Chapter 1

"Where we going, Doc?" Jack asked as he strolled into the TARDIS control room to see the Doctor at work over the controls.

"No idea. Got a distress call, but I can't seem to pinpoint the location," he answered as he continued to pull levers and push buttons.

Jack smiled at him. "You'd think after nine hundred years of operating this thing, you would be a bit better at it." He walked over to the controls and began to punch a few buttons of his own.

"I'll have you know that this is a highly sophisticated piece of technology that is now the last of its kind and I have had to rebuild using less than standard equipment countless times. It's not my fault that she's got a few kinks in her systems that I have to work through."

"Well, then it seems that she just likes me more than you because here it is," Jack said with a grin as he gestured to the screen in front of him.

The Doctor stopped what he was doing and looked over Jack's shoulder as he pulled his reading glasses on. He stared at the screen for a moment before frowning and said, "Right then, looks like we have a heading." And he moved away and began to change the coordinates.

Jack just smiled after him. He knew that the Doctor would never admit that he had been wrong and pressing the issue was only going to gain him either more silence or over his head logic in how Jack was really the one who was wrong and the Doctor had actually been right. Or maybe he would just get some comment on dumb luck.

Just then Martha walked in. "What's going on?" she asked.

"Doctor got a distress signal. We're tracking it down now," Jack explained simply.

Martha rolled her eyes. "Not again. Distress signals are never good for us you know?" she said to the Doctor.

"Well that's the point isn't it?" he said excitedly. "Someone is in trouble so of course we have to get into a bit of trouble ourselves to sort it out. That's the price of traveling with me," he said with a grin.

"Oh don't get me wrong. I'm all about helping people. But sometimes it seems we walk into a bit more than we can handle."

"Nonsense, we're all still here, still alive… obviously we're doing something right," the Doctor shrugged off.

Martha just shook her head as she leaned against the wall, waiting for the spinning of the TARDIS engines to come to a stop.

When they finally did, the Doctor walked over to the doors and placed his hands on the handle. "Well," he said as he turned around to face Jack and Martha keeping his hands on the handle behind his back. "Shall we take a look then?" he said as he threw the doors open behind him and spun around.

His readings had told him that they were underground, inside of an asteroid, and that there had been no one in the area where they had landed. So he was rather shocked to turn and face a row of laser guns aimed at him.

"Oh. Hello then," he said as he looked up at the man closest to him. "I must have gotten the wrong address then. Well, sorry to trouble you, we'll be on our way," he said as he started to back up to close the doors once again.

"I don't think so Doctor," a voice said from behind the first row of men.

"Oh, someone I know then? Who's there?"

"Fire," the voice said smoothly. Before any of them could react, a pulse of blue energy left one of the guns and struck the Doctor in the chest. He collapsed immediately, half in, half out of the TARDIS.

Jack and Martha had been making their way to the door the entire time and were just behind the Doctor when he collapsed.

Jack brought his gun up and began firing into the blockade in front of him. He was fast and had brought down several men and had made his way just outside the door, putting himself between Martha and the Doctor and the men firing at them.

Martha dropped down beside the Doctor and was trying to pull his unconscious body back into the TARDIS. But as Jack stepped out, another man snuck behind him and had grabbed a hold of the Doctor's arm and tried to pull him the rest of the way out.

Jack was too busy keeping the other men at bay that he didn't notice when Martha was stunned as well and both she and the Doctor we dragged away. When he glanced back to see if it was all right for him to head back into the TARDIS, he saw that both of his friends were no longer there. He assumed that they had both made it back in and he turned and ran back himself.

Right as he reached the door and looked in to see that the room was empty, a stunning blast hit him in the back. The last thing that he could remember was pulling the TARDIS doors closed. Above all else, he couldn't let someone get into the TARDIS.

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Rose sat at her desk cataloging new alien items that had somehow turned up on Earth. It seemed that they were getting very high amounts of alien activity lately. Once again, she wondered what it was that she was doing here in London as the director of alien affairs rather than out there in the field, trying to discover the source of whatever was bringing this stuff here.

It had been nearly two years now since she had been stranded in this alternate universe. True, for the first time in her life she was part of a family. Her mom and dad were together once again and Mickey had become like an honorary brother to her. And now she even had a beautiful baby sister to fawn over. But none of that seemed to matter when compared to what she had lost.

She loved her new family very much, and knew that she would have missed out on so much if she had been able to stay with the Doctor. But still she couldn't help but wish that she hadn't been stuck here, away from him.

But now that she was separated from him for the rest of time, she couldn't just slip back into a normal family life. She needed to be doing something, something important. That was how she had gotten herself involved in Torchwood.

Ironic how it was that she wound up being employed by the same people who, in her universe, had caused her to be stranded where she was.

But Torchwood was not enough. She was way ahead of the others who worked there in knowledge of aliens and what they can do and what types of technology are out there, but they insisted that she stay at the desk, categorizing and cataloguing everything that they came across.

She felt that her knowledge was going to waste. She should be out there, finding this stuff and tracking down the reported rouge aliens that were popping up.

She sighed and looked up at the clock. It was time to leave and go back to her family. She loved them, she really did. But nothing seemed right anymore. It wasn't just that she was now in an entirely new universe; it was that she couldn't find her place in it all. She had spent so long running from adventure to adventure that this domestic life was just too bland for her now. Of course she never said any of this to her family, but she knew that they were aware of her feelings. She knew that it broke her mother's heart to have her loathing to stay there, but she couldn't help the way that she felt.

Rose gathered her coat and purse and stood up from her desk. Reaching down she closed her laptop and turned to leave her cubical.

Just as she reached the entrance of her space, a violent feeling suddenly over took her. She was suddenly filled with tremendous fear and pain radiated from the center of her chest and arced through her whole body. As she closed her eyes and grabbed a hold of the wall next to her, she could here a voice, screaming her name.

It was the Doctor's voice. But it wasn't the same gentle whisper that he had used to call her to say goodbye, it was a pain filled scream. She knew beyond doubt that right then he was in pain and needed help. Her Doctor was calling for help.

And then, just as suddenly as the feeling had over-took her, she was released from it. She swayed as she continued to cling to the wall, trying to recover from the shock.

"Rose?" a concerned voice asked next to her.

Rose opened her eyes and saw that it was Martha, her friend and boss at Torchwood.

"Rose, are you alright?" she asked again.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Rose said as she quickly took herself in hand. "Just skipped lunch today. Got up a bit too fast," she lied.

Martha frowned at her, "you shouldn't do this to yourself Rose. You know that you are allowed and even supposed to take a break from time to time," she admonished.

"Yeah, I know. I just lost track of time is all."

Martha eyed Rose for a moment, not sure if she really believed her friend's excuse, but she really didn't have much to go on. "Well tomorrow I'm going to come by when I leave for lunch and you are coming with me, got it?" she said firmly.

Rose forced a smile, "Yeah, it's a date."

"Now get home and have a bite before you pass out," Martha said as she gave Rose a pat on the shoulder and continued on to whatever she had been doing.

After Martha had passed, Rose took a deep breath before finally releasing her grip on the wall. As she walked towards the elevator, her mind raced through what had just happened.

She couldn't imagine what might have caused that or where it was coming from, but she was certain that the Doctor was calling to her. And the only reason that she could see for him to call her was if there was some way for her to cross over into his world again.

Maybe there was something that she should be doing or someplace that she needed to go. But she certainly didn't get any information from her vision or whatever had just happened.

She shuddered at the thought that maybe he was in so much pain he didn't even know that he was calling to her. For a brief second she was able to feel the agony and wondered if that could even be real. She couldn't imagine him in so much pain.

Her thoughts flew through her mind as she made her way home. She hardly even realized when she walked through the door that she had even left Torchwood. But there her mom was, asking how her day had went.

Rose just stared at her blankly for a moment. What was she going to tell her family? Of course they knew all about the Doctor, but would they really believe her? And if they did, what could they do?

Jackie paused at the stove where she had been making dinner and looked over to her silent daughter.

"Rose what is it? You look like you've seen a ghost."

She looked at her mom for a moment longer before replying, "I think I did."