The Daughter of Gallifrey

3: The No Touching Rule

"It's Caroline! Caroline! Caroline, can you hear me? It's my daughter! What's happening to her?" Katie took off down a row of bookcases on the seventh floor. The Doctor was seconds behind her. 

"Don't touch! No touching!" He yelled, taking the steps three or four at a time. He appeared at Katie's shoulder and grasped her arm, keeping her from approaching the girl on the floor. The sight before him made his two hearts skip a beat each. Katie had begun to cry again. 

"No," he breathed. Katie struggled against his grip. "You can't touch her, Katie. Don't."

"But she's my daughter! I don't understand! Caroline! CAROLINE!" The Doctor wrapped his arms around Katie to restrain her, his own eyes never leaving the girl. The process happening to Caroline, he knew it fairly well. Extremely well, actually. 

"But that's not-but I'm the only one-" He suddenly whirled Katie around to face him. Her face was twisted in pain as she sobbed. "Katie, listen to me. LISTEN TO ME, KATIE THOMAS!" She immediately hushed up. "Caroline's YOUR daughter? Yours?"

"Yes, of course. What kind of qu-"

"She, you know, grew inside you and all that? Nine months?"

"Yes, Doctor, but I don't-"

"Who's her dad? Her father?"

"What does this have-" Katie squirmed under the Doctor's glare. 

"ANSWER ME!"

"Jack Oliver Thomas. But-"

"Human?" He raised an eyebrow. 

"Excuse me? What do you mean a human? What are you trying-"

"IS HER FATHER HUMAN?"

"Yes, yes he was."

"You're absolutely positive?"

"Yes, I am, Doctor. Now will-"

"Shh!" The Doctor pushed Katie behind him and took a few steps toward Caroline, who still lay on the floor, the golden light having engulfed her whole body. She glowed bright as a sun, not literally, though. He slowly knelt down and gaped at the girl. Still not entirely convinced of what his eyes saw, he soniced the glowing girl and read the scan. He slowly tucked the sonic screwdriver back in his coat. 

"She's regenerating."

"What do you mean, regenerating? What-"

"She's not human."

"I'm sorry, but that's my daughter. I carried her inside me like you said and gave birth to her-" The Doctor turned his head in her direction and wrinkled up his nose.

"Yuck, I don't need to know all that. I believe you." He returned his view to Caroline. "But believe ME, Caroline Thomas is no longer human. Something has happened here, in this bookshop, that changed her. Something very odd. And impossible." Katie was quiet for a moment. 

"Are you human, Doctor?" He didn't even look up from Caroline. 

"No."

"What are you, then? Martian or something?" The Doctor chuckled, which startled Katie. 

"No, not Martian. I'm a Time Lord. I was the last one. But not anymore." He smiled a little at Caroline. 

"She's a Time what?"

"She's a-no, wait!" The Doctor jumped up, interrupting his own sentence. "I've forgotten something." He smacked his forehead. "Wait, no, I haven't! Yes, I have! Oh, I have! Oh, how could I forget? Oh, so important!" His expression turned to panic as he began to pace. 

"What is it?" Katie asked, glancing at Caroline. The Doctor stopped and snapped his head toward Katie, giving her an intense stare, eyes wild. 

"HUMAN AND TIME LORD CAN'T MIX! It happened once before, to a friend of mine-" The Doctor remembered his old companion Donna Noble, back in his tenth regeneration. "-our DNA got mixed during a metacrisis-it also made a human version of me actually-and she started to burn up. Human bodies can't handle all that Time Lord-y stuff. All the things we know and such. Humans weren't meant to be Time Lords, obviously. I had to block off her memories, so she'd forget me and all the Time Lord in her. So she could stay alive. I can make a memory block, but I've got to be touching the person. A memory block won't help here though. I could try to absorb the energy out of her, but I don't know if I could get it all out before I burn up. You can't touch a Time Lord while they're regenerating. They have so much energy coursing through them, you'd burn up instantly."

"Are you sure you can't?"

"When I said you, I meant anyone. Even me. I'd burn up, too. Not as quickly, but not long enough to extract all the Time Lord energy. And that kind of burning would insure that I didn't regenerate either."

"So my daughter, she's going to-" Katie's sentence broke with a sob. She fell to her knees, covering her mouth with her hand, muffling her body-racking sobs.

"She'll die," the Doctor whispered to himself, simply to convince himself it was real. It was then that he saw the book. The book with no markings. The thick black book. 

"What have we-" He didn't finish his sentence before Katie jerked upright and lunged forward. He barely caught her before she touched Caroline's arm. Her fingers were only inches away. 

"Oi! What did I say about touching?" He tried to get a grip on her, but she was an expert squirmer it seemed. She struggled valiantly.