Prologue

All was silent in the Torchwood Hub, Cardiff. The only sound to be heard was the gentle humming of the machines. The occupants of the hub were going about their daily business. Toshiko Sato, typing away at the keyboard below the sets of screens, analysing the data. Ianto Jones, standing at the coffee machine waiting for the water to come pouring out into the mug. Owen Harper, pacing back and forth in the medical room, as if trying to figure out a cure for some unknown disease. Gwen Cooper, running around organising every loose sheet of paper floating around in the hub. And Captain Jack Harkness, sitting at the desk in the large office above everything else in the hub. But he wasn't keeping an eye on what was going on below. He sat with a small leather box in front of him, hands fishing out multiple photos at a time. All photos of his past. Dating back as far as Victorian times. You may wonder why this is.

You see, Captain Jack Harkness can't die. Ever. Something happened recently, difficult to explain, but since that particular event, he has been immortal. And, being a Time Agent, his Vortex Manipulator helps him travel through to different timelines, past, present or future.

The photo at the top of this pile was during the First World War, when he fought in honour of his country. Jack looked at it, as if with some sort of yearning to return to that era.

Jack's thoughts were interrupted by light footsteps gradually getting louder. He turned in his chair to see Gwen standing in the doorway. She glanced at the photos scattered on the desk.

'I'm not interrupting you, am I?' she asked politely.

'No, no come right in' Jack replied warmly.

'I see you are dwelling on your past again.' Said Gwen, poking her head over Jack's shoulder so her dark hair brushed by his ear.

'Yeah. What I'd give to go back to those times.'

'And leave us?' Gwen exclaimed sarcastically. Jack never replied, but flipped through a few more photos. He stopped at an extremely old photo, singed at the edges as if it had been caught in a fire. A bemused look crossed his face. Gwen looked at the photo. A younger Jack Harkness was smiling at the camera, holding up a young girl, and looking very proud.

"Who's that, Jack?" Gwen asked.

"It's..." he hesitated as the word made its way out if his mouth. "My daughter."

The shock of the word seemed to affect Gwen more than it did Jack. "What happened to her?"

"I went out to sea during the First World War. The next thing I heard was that my wife had been murdered, and there was no knowledge of what had happened to our child."

Suddenly, Toshiko yelled from the computers down below. "Rift activity has been detected! We have two and a half minutes until it opens!"

"What?" Owen exclaimed. "We usually have more than a day's warning, why have we only got two minutes?"

"The rift isn't only releasing weevils this time. It's releasing something else. Something...human, but also non-human." The ground beneath them started shaking. Sheets of paper flew from their piles and from the places they were once pasted on the wall. Computer monitors fell to the floor with a crash and the metal storage cabinets toppled over.

This could only mean one thing, one very obvious thing...

The rift had opened, and there was no stopping what came out of it.