User:DoctorQuoi/sandboxVNADamagedGoods

prologue:

Christmas night, in a London council estate called "The Quadrant" by the locals, four year-old Bev Tyler hears her mother Winnie Tyler and a man talking in the living room. Her mother leaves the apartment with the man, something she never does because she never leaves the children alone. Bev follows her out into the cold, rainy night. She hides and watches. She spots a short man wearing a linen suit, also hiding opposite from her. They look directly at each other but he disappears into the night. Bev notices the man her mother was with drive off so she runs back to the apartment before she's caught. The next day, Bev and her siblings have a festive Christmas with their mother despite thinking they couldn't afford all the nice things she got them but deep down Bev can't shake the feeling something is wrong. She ignores it, but its consequences run deeper than she realizes.

Ten years later a man called the "Capper" (real name Simon Jenkins) lights himself on fire in the Quadrant, frightening Mrs. Hearn. He is rushed to hospital and dies there.

Harry Harvey, a closeted homosexual man whose wife passed away two years ago, lurks around parks looking to hook up with someone as it is a usual spot at night for people looking to have same-sex intercourse. He shares a flat in the Quadrant with a man named David, also homosexual, although he is unaware of Harry Harvey's orientation despite being homosexual himself. Tonight he is looking for a quick encounter and spotting a young man, follows him to a graveyard thinking he has gotten lucky when the young man turns out to be a burglar and holds Harvey at knife-point. However, a body emerges from the grave beside them, sprouting tendrils having many tiny legs like a millipede and kills his would-be mugger and strips the corpse while Harvey flees the scene. He returns to his flat in the Quadrant and stitches the large slash he unknowingly received in the struggle, passing out in a pool of his own blood, afraid to call the police for fear of having his homosexuality publicly exposed.

The Doctor, Roz and Chris are vacationing in New York. Roz is happy to see the Doctor finally relaxed and care-free, unlike his usual, more cunning and manipulative self. When the waitress brings them their bill, the Doctor smells cocaine on her lip and suddenly drags Chris and Roz back to the TARDIS, realizing he has forgotten something terribly wrong. They arrive at the Quadrant. Bev, having nothing better to do during summer vacation, is on her way to meet friends when she sees the Doctor and the two in a cafe across the road and immediately recognizes him. Despite her awkward attempts to spy on him, the Doctor invites her over for a chat. She obliges, despite suspecting his perverted intentions since she is a teenage girl. The Doctor, pretending to not know her, tries to have her remember the night they met but she cannot, or is suppressing the memories. Just then her mother calls them and reveals that she has been expecting the Doctor, Roz and Chris and that their flat in the Quadrant is ready, to the surprise of the three, completely unaware that they had even signed up for the rental list.

The Doctor tries to make a plan of attack, saying they need to get to know all the residents as any one of them could be linked to their investigation of the cocaine, the full extent why though of which the Doctor hasn't yet revealed and even he himself seems not fully sure. The morning after their arrival, however, the number 11 flat previously owned by the Capper, who was a drug dealer and supplier, is fire-bombed by some unknown assailants in a car. The Doctor uses the situation to his advantage and has Chris and Roz try and find out as much as possible as well as get friendly with the residents and he does the same. He talks to Mrs. Hearn about Bev's mother Winnie Tyler to try and reveal or confirm some information but to no avail. David, meanwhile, notices and takes an attraction to Chris and tries to chat him up during the evacuation of the building from the fire. Harvey also had noticed Chris earlier but thought he had no chance. The police arrive and question everyone and the Doctor manages to gain the trust of the suspicious block members (themselves weary of police as police represent the system that treats them so cruelly in the first place) by denying having any of knowledge of the event, pretending to be just as stymied. When he, Roz and Chris reconvene that evening, he points out that when they all met Gabriel, Winnie's other son and Bev's youngest brother, they all perceived him to look slightly different. This is because Gabriel posses something called, according to the Doctor, "Glamour", an ability low level psychics posses. People are naturally attracted to and want to act friendly towards people with Glamour as they see and put parts of themselves into the person. The Doctor reveals that Chris and Roz, despite meeting the same boy (Gabriel) both saw slightly different versions, with Roz saying he possessed slightly darker skin (her own skin colour) while Chris says his hair was lighter and slightly blonder than the colour Roz describes (more akin to his own skin and hair colour).

Mrs. Jericho attends to her son who is dying and has been comatose for three months in hospital. She thinks back to her horrible teenage years and how she ended up accruing a charge on her criminal record, despite being an quiet, shy and innocent girl, when the girl who used to bully her, Sally Hunt, dared her to steal a sweater from a store, an act in which she was caught and charges were pressed. She reveals the strange voice in her head which compels her to addictively shop for clothes, after which at home she performs a little ceremony whereby she cuts, tears and slashes the clothes in order to gain sexual release/orgasm. She then returns them to the store and because she is married to a very wealthy and important man, the shops never refuse her. Meanwhile the Doctor, Roz and Chris investigate the burnt-down apartment once the police had left and make a shocking discovery. Jack Leather, who runs a prostitution ring, is visited by the Capper in his apartment in the Quadrant, whose body/corpse is actually being used and piloted by an alien ship-like entity (unbeknownst to an unsuspecting Jack, who had a feeling the Capper wasn't really dead), and they make a deal.

Gabriel Tyler uses his ability to convince his mother to let him go explore the city. Harry Harvey and David get into a fight as David thinks he should see a doctor as he looks very sick. Harry angrily tells David to leave and David heads out to give him some space. Harry is blackmailed by Gabriel (who will reveal his homosexuality if he doesn't cooperate) into driving him to a destination he wants to go to, a destination which seems to be psychically attracting his attention, a hospital up north. Gabriel walks around the complex a few times before he is suddenly chased by Mrs. Jericho, who upon seeing him, believes him to be her sick son Steven and chases Gabriel. She almost catches him, however, he gets back to Harry's car in time and makes him drive him home to the Quadrant. He lets Mr. Harvey go and says that they will do it again tomorrow. Mrs. Jericho, considering suicide as she has fallen into a crazed state, calls her husband but hangs up. He sends his assistant to go retrieve her, fearful of what she might do to herself.

The Doctor visits Winnie Tyler at her flat but she refuses to reveal anything about Gabriel despite the Doctor's insistence. He gives up and goes to visit Mrs. Hearn to look for answers while a man arrives at Wjnnie's flat. The Doctor, losing patience, tries to get Mrs. Hearn to reveal her secrets of Winnie but Mrs. Hearn turns cold and their relationship sours. The Doctor tries to visit Harry Harvey but the man is becoming sick, delusional and paranoid and won't answer the door. The Doctor finds Bev and after some goading she remembers the suppressed memory of Christmas night and runs back to her flat to break down alone and the Doctor makes pursuit, telling Roz to wait nearby for his signal. The man, revealed to be Thomas the assistant to Mr. Jericho, attempts to run away from the flat when he suspects the Doctor but Roz catches him. All is revealed: Bev's flashbacks show that Winnie had twins, Gabriel and another boy, and she had already made the deal when they born and forbade anyone from seeing the two until Steven was given away, telling everyone the one baby, Gabriel, was fine until Steven was taken away that Christmas night by Thomas as Winnie sold one of the twins in order to get money to make ends meet. Bev tries to attack her mother but the Doctor stops her. She runs off, and neighbours come to investigate the commotions at the Tyler's apartment and the Doctor dispels the crowd, assuring them things are ok. Meanwhile Mrs. Jericho views security camera footage from the building to prove that the boy she saw who looked like Steven was real. It is and she plans something big. The Doctor takes off, telling Roz he has some of the information he needs but he needs to act now as things are spinning out of control and saying that Winnie will be fine and that what happened to her is not his concern, as it is "an entirely human tragedy", something which he reveals, while sad, plays no role in his real goal.

Chris on a mission for the Doctor to find some cocaine from the botched shipment they were looking for asks David to show him some nightclubs where he can potentially buy it. David believes it's a date but it doesn't go well. Then Chris spots the car that firebombed the Capper's apartment a few days ago. They follow it along in their own car to a house hosting a rave and wait and watch in silence, which David eventually manages to turn into a sexual encounter. The Doctor and Roz arrive at the hospital and he explains as he tries to fix the machine monitoring Steven that him and Gabriel are twins sharing a psychic connection, likely passed down by genes, and having been separated has had disastrous consequences since the two need each other to remain stable, in a symbiotic-like relationship. However, since their separation Steven has slid into decline and kept calling out to Gabriel through a psychic link while Gabriel has been feeding and absorbing David's psychic abilities slowly growing more and more powerful, which is worrying the Doctor due to potential consequences. Roz says that this is what the Capper wants but the Doctor says it's shouldn't be because the power gained wouldn't be strong enough, could maybe turn a windmill and there's much stronger sources of psychich power that would be easier for the Capper to find elsewhere. This is what confuses the Doctor as there is no doubt the twins are the targets and he wants to find out why and stop it. He reveals that as things play out he seems to be two steps behind everyone else, something unusual for him and he worries he might not e in time to stop a great disaster from happening. The Doctor suddenly realises Thomas' importance in the whole scheme but he has fled and Roz goes after him. The Doctor confronts Dr. Greco, real name Neil, and it is revealed that Greco was bribed by Alfred Jericho to keep his mouth shout around his wife and not saying anything about the boy being unrelated. Greco himself was making money off the patient and had planned to do so for a long time, knowing that his condition would never get better but was paid to simply give false promises to Mrs. Jericho. Greco makes a break for it but is knocked out by the receptionist whom he and Mrs. Jericho had insulted and looked down on every day of her work experience, having heard the Doctor yell for someone to stop him. Meanwhile Gabriel is hiding in Harry's apartment, projecting a psychic field preventing people from finding him while Harry slips further into paranoia and despair. Mrs. Hearn reflects on how she and Winnie Tyler grew apart, how her husband had died young and she had never had a child of her own, the one thing she had always wanted. She had become close friends with Winnie and Sylvie (Harry Harvey's late wife) in their early days but on the night they found out about Winnie's deal to give away Steven, Mrs. Hearn, disgusted and appalled, grew apart from Winnie. Bev is drunk in the bins outside having had all her secret cider stashed there while her and Gabriel's brother Carl is out with his friends riding motorbikes on school property. Chris and David are interrupted when two gangs from the rave run outside into cars and start shooting at each other and drive down the block. Chris tells David to run home and tell the Doctor what's happening and drives off after them. The Capper, in its pocket dimension, prepares the human arsenal it has acquired and senses the two boys presence on Earth through their psychic link, and prepares to act on its plans. Mrs. Jericho arrives home and Alfred tells her the whole truth and about everything that transpired from the time Mrs. Jericho had wanted a child.

Eva Jericho and Winnie Tyler both stand in their respective kitchens, recounting the past and their new understanding of recent events. Winnie remembers how her husband had fled and left his gambling debts in her name while leaving their children and not one but two nely born in her womb. She went to a hospital to inquire about and abortion and it was there that Thomas, a cousin of Alfred Jericho who has been hired as his assistant partially out of pity, approached her and talked her out of in, instead offering her the deal: give up one of the children to the Jericho's and she would be rewarded £30,000. She hesitantly committed but kept having regrets and though she told everyone she was pregnant with only one child, on Guy Fawkes night she gets drunk and accidentally lets slip the deal she had made to her two friends Mrs. Hearn and Sylvie Harvey. Neither had children, and while Sylvie sympathizes, Mrs. Hearn was disgusted and their friendship degraded. Having no one she could rely on for support, she went through with the deal but when she received the money only then had she realized the mistake she had made. Since then she had cut herself with a knife, thinking she deserved the pain. She contemplates suicide but Carl arrives home and wants food, inadvertently saving her as she is reminded that she has to care for her remaining three children. Meanwhile Ms. Jericho reflects on her seven (though more are hinted) miscarriages and her desperate attempts to have children. However due to the shop-lifting incident on her criminal record, she is denied by every adoption agency despite Alfred's status. Desperate, Thomas organizes the deal. Mrs. Jericho received Steven (whom Winnie wanted to name Peter) on Christmas day, a miracle, then went flew off to Italy for a year, having been very careful to make it seem like Mrs. Jericho was the one who was pregnant since the deal they had made was technically illegal. It was then that Steven's health had taken a turn for the worse and he degraded into essentially a living husk. As she reminisces, she prepares a meal for herself and her husband in which she laces both their food with rat poison as it is revealed she is in a slow mental decline after the revelation. What astounds her, however, is that they were twins and she could simply "swap" the one she has with the healthy, haughty one she saw earlier that day. She calls her husband to eat but he profusely pleads and apologizes, and has no appetite. Thomas comes in and taunts her, mentioning that it was the only deal he could find despite Mrs. Jericho's obsessive personality of having a need to be the only one in possession of something, saying how he has put up with her for eighteen years and the police have been notified and are on their way. She snaps and stabs him, killing him, then forces her her husband sadistically to eat his poisoned food, which he does and dies. Although she had planned to kill herself, she cannot bring herself to do it and instead decides it is time for one more big, final shopping trip.

Refrences

-low level psychic power; Glamour

-tribophysics

-Gabriel has read The Wind in the Willows

-the doctor and roz read a copy of the daily mirror

-hammer horror films are mentioned

-tribophysics allows things to transport themselves between dimensions; the doctor desribes its name as literally meaning "the science of interfacing surfaces in relative motion." It's essentially a way to slide between dimensions to transport oneself to other locations in an instant.

-David watches australian tv show neighbours

-gabriel likes to watch the tv show Why Don't You

-chris misquotes shakespeare's play hamlet by saying "there's something wrotten in the state of denver or wherever"; the correct line is "There's something wrotten in the state of Denmark"

-logan's run the film and tv series are mentioned

-sammy jo and krystle's double? -> tv show dynasty

-psyionic powers can mental abilities can be passed down genetically

-the patrexes and the patrexian numbers

-the hands of the ripper is mentioned a 1971 british horror film

-Carl listens to Bon jovi song wanted dead or alive on his tape deck

-Lithopaedian mentioned

Notes

Gabriel likes the program 'Why Don't You..?". The full name of the program is Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead? Russel T Davies, the author of this novel and producer of the revived series from 2005 onwards was the director and producer of this very program in the late 80s and early 90s.

Continuity

-roz mentions Yemaya 4 and Dione-Kisumu

-roz asks the Doctor to confirm whether he once lived on earth himself for a time. The Doctor does confirm this, saying he was exiled here. The Second Doctor was forced to regenerate by the Timelords into the Third Doctor and was forced to live on Earth for many years, in which he worked for UNIT. (TV: The War Games, Spearhead from Space, et al.)

-the doctor mentions he once built a weapon in Shoreditch that could fry a Dalek at 10 paces.

-The Time Ripple Detector in Little Caldwell is mentioned.

-the doctor says to dr greco that he is the doctor, the definite article -> TV Robot

the brotherhood is mnetioned

-psychics and tregatorian empire?

-roz remembers her niece Gugwani had been stricken with Monroe's cachexia and her sister Leabie kept calling her

-UNIT appears to help with damage control after the Capper destroys the building and causes the 125 train derailment

-the doctor and ace visit Rio Yari in the province of Caqueta, 1983

-the third doctor and jo in tranquilandia, meet Jaime Ramirez Gomez