Eva simply minded her own business as she walked through the doors of Save Mart, where she worked as a cashier part-time. It was not an ideal job, but it helped out her family and it was close to her apartment in Kansas City. She was greeted, or rather hit in the face with, the stench of customers and of fast food from the built-in restaurant, as well as one of the floor managers caught in a shouting match with an irate customer. That was a normal sight this time of day anyway. Early mornings were always some of the hardest shifts to work, especially around Christmas. Without a word, Eva ignored the argument and continued to head toward the back of the store, pulling her thick black hair into a ponytail before reaching for her name badge and clocking in.
"I hate this job." She thought as clocked in and made her way to the break room to sneak a cup of coffee to drink. "Just one more semester, and I'll graduate." She told herself.
"Hey, Eva!" said an old heavyset man in one of the chairs in the room. He was sitting in the middle table, his eyes focused strictly on the television hanging from the wall.
"Oh. Hi Danny." She said as she grabbed a foam cup and began to pour her drink.
"Did you hear?" He asked her. "There's ghosts."
Eva filled her cup and blew gently on the surface of her drink.
"I beg your pardon?" she said.
Old Man Danny repeated himself. "I said there's ghosts roaming the streets."
Eva had a puzzled expression on her face.
Ghosts? Certainly there were no such thing. No. Certainly not. Old Man Danny, as the workers called him, was just hallucinating, telling wild stories again. She had to see for herself. Slowly, Eva walked behind Danny and looked at the television. There it was. A news reporter was telling everything live. At certain times a day, ghosts would appear all over the world, then disappear after only a couple of minutes.
"Well," she said quietly, not sure of what to make out of this strange phenomenon. "That's certainly odd."
Trying to shrug it off as she made her way to the front of the store, she noticed a strange sensation in her ear. It was a slight tingling feeling; almost as if she were honing in on a faraway conversation. Even among the roar of angry customers, the beeping of the cash registers, and the shouting of the managers, she could hear a softer conversation taking place.
"..And what's the void?" she heard a male voice. It sounded as quiet as a whisper, yet there was definitely an accent.
Eva caught her breath. Not this again. Not the voices in her head. She cringed and took a gasp of air, trying to remain in control of herself while the voices in her head continued to speak. They were coming from the left this time. It was too early in the morning for this. She turned her head and closed her eyes, hoping the voices would stop.
She could barely hear another male voice respond. "The space between dimensions."
Immediately, she reopened her eyes and tried to continue walking. The voices were still there, and what's worse, now they had Scottish accents.
"There's all sorts of realities around us, different dimensions." The voice continued.
"Hi Eva!" a coworker said as he waved at her.
Eva chuckled nervously, waving hello in response. That annoying Scottish voice in her head continued to ramble on.
"My people called it the Void." Said the voice.
Trying her hardest to look casual, she switched on her light and opened her register. It was not too long until an elderly woman came into her lane.
"Good afternoon." She said to the elderly customer.
"Why hello there." The old woman replied.
The voice in her head began to fade away, much to Eva's relief, and she was able to begin scanning items. It seemed that she would have a typical day after all.
Meanwhile, during the afternoon inside the London skyscraper known as Canary Wharf, the Doctor jumped from his sitting position on the steps underneath a void ship.
"We don't!" he shouted. "We send that thing back into Hell! How did it get here in the first place?"
A middle-aged blond woman named Yvonne Hartman crossed her arms. Torchwood was not simply going to accept this answer. There was something in there, and she needed to find out what it was. She decided it would be best to just answer the Doctor's question for now though.
"Well, that's how it all started." Hartman replied. "The sphere came through into this world, and the ghosts followed in its wake."
"Show me." The Doctor demanded.
Indeed she showed him. The Doctor was not the least bit impressed with Torchwood's ghost shifting. In fact, he ordered the next shift cancelled. Of course, Hartman had no intention of listening to the Doctor. She had grown tired of having this alien looking down upon the human race, as if they were inferior. Today that ended, or so she thought.
Frustrated, the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pushed it against a sheet of glass. He was going to give a visual demonstration of the damage Hartman and her team were doing to reality by constantly performing these "ghost shifts" that were cracking through dimensions. A high-pitched whirling noise came from the device as it cracked the glass. He had no idea that elsewhere, across the ocean, a young teenage woman clenched her ears in pain from the sound.
"When it made the hole," The Doctor explained, referring to the void ship. "It cracked the world around it. The entire surface of this dimension splintered, and that's how the ghosts get through. That's how they get everywhere. They're bleeding through the fault lines."
Across the world, Eva heard the last sentence of that conversation. What fault lines? Who was getting through? Could it be these ghosts? As she continued to wonder, she noticed the noise within the store begin to quiet down. Within seconds, she saw them for herself. Inside the store, there were at least twenty ghosts walking amongst the customers. They moved in a very stiff manner, but even so it seemed Danny was right. These things were everywhere.
Panic swept the store as customers and employees alike dropped everything and ran in fear. The ghosts had a clanking sound to their movements; almost as if they were machines not spirits. Eva froze in place, scared of what was happening around her. The ghosts' appearance began to change. They reappeared as human-like machines.
"Oh my God." Eva whispered to herself.
"What are they?!" she heard people yelling as they were running in vain from the machines.
Eva overheard the Doctor's speaking once again. She replied with the same thing that he said.
"They're Cybermen."
London was about to have a much bigger problem than Cybermen. The void ship had opened. Inside of it were the Doctor's most hated enemies: Daleks.