Chapter one: Rebecca

A woman typed franticly on her computer, trying to get out her message as fast as possible. She glanced at the door and noticed the bolts pulling at their hinges with the constant banging from the other side. But there was no time to block it. She had to fallow the Doctor's instructions exactly, no matter what. "Tick tock." She murmured, not even bothering to look at the door anymore. There was nothing she could do to change the inevitable outcome.

"Surrender!" A gruff voice shouted from through the door. enunciated with a rather violent bang on the door.

"Yeah, yeah." She muttered as she finished her message. The top hinge pulled away with the loud scream of wrenching metal. She read through the e-mail slowly, knowing that this may be one of the most important things she would ever do.

She drew in a deep breath and pressed send. "Rebecca, it's all in your hands now." She said, just loud enough for herself to hear.

The bottom hinge snapped free from the wall as she turned her chair to face the angry aliens with a smile. "Hello, boys." She winked. "Checkmate."

-

Rebecca Singer stood on the sidewalk, staring across the street at the entrance to a small pastry shop. All it would take was 17 and a half steps. She'd counted. 19 inches toe-to-toe on her average step, and about 27 feet to the door from where she was standing. and with only a half second to a step, it would only take about 9 seconds to get to the door.

But she still stood there. It was as if she couldn't force her legs to carry her a single step. Because that shop wasn't just a shop. Every bit of her research pointed to this being the new headquarters of Torchwood 5. Inside that building, somewhere, hidden, was the world she had sworn never to visit again. But she had no choice in the matter. Her doctor needed her.

She swallowed in fear. Her arms tightened around the binder that was clutched to her chest. The light turned red. She took a step. Then another. And she kept moving. Before she knew it, her hand was closing on the handle.

The door opened with a ding, and Rebecca found herself surrounded by... Not very much. There was a selection of cupcakes and cookies in the display case, and a few cakes lining the walls. She ventured a little bit closer and noticed a silver bell next to the cash register.

She tapped it, and it gave a short ring. A girl with long blonde hair poked her head around the corner. "Wait please," The girl said with a thick french accent and a grin. She turned back to the kitchen, her loose hair swirling a foot behind her as she went.

Rebecca smiled, feeling the need to be polite even if the woman couldn't see it. She leaned against the counter while she waited for the woman to come back. From the back, she could hear the buzz of voices.

"We know the Nostrivite is somewhere in northern Cardiff." A British man said from somewhere in the kitchen. Rebecca casually leaned further over the counter.

"And that is all." It was the blonde woman this time. "We know nothing." She spoke with a hint of annoyance.

"Well, we can't exactly run a scan for alien life in that section, Nostrivites are shape shifters. Their bio-signs usually match up with the form they've taken on." A different voice this time, a woman.

Rebecca had heard all she needed. "Excuse me." She called. The voices from the other room continued without pause. "Excuse me!" She said, louder.

The blonde woman popped back into the room with an annoyed look. "I have told you, I will be right with you." She said, and disappeared again.

"I was just going to say, if you're looking for a shape shifter, I'd try St. Mary's church down on 27th and Maple." The woman slowly turned around, the look on her face of pure bewilderment. "There have been a lot of rumors about The nuns keeping something there that looks like a man but isn't a man." She laughed nervously. "It's all very 19th century."

The woman walked suspiciously to behind the counter and stopped when she stood right in front of her. She watch Rebecca with a studying gaze, as though trying to figure out what she was.

"Jack," She called, not taking her eyes off Rebecca. "You may want to come in here."

A man with dark hair and a flirtatious grin walked in to stand beside the blonde woman. "Business or pleasure?"

Rebecca gulped. This is it. Her life was about to go topsy-turvy all over again. "Um... Yes." She couldn't bring herself to say another word.

Jack raised her eyebrows. "Yes?"

"Uh." This was not going as she had planned. "I'm Rebecca Singer. I need your help-- Torchwood's help."

"You know about-" He narrowed his eyes, all hints of flirtation gone from his face.

She nodded. The bell above the door rang as another customer walked in. "But..." She looked over her shoulder nervously. "I think we better talk inside."

Jack agreed, and she soon found herself fallowing the man into the kitchens, (which were even less impressive than the front of the shop) through a concealed door behind the stove, (that opened in a rather dramatic slow swivelly motion) and down an elevator, (that was, surprisingly, just an elevator.) After walking through an automated metal door that she swore was going to break the mechanism holding it up and crush her, they finally entered a huge room that could only be described as magnificent.

At the center was the rift manipulator, that filled the room with a gentle buzzing sound. Placed around the room were a number of desks and tables with computers and various other gadgets atop them. A few looked personal, one with a picture of a man and a baby sitting on it next to something that looked a bit like a space-age xylophone. The others were simply computers on tables.

She became aware of eyes watching her as she gazed around in awe. She blushed and scurried after the Captain, who stood waiting for her at the top of a small flight of stairs that led to what she supposed to be his office. "Sit down." He said, gesturing to a chair. she did so hastily, nervously smoothing her hand across the cover of the binder in her lap.

Jack took his time, sitting down and swinging his feet up onto the desktop and studying her with a questioning gaze. Rebecca waited exactly 42 seconds before she spoke. She reached her hand across the table and said; "Rebecca Ann Singer." Oh, why had she used her middle name? She never did that. Figures she has a whole speech planned out and she goes and ruins it on her name.

The man across from her smiled in a kind of friendly, mocking way. "Captain Jack manipulator."

"Yes, I know who you are." Jack's eyebrows raised.

"And how would you know that?"

Rebecca gave a startled sort of 'oh' and began to rifle through her papers. When she found the file she was looking for, she pulled it out and set it on the desk for the captain to look at. The file was a short compilation of every relevant thing that Jack had ever done. The captain figured this out rather quickly, and looked at her in a way that could only be relevant as 'creeped out'.

Rebecca made the 'oh' sound again, realizing that she should probably explain herself. "Well-" She gulped. "Sorry, I'm not usually this frazzled. I'm just a bit nervous to go back into this life again."

"'Again'?"

She nodded. "About three years ago, I was still in college then, I was home for the holidays. My parents live in america, so I went out to visit them. But on the train on the way there, people started disappearing. Right from their seats." She paused. "No one knew what to do. Once he realized what was going on-- or at least that people were disappearing. The conductor wanted to stop the train, to get everybody off, to get everybody safe. But the train wouldn't stop. It was so terrifying."

She thought back to the memory, trying to remember what she felt, the terror, the confusion. She realized she was still supposed to be telling her story, and she began again. "Every one was running and screaming, but I just sat there. What use could there be to run from something that could take you without you ever seeing it? But while everyone was screaming, I saw something. A man and a woman had slipped outside. so I fallowed them. They had climbed up onto the roof and they were talking to this... thing." She wrinkled her nose is disgust. "It was sort of blobby and round, and it stank like nothing you will ever smell. When I saw them talking to it," She paused to giggle. How silly she had been! "I thought they were working for it!"

Jack still looked at her like she'd gone mad. "Well, I grabbed a crowbar and tried to bash the man's head in. I missed, and I ended up throwing the crowbar over the side of the train, but the point is it caused a distraction. The woman pushed the thing off the side of the train, and it just sort of..." Rebecca struggled to come up with a word disgusting enough to explain what had happened. "Popped." From the look on the Captain's face, the word seemed to have gotten the point across.

"Anyway, that man and the woman turned out to be the Doctor and Donna Noble." The surprise on Jack's face told her that he knew the names very well. "I ended up traveling with them for five months. Those five months were the best of my life. All the wonderful things I saw..." Rebecca swallowed, glancing down at the binder in her lap. "But things came up and I had to leave."

Jack studied her carefully for a very long moment. Rebecca began to wonder if he had heard her at all. "Why are you here?" He finally asked.

Rebecca pointed to the file in his hand "Because of that. Well," She clarified. "Not that exactly. This." She held up the binder in her hands. "It has information about every person associated with the Doctor." Rebecca's eye's flitted to Jack's right hand, noticing that his thumb had moved almost an inch across the wood surface towards the holster on his hip. "And before you go grabbing at your gun, I'm not a stalker or anything. thirteen days ago, I got an email." She pulled a file from her binder and passed it over the desk.

The Captain picked it up and opened it. It contained a single piece of paper, printed out from an e-mail. He read through it quickly and looked up at her. "What is this?"

"It's a code of some kind. It was sent to me by the Doctor, or perhaps his companion. I need you and your team to help me decipher it." She bit down on her lip nervously.

"And why should I trust you?" Jack asked.

Rebecca gulped. "Because there's no one else who can help me."

"That's not much of a reason."

Rebecca shrugged. "It's all I've got." She heard it in her voice, that desperate, hopeful, even pleading tone, but for now she wouldn't care if she were down on her knees. The Doctor and Donna had saved her from a life of nothing. They'd opened her closed off mind to a whole new world. Even if she couldn't save Donna, she had to help the Doctor.

For a moment, no one did anything. Then Jack stood up, and Rebecca was sure he was going to pull out his gun and blast her away. There would be no time to dodge at such close range, you would have to have superhuman speed. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the blast. "Hey." Rebecca opened her eyes to find that Jack was standing by the door of his office, paper in hand, watching her with a little half smile. "You coming?"

She nodded, scrambling to her feet and rushing after him. She should have known that no friend of the Doctor would hurt her. They exited the office and Jack had apparently decided she needed a tour, as he began showing her around. "This..." He waved his arm in a sweeping motion. "Is the Hub." She was beginning to see what the Doctor had meant when he had said that Jack had and air for the dramatics.

Jack had walked down the steps to an open area in the room. Her eyes darted to the other members of his team, who had com to stand around him or beside their desks, all watching her with suspicion. She understood the need for it. In their world, your best friend, lover, or the Prime Minister could be an alien, or at least someone working for one. Why trust a total stranger who seems to know everything about you? She turned her eyes to Jack, who had begun to describe the Hub.

"Four levels underground, two above. Nothing really important happens in the two above ground, the bakery is only a cover-up and the other one-- well, I take that back. Very important things happen in my bedroom." He paused in his speech to shoot a wink at a man that she knew from her files as Alonso Frame. "We're on level one of the underground levels right now, the main workstation. One floor below is autopsy, where Martha works." He gestured to an African-American woman standing to the left of Alonso. She smiled "Below that is vaults, then cells. We keep all the alien artifacts that come through the rift in the vaults. And as for the cells, well what does one keep in a cell?"

He then introduced his team members, pointing to each of them in turn. "Ruby Sutton, our computer whiz," The blonde woman from the bakery. "Alonso Frame, expert on alien life, and an excellent cook." Jack winked, Alonso blushed. "Martha Jones, our doctor, and former companion to the Doctor." Jack chuckled at his little joke. Martha extended a hand to Rebecca, who hurried over to her to take it. "Gwen Williams-Cooper, she does everything, she's been here longer than anyone." What looked like a wave of sadness passed over Jack's face, but it was gone as soon as it appeared. "Well, besides me, of course. And as for me, I run the place."

Rebecca peered around the room, slightly overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place. "How did you salvage so much from the blast site?"

Jack sighed and shook his head. "Is there anything you don't know about us?"

Rebecca simply smiled. If Jack knew exactly how much she knew about Torchwood, she would end up ret-conned before she took one step out of the front door. In her three months traveling with the doctor, she had heard a lot about Torchwood. The things she had heard weren't all good. Even so, the Doctor truly believed in Jack, even if he didn't believe in everything he did. If the Doctor trusted him, she did too.

She noticed that Jack had not answered her question. It took her a full second to realize what he had done. (And it never took a full second.) How very clever! The man had casually defected her question with another question. The very question that would be difficult for her to answer without exposing exactly how much she knew. Furthermore, he had disguised it as a joke! He had pulled it all off so casually she herself had almost missed it.

A smile spread across her face. Why, Mr. Harkness. You will be fun.