"Well, I wouldn't like it either if you were bashing my head in while I was trying to drive!"

The Doctor stopped to take another breath while he panted, leaning against the rather silly-looking mallet he was aiming at the Tardis. "What do you mean?"

"Did you ever think to just ask the Tardis if she could get there?"

"What do you mean if?! There is no if! This is a time and space vortex machine, Donna!"

"I'm just saying that a couple of polite words might get us there easier is all."

"Donna, she doesn't want to go because it's more dangerous than most of our missions."

"How would she know?"

"Well, how would you feel about an uncharted star in a galaxy that's not supposed to be around yet? I mean, think of the interference and all that!"

"You're scared."

"I'm not scared!" The Doctor waves his arms around a bit in frustration.

"You're stalling. Just ask nicely. That's all I'm saying."

"Fine. We'll try it your way." The Doctor let the mallet fall to the ground and pushed his glasses back to the bridge of his nose. He took a second to inhale and then closed his eyes. He pleaded nicely with the Tardis and they began to shift and jolt in the red light.

"See? How hard was that?"

"Go and open the door, Donna. I want you to see the entire Cascade. It's brilliant."

Ianto was not fond of the autopsy bay these days. There was a smell that was coming from it. It was unidentified, thank God, but he was pretty sure he knew the culprit. They had begun showing up, almost as though they were being bred by raindrops.

The mutant tapeworms weren't living by the time they got to Cardiff, but no one could be sure where they came from. They weren't on any of the alien databases and Jack had no recollection of them whatsoever. It was a stalemate and a pile-up. Ianto was afraid to get rid of any though, just in case. So they piled into the autopsy bay, ankle high and on every surface.

They looked the same in those frozen instances, almost like they had perished defending themselves. Fangs bursting from mouths, tiny eyes open in surprise. The body, if you could call it that, taut. And Torchwood caught in the middle of it all. Gwen called for Ianto and he gratefully sifted through the mass graveyard back to the conference center. He used some wipes on the way to try and clean the stench on his hands.

He could hear Gwen and Jack shouting again. Gwen, of course, was being backed up by Rhys. Which was fair. Husbands were allowed to have a bias. But, any excuse to relieve himself of the autopsy bay was a happy one. Ianto noticed what they were yelling about. Both continued pointing at the screen in various ways and it remained blissfully indifferent, humming away.

"All I'm saying is that maybe we should follow the energy source! At least trace it!"

"To what, Gwen? To an alien planet or a ship with designs on world domination? Do you really want to start that war early?"

"Jack?"

"Ianto, will you tell her to listen to reason."

"Ianto, will you tell Jack that's he's being over-cautious."

"I think Ianto has something to say."

"Thank you Rhys. Has anyone noticed what's in the pattern?"

"What do you mean?" Ianto swiveled a monitor near himself and magnified the rays that were running through the Rift.

"They've attached themselves to two energy points here and here. One of them is dropping and one is taking energy from our Rift. By all accounts, things should be torn apart. But they aren't. And, hello, what's this?"

Jack joined Ianto and squinted. "I don't see it."

"Excuse me, gentlemen, see what?"

"Oh, but that's not so absurd."

"What is Rhys?"

"Well, right there." By now, all four were hovering and pointing at a computer screen in one little point of the Hub. Someone was bound to notice it eventually.

"Is that binary code?"

"Mr. Smith, I need you." Her voice was wrecked and near hysterical. Three nights without sleep and then this. She heard Luke calling and he joined her. He was more resilient, but was not sleeping either. The fanfare began.

"Oh, I wish you would stop with the fanfare. Tell me what you were doing in Pompeii!"

"I cannot tell you that, Sarah Jane."

"And why not?!"

"That is a past future time line irrelevancy."

"I don't think it's so irrelevant when it's causing me to lose sleep."

"Would you like a nice alien sleeping remedy?"

"Mr. Smith?"

"Yes, Luke."

"Are you aware of the human psychic link?"

"Sarah Jane Smith has no aptitude for the link."

"What link?"

"Are there rare cases when the link is activated?"

The console beeped for several seconds. Sarah Jane's lips pursed slightly. "Doctor?"

"You should not have been put through this."

"Put through what?"

"The House of Noble will fall. Cardiff energy output increasing. Medusa Cascade moving orbit. Transferring data."

"Doctor, What is it?"

"Cardiff activity. Torchwood."

Luke pushed her back intuitively from the room as the console began to shake and groan, bursting into flame at several points and shaking most of the house at earthquake levels.

The stench felt slightly unbearable. Well, for Martha, it wasn't even about bearable anymore, was it? Save for the absurdity of it all. The head of Unit's medical elite leaning behind a graffiti-ridden trash bin in a back alley spying on a limousine with alien binoculars she wasn't supposed to possess. Talk about dignity.

She had landed in Scotland about four hours ago and the search had commenced for Archie. Where Jack and his Cardiff crew were brash and well, American, about their operation; Archie and his "team" were about as noticed as a pack of pigeons on a rooftop in Manhattan.

It had been three hours ago that she had seen him and followed on a hunch. His name was Harold Saxon, a British expatriate trying to elect himself prime minister. Martha's eyes sharpened focus through the lens and watched the business deal. She was shaking with hunger but saw no reason to eat until he was in a secure location.

"That's not the way to find out what he's up to, love."

The scraggly man didn't smell like an ordinary homeless man. He wore two padded coats and had a large wool hat covering sparks of rusty hair. He hadn't properly shaved in a few days either and there were two holes were his left knee should have been on his jeans.

"And what would you suggest?" The tone inferred a bit of suspicion mixed with some intrigue and an air of slight indifference. Clearly, this man didn't seem to be important to her.

"Try the Indigo setting, Martha."

She moved a couple of dials around and then looked back at Harold. Surrounding him was the dye of the glowing colors: gold, blue, and silver. Her head titled, noticing the movement of his lips and hands. They were of an artistic fashion that didn't quite mesh with his personality, almost as if he had taught himself. She turned back towards the alley entrance where the man had been.

But Archie of Torchwood Two had vanished.