I'm sorry, I have rather neglected this story somewhat. New job has eaten into my time no end - This is why I hate temping!

PLEASE read and review. It seems to spur me on if I know people are reading.

Warning: From this point on the story will get pretty dark. There is torture scenes so be warned!

Chapter 4

"One down, three to go."

Rose is staring at him with dead eyes, nothing but white showing.

"Rose," he hears himself calling to her but she does not react.

"One down, three to go," she repeats. She sounds like she is hypnotised. They are standing in the middle of a deserted Torchwood Three.

Then she blinks and rivulets of blood run down her face in thick tear tracks. He runs to her and grabs her in his arms.

"Rose!" His voice wavers with fear. "Rose listen to me! I love you!"

There is a laugh from behind him and he whirls to come face to face with the smirking face of the Master. "She's mine now Doctor."

"Over my dead body!" He knows the Master and all his old tricks.

"Oh I sincerely hope so." He smiles and raises one finger. "One down, just the girlie, the freak and you to go. And I think I've got you already." The Master circles him and goes to Rose's side, slips an arm around her waist.

Rose turns her eyes to him. "I love you Master."

The Doctor raises his fist and punches out at the Master. There is a flash of white in his eyes and when he regains his vision, Rose is laying on the floor unconscious from his punch and the Master is laughing. The Doctor takes two strides over to a desk where Jack's pistol is laying and snatches it up.

The Master laughs. "Really Doctor using a gun? So common and barbaric for you."

"For you I'll make a fucking exception!" The Doctor hardly recognises his own voice.

The Master laughs again. "Exception or not Doctor, you can't heal her now. You never could."

The Doctor tightens his finger on the trigger but does not pull it. He notices the muzzle of the gun wavering.

"Rose wake up," he can hear the pleading in his voice.

The Master kneels beside Rose and gently kisses her on the lips. He looks up at the Doctor, eyes bright. "She can hear the drumming."

The Doctor wakes with a jolt from where he has fallen asleep on the console. He blinks sleep from his eyes and wonders why he keeps dropping off recently. Its not as if he really needs to sleep. But the last ten days, ever since Rose left, he can't help himself falling asleep.

Both of his hearts are thundering in his ears with adrenaline and suddenly he knows what he has to do. The storm is about to break.

Lucy shakes her head. "I'm tired. Harry you have far too much energy tonight."

He smiles at his wife. "It feels like a storm is coming." He extends his hand to Rose. "May I have this dance then?"

Rose glances at Lucy. "If your wife doesn't mind."

Lucy smiles and waves a hand. "Let him exhaust you." She picks up her glass of champagne and takes a sip. She and Harry exchange a look that Rose doesn't understand the meaning of.

Rose takes Harry's hand and lets him lead her onto the dance floor. He slides his arms around her and they start to dance. They are dancing for a few minutes when he pulls her a bit closer. Rose swears for a moment that she can feel the double thump of two hearts against her then dismisses it. Harry Saxon is just a man. A married man who she is just friends with. Her mum is wrong. Completely wrong.

"Rose?" his voice is little more than a whisper.

She looks up to find him staring down at her. His eyes surprisingly intense.

"Harry?" she asks, finding her own voice rises barely above his. "What is…?"

He cuts her off. "I'm so happy I found you Rose Tyler," he says tenderly.

She frowns slightly, not understanding where he is going with this but feels unable to take her eyes from his. He lifts a hand from her back and gently cups her cheek. "My little Rosebud," he says before he leans down and kisses her. His lips are soft against hers and Rose finds herself kissing back. His other hand rests on the small of her back. He deepens the kiss, his tongue caressing gentle entrance into her mouth. Rose starts to feel a bit dizzy, but can't make herself pull away. She lets her tongue tussle with his. Her hands grip fiercely into his back and she feels her knees start to buckle. Harry tightens his arm around her back to hold her to him. Rose is acutely conscious of his cool fingertips against her face. How can he be so cool when she feels like she is burning up? She can feel her heart thudding a strange rhythm in her temples and wonders again why it feels like his heart is beating double time against her chest. At this moment she wants him so badly and she can tell he wants her. Right now she just wants him to keep kissing her. She doesn't want to think about what will happen if he stops. The air feels like it does before a thunderstorm, electric and making the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. The noise of the bar seems to fade away to a indistinct roaring around them. Harry's hand slips to the back of her neck, deepens the kiss even as Rose thinks it couldn't get more intense. The hand on her lower back pulls her body full length against his, and the thudding of his heart beats against her breasts.

A voice intrudes suddenly on the moment, slightly petulantly and put out. "Harry?"

Jack has gone to see Martha and Tish and the team are trying to research when the explosion sends them all sprawling. Ianto manages to lift his head, which he thinks he may have hit on a desk, and sees the man standing next to the burning column that is the rift monitor. Leaning against his side, dazed but conscious, is a blonde in a red ball gown. Laying bridal style in his arms is another blonde in a black dress, younger than the first, unconscious, with a trickle of blood coming from her nose. Ianto can hear Tosh groaning somewhere. He blinks and tries to clear the ringing in his head. Maybe he is an angel he thinks suddenly, his mum's bible stories coming unbidden to his mind. Descending in flames. He dismisses the thought just as quickly. The man pays no heed to the dying fire of the rift monitor, just stares round the room with childlike delight.

"Harry it worked!" the first blonde exclaims happily.

"You," he dimly hears Owen exclaiming. "You're him...Saxon."

Harry Saxon smiles. "So you're Harkness's crack team are you?"

Ianto thinks he hears Tosh start to cry before he passes out. Of Gwen he hears nothing at all.

He awakes in the cells. Ianto can hear a weevil growling on the other side of the wall.

Owen is pacing against the glass. "Thought you'd never bloody wake up."

Ianto rubs his head. "What happened?"

"Saxon bloody did. So much for dead like Jack said he was. Dunno who the birds with him were. Didn't get a good enough look."

Ianto pushes himself to his feet, holding on to the wall for support. "The girls?"

Owen nods his head to the cell next door. "Tosh is in there. We were talking before you woke up. She's okay. We don't know where Gwen is."

"Tosh?" Ianto calls towards the wall.

"Yan?"

"How you doing?" Ianto asks.

"I'm fine. How are you?"

Ianto rubs his head and winces at the egg-sized bump on the back of it. "I think I'll live. Maybe concussion at worst."

"What do we do?" she asks worriedly.

Ianto looks at Owen who is staring at the blistering red burn on his left arm. Owen looks up at him. "I'll be fine."

"I don't know Tosh," Ianto says worriedly to her question. "Hub is in lock down I assume?"

At that moment the woman in a red dress appears at the glass in front of the men's cell. Owen leaps to his feet and throws himself against it.

"You bitch! You let us out right now!"

She actually giggles at him and leans to one of the holes in the glass. "No."

Owen thrusts a two fingers pointlessly through the hole and she jerks back. "You fucking whore!"

She pouts at him, blows him and Ianto a kiss and smiles. "You're going to be sorry," she says turning and leaving the corridor.

Owen slams his hand against the glass. "Fuck!"

Rose was still unconscious and had been unceremoniously dumped on the sofa. Lucy hovered about the room, delighting in the curious alien artefacts she was finding.

The Master and Gwen were down in the morgue. Gwen was sat on a chair, her arms tied painfully behind her, pinioned at her elbows and bound at the wrists, and her legs bound to the chair legs.

The Master is reading aloud from a printed off copy of her records. "Gwen Cooper...ex copper...yadda yadda yadda." he grins at her ferally. "You know who I am Gwen?"

"Harry Saxon," she says ashamed to hear her voice falter with fear.

He laughs. "Yes, and no. You shall come to call me Master." He throws the file to one side dismissively. "You do have such pretty hair," he says reaching out to stroke it.

Gwen jerks her head away. "Fuck off!"

Harry grabs a handful of her hair in his fist and yanks on it. "I'll teach you how to take a compliment you little bitch." He leans back and grabs a pair of scissors from the autopsy table. Gwen recognises them as the ones that Ianto keeps in the stationary tidy on his desk. Last Christmas they used them to cut out snowflakes. She hisses under her breath as he yanks her head over to the side. She sees the scissors flash silver over her face and for one horrible moment thinks he means to stab out her eyes.
But she hears the snip and the pressure on her head is released. Her hair. The bastard cut off her hair. One side now hovers uncertainly at about ear level.

"You fucking bastard!" she bellows at him, in what Rhys jokingly calls her rugby voice.

He tuts at her with his tongue. "Language young lady. You don't want me to..."

She shuts her mouth and shakes her head. "Where are the others?"

"Safe," he grins like a snake. "For now."