Day 1

He's put in the bowels of the ship and shackled tightly to the wall. He shouts for hours, until his throat is hoarse, yelling threats at anyone who is listening, and warning them of the fury of the Doctor. It is hot in that room. He isn't used to the heat.

Not yet.

He dies thirty two times that day. He's never died that many times at once before.

Day 2

His throat is still hoarse. He dies another six times before ten o'clock. He would say before breakfast, but the Master has decided that he will see if starvation will kill Jack for good.

Jack tells him he knows it won't.

They've tried before.

He dies twice more for that.

There is no news of either the Doctor or Martha Jones. Or his team.

Day 3

The Master visits to taunt him about his team, how they are lost and alone. But Jack knows that they are stronger than the Master has guessed, even as he fights the restraints keeping him against the wall.

He is shot through the heart after a few seconds.

The guards like to watch him struggle.

The seconds feel like forever.

Day 4

There is news of the Doctor. He remains in his aged condition, put as a loveable pet under the control of the Master. Jack knows that if the Master thinks that, truly think that, then he is in for a big surprise.

There is a reason why the Doctor is called the Oncoming Storm.

Day 5

He still hasn't eaten and he still hasn't died of starvation. He doesn't know how it works – he doesn't get thinner, he doesn't get hungry. He just doesn't die.

He knows why now.

Did it make it any better to know that he was only immortal because Rose loved him?

He dies eight times that day. He still can't decide.

Day 6

Martha has escaped America. The Master is following leads to Europe and to Africa.

Jack shouts more death threats.

He dies twelve more times.

Day 7

He hasn't lost hope yet. He is a Time Agent (ex-Time Agent) and a con-man. He knows exactly how long it can take to put some plans into actions – it took a month for the Doctor and Rose to catch up to his Chula Warship. That puts things in perspective.

The Master seems to be bored with starvation.

He sends food in with a pretty dark girl who looks frightened but still has that air of defiance in her eyes. Jack can't help but flirt. He thinks she's Martha's sister.

Day 8

The pretty girl is called Tish. He was right when he thought that she was Martha's sister. Tish and her parents are both onboard the Valiant but her brother Leo is still on Earth with his girlfriend and their daughter.

She hopes they are alright.

Neither of them talk about the screams they can hear, even from up here in the clouds.

Day 9

Tish had a dark bruise on her face this morning.

He shouts obscenities at the guards for it.

He dies twice that day.

Tish watches him wake up.

Day 10

After the world being taken over by an insane alien, immortal people freak her out less than they would've before, she says the next day. She looks calm but Jack still knows she is lying.

Day 11

He shouts again. This time the Master comes by himself, and tries all sorts of things to kill Jack.

Killing Jack is not the problem. The problem is getting him to stay dead.

Jack feels every death like it is his first.

Even the Doctor will be able to hear his screams.

Day 12

Tish looks horrified at the state of him. The Master started to get creative as the day passed – and he was only on 'G' of what he called his JDA. It stood for Jacks Death's Alphabet.

He is still covered in his own blood.

Day 13

Thirteen has never been his unlucky number.

The Master decides to keep in with human superstition. Jack hates the number 13 now.

That day they get all the way down to 'T'.

Day 14

The days start to blend together and he is losing track of how long he has been in the cell.

He starts having to reuse his insults.

Normally he would've escaped by now.

Days 15-54

He dies at least once each day. On most days it's no less than five. Tish is always there to clean him up afterwards, despite the stench of blood and death that lingers even when death don't.

The Master finished his alphabet on day 16.

Day 55

Jack dies twice. The Master got both ideas from two humans he captured before torturing them to death. He had admired their imaginations.

(The world lost two great authors that day. They were the latest in a long line.)

Day 67

He has news of his team. The kind of news he wished he didn't have.

Owen has been captured.

Jack dies three, four, five times.

His blood mingles with Owen's when they leave his body on the floor when they've finished.

Day 93

Lucy Saxon visits sometimes. He would pity her – used and abused by a husband that doesn't love her, doesn't care about her. She is lost and sometimes afraid.

But she looks almost excited when they kill him and she is always around for when he wakes up. He refuses to talk to her.

Day 106

He is screaming again.

Tosh, beautiful, wonderful Tosh, is down on Earth someone, slaughtered mercilessly by the Toclafane. They bring him a photo for proof.

He cries for the first time since he was captured.

Day 108

There is still no news of a plan from the Doctor.

He is starting to think that this is how his immortality will last.

Forever is an awfully long time.

Day 134

Japan burns.

Jack can hear it through the audio feeds the Master has.

He can hear them screaming.

But he can also hear the Master laughing as he watches.

The official death count over 100 million.

A quarter of that number were already dead.

Day 167

He had died over 600 times in 167 days. It is a new record. The floor is a sea of red.

Sometimes they send Tish's father in to clean it up.

Sometimes they send Tish.

Day 180

He works out what the Toclafane are. A pair of them zoom past his 'room' cackling with insane laughter.

He doesn't think he has even been so disgusted with the human race.

The guards disagree.

His tally of deaths rises by four.

Day 189

The floor is red and wet with tears.

Gwen is dead.

They brought her up to the Valiant and shot her through the head in front of him.

She told him that Ianto sent his love. It was the last thing she ever said.

He doesn't know whether to be glad it wasn't Ianto.

Day 190

If they ever get out of this, Jack knows that, if by some miracle, he gets his team back; he won't be leaving with the Doctor.

Not after the last few months.

He doesn't know the days.

He's been dead for too many of them.

Day 213

The Master is getting creative again. It's almost as though he's bored.

The Toclafane laugh wildly from outside his cell.

He can't stand to hear them.

Day 256

He's dead for days at a time now – or at least that's what Tish says.

Time isn't really a concept anymore.

Not trapped between two Time Lords like a rock and a hard place.

Both bring him pain.

Day 291

Ianto is dead. Darling, gorgeous Ianto whom Jack had loved more than most. A fog settles into his brain, seeping into all of him.

He thinks he knows what the Doctor feels like. He has lost his home, his mortality, his family, his friends and now his lover. And he knows he will be around a hundred thousand years longer just wallowing over it.

For the first time since he was locked in the cell, he truly wants to die.

Day 314

The days have long since blurred.

He taps old nursery rhymes into the walls with his fingernails.

He thinks maybe he's finally lost his sanity.

Day 345

Sometimes he hears screams in his head. He thinks its proof he's going insane.

Surely there isn't any one left on Earth to scream.

Day 351

Tish whispers a plot concocted by the Doctor – to steal the laser spanner and over power the Master.

He doesn't think it'll work but he feels the fog recede.

Day 359

When were they carrying out the plan, he asks?

Soon, she whispers.

Day 363

It has almost been a year, Tish says.

Jack imagines many more like this one.

Day 365

They try the escape attempt today. It doesn't work. Tish doesn't come back down.

The only news he gets that day is that Martha Jones has been found.

Day 366

He is on the deck. Tish and her parents are there. So is the Doctor. He looks like Gollum – one day he might've laughed at that thought. Now he can't even muster up the energy to smile.

But still, he's Captain Jack Harkness. The person he's best at fooling is himself. When Martha is guided in, he's relieved to see her.

But he hates the fact she is here.

As the plan unfolds – the true plan, the fogs dissipates into nothing, like wind in a breeze. It is only fitting that moments later he feels as though he had been caught in a whirlwind like Dorothy and Toto.

For the first time in a year he feels at home.