Chapter 1

Tyrennis.

A world in the future, but at the same time, a world that had lately seemed to be rooted in the long lost – to many – past. But here, on a tiny planet in the sixty-seventh century, fragments of history had still been preserved, and at the same time had been renewed and revived almost as you looked around.

When the planet had first been discovered, the colonists, a group of eight young and impulsive – none were older than twenty – travellers from Myrenae, had not been sure what could be done with it. With its contrasting landscapes lying underneath a burning sun or a tumultuous storm and ranging from rugged mountains capped with snow and sparkling with glaciers to wild and colourful jungles surrounded by arid golden sands reaching out towards the horizon, it seemed to be fit for very little except an application for it to be recognised among the universal areas of natural beauty. It was even given the name Tyrennis, a Myrenaean word meaning 'fruitless glory' as a means of acknowledging its colonisation by a Myrenaean group, as well as its beauty, but, as far as could be seen at the time, relative lack of useful resources.

And yet, the place where Jack Harkness now found himself bore no resemblance to anything he had learned about Tyrennis in his entire life. Admittedly, however, since any lectures on the history of the planet went up to its discovery and the claiming of its status as an area of natural universal beauty and then stopped, he had almost begun to wonder if it had actually existed in the first place or if it was just some exotic paradise dreamed up to try and spur younger Time Agents with ambitions to work in conservation – Jack had been as surprised as anyone to learn that, yes, some people did have those kind of goals – into working harder; they always used to say that if you got good enough grades, you would be rewarded with a trip to Tyrennis.

However, despite the differences between what he had been taught and what he was now seeing, there were two distinctive features that marked his location out as Tyrennis. One of them was the strange cloud formation that formed a flickering ring around the whole planet and changed colour depending on the approaching weather for the next week (it was currently pale orange, meaning that they were due for warm sun with a possibility of interspersed rain). Because the phenomenon, as astrologers called it, was formed by such thin threads of cloud, it was sometimes very difficult for the untrained eye to see it when it was the same colour as the sky or the clouds. In fact, to anyone who didn't know better, it would seem like nothing more than an unusual, and very attractive, mist that changed colour sometimes. However, Jack had taken some lessons at the Time Agency about methods of forecasting the weather throughout time and space and this peculiar mist had been one of the methods featured – as well as being one of the only things taught about Tyrennese history.

The second were the beautiful cirdanas that had inhabited the planet probably since it had been formed. They were small, the largest being barely ten centimetres, could be found in many different colours, and took the form of seahorses with butterfly wings. During the day, they could be found flying all over the landscape, escorting travellers to some of the best known beauty spots and spreading ciricana, a type of vitamin that would fertilise the soil and make the plants flourish. By night, however, the little creatures would take their places on any available surface, be it a rock, pond or in a tree while their small bodies shimmered like stars and their wings fluttered, making soft flute-like music that echoed melodiously through the air.

Aside from that, though, the place looked nothing like the Tyrennis Jack had been taught about. He had known of a planet with nothing there except nature and certainly nothing that appeared to be fit for human habitation. However, either things had changed dramatically over time, or someone had been hiding some information about the Myrenaean group who had colonised the planet. True, the abundance of natural beauty that had been so greatly eulogised was still growing freely, but then again, so were the rows of one and two storey houses which, on closer inspection, seemed to have been made out of wet soil that was then shaped like clay to form bricks and then left to harden before being cemented together with wet sand before a roof made out of grass was placed on top.

Jack felt a rather strange conflict of emotions at the sight. On the one hand, he was pleasantly surprised to see that there was progress, as well as a surge of triumph at the knowledge that the so-called Tyrennese experts who had deemed the planet to be uninhabitable had been proved wrong (those types were too arrogant for their own good). However, at the same time, he also felt a bit saddened that the natural beauty of the planet was gradually being taken over by humankind and that there was a chance that one day, there would be no sign of the former glory of Tyrennis. Obviously, he knew that this was a reality in almost every world that was colonised and inhabited, but even that inevitability didn't stop him feeling regret for what would be lost.

Clapping his hands together, he took a deep breath and made his way across the dry sand that blew softly around his feet as he started to look around and see exactly what, besides the obvious new signs of human habitation, had changed about this place.

"Hello?" he called out. "Anyone...anyone home?" He was perfectly aware that the words sounded silly to his own ears and the tentative way he'd spoken them didn't help much. Nonetheless, given that he knew nothing about who might be living here, he decided that causing offence would be a very unwise idea.

"Maybe I can help you."

Jack froze. The voice behind him was definitely that of a human woman – a very familiar human woman. It can't be...it can't... Shaking slightly, he turned around and nearly passed out when he found himself staring into a pair of eyes just like his own framed by soft black curls. She was slightly younger and her hair was longer than when he had last seen her, but, even with her stomach swollen with pregnancy, there was no mistaking her.

"Alice," he whispered, his heart pounding violently in his ears. "I...oh my God..."

She stared at him, shocked. "What did you call me?"

Jack's eyes widened. "Alice, it's me," he stammered. "I know we're not close and I know you have every reason to hate me...or at least you probably will have soon, but –"

"My name's not Alice, it's Alexis," she said, raising her eyebrow at him. "I thought you at least knew that much about me, Saket, given that you're involved with my father."

Jack blinked at her. "Saket?" he repeated. "Okay, I don't know who I remind you of, but my name's not Saket. It's –" but he stopped when she tilted her head at him.

"You smell different," she said slowly, coming over to scan him properly. "You...you look like Saket, but...but you're not him and you certainly don't belong here." Despite the rather hostile words, her tone was curious and Jack felt a wrench in his heart at hearing them; he couldn't remember a time when his daughter hadn't spoken to him without a mild sense of hostility in her voice, even with Steven around. It was heartwarming, but at the same time it hurt – on the one hand, his daughter didn't hate him, but on the other hand, really, she wasn't even his daughter.

"I..." he stopped, cleared his throat and tried again, "I'm sorry...I just...I'm a little bit lost. I've never been here before and, well, it's a little bit different to what I've been told about Tyrennis. I always thought it was uninhabitable."

Alice – no, Jack reminded himself, her name was Alexis – chuckled softly. "I guess you heard of Tyrennis being nothing but a natural beauty site, then."

"Well, yes," admitted Jack. "But as I can see, it isn't."

"No, it isn't. People have actually been living here ever since it was colonised. The first settlers just wanted everyone else to believe that no one could live here, because they didn't want the natural beauty to be ruined." She sighed. "When the eight young pioneers first came here, they instantly requested a permit for Tyrennis to be registered as a site of universal natural beauty, which, as you probably know, was granted. But after that, nothing was heard and, eventually, after five years, they were listed as missing, presumed dead. But that's all that everyone else knows."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "Well, not meaning to be rude, but it doesn't exactly look uninhabitable," he said, waving his hand around at the buildings. "Does no one know what's here?"

"No. No one leaves Tyrennis and, until now, no one has arrived either. Everyone who lives here is a descendant of the original founders, all of whom had borne children. My father, Lord Yannis, for instance, is of the generation of Raven, the leader of the Tyrennese expedition, who mated with his second-in-command, Kiran. Saket, his partner," and here, Alexis laughed. "No one's entirely sure of his parentage, to be honest! They know that one of his ancestors was Cyrus, the expedition's engineer, but there are two options for the other parent – either, Helgira, who was Raven's cousin and a doctor, or Bracken, who was a young archaeologist. But I know for a fact which was the one Cyrus eventually ended up falling in love with."

"How?" asked Jack. Although he knew that Alexis wasn't really his daughter, he could almost feel his heart warming as she shared the story with him.

"Cyrus wasn't someone who tended to believe in monogamy," said Alexis. "He professed to love both Bracken and Helgira and pursued relationships with both of them, neither of them knowing about the other. But one winter, some ten years after the first landing, Bracken was suddenly taken ill and not even Helgira's best medicine could cure him. He was dead within a few weeks and Cyrus..." she swallowed hard. "He went nearly mad with grief and spent days in the jungles where he and Bracken would lie together, almost as if being in his lover's special place would bring him back again."

"But it didn't." Jack could more than relate to that feeling and that desperate wish to bring back the people you love. To see them again and to hold them in your arms. Tears burned his eyes as he thought of them and he had to quickly look away.

"If you want to know more of the story, you will have to find my father," said Alexis. "He will be at the Colosseum at the top of this road," she indicated a long road behind her. "But I'm sure he'll willingly take you to his library – he seems to spend so little time anywhere else," she added with a rueful grin.

"Thank you," Jack said and quickly made his way up the road before the woman could say anything else. He didn't think he could stand to look at her any more, especially knowing that she was expecting a child. All he could hope was that Alexis' child would have a better life than Steven did.

Maybe it's better for her that I'm not really her father. She won't be in danger then in the way my Alice was. It's my fault, what happened to Steven, just like she said it was. I don't want her or her child to have to suffer the same fate.

He was so lost in his thoughts that it took him several minutes – and the sound of something crunching softly underfoot – to realise that he had actually come to the end of the road. Blinking slightly, he looked around and found himself standing in the middle of a lawn with blades of grass blowing lightly around his ankles and casting tiny flickering shadows in the slowly setting sun. Already, the cirdanas were starting to settle around the mounds of stones on the ground and a slow trail of coloured lights was forming over the ground.

But that wasn't what drew Jack's attention. Instead, what caught his eye were the three enormous sculptures in front of him, all of them illuminated by the glow of thousands of the creatures.

"The Pyramids of Egypt, the Acropolis at Athens and the Colosseum in Rome," he breathed as his gaze travelled over them. "I've seen them before in the very distant past, but...never in a million years did I imagine seeing them like this – and certainly not here."

Taking a deep breath, he walked up to the entrance to the Colosseum, since not only had Alexis advised him that it was where her father would be, but also that it was where most of the noise seemed to be coming from. For once, however, he didn't want to draw attention to himself by possibly starting a fight with the security guards, some of whom looked too terrifying for words, so he made his way towards one of the tunnels that was unguarded and slowly walked through it, his footsteps echoing on the path. When he saw the light at the end, he stuck his head around the archway.

"Whoa," he whispered.

The arena was completely packed out with thousands of screaming spectators. People were waving streamers around and shooting what looked like small rockets in the air, the sparks combining with the lights from the cirdanas to completely illuminate the entire amphitheatre and falling around the groups of men and women...well, beating the snot out of each other, for the want of a better phrase. One woman, who looked so delicate she might have been a nymph had picked up a tall man with one hand and was currently spinning him around in circles above his head before throwing him against the wall with a crash so loud it made the entire arena shake.

Jack gasped and leaned against the wall as small stones began to fall from the ceiling. "That cannot be the result of that one woman," he muttered. "I mean I've heard of appearances being deceptive, but this –" but he was distracted by the sound of voices echoing a little way away. Turning, he saw another long corridor on his left and he made his way down it, occasionally ducking to avoid any more falling rocks.

He knew that he shouldn't be listening in on what was very probably a private conversation, but at the same time, despite the echoing going on in the tunnel and the slightly muffled voices, there was something about one of the voices that made him pause. It sounded familiar, but he just couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Look, Saket, I know you're strong and capable, but I can't let you do this. It would be a conflict of interests of the highest level."

"A conflict of interest?" The second voice also made Jack start – the man, presumably Saket, sounded an awful lot like himself. "By Ceana, Yannis, you really are talking absolute rubbish! This is not about your integrity – this is about you treating me like a child!"

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"Yannis, you can't wrap me up in blankets just because I'm your lover. I'm also a human being with feelings and thoughts. I know you don't want to lose anyone else this quickly and I feel for you, I really do. But I do not want to be confined to the palace or to the audience just because something's dangerous."

Jack suddenly had an urge to glance around the corner at the two men who were talking. Yannis' voice was setting alarm bells off in his head and he was determined to find out why. Squinting slightly in the faint light, he eased his way closer to the alcove where the two men were arguing and glanced over. And in that moment, he realised exactly why the voices were so familiar.

Facing the first man was like staring into a mirror, except that his doppelgänger was dressed in a black tunic and trousers with silver patterns embroidered on the tunic and with a deep blue cloak that looked as if it had been woven from the sky. But other than that, Jack was looking at his own face and into his own eyes.

Then, the other man – Yannis – spoke and any doubts Jack had about his identity were washed away like the wind, though his words knocked the wind out of him.

"Do you have any idea how hard this is, Saket? I will watch everyone I care about die or leave me, while I stay here, never ageing and never being able to join them!"

Jack swayed and leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. He could hardly believe what he had just seen and heard. But only one word slipped through the turmoil in his mind and between his lips.

"Ianto."