At Torchwood
When Martha Jones walked into the rebuilt Torchwood hub she found it remarkably similar to how it was the last time she had been there, considering that it had been completely destroyed during the 456 incident. Apart from the people. Jack was still there, beaming and welcoming her with a hug, as was Gwen, but instead of Ianto, Tosh and Owen the only other person in the room was a grumpy sounding American who introduced himself as 'Rex Matheson, on loan from the CIA.' Martha was about to say how sorry she was for their losses but rather than allow the inevitably awkward expressions of sympathy over Torchwood's recent losses to occur Jack promptly herded the group into the briefing room, pausing only for some mild banter.
"I had to beg Martha for months before she agreed to join us for the day, so you two be sure to give her a good impression so she wants to stay. Basically, Gwen just be yourself. Rex, don't be yourself."
"Very funny Jack, but I don't think we're the ones have to make an impression as much as the rift and the aliens do." grumbled Rex as the group took seats around the conference table. Jack pulled up a map of Cardiff on the large screen behind him and began his briefing.
"Surprising as it is Rex, you might actually be right this time." Gwen snorted at this, and Rex looked as if he wasn't sure whether to be bemused or frustrated. Martha chuckled at their interactions. If they always act like this, Jack might be able to talk me into staying a bit longer, but a lot depends on how the actual job plays out. Why am I even allowing myself to seriously consider this as an option? I need to stop mucking about with aliens and focus on my job at the hospital and work on getting the closest thing I can to a normal life because God knows I need it and who am I even trying to fool? Unless the remainder of the day is absolutely horrible I'm going be here for a while.
"Luckily for us, the rift seems to be as eager for Martha to join the team as we are, and has been releasing energy at various points throughout Cardiff all morning." He pressed a button and a series of red dots appeared on the map behind him. "The hot spots appear to be located in two vague groupings so we'll split into two pairs to investigate, and go from there."
"Girls team and boys team?" Martha suggested "We could make a competition out of it."
"I'm afraid that's out of the question Nightingale, primarily because Rex would never agree to the sort of prizes we'd have to have." Rex gave Jack a glower that would have made lesser men go looking for their mothers. "And of course, there's the fact that during the Miracle Day crisis he picked up my habit of not staying dead." Martha looked at Rex with poorly concealed disbelief and surprise all over her face.
"Yeah, there is that." Rex grumbled, obviously still less than pleased with that turn of events.
"So what you're saying is that for Martha's one day here visiting us, she is either going to be stuck with your constant pissing and moaning, or your incessant flirting for the entire day? Shame, would have been lovely working with you in the longer term." It was unlikely that any of the other three besides maybe Martha noticed how easily Gwen's apparently offhand remark defused the slowly building tension between the two men, but it was no less effective for its subtlety and the group made it into the field without further incident.
Rather unfortunately, they also returned from their expeditions without further incident either. The only conclusion the group could make at the end of the day was that they needed a greater expert than themselves solve the mystery and so as Jack put it
"Looks like this one will have to go on the waiting list until that magnificent blue box lands on our roof for a recharge."
To no ones surprise, Martha found both the space-time continuum and working with people who knew almost as much about it as she did immensely enjoyable and agreed to continue working with Torchwood Three for the time being, although she did insist on the option to leave at any point she saw fit. With Doctor Jones seemingly effortlessly slicing and dicing her way through all sorts of alien autopsies and other medical operations that had been painstakingly slow before her arrival Torchwood Three reached a level of efficiency it hadn't seen since the peak of Captain Jack's original five man 'dream team'.
It was this efficiency that allowed Jack to resume working on one of his pet projects, finding the long absent Torchwood Four. Roughly a month after Martha had joined the team, Jack was convinced he had found it on an abandoned London metro station and almost as quick as you could say 'Gwen and Rex keep things under control while Martha and I go check it out.' the pair were off.
Jack's intuition was correct and as expected the pair found the metro station to full of the twisted mass of computers and sensors that was the heart and soul of Torchwood Four. They also found a quite attractive dark haired woman with her feet propped up on one of the consoles. Jack wasted no time in giving her his best 'I'm about to try and charm your pants off' smile and introducing himself.
"Cap'm Jack Harkness" he said as he strode over and extended his hand to the woman who slowly removed her feet from the console, stood, and shook it.
"Susan Foreman. This is Torchwood Four, obviously, and..." She walked over to Martha. "Doctor Jones I presume?" Relieved that Susan appeared to be at least partially immune to Jack's charm's Martha eagerly shook the extended hand. Jack seemed as if he were trying very hard to remember something, but then gave up and resumed talking.
"Who else is on the team?"
"Nobody, it's just me and these computers. You see, while the other branches of Torchwood focus on aliens or technology and suchlike, Torchwood Four's focus has always been the careful monitoring of any and all aspects of Space-Time we could find a way to measure." She walked around pulling up various screens packed with figures and measurements that might as well have been written in Greek as far as Jack and Martha were concerned. "The idea is that with enough data and a couple lucky visits from our self-adopted Time Lord we'll be able to develop something similar, if far inferior, to his Tardis." Martha's eyes widened, she knew Torchwood was always up to some pretty crazy and ambitious stuff, but attempting to reverse engineer a Tardis from little more than a decent understanding of its environment and rumors was pretty far fetched even for them. she began reexamining the information on the monitors with renewed interest while Susan continued talking.
"Granted it is a near impossible task, but that's why I enjoy it so much, and probably also why Torchwood hired me. When it comes to understanding the Vortex, I'm simply the best."
"Simply the best? Really Doctor Fordman, you haven't gotten arrogant in your isolation have you?" Jack had turned up the charm a little more, and the suggestiveness oozed from his voice a bit "But, if you really are as good as you claim, and I really hope you are, you might be able to help us solve a mystery we have over at in Cardiff. If nothing else the opportunity to examine the rift firsthand must be invaluable to your work and therefore quite..." He paused briefly, searching for the right word "tempting."
"The anomalies a month ago?" Her voice was suddenly clipped and businesslike "I've already fully analyzed them and it sounds a lot worse than it is. The laws of time have further degraded to a point where multiple instances of the same person are not only capable, but likely, to exist simultaneously with each other. Simplifying to what matters, time travelers, including multiple incarnations The Doctor will be drawn to the next few months like moths to a flame, so I'd prepare for quite the misadventure if I were you. Now if you'd excuse me I've quite a bit of work to do, wait until you have something really interesting before you bother me again."
Jack and Martha looked at each other in disbelief and returned to the Hub to prepare quite literally for the Oncoming Storm.
I'm putting the author notes on the bottom because I figure that'll make them easier to skip for those of you that don't like listening to me talk. If you choose to review please do so aggressively, I'd rather you told me how much you couldn't stand my poor dialogue or something that how much you liked that I used Susan or etc. (Although that is not to say I dislike compliments if you find something you like) I'll try to post a chapter a week until it's done but that depends fairly heavily on school and whatnot.
Till next week
-Em