Chapter Four—Venice

In the dimension cannon room in the parallel Torchwood of Pete's World, Rose readied herself for yet another trip across the Void. In an effort to prevent disruptions to the timeline, she wore what she always wore, what had essentially become her uniform: pink, long sleeved tee shirt, black jeans and a blue leather jacket with her hair pulled back out of her face and held in place with a hair slide.

"Are we good to go?" she asked.

Mickey sat on the opposite side of the room, doing last minute calculations on the computer. Just outside the room behind a glass window stood Jackie next to Rose's parallel dad Pete. Her mum insisted on being there every time Rose did a jump, knowing that each time she used the dimension cannon it might be the last time she ever saw her daughter.

"Not yet," Mickey answered. His voice held more than a tinge of frustration. "I don't get it. I can't get a fix."

"Oh, God, not again," she said. "Did you try to focus in on Donna Noble?"

"Yes!" he snapped.

"What about where Donna intersects with the TARDIS?"

"Yes, I tried to get a fix where Donna intersects with the TARDIS!" he exploded. "What do you think I've been trying to do for the last half an hour! I'm not a complete idiot!"

His outburst shocked Rose into silence, a silence that stretched into several long, uncomfortable moments.

"I'm sorry, Micks," Rose said eventually.

"No, I'm sorry, babe," he answered. "I know how anxious you are. 'S just, it's like she's disappeared or somethin'."

"But she must be there somewhere," Rose protested. "All the timelines were converging on her."

"Not anymore," Mickey told her. "Something must have happened."

He paused for a moment and turned away from her. "Rose, I don't think she's travelin' with him anymore," he said quietly.

"You've got to be joking," she said with a nervous laugh. He didn't answer. "You're joking, right? You have to be joking."

He turned back to her and shook his head. "No, I'm not."

As what he had said sank in, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath, fighting off a wave of panic. All of their computer programs were geared to track the Doctor through Donna. If she was no longer with him, they might have to start their search from square one. And with the stars going out, they just didn't have that kind of time.

Once she had composed herself somewhat, she opened her eyes again. "What do we do now?" she asked.

Mickey wasn't fooled by her outward calm. "Well, I can try to focus on the TARDIS alone. 'S not as accurate, though. We might veer off his proper timeline. We could even miss him altogether."

She tightened her jaw. "We've gotta risk it," she said.

"There's more," he said. "While I've been lookin' for Donna, I found somethin' else. Some sort of distortions have cropped up, almost like a second set of cracks. But these are different somehow."

"What do you mean, different? Different how?"

"I don't know. They don't seem to be cracks from one dimension to another. They're more like, mini black holes or something. One way trips into the Void with no exit on the other side. If you hit one of those… well, I don't know if I'd be able to pull you out."

She swore fluently, using curses in a half a dozen languages, some of them not human.

"Still wanna risk it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said firmly. At the look of concern on his face, she continued. "I have to, Mick. You know that. It's not just about me. It's about everything, everywhere, in every universe. He's our only hope. I've got to warn him."

He nodded. "Then I'll work on the calculations and get you goin'." He turned back to the computer and Rose began to head out of the room to join her parents. "Oh, and Rose," he called as she was walking out the door. She turned back and he met her eyes. "I'll find him for you. I promise."

Five minutes later, Mickey called her back. "Okay, I've got a fix on the TARDIS," he told her as she walked into the room. "It's not a strong one, cos I had to make adjustments to avoid one of the distortions, so I don't know how close you're gonna be to it. You're gonna have to find him quick, too, because if the distortion gets worse, I'll have to pull you out of there. Otherwise you could get stuck wherever you land with no way back."

She nodded. "Thanks, Mickey," she said.

"Good luck, Rose," he told her, and she entered the glass booth that held the dimension cannon.

The cannon fired up with a whir, and Rose felt the sensation of pins and needles that she always felt when traveling across the Void. Less than a second later she found herself precariously perched on the stone railing of a bridge. She looked behind her a bit too quickly and almost lost her balance.

"Whoa," she said and immediately held out her arms to steady herself. Gymnastics to the rescue once again, she thought with a bit of a smile.

Rose jumped off the railing and looked around. The bridge she was on spanned a canal lined with buildings hundreds of years old. And in the canal floated—

"Gondolas," she said under her breath. She wrinkled her nose at the stench of human waste rising up from the water. "Well, this certainly isn't London."

She had only seen pictures of Venice, but that was certainly where she was. The only question was when.

Whenever she was, it was still fairly early in the day. The canal, the adjacent walkway between it and the buildings, the narrow road leading away from the water, all were deserted. That surprised her. In a major city like Venice, she would have imagined that someone would have been around. On the other hand, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. If she wasn't in the twenty-first century, her jeans and leather jacket would look suspicious to anyone who saw her. Not to mention the fact that her Italian was spotty to say the least. One of the things she missed most, after the Doctor and the TARDIS herself, was the TARDIS translating for her.

She pulled a small device out of her pocket and began to scan for alien tech as she crossed the bridge and began to make her way along the walkway. She couldn't get a clear reading, so she began to scan for alien life forms in the hope of finding a certain one, one tall, thin alien with two hearts and great hair.

Her brow furrowed when she saw the results of the scan. According to it, she was surrounded by aliens and most of them seemed to be concentrated in the canal.

"Huh," she said and slammed the heel of her hand against the device. When the readings didn't change, she began to smile. If there were aliens here, he'd show up eventually.

She had wandered the city for over an hour, scanning for the TARDIS and the Doctor, when people began to emerge from the buildings. Damn. They were dressed in what looked like period costumes from hundreds of years before her time.

Hoping she hadn't been spotted, she ducked into a doorway to hide. She was either in the wrong time or the wrong universe. If she was in the wrong universe, there was nothing to do except wait for Mickey to pull her back. But it wouldn't matter if she wasn't in her time if the Doctor were here.

She looked back at her scanner and examined the readings for time vortex traces. Ha, she thought triumphantly, there were some. They appeared slightly off, slightly shifted from what she had been expecting, but the display definitely showed artron, huon, and half a dozen other energies that were associated with time travel. And they appeared to be strongest in the alley next to her.

Only a dozen yards away.

She peeked out of the doorway. There were few women gathered around a street vendor selling bread and several others near one selling vegetables, but otherwise the road was empty. Empty enough at any rate that she probably could sneak out without being noticed.

Once she saw their backs were turned, she rushed out and ran in the direction of the time traces, quickly rounding a corner into the narrow alley. And ran straight into someone.

"Oh, sorry," a male voice said.

Rose backed up and blinked. In front of her stood a man about her age incongruously wearing jeans and a down vest. Underneath the vest he had on a long sleeved orange tee shirt imprinted with a picture of himself and a young woman that was in the shape of a heart.

When he saw her his jaw dropped.

"You're…" he began.

"You speak English," she said at the same time. She scanned him, and her heart raced with excitement. There were time traces all over him.

"Yeah." He nodded dumbly. "You're…"

"You're a time traveler," she said, interrupting him.

"Uh, yeah, I guess I am now," he answered, sounding surprised as he said it. He chuckled. "How could you tell?"

She grinned. "Well, not only are you radiating time vortex energy," she told him, "but that vest is made of material that probably won't be made for hundreds of years. Plus I don't think Venetians of this time period knew how to put photos on shirts like that."

He glanced down at himself. "Oh yeah." He grinned ruefully. "I'm guessing they probably didn't have jackets like yours either." He gestured towards the device in her hand. "Or temporal scanners."

She laughed. "I suppose not." She shoved it back in her pocket. "What's your name?"

He looked surprised at the question. "Rory," he told her. "Rory Williams."

"Well, Rory Williams," she said, "I'm looking for someone, and I'm really, really hoping you know him. He's called the Doctor." She paused, and when he didn't answer right away she continued. "He's a tall, thin man with dark brown hair and eyes and always wears a pinstriped suit."

Rory opened his mouth as if to respond and then abruptly shut it without saying anything.

"Rory?" an unfamiliar man's voice called, and the sound echoed through the alley. Rose looked around but couldn't see its source.

A woman's voice followed.

"Oi, stupid face. Where'd you go?"

"I'm over here," Rory called back. "I'll be there in a second." He turned back to Rose and met her eyes and when he spoke, it was slowly and deliberately. "I'm sorry. I don't know anyone who looks like that."

Rose stared at him, feeling an odd combination of disappointment and disbelief, and Rory stared back, looking like he was trying to communicate something to her without actually saying it. And then she realized the truth.

"You do know him," she said. "You know him, but not that him."

"Rory, I told you not to wander off!" the unseen man yelled. "Rule one, don't wander off!"

"That's him, isn't it?" she asked. "That's the Doctor?"

As soon as the words were out of her mouth she felt the prickling in her skin of the beginning of her translation back across the Void.

"No, Mickey, not yet!" she yelled and then found herself back in Pete's World. Fighting off tears, she slammed her hand into the wall of the glass booth. "Damn it!"