Serendipity
ser'en'dip'i'ty (n). the occurrence and development of events by chance in a beneficial way.
o-o-o
Yvonne Hartman hadn't been lying when she promised Jack she'd secure him a parking space – but after being waved inside by the attendant with a vaguely bemused look he realised the butt of the joke was that the space, cornered off with rather farcical velvet rope as it was, had been reserved for a 'Captain Jack Helkness' as shown by the hastily scribbled paper sign. After the long drive he couldn't even be bothered to be irritated, merely amused by the blatant attempt at throwing him down a few pegs before he'd even stepped into the building.
He was met by two well built men in suits as he slammed shut the door to the SUV, sunglasses and earpieces adding to their ridiculous ensemble as they towered over him.
"A greeting party!" He flashed them his most charming smile. "I'm flattered. Captain Jack Harkness." He held out a hand the lack of response from their completely apathetic faces, he sighed and withdrew. "Or not."
"You're to come with me straight away, sir," said the first.
Before Jack could open his mouth as he gestured to the SUV, the second cut across him. "I will be taking care of your luggage."
"Security guards and bellhops? Oh, she does spoil me." He had a feeling Yvonne's idea of 'taking care' of his luggage involved searching it but he didn't really care; everything of real value he'd brought with him was strapped to his wrist. He chucked the keys for the SUV to the second guard and followed the first, who led him into what looked like an elevator at the other side of the parking lot. The doors slid shut with a foreboding thud behind him, and judging by the lack of control panel of any sort Jack suspected this lift probably only had one destination. The very top.
"No cute little hats, though," Jack said, if only to cut across the quiet warbling of Barry Manilow in the background. In his peripheral vision he saw the security guard raise an eyebrow. "For the bellhop. No bellhop hats." No response. "It's a shame, really. I love a man in a fez."
He was browsing for any kind of reaction but the security guard offered none; Jack would wager that he'd been warned about him and his penchant for friendliness before he arrived. Just his luck. With the amount of effort Yvonne was putting into his reception he was surprised he hadn't simply been labelled a threat and brought up to the top floor in handcuffs – his silent escort gave off much the same impression. Still, it was easier to cooperate and he hadn't come here to undermine Yvonne; there was a genuine problem she wanted or needed his help with.
With an ominous ding the elevator reached its destination, and as Jack emerged he was immediately reminded of the difference in budget granted to Torchwoods One and Three respectively. Compared to their homely slightly dank underground Hub in Cardiff, Torchwood Tower was like the Promised Land. He vaguely remembered this floor from the last time he was there; he seemed to have arrived on some kind of office level. Monitors and scanners sat neatly on rows and rows of desks with various members of staff dressed in smart suits and pencil skirts milling between them swapping memos for faxes for files and everything mundane Torchwood Three never bothered with.
At the end of the room huge glass panels sealed off another office with the Torchwood logo emblazoned across the front, the sanctioned off nature of it leading him to assume that was probably the area of somewhere higher up. If the woman walking towards him with an incredibly fake smile was any indication, he'd put all his money on it belonging to Yvonne Hartman.
Although the entire floor bustled busily around her, every worker seemed to part like the red sea as she passed until finally she reached him – she was just as busty as he remembered, with a suit jacket poorly done up in a way that didn't even come close to hiding her generously endowed upper body and her hair was as perfectly coiffed as ever. Eyes like steel looked prepared to either welcome him with open arms or kick him in the groin at the nearest available opportunity. No, Jack decided, Yvonne Hartman hadn't changed a bit.
"Captain!" she greeted while showing off some of her perfect pearly whites, and he felt like the noise in the room dropped just that little bit as people slowed to listen to the exchange. Some of the arguments and bitter sarcastic disputes between him and the administrator that took place on this floor were the stuff of Torchwood legend.
"Dictator!" Jack replied with equal enthusiasm, and they made a show of kissing each other on each cheek in an outrageously friendly manner no one believed for a second.
"Oh stop, you," Yvonne tittered, swatting him on the arm, "I was just telling everyone it was about time I coerced you into visiting us here at Torchwood One. You spend far too long in miserable old Wales and not nearly enough time where the real action is." The glint in her eye spoke of challenge, but Jack decided not to rise to it. Not yet, anyway.
Instead he thought of the eventful past few days they'd had back at the Hub. "You have no idea."
She began to walk back in the direction of her office on the end and Jack fell into step beside her, every bit projecting the amiable partnership that should exist between the heads of two divisions of the same organisation. "Adeola," she waved a flippant hand at a dark skinned girl watching them from one of the desks, "was just saying how wonderful it'll be for me to have someone here to talk to with the same regard for non-human life."
"That would be true," Jack sent a grin in Adeola's direction, "if I were a grenade launcher."
Adeola giggled before she could stop herself, but on noticing the icy glare coming from her boss fell silent and quickly turned away.
"You're incorrigible!" Yvonne laughed and all but hauled him the rest of the way to her office with a vice like grip on his arm with some perfectly manicured fingernails. After she pulled the door shut behind them all the sound from outside dropped like they'd just sealed an airlock. "Sound proof," she supplied at his impressed look, motioning for him to sit down as she walked around her desk herself, "standard issue. Can't you afford sound proofing in Cardiff?"
"Not after we refurbished the swimming pool, no."
"Joke all you like, Captain, but it does mean there are no pretences in here. Let's not beat around the bush, shall we?" She tucked a perfect curl of blonde hair behind her ear and pulled a few files from the first drawer of her desk. "I don't want you here," she continued curtly, "and you don't want to be here. Unfortunately, you are our best authority on alien life and in light of our recent discoveries we believe you would be of best use to the Institution in Torchwood Tower. I trust you read the intelligence sent to you this morning?"
"Not much," he said, "I was driving and planning to read some once I got here. You rushed me straight out of my car to your office so I didn't really get the chance. Speaking of which," he raised an eyebrow, "your space sucked. You spelt my name wrong."
"Did I?"
"Helkness. Very amusing."
"I had no idea there was an error. How is it actually spelt?" she purred, her expression making it obvious she already knew.
"Harkness. That's H-A-R-jog on." Jack crossed one leg over the other and smiled, picking up one of the folders she'd lain down on the desk and beginning to peruse it.
Yvonne pursed her lips. "Old age has made you cranky."
"Torchwood Tower makes me cranky. Now what am I looking at, exactly?"
Slipping easily into business mode she watched as Jack scanned the contents of the file. "Those are some shots of the spaceship taken by an amateur photographer last night that we... confiscated." Jack paused only to shoot her a withering look before turning his attention back to the blurred photos. He couldn't make a lot out, only a vague ambiguous shape against the dark backdrop of the London skyline with a small light shining down from it. In truth, it could be anything.
"Looks like your generic UFO fake to me," he remarked.
"Except it isn't," Yvonne continued, opening a second file and sliding a few more photos across the desk. "These are the photos taken by a Torchwood specialist. Do you recognise anything?" Jack took the new ones curiously and examined them.
He was startled by the clarity of the photos, showing clearly a shot of the underbelly of a spaceship – it wasn't huge by any accounts, perhaps a little bit bigger than the Chula Warship he himself used to own, and although it looked familiar something was... off about it. The vague stream of light spotted in the first shots was far more distinct, and something akin to a figure could be spotted inside. Some kind of transportation beam, perhaps? A drop off? Or a pick up?
"Well, at a glance it looks Bessanian, but..."
"Bessanian? What are they? Are they hostile?"
"Not at all," Jack continued with a frown, "I mean, the potential is there but they're no more aggressive than your average human." He shot her a look she pretended not to see. "They have the most incredible wings you wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of a thump from. But the thing is; I don't think it is Bessanian – the engines are on the rear of the ship, and Bessanians always rely on them being at the prow. They use spatial dampers to stop the ship flying forwards. Also Bessanian ships aren't usually known for flying up and down, mostly they hover in the stratosphere of their planet. Not to mention they strictly prohibit the use of transportation beams since they mess with the physiology of their respiratory system." He rubbed his chin. "Some of the side panels don't match the front, and if I had to take a guess at the engine style?" He shrugged, "Porla Mincan, because of the clamps on either side."
A smile curled at Yvonne's mouth. "You know your aliens, Captain. The things you could teach us..."
"I know my freighters," he corrected with a warning look, "like any boy knows his sports car. And you'll get nothing out of me, and you know it." He tapped a finger on the photograph. "To be honest this looks more like an amalgamation of the best bits a couple of spacecrafts than just one kind. I'd need to get a closer look to be sure."
"Well, luckily for you, we managed to salvage most of it from its crash site just south of here, near Guildford."
"You have it?" Jack blinked in surprise.
"If it's alien," she surveyed him evenly "it's ours." Jack chose not to respond to that and let the photos float back onto the desk. "What's really interesting is we found a little more than we bargained for out in the middle of the debris. Something a little more... fleshed out."
Jack caught her meaning immediately. "So whatever this species is, you have one sitting downstairs?"
"Well, sitting is a bit generous. It's dead – and before you ask, we had nothing to do with it." Jack growled something incoherent. "We were hoping you could identify it."
"It's not that easy, you know," Jack gritted his teeth. All he'd ever told Torchwood was that he was from the future and he was trapped in their time, and they already found out he was acquainted with the Doctor before he signed up. Since then various administrators had come and go, each one expecting different things from the enigma who dropped back through time; Yvonne was notorious for expecting him to answer all of the questions her scientific advisors could not.
"Can you name every single country on Earth?" he asked.
"Of course not."
"Well, it's like that. Naming different alien races is like... it's like trying to name different kinds of cheese. You know the obvious ones, the occasional obscure one and you learn pretty early on in life to steer clear of the mouldy ones." She didn't seem enthused by his analogy. "I hate to disappoint you but I'm not Torchwood's personal encyclopaedia."
The frosty look she gifted him did little to intimidate in the way she intended. "I hope you're going to have something to offer this operation, Captain," she retorted icily. "That one downstairs may be dead, but we're far more concerned about the friends it brought with it; the ones still out there, and very much alive."
Jack held her gaze stoically until finally her eyes dropped and she swept all the photos back into their respective folders. "Let's see if we can't take a look at that freighter of yours."
"Only if you buy me dinner first," he replied, standing up and opening the door to the office as the noise of the other room filtered back through. "After you."
"You're too kind," she smiled dazzlingly for the benefit of the people nearest.
"Not quite," Jack muttered under his breath, "I just want your claws where I can see them."
o-o-o
Rose had been far too fascinated by the concept of a floating city to stray too far from the edge, so the pair of them had clung mainly to the dockside and begun the long walk around the outskirts of the citadel. It was a crisp and clear evening and the moon, Selene (or Carol), seemed to make every pure white surface glow in an almost eerie luminous manner, but it was far too beautiful a night to think about going indoors. Stars shone like flecks of gold on a blank canvas and the sea was calm and still as far as the eye could see.
The Doctor tugged on Rose's hand for a moment, causing them both to stop moving. "Feel that?" he asked.
"What?"
"That buzz. Bzzzz."
He had that look in his eye that betrayed a boyish excitement, which Rose couldn't help but snigger at. "What buzz?"
"That buzz! Listen—" he paused, "that! The vibration. Bzzz!"
Rose obediently hesitated and listened out for it, and as he fell silent for her to hear she had to admit she could feel a slight tingle where her feet touched the metal boardwalk. "What is it?"
The Doctor smiled. "The engines. This city's powering ahead at about five miles per hour – so slow you barely notice it, but enough to feel the humming beneath your feet. Haven't you felt like you could nearly lose your balance a few times over the last half hour?"
"A few times, yeah."
"That's abrupt changes in its speed so slight you wouldn't think of it. Bursts of residual fuel clog up the converters, which happens when there're too many fumes in the tank and then get released every so often in little jolts."
"Right," she nodded, knowing it always better to just let him power on and pretend she understood. Although there was one thing that confused her with his hypothesis. "If we're moving, how come the water's so still?" She pointed out to the ocean that surrounded them on all sides. "Shouldn't there be ripples and stuff?"
"Observant, you are," the Doctor's chest puffed out a little proudly before nodding up to the luminescent moon, "but that's her. Carol. The city can move at whatever pace it likes, but she prefers the water being still so she makes it so. Incredible, don't you think?"
"Yeah," Rose murmured. Before she could comment further a loud cry shattered through the peaceful air and the pair whirled towards the source, only to see a man sprinting out to them waving his hands wildly.
"Keep away from the water!" he hollered, motioning frantically for them to step back. Without quite thinking it through and working on instinct, the Doctor and Rose immediately took three paces away from the edge of the platform. "Are you out of your bloody minds?!"
The man was reasonably short and stature, far closer to Rose's height than the Doctors, with a jutting chin and a pair of round-rimmed glasses John Lennon would be proud of. His frame was made to look even tinier by the low trailing lab coat the man adorned, a few sizes too large and seemingly enveloping his entire body. As it was, the man was staring at the two of them in an expression torn between disbelief and anger. "Well? Are you trying to get yourselves killed?!"
The Doctor and Rose shared a look. "I'm sure there is, erm," the Doctor began, "a perfectly legitimate reason to keep away from the water, and likewise there is definitely an even better reason why we're standing so close to it."
"Which is?"
"We are," the Doctor whipped out the psychic paper, "hydrologists! Come to look at the water. Interesting stuff, water. Hydrogen and oxygen and... all that."
The man eyed the paper suspiciously. "It says here you're from Ord Kavell."
'Another city', the Doctor mouthed at Rose while the man's attention was diverted. "That's right. And – really – not being local we had absolutely no idea this bit of ocean was..." He took a stab in the dark, "off-limits?"
"Don't be ridiculous," the man scoffed, "it's not off-limits. It's dangerous."
"How so?" the Doctor's curiosity was now piqued as he dropped the psychic paper back into his pocket. "Oh – I'm the Doctor and this is Rose, by the way." Rose gave him a smile and waved.
The man frowned. "Is she not a doctor too?"
"Nah, I'm the one with the PhD, she's my... student." Rose shot him an irritated look. Why was she always the student? "I wanted her out in the field with me, you know? So she can get some firsthand experience of..." he paused and Rose silently begged him not to say it, "water." She cursed under her breath; there was no way Baby John Lennon was buying this.
"Well, your credentials check out," the man replied to her surprise, "but I have no idea why you chose to come here. Of all the places on Moonwave!" At the mention of the planet's name the Doctor grumbled something not quite coherent.
"What's goin' on then?"Rose pressed on, "What's so bad about here?"
Baby John Lennon stared at her like she'd just dribbled on her shirt. "The water, of course. It takes people."
That was the moment she and the Doctor slipped into an easy routine, completely hooked on the mystery that was Moonwave and all thoughts of Mickey Smith and his minor emergency back home temporarily forgotten. Baby John Lennon's real name was Dr. Lon McGan, a marine biologist native to the city they were currently residing in, only one of a hundred minds trying to find the cause and solution of all the people going missing.
"It's just if people walk too close to the edge – out of nowhere a wave rises up, washes over them and drags them out to sea," he was saying as they stepped away from the dock and further into the heart of the city and his base of operations, "we have no idea what causes it. There's no sign of any life around, no seismic disturbances, and the readings from Selene are the same as they've always been. Literally nothing has changed since three weeks ago, when the first kidnapping happened. We're completely at a loss."
"Has this been happening anywhere else on the planet?" Rose queried.
Dr. McGan shook his head. "As far as we know we're the only ones. The city's under quarantine for the moment, with a strict curfew and order to stay away from the edge – that's why the streets are so deserted. Which does beg the question of how you got here." The short man shot suspicious looks at the pair of them.
The Doctor shrugged nonchalantly. "Oh, special transport. A little top secret."
Dr. McGan's mouth formed a grim line, but he seemingly accepted that response. As they reached a building labelled with gleaming silver lettering on the side reading "Marine Biology Centre" he punched in a code to a panel at the side of the glass doors and they hissed open. "I don't remember catching your name," he spoke up suddenly, "doctor...?"
"Just the Doctor," the Time Lord replied.
"It's a bit of an ego trip, really," Rose said in a mimic of a stage-whisper, as if imparting a great secret. "He loves to be reminded of all his certificates and stuff."
The Doctor shot her a disbelieving look over Dr. McGan's shoulder, and she raised an eyebrow and mouthed 'student?' back at him. The way the corner of his mouth quirked upwards made her suspect he knew that the jibe just made them even.
"So!" the Doctor continued loudly as they made their way across the foyer to some extra double doors locked tightly with more security access panels. This one actually seemed to contain some kind of finger print lock, and Rose tried not to look excited by the technology. It felt like van Statten's museum back in Utah, without the Dalek. "Being the hydrologists that we are, we'd love to get a look at some water samples if we could. Might give us some clues about what's going on."
Dr. McGan surveyed them as if searching for an ulterior motive before finally relenting. "Well, if you think you can find something more than we already have... you're welcome to take a look. We need all the help we can get."
The Doctor's eyes sparkled. "Don't you worry doc, you're in good hands now. I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but I'm brilliant."
The short man simply raised his eyebrows and looked at Rose, who mouthed 'ego trip' back at him with an apologetic shrug out of the Doctor's line of vision.
"I'll believe that when I see it, if you don't mind. Follow me, please."
o-o-o
For the second time in as many days, Daniel Johnson awoke in the Torchwood Hub to the twinkling and humming of medical instruments and the mundane clatters of several people at work a few metres away. A small alarm beeped to his side alerting the other occupants of the underground base that he'd returned to consciousness, and Owen Harper was at his side in a few moments checking his temperature and vitals.
"What's going on? What happened?" Daniel blinked and looked around before the memories of the day before came flooding back. The last thing he remembered was taking some kind of paracetamol that the medical officer had offered him for his headache, but after that everything went a little bit blurry.
"You had a bit of an accident, that's all. Allergic reaction to one of our pills. How are you feeling?"
"Er, throat's a bit dry but mostly okay." A bit was an understatement, as he felt totally parched at that moment. Owen seemed to anticipate this and handed him a glass of water that had been sitting on one of the instrument tables. The underground nature of where he was staying completely disoriented him; there was no way of measuring the passage of time and no natural light filtering into the building for him to even tell what time of day it was. Then something occurred to him and he jolted in alarm. "Oh crap, how long have I been out? I need to get home!"
"Someone's looking after your dad, if that's what you're worried about," Owen said, looking up to where the rest of the base extended and making eye contact with someone over there. Daniel thought he could see an Asian woman nod before she ducked out of sight again. "He just thinks you've gone on a brief holiday."
"How—how do you know about Dad?" Daniel eyed the man in the lab coat warily. Owen simply shrugged in response before retreating to the computer monitor a few paces away and typing rapidly on the keyboard. "Oh. Secret government operations, right? Super intelligence gathering?" They probably knew everything there was to know about him, or maybe he was being a bit too cliché about the whole thing; Owen didn't offer any kind of response to that. "So I'm still in..." he struggled to remember the name, "Torchwood?"
Owen looked up briefly. "'Fraid so. And you will be for a while yet, I've got to run some tests and work out what happened to you back there – you gave us a bit of a scare, kid."
"Face of Boe?"
Owen didn't think he'd heard him correctly and lifted his head once more to look at Daniel, seeing the younger man staring back at him expectantly. "Say what?"
"I said then can I go?"
Still slightly bemused, Owen nodded. "Uh, yeah. 'Course. Jack's gone on a bit of a trip but the moment he gets back you can go. You remember Jack? American, walking pheromones, looks like he stepped out of the 1940s?"
"Suspenders man?" Daniel said, and Owen smirked. "I remember."
"Suspenders man," the medical officer shook his head in amusement, "take that, Captain."
A sudden thought occurred to Daniel as he swung his legs to the side of the bed, taking in his surroundings a little more and spying some hints for what time of day it was. "What's the date today?"
"20th February," Owen replied, before checking his watch, "wait, 21st. By three minutes." He turned his wrist so Daniel could see the time: 00:03.
"Oh."
Owen finished with the computer and moved over to one of the trays displaying some sharp medical looking instruments that Daniel didn't like the look of at all. "Important date?"
"My birthday," Daniel sighed, put out, "20th." And he was stuck in this stupid base in the middle of some operation he didn't understand instead of at home with his Dad or out at the pub with his mates. He'd made plans for this evening, and he had a feeling he wouldn't be getting out – yet he didn't feel like commenting on it to the Owen guy. This whole thing felt so much bigger than him, like he was caught up in a grander scheme that seemed so much more important. He couldn't quite explain it, it was just his instincts telling him so.
"Well, congrats," Owen gave him a half smile over his shoulder, "not so much of a kid anymore, then? You have my permission to begin your existential crisis."
Daniel couldn't help but snort a laugh. "Thanks." They sat in silence for a minute more, Daniel swinging his legs back and forth and musing on his predicament as Owen worked silently calibrating the settings on some small device. He could hear muffled voices coming from elsewhere, and suspected the man in the lab coat wasn't the only one out of this 'Torchwood' crew working into the wee hours of the morning.
Daniel sniffed, running a hand through his hair. "Why... me?" he muttered, and he couldn't tell if he was asking about seeing the blue box, waking up in Torchwood or having to stay away from his family and friends for the foreseeable future. Maybe all three of them, and more.
For what it was worth, Owen looked sympathetic as he stepped back over with the device. It resembled some kind of bicycle pump with a round monitor on one side with an oscillating graph across the front and a laser at the other end. Daniel would hazard a guess at some kind of scanner.
"That's what we're trying to work out, and I promise we're doing all we can. By all accounts you seem normal but... something isn't ticking the way it should, I'm sure. Could you hold still for me?" Daniel obeyed, and the other man began to run the laser across points of his body, starting with his eye, then neck, heart, wrists and continuing down.
"What is that?" Daniel asked nervously while trying to keep his head still.
The corner of Owen's mouth perked up. "You'd have a hard time believing me."
"Alien tech?"
Owen paused momentarily. "Or not."
He finished his scan and began examining the results displayed on the graph at the bottom of the instrument.
"So if I'm here for a few days," Daniel began hesitantly, "last of the Time Lords?"
Owen's head jerked back up and he stared at the now-officially-not-a-kid. "What did you just say?"
Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Is your hearing skewed or what? If I'm here for a few days what am I supposed to do if I get bored? I can't exactly go to class, can I?" He thought of his professor's key to the ICT suite still sitting in his jacket pocket and cursed internally.
Owen turned back around to the instruments table and went for the next item he wanted to test Daniel with. "Well, d'ya happen to know how to make a good cuppa? Apparently what we really need around here is a—"
A loud thud cut him off mid-sentence and he turned to see the 20-year-old slumped on the metal table, out cold. Owen dropped the scanner in alarm. "Kid? Er, Daniel?" No response. He slapped his cheek and put his ear by the man's mouth to make sure he was still breathing – everything seemed normal, he just looked like he'd fallen unconscious. But what had caused it?
He was intending on bringing the scanner back over and investigating further, but when Daniel's mouth opened and a sliver of gold mist slipped out Owen jumped back a few paces, knocking over the instrument table in the process.
"Owen?" came a concerned shout from the other side of the Hub.
Owen could only watch on in transfixed awe at what happened next.
And unbeknownst to him, around thirty paces away and securely placed on Jack's desk, a hand in a jar began to glow a luminescent gold as if possessed by the heart of a ship millions of miles and thousands of years away.
The plot thickens! Please let me know what you thought. :) Over and out!