Hunger Moon: Chapter Twenty-Three

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                                                        Chapter Twenty-Three:  Spherical Thinking

“Oh, eww, what’s that smell?” Rose asked as Tosh suddenly sprang back from the work table with a hand over her mouth. The Japanese woman stood there for a long minute, her mouth working to control her nausea, her expression bleak.

The Doctor leaned across the table and looked inside the sphere. His eyes darkened and his face turned angry. Rose moved over to look and wished she hadn’t. Tosh had managed to unravel a layer of coils and springs that had come away to reveal various tiny wires that led into what looked suspiciously like brain tissue.

“Is that human brain tissue?” Davin asked, his eyes sweeping from the Doctor to Rose and finally settling on Tosh.

“I’d have to check it under a microscope to be sure, but judging from appearance alone, I’d say it is,” Tosh affirmed.

“But I thought it was an artificial intelligence,” Rose said. “What’s it doing with a bit of decaying brain matter in it?”

“It’s not decaying,” the Doctor said reaching in with his finger and giving it a little poke. It quivered and sparked, giving him a tiny electric shock. “Why’d you say that?”

“Because of the smell. It smells like a corpse,” Rose replied.

“I don’t know why it smells, probably an ampoule of foul scent burst as a defense mechanism to get us out of there and close it up again, but that’s healthy brain tissue considering it’s existing outside its natural habitat,” the Doctor told her.

Tosh returned to the table and removed the Doctor’s finger from inside the sphere. She fiddled around a bit with one of her tiny tools and then announced, “It’s a hybrid. The brain tissue is definitely alive and the artificial intelligence is wired into it. It’s using, ouch,” she pulled her finger away and sucked on it a second, “sorry, burn. It’s using the brain tissue as a catalyst for its thought processes.”

Tosh reached in again with a scalpel and this time succeeded in pulling it back out again with a sliver of the brain tissue on it. She grabbed a slide and put it on the little piece of glass, then added a solution and topped it with another slide, smearing everything together. She pulled them apart and put the resulting smeared slides under her microscope in turn, checking and double checking. “That’s definitely human brain tissue,” she said.

When she moved away from the microscope the Doctor peered through it for a moment before pulling away and looking down again at the sphere thoughtfully. “Yes, it is but why? What are they using human brain tissue for?”

“We’ve figured out that they’re using them to control humans telepathically,” Rose posited. “Might it be necessary for them to have something of us to home in on? Something that refines the process, makes the thought control easier?”

“It’s a better theory than anything I can think of,” Toshiko said.

“It would explain the ease with which they seem to be taking people over and replacing them, too. You humans are a stubborn lot, resistant as can be, but hit on just the right thing, mimic the brainwaves of humans closely enough and you can turn human beings into mindless, dancing puppets on a string,” the Doctor said.

“What happens,” asked Davin, “if you disconnect the organic matter from the AI’s computer?”

“Judging from the large sparks it sets off just by touching it and the defensive reek, nothing that’s good for it. At a guess, I’d say it interrupts the energy field. It might crash the AI altogether.

“Isn’t that what we want?” asked Rose. “A way of dismantling it? Or at least of make it harmless?” Tosh nodded.

“What if it’s simpler than that?” asked Davin. “What if it’s like what happened when the Sycorax came? They used something called blood control. Could this be something similar?”

The Doctor thought for a minute. “Well, not exactly like blood control, because that calls out to everyone of a certain blood type. Neural control works a bit differently. It’s not like humans have brain types. Other than male and female and the occasional cross-gendered brain, but that’s more of a generality than anything else. It’s possible if it ran on DNA lines, they might get the brain tissue of one person, and anyone genetically related to that person, they might be able to control, but we’re talking about very small sub-groupings. After a couple of generations the cellular drift is going to make the brain of the descendants too different to be recognized as the same type.”

“So if they had a piece of my brain tissue they could control me, my parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, children and grandchildren, saving I don’t have any of those,” Tosh said.

“Correct. And maybe some cousins and aunts and uncles. But any further out on the family tree and the control would be minimal at best before failing completely,” the Doctor affirmed.

“Everything I’ve ever read about neural control says that it functions based on telepathic carrier waves and the host species naturally occurring brain wave patterns,” said Rose. The Doctor looked at her askance. “What? I read up after the Teroc’manu incident. Wanted to know what they did to me and how. Not just a pretty face you know. Torchwood doesn’t hire dummies.”

“Didn’t mean that,” he said softly. He shot her an apologetic glance and she suddenly felt ashamed of herself for talking to him like that.

“I know,” she said just as softly. She was getting very irritable. She looked at her watch. It had been hours since she and the Doctor had made love. Stupid hormonal pink fog withdrawal symptoms! She didn’t even know when they’d get the chance again either. She’d have to tamp down hard on her irritation.

She could do this. They had a case to solve and she was not a slave to her libido. It wasn’t like the first few days when she’d first met him and the skin hunger rose to ridiculous levels. She had managed to get through that. She could get through a few more hours until they were free to go back to the TARDIS and shag.

Rose forced her mind back to the problem at hand. “Where do you think they’re getting the brain tissue for their devices?”

“Street people?” Davin suggested.

“No, I don’t think so. Not if they need healthy specimens,” Tosh objected. “Where’s Andy?”

“He went to question his old partner Gwen further about the spheres,” Davin said.

“Damn. Is Katie still here?”

“Ianto said she was going to the hospital to ask her husband about the people showing up with brain trauma. Why? What are you thinking?” Davin asked.

“They said there were no outward physical signs of the trauma; they were just showing up with the symptoms, right?” Tosh asked.

“Yeah,” said Rose. “You think…you think they’re taking bits of their brains out to run these spheres?”

“I do. We need to find out if any of the patients have had CT scans run on them. The aliens might have a way of sealing up the surgery site so that you can’t tell from the outside that anything has been done. But if there’s a chunk of brain tissue missing that’s going to show up on a CT scan,” Tosh said.

“I’ll go tell Suzie. She was stationed here for a long time and knows her way around Cardiff. She can take the boys and go to the hospital and talk to Katie and Owen, find out what we need to know,” Rose said.

The others agreed and Rose went up to the conference room where the others were still working and explained what they needed. Suzie, Jake and Mickey took off shortly thereafter to track down Andy and Katie and Rose returned to Tosh’s workstation just in time to see the Doctor severing the wires that went into the brain tissue with his sonic screwdriver.

The flashing lights on the outside went dead. He removed the lump of organic matter from inside and set it down on a Petri dish. It quivered for a few seconds but without the electronic stimulus of the little AI computer it soon shuddered to a halt and died.

Tosh removed the computer chip from inside the sphere and placed it in a separate Petri dish then handed it to Davin. “See what you can make of it,” she said. “I’m taking the brain tissue down to medical and refrigerating it until Katie can look at it. There’s nothing more we can do for now. Davin, I’ll show you a work station you can use if you’ll follow me.”

Rose watched the two of them head off together and turned back to the Doctor. “We need to find a broom cupboard or something,” Rose said. “Or I’m not going to be responsible for my temper turning foul.”

“Saw just the place,” the Doctor said and held out his hand. Hurriedly he tugged her with him as he led her to the small supply room. “We don’t have much time.”

“I don’t need much time,” Rose snapped. “I just need you.”

“Sex as medicine, yeah?”

“Wasn’t my idea to stop the pink fog,” she said.

“Rose, we needed to. We have to let the hormones run their course otherwise when we move on the next stage of the quest we’re going to be horribly distracted. On an alien planet when we have no idea what we’re walking into, we need to be at our highest possible best,” he said.

“I know that. It’s just…doing it with all these people around all the time. My family, my colleagues, my friends. I should be able to control myself. I can’t,” she huffed in frustration.

“It won’t be like this forever,” he said.

“How come you seem to be not so easily affected by it?” she demanded.

“You’re kidding me, right? I’m the one that scoped out the supply cupboard an hour ago,” he snorted.

Rose began to feel better immediately, realizing that it really was just as hard on him as it was on her. The Doctor soniced the lock shut so no one would interrupt them then turned back to Rose.

“Knickers off, please,” he said.

“You sure know how to romance a girl,” Rose complained as she hitched up her skirt and looped her fingers through the scrap of lace and silk. She shimmied out of them and kept the skirt up at her waist. The Doctor picked her up and set her down on top of the shelving unit then unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans.

“I love you. I want you. And romance can wait,” he said as he pushed forward and buried himself deeply within her. Rose groaned and the Doctor’s mouth came down hard on hers, muffling the sound with his tongue. His hands were busy sliding up under her shirt and freeing her breasts from her bra. He took them in hand and began kneading gently as he thrust into her.

Rose managed to scoot herself a little further forward on the shelf and then wrapped her legs around his hips. He grunted at the change in angle, his hands slipping down to support himself against the shelves. Rose moved one hand under his t-shirt, the other going to thread through his hair. She loved doing that. She hadn’t minded the short, close-cropped cut he’d had when they first met, but she enjoyed that she could run her fingers through it now that it had grown out. In fact it was one of her favorite things to do. She had never had the chance before to realize what really great hair this version of the Doctor could have.

Because of their position the Doctor couldn’t get his hand in to play with her clitoris so Rose focused on calling up the golden sparks, allowing the electricity to flow freely through her body and then concentrating it into one flow of energy that she sent straight to her pelvis. She felt it pooling between them, raising her pleasure to a fever pitch before it quickly exploded inside her.

The Doctor swallowed down her cries as she came shuddering hard around him. It took him only a few deep plunges afterwards to orgasm violently inside her. He stayed there for a moment, breaking the kiss but holding her tightly. “I wish you’d warn me when you were going to do that,” he murmured. “Not so easy to handle when I’m standing up.”

She smiled. “We didn’t have a lot of time to be doing this. Thought I’d get to the point.”

“Feel better now?” he asked softly.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Good. But tonight I’m going to spend at least an hour driving into you,” he promised.

“I’ll hold you to it,” she said cheekily. She reached up and kissed him again, then sighed. “Sorry I was getting bitchy.”

“It’s okay,” he said. He looked around him then focused on a high shelf next to them. He pulled down a tissue box and opened it. Hastily he pulled some out and then pulled out of Rose and they set about the business of cleaning themselves up.

“What do we do with these?” Rose asked gesturing to the soiled tissues. “There’s no rubbish bin in here.” The Doctor pulled a small plastic bag out of his pocket. “Where’d you get that?”

“Don’t you know by now that I’m prepared for every eventuality?” he asked her.

“What? Even a five minute shag in a supply cupboard of a top secret government organization?” she teased.

“Yep.  I'm just that good,” he said smugly. He disposed of the tissues in the bag, sealed it up and stuck it back in his pocket. “Should probably find the loo and straighten up a bit,” he suggested.

Rose jumped down and straightened up her skirt while the Doctor put himself away and zipped up. The Doctor unlocked the door and they snuck out into the hallway. Rose breathed a sigh of relief. It looked like they had gotten away with their little rendezvous and no one was the wiser. She scurried off to the loo to put herself back together properly. It was only then that she realized that her husband had kept her knickers.

Ch. 24:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/191659.html