Chapter Three
"You don't think she's…" Owen didn't finish the sentence, but everyone knew that he meant dead.
"No!" Jack said forcefully "Not Tosh" he sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
Gwen got the laptop from the SUV "Seems Tosh's handheld sent back the readings right until the minute she disappeared.
"Anything odd?" Jack asked.
"There was a massive read out right before it stops"
"The rift?"
"Not normal rift activity"
"Not negative rift?" Jack said the horror of the possibility visible in his eyes.
"No"
There was an audible sigh of relief from Jack "So what? She just disappeared?"
Gwen thought for a moment and looked up and down the street then frowned.
"What is it?" Owen asked.
"When I was a copper, there were lots of disappearances and this was the last place they were seen"
"That's not good"
Toshiko headed home, at least she hoped she still lived there. She was lucky her keys still opened the lock, walking inside it was definitely her flat. Some of the technology was slightly different, but the rest was more or less identical.
Owen hadn't had the courage to come out of the shadows when she was crying; he wasn't sure what he could have done to help anyway. 'There there you're not a loony' wouldn't have cut it anyway. He did feel sorry for her, what if she had been telling the truth? Even it was sounded bonkers. Mad people don't tend to have the telepathy needed to have got his name.
Owen had followed her home; he saw her go in side and the light come on. He turned to leave and caught a quick glimpse of someone. A man in a long coat, Owen had a feeling that he had been following him. Earlier Owen had just thought he was beginning paranoid, but now he saw him.
"Hello?" Owen called but no one answered. The echo from his voice was the only noise. He carefully checked around him. But there was no one there. He was being to wonder if he was seeing things. But it didn't end there.
The following day Owen kept catching sight of that man out of the corner of his eye. He was watching him from the pavement as he drove to work. He even saw him at work, before a huddle of patients blocked his view and when the parted again he had disappeared. Whoever he was he seemed to do a lot of that.
Toshiko was at her work station when Jack wondered back in.
"Good to see you back Tosh, I hope you're feeling better"
Jack wandered towards his office.
"Jack I need a word" Toshiko said with some urgency.
"Is this about you not being our Tosh?
The others looked around; Ianto nearly dropped the tray of mugs he was carrying.
"Jack what do you mean?" Gwen asked.
"This Tosh, comes from a parallel world"
"Tosh is this true?" Gwen asked
"Yes. Jack how did you know?"
"It doesn't matter"
"That's why you're here when you shouldn't be" Gwen said realising "What's it like in your world?"
"Pretty much the same"
"But without Berney" Jack added
"Yes"
"You're really missing out" Bernard with a rye smile.
"Can you get me back?" Toshiko asked Jack
"Sorry, no can do"
"What?"
"You're stuck here"
"There must be something we can do"
"Sorry no, there are no doors to parallel worlds, if you can't go back the way you came then there's nothing we can do about it"
"I can't stay here, there's already a Toshiko Sato here. How's she going to explain that she suddenly has an identical twin? Then there's the flat we can't both live there.
"You'll have to work something out"
"Come on Jack there must be something we can do" begged Gwen
"No, I'm not just being mean. Honestly there is nothing I can do"
"What am I going to do?" Toshiko said with panic.
"Well you're jobs safe, two of you might be useful. One back here and one out in the field would be very handy. Now as you are staying, there's something on the loose, the notes are on your desk, well the desk you'll be sharing with yourself. Toshiko read the notes and started tapping away at her computer. Toshiko spent hours working on her records looking for the alien that had been sighted. Eventually she had to give up.
Toshiko was extremely tired when she headed home.
"Toshiko" she heard a voice behind her call as she put the key in the lock. She turned around to see Owen behind her, wondering what he was doing there at such a late hour.
"I thought I'd been a bit harsh, you're probably just a bit concussed" he said.
"Owen don't move" Toshiko said getting her gun out.
"Oh my God I wasn't that bad"
Owen closed his eyes as she pulled the trigger. He opened them again in relief when he didn't feel any impact. Toshiko was no longer standing in front of him. Owen looked behind him and Toshiko was knelling down at a body. He moved to join her as he did she snapped her phone closed. Owen was rather shocked when he looked at the body. Roughly the shape wise it looked human, but on closer inspection it's skin was green in colour, slits for a nose, lizard like eyes and a large slash of a mouth.
"What is it?" Owen asked staring.
"It's an alien"
"No, no way. Aliens don't exist"
"You're a doctor, you know the human body. Does this look human"
"No, but…"
"You'd better be going. We'll be dealing with this"
Owen stood, eye's fixed on the body.
"Owen. You've got to go" Toshiko said grabbing hold of Owen. "If you stay here you will have your memory altered"
Owen snapped out of it and ran. When he was far enough away he stopped to look back and saw the man who had been following arrive and talk to Toshiko, they were soon joined by some other people and Owen decided he's best not hang around.
"Did anyone else see?" Jack asked
"No" Toshiko lied, hoping they hadn't seen Owen.
She didn't like the idea of them fiddling with his memories, they would wipe her from them too.
"That's it ok" Jack said looking at the body "Well done, Ianto get the body into the SUV. Berney you'll need to give this thing a good looking at"
Owen raced into his flat, closed the door and leant against it. His heart was still pounding. He was unable to grasp what he had just seen. He moved into the room and poured himself a large drink and downed it. He poured himself another one and sat down. What had he just seen? An alien, it couldn't be there was no such thing. So what was that thing he had seen? There had to be a rational explanation, but what? What could it be if it wasn't an alien?