"No, nothing afterwards. Just the Doctor."
Myka stared at this strange woman, this woman who called herself simply the Doctor, who claimed to have come to Cardiff simply to study car accidents—
And she shook her head wearily and accepted it, for the moment. "It's nice to meet you, Doctor."
"And you, Agent Bering."
"If I hadn't had such a weird day already, I'd think you were crazy. Refusing to give me a real name isn't so strange after a man's been telling me there are aliens in Cardiff, though." Myka smiled, but it faded when an odd light entered the Doctor's eyes.
"You don't believe in aliens?" the Doctor asked. Her voice was tinged with amusement and something else Myka couldn't place. The Doctor came to a stop, extracting her arm from Myka's to rest her hands on her hips.
Myka shrugged, embarrassed without knowing why, shifting her weight from foot to foot. "It's plausible that there might be single-celled organisms out there, especially with some of our recent developments, but I don't think there's sentient life."
The Doctor laughed her clear, musical laugh. She resumed her walk with a playful jump of a step, Myka following behind her. "Oh, Agent Bering, I think we'll have fun together."
A bemused Myka followed her down the alley until they came to a halt by the tall, dusty blue box. The door was wooden, with brown peeking out from behind peeling paint. The top of the box read Police Public Call Box. Myka was familiar with the concept of a public police telephone. The earliest had been installed in the late 1800s, and they'd been phased out with the invention of radios and walkie-talkies. There was absolutely no logical reason why one should be in Cardiff in the modern day. She wrinkled her nose as she stared at the anachronism.
The Doctor hopped forward to grab the handle, looking expectantly at Myka. "Welcome to as close as I've got to home, sweet home."
Sudden horror flashed through Myka, and full-fledged paranoia kicked in. The woman wasn't simply eccentric, she was insane, some sort of tramp living in a run-down police box. She took a step backwards, firing a desperate glance over her shoulder at the distant exit of the alley, but when she turned back, she stopped in her tracks. The Doctor was dressed well, if simply, in dark jeans, high boots, a thin pale blue shirt, and a long brown coat. A lovely necklace, perhaps a locket, hung around her neck. She looked nothing at all like a lunatic living in a box. More than that, though, she had a smile that Myka longed to trust, and the moment she registered the Doctor still fixing her with that smile, she moved back towards her. It was silly, it was foolish, and she couldn't help it. There was something so irresistibly strange about this woman, and Myka was going to do her best to figure it out.
"Okay. Let's see this box of yours," Myka said, lifting her arms in defeat.
The Doctor swung the door open, gesturing for Myka to enter. Myka froze. The door didn't open to the dusty, stark insides of a public call box. The insides shone copper, and the far wall seemed to curve in a dome.
"What the hell…?" Myka began, but the Doctor cried out encouragement to urge her on, and Myka stepped over the threshold. The Doctor shut the door behind her.
She looked around in disbelief. It was only when the Doctor placed a hand on the small of her back that Myka realized she had been close to falling. She felt distant from her body, distant from the whole world.
The room was massive, organic and futuristic all at once. Thick, strange vines climbed up the sides of the curved walls. An oval apparatus in the center of the room was covered with knobs, buttons, and screens, and a soft hum emanated from the glowing blue tube that rose from the central oval into the ceiling. It was distinctly not the size of a police box.
She stammered out something jumbled and nonsensical, eyes fixed on the high ceiling. The Doctor squeezed her shoulder reassuringly before moving to the middle of the room, holding out her arms in welcome. "This is the TARDIS! Or the console room of the TARDIS, at any rate. There are other rooms but we won't really be using them for our current objective."
Myka took a trembling step forward. "It's…"
"Bigger on the inside? Yes, I've heard that before," the Doctor sighed.
"…much less 1970s than I expected," she finished, managing a wry smile despite her queasiness. The smile wavered and she fought to maintain it.
The Doctor clapped her hands together. "Oh, look at you, avoiding all the clichés! It's really more sixties, but I'll let it pass because I'm so pleased. I like you already, Agent Bering."
Myka took another step closer, stepping up to the dais. "You haven't drugged me, have you? Where—what—where am I?"
Her tone was kind enough to feel nearly condescending. "It's the TARDIS, darling. I know it can be startling at first, but you'll—"
"What on Earth is a TARDIS?"
The Doctor paced the floor, hands behind her back. "What a perfect turn of phrase. 'What on Earth.' Well, it's not particularly simple to explain. I don't think you'll believe me at first, in all honesty, but I hope I'll get to prove it to you. I do think I'll quite enjoy working with you as we proceed with this investigation."
Myka's initial shock was quickly wearing off to be replaced with irritation. She had reached her limit of daily frustration. No one was giving her any answers today, and she did not operate without answers. Her years as a Secret Service agent had taught her that there was one method of getting answers far more efficient than any other: In one swift motion, she seized the other woman by the shoulders and shoved her back against the blue console. "I haven't decided that you aren't crazy enough for me to not report you to god-knows-who yet. Do not talk nonsense at me for another second. You're going to answer my questions quickly and accurately until this makes sense."
"Oh, dear. I always forget you government agents are such a different sort." The Doctor's eyes were wide, but she didn't look surprised. With a trace of her former smile, she reached up to grab Myka's shoulders in a mirror image. "I don't suppose you'll let me up; this isn't especially comfortable. No? Alright, ask swiftly. I so hate a sore back."
Myka swallowed hard, throat tight with a sudden wave of anger. It was rare for her to lose herself so rashly. Still, this wasn't a typical day. Shame and pride kept her hands firmly on the Doctor, holding her against the console. "This is a police box on the outside. It is…not a police box on the inside. What is it?"
At that Myka tightened her hold on the Doctor, who grimaced. "The TARDIS is what you would imagine as a time machine, only that's not quite right. It's an acronym for Time and Relative Dimension in Space."
"You have a time machine? You have a time machine that looks like a police box? Excuse me if I have a hard time believing that."
The Doctor sighed. "Well, I did warn you that you might not believe me. She only looks like a police box because the chameleon circuit broke ages ago, and I'm too fond of the look now to try and fix it."
Myka stared at her, not comprehending what she was saying. "But a time machine. A time machine."
"Yes, of a sort. A TT Type 40 Mark 3 TARDIS, which I admit is outdated, but she has many an enhancement designed by yours truly. I fancy myself a bit of an inventor, you see. Though I suppose technical specifications don't mean anything to you." The Doctor squirmed in her hold, uncomfortable and antsy.
"They don't. Where did you acquire a time machine, if—only hypothetically!—that's what this is?"
"I stole her, or she stole me. Before you ask: From a museum on Gallifrey. And, again before you ask: My home planet. Which means what you think it does."
Myka licked her dry lips. If she wasn't standing in a room that defied physics, she would dismiss this without a second thought. Here, though, a second thought was demanded…and then a third and fourth after that. She was intelligent enough to know it wasn't a dream, but she desperately wished it was. Nothing had ever made less sense. "Your home planet?"
"I'm a Time Lord, dear." Her voice was gentle. Myka's storm of emotions was clear on her face, and sympathy was equally obvious in the Doctor's eyes. "Put your hand on my chest if you're having a hard time with that little detail. Two hearts and a rate far above humans."
Myka hesitated, and then released her. The Doctor stood up cautiously. "You've thrown me down twice today. Are you planning to make a habit of it?" Myka opened her mouth but shut it again without a word. Kindly, the Doctor reached out to take Myka's wrists. She drew Myka's hands to her chest and settled them there, her gaze piercing as she studied Myka's face, waiting for the reaction.
"That…." Myka's fingers curled into the thin fabric of the Doctor's shirt, barely at first and then gripping it as if this blouse was her only anchor to the world. She felt faint. "That isn't possible."
"It's perfectly possible for a Time Lord. I'd be more concerned if I didn't have two hearts." She squeezed Myka's hands before gently breaking the other woman's grip, taking a step backwards.
Myka shook her head, slow and disbelieving. Her frustration was gone and the shock had returned in full force. "A Time Lord? From Gallifrey? What does that mean?"
The Doctor leaned on the console, looking absentmindedly into the tube that rose from it. "Earlier you said you didn't believe in extraterrestrials. I'm the evidence you were lacking. I was born on Gallifrey, a…truly lovely planet. It's near 250 million light years away from Earth, so you're excused for not being familiar with it. I was born there well over a thousand years ago. You wouldn't understand much more about that." She turned back to look at Myka. Her smile was strangely tired. "I don't like to talk about myself."
"Hold up. You can't say you're an alien and not talk about it after that!" Myka ran her hands wildly through her hair, trying to understand. She had felt the two racing heartbeats with her own hands. Reality was unsettlingly close to crumbling around her.
"That is exactly what I intend on doing." The Doctor moved around the console to a touchscreen, her hands moving too swiftly for Myka to make out what she was doing, even as she sidled closer to try and get a glimpse. "We have a task we should be working on, remember? Car accidents? It's dreadfully hard on both parties when I find myself with a skeptic but I promise things will make more sense as we go along. For now, you can just forget about the whole Time Lord thing and pretend I'm a strange woman with a nifty box if that makes things easier. Usually it helps if I meet up with people in the middle of some sort of terrible tragedy. Earth under assault or something like that. Then they already have evidence. You showed up a few hours too early. Of course, it does mean they're caught up in a terrible tragedy, so I suppose you're better off. But honestly, how much has to happen before humans start to figure out that aliens are very, very present? No one ever remembers anything! I digress. You'll have to be skeptical of me for a bit longer. Are you still skeptical? I wish I could take you for a ride and change your mind, but we must deal with things here first."
Her logic made sense. Any more answers right now would just confuse her more, she decided, trying to convince herself of that fact. No manual for an afternoon with an alien, after all. "You're a babbler," Myka told her, and she was amused to see that Time Lords blushed too. If this was reality, she had no choice but to accept it. If this was a hallucination, she might as well enjoy it. "Alright. So, uh, what is it about car crashes that brings a thousand year old alien to Cardiff?"
She stepped to the side of the screen, beckoning Myka to take a look. "Humans and your brief little moods. I'm glad we'll be working together, nevertheless. I'm sure you're familiar with this data, yes? There have never been this many accidents in Cardiff. They're all odd circumstances, like when I was nearly hit this afternoon. And the driver never—"
"—remembers what happened," Myka finished. She looked up from the screen. None of this data was new to her; she'd dug it all up days before. The nervous woman of earlier was now the serious agent, all business despite the circumstances. "What, is it some kind of half-assed alien assault?"
The Doctor reached out to slide through pages on the screen. "Maybe. It's certainly alien. My readings are off the chart. Look at this. Perhaps you'll think it's bunk, but you can see the levels of extraterrestrial activity in Cardiff over the past few years here, and this is the highest it's been in quite a while. Cardiff is a bit of a hotbed to begin with, since there's a rift here, but this is unusual."
A rift. Aflush, Myka ducked her head to look at the screen, letting her mess of curls fall to mask her face. Yelling at Captain Nielsen and walking out of Torchwood suddenly seemed so arrogant and childish. "Okay. I don't know how this works, but that bar is definitely really high there. So…how do you stop alien car crashes?"
The Doctor flashed her that lovely smile once more. "Why, the same way you stop any alien assault. Come, let's get to it."
They exited the TARDIS, the Doctor in a dash and Myka at a slower pace. Myka glanced at the time machine one more time before she shut the door. Pete would be impressed, she thought. Heading out blindly to save the city with a time-traveling alien was as far from playing by the book as she had ever been.
"So," the Doctor began, talking nearly as quickly as she was walking, "we need to find the common thread for a starting point. What would you say is the one thing these cases have in common?"
"Almost all of the accidents happened in the middle of the day. The driver always felt lost afterwards. A lot of the cars were Ford and there were a few more Peugeots than any others, but that's not too unusual with the demographics." She racked her brain, searching for anything else that could be a pattern.
"Think broader."
Before Myka could come up with another answer, the Doctor answered her own question. "They all had cars! So, let's find ourselves a car."
"They all had cars," Myka muttered to herself, incredulous. "Yes, why didn't I think of that, each car accident involved a car. Good grief." The Doctor heard and only grinned.
As they moved down the street, they took turns making calls to the driver from each accident. Most were evasive, claiming prior commitments. The sixth man agreed that they could come inspect his vehicle. He was a stout, balding man whose hands shook wildly as the approached. The Doctor ignored him, going straight to circle his car curiously. As Myka walked over to the man, he pulled out a tissue to wipe his brow.
"Are you from th' police?" he asked in a thick, shaking voice. "I've already 'splained myself good as I can."
"Relax. We're here about your car, not you."
The Doctor popped up beside them. She flashed the man a card, and his eyes widened. He gave them both a nervous smile, dug keys out of his pocket to give to the Doctor, stammered something about waiting inside, and quickly went in the direction of his house as fast as his stumpy legs would carry him.
"What was that?" Myka demanded. "The 'I'm a Time Lord' ID card?"
The Doctor handed it to her. "Psychic paper. Tells people what they want to see, among other uses. Not entirely sure what he saw, but it worked, didn't it?"
The piece of white paper was small, fitting neatly in a thin leather cardholder. It was blank. Myka turned it over in her hands. "Why is it blank?"
"Because I'm an expert, of course." Myka handed it back to her, and amusement filled the Doctor's face as she took it back. "You, on the other hand, it's going to blare out your subconscious thoughts. It says—hah!—you trust me, but you're too stubborn to act like it." She laughed. "I can live with that."
"What?" Myka grabbed the card back from her. Once more it was blank. "Did it really say that?"
"Of course it did. It's psychic paper. Let's see what you've got for me this time."
Groaning, Myka handed her the card for the second time. The Doctor snorted, her eyebrows rising. "What is it?" Myka asked.
The Doctor tucked it in her coat pocket. "Oh, nothing, nothing. Come, let's take a look at that car."
The car looked new, no more than two or three years old. The owner clearly took good care of it; it shone, spotless. The Doctor tossed Myka the keys, and she let herself into the driver's seat as the Doctor opened the hood. Nothing seemed unusual about the car.
"What are we looking for?" Myka asked.
The hood slammed. The Doctor climbed into the passenger seat. "Haven't the foggiest."
Myka sighed, but before she could make an exasperated comment, the Doctor pulled something new from her pocket. "What is that?"
"This old thing? A sonic screwdriver."
"You just love giving me terrible answers, don't you?" It looked nothing like a screwdriver. The object was slim, silver and copper in color, and when the Doctor pointed it at the screen in the car's dashboard, a green light at the tip began up glow and emit a strange buzzing. Myka itched to ask more questions about the device, but she already knew better than to expect an easy answer from the Doctor.
The screen flashed white and then blue. A string of numbers raced down the screen before a single line of characters popped up. The Doctor ran a hand absently through her hair as she stared at the screen. "That...that doesn't make any sense."
"What doesn't? What's going on?"
"I can't tell what that says." She held up a hand to silence Myka. "And yes, I know you can't either. You haven't spent enough time in the TARDIS. But it's a language of some kind and I can't read it. That shouldn't be the case."
"Maybe it's in code?"
She pondered that, rubbing her chin. "Perhaps. It doesn't help us, though. I don't know what we're to do now."
Myka leaned back in the seat, exhausted, faced with another brick wall in her investigation. In the same moment, the Doctor leaned forward. She pointed the screwdriver at the screen with one hand and smacked the top of the dash with her free hand. "We come in peace! Take us to your leader!" she shouted.
Myka started to smile at the seemingly-childish action. But then the car started rolling, backing out of the drive and pulling out into the street, and her smile flew away. "Oh my God!" she cried for what must have been the millionth time that day, startled.
The keys sat in the cupholder between the seats, Myka's foot was nowhere near the gas, and the gearshift still claimed the car was parked. The car moved entirely of its own accord. It was entirely illogical in every way, and yet it was still happening.
The Doctor clapped her hands in delight. "Oh, I love it when a ridiculous cliché works! Fasten your seatbelt, Agent Bering!"