Disclaimer: I own nothing. Characters, settings, and some plot structures are borrowed from the BBC and the mind of Mr. Jim Butcher with a very pretty smile and a promise to return them in the same condition in which they left.

"Ianto," cried Jack. "You're with me!" The two men ran out the Hub and dove into their iconic SUV. They sped off into late night traffic in downtown Cardiff. Ianto was checking his handheld to make sure they were headed in the right direction.

"Take a left here", he mumbled. Jack obeyed and lifted two wheels of the road while making the turn. Something had just come through the rift that gave off the strongest energy signature in the recorded history of Torchwood. After breaking several speed limits, most traffic laws and the leash of a now elated pouch, the operatives came to a screeching halt in a dark, narrow, dead end alleyway.

"If we get out of this situation," said Jack under his breath, "the clichés will kill us."

Before them stood a man dressed in what used to be a nice jacket, though now it more closely resembled something more akin to scarecrow wear. In one hand, he brandished a rusted knife that looked like it would crumble in his shaky hand before cause any real damage, and in the other he clutched a stuffed to bursting black duffel bag. Ianto and Jack slowly got out of the SUV and started moving toward the nervous vagrant.

"We're not trying to hurt you." Just as the soothing words left Jack's lips, Ianto's handheld tumbled to the ground. In a moment of sheer panic, the vagrant took off, dropping both the knife and the duffel. "Well done!" chortled Jack. Ianto cast him a look that was somewhere between "I hate you right now" and

"I'm sorry, it's all my fault", before collecting the fallen equipment and taking some readings.

"It appears that the duffel is what fell through," commented Ianto quietly. Jack approached it slowly, his own scanner humming and whirring intently.

"I can't tell in something inside is alive or not. I've never seen anything like this before." He nudged it with his foot expecting it to leap into the air. When nothing happened, he picked it up and gave it a small shake… Still nothing happened. "I suppose we take it back to the Hub." He and Ianto retreated to the SUV with the strange bag.

An uneventful trip lead the captain and his lieutenant back to Torchwood headquarters where Jack set the duffel on a wheeled cart to open it. He did this in the medical examination area, just in case. It was easier to contain whatever was inside with all the tech within arm's reach. The zipper pulled back with what could only be described as a sign of relief. The contents were many and varied; a pair of swords (a katana disguised a cane and an old school two handed broadsword), a bleached and worn human skull, and a pouch of odd smelling grey dust among other things. Nothing in the bag trigger any alarms, nor did anything jump up and attempt to eat anyone's face. Jack sat there and puzzled about it for a long while. How is this possible? thought Jack. The thing damn near glowed with energy when we picked it up, hell I could feel it! But now, there's nothing.

Owen and Gwen chose that moment to make an entrance into the Hub, all laughs and friendly shoves, as per the usual. Jack called out a greeting, surprised that it was late enough in the morning to have the team start showing up already. Owen made his way to the exam area to see what Jack had done to his office (for lack of a better term). Ianto was just coming in with his customary tray of liquid gold (known as coffee).

"So, what's the verdict?" he asked, setting down his tray for all to access.

"Your guess is as good as mine." Jack was still puzzled over the contents of the bag, now spread out on the exam table. "There has got to be something I'm missing!" He jumped up, coffee mug in hand, and started to pace around the table.

"What's all this then?" ask Gwen, clearly confused as to what she was actually looking at.

"Earlier, Jack and I caught something coming through the rift and we found this. When we got there, the readings we were getting from it were off the charts. Jack looked as if he expected something to jump out at him when he approached it. I thought it was a malfunction of the equipment."

"How could the equipment be malfunctioning? I checked and updated everything before I left last night." Tosh had taken that moment to poke her head in exam area to see what was going on.

"I… um… well…" Ianto stammered for a little while.

"A vagrant knocked it from his hands during an impromptu escape," the Captain supplied. Ianto thanked him with a bright red face (this was something that Jack would never let him live down).

"That would do it," nodded Tosh. "Let me see your scanner, maybe it was off."

Jack stopped pacing. "No…" he began, but never finished. He was staring at the skull that sat on the exam table like it had just grown tentacles and started waving.

"Jack?" Gwen's voice was cautious. "What is it Jack?" That seemed to pull him out of his state.

"Nothing…" But he didn't take his eyes from the skull. Lost in thought, he pulled the bioscanner to the table and set the skull on it. The scanner whirred quietly, but the results were less that heartening. Jack fumed silently and left the area, and the rest of the team followed suit, remembering other things that needed to get done.

First, I'm unceremoniously shoved into a duffel bag with two Swords of the Cross, some Ghost Dust and a bunch of other illegal object that Harry did not want the cops finding. Then I'm buried, alive I might add, in the Nevernever. Finally, I fall through the ground (don't ask me how), and land in what I can only assume is a foreign country on earth. There was running and yelling and squealing tires. It was GREAT! The only thing it was miss was a hot babe at the end of the chase. When the running stopped though, things got weird. I felt… something. I don't know what, but something knew I was there. So, like the live-to-run-away-another-day coward I am, I hid in my skull. Nothing could hurt me unless I invited it in here, so I was safe… at least I thought I was.

Someone new picked me up and put me in a car (I'm still in the duffel bag at this point, but it's just easier to assume that the bag is part of me). The whole drive there were two guys talking. One was clearly an American, but the other must have been some sort of Brit or something. Definitely not Aussie, but I don't think that really matters. What does matter is the fact that they were flirting! Gah! It couldn't have been to chicks, could it? Apparently, spontaneous transport is working against my wish to see girl on girl action.

The vehicle stopped and I was taken into a basement of some sort. A lot was going on around me, but I couldn't figure any of it out. I could sense some computers, and other more modern technology (better find a way to tell Harry not to come down here), but there was another layer of something that I had never felt before. For someone like me, who almost knows everything, it was downright terrifying. I was still bound to Harry, so any chance of leaving my little bony cage (though a comfortable cage) was out of the question. Someone had taken me out of the bag and set me on a solid surface. There was some general chatter about what was all in the bag. When the chatter died down a little, I ventured a peak into my surroundings.

Everything was old white tiling. The kind you see on the sets of British TV shows. There were also a lot of lights and polished stainless steel. It could be a lab of some sort, possibly a medical station… but underground? The Swords were laying on the table in front of me, along with all the other contents of the bag. There were people on all sides of me. I could see a man in an old style army coat pacing, another guy in a nice suit (nice enough for me to consider swinging in his direction), and then I could see the left side of a woman with curves in all the right places. I was considering a stealthy hop to see the rest of this woman when Army Coat locked eyes with me. I pulled back a split second after, but he saw me. I heard him try to brush off his sudden pause. I was moved again, and I felt that unknown touch of Something again, this time coming from under me. I had to find a way to get in touch with Harry. This place was bad juju.

The rest of the day went smoothly within the confines of the Torchwood Hub. Jack did regular checks on the objects from the duffel, but other than that, it was situation normal. Computers hummed, scanners chirped, and papers were shuffled. No one else really paid any attention to what was in the exam area. No mysterious lights appeared, and nothing tried to eat anyone's face.

Gwen left a little early, claiming that she had a date with Rhys. Owen and Tosh left not too long after Gwen, leaving Jack and Ianto alone. In an effort to distract the increasingly stressed captain, Ianto lured him to his office and proceeded to thoroughly distract him.

It was a while before either of the two men were seen in the main gathering place of the Hub, but when they did make their grand appearance, they were greeted by an odd orange glow coming from the exam area. Jack cursed under his breath and raced down the stairs, attempting to button his pants. Ianto poked his head around the door frame, also fumbling with his bottoms, to see what was going on. Ever the proper one, Ianto grabbed a shirt (which turned out to be Jack's, and was much too big), and followed his Captain. The scene that greeted him was an odd one, Jack was standing frozen on the stair and the skull from the bag glowing orange and its mouth hanging open at an odd angle. There was a pregnant pause, and then the skull seemed to say "Oh shit".

Many things happened all at once. Jack and Ianto pulled out their guns and trained them on the table, and the light in the skull flared and then disappeared making the jaw of the skull clatter shut. Stillness followed, the panting of the adrenaline filled men the only sound.

"What the hell was that?" demanded Jack. Ianto shrugged half heartedly and continued staring at the skull. Jack poked the offending cluster of bone with the muzzle of his gun. This was met with a flare of orange light and a rather annoyed noise that sounded astonishingly like a grunt.

"Do you mind?" Both men standing in the exam theatre jumped at the statement. "I don't go around knocking on your head!"

"Th-that's not p-possible!" stuttered Ianto. "It's just a skull!"

"I scanned it earlier," agreed Jack. "The results were clear. There isn't anything in that thing!"

"Well, apparently your little scanner is WRONG!" replied the skull.

"What are you?" asked the Captain.

"I am a spirit of intellect. And you seem to both be human, which tells me that I'm not in the Nevernever anymore." The skull paused and chuckled to itself.

"Maybe I should find some ruby slippers and a little dog named Toto." Another pause. No one said a word. "What, you've never seen the Wizard of Oz? I guess it was a stretch…"

"What do you mean a 'spirit of intellect'?"

"Just that, I'm a real brainiac. I've spent the last few centuries hanging around some of the most powerful wizards the world has seen. In fact, one of them is supposed to come find me soon."

"Wizards? Are you serious? There's no such thing as magic."

"Is that so, Mr. Coat?"

"That's Captain Harkness to you, bone boy."

"Alright, Harkness. You can call me Bob."

"And who is this 'wizard' that's coming to find you?"

"Oh, just a guy who's going up against an entire nation of vampires to save a little girl with nothing but a couple of sticks and dog. His name is Harry Dresden, and while he doesn't get near as much action as you two clear do…" Ianto blushed and glanced curiously at the skull trying to figure out how it was able to leer at him that way. "He is quite capable of creating a pile of smoldering rubble where this place is." The men looked at each other skeptically. "Don't believe me, look up recent events in Chicago."

Eager to get away from the weird talking skull, Ianto scurried off to one of the computer terminals and with a few key strokes pulled up information on all major occurrences, both benign and otherwise, in the US city. "There's nothing here to suggest anything out of the norm." In the exam theatre, there was a clatter of bone on steel as Bob's jaw dropped… Or rather popped up, cause the whole skull to tumble over.

"What do you mean nothing? A building was just blown up yesterday!"

"Nothing's been blown up in Chicago for years. I've gone back a decade and the only explosions have been relatively normal… for explosions that is."

Bob mulled over the possibilities for a moment and decided to give the annoying little know it all the address to Harry's office building. A few key clicks later…

"There's nothing at that address. Never has been." Bob was speechless, a fact that was completely lost on his new associates. He tried the apartments address. "Looks like that is actually a vacant factory building."

"That's impossible! It's a residential area; there should be an old boarding house th-…" Bob stopped mid word, as a thought struck him. Since working with Kemmler, he had been contemplating the existence of other dimensions. He didn't give it much credit; it made him think of cheap sci-fi sex novels (a pause in thoughts… three titties- awesome!). But, still… Everything was the same, save for Dresden's existence. Bob gave specific events and locations for Ianto to check, and everything came back blank, save for major world events.

It took a while for Jack to regain his usual swagger and confidence. He had complete faith in his technology; it could not be wrong, simple as that. But there it was, a skull having his deputy checking world events with the absolute certainty that something happened, when nothing had. Jack stopped to chuckle quietly, remembering stories from Rose; her unwavering conviction that her father was dead when he was walking around in the dimension she was in at the present. Sensing no immediate danger, the Captain wandered off to his office, lost in a pensive cloud of memories of Rose. The not quite satisfied desires from earlier stirred at the thought of her laugh. He lost himself in thought and memory for a long five minutes before recalling what had brought the companion to mind.

There was another clatter of bone on steel table as the skull Jack seemed to have just righted fell over again with the exclamation of "Parallel dimensions?"