Rose watched the downy-feathered sparrows flit across the lush lake-side park, their wings tapered to russet-brown tips. She dug her thumbs through the denim belt loops of her dark blue jeans and continued walking, gold strands of soft hair curling gently around her cheeks.
She was wearing her hair that way again. Two braids of thick, long blonde hair tied to her scalp, the remainder scooped into a bun at the base of her neck. He used to love it, although he never admitted it; surreptitious looks, a comment or two, his hand trailing across her shoulders and touching her hair. She could read his every action like an open book.
Stop it. A voice said firmly in her head. No. Rose answered defiantly, then realised she was talking to herself.
She'd not even noticed she'd walked into this park – it was near the base, and she'd heard Jack mention it at a meeting, sipping cold coffee and sorting through piles of blueprints and yellowed documents.
Of course, it wasn't normally like that, sitting at a desk, going through inventory. It was kicking and fighting and running breathlessly through dark alleyways, being chased by monsters or aliens or memories. Her huge blaster-gun rested coldly at her hip, compressed by a miniaturisation field that dissipated when it was drawn. She'd got that from an October Verulian from Verulia 18, who'd left bruises all over the back of her legs when it slammed a tree-trunk into the inside of her knees.
"Verulians?" he grinned at her, all teeth and spiky brown hair. "They're named after months and history dates."
Rose hooked his arm with hers and kicked a pile of neon-pink leaves from their path. "So, what would I be then?" she teased, and he looked at her, his eyes dancing like candlelight. It was too much, too strange, that look. She knew his hearts would be twisting inside from a thought, like hers was jumping about so wildly.
"Something glorious," he laughed, and grabbed her hand to pull her away, leaves flying from their feet like sparrows. "Something like –"
"December," Rose said softly. She stayed standing in the middle of the park pathway, time passing her by with not even a backward glance.
"First sign of madness, you know."
Rose snapped alert, her hand darting to her hip. The smooth, velvet voice had come from under the huge, sassafras tree at the end of the path, where it forked into dispersed lanes blanketed in sunlight. A tall, slender man leant against the trunk, hidden by diamond-shaped emerald leaves.
"Really?" Rose replied, her eyes resting on his dark purple, finely- tailored suit. "The second's talking to mad people, y'know."
The man shrugged his bony shoulders. A scarf was tied thickly around his mouth and nose, and an elegant hat balanced on his head. Large black sunglasses hid his eyes – but she could see his hair, escaping in fantastically frizzy clumps from underneath his hat-brim.
Distrust immediately filled her. Any creature that hid its face had something to hide – even in human psychology, unnecessary covering of the mouth or nose meant lying, or hidden truth.
"That's an Irish accent, isn't it?" Rose said cheerfully, unlocking the holster of the blaster with a flick of her fingers.
"It is indeed. And that – London, correct?"
"You are indeed. So," Rose twisted the lock on the gun handle, and a subtle vibration across her thigh confirmed it was active. "What brings you to England?"
The man (or alien) pushed away from the tree, and Rose was suddenly sensitive of the dangerous aura that surrounded him. You had to be, in the profession she was in. Auras were actually whole identities on some planets. It was angular and glossy like the coat of a jungle cat, and twice as sleek.
"A blonde, to be honest. Tanith Low." The man tilted his head, and under the glasses she got the impression he was looking straight at her. "Ever heard of her?"
Tanith Low. Tanith Low. Where had she heard that name before?
"...and this girl pops out of nowhere, dressed in combat brown leather, with a sword strapped to her belt," Owen announced, tapping the screen of the presentation board, which depicted a pretty young woman with long, tousled yellow hair. What was odd, however, was the smile that crossed her face as she decapitated a Boraficious Arkoon with apparent ease, ducking the poison-coated tentacles with practised finesse.
"Is that a sword?" Tosh asked incredulously, pointing to the glinting silver blade in her hands.
"Yes. Now this was taken in Dublin, Ireland, by one of our sources."
"We have sources?" Rose smiled at Jack, receiving a grin in return. "Yeah. Weird, huh?"
"Do they have walkie-talkies? Are they sworn to secrecy on punishment of death?"
"If we can please try to be mature," Owen sighed. "Gwen says that the woman introduced herself as Tanith Low, after incidentally appearing from a nearby alley. She disappeared soon after slaying the Arkoon in under three minutes, and there hasn't been news of her since."
"Well, what are we to do about it?"
"Leave it until we hear of her again." Jack said. "The civilians in the area had no idea what we were talking about, and had no trace of alien memory technology used on them."
"Besides," he continued, grinning lecherously. "I'm sure a gorgeous young lady like that could take care of herself. Seeing as all that leather certainly –"
"Jack."
"Sorry."
"No," Rose immediately said, knowing exactly who she was. "Never."
The man held her gaze levelly under the squares of shaded glass. He shifted ever so slightly, and cold leapt up Rose's throat as she caught a glimpse of smooth alabaster-white jutting from under his sleeve. She'd seen enough mutilated limbs and bare skeletons to know what bone looked like.
"Where did you say you were from again?"
Before he could answer, a sixteen year old came charging across the quiet, empty park, dressed all in black clothes with her long, dark hair flying behind her. She juddered to a halt beside the man, and Rose could see her eyes, bright and black and even darker than her hair. She was pretty, in a cocky sort of way.
"Hi," she grinned, although her smile seemed a bit forced. "Um...Skulduggery, Jeffrey (here she arched her brows pointedly) is getting a bit restless. In fact, I think he might be headed here right now."
"Who's Jeffrey?" Rose asked lightly, straining to keep the curiosity from her voice.
"My brother –"
"My nephew –"
Skulduggery tilted his head toward the girl just as she glanced at him. "Skulduggery's my uncle," the girl said eventually. "And I'm Valkyrie. Valkyrie Cain."
Valkyrie stuck a hand out, and Rose shook it. The two quickly excused themselves and then headed toward a cluster of tall, copper-leaved trees, two dark slashes against the orange backdrop. Rose forced herself to wait till they were out of view, then twisted her short, wide-knuckled fingers around her vortex manipulator, setting it to leap forward to round about the region Skulduggery and Valkyrie had gone to. She mashed her thumb into the manipulator and felt the world lift and pulse around her; twisting the air around her until she was nothing but atoms, then slamming her forcefully onto an earthy forest floor.
Suppressing a groan, Rose rubbed her disorientated head –then froze, sprawled ungracefully on the floor right before Skulduggery and Valkyrie. Who, incidentally, were in the act of wrestling a ten tonne Judeen into a shimmering, claw-footed cage. The Judeen were the 'pets' of the Judoon, the faithful elephantine companions to the rhino-like race, although far larger and far more stupid. This particular Judeen rippled with muscle beneath the yellowish-green scales of its skin, and the scarlet feathers rimmed around its small, unintelligent eyes bristled with anger.
Rose immediately spotted the problem. The beast's thick mustard tail had been stabbed with a blinking dial, with a serial number and a flashing red tracker light. Couple that with the frayed ropes around its huge feet and the cage bar marks striped against its sides, and it was obvious that some black-market trader must have hastily abandoned the Judeen on Earth in an attempt to hurriedly dispose of illegal stock.
Although God knows what that had to do with this Skulduggery and Valkyrie – if those were their real names.
"Get out of here!" Skulduggery yelled, giving a winded cough as the Judeen whipped its tail into his slender stomach.
Instead of running away, Rose ran forward, digging in her pockets for her tranquilizer kit. Her groping hand found the gun, with the syringe in place and the broad chemical-filled tub beneath it. Using her momentum to vault herself up, Rose sprang onto the lumbering Judeen and shoved Valkyrie out the way, who had been clinging doggedly to its neck.
"What are you doing?" she shrieked, scrambling to her feet. "You'll get yourself killed!"
In response, Rose swore violently as the Judeen rammed its head up into her shoulder, and pain lanced through the bruised muscle. Ignoring the fallen Skulduggery and his partner, she thrust the needle into the Judeen's weakest point, just behind the curved joint of its ear. The syringe was filled with a pale lilac liquid, the Judeen's blood. The chemicals beneath swirled as they rearranged the structure of it, turning into a sedative for the alien. Enraged, the Judeen gave an agonized bellow and began bucking like a demented bull, determined to throw Rose off.
Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God.
Not risking screaming in case she bit off her tongue, Rose decided to pray fervently for a miracle, a tactic she employed regularly when involved in some Torchwood-based catastrophe. Or when she came back to her flat to find smoke in her kitchen and Jack passed out drunk on her sofa. Whichever.
Suddenly, something powerful and invisible slammed around the Judeen, compressing it into a bubble of hard air. Blearily, Rose looked around to see Skulduggery and Valkyrie holding out their hands, with a faint haze issuing from their snapped out palms.
"Whatever you're doing," Skulduggery called loudly over the Judeen's roars, "I suggest that you hurry it up."
For some inexplicable reason, that dry wit reminded her of the Doctor, and a surge of hope filled Rose like warm milk. The tranquilizer kit chirped once, and the liquid inside settled to a clear colour, the shade of the correct sedative. Rose smiled triumphantly as she stabbed the needle back into the Judeen and depressed the plunger.
With a few more staggering steps, the Judeen gradually lost consciousness. The elephant groaned, then slumped forward in a swirl of fluttering leaves. Skulduggery and Valkyrie ran forward and lifted the beast into the air with the strange haze, throwing it into the electric cage. As the Judeen fell in, the bars became wider, allowing space for its massive frame.
Rose cocked a brow as the duo turned slowly around.
"So, what was that ab –"
A flash of scarlet light, and Rose fell silently to the ground, unconscious.
Skulduggery and Valkyrie walked back to the Bentley with the troll mutation tucked away in Skulduggery's coat pocket, shrunk down to size. He seemed oddly quiet.
Valkyrie thought of the girl they had met, of her face when Skulduggery had wiped her memory, causing her to faint.
"Will she be OK?"she asked, ducking under the door Skulduggery held open for her. He stayed quiet a while, then answered. "She'll wake up with a sore head and a bad cold, but yeah, she'll be OK."
The finality in his tone ended the topic. Grudgingly satisfied, Valkyrie felt the purr of the engine as the Bentley surged forward out of the park and into the maze of streets, leaving the strange blonde girl behind. Valkyrie remembered briefly the glimpse she'd caught of the chain linked around her slender peach-coloured neck, the engraved 'R' on the locket.
What did it stand for? Rebecca? Rachel? Ruth?
Without knowing why, a name entered her head, unprecedented, whispered by a faint male voice.
Rose.