sam knew he needed to pick this kid’s brain; he just wished he remembered what information he was looking for.

“Yes sir. Fine, sir.”

Sam cradled his chin in his hands. “Uh—what I mean to say is—”

What did he mean to say?

“Mister Macmillan…?” Charlie’s feet shifted uncomfortably under Sam’s scrutiny.

“Oi, would you stand still? Yer gonna wear a hole in my floor!” Sam snapped, before shutting his mouth in surprise at the harsh words.

Dammit, Charlie doesn’t deserve this! Take a hike, Ralph!

He took a deep breath, and continued. “I’m sorry, that was mean. And you can throw away that toothbrush, I’m done with the cruel and unusual punishments.” He gestured to the bin by his desk. “Go on.”

Hesitantly, Charlie cast the toothbrush into it, and sighed with relief.

“Now, uh—” Sam scratched his head, “—do you remember anything weird happening lately? Maybe some lost time, or memories of things that make no sense…”

The look on Charlie’s face told Sam as much as Charlie’s answer might have.

“So that’s a ‘yes’…”

“Mind you…” Charlie said quietly, “it’s not the first weird thing that’s happened to me. Bloody aliens, swear to god.”

Aliens! Sam knew there had been something weird about the last leap. And he was sure it had to do with aliens. A weird guy with a coat, and a woman—Martha! Martha, who worked here at the store. She would be the key to all of this, he was sure of it.

Charlie cocked his head. “Why d’you ask, but? Did something happen to you too?”

Sam chuckled. “You could say that.” He stood from his seat, eyes on the door. “Do you know if Martha is in today?”

Charlie shrugged. “Dunno—it’s your rota, sir.”

Sam couldn’t help but feel like the kid was being evasive, but he was right—Sam just had to find the schedule and see.

“Yeah,” he mumbled, opening a drawer of the desk, before looking back up at Charlie. “Listen, go sell some records, okay?”

Charlie’s mouth curved into a smile. “Yes sir!”

The kid left the room, and Sam took a deep breath. He was beginning to wonder why Al hadn’t shown up yet.

Chapter 15

Double or Nothing?

“Hey now, settle down old girl,” the Doctor cooed, stroking the timey-wimey detector as if his comforting would do something to stop the ‘ding’ that had been ringing out every three seconds for the last ten minutes.

Martha held her head in her hands, nursing a headache borne of the incessant noise. “Are we going to go find what’s making it do that, or just keep sitting here?”

They were sitting in the sunshine of Russell Square—on the very seat Martha had first encountered Sam, and by extension Charlie.

“Maybe he’s cooking some eggs,” came the cynical voice of Billy Shipton, the former Detective Inspector sitting beside Martha.

Martha snorted at the suggestion—the Doctor had indeed asserted that his little gadget could boil an egg in thirty paces. Whether that was true or not, Martha wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

The Doctor looked up from his concentrated study of the device. “Well, sitting here is what’s making it go ‘ding’—apparently, there’s something close by, but I don’t see anything of interest. Do either of you?”

Martha exchanged a look with Billy, and stood, looking around the square. A few people walking, a dog sniffing a tree. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Then, as she was about to sit back on the park bench, she noticed something scratched into the stone where she had been sitting.

DOCTOR – SOS!
—SAM, 1952

“Was that always there…?” Martha mumbled, waving the Doctor over.

As he approached, the timey-wimey detector dinged three times in quick succession.

“Oh, Martha—good eye.” He crouched and ran a hand over the weathered inscription. “Blimey, what happened to you, Sam?”

He glanced up at Martha. “I had a sneaking suspicion something a tad unusual happened on that stroll he took. Well, when Charlie came back without him, it seemed quite likely.”

“Sorry, but what?” Billy interrupted. “Who’s Sam?”

Martha and the Doctor shared a look.

“Uh, it doesn’t matter.”

The Doctor sighed. “Well, there’s not much we can do for him now; not until we get the TARDIS back.”

Martha nodded. “I promised him he’d see it, you know. So the minute we get it back—”

“Don’t doubt it, Martha Jones. We’ll see him again.”

“See who again?” A gruff voice interjected. Martha looked up to see Ralph, a parcel of fish and chips under his arm. He was smiling at her—something she’d never witnessed before. And the timey-wimey detector was jingling like a bell.

“Um, nobody… sir,” Martha stuttered, as the Doctor peered at him curiously for a moment, before stepping towards him and taking a deep breath in.

“The faintest whiff of American…” he murmured.

Ralph began to unwrap the parcel of food. “I’m right pleased I retraced my steps now. Anyone hungry?”

“Sam, is that you in there?” the Doctor said, hands pressing against the man’s face. He pulled an eye wide open and peered in with intense scrutiny.

“I doubt the real Ralph would let you do what you’re doing right now—do you?”

“Good point.” The Doctor sheepishly withdrew his hands, and gave the stocky man a pat on the back. “Sam Beckett, it’s brilliant to see you again. Have you gone native since we last saw you?”

Ralph—or Not-Ralph—shrugged. “Yeah, I might be a little mind-melded with Ralph. It happens. But it’s me, I promise.”

Martha studied his face, and somewhere in those dark brown eyes, she saw a familiar flicker, and she just knew she was looking at Sam. She snatched a chip from his offering with a grin.

She looked down at the carving in the seat. “Have you been Ralph since ’52?” she said, gesturing to it. It didn’t make much sense if he had, but what was this SOS doing there otherwise?

“No, I only leaped here three or four hours ago.” Sam leaned down to look at the message, his eyebrows knitted. “I didn’t write that—at least, I don’t remember writing it…”

*        *        *

A heated argument could be heard coming from the Control Room at Project Quantum Leap, when Al arrived for the day. Two feminine voices—one emotional and loud, and the other cool and detached. Al knew immediately who the voices belonged to, well before he reached the room.

“Alright ladies,” he said as he entered the room, hands on hips. “That’s enough.”

“Al, could you please tell Ziggy that what she’s saying is completely impossible?” Donna Elesee-Beckett snipped, glowering with narrow eyes up at the orb that housed Ziggy’s consciousness.

“I would, but I don’t know what she’s saying,” Al said, and crossed his arms. “Mind enlightening me?”

“Admiral Calavicci,” Ziggy said, putting on more of a sultry voice than usual, “could you tell Doctor Elesee that I am merely following the data I’ve collected based on the same hard facts and measurements I have been using for near five years now?”

Al peered at the blue orb, eyebrows raised expectantly. “I’m still waiting for one of you to tell me what you’re talking about.”

Donna scoffed. “Ziggy says she can’t get a lock on Sam because supposedly, his leap signature split in two and went in separate directions in time. Which is simply not possible.”

“Doctor Elesee, it’s of no value to me how impossible you think it is; it has happened, and therefore it is, in fact, possible.” Ziggy was projecting about as much vitriol as that smooth, unflappable voice ever did. Al was amazed at how passive-aggressive the egomaniacal parallel hybrid computer could sound when she wanted to, even while keeping her cool on the surface.

“Split in two—?!” Al said, incredulous. “How could something like that happen, Zig?”

“It couldn’t,” Donna asserted.

“I suspect it may be an unexpected result of the Weeping Angel that touched Doctor Beckett,” Ziggy explained, pointedly ignoring Donna’s interjection.

“What!” Al gawked up at Ziggy. “Why didn’t you tell us that’s what happened?!”

“I just did, Admiral.”

“It’s been three months since we lost contact with Sam. Three months, and you didn’t think we should know that before now?”

“I didn’t know myself, Admiral. It is simply a hypothesis I’ve made based on the available data.”

Al exchanged a look with Donna, who put a palm to her forehead and shook her head.

“So how exactly would this angel have split Sam into two different times?” Al persisted.

“I have no conclusive data about that, Admiral,” Ziggy admitted. “But I suspect the Doctor will be able to figure it out. I recommend asking him.”

“But if we can’t get a lock on Sam, I can’t do squat,” Al said, throwing up his hands in frustration.

“I never said it would be easy.”

Sometimes Ziggy was the least helpful computer in the world, despite being the most advanced.

“I can’t deal with this right now,” Donna announced with a groan, and turned on her heel to leave.

Al frowned up at Ziggy. “We have one guy in the Waiting Room right now, not two. So even if—somehow, there are two Sams—can’t you lock onto that Sam? The one in Ralph?”

“Admiral, allow me to… simplify this. For your limited human mind,” Ziggy sniffed. “My ability to locate Doctor Beckett and lock on is reliant on his specific mesons and neurons.”

“I damned well know that already!” Al snapped.

“Do let me finish, Admiral Calavicci,” Ziggy chided. “Those mesons and neurons are currently being shared between two separate times in history simultaneously. It is not possible to isolate one set.”

Al let out a huff. “Dammit.”

“However—”

“However what?”

“I will do a macro-chronometric trace on the brainwaves that leaped further back in the timeline. It may be possible that this counterpart survived to 1969, and thus I will be able to synchronise both and allow contact.”

Al sighed with relief. “Okay, great. And how long will that take?”

“In the case that I am successful in the trace, I estimate anywhere from one hour to four hundred days,” Ziggy replied. “Though there is an eighty-two point three percent probability that it will take fewer than thirty hours.”

Al sighed. “Well then, you’d better start now.”

Chapter 16

Trapped In The Past

Sam studied the inscribed message silently, mouth full of salted chips. He traced the lettering with his fingers.

“It’s a bit rough-hewn to tell if it’s my handwriting,” he said, “but if it wasn’t me, it’s kind of a coincidence that this specific message just so happened to be on this specific seat, innit?” He smirked, looking back at Martha and the Doctor. “Jeez it’s weird hearing myself talk like this.”

“Frankly it’d be weird if you didn’t, looking like that,” Martha countered, before glancing at the Doctor, questioning. “How do you suppose that message came to be?”

“Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey,” the Doctor said with a broad shrug. “I expect we might find out soon enough.” He turned his eye to Sam. “But what I’d like to know is exactly what happened to you on Tuesday night?”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t remember. In fact I’m patchy on everything that happened before—that’s why I was out here retracing my steps.”

The Doctor studied him a moment, before pulling a stethoscope from his pocket. He clamped it on his ears and placed the chestpiece on Sam’s forehead, to his confusion. “Tell me, does that happen every time you leap?”

“Usually, yes. Though, on the rare times I return to the same time and place, I tend to retain a bit more than this. It was a rougher landing than I’m used to, I can tell you that much.”

The Doctor moved the chestpiece to Sam’s temple.

“As a doctor,” Sam said, raising an eyebrow, “I should tell you that this part typically goes on the torso.” He took hold of the bell and moved it downward. The Doctor snatched it away from his hand.

“As The Doctor,” the Doctor asserted, moving the chestpiece up to Sam’s other temple, “I should tell you that your brain seems to have a few neurons temporally displaced. Highly unusual for a human.”

He dropped the stethoscope to his neck. “Whatever it was that happened the other night, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it was a smidge out of the ordinary, even for you.”

“Is anything ordinary with what’s happening right now?” said the man in the black leather jacket who had been observing silently until this moment.

“Oh!” the Doctor exclaimed sharply. “I can be rude, can’t I? I never introduced you. Sam, this is D.I. Billy Shipton, brand new arrival from 2007. Billy, this is Sam. He’s from 1999 and came here by way of quantum energy state, which is frankly a remarkable method of time travel without a capsule that I wouldn’t have thought of—none of the nausea, but the memory loss seems a bit dire. Don’t get attached to the face; it’s liable to change any time. In fact, same goes for mine. Dust in the wind, the pair of us.”

Did I tell him all this before, or did he just figure it out? And what was that about his face?

Sam shot the Doctor a puzzled look, before extending a hand of greeting to Billy. “Billy is it?”

“Uh, yeah. No sense calling me a D.I. any more, eh? Nobody’s going to accept my badge here. Nice to meet you, Sam.” Billy took his hand and shook firmly, but his face was skewed, and his eyes were lingering on the Doctor. “Are you as mental as him, or can I expect to understand a word you say?”

“I’m not sure I even understand some of the words I’ve been saying today, but you might have a better time of it,” Sam said with a chuckle. As a memory floated into range of his perception, he furrowed his brow. “Wait, are you the unlucky sod who has to stay behind?”

Billy side-eyed the Doctor for a beat, before nodding. “He assures me if I don’t do this, the universe will explode or something. But to be honest with you, I’m still digesting the part about the evil statues.”

Sam took a step back in alarm. “Oh my God, the angels! I can’t believe I forgot about those things!” He grabbed the arm of the Doctor. “What happened to them?”

The Doctor shrugged. “I put them back on the roof where they were before… with three less arms, of course. Easy peasy!”

Sam paused a moment, breathing unevenly. He had a horrible inkling that those two weren’t the only ones, though he couldn’t pinpoint why he felt that way.

“How many are there in 2007?” he asked quietly.

“Four,” the Doctor said, “but I only found two at that old house. The others must have come later.”

“From where? And when?”

The Doctor’s brow hung heavy over his eyes. “Why? Did you see another one, Sam?”

Sam pulled at his hair, unfocused eyes on his feet. “I can’t remember.”

“Hold still.” The Doctor held up his hands, index and middle fingers extended. “Let’s see if I can’t dredge something up. If you’re alright with it.”

Sam swallowed nervously as he realised what the Doctor was planning to do. But he nodded his consent. “Go ahead.”

And he closed his eyes as the Doctor once again ‘probed’ him.

The spine-tingling feeling of hands rifling through his mind returned, which in turn brought him right back to his time in Charlie’s shoes, filling in blanks he hadn’t even known were blanks. Suddenly he had a very clear mental image of Charlie’s attic, and the expanse of garbage spread across the lawn. Sonic screwdrivers and film projectors and wine and a song about someone named Delilah…

And the evening walk pieced itself back together, ending in—

“There was another one…” he recalled, as the fingers withdrew from his temples. “And it triggered a leap…? I don’t think that’s what it expected to happen.”

The Doctor was frowning, his eyes wide under a furrowed brow as he stared at Sam in seemingly stunned silence.

“Doctor?” Martha said, looking at him worriedly. She exchanged a look with Sam before adding, “I don’t like it when he makes this face. It’s always something terrifying.”

“I’m beginning to dislike it, too,” Sam agreed, retreating a few steps from the intense gaze. “Doctor, what is it?”

After another second, the Doctor seemed to snap out of the grave mood, and he grinned, putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“Thanks for that, Sam Beckett. Looks like we’ve another angel to catch. We have the bait, but how come Al’s not ’ere, Sam? I like Al; he’s like a little ghost friend putting on a fashion show just for us.”

Sam dropped his gaze, taking a breath. “I don’t know where he is. He’s never this late. Maybe the nonstandard leap—”

“Yes, I imagine that might have caused issues, with those neurons all over the place,” said the Doctor, fingers combing dramatically through his spiked hair. “Well, no early warning system for now, but we’ve an extra two sets of eyes if we include Charlie, so that ups our odds. Too bad all the flies died off, but I suppose it’s not hard to attract more if we just kick up a stink, so to speak. In the meantime, I suggest we go somewhere nice and busy, with lots of eyes.”

Sam chuckled, glancing at his watch, which read one o’clock. “I know just the place. You folks ever heard of King Thunder?”

*        *        *

Sam opened the staff door of the record store, which led into the back room where he now vividly recalled pricing endless records.

He could hear the muffled cacophony of voices through the door, and licked his lips as his three companions entered the room.

“The band should be pulling up in about twenty minutes,” Sam said, leaning a hip on the desk, and flattening his hand on its surface. “Until then I guess I need to—”

He paused, feeling grooves in the woodgrain beneath his fingers, and peered down at what he was positive had been a smooth desk.

“Who defaced my bleedin’ desk?” he moaned in Ralph’s voice, as he saw the graffiti scratched into the surface.

DOCTOR – HELP ME!
—SAM, 1963

“Oh. I guess it was… me?” He looked up at Martha, bewildered. “1963…”

The Doctor leaned over the scrawl, and planted his face on the desk beside it. His tongue protruded out of his mouth, and traced the letters for a moment before he lurched back suddenly.

“Ow! Splinter in my tongue!” he said, though it was inelegantly spoken, with his tongue still sticking out. He made a show of pulling out the splinter with his fingers, before his tongue retracted and he smacked his lips.

“Well it definitely tastes like it’s from 1963,” he finally concluded. “With a helping of timey-wimey stuff as an aftertaste.”

Sam really, really didn’t like the implications of these messages.

Chapter 17

Messenger

“So what exactly am I supposed to be doing here? I don’t even like King Thunder,” Billy piped up, as Sam peeked out the door at the masses that had crammed themselves into the relatively small shop. From the number of people looking through the various racks, Sam was sure it would be quite a bumper sales day. By way of Ralph, this pleased him enormously.

“What, don’t you want an autograph?” Martha asked. “They’re going to be internationally huge in a couple of years time, after they start painting their faces like clowns. Might make a mint.”

Billy mulled this over a moment, before shrugging. “Fair enough. But I haven’t got any money to buy an album or nothing.”

Sam grinned. “Just take one; I own the place. Technically.”

“I still don’t even have money yet,” Martha lamented. “Payday’s not ’til Monday.”

“Well I think your boss just might be feeling generous today,” Sam said smoothly, rocking on the balls of his feet. “Talk to me at closing.”

The corners of Martha’s lips curled upward. “I think I like the new Ralph.”

“Just don’t tell the old Ralph.”

Sam realised the Doctor had been pretty quiet for the last minute or two, which was hardly normal for him. He spotted him hunched over the desk.

“Something wrong?”

The Doctor straightened, revealing the scratching on the desk. Only now, 1963 was scratched out, and below it was written 1964, which in turn had been scratched out, and 1965 had been written beneath it.

The Doctor’s face looked pale, and he looked similar to how Sam felt as he stared down at the unnerving countdown that seemed to be occurring.

“What’s going on here…?” Sam asked nervously. “Is there… another me… that’s been living all these years in the past?”

The Doctor rubbed his forehead vigorously, taking a sharp inward breath. “Yeah. Seems that way, doesn’t it?”

“And what happens when he hits ’69? Will we see him? Uh—me?”

“I expect so.”

“Why—why do you look so worried about that?”

The Doctor sniffed, looking away. “Is that a limo I hear pulling up outside?”

Sam frowned, pulling open the door to the sales floor. “This conversation isn’t over, okay?” he warned, before closing the door.

Sam waded his way through the crowds to the front of the store, and opened the door to greet the band, who were similarly making their way through the outdoor crowd.

“Ah, Mister Macmillan,” said a man with glasses and suit, extending his hand. “Quite a turnout, this.”

The manager—Dwayne something. How do I know that? Sam took the man’s hand to shake, but what he couldn’t shake was the bad feeling he had about the man.

“Uh, yeah. Well, that’s London for you. This way please—we have a table set up.”

As he directed the manager into the store, he glanced down the street to a Soho theatre that loomed large behind the shop fronts, and he wondered nervously if it had always had that statue on its roof.

*        *        *

“Orderly single file, please!” Sam called out to the throngs of fans, in what proved to be a futile attempt to create order as the band took their seats at their table.

A plume of tobacco smoke rose from one of the band members as he took a drag on a cigarette.

Great, this place is going to stink, Sam thought bitterly.

“Oi mates, what do you call this?” another band member piped up, holding up the glass of water at his place at the table, “this don’t look like a whiskey neat to me.”

“I believe it’s this thing called ‘water’, Flash,” said the one Sam recognised the most; the one with a webbed finger (though Sam wasn’t sure how he knew that, since he hadn’t seen it). “You might’ve heard of it. It’s only ninety-five percent of the ’uman body.”

“I think that’s seventy percent, Tonic,” Flash said with a smug sneer. “So who’s a bloke have to shag to get an adult beverage ’round here, anyway?”

“Cryin’ shame, it is,” said another, rolling his eyes and glancing to another band member with a grin, “he might have to face the masses sober for the first time since he were old enough to drink.”

“Lads, he’s been on a bender since his Mum used to send ’im to bed with a baby bottle full of Guinness,” said the one on the end who hadn’t spoken yet.

The one called Tonic stood up and made for the door to the back room, looking back with a devilish smirk. “Hold the phone, I’ll go see if this establishment has our refined tastes met. Don’t want the fans to think Flash has ever been sober, now do we? He has an image to maintain.”

 Sam nervously pushed his way to meet up with him at the door.

“Uh, you don’t need to go in there. I—”

Tonic ignored him and burst into the room. Sam hurried in behind, worried about what the Doctor might be doing in there.

“No, really,” Sam protested. “There’s nothing back here.”

“Oi oi, lads,” Tonic announced to the room. Upon spotting Martha’s surprised face, he added: “—and lasses.”

The Doctor was sitting behind the desk, his feet up on the desktop. He peered up at Tonic with a raised eyebrow, as Billy stood leaning against the wall, arms folded.

Sam whipped around to Tonic’s front, holding his hands up defensively. “We don’t have any alcohol back here, Mister—uh…”

Tonic closed the door and leaned in, his voice suddenly lowering. “I’m looking for a doctor.”

Sam, Martha, and the Doctor all paused, exchanging looks.

“I’d say you’ve come to the right room for that,” the Doctor said, a curious smile tickling at his lips. “But it depends why you’re looking for one. You feeling a bit green around the gills?”

Tonic frowned. “No, I was just told there might be some sort of a doctor here. I have a message for the bloke.”

“From who?” Sam asked urgently.

“A flippin’ mental case, that’s who! Look, last night I was doing lines on my hotel balcony, yeah? Couple of young things waiting for me in bed. But suddenly there’s a bag over my head and some bloke tells me to deliver a message to a doctor. Said he might be here—or some bird named Martha. I don’t know what bollocks this is all about, but the geezer promised to come back for me if I didn’t get this message to him.”

Sam took a step back, speechless. He wasn’t sure he wanted to believe what his mind was screaming at him was likely the case.

The Doctor swung his legs to the floor and stood, mouth a straight line. “I’m the Doctor. What’s the message?”

Tonic sighed. “All he said was, ‘don’t look at the angel.’ Don’t ask me what he meant, ’cos he wouldn’t say.”

Sam grabbed him by the shoulders. “Did you see his face? What did he sound like? Did he give his name?” Sam’s mouth was very dry, and his head was swimming.

“The bloke had a bag over me head; I didn’t see him at all. He told me his face didn’t matter, it wasn’t his anyway. Dunno what that means, but it would make a good song lyric.”

“Did he give his name?”

“Um… n—wait, he said the message was from ‘Sam.’”

Sam’s eyes moved sluggishly to the Doctor as he struggled to process this mind-boggling information.

And as he was about to open his mouth to speak, the back entrance door swung open to reveal Ralph’s daughter and her group of teenage friends, who began to squeal at the sight of Tonic.

“Oh boy…” Sam muttered under the high-pitched cries, and leaned weakly against a crate near the door.

Chapter 18

See No Evil

As the teenage girls enveloped Tonic, vying for his attention, the door to the sales floor cracked open to reveal a nervous Charlie sticking a head in.

“Um, is everything okay back here?” he asked, before scanning the now-packed room with surprise. “Er—am I interrupting something?”

Sam didn’t know how much Charlie knew about any of what was happening, but he figured the Doctor would have told him a thing or two in his absence. Still, it wasn’t exactly the right moment to be going into all that. In light of that fact, he resolved to get this event over and done with before ruminating on the chilling message.

“Uh, Tonic here was just heading back to the autograph table,” he said, reaching a hand past the girls, and gripping Tonic’s arm. “Weren’t you?”

“Indeed I was,” Tonic agreed, looking a little flustered by the ambush. “But you lovely ladies can be first cabs off the rank, yeah?”

Ralph’s daughter—who Sam still hadn’t caught a name for—leaned towards Sam, grinning. “Did you bring him in here just for us?”

Sam shrugged. “Uh… sure,” he lied. Well, it wasn’t like the real reason Tonic had come in here was something that sounded more plausible.

She gave him a peck on the cheek. “This almost makes up for slashing Mum’s tyres,” she whispered, and turned to join her friends, who were shuffling out the door behind Tonic.

Sam watched them go, a little alarmed at the comment about the tyres, and he wondered just how many skeletons Ralph had in his closet.

*        *        *

As the weekend staff closed up for the evening, Sam sat in Ralph’s office, pensively sorting through the thoughts swirling around in his head.

A knock came at the door, and Martha appeared as it swung open.

“Oh, hey,” Sam said, peering up from his clasped hands.

“You alright?” she asked, tilting her head. “You look a bit worried.”

“Yeah, well there are a few things to worry about, aren’t there?” he said, before relaxing his expression and pulling a fat envelope from his desk drawer. He thrust it towards her with a smile. “Here’s your pay. I added a… little bonus in there.” He put a finger to his lips.

Martha took the envelope curiously, and looked inside.

“Are you sure?” she said when she realised that there was one hundred pounds in there, which would have been more than a month’s worth of pay.

“Ralph is—or at least, was—a drug dealer,” Sam said. “I’m sure you deserve these ill-gotten gains more than he does.”

His eyes slid past Martha and through the doorway, towards the counter, where one of the staff he didn’t know was counting money at the register. “I think Billy might need a leg up too, right? So he can have a fresh start?”

He met her eyes again. “Whatever profit this place made today, he can have. I think it’s probably going to be several hundred.”

“That’s very kind.” Martha shot him a grateful smile. “You know, when the real Ralph gets back, he might be a tad grouchy.”

“What else is new?” Sam said with a smirk—he already felt Ralph’s reluctance to do what he promised, but that was just too bad. “He’ll live.”

Martha pocketed the generous sum and turned around. “The Doctor’s waiting in the back with Billy and Charlie. He wants a word when you’re ready.” She glanced back a moment, adding: “And uh… your daughter’s also there, waiting for a lift home.”

“I uh, don’t suppose you caught her name?”

Martha giggled. “What, you don’t know it?”

Sam gave her a sheepish shake of his head. “Not a clue.”

“She introduced herself as Evelyn.”

“Evelyn,” he repeated, slapping his forehead as Ralph’s memories of the name opened up like a flower. “Lyn for short. Bloody hell, now that you’ve said it, it’s like I always knew.”

He shook his head, trying to clear away Ralph’s encroaching personality. “Well since she’s hanging around, could you bring the Doctor in here so we can talk in private? And Charlie, too. I want him to know what’s going on.”

Martha nodded. “Okay.”

A few minutes later, the Doctor, Martha, and Charlie were gathered around Ralph’s desk, with Sam sitting and looking up at them, lips pressed together.

“So, uh…” he started. “Charlie. How much do you know about—well—what’s happened in the… past week?”

Charlie looked from face to face around him, silently assessing the situation.

“It’s alright, you can tell me,” said Sam, hands fidgeting against the desk. “I know you’re from 2007, if that helps.”

“Did you tell him that?” Charlie asked accusingly of Martha.

“She didn’t,” Sam said. “You did.” He pointed a finger at Charlie.

Charlie glared at him. “I did not, sir!”

“Oh, that’s about enough beating around the bush,” the Doctor cut in, taking a seat on the desk. “This is Sam Beckett from 1999, and he was masquerading as you earlier in the week. Now he’s Ralph. There you go, ripped the plaster off for you.”

Charlie squinted at Sam. “Really?”

Sam leaned back in his chair, and threw a bulky pay envelope towards Charlie. “Here. Would Ralph give you double pay two days early?”

Charlie picked up the envelope with surprise, and grinned when he saw the amount inside. “Well, no, I don’t think he would.”

Sam spread his arms, palms open. “Well there you ’ave it.” He leaned forward again, his face more serious. “So, about this angel on the loose…”

“There’s another one?” Charlie asked with alarm. The Doctor nodded silently. He had that look on his face: the grave expression of deep concern that had spooked Martha earlier in the day.

“Doctor, what do you make of that message?” Sam asked with trepidation. “‘Don’t look at the angel?’ Isn’t that the worst thing you can do?”

“You’d think so,” said the Doctor, staring at a blank wall. He hunched over, almost looking like that sculpture—‘The Thinker’, Sam was pretty sure it was called.

“Then, how can we possibly follow that advice?”

The Doctor didn’t answer for several long moments, and when he did, he was frowning and making close eye contact with Sam.

“We can’t,” he said. “The message was for me. So I will.”

*        *        *

“Doctor, this is a bad idea,” Martha said, gripping the Time Lord by the arm. “What if it sends you back in time?”

The two of them were standing on the dark street in front of the record store. And Martha most certainly had his arm in a vice grip, didn’t she?

The Doctor gave her a gentle smile. “Oh, Martha Jones—don’t worry about me. If something happens, you just make sure all the events are in place, and the TARDIS’ll come to me whenever I end up. Then I’ll come pick you up and we’ll take a holiday on the fifth moon of Minerva IX. Its entire surface is springy, like a gigantic bouncy castle.”

Martha laughed. “That sounds fake.”

The Doctor shrugged. “Well, if you don’t want to go, I can always take Sam or Charlie.”

Martha gave him a playful slap in the midsection. “Of course I want to go. We can all go.”

“Yeah. Mark it in your schedule, after another go-round of the moon landing. That’s tomorrow night, you know. Though you might have to watch it on telly this time.” He placed his hand under her chin, tilting her face upwards so he could get a better look into her eyes. “You have a bit of a menagerie to take care of now, so go be your brilliant self.”

Martha nodded. “Alright, Doctor. I’ll keep them safe. Good luck.”

And she headed off into the night, leaving the Doctor—well, not alone. He definitely felt watched.

He peered out into the blackness, and knew something was peering back.

“I’m going inside,” he announced to the shadows. “If you intend to join me, I’ll be waiting.”

He stepped into the darkened shop, and wandered over to the record player, dropping the needle on the Jethro Tull album.

As ‘Living In The Past’ began to play, he felt a presence behind him.

“Quite an elaborate way to get my attention,” he said, closing his eyes as he turned around to face the angel.

“I guess you figured it out then,” came a mild American man’s voice. “Thanks for trusting me, Doctor.”

“Oh, Sam Beckett,” the Doctor murmured, “I’m so sorry.”

Chapter 19

Rock and Roll Over

Sam let himself into Ralph’s home, pushing the door open with his hip as he carried an armful of take-out containers into the house.

“Ready for tea?” he asked, and his face screwed up at the involuntary lingo—tea was dinner now?

Over at the sofa, Evelyn climbed to her feet. “Finally!” She hurried over and ran a finger over the three containers of Indian food he held, selecting her requested meal, sliding it out from the stack, and traipsing away to the dining room.

Sam watched her disappear with a smile, and stiffened as he heard a sound he’d been waiting for all day: the door to the Imaging Chamber. And there it was, the glowing rectangle in the centre of the living room. Al burst through, eyes wide.

“Sam!”

“Al… thank God,” Sam was relieved to see the hologram, but moreover he found himself annoyed it had taken so long. “Where were you all day?” he hissed. “I’m Ralph! Why am I Ralph?”

Al shook his head. “Oh, Sam. Do you know it’s been months since you leaped? We were afraid we’d never get a lock on your brainwaves, because—”

“—because my neurons were temporally displaced?” Sam took a seat on the sofa, placing his take-out on the coffee table. “That’s what the Doctor said… I think that somehow—”

“—You were split into two times.” Al finished his thought.

Sam looked up at Al in alarm. “What do you know about it?”

Al flailed an unlit cigar around wildly. “Ziggy had to do a—a ‘macro-chrono-something trace’ of that other you from decades in the past right up to today, so your shared neurons and mesons were in the same time. At least that’s what she told us. I have no clue what any of it means, of course.”

“Macro-chronometric trace?”

Al pointed his cigar at Sam. “Yeah, that’s it.”

Sam stared down at his containers, suddenly a bit less hungry than he had been.

“So some other version of me really did have to live as someone else all those years…” he murmured. “But it doesn’t make sense… why wouldn’t I just show up to see the Doctor instead of sending a message via rock star?”

“What…?” Al was looking at him with one eye squinted. Sam looked up at him, lips pursed.

“The other me left messages scratched into places he thought the Doctor would go, begging for help. And then today, this guy from King Thunder comes looking for the Doctor and delivers a message from him—I mean me!”

Both of Al’s eyes were now squinting. “You saw King Thunder?”

“Uh, yeah. They had an autograph session at the store. It’s been a long day.” Sam shrugged, not sure why Al would be hung up on that detail.

“Jeez,” Al laughed, “what are the odds?”

“Odds of what?”

“Meeting one of your ex-leapees.”

Sam furrowed his brow. “Well considering I’m Charlie’s boss now…”

“No, not Charlie. I meant—you don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what?”

“Oh, forget it,” Al said with a wave of his hand. “Listen, I think the other you is in trouble. When Ziggy tries to centre me on him, the security protocol kicks in and I can’t contact him. He must be right near one of those statues as we speak.”

Sam swallowed hard. He had a funny feeling. “The Doctor’s supposed to be meeting with the angel right now.”

“Meeting with?” Al gawked at Sam, incredulous. “What, are the killer alien statues looking to negotiate or something? ‘Meeting with!’ I knew that Doctor guy was a loony.”

Sam’s appetite was well and truly gone now, and he left the meal, heading for the door. He’d been reluctant to leave the Doctor alone with his nigh-suicidal task, but now—if the other half of him was there, he had a feeling in his gut that he needed to be, too.

As he hotfooted it to Ralph’s three-wheeled abomination, Al stared at the vehicle with a look of disgust. “Oh Sam, do you know what kind of car this is?”

Sam glanced up at him as he unlocked the door. “A glorified tricycle?” he asked as climbed into the driver’s seat, and Al lowered his projection to Sam’s eyeline, stepping into the passenger’s side.

“It’s a Reliant Regal. My second—or was it third?—wife had one of these things, imported. She loved that tin can.”

“That’s fascinating,” Sam said flatly, as he pulled out onto the street and began speeding down the road. “I assume you have an equally enthralling story to tell me about it while I’m driving to my potential doom.”

“Well now that you mention it,” Al continued, “She—my second wife, I’m sure of it—never let me drive the thing, so I was always the passenger, just like this. Oh Sam, it was the pits riding shotgun in one of these things. I felt like someday it was going to blow away in the wind and we’d end up in the land of Oz. And then one time, she took a corner too fast and the damn thing tipped over.” He gestured the tipping motion with his hands. “We both had to climb out the side, and she kicked me in the stomach with her stiletto heels on her way out. After that, I just kept letting the air out of her tyres until she decided it was some kind of a defect, and got rid of the death trap. Then, of course, we divorced about a week later anyway so it was a moot point.”

“How ’bout that…” Sam muttered through gritted teeth, not giving any indication he’d comprehended a word of it.

“Sam, you weren’t even listening to my story, were you?”

“Yeah, it’ll do that,” Sam said obliviously as he navigated the dark streets at as high a speed as he thought he could handle.

“Sam…”

“Mm-hmm… I see…”

“Jeez! Three months incommunicado and you’re not even paying attention. You know, I’m imparting a lesson here, Sam. I’m trying to tell you not to take corners too—”

At that moment, Sam turned sharply and the car lost its traction, tipping over and coming to a stop with the ear-splitting screeching of metal against pavement.

“—fast.”

Al stood halfway inside the overturned car, looking at Sam with a ‘told-you-so’ smirk. He opened his mouth, and Sam put a finger up to silence him.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

*        *        *

The Doctor sat on the counter of the record store, eyes shut and legs dangling. His other senses told him that Sam was next to him, leaning back. It seemed prudent for him not to sit on the counter himself; being stone, he was probably quite heavy.

“Bit of a predicament, this,” the Doctor said with a pensive frown.

“That’s kind of an understatement,” said Angel Sam, his voice low and tired. “Can you help me? I can’t stay like this.”

The Doctor let out a deep huff. “Can you remember how this happened?”

“I just remember that thing reaching for me, and then…” he sighed. “I don’t know exactly what happened after that, but it was like both me and the angel got pulled into the past. And I ended up… I guess I leaped into it? I don’t know how that could happen… I’m not exactly genetically similar to something made of stone, am I?”

Angel Sam paused a moment, and the Doctor heard a few pacing footsteps in front of him.

“It’s been twenty-six years, more than half of which I was stuck as a statue; unable to move, but completely conscious—do you know how rare it is for no living thing to be looking at you? London has a lot of mice, you know.”

The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver towards Sam’s voice, and waved it over him. He then turned away to view the readings. They were perfunctory at best—hardly useful for such a complex temporal event as this.

“Well, Sam,” he said finally, “I want to help you, but I can’t—not until I get my TARDIS back. My time machine, that is.”

“I see.” Angel Sam drew a deep breath. “Well, I’ve already waited this long. But there’s something else…”

At that moment, the door of the back room burst open, and the Doctor sensed all movement from Angel Sam cease. He opened his eyes—the statue was in mid-step, head bowed, with a hand on his forehead. And the Sam who looked like Ralph was staring at the two of them, mouth ajar. He was breathing heavily, and sweating as if he’d run here.

“Where’s the other me?” he asked, unblinking eyes fixing on the angel with obvious fear.

The Doctor pulled himself to his feet and hiked a thumb at the statue. “Well… turns out you’re looking at him.”

Sam was so surprised at this answer that he blinked in spite of himself.

“I don’t think he knows you were split in half, though…” The Doctor continued, and gestured as if to make introductions. “Angel Sam, meet Ralph Sam. Must be nice to have a reunion with the ol’ brain cells. Though you might be stuck separated a touch longer, I’m afraid.”

Ralph Sam was looking at the Doctor like he was a madman—not exactly a rarity, but it still hurt.

“What are you saying?” he said, tilting his head. “Are you telling me I not only split in two, but one of me leaped into a bleedin’ statue?”

“More or less, though I’ve only seen a ‘bleeding’ statue the one time, and that was several hundred light years away from here.”

The joke didn’t land with the stony-faced Sam.

The Doctor’s irreverence fell away. “I think we’d better close our eyes and let your counterpart in on this discussion, don’t you?”

Chapter 20

Meeting of the Minds

Sam’s eyes moved over the grey stone angel statue in the record store, his heart pounding. The surface of it was rough and cracked. Worn away. Not as damaged as the other two angels he’d seen before, but still weathered. It appeared otherwise like the other two, though somehow not quite as menacing, given that it looked like it was deep in thought.

“…And you’re one hundred percent sure this is…”

“Although I can’t say I’ve ever had a conversation with one of these creatures before,” the Doctor said, “I’m fairly sure they wouldn’t sound like an American human male aged thirty to fifty. It’s you, Sam—and if I’m wrong, may I be stranded in the past as punishment. Again.”

Sam peered at the angel’s face. It’s mouth was open, but not in the same snarling way as the others. It was more like it had been interrupted mid-sentence.

Me or not, maybe it really was in discussion with the Doctor.

If Al was here, he’d be able to verify that this thing was his other half. But Al couldn’t be here—not with the angel present. Could he trust the Doctor’s word? Well, he had proven himself right about everything else. Sam sent a pleading glance at the Time Lord, only to find his eyes were closed already.

Sam sighed deeply, clenched his teeth, and covered his eyes.

Immediately, he felt the energy in the room change. A loud, heavy footstep, and an outward breath. And then a voice.

“Hey, uh—what was that about being split into two?”

Sam instinctively looked up again, freezing the angel in place. It was now staring intensely in Sam’s direction, eyebrows raised inquisitively.

“That… that really is my voice, isn’t it?” Sam croaked. “You sound more like me than I do right now.”

The Doctor cleared his throat as Sam stared. “Bit rude to put him on pause like that, wouldn’t you say?”

Sam realised what he had done, and wrenched his eyes away from the statue. “Sorry…”

A sigh came from the direction of Angel Sam. “It’s okay. I’m used to it by now. I’ve been playing the world’s longest game of involuntary freeze tag.”

Sam felt eyes boring into him.

“I don’t know why, but… you have a strange smell.”

“Smell…?”

“Angels sense temporal energy to feed on,” the Doctor explained. “I didn’t know it was olfactory though, that’s a bit strange.”

“Stranger than you sniffing out my nationality?” Sam challenged.

“It’s really… pungent,” continued Angel Sam. “I could smell it from miles away. It’s pretty distracting.”

“And is it… making you hungry?” the Doctor asked cautiously.

“Probably, but I learned to ignore that feeling a long time ago.”

Sam felt a trembling, cold hand touch his shoulder. He stiffened, expecting something terrible to happen. But nothing did.

“So part of me really leaped into Ralph?” Angel Sam continued. “How could this happen?”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t know. Al says Ziggy doesn’t know either.”

He felt the hand leave his shoulder, and his statuesque counterpart was quiet for a beat.

“…You’ve seen Al?” Angel Sam’s voice was high-pitched and strained.

Sam nodded. “He was just with me—that is, until I got too close to you.” Sam felt a breeze as Angel Sam made a sudden movement, perhaps turning around—but it was difficult to tell.

“That damned safety protocol…”

Sam didn’t know what to say to this, so he defaulted to his go-to reaction to something tragic: “I’m sorry.”

Angel Sam let out a weak chuckle. “You’re terrified of me, aren’t you?”

Sam swallowed. “Well, maybe a little.”

Or maybe a lot.

“I guess I don’t blame you.” He stepped a few paces away from Sam. “I’m quite literally a monster.”

“You’re not, though,” the Doctor interjected. “By the state of you, it looks like you’ve not fed since you got zapped. Hardly monstrous of you, is it?”

Angel Sam didn’t respond, other than to let out a shaky breath.

A moment passed without comment, before Angel Sam broke the silence.

“There’s one more angel still out there, you know.”

Sam couldn’t help himself, his eyes popping open. “Another one?!” He then realised he’d done it again, and squeezed his eyes shut once more.

“Yeah—four all up, including me. I don’t know how I know, but I do.”

“Telepathic communication,” the Doctor said matter-of-factly. “It’s how they work together silently.”

“I first ‘heard’ it a few days ago. And the other two you already dealt with—they’re calling for help.”

“Well well well,” Sam heard the Doctor’s rubber-soled shoes hit the floor, followed by his hands clapping together, “looks like we have a man on the inside. A secret agent. An undercover operative. An ace up our sleeve! Speaking of which—”

Sam heard a rustling of clothing and the sound of what he assumed to be a playing card falling out onto the counter. He was no longer surprised at the prospect that the Doctor would have a literal ace up his sleeve. The coat, after all, seemed to defy the traditional laws of physics as it was.

“I… I don’t know if I’m up to infiltrating alien statue society,” Angel Sam said, his voice uncertain.

“You do it with humans all the time, don’t you? Isn’t that right, ‘Ralph’?”

Sam quirked a smile. “Daresay I’m beginning to feel like Ralph’s infiltrated me right back,” he said, “but yes, that is basically my life. Our life.”

“It’s been a long time for me,” Angel Sam muttered. “A really long time.”

“Long enough for you to have learnt the ropes of how to skulk around like the rest of them, hear how they communicate, work with their instincts,” the Doctor chirped. “You’ll make a fine undercover angel.”

Sam ran a hand through his hair. “I still don’t get it,” he muttered. “How I could leap into one of these things, I mean. Al would have told me if one showed up in the Waiting Room, for a start.”

“I’ve been trying to figure it out for years,” said Angel Sam, “but I never knew part of me was in 1969 the whole time. And it was strange to me that I seem to have acquired the biology of one of these things when my leaps don’t normally work that way. I can only think that…” He was pacing now, and Sam joined in, brushing against rough stone every few steps as he blindly walked.

“That the angel must have absorbed some of my mind, somehow?” Sam finished.

“Exactly. Meaning—”

“—Meaning it wasn’t a leap in the traditional sense—”

“—But rather, some sort of… I don’t know…”

“…Quantum fracturing event,” the Doctor finished.

The two Sams stopped in place, and turned to face the Doctor in surprise. Sam’s eyes opened, and he placed a hand up as a wall to prevent accidentally freezing his other half through peripheral vision. At some point during the conversation, the Doctor had found a hot pink eye mask somewhere in his pockets, and strapped the thing onto his face. Despite him looking kind of funny, he was not smiling.

“Fracturing event? What is that?” Angel Sam asked with alarm.

“It sounds ominous,” Sam added.

The Doctor sniffed, and felt his way to the record player, which was still playing some spirited flute-laden proto-prog rock.

“Time travel without a capsule,” he mumbled, skipping the needle across the vinyl, causing a horrific scratching noise. “Comes with a variety of drawbacks, you know. And when you accidentally cross two different methods, well—”

He slammed a fist down on the needle arm so hard that the record cracked, and the needle broke off.

“Not pretty.” He spun around. “Oh, that angel didn’t know what it was getting itself into when it touched you, Sam. It thought it was about to have a feast, but instead, it turned you back into your quantum energy state, and the unlucky beast was sucked into its own temporal rift. When the two of you were in the Time Vortex, I suspect whatever is in charge of your leaping tried to pull you back here—but didn’t get all of you. Meanwhile in 1943, an angel pops into existence, plus some entangled neurons that got pulled along, and off it goes thinking it’s Sam Beckett.”

“Wh-what are you saying?” Angel Sam stammered. “I’m not who I think I am?”

“Not at all,” the Doctor said with a smile, “You are most certainly Sam Beckett—and at the same time, you’re a very confused Weeping Angel. But you’re the nicest one I know, so that’s a plus.”

“My neurons,” Sam said, “I can get them back, can’t I? The last thing I need is Ziggy having to do a macro-chronometric trace every time I leap from now on.”

The Doctor took a beat too long to respond, to Sam’s infinite worry.

“When I get my TARDIS back, I’ll be able to do a lot more. Hold on tight ’til then, alright Sams?”

Sam couldn’t help but steal a glance at Angel Sam, who froze with the same expression of apprehension he was pretty sure he was giving.

Chapter 21

Intrusive Thoughts

Sam walked slowly around Ralph’s car, inspecting the damage the accident had caused. It was mostly superficial, but the Ralph in him was a bit upset over the dented door and substantially scraped paint.

He ran his fingers over the scratched surface, biting his lip as he wondered about the cost of repairs. If only he hadn’t given hundreds of quid away to a bunch of freeloaders he barely knew…

Oh shut up, Ralph. He slapped himself in the temple a few times. Go yell at Verbena in the Waiting Room instead of hanging around in here. She’s the one trained to deal with the likes of you.

“I’ve heard of beating yourself up, but I always assumed it was figurative,” Al said, sidling up to Sam. “Don’t knock too much loose in that head of yours.”

Sam glanced at him with a raised brow. “Just trying to shake Ralph out of there. There’s nothing helpful about the thoughts he’s providing.”

“There wouldn’t be, given what Ziggy’s turned up. But never mind that for now—what happened? Did you find the other you? I still can’t connect.”

“Sure did.” Sam climbed into the car, dropping into his seat with an exhausted sigh.

“And…?” Al asked, leaning into the passenger side.

Sam rubbed his eyes, and turned the ignition. “My neurons seem to have taken up residence inside one of the angels.”

Al was silent a moment. As Sam peeled away from the kerb, his periphery told him the hologram was staring at him with incredulity.

“Yeah, I know how that sounds. But it’s the truth. We… talked.”

Al still didn’t respond, instead choosing to bury his head in the handlink, tapping at it rapidly, eyes like saucers.

“Tell Ziggy the Doctor called it a ‘quantum fracturing event,’ which occurred when the angel’s temporal rift interacted with my leap energy. It caused a volatile de-synchronisation of my brain in the Time Vortex.”

Al had stopped tapping at the handlink, and was looking at Sam, bewildered. “What the hell does that mean?” He was completely out of his depth.

Sam glanced at him, lips tight. “The angel that touched me got thrown into the past instead of me, but it seems to have had its mind flooded with my identity and memories because of the displaced neurons that got drawn with it, but are still entangled with my brain. Until tonight, he thought he was just in the longest, strangest leap of his life.”

“Jeez. Tough break,” Al said finally.

“No kidding.” Sam carefully applied the brakes as he rounded a tight corner. “In order to fix things, I have to wait for the Doctor to get his time machine back. I don’t know when that’ll be, but from what he explained, it’s a bit like completing a leap: as soon as there’s a hundred percent probability that the proper sequence of events plays out in 2007, the machine should return to him and he’ll be free to get out of ’69.”

“So what’s stopping that?”

“Well, there’s one more angel out there,” Sam explained. “I think it needs to be put into dormancy like the others. That might be the key to finally getting it back.”

“Are you serious? Another one?”

Sam nodded grimly. “‘Angel Me’ could sense it. So he’s going to work with the Doctor to make a plan of attack on that front.”

“Okay, that frees you up, right?”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “Frees me up? For what?”

“Well, we know why you’ve leaped into Ralph now. And it might even be why you leaped into Charlie, too.”

Sam pulled into Ralph’s driveway and pulled the handbrake before locking eyes with Al. “And what reason would that be?”

“Well, on Monday morning, Ralph’s found dead in his office.”

“What!”

This leap is cursed or something. One thing after another. I guess at least Ziggy’s functioning now, which is better than nothing.

“And here’s the kicker: His ex-wife and daughter are also found dead in their home that night.”

“Oh my God. How do they die?” He climbed out of the car, keeping his eyes fixed on Al, who was looking down at the handlink.

“Police reports say it was a murder-suicide…” he looked up at Sam with a pale face. “By Ralph. He stabbed the family, went into work and ate a bullet.”

“That’s horrible!” Sam felt like throwing up—he knew Ralph wasn’t exactly a boy scout, but a murderer? “But, surely that won’t happen now—not if I’m here instead, right?”

Al phased through the car, looking at Sam with suspicion. “I know you wouldn’t do it, Sam, but weren’t you just trying to hit yourself in the head because you’re psycho-synergising with Ralph? It wouldn’t be the first time you got some… well, murderous feelings bleeding into your mind from a leapee.”

 Sam fell silent.

God, what if he’s right? What if this is another one of ‘those’ leaps?

But no—he couldn’t. He wasn’t so blended with Ralph that he could do such a thing. Right?

It was only because a bunch of his neurons were elsewhere that the void had been filled with Ralph’s, he was sure of it. But he was still himself. Wasn’t he?

“Well I certainly don’t feel murderous now, and I fully intend to keep it that way.”

“Sure thing, Sam,” Al said with a sceptical grimace. “These last couple of leaps have been going so well, I’m sure we can trust both you and your alien statue double to stay nice and pacifist for the next couple days. Boy do I wish I had some wood to knock on right now.”

“I won’t let it happen!” Sam snapped, and stormed away towards the front door. As he opened it, he gave a pointed knock on it, eyes focused on Al. “There, feel better?”

*        *        *

So it was never a leap, Angel Sam thought. If he had a stomach, he was sure it would be churning right about now.

He didn’t think he had vocal chords either, for that matter, which raised some troubling questions about how he had been talking. Probably best not to think about it, he figured.

The Doctor said I was both Sam and a ‘confused’ Weeping Angel. But I have no understanding or memory of being one. What happened to the angel’s mind, I wonder?

Meeting his ‘real’ self had been a little enervating, he had to admit, and not just because he sounded almost exactly like Ralph.

That smell—an overwhelming scent that he could only describe as some kind of unearthly mixture of rosemary and old growth rainforest—would have made his eyes water if he had tear ducts. It was a lot stronger than the Doctor’s scent, which he would describe as more of a sweet lavender mingled with cat dander and bananas. His was unique, and quite strong—but the moment Ralph Sam had entered the room, it was muted out and replaced by the much more powerful ‘leap aroma.’

That made Sam potentially irresistible to the angels.

But now that it was clear what would happen to an angel attempting to feed on him—well, it would probably benefit all parties involved if Angel Sam could figure out how to communicate with them.

And so, he and the Doctor remained in the closed record store, attempting to figure out how the telepathic communication actually worked.

And he was about to be probed again.

“Are you ready?” the Doctor asked as he ran his hands up Angel Sam’s face, eyes still covered by the mask.

“Okay, but…” he swallowed, “I don’t know what you’re gonna find in there. Be careful.”

“Me, be careful? No fun in that.”

His fingers found Sam’s temples, and they planted there, followed by that creepy feeling he hadn’t felt in twenty-six years.

With some shock, Sam found the Doctor’s mind open to his own probing, an ability he was certainly not aware he had. As soon as he took a curious look inside, he felt suddenly like he was trespassing, and retreated. But a few things came back with him—some terrifying things that made him realise the Doctor was a little less cuddly than he appeared.

And as he returned his consciousness to the mind of the angel, he saw some of his own memories that the Doctor had dug up that were similarly dark.

When the Doctor had assumed he’d never fed, it had not been entirely correct.

The Doctor pulled up his eye mask, leaving Sam’s look of shame frozen on his face.

“It’s alright,” the Doctor said with a sad smile. “We all make mistakes.”

Chapter 22

I.O.U.

The Doctor moved away from Angel Sam, and pulled down his mask once again.

“I can explain—” Sam choked out.

“You don’t have to, Sam. I saw what happened.” He felt his way back to the counter, where he pulled himself up to sit again. “But, if you want to talk about it, I’m listening.”

Sam stared at the floor. “It was an accident. I didn’t know what I was yet, and—”

“You wanted to get her attention. Just a tap on the shoulder, right?”

Sam winced as he thought about the woman. Her name was Emily, he came to find out later. She was pushing a pram with a one-year-old daughter. And in an instant, she was gone. Never knew what was behind her. The sheer panic he’d felt when it happened, followed by the feeling of ‘satisfaction’ at having fed, shook him to his core.

“I don’t even know where or when she ended up. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t even produce tears. ‘Weeping Angel’ is quite a misnomer.”

“Am I the first person you’ve told about this?” asked the Doctor.

Sam shook his head. “Her baby, Harriet. Turned out she was born blind. She couldn’t see me, so she couldn’t freeze me.” Sam chuckled bitterly. “I took that as a sign that I needed to help her. So I tried. I tried for years—to make up for what I’d done, but it became harder and harder. And when she became old enough, she decided I was an imaginary friend, since nobody else had met me, and I would never touch her.

“I left her for a while, as I learned to control the ability. I went out into the woods and practised on field mice, squirrels, deer, foxes… eventually I figured out how to touch one without anything happening. Think it took four or five years to be confident in that. And I resolved to never feed again.

“And so I went back and found Harriet again, because I had to come clean. This was about the time I left the message in the park bench.”

The Doctor nodded. “And when you told her, she was horrified, and rejected you.”

“And rightly so,” Sam added. “So I stopped talking to her. Instead I just kept watch from afar, to make sure she was alright. Occasionally I’d help her in what few ways I could, just to make her life easier.”

“Guardian Angel Sam,” the Doctor mumbled.

Sam bowed his head. “There was one last time I fed after that. And it weighs heavy on my conscience.”

The Doctor pulled his legs up to the counter-top and sat cross-legged, leaning his elbows on his knees. “You saved her, though. He was trying to force himself on her.”

“I could have just held him in place. I didn’t have to steal his life away.”

“True enough,” the Doctor mused. “It all comes down to those little split-second choices in the end, doesn’t it?” He cradled his chin in his hands. “A lifetime of regrets, triggered by tiny rash decisions.”

“Did you really wipe out your whole planet…?” Sam blurted, finally admitting to the fact he acquired some information from the Doctor’s mind.

The Doctor stiffened. “How did you—? Oh… ‘a door, once opened’…” He ran a trembling hand through his hair. “That one wasn’t a split-second decision. Oh, I thought that one through, Sam. It wasn’t a decision made lightly.”

“How do you know you’re the last one left?”

“I suppose it’s not unlike the way you know there’s another angel out there: gut feeling. Time Lords can sense other Time Lords when we get close enough. But I suppose it’s possible one or two managed to drop off the radar prior to the time lock and have been well-hidden ever since.” He shook his head. “No sense thinking about that, though. If they wanted to be found, they’d let me find them.”

“Thanks for letting me get this off my chest, Doctor.”

The Doctor smiled. “You’re more than welcome, Angel Sam. Now, back to the telepathy…”

*        *        *

Charlie’s flat was getting to be a bit crowded. Martha had been grateful that he’d allowed them to stay there even after Sam had left and he came home to see a couple of strangers in here using his film equipment, but now that Billy was here too, that made things mighty cramped in this single bed attic studio. It was quite the imposition for the poor guy—and although the Doctor had promised him a return to 2007, it was still less than ideal.

Still, it was better than sleeping on the streets, or living in an old lady’s basement under false pretenses.

“How are you two holding up?” she asked the two boys, who were sitting on the sofa watching some formal debate on the TV about whether or not the moon landing was worth it.^

Charlie looked up at her. “Well, my nerves are frayed now that I know there’s another one of those statues stalking us.”

Billy nodded. “Agreed. There’s no way I’m going back in time again! I think my rights as a black man will start dropping precipitously the further back I go.”

“I hear you,” Martha said with a cringe. “But don’t worry. The Doctor promised he’d come up with a solution. I just wish I knew what that solution was…”

Jingle jingle!

“Is that the doorbell?” Charlie asked, turning his head in alarm. “Nobody ever rings my doorbell.”

“Oh bloody hell,” Billy said, “what if it’s one of the statues?”

“A statue that rings the doorbell?” Martha asked incredulously. “Don’t be daft.”

She trotted down the small stairway to the door, and pulled it open.

It was a statue.

Martha shrieked, falling back onto the steps, and fought to keep her eyes open and trained on the creature.

The creature that seemed to have an apologetic posture, and a nervous expression on its face. Martha tilted her head. Behind her, she heard Charlie and Billy scrambling to their feet.

“Um… hello?” she said quietly. “You look… concerned.”

“Yeah, he’s a touch anxious,” the Doctor said, poking his head over the angel’s shoulder. “But don’t mind him, he’s barely had a full conversation in years. Just a bit rusty, that’s all.”

Martha raised a confused eyebrow. “Doctor, explain yourself. I think Charlie and Billy are pissing themselves behind me.”

“I hope you mean that in a figurative sense,” the Doctor muttered. “Alright, alright. Martha, this is Angel Sam. To put a long story short, Sam’s got part of his brain in here—” he knocked on the head of the statue. “—and he’s not a danger to you.”

Martha stared at the two figures in the doorway, speechless. What a terrible fate for Sam this was…

“Though, having said that…” the Doctor continued, glancing past Martha, “Charlie, I have a minor request, if you wouldn’t mind…”

*        *        *

‘Hello? Can you hear me?’

Sam’s eyes popped open as the stray words flitted through his consciousness.

Who is that…?

The light of morning was glimmering in Ralph’s bedroom window through the leaves of an oak tree in the yard. He stretched, and rubbed his eyes before checking the clock on the night stand. Quarter past seven.

“Doctor Beckett? Am I coming through clearly?”

Sam jumped as he realised he was not alone in the room. “Gooshie?”

“It’s good to see you again sir,” the cheerful programmer said. Since last time, it seemed Ziggy had improved the connection, and his holographic image was somewhat clearer, and his voice no longer distorted. Well, it had been three months, hadn’t it?

“So you’re sharing hologram duty again?”

“Ziggy thought it would be the safest option for you,” he explained. “If the Admiral was correct in saying there’s still a threat.”

Sam nodded as he donned a dressing gown and slippers; for summer, it was a chilly morning. “Okay. Well… don’t expect much acknowledgement of you when I’m with Lyn—uh, Ralph’s daughter.”

“That suits me just fine,” Gooshie said. “Just think of me as a fly on the wall.”

Sam smirked. “Could use a few of those.”

Heading into the hallway, he noticed Evelyn’s room was already vacated, and the door of the bathroom was shut. Something told him she was going to be in there for a good while, so he headed downstairs to reprise his role as breakfast cook.

When the teenager finally emerged from the shower, she followed her nose to the dining room where Sam had prepared her a serving of bacon and eggs on toast.

“You cooked again? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were bribing me,” she said suspiciously.

Sam gave her a nervous laugh. “Now why would I do that?”

Lyn raised an eyebrow. “Put in a good word with Mum. Maybe you’re hoping she’ll let you off with your unpaid maintenance?”

“Maintenance?”

“Spousal maintenance,” Gooshie piped up. “Alimony.”

“Oh, I—no, I’m just trying to be a good Dad, you know?” Sam sent a wide-eyed look to Gooshie. “How… much do I owe her?”

“I’m not sure,” Evelyn answered, “you’ll have to ask Mum. But I think it’s a lot. She’s been on the phone to solicitors, you know. And you promised you’d pay it last month and you never did.”

Meanwhile, Gooshie’s fingers danced over the handlink, which responded with a squawk. He looked up with a grimace. “Do you have… twelve hundred pounds lying around?”

Bloody hell!

“Ah, well… anyway, I’m sure we’ll work that out,” Sam said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t want more bad blood between us.”

Well, there seemed to be some motive for the terrible crime now, but was that amount of money really worth killing over?

“Well that’s a change,” Evelyn said through a mouthful. “She’ll be here to pick me up at half eight, so you can tell her then.”

Sam was about to respond when a sharp knock came from the front door. He exchanged a glance with Lyn, before heading over to open it.

“Surprise…” Martha said as he pulled the door open. She was flanked by Billy and Charlie.

“Oh? What are you doing here?” Sam said, taken off-guard. They knew Ralph’s address?

“The Doctor sent us here, because he’s taken over Charlie’s flat with…” Martha trailed off as she looked beyond Sam to Evelyn, who was peeking from the dining room with curiosity. “Uh… let’s just say he’s dealing with something that required us to vacate. Do you mind if we hang around here for the day?”

“Oh, not at all,” Sam said, stepping back from the doorway to let them in.

“Hello again,” Lyn said to the three. “I didn’t know Dad was so friendly with his staff.”

“This is an… unusual circumstance,” Martha explained. “But maybe we can all watch the moon landing together tonight, yeah?”

“Oh, Lyn’s going back home with her mother shortly,” Sam said.

“That’s too bad,” Martha said distractedly, as she laid eyes on Gooshie and smiled.

Evelyn’s eyes, on the other hand, had moved on to Charlie. “Hi again,” she said with a bashful smile.

“Hi…” Charlie quirked a smile back at her, but looked wholly uncomfortable as she closed the distance between the two, clearly aiming to flirt.

“Oi, you two! There’ll be none of that.” Ralph barked through Sam’s mouth. He was not going to have his least favourite employee and his daughter getting that close to one another. He pulled Evelyn by the arm away from the flustered Charlie, and pointed a finger of warning at her. “Not under my roof, Lyn.”

Lyn narrowed her eyes at him. “Good thing I’m only under this roof two nights a week, then.”

Sam felt anger bubbling up, but pushed back on it as he felt the eyes of everyone in the room on him.

Reel it in, Sam told himself. It’s not your anger, it’s Ralph’s. And it doesn’t control you.

He let go of her arm, and turned toward Martha. “Could I have a quick word in private?”

Chapter 23

Reaching Out

Sam led Martha away from the living room, past the dining room, into a small home office at the back of the house, furnished with a desk with a typewriter, a chair, and a filing cabinet. He shut the door and locked it with trembling fingers.

“What’s wrong?” Martha’s voice was low and worried. “Is it to do with the angel version of you? Because we’ve been introduced already.”

“No, it’s not that.” Sam took a seat on the chair, and planted his face in his hands. “Al gave me some information about the near future that’s… troubling.”

Martha bit her lip, and nodded silently, waiting for him to continue.

“Tomorrow, Ralph and his family are going to die,” he began, and took a deep breath before continuing. “By Ralph’s hands. Now, that would normally be an easy fix: I’m not Ralph, and I wouldn’t do something like that.”

“But…” Martha said cautiously, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“But, part of me is Ralph, as you clearly just saw out there with Evelyn. His personality sort of pops out sometimes against my will.”

Martha pressed her lips together, looking away from Sam. She nodded slowly. “You’re worried you might lose it?”

“I can’t trust myself to act entirely rationally…” Sam replied, balling his hand into a fist. “But I get the feeling there’s more to the fate of him and his family than some unpaid alimony. Will you help me figure this thing out? I don’t think it’s just a matter of not doing the deed. I need to find out what would drive him to do it.”

“Of course I’ll help.” There seemed no hesitation from Martha about helping out anywhere help was needed. Sam could see why the Doctor would want someone like her around. “Billy’s a detective—maybe he can help too?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Sam said, not yet meeting her eye. “But listen… if we uncover something terrible, it might spur Ralph into action…”

He opened a desk drawer, revealing a case that Sam knew contained a gun—because Ralph knew. He lifted it out, and held it up to Martha.

“First off, I need you to put this gun somewhere where I won’t find it. I suspect this is what Ralph uses to end his own life.” He thrust it towards her. “Promise me.”

Martha took the case reluctantly. “I promise, Sam,” she asserted, looking him closely in the eye.

“If I start… losing my mind,” he said haltingly, “I want you to start quizzing me on your med school knowledge. That kind of thing has been known to snap me out of it.”

“Alright…”

“I really appreciate this. Now you’d better go hide that thing, okay?”

Martha nodded. “Leave it to me,” she said with a resolute nod, and left the room. Sam took a moment to breathe, giving Martha time to disappear to wherever she was going to put the gun, and finally left the claustrophobic study, returning to the living room.

As he entered, wandering past Gooshie who was making himself scarce in the corner, he noticed Evelyn on the opposite side of the room from Charlie, arms crossed. She was glaring at the other teen with a pout on her lips.

Oh great, what did I miss?

He glanced at Charlie, who was pointedly avoiding her gaze. He exuded an awkward energy that told Sam something had happened between the two that perhaps he didn’t like.

He turned to Billy. “What happened here?”

Billy snorted. “He rejected her advances,” he said simply, looking at the two teens with amusement.

Sam looked back to Charlie, who nodded his confirmation.

“I’m just… not interested,” he said quietly.

“You a queer, or what?” Lyn snapped, her cheeks filling with red.

“Lyn!” Sam was taken off-guard by the slur, and his Ralph-borne bigotries gave way to more evolved views. “I’d say that’s none of your business, is it? Leave him alone—no means no. And don’t use that word.”

Charlie shot Sam a grateful glance.

Lyn stared at Sam, as if trying to figure out who he was and what he had done with Ralph. After a moment of this, she shook her head and sat on the sofa, continuing to give the stink eye to Charlie.

As Martha wandered in from the hall, a new knock echoed from the door, and Sam’s stomach turned as he realised it was Ralph’s ex-wife—whose name he still didn’t know.

He set his jaw, and opened the door. The woman awaiting him—a diminutive middle-aged brunette, with winged cat-eye glasses and a pair of white gloves on her hands—filled him with reflexive antipathy.

“Morning, Ralph,” she said tersely.

Sam peered back at her through narrow eyes. “Morning.” He turned around towards Lyn. “Righto, Lyn. Off you pop.”

Lyn frowned. “I thought you needed to talk to Mum about the maintenance?”

“Ralph, I don’t want to look at your ugly face any longer than you want me to,” the woman’s grating voice made Sam wince. “But, if you have something to say about what you owe me…”

Sam turned back around to face her. “You’ll get it, Paula. Right? You’ll bloody get it!” Sam fell silent, pausing to take in what had just slipped out of his mouth. Beside the fact he (apparently) now knew the woman’s name, it sure sounded a little like a veiled threat.

Damn, keep a lid on it!

He gestured to Evelyn. “Just get going. I’ll figure out the maintenance. I’ll call later.”

“If you don’t,” Paula snarled, her Yorkshire accent making Sam distinctly irritated, “you can expect to hear from my legal representation later this week.”

As he closed the door behind Evelyn, he let his forehead rest against the polished wood. Was Ralph really capable of murder? And if so, could Sam really let himself carry out such a thing? He needed that answer to be ‘no.’

‘Who’s capable of murder…?’

Sam stiffened as the unknown voice echoed in his mind.

Who said that? Hadn’t he heard something like that earlier? Or had that been Gooshie?

He felt a hand gently perch on his shoulder.

“Sam…? It’s still you, yeah?” Martha asked in a quiet, soothing tone.

“Yeah… yeah, I’m okay.” Sam nodded, recovering his composure. He turned to meet her eye. “We’d better go comb through Ralph’s finances.”

*        *        *

“How goes it, Angel Sam?” The Doctor was grinning as he rubbed Sam’s stone head. “Made any breakthroughs?”

Sam was sitting in a meditative pose on the rug between Charlie’s sofa and TV, where he had been for several hours at this point, trying to harness a telepathic ability he didn’t understand at all.

“I’ve tried so hard to reach out to the angels, but I don’t hear any reply. I don’t think they have language in the traditional sense, so I don’t even know if I’d be able to tell if they were responding.” He sighed with defeat. “The last time I had to learn to control one of these abilities, it took me years to master. How am I supposed to do this in a day?”

He shifted positions, his weight causing the floorboards to groan.

“Then again…” he peered up at the Doctor, frowning. “I do keep thinking I’m hearing the other me.”

“That seems plausible,” the Doctor said, stroking his chin. “Your ability might be taking the path of least resistance and defaulting to connecting with the mind most like yours. You might be able to use that natural connection to learn the ropes of communicating that way. Like training wheels!”

Well, it was worth a shot.

Sam chuckled. “Well, if I’m gonna start talking to him in his mind, then I hope he’s in a good mood.”

Chapter 24

Peer-To-Peer

Sam had dug up the relevant letters and documentation for all the unpaid spousal maintenance, and the papers were sitting in a pile on the desk. Billy was sifting through Ralph’s bills and mortgage, while Martha was hunched over the filing cabinet, rifling through what remained within.

“Everything’s in order here,” Billy said, slapping the file onto the desk. “He’s kept on top of the mortgage payments so far as I can tell. And he pays his utilities on time.”

“Damn,” Sam said, cradling his head, “I just can’t help but feel we’re missing something.”

“What’s this stuff?” Martha pulled a file from the cabinet and flipped it open. There were pages of undefined dates and numbers all written by hand, paired with some uppercase letters. “This is a bit mysterious.”

“Here, let me see that,” said Sam, taking it from her. Studying it, he saw a pattern to the numbers; many were negative, and they recurred multiple times with the same letters next to them. It seemed a makeshift, roughly drawn up spreadsheet.

“This looks almost like… accounting?” He snapped his fingers. “Wait, Ralph pays some of his employees off-the-books, doesn’t he? This could be where he keeps track of that. ‘His eyes only’ sort of thing.”

He moved a finger over the letters. Initials?

“Wait, ‘CW’—that’s probably Charlie. Weekly outgoing payments to him. But some of this is… income?”

Billy and Martha moved in closer to see the pages.

“Off-the-books income, in my experience…” Billy mumbled, “can often be for illegal activities.”

“Right! He was dealing drugs.” Martha chimed in.

Sam nodded. “Yeah. But we shut his racket down a week ago, right?”

As he scanned the pages further, he felt his heart sink as he made calculations in his head that led him to realise that Ralph was quite significantly in the red. “Oh, no… look at this deficit—over a thousand quid. I think Ralph owes money to someone for the dope…”

“Well that explains why he was so angry with Charlie for forcing him to give it up,” Martha said, grimacing.

“God, it was me! I caused this!” Sam said, pounding a hand on the desk. “Ralph thought he’d be able to pay the alimony with the drug money, but I cut it off, and now he owes money not only to his wife, but to his suppliers. Not exactly the kind of people you would want to tick off. And I guess he thought the only way out of it—”

‘You seem upset. Bad timing.’

That voice again. Sam looked up from the papers, mouth ajar. “Not again. Hello? Who said that?”

It almost sounded like his own thoughts, but it seemed to be coming from somewhere else.

The faces of the others in the room looked at him in confusion.

‘H-hey there. I’m glad you can hear me.’

“Hear who?”

‘Sorry, I think I’m coming through with the same voice as your inner monologue. I can see how that could be confusing for you. Let me try something else…’

An impression came to Sam: an image that he hadn’t conjured, infused with a curious feeling and some information. And suddenly he knew who was talking to him.

“H-how did you do that?”

“Who are you talking to now?” Martha asked, moving into his field of vision. “Gooshie’s not in here, is he? I can’t see him. It’s not Ralph, is it?”

“No… not Ralph.” Sam blinked a couple of times, and met her eye with bewilderment. “I think… it’s Angel Sam.”

‘Yeah. This is crazy, right? Next best thing to having a complete brain.’

“Is he using his telepathy?” Martha probed.

“I guess he must be…” Sam rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know if this is the best time, though.”

‘Why? What’s going on? No, wait—don’t tell me. I want to find out if I can see it myself.’

There was a pause in the communication, as Sam once again felt his mind being poked. He would never get used to that.

‘There’s an awful lot of Ralph in here.’

“Tell me something I don’t know,” Sam snapped.

‘Wait… murder-suicide? Oh boy.’

Sam pursed his lips as the probing feeling continued. “Can you stop rummaging around in my brain now? It’s really uncomfortable.”

‘Right. Sorry.’

Sam shook his head as the feeling subsided. “Just what I needed, another presence in my head.”

‘What do you mean, “presence?” I’m part of your own brain, aren’t I?’

“Is there a reason you’re talking to me instead of the angels?” Sam sat himself on the office chair, folding his arms. Martha watched with interest, while Billy shook his head, and slipped out of the room with a file under his arm.

‘As a matter of fact, yes. You’re my training wheels.’

“What’s that supposed to—” Sam’s words were cut off by another package of information being passed into his head, which unfolded and presented him with an understanding of what his counterpart had meant. “—oh.”

‘I think I’m getting the hang of this.’

“That’s great. Does that mean you’re ready to graduate from bothering me now? I’m kind of busy.”

‘Maybe—I might have to come back for more practice—but listen: be careful. The angels can smell you; you kind of reek. But unlike the repellent properties of Gooshie’s breath, your stench will only serve to attract them. Don’t let your guard down, okay? Last thing we need is another fracturing event.’

“Got it.” Sam licked his lips as the reality of the tense situation sunk in. “You be careful too, okay?”

‘Yeah. Well, talk later.’

And Sam’s mind was silent again.

“Well, that was a weird phone call,” Sam muttered, rubbing his temples. He smiled weakly at Martha. “Looks like there’s been some minor progress. But we need to be vigilant for now. Speaking of which, where is Gooshie?”

He leaned out of the office door, scanning the hall.

“Gooshie’s out to lunch,” came Al’s voice from behind him in the office. Sam spun around to see him standing there, cigar in hand. “Literally, not figuratively—although, sometimes…”

Sam sighed with relief. It was good to have Al back; nobody could keep his psycho-synergy in check like Al.

“Al—let me tell you what we’ve turned up here…”

*        *        *

Angel Sam took a deep breath—well, that’s what it seemed like; it was another thing he didn’t think he had the anatomy for. Maybe it was just all in his head that he was breathing. And maybe his ‘talking’ was merely an illusion as well. Some kind of manifestation of the telepathy, perhaps.

“Alright, I’m going to try the angels now,” he said to the Doctor, who was working with his sonic screwdriver on something behind him.

“Wonderful! Best of luck. If you detect any trouble, cut off contact immediately, right?”

Sam nodded. “I will.”

And he reached out with his mind, searching for the line of communication used by his fellow angels.

His telepathic tendrils spread across the city—bouncing off the incompatible minds of humans, towards the place he knew the original pair of angels had been taken; Wester Drumlins. And he managed to detect a high-pitched droning coming from the estate, that rang through his mind. He penetrated the piercing sound, and it resolved into a coherent stream of information.

‘Find us… free us…’

The message was not in words, but Sam could sense the call for help more as a feeling, followed by an instinctive knowledge of their exact location in relation to where Sam was sitting.

That was hardly helpful, though, because he already knew where they were. He needed to get a hold of the one who wasn’t stuck.

Now, how to communicate without using words? How does an animal think? How do they organise their knowledge?

He tried to think of his communiqué like a bit packet of data in a computer being sent from one IP address to another over a phone line. Reducible to ones and zeroes, that data could represent anything, not just words. He tried to re-interpret his message outside of the English language and into raw data, feelings, pictures.

He projected his warning against feeding on Sam, followed by his need to find the third angel. He closed up the package, said a silent prayer, and sent it through to the angels.

To his relief, a package was returned, and he wrenched it open.

The information contained within was overwhelming, and Sam put a hand out on the floor to keep from toppling over.

In an instant, he knew exactly where the last angel was, what it was doing and how to contact it. But there was a whole lot more information, to which Sam would rather have been ignorant.

Sam gasped and looked at the Doctor, mouth open.

“I—I think I’ve just been initiated into angel society,” he said, clutching his head.

Chapter 25

Calling In The Cavalry

“Hmm, they did drop a great big steaming pile of angel knowledge into your head, didn’t they?” the Doctor said, waving his sonic screwdriver over Angel Sam. “How do you feel after that? Still yourself?”

He turned away, releasing Sam from his stone prison. Sam lifted himself to his feet and assessed the state of his mind now that it had been flooded with volumes of unfiltered information.

He felt like Sam. He still had the knowledge and experience of being Sam. There was just a lot more stuff crammed into his brain than before—stuff that was very different to anything he’d known, so utterly removed—alien—from Sam Beckett, that it was difficult to make sense of.

“Yeah,” he said, “more or less.” He paused as it began to crystallise just why that was the case, as the new information in his mind filled in gaps. “I think the angel that I merged with was young—brand new. Without a sense of identity yet; running on instinct. So… I guess my—Sam’s—sense of self just slotted in there.” He clenched his teeth. “Those things just told me… a lot. It’s going to take me a while to sort all of this out in my head…”

The Doctor frowned, and donned his glasses—even though his eyes were closed. “How do you mean, ‘brand new?’ How do angels propagate? I assume it’s not quite the birds and bees, is it?”

Sam paused, narrowing his eyes as his mind worked overtime to assimilate the new data. “I don’t know… I haven’t found that information yet…” He looked towards the Doctor. “But the other one still out there is new, too.”

“Ooh, that might explain why it hasn’t done much yet. It’s a mere Weeping Cherub; clumsy and still finding its feet like a newborn foal. Aww, bless its little cotton socks.” The Doctor clasped his hands together against his cheek.

“Yeah, but that means I’ve really got to warn it away from the other me. It’ll just be following its nose.”

“Well, best hop to it then. Allons-y!”

*        *        *

Sam was pacing so much he thought he would run the rug under his feet threadbare.

How do I fix this? Even if he didn’t do what Ralph would have, that wouldn’t pay off the debts. And if he leaped out, that left Ralph in exactly the same situation as before.

“Sam, sit down before you have a conniption,” Al said. “We’ll figure this out. Relax a minute.”

“Sure. Relax. And meanwhile, there’s another angel bearing down on me,” Sam moaned. “Not to mention I may have incurred the wrath of some unknown narcotics suppliers, on top of the fact I may or may not be losing it. But all I need’s a nice aromatherapy bath and I’ll be good as new, right?”

Sam glared at the wide-eyed Al a moment before realising just how surly he must have sounded. “Sorry Al. I’m a little edgy right now.”

“Listen,” Martha piped up, “you’re not alone in this, yeah?” She took a hold of his shoulders and pushed him down onto the sofa. “All of us here want to help. Right guys?”

Billy nodded. “After your generosity yesterday, how could I say no?”

“I mean, you sort of got us into this mess,” Charlie added, “but then if it weren’t for you I might not have hooked up with others from my time. I’d say that’s worth paying back.”

“Thanks,” Sam said, bowing his head. “This has been hard for all of us, hasn’t it?”

Martha sat down beside him, giving his shoulders a squeeze. “Shall we brainstorm on what to do next?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Sam said with a weak smile, and looked up at the faces around him. “Okay, any ideas?”

Charlie grinned, holding up a hand. “You still have them drugs stashed somewhere? You can always find a house party and sell ’em.”

Billy glared at him. “Tell me you’re having a laugh.”

Charlie shrugged, a sheepish look on his face. “Well, it’s always an option, innit? You wanted ideas, I gave you one.”

Sam chuckled. “Let’s put that last on the list, shall we? But you raise an interesting question: what did Ralph do with his stash? Could I give it all back as a peace offering?”

“Sounds dangerous,” said Martha.

“Sounds idiotic,” Billy scoffed. “Can we think of something that doesn’t involve the streets being flooded with illegal substances? I know I’m not technically on the force any more, but the less criminal activity the better, if you don’t mind. Besides that, if I’m going to be living in this time, I don’t want to be connected to anything that could land me in trouble.”

“If you’ve got a better suggestion, we’re all ears,” Charlie said, crossing his arms smugly.

A moment of pensive silence pervaded the room.

Finally, Billy sighed, locking eyes with Sam. “Do you want me to give you back the money you gave me?”

Yes! Give it back! Sam winced at Ralph’s knee-jerk reaction. No. I will not.

“Billy, I can’t ask that of you. You need it.” Sam shook his head. “Besides, it wouldn’t be enough.”

“Pity the football don’t start up again for a few weeks,” Charlie said with a smirk, “you could easily double that lot with a bet, and we’d be on easy street.”

“Humph. If the Doctor had the TARDIS,” Martha said, “he’d be able to check the lottery results for next week and buy a ticket for you.”

Sam’s eyebrows raised as he looked at her, then turned to look at Al. “Next week’s lottery results, huh? Gee, if only we had someone in the future to tell us those numbers…”

“Ohhh no, no no no,” Al said shaking his head vigorously, and gesturing with his hands. “Remember the rules, Sam. No personal gain. We’ve been through this before.”

“Personal gain—?” Sam squinted. “This wouldn’t be personal gain! I’m not Ralph! And this would be saving three lives. Don’t you think that’s a good enough reason?”

Sam and Martha looked up at Al pleadingly.

“You and your sick puppy look,” Al moaned. “This could get us in deep doo-doo with the Committee, you know.”

Sam grinned, knowing he’d already won the debate. “Did I ever tell you how glad I am to have you as my best friend?” he said smoothly.

Al responded with a dirty look, before typing on his handlink. “Give me a minute,” he sighed.

*        *        *

‘Keep away from the strong-smelling one. Danger.’

He thought his message to the other angel was pretty clear. Images of the terrible fate that awaited it if it fed on Sam, paired with a deep sense of foreboding written into an image of Ralph and the scent that surrounded him.

But the angel wasn’t responding—certainly not like the two he’d contacted before.

Angel Sam groaned. “I don’t think it understands what I’m trying to tell it.”

The Doctor frowned, tapping his sonic screwdriver against his lips. “I suppose it wouldn’t, if it’s a newborn. Only way to keep a baby out of trouble is to pick it up before it hurts itself.”

Sam grimaced. “Then, in that case… I need to go.”

The Doctor nodded. “Seems like the prudent course of action. You go on ahead with your super speed. Watch for flies, eh? I’ll meet you at Ralph’s, assuming I can get there soon enough.”

By the time the Doctor opened his eyes, Angel Sam was already gone, leaving the front door swinging.

Chapter 26

Feeling Lucky

“What do you mean there’s no lottery?” Sam stared at Al through a haze of cigar smoke, incredulous. “How is that possible?”

Al cringed as the handlink threw out a variety of noises and flashed red. “Ziggy has nothing on lotteries in this time period. If there are any, they’re not documented. Unless you want the draft lottery for ’Nam coming in December, and I for one would rather skip that.” He looked down at the handlink, pushing a button. “But Ziggy has another suggestion: finding a gentlemen’s gambling establishment.”

Sam tilted his head. “A what?”

“You know. A casino.”

“What, and lose even more money?”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Al said, hands outstretched. “You play some poker, and I can tell you everyone’s hand—bingo bango bongo, you become damn near unstoppable, barring being dealt the world’s unluckiest hands of course. That, or you can count some cards playing blackjack. You don’t even need me for that; you’ve got the genius brain for it. Though you might need me to teach you that one.”

Sam softened his grip on the arm of the sofa. “Okay, yeah. Poker. That could work.”

“What’s the invisible guy saying?” Charlie whispered to Martha.

“There’s no lottery,” Martha relayed to the two present that were unable to perceive Al. “But he could play poker. Well, cheat at poker. But at this point, what other option have we got?”

“I mean, you want me to ring up my bookie?” Charlie offered with a grin. “I can find out what’s on—”

“You’ve got a bookie?” Billy cut in, glaring at Charlie, bewildered.

“How do you reckon I got enough money for a film camera and a flat? Begging? That is where I got the seed money, but…”

“Hopefully that won’t be necessary,” Sam said. He paused, and turned to Charlie. “And aren’t you seventeen?”

Charlie shrugged. “Nobody knows that in 1969, do they?”

Billy snorted. “Well, you look like a child, so it’s a hard sell to say you’re eighteen. Surprising you found a bookie at all.” The detective ran a hand across his face and reached into his jacket, pulling out a familiar, bloated envelope. He held it out towards Sam. “Here. Use this.”

“I can’t take your money,” Sam said, shaking his head. He produced Ralph’s wallet and pulled out twenty-five pounds, which was everything Ralph had outside of his bank account. “I’ll start with this and work my way up. I don’t want to be in debt to anybody else.”

Al looked at the money with a frown. “How long do you think we’ve got to make this money, Sam? That’s not much to work with.”

“At least let me match that,” Billy said, rifling through the envelope. “Don’t consider it a debt, it was yours in the first place.” He threw down some bank notes onto the coffee table.

Martha reached into her pocket and pulled out some stray coins and notes. “Take this too. It’s not much, but I left my pay packet at Charlie’s.”

“Here.” Charlie added another few notes to the pile. “How’s your poker face, anyway?”

“Guess I’ll find out.” Sam sighed, knowing the three of them were not going to take ‘no’ for an answer. “Thanks.”

He scooped up the money, and looked up at Al. “Well then, I’d best go see what kind of suits Ralph’s got in his wardrobe—uh, closet.” He pressed his lips together, trying to purge the British-isms from his vocabulary.

*        *        *

Sam looked at his reflection, brushing some lint from the tweed suit he wore. He inspected Ralph’s round face, with a surly snarl that no amount of mugging could erase. Above his lips sat a well-trimmed moustache, and upon his head, thin salt-and-pepper hair neatly parted and combed. And the side burns—boy, they were definitely side burns, weren’t they? Perhaps as prominent as the Doctor’s.

Suited up and ready to hit the town, Sam descended the staircase with a little more optimism than he’d had before. Maybe this could all work out—maybe he could really win all the money he needed to pull Ralph out of this mess. Maybe he could finally accomplish something useful on this leap. Maybe he could make up for unleashing those creatures, and for dragging Ralph into this dire situation to begin with. And maybe he could even reconcile with Paula, so the simmering hatred he felt coming from Ralph would subside, at least enough for the two of them to let bygones be bygones.

In the living room, Al awaited by the front door.

“Sam, come on. If you get going now, we might be back early enough to watch the moon landing at eight,” he said, “so vamoose already.”

“It’s not like I didn’t see that the first time around,” Sam said, shaking his head and heading for the door. As he reached it, he waved off the other three.

“We’ll save you some popcorn,” Martha said, holding up a stove-top popcorn package that she’d evidently brought here with her.

Sam grinned at her. “You do that,” he said, and left the house.

He didn’t notice Al flicker and disappear.

And as he stepped outside and shut the door, the sound of a gun being cocked echoed in his left ear. Sam swallowed hard. He’d heard that sound too many times.

“Going up the pub for a pint, Ralph?” came a strong Liverpudlian accent. For a split second, he thought Ringo Starr was threatening him with a gun.

Sam slowly raised his hands, and turned his head to see who had ambushed him. A tall man with jet black hair and a scar over his lower lip was grinning at him, a cigarette lodged between his teeth. The gun barrel pressed against Sam’s cheek, as the man gestured with his free hand towards a brown Volkswagen Kombi van.

“I can give you a lift if you like, mate. Hop in. Few acquaintances waiting to see ya.”

*        *        *

Meanwhile, inside the house, Martha observed Al’s image shift and blink out as he moved to follow Sam out the door. Her heart skipped a beat.

Alright, it’s happening, she told herself. And the Doctor’s not here, so it’s all up to you. Don’t stuff it up. You’ve got this.

She shot to her feet. “Nobody panic,” she said, eyes darting around the room, “but I think there’s an angel nearby. Everyone get your back to a wall.”

She gestured as the other two stared at her, still processing what she was saying. “Move it, boys! Let’s go!”

She moved to a far wall of the room, and faced out so that all entrances to the room were in her eyeline. She beckoned the other two, and they backed up to her.

“Eyes front and centre, lads,” she commanded. “Make sure you can see every door. With all three of us, we should be right to blink. Just give warning before you do, so we don’t all do it at the same time.”

They stood there in silence for several minutes.

And then the piercing sound of glass shattering in the kitchen caused all three of them to blink reflexively, at once.

When Martha’s terrified, watering eyes popped open again, two weeping angels stood in the living room. One was reaching for the front door, and the other was gripping it tightly on the arm from behind.

“Jesus flipping Christ,” Charlie said through gritted teeth. “What do we do now?”

Martha bit her lip, as she tried her best to calm her racing heartbeat. “Um… I’ll let you know when I’ve figured that one out.”

Doctor… where are you?

Chapter 27

Stuck Together

The ride in the back of the van was bumpy and uncomfortable, which would have given Sam a few opportunities to grab at the gun, if his hands hadn’t been tied up.

“So, I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what this is about,” he said, more to himself than to the man with the gun.

The man laughed. “I think we both know.”

“Yeah, you’d think so, huh…” Sam leaned back against the wall of the van, sighing. Where the hell was Al? He’d been there right up until Sam had stepped outside. And then—what? He’d… disappeared?

Bloody hell! The angel!

If the angel was following him, Al wouldn’t be back at all, would he? So he’d need to work this out for himself. Never his favourite thing.

From what he knew of Ralph’s situation, he had to assume that these people were involved in the drug trade and it was related to his debt.

“Listen, I’ll have the money by tomorrow,” he ventured. “You just need to let me go so I can… get it.”

The man shook his head. “No point tellin’ me, is it?”

Sam frowned. “Why not?”

“D’you think the hired muscle makes the decisions in this operation, Ralph? You barmy or what?”

Sam fell silent. Best not say any more for now. Just observe.

But then he heard the most wonderful sound: the chime of a hologram popping into the van. Al had appeared beside him, and Sam had to hold back tears of relief.

“Sam, the safety protocol kicked in at Ralph’s place, and—” His eyes finally spotted the gun pointed at Sam. “—oh boy…”

Sam raised his eyebrows in response, and in an effort to convey some information to Al without provoking suspicion, he said to the gunman: “You know, you didn’t need to ambush me as I walked out of my house. You could have just called. We could have arranged a meeting.”

“Ambushed?” Al said, tapping at his handlink.

“Oh yeah?” the gunman said. “Like the meeting you were supposed to have with the boss last night? That kind of meeting?”

Sam swallowed. “Last night?” He bit his lip. “Uh, m-must have slipped my mind…”

“Ziggy has no idea who this guy is,” Al said, slapping the handlink against his hand. “But I assume it’s the drug syndicate, huh?”

Sam gave a tight nod.

“Blimey, Ralph,” the gunman said, laughing, “you really should get yourself a diary. Mustn’t forget things like that, mate. Maybe you wouldn’t have ended up on the business end of me shooter.”

‘Sam, I need your help…’ Angel Sam’s voice bounced through his mind.

Well I’m kind of being held at gunpoint right now, so… he thought back, hoping his counterpart would hear it.

‘Gunpoint?! Oh, that’s just terrific! Is Al with you? I’ve immobilised the other angel at the house, so he should be able to reach you.’

Yeah, he’s here. Sam gave a pointed look at Al, who wasn’t picking up on what he was trying to communicate.

‘Oh, thank God—listen, there’s only one person who can help us now, and that’s the Doctor. But he’s on his way here. Al needs to centre on him before he gets to me and the safety protocol kicks in.’

Can’t you use your telepathy to talk to him?

‘No, I can only get into your head, and that of the angels.’

Sam sighed. Of course… why would it ever be convenient? I’ll see if I can put across the message.

He gave Al a look. “Boy, I’m feeling a bit under the weather. I could really use a doctor. Is there a medical centre around here?”

“What?” the gunman glared at him. “I don’t think you quite understand that you don’t actually have a choice in where we’re going, mate.”

Al’s brow furrowed. “What are you saying, Sam?”

Sam gritted his teeth. “Well, if I can’t go to a doctor, maybe you—” he glared at Al, “—can go find one and let him know I need his attention.”

“You’re just not getting it, are you, Ralphie? This is a bloody kidnapping. You don’t get a house call!”

It finally dawned on Al what Sam was saying, and he nodded with sweet comprehension. “Oh, I see… good thinking, Sam.” He looked upward. “Gooshie, centre me on the Doctor! Right now, Gooshie!”

With a tap on the handlink, he was gone.

Sam returned his gaze to his kidnapper. “Well, it was worth a try,” he said, hoping to pass off his strange words as some kind of escape attempt.

The man with the gun frowned. “You’d best shut your gob from here on, Ralph, else my trigger finger could start to itch.”

Sam nodded. Being quiet sounded like a good option at this point.

‘That was impressive,’ Angel Sam commented.

What’s happening back at Ralph’s house anyway?

‘I’ve got the other angel in my sights, so it’s not going anywhere. However, Martha, Charlie and what’s-his-face—the new guy—are staring at the both of us, so I’m a little stuck too.’

Tough break.

‘No kidding. Guess we’re both in a bind. And these three sure aren’t going anywhere.’

Yeah. It’s all up to Al and the Doctor now.

*        *        *

When Al materialised, he was on a train. The Doctor was standing, hand holding a rail hanging from the ceiling, and carrying that strange device he’d used to track Al down the first time the two had crossed paths.

And, of course, it went ‘ding.’ The Doctor looked down at it, and then turned his head to see Al. His frown instantly flipped upward into a grin.

“Oh, hello Al!” he said in a high pitch, making the handful of other people in the carriage turn to stare at him. “I was wondering where you were.”

Al glanced around. “You wanna talk somewhere more, uh, private?”

“On the tube? Doesn’t really get more private,” the Doctor replied, throwing a smile at the perturbed commuters. “Yes, hello. Don’t mind me, just having a chat with my invisible friend.” He leaned toward Al, winking. “They won’t bother us. I’ll just be something to complain to their friends about later. So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

Al folded his arms. “Okay, listen up, Doctor Freakazoid: I don’t like you, and you don’t like me—”

“I do like you!” the Doctor pouted. “You… don’t like me?” He looked genuinely wounded.

“Okay, lemme rephrase. I don’t trust you.” Al regarded the Doctor through narrow eyes.

“Fair play,” the Doctor conceded. “Do go on.”

“We have a couple of problems on our hands. I can’t get to Ralph’s house because there’s an angel there. And Sam’s been kidnapped at gunpoint.”

“Kidnapped? Blimey.” The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, his eyes wide. “That throws a spanner into the works. Poor bloke’ll completely miss the moon landing for one.”

“Forget the damn moon landing,” Al snapped. “You’ve gotta do something!”

The Doctor nodded. “I’m working on it, Al. Don’t fret. First thing’s first, I need to take care of the angel situation.” He peered down at the handlink, stroking his chin, before producing his sonic screwdriver and waving it over the flashing device. It responded with a whistle and flashed blue.

“What did you just do?” Al said, withdrawing the handlink from the Doctor’s view.

The Doctor held the sonic screwdriver above his head and activated it. The handlink made the whistling noise again.

“Pager,” he said with a grin. “If you get my signal, come find me again.”

“I don’t know how you did that,” Al said, staring down at the handlink, “but I don’t want you to mess with my stuff again, okay?”

“Cross my hearts,” the Doctor said with a wink. “Now, off you pop.”

Chapter 28

Desperate Measures

The Kombi van rattled through the gates of a large estate, shuddering to a merciful stop by a row of neatly trimmed hedges.

It had gotten dark, and Sam was acutely aware that precious time was passing him by.

“End of the line,” the Scouser gunman said with a dramatic gesture. “Not often the boss asks to entertain the rabble at his residence, but he extended an invitation just for you, Ralph. Lucky man, you are.”

The driver of the van slid out of his seat, and a moment later pulled open the back doors.

“Let’s go.”

Sam was led by the two men to a large set of double doors, a stately entrance to the mansion.

The driver pulled a cord, which triggered a door chime.

“If I were you,” the gunman said, leaning towards Sam’s ear, “I’d keep my mouth shut unless spoken to.”

“Wait, no, then how are you supposed to talk to me?” Al cried, scurrying up to Sam with a frown. He glanced up at the estate. “Boy, this guy must be loaded. Why does he care that much about a grand?”

Sam met his eye and shrugged.

“Listen,” Al continued, “the Doctor’s on his way to Ralph’s place to work out the angel problem, and then he’s going to contact me through the handlink when he’s done. Don’t ask how he can contact me through the handlink, because I watched him do it and I still have no idea how he managed it. Bottom line is, he can do it.”

The door swung open, revealing a well-dressed butler. He was a thin man with a balding head and an unsettling smile.

“This way, sirs,” he said, leading them into a high-ceilinged entry hall, and up a grand staircase. A pair of plush red benches were perched at the landing, and the butler gestured to it. “Please take a seat. Mister Carlisle will be with you shortly.”

Sam exchanged a look with Al. “Does Mister Carlisle have a first name?”

The butler glared at him for a moment, before advancing down a hall without responding.

The gunman punched Sam hard in the arm. “I told you to shut it.”

“Don’t worry Sam,” said Al, frantically typing into his handlink. “I’m having Ziggy triangulate this location and finding out who owns this place.”

As Al queried Ziggy, Sam caught some movement in the corner of his eye. He leaned forward and looked down the hall the butler had disappeared into, and spotted a man shaking the hand of someone behind a door, and turning to head towards the stairs, carrying a leather briefcase.

As he approached, Sam realised he knew the man.

Dwayne? The manager for King Thunder?

Sam wondered if he was engaged in some kind of drug deal on behalf of the band. The distaste he’d felt towards the man the previous day returned as they locked eyes, and recognition passed over the manager’s face.

Sam nodded. Dwayne nodded back to Sam. And then nervously hurried past him and down the stairs when he saw Sam’s bound hands. Going by this reaction, Sam had the strong feeling he wasn’t going to help at all.

Tosser.

He shot the man a dirty look, and turned his head back to Al.

“Ziggy got a hit. Lucas Carlisle,” Al said, looking up from the handlink. “This guy’s a big cheese drug lord, Sam. Better be careful. I wouldn’t tick the guy off, if you know what I’m saying.”

Before Sam had the chance to react to this, the butler  stepped up to them.

“Mister Carlisle will see you now.”

“Let’s go, Ralphie,” the gunman said, poking his gun into Sam’s ribs.

Sam complied, standing and following the butler down the hall, as he felt the barrel of the gun between his shoulder blades.

The butler opened a heavy wooden door at the end of the hall, which led to a spacious office with a large polished wood desk.

In a corner of the room was a liquor cabinet and drinks trolley. A man was standing at it, his back to them. He was small, with ghost white hair, and wore a light grey suit. As he turned, he held up two glasses of a brown liquor. He had an eerily warm smile on his face, under a pair of thin-rimmed spectacles.

“Ah, Mister Macmillan, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said. His voice was quiet and polite—almost friendly, but his words somehow commanded authority all the same.

He held one of the glasses out as he approached. “Here, have a—oh my, Mister Booth, do take that rope off his wrists, will you? Gracious me, that’s hardly necessary.”

The gunman grumbled, and began to untie Sam’s bound hands, putting the gun in his belt.

“Normally I’d call this your chance to beat everyone up and escape,” Al commented, “but I don’t think that’s an option around here. Just do what he says: he’s probably got armed guys all over the joint.”

“There, that’s more gentlemanly,” said Carlisle, extending the drink to Sam once more. “Please, have a drink.”

Sam took the drink in hand, but didn’t have any as he stared down the drug lord, who swallowed all of his in one go.

“Now, if I’m not mistaken,” Carlisle said, moving behind his desk and grabbing a paper from a pile, “you owe me one thousand and fifty-three pounds. Correct?”

“That is what my records say, yes…” Sam said cautiously.

Carlisle took a seat, clasping his hands. “And I hear that you’ve not been selling our product for some days now.”

Sam shifted on his feet. “…No.”

“I see.” Carlisle leaned forward. “Is there a problem, Mister Macmillan?”

“You’re bloody well right there’s a problem!” Sam found himself saying in a perfectly formed Cockney cadence.

Wait, don’t—

“Oh jeez, not now!” Al cried, hand shooting to his forehead.

“There’s nothing but problems,” Ralph continued. “My own staff are blackmailing me, me harpy of an ex-wife’s shaking me down for maintenance, and I got busted by—”

Please don’t…

“—by a bloke who said he was a copper, but…”

Al waved a hand over Sam’s eyes, which refused to acknowledge him. “Sam, you’re psycho-synergising… snap out of it!”

I’m trying!

“I’m not so sure he was police at all, actually…” Ralph rubbed at his forehead, confused. “No, I think he’s some kind of doctor, come to think of it. That lying git.”

Shut up already…

“Sam!”

I’m right here…

Ralph necked the drink in his hand. “I could have had your money yesterdee if it weren’t for all of that.”

Carlisle stroked his chin. “Tell me about your ex-wife. Has she been causing a lot of trouble for you?”

“Too bloody right. Paula’s a flippin’ parasite, she is. We only split because she was a cheatin’ slag, and now she thinks she’s entitled to half me earnings!”

“Sam, stop!” Al’s wild eyes were on the handlink. “Ziggy says—”

“And how much do you owe her?” Carlisle coaxed.

“Even more than I owe you,” Ralph said darkly.

Carlisle nodded, removing his glasses to wipe them with a cloth. “So it seems that all of this is a bit of misfortune, isn’t it? Perhaps we can come to an arrangement.”

“Arrangement?” Al asked, face growing pale. “I don’t like the sound of that, Sam.”

Me neither.

Carlisle smiled, but there was no kindness in his eyes this time. “What if you didn’t have to pay that ex-wife of yours?”

Ralph narrowed his eyes. “Just what exactly are you gettin’ at, Carlisle?”

“We can take care of it.” The old man picked his phone up. “Just one call, and the problem goes away.”

“What’s the catch?” Ralph crossed his arms.

“Sam!” Al cried. “He’s gonna have her whacked!”

I know!

“The catch is simply that you continue working for me, and we have a wonderful, prosperous future together. What say you, Mister Macmillan?”

“No! Say no!” Al shouted into Sam’s ear. But Sam was still deep under the surface, clawing for a way up.

Ralph grinned. “Go on, then.”

No!

Carlisle started dialling up his phone, as Ralph crossed to the drinks cart and placed his empty glass on it, feeling pretty good about his decision.

“He’s gonna kill Evelyn too, Sam,” Al pleaded. “They’re both gonna die—you’ve gotta stop this before he finishes the call.”

Ralph paused a moment, shaking his head. Did he hear something just now?

I’m sorry, Al. I tried.

Chapter 29

Pip Pip

When the Doctor pulled open the door of Ralph’s house, he nearly walked straight into the outstretched hand of an angel.

“Whoa now!” he cried, and carefully ducked under the arm, chuckling. He turned, walking backwards as he studied the two angels there by the door, before spinning towards Martha and the boys. “Evening, all. Bit of a situation, eh?”

Martha grinned at him with clear relief, and elbowed Charlie in the arm. “Told you he’d come sooner or later, didn’t I?” Charlie let out a held breath.

The Doctor smirked. “You needn’t have worried too much,” he said, scanning his sonic screwdriver over the angels. “One of them is Angel Sam, and I’m willing to bet it’s the one hanging on to the other. You could have looked away this whole time and he would have kept his unblinking eyes on the dangerous one.” He checked the reading on the sonic, and nodded thoughtfully.

Martha glared at him. “You’re joking.”

“Not this time, Martha,” the Doctor said. He donned his spectacles and studied the weathered surface of the rear angel. “Oh yes. This is Angel Sam alright. I recognise this hairline crack on the cheek. Very distinct.” He glanced at Martha. “You may safely look away—in fact I insist you do, because that’s the only way he’s going to be able to talk to us.”

Taking the lead, he swapped out his glasses with the eye mask he’d been wearing earlier.

Martha relaxed her shoulders, glancing at the men on either side of her. “You heard him boys; look away.”

“This is mental…” Billy muttered as he followed her direction, and dropped his gaze.

Charlie hesitated. “You’re absolutely sure?” he asked the Doctor.

“Oh, positive. Ninety-nine percent. Well, ninety-eight.”

Charlie glared at the Doctor for a moment, but then relented. He took a deep breath, and covered his eyes.

“Thank you Doctor, I appreciate that,” Angel Sam said, as he came out of his stasis. “I take it Al’s spoken to you?”

“He certainly did; what’s all this about Ralph Sam being kidnapped? He’s going to miss the moon landing.”

“Kidnapped?” Martha repeated, alarmed. “By who?”

“It’s to do with the drugs, I think,” said Angel Sam.

The Doctor peeked from his mask, eyes on the three humans. “Martha, look sharp.”

She opened her eyes as the sonic screwdriver flew through the air towards her. She managed to catch it clumsily, and looked inquisitively back at the Doctor.

“Run off down the road, and use setting eighty-one to call Al. Find out what’s happening on that front while I sort this out.”

Martha nodded, and headed for the door.

The Doctor paced a moment. “Alright, we’d best take care of this angel, pronto. The sooner we do that the sooner the TARDIS will come back to me and we can mount a rescue.”

“No arguments from me,” Angel Sam said, “but—what do we do? I can’t get through to it. All I can do is keep it still.”

The Doctor pulled up the eye mask and inspected the newborn angel, its teeth bared in a silent growl.

“Come now, Angel Sam,” he said, throwing his arm around the rear angel as he pulled the mask back down, “you can do a lot more than you think.”

Sam frowned. “Like what?”

“Those angels gave you a trove of information, Sam. You just need to dig through it a bit more. For one, I know for a fact that telepathy becomes stronger on physical contact, and you’ve got quite a grip on this young’un.”

“I already tried explaining—”

“Then don’t explain, Sam. There’s a lot more you should be able to do in that angel’s mind than just tell it ‘no’; keep looking.”

Sam was silent for a few moments. “Wait…”

“Find something, did you?”

“You can’t kill an angel, not unless it hasn’t fed for thousands of years, but—” Sam took a step closer to the other angel, “—I think I might be able to put it into a dormant state. It’ll just be a normal statue, until another angel comes along and revives it.”

“Brilliant!” the Doctor said, grinning. “Go on and do that, then.”

“Thing is…” Sam said quietly, “To the angel, it won’t be any different to death. Its mind will be erased.” Sam took a deep breath. “It—it’s a monster, right? I shouldn’t feel this bad about doing this.”

The Doctor patted Angel Sam on the back. “Oh, Sam, this angel’s basically your sibling, isn’t it? You might have the identity of a human now, but you were once just like it: young, confused, hungry. It would be strange if you didn’t feel this way.”

He sniffed sharply. “Weeping Angels aren’t monsters—not really. They’re just creatures of the universe, same as any other. Granted, one that feeds in an unconventional way, but it has just as much right to survival as the rest of us.”

“This would be… for its own safety,” Angel Sam murmured.

“Precisely,” agreed the Doctor. “Now, go on.”

The sound of stone clinking against stone signified that Angel Sam was touching the other angel with both of his hands. A wave of unusual energy emitted from both statues, and the Doctor stepped back, away from them. Then an electromagnetic pulse expanded from them, knocking out the electricity in the house and leaving the living room suddenly pitch black.

“It’s… uh, done,” Angel Sam confirmed weakly.

It was at that moment that Martha came sprinting back through the front door, puffing.

“Doctor!” she cried, “We’ve got trouble!”

“What is it?” The Doctor didn’t like the frantic edge in her voice.

Martha grabbed him by the arm. “We need to get to Ralph’s ex-wife’s house in Brixton. There’s a double murder about to happen.”

“What?” the shaky voice of Angel Sam came from the darkness. “I thought Ralph was supposed to do that. But Sam’s nowhere near Brixton—he’s in Islington, I can smell it.”

“It’s a hit job,” Martha explained. “Agreed to by… um, Ralph, thanks to that mind-melding thing. Look, we need to go! The killer’s already well ahead of us!”

She pulled the Doctor towards the door.

“Hold on,” he said, wrenching his arm away. “If they’re already so close, then there’s only one of us here quick enough to beat them.” He reached out into the darkness, and landed a hand on a cold stone arm. “Angel Sam… go. We’ll be right behind.”

“I—alright,” Sam stammered. He pulled away from the Doctor’s hand, and in a gust of wind he was gone.

“Wait, I didn’t tell him the address…” Martha said, bewildered.

“He can pluck it easily enough out of Sam’s head,” the Doctor said with a wave of his hand, before turning to Charlie and Billy. “Well, who’s coming?”

“You’re in my wheelhouse now, Doctor,” Billy said, stepping forward and cracking his knuckles. “Let’s go nick us a murderer, yeah?”

Charlie, on the other hand, shook his head. “Look, I can stand aliens, and time travel, and even staring unblinkingly at living statues, but I draw the line at going toe-to-toe with a soddin’ hitman.”

The Doctor nodded. “Smart boy.” He gestured to Martha and Billy. “As for you two; allons-y!”

Chapter 30

Pop Quiz

“Come on Sam…” Al moaned as he watched what was now effectively Ralph clinking glasses with the drug kingpin. On the desk in front of him were some neat lines of cocaine on a tray which the butler had brought in and revealed like it was some kind of delicacy.

“In just a few minutes, your troubles should be over,” Carlisle said, having a light sip on his drink. “Shall we celebrate?”

“You read my mind.” Ralph downed the snifter before proceeding to roll up one of the bank notes that had been pooled for Sam to gamble with earlier.

“Sam, what are the four fundamental forces in physics?” Al demanded. Ralph didn’t seem to flinch. “What are the first nine digits of pi? Come on pal, are you hearing any of what I’m saying? Give me some kinda sign!”

Ralph’s eyes were on the coke, and he hunched over the desk.

“Don’t you dare hoover up that junk…” Al barked, squeezing his eyes shut as Ralph did just that. “Oh jeez… do you know how bad that is for your nose, Sam?”

Al paced, trying to reconcile what he was seeing with what he knew of his best friend. To witness Sam doing these actions was painful; Sam would never in a million years snort cocaine. But, he told himself, this wasn’t Sam. Sam was in there somewhere, but he was looking at Ralph right now—and he didn’t know what else Ralph was capable of. Especially a coked-up Ralph.

I’ve gotta get through to him.

“Sam… please. The four fundamental forces in physics… name them!”

Ralph sniffed, rubbed his nose, and gave his head a sharp shake. “My word, that’s strong.”

“Yeah, ‘strong’. Strong nuclear—that’s one of the forces,” Al coaxed. “Come on, am I ringing a bell? What’s another one?”

“It’s pure as the driven snow,” Carlisle said smoothly. He was conspicuously not getting high on his own supply. “Our finest batch ever, if I do say so.”

“Yer not bloody wrong about that.” Ralph leaned against the desk. “It’s got me a bit weak at the knees.”

“Weak nuclear,” Al said, pointing at Sam. “That’s another one. Two more, okay?”

Ralph grabbed hold of a chair, and flopped into it, chuckling. “Bloody Christ that’s good shit.”

“I’m told it gives a mild feeling of floating as it takes effect,” said Carlisle.

“Low gravity. Like walking on the moon—” Ralph muttered, and looked confused for a moment, rubbing his nose. “Isn’t the moon landing tonight?”

“Gravity! that’s the third one, Sam. Yes, the moon landing’s on TV right now. Nobody knew what walking on the moon was like until they saw that footage. And you saw it thirty years ago…” Sam was resurfacing. He just knew it.

“It is,” Carlisle said, pouring more liquor into his and Ralph’s glasses. “The general populace all glued to their idiot’s lanterns. Ideal time for my men to operate, isn’t it? I expect I’ll be receiving a call any minute now to confirm the deed is done.”

Al phased into the desk, putting himself directly between Sam and Carlisle. “Strong and weak nuclear. Gravity. One more force, Sam… you can do it.”

Ralph took up his glass. His brow was heavy as he swirled the brown liquid.

Come on…

*        *        *

The Doctor ran his sonic screwdriver over the ignition of Ralph’s battered Reliant Regal, and the engine spluttered to life.

Martha and Billy were crammed in the small car with him, and he had never wished for his TARDIS more than right at this moment. Far from being bigger on the inside, this car seemed infinitely smaller than it should have been. Not built for a man of his stature, certainly.

Still, he put his foot down and it began speeding down the road.

“Martha, be prepared to do some first aid, if anyone’s been injured,” he commanded. “Billy…” he hesitated. “No offense… but ah, try and stay out of my way.”

Billy scoffed. “I told you this is my speciality, didn’t I? I didn’t become a Detective Inspector by staying out of the way.”

“It’s nothing personal,” the Doctor explained matter-of-factly, “it’s just police are seldom helpful in my experience. As much as I’d like to believe you’re the exception… well, I just don’t have much confidence, in all honesty.”

“That doesn’t half hurt,” Billy said with a frown. “S’pose I’ll just have to prove myself.”

“Try not to escalate things,” the Doctor murmured as he turned a corner.

And violently hit the brakes.

In the middle of the road, like a shining beacon, stood the TARDIS.

As the car came to a screeching halt, the Doctor burst out of the door and sprinted to his beloved blue box.

“What sort of time do you call this?” he demanded of the time machine, kicking it on its side before wrapping his arms around it. “Blimey I missed you, old girl.”

Martha and Billy approached from behind.

“My God, it really is the police box from Wester Drumlins…” Billy said, amazed.

“And now you get to see inside,” Martha said, putting an affectionate hand on the wood panelling. “You’re gonna love it.”

The Doctor turned around, grinning. “Well, no time to waste. Everyone in.”

The door swung open on its own—a part of the contingency function that Sally Sparrow had activated—and Billy stumbled back in shock.

“W-what—?” he stammered. “How is it—?”

“Bigger on the inside?” Martha finished. “He could explain to you how, but it won’t do much good, trust me.” She drew her hand over her head, before grabbing Billy by the wrist. “Come on, we’re in a hurry.”

*        *        *

Sam was suspended in darkness, with only Al’s muffled words keeping him from succumbing to unconsciousness.

Electro-magnetism, he thought. That’s the last force, Al.

If only he could breach the surface of his mind. If only he could claw his way out of wherever he was. God, what was Ralph doing up there? He didn’t feel so hot. Something was off.

“Come on… you’ve got three out of four…”

Al was still trying. After all this, he was still trying so hard. Al had such faith in him.

I’m trying too, buddy.

It was as though he was swimming through molasses. Every inch gained as he tried to ascend to the front of his mind—to regain control of his body—left him that little bit more exhausted.

He feared he couldn’t win this fight. And when Ralph finally discovered the hitman had killed Evelyn too… he’d realise the error of his ways and kill himself. Sam was certain that’s what really happened, now that all of this had played out. And when Ralph died, it would be curtains for Sam, too.

‘They’re safe.’

Sam would have fallen out of his chair if he’d had control of a body at that moment.

Angel Sam?

‘I took care of it.’ Angel Sam’s projected words were flat and unemotional. ‘Do you need a hand here? It’ll be my last act.’

Last act…? What are you talking about?

Sam felt a hand grasp his, and he was being pulled upward through the thick darkness of his subconscious. Further and further, until he found himself staring at Al’s dangling polka-dot tie in front of his face. His heart was racing and head was swimming.

Breathing heavily, his eyes rose to meet Al’s.

“Electro-magnetism,” he murmured.

Chapter 31

TARDIS Ex Machina

Martha smiled, running her fingers over the coral pillars of the TARDIS. The Doctor was advancing around the console, excitedly pulling levers and pushing buttons, and Billy was on all fours, gripping the mesh floor for dear life as the time machine lurched to and fro.

Martha couldn’t have been more pleased to be violently thrown against the wall. Finally, she was back here in this bonkers old space ship that didn’t fly quite right, a place which was feeling more and more like home of late. She looked through longing eyes at the Doctor as he hung on tightly to his seat, almost toppling over it.

From across the console, his eye met hers, and she averted her gaze from his giddy grin, wondering just how aware he was that she wished he would look at her in a different way. Just once.

After a minute, the wheezing noise subsided and the erratic jolts came to a stop.

“Alright, we’re here,” the Doctor announced as he bounded to the door and grasped the handle, “be ready for anything…”

He opened the door to a dark, silent room—living room?—and slowly moved out into it, sonic screwdriver extended, bathing the immediate area in blue. Billy crept closely behind, his gaze surveying the room in a practised, systematic fashion. Martha poked a head out of the door, glancing around—it was too dark to see anything, but she could hear a faint whimpering.

Closing the door behind her, she followed the sound in the opposite direction of the Doctor and Billy. In the kitchen, in a shaft of moonlight from the window, was Evelyn. She was gripping her arm, and the shining red of blood glinted from her fingers. Martha hurried to her.

“Evelyn,” she whispered, “are you wounded? Let me help…”

Evelyn nodded, her breath uneven. “I don’t know what happened,” she choked out, as she moved her hand from her arm, revealing a deep cut. “There were men with knives… but…” she blinked as she seemed to realise just who she was talking to. “How did you…?”

“Don’t worry about that for now, Evelyn…” Martha took the girl’s hand and pushed it back onto the wound. “Keep pressure on that,” she said. “Do you have a first aid kit—or bandages, rubbing alcohol, anything like that?”

Evelyn shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe in the bathroom?”

“Stay put, I’ll be back in a minute. Just breathe; you’re going to be okay.” Martha dashed out of the kitchen, trying the light switches—no good. Perhaps, she thought, the hitmen had cut the power.

Were they still in the house? Martha’s mouth felt very dry all of a sudden. She could be walking towards an ambush for all she knew.

“Doctor…” she whispered, “…Billy? Are you around?”

“Martha, over here,” the Doctor called back. “I think it’s safe.”

Martha followed the voice up a narrow staircase and into a bedroom, where she heard a woman’s shuddering breath.

“Paula?” Martha asked gently.

“Yeah, it’s her,” Billy said, pulling open a curtain, which let in faint light from a street lamp, revealing himself, along with the Doctor and Paula sitting on the edge of a bed. “She’s alright. Bit in shock, though.”

The Doctor nodded towards a dark corner of the room. Martha followed his gaze, and she drew a sharp breath as she saw the stone angel there, sitting on the floor with its head buried in its knees, arms covering itself like it was trying to hide.

“Is that… Angel Sam?”

On the floor nearby, a bloody kitchen knife shone dimly, the only obvious evidence in this room that there had been an attack.

The Doctor nodded. “No sign of the hit squad… and he’s looking a little healthier now, too.” he said, eyes looking sadly upon the mournful statue. “I’d wager the power’s out because of him, too. Electro-magnetic pulse.”

“Like what happened at Ralph’s house?” Martha ventured. “Are you saying he did that—that thing to himself? Like he did with the other angel; erased his own mind?”

“Did you find Evelyn?” the Doctor asked, pointedly evading the question.

“Yeah. She’s going to live, but she needs medical attention.”

“Well, best tend to her, then.”

*        *        *

“Come again?” Carlisle asked, head tilted.

“Electro-magnetism,” Sam repeated, placing his glass down on the desk.

“Sam, is it you?” Al asked, bending over to study Sam’s face.

Sam nodded, eyes filling with tears of relief.

“Oh my god,” Al said, his shoulders dropping as he stepped out of the desk and moved to Sam’s side. “Don’t ever do that again! I was worried sick!”

“I don’t follow,” said Carlisle, squinting at Sam.

“It—it’s nothing.” Sam looked down at the white powder on the tray and cringed.

Ralph got me… high? Now he knew why he felt so strange; why everything felt too intense, why his mind was running a mile a minute, and why his heart was pounding. Not to mention he felt quite tipsy to boot. How much liquor had Ralph consumed on his behalf? At least a few, but everything Ralph had done was a haze in his memory.

“Listen,” Al said, “I don’t know what’s happened to Paula and Evelyn, but—”

“Evelyn…” Sam glanced at Al, eyes wide, before turning back to Carlisle. “Ralph’s—uh, my daughter… she was with Paula. You sent your goons to kill both of them, didn’t you?!”

“We could hardly leave witnesses, now could we?”

A flash of rage filled Sam, and he launched himself over the desk, grabbing Carlisle by the collar. “You bastard! You ruined his life!”

“Sam! Stop!” Al cried as Booth—the man who’d brought Sam here—aimed his weapon at Sam.

“Ralph, let ’im go before I blow your ugly head off,” he snarled.

Sam, barely able to contain himself, took a beat longer than he should have to let go of the collar. He drew back to his side of the desk slowly, narrow eyes still on Carlisle. To his credit, the old man hardly seemed intimidated by the outburst, and was still gazing mildly at him.

Get a hold of yourself! Sam thought. God, Ralph, why did you have to do drugs—I don’t know what to expect from myself on this stuff.

He raised his hands, turning towards the gun. “Sorry.” He nodded towards the tray, which he had knocked in his haste, spreading white powder all over the desk and his own clothes. “That stuff is… uh, intense,” he said, hoping it would be an adequate explanation for his erratic behaviour.

Carlisle straightened his tie. “Ralph, I’m willing to forgive that little indiscretion, under the circumstances. But be aware that you’re on thin ice. Do we understand one another?”

“Sam, you wanna get out of here alive, don’t you?” Al pleaded. “For the love of god, play along…”

Sam fought the urge to argue, and clenched his teeth. “Yes. Mister Carlisle.”

But his answer was drowned out by a peculiar noise behind him. A strange kind of mechanical groaning, accompanied by a strong wind, as though all the windows in the office had been opened at once. But it wasn’t coming from the windows.

Everyone in the room took a moment to look towards the source of the disturbance, and Sam barely contained his urge to laugh as he saw a blue police box, like the one Martha had once shown him, shining a blue light upon the room.

There it is. The time machine in a phone box.

Booth was now pointing his gun towards the box, looking scared out of his wits. “What the bloody hell—”

Sam’s gaze flicked back towards Carlisle, whose nigh-unflappable disposition was finally… well, flapped.

Sam smirked. “I think my ride home just arrived.”

Chapter 32

Shots Fired

The door of the TARDIS swung open, and the Doctor’s face popped out from behind it, only to be met with the barrel of Booth’s gun.

“Who the hell are you?” the Scouser demanded, echoes of his trembling hands reflected in the unsteady movement of the firearm. Sam stepped out of the man’s periphery, moving as smoothly and inconspicuously as he could.

“I’m the Doctor, and—could you not point that thing at me, if you don’t mind?” the Doctor said in a casual tone, “—and a little hologram told me you folks might have arranged the attempted murder scene I just came here from.” He clicked his tongue admonishingly and shook his head, moving out of the box in full. He sauntered up to the desk, and sat on it, seeming to completely absorb command of the room from the speechless Carlisle.

Al was similarly speechless as he peered, dumbstruck, into the doorway of the time machine—which Sam couldn’t see from his vantage point.

Booth cocked his gun, still wild-eyed. “Put yer hands up… I’ll bloody well shoot.”

The Doctor frowned. “Oh, I don’t doubt it. This operation’s got quite a bit of blood on its hands, doesn’t it? But, not my good friend Ralph’s family, not now.” He gave Sam a pointed wink before turning his attention to Carlisle. “I’m afraid you might not be seeing your henchmen again, though.”

Sam licked his lips as he absorbed the words—Angel Sam had done something to them, it seemed clear.

As Booth trembled, Sam found himself in position, and took his opportunity, disarming the man with a swift kick before landing a blow across the man’s jaw that left him prone on the carpet.

“Well I don’t approve of that,” the Doctor commented. “Bit violent, but… I’m suitably impressed.”

Sam headed for the gun, which had been launched across the room, but froze when Carlisle reached it first.

The formerly amicable old man pointed the gun squarely at Sam’s chest, his expression cold.

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” he spat, “but I no longer think we’re well-paired as business associates, Mister Macmillan.”

Al finally snapped out of his stupor. “Don’t make any sudden movements, Sam! I don’t like that look in his eyes.”

Sam raised his hands. “Now, let’s talk about this…”

“Goodbye, Ralph,” Carlisle murmured as he took careful aim.

Crack!

“Sam, no!” Al’s voice cried out.

Sam flinched, and moved his hand to his chest where he expected a terrible bloody wound, until he realised that the shot had come from behind him.

As Carlisle clutched his chest and dropped to the floor, Sam whirled around, and saw Billy standing in the doorway of the time machine, lowering a gun—Ralph’s gun.

The Doctor jumped off the desk, mouth ajar. “Billy, were you carrying a gun in my TARDIS?” He snatched the gun from Billy’s hand and ejected the ammunition in one smooth movement. “Where did you even get this?”

Sam exchanged a look with Billy.

“Found it at Ralph’s house,” Billy said simply.

Sam wasn’t so sure of that. The last thing he’d done with that gun was give it to Martha to hide. If she’d hidden it well, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity to find it; leading Sam to the probability that she had given it to Billy for safekeeping.

He wasn’t going to give up that information, though. That gun, along with Billy, had just saved his life.

“I was wondering where that thing had gone—it disappeared from Ralph’s office earlier today,” Sam lied, leading to a private smile from Billy.

The Doctor narrowed his eyes, looking between the two men for a moment before pushing Billy into the time machine with him.

“I’ll dispose of this—maybe throw it out into space,” he said, his voice fading off as he proceeded inside. “Then we’ll go back to see how Martha’s progressing. Come along.”

Sam hurried to it to see what he was doing. And finally, he got a peek inside the blue box that the Doctor called ‘TARDIS.’

An impossibly-sized room could be seen inside the little blue box, with a mesh metal floor and branched golden brown pillars surrounding a circular console in the centre full of exotic-looking controls. Though, he supposed, anyone would look at Ziggy’s console and think the same of it, except a select few who understood the configuration of colourful panels.

As he stepped inside the cavernous room that defied physics just as much as the Doctor’s coat pockets, his first reaction was to laugh; a reaction that might have been different if he wasn’t experiencing this moment through a haze of alcohol and cocaine, but nonetheless, he clutched the door frame and fell into peels of laughter.

“Okay, sure,” he said between uncontrolled giggles, “why the hell not? It’s that kind of week, isn’t it?” He looked with amusement out the door at Al, who didn’t find it nearly as hilarious.

Al gingerly reached a hand inside the door, only to find that his hologram flickered upon contact. He punched at his handlink urgently, and winced as Ziggy provided the data he needed.

“Uh…” Al said, still dumbstruck by the sight of the spacious room inside the box, “I don’t think I can go in there. Ziggy says it’s not temporary—” he furrowed his brow, smacking the flashing device, “—temporally stable. I’ll lose my connection.”

“Well, it’s a time machine, of course it’s not temporally stable, Al!” the Doctor called back from further in the room. “Won’t be long before you can catch up. Sam, be a dear and close the door.”

Sam gave Al an apologetic glance as he took the door by the handle.

Al bit his lip. “Be careful. I don’t think that, uh, ‘nose candy’ is doing you much good right now.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” Sam said, unconsciously rubbing at his nose. “Can’t wait for it to be over. I’m just so… edgy.”

He began to close the door. “Al, listen… thanks for persisting… when I wasn’t myself.”

Al nodded, his expression turning sincere. “Thanks for coming back.”

Sam smiled weakly. “You can thank Angel Me for that one.”

Though, given that last thing he told me… maybe you can’t.

The door clicked shut, and Sam’s attention returned to the bizarre—alien—environment that was the Doctor’s time machine.

Sam walked unsteadily up the ramp towards the strange console where the Doctor stood, marvelling at the technology.

“Well, welcome to my time-machine-slash-spaceship, the TARDIS: ‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space.’ Any questions? Comments? Outbursts? Observations?” The Doctor seemed to be waiting quite expectantly for Sam to speak, but Sam could suddenly only think of one thing.

“Is there a bathroom in here? I need to take a leak.”

Chapter 33

Petrified

As it turned out, the TARDIS did indeed have a restroom, among a maze of other rooms of all kinds off winding corridors and up and down ladders and staircases. Sam thought that if he followed one of the paths further into the ship, he might never find his way back. So he retraced his steps back to what he figured must be the ‘bridge,’ where Billy was white-knuckling a railing.

“Pretty crazy, huh?” he said quietly.

Billy nodded. “I feel like I’m gonna be sick,” he said as the floor shifted beneath them, and Sam extended his own hand to keep from stumbling.

“How do you think this enormous place fits inside such a small outer shell?” he continued, looking up to the high ceiling. “My guess would be some kind of pocket dimension…” He trailed off as he read Billy’s blank expression. “Uh, never mind.”

He patted Billy on the shoulder as he advanced towards the console, and watched the Doctor doing laps around it, adjusting things as he went.

“Seems pretty involved for one guy,” Sam observed.

“Yeah, she’s not technically built for just one pilot,” the Doctor mumbled as he picked up a large mallet from the floor. “But I make do.” With that, he slammed the mallet onto the console, causing the TARDIS to lurch to one side.

Sam stumbled to one of the pillars and grasped it for stability. He suddenly felt quite pleased that Project Quantum Leap had a decent sized team. Not that it did him much good when he still couldn’t get home.

“Almost there,” the Doctor announced, flipping a few switches, as the groaning sound returned. Sam redoubled his grip on the pillar.

“And…” the Doctor pulled a lever, and the room shuddered to a stop. “Here we are.”

“Paula’s place?” Sam said nervously, heading for the door with caution.

“They’re safe,” the Doctor reassured him. “Both of them.”

“That’s what Angel Sam said…” Sam murmured, opening the door on the dark living room.

Martha emerged from the shadows, grinning at Sam. “So, you got to see it at last. Bit fancier than your standard phone booth, yeah?”

Sam chuckled. “It… it has good plumbing—now, where’s Evelyn?”

“She’s gone off in an ambulance,” Martha explained. “She wasn’t badly injured, but she’ll need stitches. Paula’s gone with her—she was in shock. They’ll both be alright, but it’s going to be tricky to explain to them just what happened, isn’t it?”

Sam nodded, lips pressed together.

“And how about you…?” Martha said in a low voice. “Last I heard, Ralph was—uh, in charge.”

“Ralph’s gone,” Sam replied, touching his forehead gently. “Well, more like buried, I guess. Though, I’m not entirely myself either, because Ralph left me with coke in my system.”

“I thought you seemed a bit tense,” the Doctor remarked, coming out of the TARDIS, hands in his pockets. “Too bad Earth won’t develop narcotics-neutralising inhalants for another hundred and thirty-one years.”

He grinned. “Oh wait, what do we have here?” He pulled his hand from his pocket, producing a small spray can, and pointed it at Sam, before pressing down on the tab. It launched a puff of smoke into Sam’s face. Sam coughed as the smoke entered his lungs, and a moment later, the effects of the cocaine seemed to dissipate, leaving Sam’s mind clear and calm, and heart rate eased.

“Is that better?”

Sam rubbed a hand on his face. “Uh… wow. Yeah.” He squinted at the can. “What was that?”

The Doctor pulled it away from his face. “Nothing you should be able to replicate in the twentieth century, I’m afraid. Now, come with me, I have something to show you.”

He tugged on Sam’s arm, taking him up some stairs.

As he ascended, a wave of fatigue crashed over him, no doubt an after-effect of the high. He yawned as the Doctor brought him into a bedroom, and gestured to a dark corner.

As his eyes adjusted, he realised what was there, hunched over.

“Angel Sam…?”

“He’s been like that since we got here,” the Doctor explained.

“What did he… do here?” Sam crept up to the statue, tracing a finger over his arm. It was smooth—much more so than it had been the last time he’d seen his counterpart.

“Two men with knives entered the house,” said the Doctor, “and none came out. He fed.”

Sam turned back to the Doctor, who was looking down at Angel Sam with pity. “He spoke to me when I was stuck inside my own mind. He said he took care of it, and then he brought me out of the psycho-synergy… he said it would be his last act.” Sam’s eyes moved back to the angel. “What’s he done to himself?”

“Before he came here,” the Doctor explained, “he put the other angel into a kind of dormant form, erasing its mind and leaving it effectively no more than the statue it appears to be. I suspect he tried to do the same to himself, but…” He pulled his sonic screwdriver out of his coat, and gave Angel Sam a cursory scan with it. “…I don’t think he quite accomplished that. He still has detectable brain activity—quite possibly because of your neurons being in there.”

Sam sat on the floor beside the cold stone figure, placing a hand on its shoulder. “Can we… bring him out of this?”

“Oh, Sam Beckett, you listen to me…” The Doctor straightened up, looking Sam intensely in the eye. “We can, and we will.”

He said it in such a resolute, conclusive way that Sam couldn’t help but believe it.

“First thing’s first,” continued the Doctor, “talk to him. About home, about loved ones, about anything good in your life. Meanwhile, I’ll be off on a little scavenger hunt. Don’t worry, I won’t be long.”

He turned, proceeding to the bedroom door. “You just talk to him, okay? Keep going until I get back.”

“Okay,” Sam agreed, as the Doctor disappeared into the darkness. Sam yawned as he scooched close to his angel self on the floor.

“Hey, buddy…” he said. “Nice wings you’ve got there.”

Oh my god, that was stupid.

“Hey, I got to see the inside of the Doctor’s time machine. It’s surprisingly spacious. And, uh… hey, it’s 1969. That means Dad is still alive. Remember when we all watched the moon landing on TV? Me—uh, you—and Mom and Katie and Dad. Tom wasn’t there. He was home for Thanksgiving later in the year, though. Well, I think we both missed the landing this time around. But that’s okay. We saved some lives, right?”

He shifted positions. “Thanks for helping me out, by the way. I don’t know how you did all that telepathy stuff, but it was really useful. I know you… sent those goons to the past, but that’s…” he swallowed. “That’s not the worst thing we’ve ever done in the line of duty, is it?”

Am I making things worse by bringing that up?

“But look. I need you to wake up. We need to get my brain back together, don’t we? Don’t you want to leap out of here? The Doctor promised to get us home. Remember home? We have to go back and see Al, and Ziggy, and Gooshie, and Verbena…”

‘And Donna.’

Sam jumped as the familiar voice bloomed in his consciousness.

“You are still in there!”

But—wait… who’s Donna?

‘Donna is your—’

“—My wife…” Sam whispered, as he recalled tiny fragments of memories of being married. But he couldn’t quite picture her face. “I have a wife…? What… does she look like?”

But a deafening silence followed.

Chapter 34

One Small Step

Hmm?

Sam’s eyes fluttered open, and he realised he’d dozed off, his head leaning against the statue beside him.

What had awoken him became clear as he watched the TARDIS materialising in the room, on the other side of the bed, its now-familiar noise filling his ears.

He rubbed his eyes, before moving his hands to his sore neck, which hadn’t been at an ideal angle. He grimaced as he realised he hadn’t been able to keep his promise to keep talking to Angel Sam. Instead, his fatigue had put him to sleep, just after—

Donna.

Sam looked at the angel beside him. How could a few stray neurons of his remember her when the rest of him couldn’t?

He rolled his neck and stood, as the door of the time machine opened. The Doctor emerged, holding the hand of a woman Sam had never seen before. She appeared to be in her twenties, long strawberry blonde hair swept into a ponytail. A handful of freckles punctuated her cheeks, and her brown eyes gazed into space, unfocused. Sam had seen enough vision impairment to know she was most likely blind.

“Who’s this?” he asked, cocking his head.

“Someone from Angel Sam’s past,” the Doctor said simply, and led the woman around the bed. “Harriet, this is… Ralph.”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” the woman said in a mild voice, extending a hand in his general direction. Sam took it and they shared a shake.

“And you… Harriet.”

Sam had no clue who this woman could be, but looking at her made his stomach tie in knots for some reason. He stepped aside as the Doctor pulled her towards Angel Sam and brought her hand down on one of his wings.

“This is him,” he said softly to her.

Harriet bit her lip as she moved her hand over the statue, feeling the ridges and shapes.

“Sam…?” she turned her head back toward the Doctor. “Why is he all balled up like this?”

“He’s in a bit of a state right now,” the Doctor explained. “If there’s anything you ever wanted to tell him, now’s the time.”

He moved to Sam, gripping him by the shoulder. “Let’s give them some privacy.”

Sam and the Doctor stepped into the TARDIS and shut the door. Inside stood Martha, Billy, and even Charlie—who was apparently unfazed by the TARDIS, which seemed in keeping with his reaction in the Waiting Room back in Sam’s previous leap.

“Those two have a complicated history,” the Doctor continued. “In the meantime, how’s about a little spin? We can pop back a few hours and view the moon landing from a bit closer afield. Say, from the moon’s surface?”

Sam’s jaw dropped. “Seriously?”

It shouldn’t have been such a shock; he knew it was both a time machine and a space ship, but the prospect of actually going to the moon? Oh boy.

“Oh yeah, we’ve been a few times,” Martha said with a grin. “It’s brilliant.”

Sam chuckled. “Then it wouldn’t be anything new for you, right?” He rubbed his stiff neck for a moment, before an idea came to him. “We’ve all seen the moon landing before, haven’t we? I might have an alternative suggestion.”

“You don’t want to see humanity take their first steps on the moon?” the Doctor said. “Giant leap for mankind and all that?”

Sam shrugged. “Sure, it would be great, but well… this is a time machine, right? There’s something a little earlier I’d really like to see.” He glanced at those around him. “If it’s okay with you guys, anyway…”

*        *        *

“Sam… can you hear me?”

At the sound of Harriet’s voice, Angel Sam wished he could curl himself up even further than he already had.

Doctor, why would you leave me alone with my worst failure?

“It’s okay, you don’t have to answer. Just listen, alright?”

Harriet’s gentle touch against his shoulder would have made Sam pull away if he wasn’t locked in stone.

This isn’t fair.

“I haven’t heard from you in a while,” Harriet continued. “Not since you… did that thing to the orphanage director when he tried to hurt me.”

Please don’t remind me of that.

“I never thanked you for doing that. He was hurting a lot of girls, as it turned out. I was just next in line.”

I didn’t have to do what I did. I had other options. Less destructive options. Just like tonight.

“I’m sorry for the things I said when I was twelve—when you told me what you really were. I was scared, you know?”

A reasonable response to a thing like me. You’d run for your life if you knew the things I know about my kind.

“I—I forgive you for what you did to my mother, Sam.”

How could you possibly forgive me for that?

“It still makes my heart ache, but… it was an accident. And if I understand correctly, she still lived a life in the past, right?”

Without her child.

Harriet sighed. “It seems like I’m talking to an inanimate object right now. Feels a bit silly, really.”

That was the idea. I didn’t intend to still be hanging around in here.

“When I was a child, I was convinced I’d made you up. And I had been starting to believe that of myself again, until that doctor man showed up. He told me you were waiting for me. That you needed my help.”

He was wrong. I should never have let him dig up those memories.

Sam would have been openly weeping if he was capable of such things. This was really a low blow by the Doctor, bringing her here.

“If you don’t respond, then maybe I really am just a mad blind woman who talks to statues. Maybe old Doctor Franklin from the loony bin was right about me having delusions all along.”

Dammit.

“N-no, he was wrong.” Sam lifted his head slowly, his eyes scanning forlornly over her familiar face. “I’m sorry, Harriet. For everything.”

Harriet’s ashen face lifted into a smile. “It really is you, Sam?”

Sam reached a trembling hand to her cheek, and held his palm against it. Though it was stone cold, she leaned into it, and placed her own hands over it.

“I think this is the first time you’ve ever touched me,” she said as tears started to roll down her face.

*        *        *

“I’ve expanded the atmospheric field to a twelve foot radius around the TARDIS,” the Doctor said, as he reached for the doors. “So, who’ll be the first human to set foot on the moon, even before old Neil and Buzz did it?”

Sam exchanged glances with the others.

“Go on, then,” Charlie said, pushing Sam towards the door, “you look more excited about this than the rest of us combined, I think.”

“O-okay,” he said.

Martha was grinning at him. “You should have seen the first time I came to the moon,” she remarked. “Whole bloody hospital got teleported up here. That was a day and a half, wasn’t it Doctor?”

Sam glared at her. “What?”

But she said no more as she gently pushed him towards the door.

The Doctor opened it with a flourish, revealing the vast expanse of grey dust and craters, watched over by a firmament of bright stars. And front and centre sat the looming blue sphere that was planet Earth.

“Oh boy,” he breathed, as he stepped out into the dust. The gravity changed as he passed through the threshold, and he bounced up from his footstep, feeling his weight alter.

“Al, eat your heart out,” he mumbled as it truly hit him where he was standing. Al had been an astronaut, alright—but he’d never stood on the moon.

“Watch the sky just over there…” the Doctor pointed to the horizon to their left. “You’ll be seeing it spring up in four minutes.”

Sam fixed his eyes where the Doctor had pointed, and let himself fall into a sitting position, where he landed lightly, and leaned back against the TARDIS. He breathed deep of the impossible air available to him, despite lacking any kind of space suit, and sat dumbstruck as he stared at the sky.

The others each stepped out, each giving their own cry of amazement—even Charlie, who had been so nonchalant about the TARDIS.

And they watched with wonder as a rocket emerged from the horizon, shooting across the sky.

“There he is,” Sam murmured. “Third lap of ten…”

In the sky, a team of astronauts circled the moon one Christmas Eve, and among them was a young Albert Calavicci, who was still married to Beth, and hadn’t yet been to Vietnam.

As Sam smiled up at the rocket, a hand grasped his. He turned his head to Martha, who was studying him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“He’s been all you’ve had for a long time, eh?”

“Who? You mean Al?”

“Yeah. He must mean the world to you.”

Sam dropped his gaze. “Yeah. I’d be lost a hundred times over without him.” He picked up a stone from the dust. “Still, I wish he would have been honest with me that I had a wife.”

He tossed the stone ahead, and watched as it made a ripple in the atmospheric bubble as it pierced through.

“You have a wife…?”

“Looks that way,” Sam said with a snort. “Angel Sam reminded me. Her name is Donna. But I just don’t remember anything about her.”

“I knew a Donna,” the Doctor interjected. “Showed up in the TARDIS in her wedding dress out of the blue. Bit of an awkward situation, disappearing from your own wedding.”

Sam blinked as the comment unearthed a memory. “Donna left me at the altar. Wait, that can’t be right. I’m married to her… but…”

“Layered memory?” the Doctor said. “Can happen when you change your own timeline. Not generally a good idea, mind you. In fact it’s usually not. Did you do a little tweaking in your own past, perhaps?”

“Huh. Maybe.” Sam rubbed his forehead. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time. My brother, Tom… I saved his life in the war.”

“Fascinating,” the Doctor mumbled. “Think I’ll need to do a diagnostic on your personal timeline, Sam. Maybe the whole thing is a great big flux point. That would make you fairly unique, I’d say.”

The rocket above was set against the Earth in the sky now, which turned it into a silhouette against the shining blue of the ocean.

“God that’s beautiful,” he whispered, becoming transfixed by the breathtaking sight.

And he thought about Al’s life from this point: becoming a prisoner of war, languishing there for years, thinking about Beth, only to arrive home to find her having moved on and married another man.

And he’d once had the chance to change it. But he hadn’t.

I’m sorry, Al. If I ever have that chance again… I promise I’ll take it.

Chapter 35

Unintendo Consequences

Angel Sam climbed to his feet, and stood hand-in-hand with Harriet, a variety of painful emotions cycling through his chest. But it was overshadowed by the relief that she was here, standing in front of him, and had somehow come to terms with what he was and what he’d done. This woman he had hurt all those years ago, before she was old enough to understand, and that he had tried to watch over, only to wind up with nothing but guilt for his failure to control himself.

“I don’t deserve your forgiveness,” he said, his head bowed. “There’s no getting around it… I’m dangerous.”

“The way I see it,” Harriet said, “a weapon can be used to hurt someone, and it can be used to protect someone. I might be blind, Sam, but I can see full well which path you consistently choose.”

Sam let out an unsteady breath.

“I’m not so sure about that, but—” he squeezed her hand, “—it means a lot to me that you’d say that.”

She smiled, an expression that warmed his stone heart, and he almost felt… happy. Just for a second.

And then the mechanical whooping sound of the time machine returned to the room. The blue box faded into existence in a gust of wind.

“Such a peculiar sound,” Harriet remarked, stretching her hand to the TARDIS to touch it. “I don’t understand this box one bit.”

“It makes me… hungry,” Angel Sam admitted. “I don’t think I can ever go in there.”

“Oh, absolutely not,” the Doctor said as the door creaked open. “I might like you a lot, Angel Sam, but I couldn’t possibly trust you to control yourself in there. Lovely to see you up and about, by the way.”

The Doctor peered back inside the TARDIS. “Eyes closed when you come out of here,” he told the occupants. “Though not until the door’s shut. Angel Sam’s looking more limber.”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Harriet said to the Doctor, “who are you, sir?”

“Me? I’m just a friend,” the Doctor said, dismissive. “And speaking of which, here’s another.”

He moved aside as Ralph Sam stepped out of the TARDIS, eyes glistening as he looked at his stone double.

“Are you alright?” he said cautiously, padding across the room to the statue, and closing his eyes.

“No, I wouldn’t go that far,” Angel Sam confessed. “I have a lot of regrets, and I’m worried about what will happen to the angel if we—”

“—extract my neurons from you?” Sam finished. “Yeah, me too. But what else can we do? I need those neurons.”

“Neurons?” Harriet’s brow furrowed. “What are you on about?”

“It’s a long story,” the two Sams said in unison.

“We’ll regale you later,” the Doctor added. “But for now, we should probably get you out of a stranger’s home. Angel Sam, would you meet us back at Ralph’s? We have some work to do—and don’t you worry, I’ll fix you up.”

“Yeah… okay,” Angel Sam said with a resigned sigh.

Am I going to be able to live with myself when our neurons are reunited and he sees all I’ve done?

*        *        *

As Sam emerged from the TARDIS on the front lawn of Ralph’s house, he noticed the trashed Reliant was nowhere in sight.

“Hey, where’s Ralph’s car?” he queried the Doctor, who exited the box behind him, holding the hand of Harriet.

“Oh… I may have left that on the street somewhere down that way.” He pointed vaguely in a direction. “I’m sure it’s fine where it is.”

Sam frowned, heading for the front door. As he opened it, he jumped back at the sight of the angel right there in the doorway, seeming to be reaching out to him.

“Whoa, what the—”

“Oh, right,” the Doctor added. “Dormant angel. Watch it doesn’t poke out your eye.”

“A lot happened since I left here, huh?” Sam said, ducking under the arm, and flipping the light switch, which did not respond. “Oh, come on!”

“Angel Sam knocked out the power, and probably fried all the appliances in the place, too. Sorry about that.”

“As if Ralph wasn’t in enough debt,” Sam moaned. “How am I gonna get his life back on track now?”

“Well,” Charlie said, manoeuvring around the statue in the doorway, “I think you’re in luck. See when you were up getting changed into that suit before, I rang my bookie. Made a few bets on the horses with Billy’s money. By this time tomorrow, we’ll have three grand out of it.” He grinned. “That should sort you, right?”

Sam stared at him, completely shocked. “Al helped you with that?”

“That he did,” Martha said, as she too entered the house with Billy. “Can’t help but think the bookie will be blacklisting Charlie after this one, though.”

“Fine with me, as long as I get to go home,” Charlie said, with an expectant look at the Doctor, who was guiding Harriet around the statue.

“It would be my absolute pleasure, Charlie.”

Sam melted into the sofa as he looked around him. This unusual grouping of people from the future—even beyond his own—helping him out like this. Being able to rely on people other than Al was a rare thing in his leaps, but this time it really felt like he was part of a team, all supporting one another. It certainly helped that they all knew his secret.

“Thanks, everyone,” he said to the smiling faces.

And then his gaze fell on Billy, who was looking at his hands, a pensive expression on his face.

Billy Shipton was the only one who wasn’t going anywhere. And there was nothing anyone could do about it, was there?

How depressing.

“Right!” the Doctor announced, voice booming. “I’m going to get a bit of kit from the TARDIS and we can start giving you the guinea pig treatment I promised a week ago. Oh, we’re going to have fun, Sam Beckett.” His expression of childlike excitement almost caught on to Sam, but he tempered it with anxiety.

“At least he didn’t say ‘lab rat’ this time,” Martha added with a cheeky wink at Sam.

The Doctor dashed back out of the house, leaving Harriet to find a place on the sofa to take a seat.

“Um…” she said as she sat beside Sam, “why did he just call you ‘Sam Beckett’?”

*        *        *

As the breaking dawn shone warm light into the living room, two Sams stood back-to-back, each wearing strange wired headgear that the Doctor had produced from the depths of his TARDIS.

To Sam, they seemed similar to the sensors that he and Al had used when syncing their respective brain waves for the neurological hologram connection that could only be crudely replicated by Gooshie’s brain—hence the instability of Gooshie’s projection. Though he couldn’t quite remember how the sensors had worked.

The Doctor stood between them, holding something that looked like a Game Boy, which was wired into both headsets. It couldn’t have actually been a Game Boy, though, surely.

Well, he was sure of that until the chiptune melody of Korobeiniki—a Russian folk song—started playing…

“Are… are you playing Tetris?” Ralph Sam asked, incredulous.

“Tetris? No!” the Doctor said, apparently appalled at the suggestion. “Well, sort of. Well, yes, I’m playing it, but I’m playing it for a very good reason. It’s an ideal interface for reconnecting neurons, you see, and I have it wired in to slot the neurons over from Angel to Ralph. I just have to…”

The sound of fingers tapping buttons replaced his speech for a moment. “Oh yes! Hello, Smashboy!”

Smashboy??

“You’re taking this seriously, right?” Angel Sam asked slowly, his voice wavering.

“Of course I am,” the Doctor protested, his voice pitching higher, like a child who demanded to be given the benefit of the doubt. “Six more rows to clear, and we’ll be good. Oh, blimey, not a Rhode Island!” He hissed. “Okay, I’ll be cutting it fine. Oh, I’m rubbish at this game. Proper rubbish.”

“If you lose, is something bad going to happen?” Ralph Sam asked, suddenly a little scared.

“No, no. Well, nothing I can’t fix… a-ha! Hero, you’re my hero!”

The sound of several rows being cleared at once resounded from the Game Boy.

“Nearly complete… brace yourselves, Sams…”

And the music abruptly cut out, followed by a cry of victory from the Doctor. “That should do it!”

“Do what?” asked Angel Sam.

Ralph Sam, on the other hand, was pulling the headgear off and breathing heavily.

“Oh my god…” he said, his heart pounding as he suddenly felt truly himself for the first time this whole leap.

“No, really…” Angel Sam said shakily. “I’m still here…”

“I’m sorry, I really should have explained what would happen,” the Doctor said quietly. “Sam’s neurons have been moved out, but your angel mind has retained all the memories from them. You might slowly lose his identity over time, but you’re going to be like this for a while, I’d wager.”

Angel Sam took in this new information, and reached out to his counterpart behind his back, taking hold of Ralph Sam’s warm, fleshy hand.

Meanwhile, Ralph Sam began to assimilate the imported memories of being an angel that he was now privy to.

And neither spoke for some time.

Chapter 36

Guardian Angel

“You… wanna talk about it?”

The Doctor had left the two of them alone in the living room, and Sam sat facing away from the angel that no longer had part of his brain, but nonetheless retained his identity.

“What’s there to talk about?” Angel Sam said, chuckling bitterly at the tragedy of his own misfortune. “I drew the short straw. Didn’t I?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I know. Of course you are,” he muttered. “I might as well just go ahead and try that process again… erase my mind properly this time. It should work now, right? No more human neurons to stand in the way. Lights out. Sweet oblivion.”

Sam opened his mouth to reply, but nothing came out. What could he say? Angel Sam had already tried this once. Of course he was going to try it again. And Sam couldn’t think of any good argument as to why he shouldn’t, as much as it pained him to admit it.

“Do you mind if we just sit here a while?” Angel Sam murmured. “Shoulder to shoulder? It’s nice feeling someone’s body warmth beside me.”

“Sure thing,” Sam replied, moving himself closer against the statue’s extremities.

I remember that feeling of coldness, the desire for a warm hand. Sam was still coming to grips with the new memories in his mind that didn’t feel so new, because some of them were very old. Memories spanning twenty-six long years here in London, figuring himself out and learning to live as something alien. The painful memories of Harriet’s mother, and the years of trying to help her—it always seemed to come back to using that terrible ability. And sprinkled among it all, a mess of disorganised snippets of knowledge that the angels had provided. And on the edges of his recollection, some frightening knowledge about the Doctor that he hadn’t known before. Oh boy.

“What about you?” Angel Sam asked. “I’m sorry you had to see the things I did.”

“It was both of us, wasn’t it? Technically.”

“Only the part of me that’s you is the part that feels bad about it. So what happens when that part dies off?”

Another moment passed in silence. Sam was in a liminal space between being dead tired and filled with adrenaline. He wanted to sleep, but he couldn’t leave Angel Sam in this vulnerable state.

His neurons were all together in his brain again, but he still felt a kinship to this version of himself. As if a part of his soul hadn’t made the trip over.

“… Sam?” Harriet’s voice broke the silence. The woman stood in the entrance to the living room, clutching the door frame. “Are you okay?”

Both Sams responded with a soft chuckle, and a ‘no.’

“Which one of us are you asking?” Sam asked.

“I… I don’t know. The Doctor told me you both remember me now.” She put a hand on each Sam’s shoulder.

“If you’re looking for the ‘real’ Sam,” Angel Sam said bitterly, “it’s him. I’m just a cheap copy.”

“Don’t say that,” said Harriet. “I don’t really understand all this neuron rubbish, but you sound like my Sam to me.”

“I’m not, though,” he retorted, “and eventually I won’t have any Sam left in me. I’m going to end up a beast, like the rest of them. That’s why I have to turn myself off, like the one over by the door.”

Harriet’s hand left Sam’s shoulder, and she put both of her arms around Angel Sam, embracing him.

“Please don’t,” she murmured. “Not now. I need you, Sam.”

“After all this…” Angel Sam whispered, “you still want me around?”

“Of course I do. You’re like a father to me.”

Sam found himself teary-eyed as he listened to the exchange. He himself couldn’t stick around to help her. He’d be leaving pretty soon, he sensed. But maybe Angel Sam could stay by her side, in the role he’d played for so many years: a protector and a confidant.

He instinctively knew that Harriet had always been what kept Angel Sam going through those years. The need to keep her safe was a guiding force. And now it could be again.

“Hey,” Sam said, “You can still do good here. Your life isn’t over… it could just be beginning.”

“What if I start losing myself?” Angel Sam asked in a shaky voice. “What if I start wanting to hurt people?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” She reached down to his hand and gripped it. “Please… be my guardian angel again.”

Angel Sam took a deep breath. “You don’t understand. When I feed, it’s like—”

“—Drinking water in the desert?” Sam finished. “I get it; I remember. But Harriet was right… about weapons being used to protect.”

He stood up, stretching. “Put your faith in Harriet, Sam. Let her be your moral compass. And when the time comes that you start to lose yourself… then you can hit the reset.”

Sam was startled to feel Harriet envelop him in an embrace from behind.

“I had my doubts, but now I hear my Sam in there, under that English accent.” she whispered, before letting go and turning back to Angel Sam. “I’m going home, Sam. Are you coming?”

Angel Sam took a moment to collect himself before speaking. “Do… do you still live in that bedsit in East Ham?”

“I do.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you there, then.”

She leaned over, and Sam heard her land a kiss on the top of his head before she felt her way out of the house.

“I’m still worried,” he said to Sam.

“Well,” Sam said with a weak smile, “if you become a danger to anyone, I’ll just have to leap in to stop you.”

Angel Sam snorted. “I don’t doubt it. Well, I hope I never have to see you again.”

“I don’t think you will. But maybe the Doctor will some day. And Martha, Charlie, and Billy. Four angels, right?”

“…I guess by 2007, I’ll be one of them,” Angel Sam’s words were pained.

“I think that was how it was always going to be…” Sam murmured.

“Y-yeah. I think you’re right. I sense it.”

Sam turned to look over the angel, seated on the floor, hand under its chin, looking up towards Sam with a frozen expression of sorrow.

He placed a hand on the shoulder of the statue. “Sorry I had to be the one you fed on back then, that caused all this to happen.”

‘Yeah, me too.’

Sam blinked, and Angel Sam was gone.

Goodbye.

Chapter 37

Facing The Music

Sam pulled the Reliant into Paula’s driveway, and climbed out, looking upon the terraced house nervously.

“You think you can handle this one, Sam?” Al asked, phasing out of the passenger seat. “This broad seems to be a major trigger for Ralph.”

“He’s not giving me any trouble now,” Sam said. “Surely you’ve noticed? I haven’t felt this whole in a while.”

“I still don’t get how he managed to get your brain together so easily.”

“The guy’s an alien with a time machine. What is there even to get? We just have to accept we may never understand even a fraction of what he knows.” It pained Sam to say this, considering his curious nature.

“Though, I can’t say I won’t try,” he added after a moment’s contemplation, and flashed Al a grin. “How’s Ralph been in the Waiting Room, anyway?”

Al shrugged. “He’s more swiss-cheesed than they usually are; he barely remembered his own name. But boy is he cranky. He does remember a lot of colourful insults, that’s for sure.”

“Sounds about right.” Sam locked the car and took a deep breath as he began heading for the door. “Guess this is it…”

Al took a puff on his cigar. “This is one thing Ralph brought on himself, so don’t feel too bad, Sam.”

“I wish there would have been another way, but I guess he sealed his own fate,” Sam muttered. He proceeded to Paula’s front door, and knocked a few times. Evelyn was the one to answer.

“Dad…” she said as she looked upon him. A split second later, Sam was smothered in a hug from the traumatised teen. “Did the hospital tell you what happened?”

“Y-yeah,” Sam replied, stealing a glance back at Al. “Whereabouts is your mother? I need to talk to her.”

“Just in the kitchen,” she said, taking Sam by the hand and leading him inside the house.

“Are you alright?” he asked, gesturing to her bandaged arm. “I heard you got a pretty deep cut…”

Evelyn nodded, her lips pressed together. “I’ll be okay. It didn’t hit a major artery or anything. And that Martha girl is really smart; she knew exactly what to do. You should give her a raise.”

“I already did,” Sam said with a private smile.

“I don’t understand why she showed up, though. How did she know where I live? How did she know we were in trouble?”

“It’s… difficult to explain,” Sam admitted. “Let me talk to your mother in private first, okay Lyn?”

“Okay…”

Evelyn opened the swinging door to the kitchen, and Sam stepped in, leaving her outside.

Paula was at the sink, scrubbing dishes.

“Lyn, could you dry the—” she looked up and cut herself off when she saw Sam. “Oh, it’s you. What are you doing here, Ralph?”

Sam reached into his coat, and pulled out a chequebook and pen. “I have your money.” He started writing out a cheque as he continued: “I’m gonna give you a little extra because you probably won’t be seeing me much for a while.”

Al had popped into the kitchen behind him, and the handlink chirped a few times. “If you go through with this plan, Ziggy gives it a ninety-six percent likelihood that Ralph won’t be seeing daylight for ten years,” he remarked. “Which I guess is a better result than his brains being splattered on the wall…”

“What? Why?” Paula was incredulous. “You pissing off somewhere?”

Sam took a deep breath. “Those men last night weren’t… random.”

Paula’s eyes widened. “What?!”

“I’m sorry Paula, I’m a terrible person and I got in over my head with a drug syndicate—they were the ones who came here to…” He licked his lips as Paula’s mouth drifted open. “I’m glad they failed, but…” Sam offered her the freshly written cheque. “But I can’t guarantee I’ll never do something like this again, so please just take this and promise me you’ll cut me out of your life.”

Paula stepped back from him. “I… I’m calling the police,” she said, grabbing a phone from the wall behind her.

Sam grimaced. “You don’t have to do that. I’ve already recorded a confession on tape that the police will be receiving very soon. Please, just take the money, Paula. And about the other things you may have seen last night…” He cleared his throat. “Uh, I’d come up with a more believable story if I were you. Nobody will believe what you really saw.”

“What do you know about what happened?” Paula demanded. “How did they just vanish like that?! And what of that strange statue I found in my bedroom? Ralph, none of it makes any sense!”

“Precisely,” Sam said. “So don’t tell anyone the truth, for your own sake. The bottom line is you’re alive. Both of you.”

He placed the cheque on the kitchen counter, and turned to leave. “I’m sorry for everything.”

He left the kitchen, and headed towards the door. Evelyn intercepted him, tugging on his coat.

“You’re already leaving? You said you’d tell me—”

Sam cut her off with a hug. “I’m sorry, Lyn. I hope you grow up to be better than your old man.”

And he left the house, leaving Evelyn staring in bewilderment as he drove away.

*        *        *

When Sam returned to Ralph’s house, the angel was gone: carted away to join its brethren at Wester Drumlins. He was glad to see the back of it, in no small part because Al could now successfully accompany him to the house without vanishing.

Sam’s new entourage awaited in the living room. Charlie and Martha had packed up their things at Charlie’s flat and were standing by with suitcases, while Billy was preparing the film and audio reels of Ralph’s confession.

On the front lawn, the Doctor emerged from his blue box and leaned against the side, arms folded, and sonic screwdriver tapping against his lips.

“I don’t know about the lot of you,” he called in to the house, “but I’m getting a smidge tired of 1969. First order of business, Sam: let’s get you home, shall we?”

It seemed too good to be true, but the Doctor had indeed promised him he’d be able to do it, using his fantastically advanced technology. Just like he’d so easily moved Sam’s neurons from one being to another. Just like he could make his box disappear from one place and reappear in another, just by pulling some levers and occasionally assaulting the console (Al, too, had the philosophy of whacking something until it worked right).

Sam peered out the door. “Alright, just give me a minute to say my goodbyes.”

He turned to the others, and stepped up to Charlie.

“Thank you, Charlie. I thought I was here to help you, but I think you ended up helping me a lot more.”

Charlie scratched the back of his head in a bashful fashion. “Well, let’s call it even, yeah?” He took Sam by the hand and shook it. “Let’s never meet again. Neither Sam nor Ralph, yeah?”

Sam grinned. “That sounds like a plan.”

He moved on to Martha, and took her by the hand.

“…I went to the moon today.”

Martha grinned, and drew him into a hug.

“I’m sorry, you went where?” Al asked, eyes bulging.

Sam shot him a mischievous look. “I’ll tell you all about it when I’m home.” He turned back to Martha. “I can’t thank you enough, Martha. This experience wasn’t easy, but you seemed to have it together the whole way through. You’re pretty great.”

Martha snorted. “Don’t be giving me a big head. Don’t even have a doctorate yet.”

“Well, I’m sure it won’t be long before you do,” Sam said with a smile. “And whatever crazy situation you end up in next, I know you’ll be able to handle that too.”

“Thanks, Sam. Good luck.”

With a pat on Martha’s arm, Sam finally turned to Billy.

“You saved my life last night, Billy. Thank you. Listen, if you ever need help,” he said, pulling a slip of paper from his pocket, “this is Harriet’s number. Angel Sam might be able to assist you in fulfilling your mission.”

Billy nodded, his face dark. “Thanks. I suppose he and I are not so different, being left behind.”

Sam averted his gaze. “Yeah. I wish there was some other way.”

“I mustn’t dwell on it,” Billy said with a deep sigh. “Besides, the money you’ve given is going to help me a lot. It’ll be nice to retire from the dangerous life of a cop, right? Well, once Ralph’s trial is over with.” He smiled wryly.

Sam mirrored his expression. “You have a good life, Billy.”

With a final wave, Sam left Ralph’s house for the last time, and met the Doctor at the TARDIS.

“What happens now?”

The Doctor grinned. “Well, it should be a simple matter of using a controlled application of time vortex energy to trigger your return to a quantum state, and use the navigation controls of the TARDIS to direct you to the right place and time.”

“That easy, huh?” Sam said with a smirk. “And I suppose you’ve accounted for all the variables?”

“Always asking the right questions, you are.” The Doctor winked, and opened the door of the TARDIS. “Come on then, we can go through the details together.” He pointed to Al. “As for you, I’d be going back and checking wherever you keep your leapees, because it should only be a good ten minutes.”

Sam and Al exchanged a look. “Well,” Sam said, “I guess this is a temporary goodbye. See you on the other side, Al.”

“I hope you’re right,” Al replied, fiddling with his cigar. “Good luck, Sam.”

And the door closed.

Chapter 38

Time Flies

The handlink let out a ‘ping’.

Al jumped to his feet, recognising the noise it made whenever a new person leaped into the Waiting Room. He scooted out of his office and power-walked down the corridor to the Control Room, where a nervous Donna met him.

“You’re sure it’ll be Sam?” she said, her eyes fixed on the Waiting Room door.

“No,” Al admitted, “you know I don’t trust the Doctor as far as I can throw the guy. But there’s only one way to find out who’s in there, right?”

“You go. I couldn’t bear it if it wasn’t him,” Donna murmured, pushing Al towards the door.

“Alright, I’m going.”

Al felt his breath become unsteady as he approached the door. He wanted it to be true. He needed it to be true.

Sam, it better be you in there. Or I’m gonna track that Doctor down and feed him a knuckle sandwich. I don’t care if he is a damn alien.

He opened the door, and stepped into the blue room, where a man faced away from him. The tall figure leaned against the table, arms crossed and head down.

As the door closed behind him, Al cleared his throat loudly.

And the occupant of the Waiting Room turned around, his green eyes and brown hair unmistakable.

“Sam! It is you!” Al cried, launching himself across the room and wrapping his arms around his best friend.

“Al…” Sam said haltingly, “W-what am I doing in here? And why are you—?” He gently pried Al off him and looked him in the eye, questioning.

“You’re home, Sam,” Al said. “That nutjob Doctor actually did it.”

Sam’s blank expression was disheartening.

“What?” he asked, apparently not comprehending what Al had just told him. “Al, I’m quite clearly not at home—I’m in the Waiting Room. I was at home, last thing I remember. How did I get here? And what doctor?”

Al squinted at him. “What do you mean, last thing you remember? What is the last thing you remember?”

Sam regarded Al as if he had two heads. “Donna and I went to sleep at home.” He glanced around, and checked his unadorned wrist for a watch. “What time is it? And why am I in a Fermi suit, anyway? What happened?”

Al didn’t know what to say to this. The last time he’d slept beside Donna was… the night before he leaped. At least that’s how it played out in the timeline he’d created after having leaped.

This made no sense.

“Are you telling me you’ve lost your memory of the last… what, almost five years?”

Sam glared at him. “Al, please don’t mess with me. My memory is perfectly fine. I can tell you what you ate for lunch three weeks ago if you want.”

Al swallowed. “What date do you think it is, Sam?”

“Well I can’t tell what time of day it is, so it might still be the eleventh.”

“…Of what?”

“May.”

“What year?”

It was Sam’s turn to squint. “What is this Al, Twenty Questions?”

“Humour me,” Al was sweating now, and he spoke through his teeth. “Please. The year.”

“Nineteen ninety-five. Al, just what is this about? Did something go wrong with the brainwave synchronisation process?”

He started towards the door, snatching the handlink from Al. “If something’s malfunctioned and messed with my brain, you need to tell me.”

He opened the door, and marched out. Al scurried behind.

“Wait, Sam. You don’t understand…”

He rounded a corner to find Donna engaged in a handsy kiss with her husband. Sam was caught completely off-guard, and his hand loosely dropped the handlink, which Al retrieved from the floor as he struggled out of her tight grip.

“Whoa whoa whoa,” he said, putting out his hands defensively. “Just what’s goin’ on here?”

“Sam… don’t you remember me?” Donna asked breathlessly.

Sam cocked his head. “Why does everyone think I’ve forgotten things? Why wouldn’t I remember my own wife?”

Donna glanced at Al in confusion, and he made a ‘time-out’ sign with his hands.

“Okay Sam, listen: it’s not nineteen ninety-five. It’s the year two thousand, and you’ve been leaping for the past four and a half years.”

Sam stared, slack-jawed, at Al and Donna.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “that can’t be true. If that were true, why don’t I remember doing that?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Al said, clenching his fist.

Doctor, you’d better hope I don’t track you down.

*        *        *

Sam blinked as Doctor Verbena Beeks’s pen light shone in his eye.

“You don’t understand,” Sam said, voice rising. “I don’t forget things. I have a photographic memory, Verbena. How could I forget five whole years, and of something so significant as time travel?”

“It’s entirely precedented that you might have memory loss,” Verbena said in her no-nonsense professional manner, “and in fact, the last time you leaped home you experienced notable memory loss of your time leaping. You described it like a fading dream. But I have to say, this is far more complete. And instantaneous.”

“Last time?” Sam shook his head. “I can’t understand this at all. I never anticipated such severe side effects of using the Accelerator.”

He rubbed his eyes. “What a disaster.” After a pause, he looked Verbena in the eye. “Well, Ziggy recorded everything, right? I need to read his reports, get up to speed. From what little Al’s described, it sounds like I’ve been busy.”

“Yes, you have,” said Verbena, placing a blood pressure cuff on his arm, “which is why what you need right now is a vacation. You may not remember it, but you’ve been in high stress situations continuously for the last five years. Especially recently.” She pursed her lips. “You don’t need to know about that just yet. Go home and rest. Donna missed you all those years, Sam. Spend some time with her.”

She read the blood pressure monitor, and removed the cuff before noting the reading down in her computer. Sam leaned over and noted that it was 108/70, which was entirely fine—excellent, even.

Sam gestured to the reading. “I feel fine. All signs point to fine. Besides, how can I possibly relax if all I want to do is find out about everything I forgot? I’m just going to be restless until I access those records.”

Verbena cradled her head in her hands. “You’re a chronic workaholic, Sam. Look, I’ve given you my recommendation, but it’s not like I can force you to relax; you’re my boss, not the other way around. I’m just going to note it in your file that I suggested it, and you do with that what you will. Got it?”

Sam nodded. “Thanks, ’Beena.”

Sam left Verbena’s examination room, stretching, and headed for the Control Room.

It certainly gave him a sinking feeling, knowing he’d forgotten nearly five years, but the sheer excitement of knowing he really did travel in time—his lifetime of work had truly come to fruition—was enough for him to put his dread aside and roll with the punches of this happening to him.

He placed his hand on Ziggy’s activation panel.

“Afternoon, Ziggy,” he said in a cheerful tone, peering up at the scintillating blue orb above him.

“Doctor Beckett, it’s fascinating to see you again,” Ziggy replied in his—her?—signature detached tone.

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Ziggy, when did you get that voice?”

“Since Gooshie allowed me to choose my voice modules.”

Sam chuckled. “So, what pronouns do you prefer?”

“Doctor Beckett, you may designate any pronouns you would like. It’s hardly relevant. I’m a computer.”

“That’s very forward-thinking of you,” Sam said. “Okay, listen. I need you to print out copies of every leap report you’ve generated since ’95. I need to get up to speed with what I missed.”

“I’m sorry, Doctor Beckett,” Ziggy said, her voice becoming sulky. “But that’s not possible.”

Sam crossed his arms. “Why the hell not?”

“Well, you’re not the correct Doctor Beckett, I’m afraid.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Sam glared up at the orb, eyebrows high. Since he came back it seemed like nobody was talking sense. He thought at least Ziggy would put it to him straight.

“I cannot allow Doctor Beckett from 1995 access to information of actions he is yet to take.”

Sam’s jaw fell open. “Wait a sec—wait a sec. What are you saying? Are you implying that the reason I don’t remember is because it hasn’t happened to me yet? Because the future me leaped into the me from ’95? And that’s how I got in the Waiting Room?”

“Very perceptive, Doctor Beckett. I was waiting for the penny to drop for someone around here. It’s not surprising that it was you. But I’m somewhat disappointed it took so long.”

Sam furrowed his brow. “You could have told us this at any time, Ziggy.”

“I just wanted an afternoon of entertainment. I was planning to tell Gooshie when he got back from his dance class.”

Sam groaned in exasperation, and turned on his heel to find Al.

“For a computer, you sure like to withhold vital information,” he muttered as he left the Control Room.

Chapter 39

New Beginning

Sam woke up to the sound of a song on a clock radio.

“…You gotta be hard, you gotta be tough, you gotta be stronger…”

The song sounded awfully contemporary. At least in the mid-nineties it had been. He’d never leaped this far forward, as far as he could recall.

Through the haze of sleep, the memory came to him of what he had been doing before.

I was coming home, wasn’t I?

Sam sat up urgently, and rubbed the sleep from his eyes as he looked around the room. His room. His clock radio. His own bed, with sheets that smelled of his wife’s perfume.

“Oh boy,” he mumbled, “he really did it, didn’t he?”

The Doctor had brought him back home.

Sam pulled the covers off himself, revealing boxer shorts he recognised, and he stumbled out of the bedroom in a daze.

Shouldn’t I have leaped to the Waiting Room? he wondered idly as he crossed the hall into the bathroom, where he looked himself in the mirror and saw his own reflection.

He let out a joyous laugh, inspecting his face—exactly how he remembered it. He could hardly believe it. It was really true.

“Thank you,” he said, eyes on the ceiling. Though this time, he wasn’t sure if he was thanking God, or thanking the Doctor.

Finishing up his business in the bathroom, he headed for the kitchen. The house was incredibly quiet. Where was Donna?

God, he needed to see her.

Along with this need came an influx of memories of his wife. Her face, her voice, and their life together. And his brief time with her when he’d switched places with Al a couple of years prior.

He moved from room to room, looking for her. But the house was empty save for himself.

He picked up a photo frame from the coffee table, running his fingers over the picture of himself and Donna, cutting their wedding cake.

The memory pushed itself harshly against another in his mind; one of quietly staring at the uncut cake in a darkened reception hall, hours after Donna’s cold feet had walked her away from him.

‘Layered memory,’ the Doctor had called it. Holding the two opposing images in his head together made his neck hair stand on end. And he took a moment to think more about those changes he’d made along his own timeline. But it didn’t seem like the things he changed ever seemed to alter where he ended up. He always leaped on May 12th, 1995.

His reverie was cut short by the phone ringing. He jumped on it when he saw the caller ID showed it was coming from the Project.

“Hello, this is Sam,” he said into the handset, his hand trembling.

“Oh good, I got a hold of you,” came Donna’s husky voice.

“Donna…” Sam murmured, feeling his tongue tie in knots. “I—um… I missed you—”

“Yeah, sorry about that, darling,” she said, her tone remarkably light considering the gravity of this phone call. “I went in early because I wanted to go over some of the programs again. I think there could be one or two more safety tweaks that we could make before tonight.”

Sam stared into the phone, unsure of where this conversation was going or why.

“What programs…?”

“For the Accelerator, honey. You’re still planning to leap tonight, aren’t you?”

Sam suddenly had a very strong sense of déjà vu.

“Leap? Tonight?”

There was a beat of silence on Donna’s end. “I hope you’re not planning to back out. Not now. Didn’t you say it was the only way to prove your theory works? I don’t want them to shut us down, Sam. We’ve worked too hard.”

The phone slipped from his hand as he pulled the newspaper from the coffee table and had a good look at the date.

He didn’t leap home—not really. He leaped to the very day he left home. And Donna was in on the whole thing.

“Oh boy.”

He bent down, grabbing the phone from the floor, and held it back to his mouth. “I’ll be there shortly.”

*        *        *

The Project was exactly as he remembered it from the days leading up to his first leap—of course it was, since it was the same days. But his recollection of this specific day was just out of reach, save for the déjà vu he felt. He could only assume that by leaping here, he’d thrown the day into flux, and each event was only solidifying in his memory in the split second after it happened.

As he exited the elevator, he stood a moment, watching the Navy staff going about their business. He felt a jumble of emotions at once as he realised how close he was to being home, and yet…

And then he felt a hand come down roughly on his shoulder.

“You look like you’re about to cry,” Al said. “What’s eating you, kid?”

Al was touching his shoulder. Al was touching his shoulder.

If Sam hadn’t been about to cry before, he certainly was now. He blinked back tears, and pulled Al into a bear hug.

“Whoa, it’s not that dire, is it?” Al asked, taken aback by the affection. “We’ve still got a chance to save the funding at the function tonight. Save the waterworks, Sam.”

Sam loosened his grip on Al. “Sorry. Yeah. You’re right. I shouldn’t get ahead of myself.” He brushed the tears out of his blurred eyes. “I got a little carried away. That’s all. Do you know where Donna is?”

“Think I last saw her in your office,” Al said, and smirked. “She’s been frisky with you lately, huh? I wouldn’t be surprised if she was waiting for you in there wearing nothin’ but a skin-tight—”

“Al.”

“Fermi suit.”

Despite himself, Sam laughed.

“Ha, I knew one of my naughty jokes would get a laugh out of you one of these days,” Al said, triumphant. “Now get in there and make me proud.”

Sam rolled his eyes and headed for his office.

As he pushed open the door, he spotted Donna. Her head was down, with her full-bodied hair almost obscuring her face entirely. She was reading through a stack of papers, pen in hand.

“Donna…” he murmured as he watched her make a notation on the side of one of the pages. She looked up at him and gave him a once-over with her eyes.

“Hello handsome,” she said, licking her lips. “Come over here, I have to show you something.”

Sam wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that kind of lustful look in her eyes before. But he didn’t care; he needed to hold her as much as she appeared to want that of him.

He moved to her, grabbed her by both shoulders, and planted a kiss on her welcoming lips.

As the kiss went on, he felt a shiver down his spine. This was not the kind of kiss he remembered from Donna.

As he pulled away from her, he jumped back, seeing that the woman he had just kissed was not Donna.

“Oh my—who the hell are you?”

The woman fanned herself with her hand. “Goodness, you are a fabulous kisser, aren’t you? No wonder all the ladies fall for you. Even bad girls, or so I’ve heard. Lucky me.”

British accent. Another British accent. And a leaper? He’d only ever crossed paths with one British leaper before. But this wasn’t Zoey.

Sam took another step back. “Did… you leap into my wife?!”

The woman laughed, her blond curls bouncing as she lifted her head. “I do like playing wife to cute time travellers, you know.”

She pointed her pen towards the papers. “Come now, sweetie—we have work to do.”

Chapter 40

Health and Safety

As the unfamiliar woman turned back to the pile of paper she had been working with, Sam took a firm hold of her wrist.

“You get the hell away from my work,” he snarled. “Tell me who you are and what you’re doing here. Now.”

The woman’s cheery demeanour barely faltered. “Oh, you’re adorable,” she cooed, pinching his cheek with her free hand. “But I’m afraid I can’t be having you strong-arming me when I’m already behind. Good thing the paralytic should be kicking in any second.”

She puckered her red lips, smacking them together, and winked at Sam as he found his grip loosening, and his knees losing their integrity.

There was something in her… lipstick?

“No…”

The woman caught him as he fell towards her, and she gently lowered him to the floor.

“I hate to do this,” she murmured into his ear, “but I rather need you to listen, and I’d prefer you didn’t cause a bother in the meantime.”

She propped his limp body into a sitting position against the wall.

“Tell me… who you are…” Sam pleaded, speech slurred by the muscular relaxation.

“My name is River,” she said, proceeding to speak to him casually, as if she hadn’t just done this to him. “And the Doctor sent me. Only, the Doctor I know’s a fair bit later along than the one who’ll be showing up here in a few hours. I need you to play along that I’m your sweet wife, because he won’t have met me yet and it’ll be a whole ruddy thing if he sniffs me out. Timey-wimey nonsense—surely you understand.”

“Why are… you… here…” Sam choked out. “And… how did… you…”

River wiped a hand against his chin. “You’re drooling a bit there, love,” she said in a motherly tone. “Oh, stop looking at me like that. I’m not going to harm you in any way, you silly boy. I’m here to help.”

Oh, sure. That’s why you drugged me.

“See, I have some pertinent information about the Weeping Angels that the Doctor and I only learnt recently, and your Imaging Chamber is a big red flag. It’s exceptionally dangerous around an angel, you know.”

She gestured to her stack of papers. “I’ve been here the last two days developing a vital safety protocol for you. But I daresay that computer of yours will pull a HAL-9000 on me if she finds out I’m an impostor, so I need you to upload it to her core for me.”

“Safe—safety pro—” Sam glared at her. That damned protocol did so much more harm than good. He still felt the sting of Angel Sam never having been able to lay eyes on Al for twenty-six long years.

“Yes, I believe that saved you on a variety of occasions when you were in ’69,” River continued. “And it’s not only because the little Navy man with the cigar going AWOL acted as a proximity warning, mind.”

She ruffled Sam’s hair. “Oh, chin up, dear. I’m doing this out of the kindness of my heart.”

“How’d… you… leap…?” Sam bored his eyes into her.

“Oh, you’ll like this story, I think.” River took a seat on the desk chair, crossing her legs. “Did you know there’s another facility just like this one just outside of Edinburgh? Well, it’s a decade or two in the future, but the funny thing about it is that the people there kept putting things wrong that once went right. Can you imagine?”

Sam’s body twitched in alarm.

She laughed. “Could hardly let that continue, could I? They were all a bit mad at me for my hostile takeover, let me tell you.”

The ‘evil’ leaper project? Does that mean—?

“Donna… is she—”

“Don’t worry, she’s just fine. She and Alia are probably having tea as we speak.”

Sam was rendered speechless at this. She had to be lying. Right?

“Who are you?” he forced out.

River offered him an almost-sincere smile. “I’m a friend. By the way, I spoke to Harriet the other day. She’s an accomplished saxophonist now. Brilliant ear for music. I do wonder who taught her that.”

Sam stared at her, eyes bulging and fingers twitching. If she’d done something to Harriet…

“Steady now, Daddy,” River said, rolling her eyes. “I didn’t lay a finger on her. I’ve met her guardian angel—it would be daft to incur his wrath again.”

She pulled her shirt sleeve over her hand and used it to mop up further drool around Sam’s mouth.

“You should be starting to get limited movement back momentarily. I trust you’re not planning to land one of your famous roundhouse kicks on my face? Let’s do be civil, now.”

“Let me… see those…” he mumbled, reaching an unsteady finger towards the stack of paper the woman had been working on.

“Thank you, sweetie. I think we could work well as a team, you know.” River retrieved the stack, and placed it on the floor in front of Sam. “Song and Beckett, fighting crime in the sands of time.”

Sam scowled.

*        *        *

Four years and eight months later, a younger Sam Beckett leaned into Al Calavicci’s office, tapping on the door as he opened it.

“Al…?”

Al’s feet were on his desk, and he blew a puff of smoke towards the ceiling. The whole office smelled strongly of cigar smoke, even with the aggressive ventilation installed in the room for just this reason. Upon seeing Sam, he brought his feet down to the floor.

“What did Beeks say?” he asked, stamping out the cigar in an ashtray.

“Well, she told me to take a vacation,” he said with a chuckle, “but I’m not so sure that’s a great idea, considering what Ziggy just told me.”

Al leaned forward, eyes narrow. “What’d she say?”

Sam cringed in anticipation of what he was about to say. “You’d better get to the Imaging Chamber, Al. I’m willing to bet I’ll be wondering where you are by now.”

Al glared at him, not quite comprehending.

“Al, I never forgot the last five years. The older me leaped into 1995.” Sam’s gaze dropped to the floor, and he shook his head, still chuckling in disbelief.

Al sprang to his feet. “Are you kidding? So you’re the you before you leaped?” He slapped a palm against his face. “Why didn’t Ziggy say anything?!”

“It’s Ziggy,” Sam said with a broad shrug. “Why does he do anything?”

Al thought for a moment, before grinning. “Well, that’s good news! It means you haven’t lost your memory. That’s a damn relief.”

Sam pressed his lips together. “Does this mean I have to go sit in the Waiting Room? Rules are rules, right?”

Al rubbed his chin. “Well, it’s not like you’re going to be freaked out by the technology, and your clearance is still in place. But I won’t be able to let you up to the surface.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “That’s a pretty relaxed attitude.”

Al snorted. “Sam, the rules have been bent and broken so many times these past five years that they’re no more than the honours system now.”

Sam processed this with surprise. “And how did the Committee feel about that?”

“We learned pretty quickly that the less they know about it, the better. You gotta understand, leaping sometimes requires very creative solutions. And the rules can get in the way of your… you know… survival.”

“It’s that dangerous, huh?” Sam leaned against the wall, folding his arms in contemplation. “Al, let me ask you something…”

“What?”

“Did I make the right choice? Leaping, I mean?”

Al responded with a sorrowful smile. “I think you did. I wish you’d said goodbye, though.”

“Would you have let me go if I had?”

Al picked up his cigar from the ashtray. “Probably not.”

Sam nodded. “Well, you’d better go visit future me, right?”

“Yeah. I’ll see you around, kid.”

Chapter 41

Destiny

Control had returned to Sam’s body—mostly. But it wasn’t enough to confidently lift himself from the floor, and so he remained there, scanning over the lines of code that ‘River’ had written.

Well, it definitely did what he recalled it had done: detected the specific electromagnetic emission from a Weeping Angel, and disconnected the hologram. He recognised the specific signature. In those twenty-six years in the body of one of the creatures, he had made all kinds of measurements. It checked out. But he was still missing just why it was so necessary to insert this into Ziggy’s core functions. And what did the comment at the top mean?

“You said there was a reason for entering this into the system?” he asked the fellow leaper, eyeing her with caution. “One I didn’t know?”

River had a compact mirror open, and was applying fresh lipstick. She eyed him through Donna’s face in the mirror.

“That’s right. You were one of them, as I understand it. Don’t you know they multiply through images?”

“Images?”

“Photos or videos, drawings, and the eyes of other creatures. Mirrors…” She snapped the compact shut and turned to face him. “Your little stunt with the flies are what made the two extra angels, you know.”

Sam thought back to his time in angel form, and the mirrors he avoided because they always seemed to mist over when he looked in them. He’d always assumed that was some kind of defense mechanism, so he wouldn’t turn himself to stone by catching his own reflection. And he always seemed to know where a mirror was, whether he had seen it or not. Was there more he could have done? Not that he wanted to propagate more angels, certainly.

Was this knowledge part of what the angels had told him? He couldn’t remember—most of the information was left behind when his neurons were migrated.

“If your Imaging Chamber had captured an angel, it wouldn’t have ended well around here,” River continued. “Trust me darling, this protocol is essential, and I’m sure that somewhere in that incredibly handsome head of yours, you know that to be true.”

“And what about this comment at the top? ‘Hello Sweetie.’ What is that?”

“That’s a message for the Doctor. He wouldn’t have understood when he first heard it—but it would’ve clicked later. And so, he went ahead and tasked me with coming here to complete the circle. By being here, I’m simply fulfilling my part in all this.” She gestured broadly, expecting Sam to understand. And he did… kind of.

“So you know the Doctor… in the future?”

“I know all sorts of versions of the Doctor,” she admitted. “That’s our thing, really: crossing paths in the wrong order. But the version you know hasn’t met me for the first time yet, as I understand it. The Doctor who sent me here is aware of that first meeting—and it isn’t here, so he said. I can’t change that, else I’ll cause a bit of spacetime shenanigans that might be quite dangerous.”

Sam frowned. “I’ve crossed my own timeline before and nothing bad happened.”

River chuckled. “Ah, you’re not that important in the grand scheme, Sam. No offence—I’m sure you’ve done wonderful things on the micro scale. But the Doctor’s life is intertwined with the fates of entire worlds. Disrupting the trajectory of that timeline would be terribly catastrophic. I shudder to think.”

Sam pondered this for a moment. “So now my timeline’s entwined with his, doesn’t that change my ‘importance?’”

“You might need to tread more carefully,” she said, “but I’d sooner say that of the you that’s now in 1999. He’s still yet to do most of the things that mustn’t be altered.”

River moved to sit beside him against the wall, holding up her watch. “The Doctor will be here at the top of the hour. Please, Sam. It’s extremely important that you play along and call me ‘Donna.’ And Al, too.”

“Did someone mention me?” Al said, stepping through the Imaging Chamber door. “Sorry I’m late, we didn’t realise—” he stopped in his tracks as his eyes fell on River. “Sam, who is that?”

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to formulate an answer as Al gave River an appraising once-over, ending with a lingering eye on her chest area.

“Whoever she is, she looks… experienced.” He lit his cigar as he leered. “I bet she knows her way around a bedroom; I wouldn’t mind letting her play tour guide.”

“You could buy me a drink first,” River said, looking up at him with a suggestive smile.

Al jumped, looking like a child caught with his hand in a cookie jar. “Not again?! Sam, how can she see me?”

Sam sighed deeply. “Probably because the Doctor sent her here. Or should I say, leaped her here.”

“Leaped?!” Al glared at her. “Into who?”

“Donna.” Sam’s face was stony.

“My name is River Song,” the woman said to Al. “Archaeologist, and basically time travel’s answer to Lara Croft. Lovely to meet you properly, Admiral. Must say you’re even more stylish as a hologram.” She flicked a finger through Al’s shark-shaped lapel pin. “I do love the flair. The Doctor went through a celery phase, but I haven’t had the privilege of meeting that version.”

Al took a step back, away from the loquacious leaper. “Where the hell did you come from? Sam, throw me a bone here.”

“She mentioned the… you know…” Sam said with a frown. “Other leapers. I think that’s where she came from.”

Al’s cigar dropped from his mouth. “Oh my god, Sam, get her out of the complex!”

“I would have if she hadn’t drugged me.”

“She what?!”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” River said, waving her hands at Al. “We’ve come to an understanding, haven’t we Sam?”

Sam narrowed his eyes at her. “You have my wife. She’s what matters to me.”

“Well, that’s a good point.” River turned to Al. “When the Doctor gets here shortly, the both of you need to pretend I’m Donna. I’ll thank you not to blow my cover with the Doctor, boys. Or Donna gets it.”

“I thought the Doctor was unhinged,” Sam muttered, “but you take the cake, lady.”

River responded to the comment with another ruffle of Sam’s hair.

Al’s brow creased as he turned his head to Sam. “I thought you said the Doctor sent her? Why would she want to hide from the guy?”

Sam grimaced. “Uh… ‘wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey?’”

*        *        *

In the early 21st century, the younger Sam sipped idly on a bottle of water in the cafeteria, watching the staff, some of whom he recognised, and some who must have been hired later. Many of them were stealing curious glances at him—most of them hadn’t seen him, or his aura, for years—but they had all been briefed on the situation, so by-and-large they seemed to want to act casual around him.

All except one particularly curious woman in a lab coat, who came up to his table with her lunch tray in hand.

“D-Doctor Beckett?” she said, her eyes wide. “Do you mind if I…?”

“You want this chair?” Sam asked, gesturing to the empty chair across from him. “Sure, you can take it. Nobody’s using it.”

The woman shook her head bashfully. “No—I mean, can I sit here?”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Oh, sure, I guess. Have we met before?”

“No, sir,” the woman said, as she took her seat at the table. “I was hired after you already left.”

“Oh, well in that case, it’s nice to meet you… what was your name?” he held his hand out.

“Uh, I’m Doctor Fuller,” she said, shaking his hand. “Uh, Sammy Jo. I’m kind of following in your footsteps. Quantum Physics and all. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, sir.”

“Oh, well it’s always good to meet another scientist of like mind,” he said with a grin. “Sammy Jo, huh? Funny, my first two names are Sam and John.”

“Oh, I know. Funny coincidence,” she said, hands fidgeting.

“So what do you think of this project?” Sam asked, leaning his cheek on his fist. “Do you think I did the right thing, leaping when I did?”

Sammy Jo’s eyes widened, and she dropped her gaze.

“It’s alright,” Sam laughed, “You can tell me what you really think.”

She busied herself with opening her flavoured milk carton. “Well, I mean, it was premature, I guess. But what else could you do? You thought they were about to shut you down, right?”

“Yeah, that basically sums it up,” Sam agreed.

“It’s a shame the retrieval program never worked.”

“Yeah, I didn’t expect that…”

“But I’ve read all the reports and…” Sammy Jo rubbed the back of her neck, “I mean, you adapted so well, it was like the whole thing was meant to be.” She met his eye. “I’ve been rewriting the retrieval program in the hopes we can get you home soon, but it hasn’t been easy. Honestly, the reason I wanted to talk with you was because I think you might be able to help me solve it.”

Sam coughed as he choked on the water he was drinking. “Oh! Well… I guess I don’t see why not,” he said with a grin. “As long as I’m here, right?”

Chapter 42

God

Donna brushed a stray tear from her cheek as she headed down the corridor towards Sam’s office, which was occupied for the first time in years.

They’d come so close to bringing Sam home. And they had, in a sense. This was the man she’d married, after all. But at the same time, there was so much between this Sam and the one who had been out there leaping. It was difficult to think about without her eyes welling up, because she knew the Sam in that office was destined to leave her. For the first time. Again.

As she approached the door she heard voices inside. A woman’s voice? Why would he be having a meeting with some other woman before his own wife?

She leaned her ear to the door and listened.

“I don’t understand these two variables—GF and USF. What do they mean?”

“GF stands for ‘God Factor.’”

It was Sammy Jo. Donna bit her lip. They must have been working on the retrieval program.

“‘God Factor?’ I don’t get it.”

“See when you leaped, something took over. Some kind of… force… that seems to choose who, where, when, and why you end up. You and Admiral Calavicci, and even Ziggy, have theorised it to be the work of something… supernatural. Maybe God, maybe something else.”

“No kidding?”

“Whatever it is, it’s something we can’t explain or adequately account for, but it’s the number one factor in why the retrievals keep failing.”

“Huh. And what about this USF?”

“‘Unknown Secondary Factor,’” Sammy Jo explained. “We don’t understand much of anything about that, but it kicks in occasionally when you leap. Ziggy thinks it might be some kind of random chaotic factor, a dice roll we can’t know the outcome for until you’ve leaped into someone. I was theorising it may be some kind of directive controlled by your own subconscious. But there’s no way to tell for sure.”

“So many unknowns. No wonder the retrieval hasn’t been working,” Sam muttered.

“There’s something else… the last retrieval attempt that brought you here wasn’t something we did.”

“What do you mean?”

There was a pause from Sammy Jo, and Donna took the opportunity to knock on the door.

“Hold that thought,” came Sam’s voice, growing in volume as he approached the door. Opening it, his mouth drew into a smile. “Donna, I meant to come find you… guess I got a little sidetracked.”

It’s Sam alright. Work comes first.

“It’s alright,” she said, brushing off the years of loneliness, “I’m glad you’re helping Doctor Fuller with the retrieval program. We’ve missed your expertise.” She turned her head to Sammy Jo. “Would you mind giving us a few minutes? Sorry to interrupt, but—”

Sammy Jo shot to her feet. “Sure, I have a few extra pages of data to dig up anyway.” She hurried out of the room with a nervous smile at Donna.

Sam was looking at her expectantly. “Were you planning to pick up where we left off?” he asked her sheepishly.

Donna laughed. “No, no. Well, maybe later, if there’s time.” She took a seat in the chair Sammy Jo had been occupying. “I understand that you came here straight from the night before May twelfth.”

Sam nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Big day ahead.”

“Because you leaped that night.”

“By all accounts, sure. I guess I must have. You were there, weren’t you?”

Donna frowned. “I was, but…” she rubbed her chin, “I don’t remember it well, and I don’t know why. Which makes it all the harder that you left me.”

She didn’t bother to tell him that the first time around, she wasn’t even there at all. Not until Sam had leaped into that English Lit professor at her university.

Sam leaned against his desk, taking her hand in his. “I don’t understand. You wanted me to. We planned it together. Of course, neither of us knew I’d be stuck leaping for years. Until now, I guess?”

“I wanted you to?” Why couldn’t she remember that? She remembered only the sense of loss and feelings of betrayal that only deepened the longer he was gone.

“Yeah, you were quite insistent about it for the last couple of days. Why wouldn’t you remember that…?” Sam was looking at her in the way she’d seen him look at medical patients.

“I’m not sure you wanna know the answer to that question,” came Al’s voice as he peered into the office. “Donna, a word?”

Donna was about to protest, but then she saw the look in Al’s eyes. Oh, it was definitely serious.

She leaned in to Sam, and gave him a lingering kiss on the lips, before joining Al in the hall.

He closed the door on a curious Sam.

“What is it?”

“Well, I know why your memory of that time is fuzzy,” he said with a tense look. “And you’re not gonna like it.”

*        *        *

“Alright, loving husband,” River said, adjusting her clothing and straightening up as she approached the door to Sam’s office, “it’s showtime. Don’t let me down, now; I’m not nearly as opposed to violence as the Doctor, and I’m very good at concealing a weapon.” She opened the door and strode out, giving a nod to a Marine standing guard at the end of the corridor as Sam followed behind her.

“Are you normally this stand-offish with your darling wife?” River whispered. “Or do you plan on making everyone think we just had a quarrel?”

Sam gave her a dirty look before taking her by the hand and feigning affection with the impostor. But a trained eye would have seen the red flags. A trained eye such as Al Calavicci, who was coming in the other direction, sipping at a coffee mug.

“Sheesh! I take it that all that time you two just spent locked in that office together wasn’t exactly for marital bliss. That hand-hold wouldn’t have less affection if it was you and Senator Weitzmann.”

“Oh yes, well it’s my fault really,” River said, laughing, “I vetoed his idea to grow a vegetable patch at home. Waste of water here in the middle of the desert, you know. And the climate is too arid.”

“Uh… yeah. Guess you can take the boy out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy,” Sam said awkwardly, giving River a look that said ‘what the hell are you doing?’

“She’s right, you know,” Al said, “you probably wouldn’t get much to grow around here.” He scratched his head. “Anyway, I’ve got a presentation to prepare, so come find me when you want lunch, pal.”

Al patted Sam on the shoulder and continued past them.

“Would you let me take the lead?” Sam hissed. “You don’t know these people like I do.”

“It’s not really my style to let a man take the lead,” she countered, “but in the interest of keeping the peace, I’ll give you the next one. Hubby.”

“Don’t ever call me that again.” Sam sighed with exasperation. “When we reach the Control Room, just remember that Ziggy will be listening. Okay?”

Sam really didn’t like feeling like he was infiltrating his own project.

They reached the Control Room without further incident, and as they entered, River hung back as far from Ziggy’s orb as she seemed to be able to get, as Sam headed to the glowing control panel, pulling the data disk loaded with the security protocol from his pocket.

“Morning Ziggy, I have a treat for you,” Sam said, placing his hand on the activation panel.

“You say that as though I were your pet,” sniffed the booming male voice of the first-gen Ziggy.

“You don’t want the treat? Okay, I’ll find some other computer to give it to…” Sam moved to leave the control panel with a private grin.

“Oh, very well. Father, may I have a treat? I’ve been a very good computer.” The voice was deadpan, and if Ziggy had eyes, the AI would have rolled them.

“Ah, you have, haven’t you?” Sam said, patting the control panel. “Well, let Papa Beckett give you a reward.”

He inserted the disk into a receptacle in the panel, and the walls lit up with various blinking coloured lights.

“This is highly unusual, Doctor Beckett,” Ziggy commented. “What is the purpose of this code?”

“Safety,” Sam explained simply. “You’ll understand in four to five years when it becomes active.”

Ziggy was silent for a moment, before answering: “You’re a future version of Doctor Beckett.”

Sam bit his lip. He’d been afraid Ziggy would know something was off. “Well yes, but that’s confidential. Do me a favour and lock all records pertaining to this matter until the year 2000 for me. And make sure all of this code but the Line 1 comment is similarly locked until then.”

“Very well, Doctor Beckett. Shall I also classify records related to the unusual readings I have picked up from Doctor Elesee?”

Sam whipped his head towards River, eyes wide. She looked back at him intensely, a finger at her lips.

“U-um. Yeah. You’d better.”

“Records sealed.”

“Thank you, Ziggy. You get a gold star on your report card.”

“Ah, I see you’ve upgraded me to the status of child. Perhaps one day I’ll be all grown up.”

“A brilliant time traveller squabbling with his beloved sentient machine. This reminds me of another couple I know,” River commented idly. “And speaking of…” she gestured for him to follow.

She’s taking the lead again, Sam thought bitterly, but nonetheless followed.

Chapter 43

Time

Gooshie was tapping anxiously at an old model handlink as Sam passed him in the corridor, still trailing behind River like a lost puppy.

“Doctor Beckett…” the programmer said, looking up at him with wide eyes.

Sam turned to him with a smile. It was nice to see him in the flesh, although he could have done without the bad breath that accompanied the guy. “Hey Gooshie, something wrong?”

“Well, I just received word from security at the entrance, and a representative of the Committee is coming in to see you.”

Sam’s heart sank. “Seriously? Now?”

“Who is it?” River asked, eyebrow raised.

Gooshie looked at the handlink. “Someone named… John Smith? Wow. He might as well have been called ‘John Doe.’” He shook his head. “Never heard of him. I hope he’s not coming to shut us down…”

Sam exchanged a look with River, who gave him a subtle nod.

“Uh, okay. I’ll meet him at the elevator. Thanks for letting me know, Gooshie.” He gave the little man a pat on the back—boy was it nice to be able to do that and not have his hand pass all the way through—and turned to River. “Come on, honey. Let’s put our best foot forward.”

The pair of leapers continued onward to the elevator, just in time to see it open and reveal the Doctor.

“Hello! I’m looking for Sam Beckett,” he said, grinning, and looking down the corridor curiously.

Sam’s mouth drifted open. He’d forgotten that the Doctor hadn’t actually seen his real appearance. “Uh… yeah, that’d be me, Doctor.”

“Ah, it’s you! Blimey, sorry about the mix-up, Sam!” the Doctor babbled, as he bounded between the doors and gripped Sam by the shoulders. “I honestly thought I’d sent you to the right time! Oh, but then after I dropped off Charlie I had to go to Cardiff for a refuel and then a whole thing happened where the world ended for a while, and I was stuck in a bird cage, and then right after that I had to stop the Space Titanic from hitting Buckingham Palace—it was all a bit of a distraction, really. But the important thing is, I made it. And I probably shouldn’t have said any of that in front of her, should I?” he nodded towards River, who had assumed an innocent act.

She grabbed Sam by the wrist. “Who is this man, Sam, and why is he talking such nonsense?”

Sam, having been put in an entirely unenviable position, took a deep breath and attempted to play along, mustering up his years of ‘improv’ experience while leaping.

Trying not to think about Space Titanic and the world ending, he turned to River, putting an arm around her shoulders.

“Uh, it’s a long story, sweetheart.” He glanced at the Doctor. “Doctor, this is my… wife. Donna.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, I suppose I was picturing a mouthy ginger. Nevertheless, good to meet you, Donna.” He held out a hand, which River avoided, feigning fear. “Now now, I won’t bite.”

“She thinks you’re out of your mind, Doctor,” Sam said, covering for her reticence. “You did just say something about a ‘Space Titanic.’”

“Yes, it was a bit on-the-nose calling it that,” the Doctor said with a shrug. “Still, I met a man named Alonso, almost got murdered by a different kind of angel, and saved Christmas—third year running. Not that I keep score.”

Sam felt River tense up at this, as if she wanted to argue the point, but she held her tongue. Instead, she stepped away from Sam.

“Well, sweetie, I’ll leave you and this strange, smartly-dressed man to whatever it is he’s here for. Don’t forget our plans for tonight.” She winked before disappearing down the hall.

“Plans?” the Doctor enquired.

Sam licked his lips. “Uh, yeah. You sent me to the day I leaped, Doctor.”

“Yes, of course…” The Doctor looked pensive. “Thing is, I didn’t. This is an intriguing development, Sam. Because I ran a trace on your timeline, and it found one very specific fixed point: today. You need to get in that machine, no matter what else happens.”

“Sure, wouldn’t want to blow up the universe or… whatever you said happens.”

“Very much so. Now, the question is…” the Doctor flipped his sonic screwdriver in his hand before pointing it at Sam. “What brought you here and why? Because something blocked the TARDIS navigation when I was trying to send you to your proper time. I’d very much like to know what that was.”

Sam brought a finger to his chin. “My guess would be the same thing that’s been controlling where I go all along.”

He hesitated to call it ‘God or Time or Fate’ as he normally would, now that it seemed like it could be just about anything in a vast universe apparently teeming with alien life.

“Yes, that seems likely, and I’d like to put a trace on your leap from here, in the hopes I can track down who or what this thing is.” The Doctor frowned. “Unfortunately, I can’t get my TARDIS in here to do that. The technology you have in this cave is playing havoc with the sensors. So, failing that: do you mind bringing me to that computer of yours? I’d very much like to meet it.”

Sam sighed, and nodded. “Follow me.”

For anyone else, there would have been no way he’d let them get their paws on Ziggy—but this was a man who’d taken him on a field trip to the actual moon. Whether his far-fetched story about a Space Titanic was true or not, he knew that the Doctor was genuinely trying to help him. He couldn’t say the same about River, though. Then again, if the Doctor truly had sent her here, maybe she wasn’t so bad?

As he brought the Doctor into the Control Room, he noted that Gooshie was already inside, tapping away at a keyboard.

“Whatcha up to?” Sam asked.

“Just completing some redundancy routines,” he said, before meeting Sam’s eye. “I thought you were meeting with the representative?”

Sam nodded. “I did. He’s—” Sam glanced around, seeing no one. The Doctor had been right behind him, hadn’t he? “—uh, he’s around somewhere. Listen, would you mind going to lunch, Gooshie? I have some tweaks to make in here.”

“Oh… uh, sure thing Doctor Beckett,” Gooshie replied, and flipped shut the panel he’d been using before disappearing out the door.

Now all Sam had to do was find the Doctor.

“Brilliant, love having the help of a respected boss. I bet if you told that fellow not to wander off, he’d stay put, wouldn’t he?”

The Doctor was standing right at Ziggy’s control panel. Sam blinked a couple of times.

“Where did you come from just now?”

There was nowhere to really hide in this room, unless he’d crawled under the control panel.

The Doctor grinned, pulling out a key on a chain from around his neck. “Just a little trick I developed recently. Perception Filter. If I don’t draw attention to myself, people won’t notice me skulking around.”

“Doctor Beckett, who is this man?” Ziggy’s voice boomed. “And why have I cross-referenced his exact face with archive photographs from multiple decades. Does he not age?”

“I have an excellent skin care routine,” the Doctor remarked, with a charismatic smile. “Moisturiser works wonders, though to be fair you sometimes end up as a trampoline if you let it go on long enough.”

“Well, Ziggy…” Sam said, peering up at the blue orb, “This is the Doctor, and you’ll need to seal records of him until 2000.” He left off the ‘too’ so as not to raise questions from the Doctor about what else he’d been hiding.

“This is all terribly secretive, Doctor. Are we being… naughty?”

“You can think of it however you’d like, Ziggy. As long as you keep it between us.”

“Will there be any further conspiracy today?”

“Blimey Sam, you’ve created quite a personality for this computer, haven’t you?” the Doctor looked almost impressed.

“I gave her Barbra Streisand’s ego,” Sam said, rolling his eyes. “I might have gone a little overboard.”

“No, I like it,” the Doctor said. “It’s always good to have someone to put you in your place when you’re being a bit daft. That’s half the reason I keep friends around. Humans tend to be good at that.”

“About that—where’s Martha?” Sam asked.

The Doctor went quiet for a moment. “Oh, I expect she’s off getting that doctorate. Outgrew me, I think.”

He said no more, opting to wave his sonic device around the control panel. And Sam dared not probe further.

Chapter 44

Fate

Back in 2000, the pre-Leap Sam rubbed his eyes, looking away from the pages of formulas he’d been writing out and turning to Sammy Jo.

“Boy, I could use a break,” he mumbled. “I’m gonna go find Donna and find out what Al said to her.”

Sammy Jo nodded. “Okay, sir. You’ve been a great help so far.”

“Have I, though?” Sam was sceptical. “Whatever tweaks I’ve made are small potatoes compared to the GF values. I feel like the best odds we can get for retrieval are no greater than eighteen percent, and that’s not taking into account the USF, which has absolutely no pattern I can see to it.”

“Eighteen percent is still better than before,” said Sammy Jo, giving him an encouraging smile. “One day we’ll do it. I just know we will.”

“I’m beginning to think it was a big mistake to leap at all,” Sam confessed, standing and stretching his legs. “I mean, it’s amazing to be proven right and truly travel in time, but sacrificing god-knows-how-many years of my life in the process? I can tell everyone here has been working their butts off against all the odds, but I kinda feel like it’s a losing battle, you know? I don’t want to put everyone through that just for my own vanity.”

Sammy Jo took him by the hand. “Sir, vanity isn’t what kept you going all these years. Leaping means helping people; making lives better. Like my Mom’s. I—I think you might have saved her life… more than once. I’m almost certain I wouldn’t be here if not for that.”

Sam’s eyebrows rose. “Oh…?”

“You could say that gives me quite a vested interest in this project,” Sammy Jo said, cheeks flushing. “Look, don’t tell anyone I said that. Because I don’t even think they know I know about it. But my grandmother saw things, you know? I think she saw you and Al. And it was always when Mom was in some sort of trouble.”

Sam nodded slowly. “Alright, I won’t tell anyone. But… thanks. That gave me a lot to think about.” He headed out of the room, before pausing in the doorway. “I’ll be back soon.”

He continued out of the door, and at an intersection, he walked straight into a man he’d never seen before.

“I never do get tired of running into you,” the man said in his British accent, pointing a strange device with a blue light at the tip towards him. “Listen, I need some data for 1995 and I think you may have the goods.”

“Uh…” Sam rubbed the back of his neck, “do I know you?”

“Oh, where are my manners? Keep forgetting the order of things. Two people jumping around time can be a bit timey-wimey. My name’s the Doctor, and I’m working with the future you in the past.”

Sam furrowed his brow. “You’re another Observer?”

“Oh my, no,” the Doctor said, grinning. “But never mind the details about that, Sam. I’m working on getting you back home, but I need the data on this entity that keeps thwarting my attempts.

Sam took a step back in surprise. “You mean the ‘God Factor?’ I was just…” he looked back towards his office.

“Good man,” the Doctor said, patting both of Sam’s arms at once, before scooting past him in the direction of his office.

“Wait a sec…” Sam called to him, which garnered no hesitation from the man, as he and his billowing coat disappeared into the office.

“Hey, Doctor! Get back here!” Sam turned around to see Al scurrying towards him from another corridor.

“Dammit. Sam, did you see where that guy with the coat went? We never gave that nozzle clearance to be in here—Ziggy just let him through all the security checkpoints! I think he did something to her in ’95 with that screwdriver thing of his.”

Sam rose a trembling finger towards his office. “Uh, he went in there. But Sammy Jo is in there—”

He was cut off by Al pushing past him and barrelling towards the room. Sam had no choice but to follow and see what all the hubbub was about. It was his office, after all.

“Oh. Ohh. Oh, I see!” Sam could hear the Doctor before he could see him, and he arrived at the door to see him with all of the pages Sam had been annotating spread out across the floor.

My stuff…

“Oh, this is a development, isn’t it? I think whoever this was who put Sam into 1995 was throwing breadcrumbs for me,” the Doctor said, his bespectacled eyes darting from one page to another.

He locked eyes with Sam, grinning. “Triangulation.”

Sam glared back. Was he supposed to understand what this guy was saying?

“Doctor, you shouldn’t be in here,” Al said, face stormy.

“Oh, Al. We’ve been through so much together. You still don’t trust me?” the man pouted. “Oh, but this is a clear message, you know.”

He gestured to the papers spread out, all the equations completely opaque to anyone who didn’t know extensive quantum mechanics.

Al looked blankly at it all. “Whaddaya mean?” He clearly hated not being able to keep up. While building the Project, Sam had always taken explanations slowly with him. Even when there were parts that didn’t click for him, Sam still did his best to explain. After all, it was Al who then had to explain in even simpler terms to government bodies.

Sam stepped over the papers, and looked at them from the Doctor’s point of view, scanning over them in the unusual order the man had managed to lay out in the mere seconds he had been in here.

And something stuck out.

“Triangulation…” Sam murmured.

Sammy Jo, who had been standing back in confusion, chimed in. “Oh my God…”

The Doctor placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Brings new meaning to the phrase ‘finding God,’ doesn’t it?”

Sam glared at him. “Even if you found the origin, how would you—?”

The Doctor’s eyebrows wiggled. “Oh, believe me. I can do it.”

Al cleared his throat. “Someone want to fill me in here?”

Sam looked at him, eyes wide. “If both of us—me and the other me—use the Accelerator at once, and the God Factor directs both of our leaps…”

“…Then I can find the exact origin point in spacetime,” the Doctor finished. “I can track down whoever it is that’s playing God, and perhaps convince them to send Sam home.”

“Who the hell is this guy?” Sam gestured at the Doctor, eyes darting between Al and Sammy Jo.

“One of these days, you and I are going to be best of friends,” the Doctor said, putting an arm around Sam’s shoulders.

Al scowled at this. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I’m beginning to think you have trust issues, Al,” the Doctor replied, eyes narrow.

“Gee, I wonder why I wouldn’t trust you? You promised to bring Sam home, and what do I get? The wrong Sam!”

“Okay, mistakes were made,” conceded the Doctor, “but I’m making amends! Just you watch! All you have to do is make sure both Sams use your Accelerator concurrently, and I can find out just who or what is behind all of this. Got it?”

“Look, there’s a lot I’m missing from all this,” said Sam, “but if he can really do what he’s saying…”

Al frowned. “Fine.” He looked at his watch. “Six hours and thirty-three minutes until the leap. I’ll see you in the Control Room then, Sam.”

Sam nodded. “I’ll be there.”

Chapter 45

The Doctor Will See You Now

As Sam collected his lunch at the cafeteria counter, he turned to survey the seating situation, and spotted Al in a corner, waving him over.

The sight of him caused Sam’s stomach to fill with butterflies. Al had no idea Sam was planning to leap that night. He was totally in the dark. And informing him would mean potentially jeopardising everything.

The fact he didn’t even have a chance to see Donna—the real Donna—was like a knife through his already aching heart.

Sam took a seat across from Al, smiling as casually as he was able. The Doctor was off in 2000, he understood, but River was still lurking around somewhere—he was entirely on edge about the whole thing.

“Feeling any better, Sam?” Al asked between bites of his sandwich.

“Better?” Sam shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “What do you mean?”

“Well, your little spat with the Missus for one. And I hear some Committee rep came in to speak with you. I know how much you hate talking to those nozzles. You should’ve tagged me in to deal with ’em.”

Sam chuckled nervously. “Oh, it went fine, I think. He, uh, just wanted to go over some heady technical details. Nothing to worry about there. How’s your presentation coming along?”

“Well, it’s a Hail Mary,” Al said with a sigh. “Last ditch effort to impress. I just hope it doesn’t come off too desperate.”

“I think you’ll do just fine,” Sam said, though he didn’t actually know what the result of that function was going to be, since he’d leaped before Al returned.

Al glanced around the room at the mixture of scientists and military staff of varying ranks, eating their lunches and chatting casually, largely unaware of how close the project was to having its funding shut off.

“I hope for everyone’s sake that you’re right,” he muttered.

Sam leaned toward his friend. “Al, you have a gift. When you talk, people listen. You’re incredible at simplifying complicated technology so that anyone can understand. Way better than I ever was. We only got this far because of you, Al. I think you’ll knock it out of the park.” He favoured Al with a broad smile. He’d meant every word of it.

Al raised an eyebrow as he suppressed a grin. “Boy, you’re gonna make me blush, Sam. I may be good at dealing with the stuffed suits, but you’re king of the cornball pep talk.”

Sam snorted. “Corny and corn-fed, that’s me.” He held up a forkful of corn kernels from his plate before putting it in his mouth.

As Al focused on finishing his lunch, Sam gazed at him, trying his best not to blurt out the things he wished he could have said the first time around.

Al (the hologram) had been making himself quite scarce, Sam realised. He was perhaps afraid of this Al potentially seeing him. Perhaps moreso, being put off by River’s presence.

After a moment, Sam noticed Tina and Gooshie eating lunch together on the other side of the cafeteria.

Sam knew Al had officially got together with Tina some time after he leaped, but he also recalled Ziggy claiming Gooshie and Tina had been having an affair the last time he’d been here.

“Are those two an item?” he asked, nodding towards them.

“Hard to imagine anyone would want to kiss Gooshie,” Al remarked with a smirk. “It’d be like kissing Pepe Le Pew. I don’t think I’d want to know if they are hooking up.” He gave Tina a quick leer. “Though it’s hard to pass on Tina. Body and brains: what a woman! Did I ever tell you about our quickie at your birthday party last year?”

Sam squeezed his eyes shut. “No, you—” he hesitated as he recalled the party; come to think of it, he was remembering a lot about his past during this leap. “Wait, wasn’t that party in my house? Good god Al, please don’t say any more. I don’t wanna know what room and/or piece of furniture of mine the two of you defiled.”

Al leaned back, wiggling his eyebrows. “Alright, I’ll just leave it to your imagination.” He took a sip of his Tab, smiling mischievously.

That may be worse, Sam realised. He cringed, and moved his attention to his roast beef and gravy.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” came another familiar voice. Sam looked up to see Verbena, coffee in hand, approaching the table.

Sam suppressed the urge to hug her. “Verbena, good to see you,” he said with a conservative smile and nod. Since she was a trained psychiatrist, he didn’t want to act out of character for his pre-leap self around her.

“Doctor Beckett, when you’re done with your break, would you mind meeting me in my office?” she asked. “Just for a short chat.”

Sam dabbed at his mouth with a napkin while he tried to calm his nerves. “Is there something wrong?”

“Probably not…” Verbena’s expression was unreadable. “But humour me, alright?”

Sam exchanged a curious look with Al. “Uh, sure. No problem.”

*        *        *

In the future Project, the strange British doctor had dashed away to something he called a ‘TARDIS’, and the younger Sam now stood before Al and Donna, studying them.

“So what’s the deal?” he asked finally. “Why did Donna not remember what happened on the day I leaped?”

Donna exchanged a grave look with Al. “It’s… it’s nothing. Repressed memory, that’s all. Verbena told me.”

“Exactly,” agreed Al. “Nothing to concern yourself with, Sam.”

Sam frowned. “You’re obviously keeping something from me.”

Al grimaced. “Rule number one: we can’t tell you what you don’t already know.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Oh, now you’re following the rules? I’m really starting to regret coming up with those at all.”

“Sorry, Sam,” Donna said quietly. “It’s way too complicated. Just know that I don’t blame you for leaving, and we’ll leave it at that.” She took him by the hand. “The important thing is we’re together now.” She leaned to him and planted a kiss on his lips.

Sam wasn’t exactly thrilled to be kept in the dark, but he understood just how long Donna had waited for him. She was right; they were together now. Even though he’d seen her every day from his perspective, he felt a duty to her, knowing what was to come.

He leaned in to her ear. “Wanna go somewhere quiet?” he murmured.

Donna smiled, and whispered: “Doctor Beckett, I’ve been meaning to book a physical.”

Sam met Al’s eye, and he gave the two of them a look of approval.

“Hey, don’t ever let it be said that I kept you from a turn in the sack,” he said, smirking. “I’ve gotta go check up on Sam anyway—uh, the other Sam, that is. You two have at it. Just keep an eye on the clock.”

Sam grinned at Donna. “I think I can squeeze you in for an appointment this evening.”

*        *        *

Sam knocked at Verbena’s door. What was this about? Sam thought Verbena must be good at poker, the way she hadn’t given away a thing in her expression about her request for him to see her.

Behind him, the sound of the Imaging Chamber door made him jump and spin around. The Al of 2000 stepped through the doorway, handlink flashing in one hand and cigar smouldering in the other.

“Sam, the Doctor was just here, and I think he figured something out…”

But Sam didn’t have a chance to reply as Verbena opened the door.

“Thanks for coming,” she said, standing aside to let Sam in.

“What’s Beeks want with you?” Al asked, and Sam gave him a surreptitious shrug.

“What’s up, ’Beena?” Sam asked, acting casual as he entered and took a seat on her therapist couch.

Verbena clasped her hands together. “It’s about Donna.”

Sam tensed up.

“Oh boy,” Al said, exchanging an uncomfortable look with him. “This could be trouble.”

“Wh-what about Donna?” Sam asked, struggling to appear unconcerned.

“Don’t you think she’s been acting… strange…? The past few days? Out of character.”

“I, uh, don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, Sam, you can’t be that oblivious.” Verbena glared at him. “You haven’t noticed she’s been rivalling Al in the double entendre department? Since when does she act like that, Sam? And she’s started pinching you on the behind! How can you not have noticed that?”

“That leaping hussy!” Al cried. “Sam, we need to get that woman out of Donna!”

“Well, sure I noticed that…” Sam said, shifting in his seat. “I just thought she was… um… ovulating?”

He winced, realising how lame that explanation had been.

Verbena rubbed at her eyes, sighing. “Okay, so there’s something going on with you too, isn’t there? You’re covering for her, and you’ve been on-edge all day. What’s going on here, Sam?”

Sam gave an apologetic glance to Al, before sinking into his chair. “Doctor-patient confidentiality, right?”

“What are you about to tell her, Sam?” Al said in a warning tone.

Verbena nodded. “Of course.”

“Okay. Donna and I have been planning to put me in the Accelerator while Al’s at the function tonight. I’m gonna leap.”

“Sam, you didn’t tell Beeks before you told me?!” Al gasped.

Verbena’s jaw dropped. “What?! But you’re not ready for that, are you?”

“At this point, we’re as ready as we’re gonna get, because the Committee’s about to can the Project. We have to prove to them it works.” He leaned forward. “Don’t tell Al, okay?”

In the corner of the room, Al glared at him. “Sam…”

Verbena crossed her arms. “And what does this have to do with Donna acting the way she has been?”

Sam ran a hand over his chin. “Well…” he thought fast. “…Turns out the thrill of our secret is a turn-on for her.”

Sorry, Donna.

“Oh my God, Sam, you just made Verbena think Donna has a new fetish,” Al said, waving his cigar. “This could affect Donna’s future therapy sessions, you know.”

“Don’t tell her I said anything, would you?” Sam added quickly. He felt the prickle of sweat on his neck.

Verbena stared down at him, her brow furrowed, for some time. Finally, she headed for her door and opened it.

“I hope you’re safe leaping, Sam. Be careful.”

“Thanks, Verbena.” Sam hurried out of the office and  down the corridor.

Oh boy.

Chapter 46

One Giant Leap

“Both of us at once?” Sam studied Al carefully. “Are you sure that’s what the Doctor said?”

“It’s what you said,” Al confirmed. “Then, after you all figured that out, the Doctor went back to that box of his and—well, I don’t know where he’s heading next, but he made me promise to tell you.”

“I see…” Sam paced his office, fidgeting with his hands. “Sure do wish I could remember what I saw on those papers you described.”

“You all seemed very excited about it,” Al said with a shrug.

“Okay, well, I guess that’s what I need to do. I was going to anyway, but you’ve gotta make sure it syncs up just so.”

“Ziggy’s on the case,” Al said, “so don’t worry about it.”

“Good to hear it,” came River’s voice as she opened the door.

Sam narrowed his eyes. “How do you keep getting in here?”

“The biometric scanner sees Donna’s prints,” the leaper replied. “Surely you know that?”

“What are you even still doing here?” Sam prodded, sending her an icy glare. “When are you bringing Donna back?”

“Damn good question,” Al added. “Sam hasn’t seen his wife in years, and you took that away from him again.”

“Dear, I can’t leave until I’ve made certain you’ve gone in that Accelerator Chamber. I’m sorry you have to miss out on married life, but I daresay the integrity of a Fixed Point is more important.” She stepped toward him, a hint of pity in her eyes. “What I can tell you for certain, Sam, is this: you’ll be seeing a lot of Donna in the near future.”

“Why does that sound like a threat?” Al asked, staring daggers at River.

“Oh, my threats are quite a lot more explicit.”

An urgent noise came from Al’s handlink, and he looked down at it.

“Damn,” he said. “The other me’s coming. I’ll see you later, Sam.” He gave River a final glare before pressing a button and vanishing.

“It’s really a pity we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” River said. “He and I are quite alike in many ways, wouldn’t you say?”

“A pain in my butt? Yeah, I guess you are,” Sam muttered as a confused younger Al opened the door of the office. He glanced at Sam and River, eyes wide.

“Uh, should I come back?”

Sam shook his head. “No, I think we’re about done here—right, darling?”

River offered him an amused glance, before turning to Al. “Yes, I was just leaving. Good luck at the function tonight, Al.” She smiled at him, and skirted around him to leave. “Break a leg.”

“Thanks, Donna…” Al mumbled as he watched her go. After a beat, he turned back around, a curious expression on his face. “What’s with her lately, anyway?”

“It’s nothing,” Sam said, a little too quickly. “It’s between the two of us.” He hoped this addition would make Al drop the issue.

“Uh, sure thing,” Al said slowly, brow furrowed. “Well, anyway… I’ve gotta get a move on. Don’t you work too late, alright?”

“Me?” Sam said with a nervous chuckle. “Work late? Don’t be silly.”

Al gave him a look. “Sam, I know you. Whenever you get all nervous and edgy like this, you end up burning the candle at both ends. Don’t drain the batteries, okay? Promise me.”

“Okay… I promise,” Sam lied. “Good luck tonight, buddy.”

*        *        *

“Do you think he’ll do it? That Doctor guy?”

Sam lay with Donna on the bed in their spartan on-base quarters, his fingers playing with her hair. Her face leaned on his chest as they both stared at the ceiling, basking in post-coital afterglow.

“Bring you home, you mean?” Donna murmured.

“Sure, or even just track down the ‘God Factor,’” Sam said, brows knitting. “Where did you find him, anyway?”

“More like he found us,” Donna said. “I suppose he’d be best described as… a freelancer.”

“A freelance—what, scientist? Physicist?” Sam squinted down at her. “What, does he go from place to place helping people solve their complex math problems?”

Donna smirked. “That’s not so different to what you’re signing up for by leaping.”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Point taken.” Sam was silent for a moment, before making another observation. “Al doesn’t seem to like him much.”

“He’s… a wildcard,” Donna said, chuckling, “but he’s obscenely smart.”

“Well, even I can tell that.”

“The point is, if anyone can do what he said, I think it would be him.”

“And so now I have to make an informed choice to leap, knowing it will steal away four-plus years of my life—at least. And if I don’t…”

“A lot of things will change for the worse,” Donna said quietly.

If Sammy Jo can wink in or out of existence just by a choice I make, what else could be different if I never leap? It seemed like he was doomed to ruin his own life for… what? The greater good? Or the explicit will of whatever the GF value represented?

Sam let out a breath. “I can’t say I’m thrilled about what’s to come,” he kissed the top of Donna’s head, “but I’ll be thinking of you every day while I’m out there… doing whatever it is I have to do. I promise.”

Donna went quiet after that.

*        *        *

The Project was dark and quiet as the hour approached. The only one in the Control Room was Gooshie. And he didn’t yet know what was going on.

Sam and River stepped out of the elevator together—as much as Sam wished she would just leave him alone—and the pair of them headed in the direction of the Accelerator.

As they entered the Control Room, Sam nodded to Gooshie, who was staying back late, as always.

“Evening,” he said to the programmer, who jumped at his voice.

“Doctor Beckett—wh-what are you still doing here? And why are you wearing that…?”

He looked down at Sam’s Fermi suit.

“Gooshie, it’s time,” Sam said with a sad smile. “I’m getting in the Accelerator.”

Gooshie’s eyes bulged. “But sir… you can’t! We’re not ready!” He moved towards the Accelerator door and held out his arms. “It’s too dangerous.”

“We’re as ready as we can get,” Sam countered, “and I’ve made up my mind. So stand aside.”

Gooshie looked pleadingly at River.

“You heard the man,” she said. “Move it.”

Defeated, Gooshie scurried to the console. “Ziggy, is the Accelerator ready for use?”

“No,” Ziggy replied simply.

“Well can’t you stop Doctor Beckett?”

“I can.”

“But you won’t, will you?” Sam asked the glowing orb.

“I won’t.”

“Thank you, Ziggy.” Sam headed up the ramp to the Accelerator Chamber, and looked back at Gooshie. “Sorry, Gooshie. Would you tell Al I said goodbye? And tell him I’m sorry, too.”

“Doctor Beckett, I…” Gooshie deflated. “…Okay.”

“I love you, sweetie,” River said, waving to Sam. He gave her a narrow-eyed glance, before disappearing into the chamber.

Inside, the future Al awaited him.

“Is the other me ready to leap?” he asked, licking his lips.

“He’s ready, Sam.”

“I wish I could just stay here, you know?”

“I wish you could too,” Al sighed. “I hate helping you do this. But even I know that would royally screw with everyone’s timelines, so I guess you have no choice.” He straightened his tie. “Well, at least we can say proper goodbyes now, right?”

“Yeah.” Sam locked eyes with his friend. “I don’t know where I’ll end up this time,” he murmured, “or how long it’ll take to get there. So until then… goodbye, Al.”

“Bye, Sam.”

And so, the parallel Doctors Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator, and vanished, while Ziggy triangulated the spacetime origin point of the God Factor influence, and transmitted it to a little blue police box across time. Meanwhile, a frantic Gooshie contacted Al, who was driving through the New Mexico desert with a pretty girl.

One Sam awoke in the bed of a test pilot named Tom Stratton in 1956, and the other found himself in a bar called Al’s Place at the exact moment he was born.

Chapter 47

Whatever

When the Doctor arrived at the mining town of Cokeburg, Pennsylvania on August 8th, 1953, it was just in time to witness Sam turn to blue light and disappear.

The portly middle-aged bartender that sat beside him was smiling, and turned his head pointedly to the Doctor from across the street.

“Well, are you just going to stand there and gawk?” the man called to him, before patting the seat beside him where Sam had been sitting the moment before. “Come on over. It’s rude to stare.”

The Doctor crossed the street warily, sonic screwdriver extended.

“What have you done with him this time?” he demanded. “Hasn’t the poor sod suffered enough?”

“What, you think I’m some kind of monster? I just offered him the chance to go home!” the bartender said, fiddling with the apron around his waist. “And, he chose not to. Of his own free will.”

“Who are you?” The Doctor narrowed his eyes as he reached the man, and peered into the window of the bar, which was teeming with miners having some kind of celebration.

The bartender tapped the sign on the window of the building right behind his head: Al’s Place.

“I’m Al. It’s written right here.”

The Doctor, though, was busy taking readings with his sonic screwdriver.

“That’s a human name,” the Doctor said, “but I seriously doubt you’re human.” He checked his readings, and felt his hearts each skip a beat. “What?”

He glared at the bartender. “You’re not meant to be here. It’s impossible.”

“And yet, here I am,” the bartender said with a grin, and stood, heading into his bar. “Can I make you a drink?”

The Doctor followed, his brow creased. This couldn’t be. He watched the bartender move behind his bar and begin to mix something.

“I didn’t agree to your offer,” the Doctor protested.

The bartender shrugged. “No matter. On the house.”

The Doctor scanned around the bar at the people, some of whom were giving him a curious look.

“Why are you maintaining this illusion?” he asked. “It isn’t for my benefit.”

“You don’t like the atmosphere? Too rowdy?”

“Stop it.”

The bartender gave him a sour look, before leaning over and pressing a button under the bar. Immediately, all the occupants of the bar stopped talking, stood from their seats, and filed out of the bar, disappearing into the night.

“Happy now?”

The Doctor took a seat on a bar stool. “Not until I understand how a Time Lord and his TARDIS managed to escape the time lock and stay hidden all this time.”

The bartender looked at him, incredulous. “What do you mean ‘hidden?’ I run quite a successful business here. I have full-page adverts in the local paper.” He placed a drink in a cocktail glass in front of the Doctor.

“Oh, I’m sure all those autons are positively brimming with money.” The Doctor sniffed the cocktail in front of him. “A banana daiquiri? Really now?”

“You don’t want it?” the bartender moved to take it away, and the Doctor batted away his hand before taking the cocktail and sipping at it.

“Well, it isn’t half bad, I’ll give you that. But listen, what are you doing with Sam? All he wanted to do was prove time travel was possible, and you’ve got ’im running errands all over history. Give the man a break!”

“Like I said,” the bartender said, polishing a glass, “he chose to keep leaping. He even got to help his best friend in a big way.”

“You mean Al?” the Doctor squinted. “How?”

“Well, he now has four more daughters, and four fewer marriages.”

“Why are you messing around in the lives of humans? Haven’t you got anything better to do?”

The bartender finally let his affable smile drop.

“Doctor, you’ve always had a soft spot for humanity, right? Surely you understand that they’re better than Time Lords ever were.”

“I suppose that depends on the human, and the Time Lord,” the Doctor replied.

“Well, sure. That’s why I’m working to improve them, one life at a time. Sam’s time travel experiment let me ‘meddle’ with a hands-off approach. But moreover, he’s something of a long-term project. I like him.”

“So you’re not doing this for philanthropic purposes, then. Not really. There’s a bigger picture.”

The bartender gave him an enigmatic smirk. “Time Lords are made, not born.”

The Doctor glared at him. “Is that your end game? To turn humans into Time Lords? Build a new Gallifrey on Earth?”

“What? No!” The bartender burst into laughter. “Oh hell, that’s the last thing I’d want. Frankly I’d be glad to see the end of us, Doctor. There’s a reason I ended up here instead of fighting a war for the survival of a people I can’t stand.”

He thumped a fist down on a panel beside his beer taps, and the wall behind him opened up to reveal a TARDIS console.

“No, Sam could be something far better than a musty old Time Lord. Having said that, he could do with a helping of Time Lord knowledge. Which is why I’m sending him somewhere a little ahead of his time next.”

He began flipping switches at the console.

The Doctor jumped to his feet. “Where are you leaping him?!”

The bartender turned back to him, grinning. “Don’t you worry about that, Doctor. You’ll find out eventually, I guarantee it.”

And the Doctor found that the entire bar around him began to fade away.

“Oi!” he called out. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“I was hidden from you for a long time, Doctor,” the bartender said, “and I’m awfully good at staying that way. So the next time you see me, it’ll be because I want you to. I have to say, it was a pleasure meeting the guy who put an end to the Time War—and the Time Lords to boot. Ciao!”

And the Doctor was left alone on an empty patch of dirt, a half-drunk glass of banana daiquiri in his hand.

“Blimey, that could’ve gone better,” the Doctor muttered, before necking the remaining drink.

*        *        *

When Sam Beckett’s vision cleared of the blue light, he thought he was about to say something—his mouth was open, and he was holding something to his ear, which slipped out of his hand in his confusion. He was still reeling from his previous leap, where he had spoken to Beth, convincing her that Al was still alive. He felt like crying.

The dropped object hit the ground, and Sam squinted at the device—a cell phone? Not like any cell he’d used before. Much more compact. More modern.

He retrieved it from the floor, realising there was an ongoing phone call connected. The name on the screen was ‘Mum.’ Was he a Brit again?

Around him, he realised, was a kitchen, and an empty mug with a tea bag sat on the counter. Nearby, an electric kettle switched itself off as the water within bubbled.

“Uh, sorry,” he said, as he brought the phone back to his cheek, “I dropped my phone. What were we talking about?”

“Not again! I wish you’d take care of your things; they’re not indestructible you know,” the woman on the other end scolded in her decidedly English accent. “One of these days that phone of yours is going to smash to pieces, and then how will you expect to get a call back from the temp people?”

“Uh… I could get a new phone?” Sam guessed.

“Oh sure, and who’s going to pay for that? Certainly not me. And you know your grandfather can barely pay for his blood pressure medicine. You know, you’re lucky you live rent-free because you wouldn’t even have afforded a phone to begin with if you had to fend for yourself.”

“Morning!” came the cheery voice of an old man. Sam followed the voice to see what he assumed to be the ‘grandfather’ the woman on the phone had just mentioned, coming in a sliding glass door. Sam gave him a weak smile.

The old man regarded the phone. “Is your Mum talking your ear off again?” He leaned towards Sam, shouting into the phone. “Sylvia, you needn’t call while you’re down the shops; you can always chin-wag when you get back home, can’t you? Let Donna make her Earl Grey in peace, love.”

Did he just call me ‘Donna?’

“Oh boy.”