Sorry for the wait, again thank you so much for the positive reviews. Hope you're still enjoying this :o)

This story contains mature themes and strong language. Rating may rise

Chapter Three

It was endless. Corridor after corridor, that sickly, hospital white, neon lights flickering. He was running, his pistol held out in front of him, straining his eyes and praying he would finally see that glowing green sign that read EXIT. How long had he been running now? Minutes? Hours? Days?

Jack was breathing heavily, and he suddenly felt the gut wrenching sickness of clostraphobia closing in around him, lost inside this maze, this labyrinth. What if he couldn't find a way out? What if this horrible place (because although he didn't know where in the universe he was, he knew it resembled some kind of hell) became his final resting place, like the hundreds of lost lives he had found down here?

He stopped to rest his head in his hands, fear and hopelessness slowly beginning to take over.

"Come on…" he muttered to himself. "Come on man, get it together…"

He felt irrational fears- visions of a body, reaching out and grabbing his ankle, the shadow consuming him, the low primal growl reveiling itself.

He continued to run.

Judging by his surroundings, he guessed he was in some kind of hospital or medical research center. The thought crossed his mind only once, where he was. He didn't care, truth be told, he just didn't want to be here any longer.

Suddenly, he saw it.

The sign. The green sign.

"HA!"he yelled, almost with a sob, and ran even faster towards the door, the wonderful door. Oh Jesus Christ he'd never been more glad to see a door before.

He tripped over more bodies on his sprint to get there, praying it wasn't some sort of mirage. Feeling sicker by the second-

He stopped.

The doors were glass. Glass doors. But they were grey, grey and dark and strong.

He couldn't see out of them.

They were blocked.

"No…" he said, slowly, resting a palm on the glass as if by doing so they would dissappear to reveal a path into a forest where birds were singing and the sun was shining. He would have laughed at the thought if he hadnt been so consumed by terror.

"No!" Jack barged into the door, banging, smashing, and in some wild moment he thought that his human strength could move the building that had crumbled beside this one, turning it into a tomb.

He was so taken over by shock and sorrow, he turned around, held his stomach and threw up.

As his insides heaved, the thought struck him- This is it.

Jack Harkness was going to live forever. Trapped inside here. Once upon a time he could see the whole of time and space, love and loss, and it felt like bliss. The feeling of jumping off the impossible hight, forever falling…that amazing sensation he felt seconds before hitting the ground. It was like staring death in the face and then spitting at it.

He didn't need death.

But he needed life.

"Help!"

It was so far away that he thought he must be dreaming, or going mad.

But there it was again.

"Hello? Help me!"

Coughing violently and skidding in his own vomit, he ran towards it. The voice. It sounded like an angel. It was going to rescue him. It was everything he'd ever wanted, everything he'd ever been searching for, and he felt madness and sorrow and panic all at once.

"Hello?" he yelled, burning his throat.

"Help!" the voice screamed again, definitely female.

Door after white, clinical door, shattered glass, bodies. The stentch that had at first been overwhelming was now just lingering, sickeningly, in the air, filling the space in his lungs that were struggling to work with each hurried step he took. The coughs continued to rage.

"I'm coming!" he managed to yell again, convincing himself that he was hearing this voice. That he wasn't going crazy. He could feel it, in the very depths of his soul, he could feel her.

Then he reached the source. Jack ripped open the door, and found her.

At first, he let out a startled gasp as he thought his fears had actualy come to life; a dead body crumpled in the corner and screaming at him. But of course she wasn't dead.

She looked it though. Her face, a deathly white, her skin clinging to her bones, dark, grim cirles pulling on her eyes. Full of tears they were.

A skinny, boney hand reached towards him, her claw like fingers clinging onto his coat.

"Your real…" she breathed, sobbing "You're a person."

He grinned at her, impossibly. He felt strength, for some reason. Fear still lurked within him, but now, he felt that just by seeing and touching this woman, this person, this life, he could do anything. There was someone here, where ever here was, and that piece of information was enough to fuel his sense of adventure, optimism slowly re-surfacing.

"I'm here sweetheart, I'm here."

She let out a breathless laugh, pulling herself to her feet. She wore a pale blue shirt and black pencil skirt, and a white labcoat, her mousy brown hair greasy and tangled and matted with blood.

How long had she been here? Jack thought, gazing at her now with concern.

"You found a way in?" she giggled a little manically with a thick scottish accent. Registering her question, he felt his optimism deflate.

"No. I'm looking for a way out."

She looked confused, distraught, insane.

"What? But…but how? But…"

"We're gonna find a way out." He said, grimly determined, taking his role as leader, because that's what he did. He put hope in people even when it felt like there was no hope at all. "Where…where are we?"

Confusion furrowed her brow.

"What?" she stuttered "What do you mean?"

"I mean I don't know where the hell I am."

"Glasgow." She wailed "Oh it's all gone, it's all gone…they've all gone! The entire team, everyone else…Torchwoord Two…it's just going to vanish off the map! The whole world!"

Jack's heart dropped into his stomach.

"What?"

But she was crying. Crying and hopless and lost and alone, and she didn't know what was happening around her. She had no idea what she was saying, she had no idea who she was.

"Hey…" he whispered, taking her face in his hands and pushing down the panic that was slowly beginning to return. "Listen to me. You're gonna be okay."

She gazed up at him, like he was a God of some kind. The end of all things, the center of the universe.

"What's your name?" he asked her.

She stuttered slightly as she spoke.

"Margret…" she said "But...no...people call me Maggie."

Then her face collapsed in on itself, as she seemed to remember that those 'people' were gone. He could see her story unfolding in her broken eyes.

"Okay Maggie, I…I'm going to help you. I promise."

He scared himself a little, because when he said that he sounded a bit like the Doctor.

"But…how?"

Jack, who didn't know the answer to that, let her lean against him, and he took a look at the room she was in. Large. Bodies everywhere, as was usual here.

But Jack didn't notice anything.

His eyes were locked on something in the room ahead, a glass wall seperating them. In that moment, he truly felt invincible.

The Blue Box.

The TARDIS.

"Sweetheart…" he sighed, relief threataning to burst from him "We just got our ticket outta here."

When she finally surfaced from sleep, where dreams and visions had haunted her for what felt like a life time, she was met by utter silence.

Complete, eternal silence.

She thought she was dead.

Her eyes still foggy and her head hurting, Martha cleared her throat and tried to sit up.

She couldn't.

Her breathing suddenly becoming laboured, she looked around in fear, her head able to move from side to side. Was she strapped down?

She peered at her arms. No. She wasn't.

She couldn't move…Oh God, she couldn't move.

Moans and sharp breaths escaped her as she struggled against the weight of her own body, her mind coming to far too many horrific conclusions.

"Oh God…Oh God help!" she screamed. She felt like she'd screamed it a thousand times before. And she knew know one would come.

She couldn't move.

And in that moment, where there was no one, nothing, no sound or light or comfort, Martha Jones lay there, trapped inside herself, and wept. Her cries echoed down the hallway for only dead ears to hear, her anguish unknown, her pain suffered alone. So, so alone. She lifted her hand to her face to wipe her tears away stubbornly, feeling-

Wait.

Her arm. She lifted her arm.

Martha choked on her tears as she tried to move the other one, slowly but surely lifting herself up onto her elbows, feeling like she'd climbed a thousand steps and her entire body was screaming, her blood boiling and her head pounding. Sitting up had become the hardest thing in the world to do.

"Please…" she found herself begging some unknown force, praying to God. "Please…"

Her mouth formed a frown of determination, her teeth gritted and her eyes watering, and she let out a groan of pain as she finally managed to lift herself up, sitting up straight. She tried to catch her breath, her lungs being held down by iron grips.
Coughing, she was finally able to see where she was.

It was some sort of…laboratory, similar to the one back at Torchwood. But it also had the disturbing qualities of a torture chamber. A dungeon. A prison. Darkness drowned every corner, the only light coming from a flickering, neon tube above her. She began to shake uncontrolably, a fear inside her which she'd only experienced once before. In that escape pod, hurtling towards that sun. The hopeless nauseating sickness of being so far away from home. So unknown. So tiny.

So lost.

She could smell the all too familiar stench of rotting flesh, of dead bodies, and she didn't need to see them to know that they were there. All her years training to be a doctor, she herself seemed to have become immune to the nausia one felt upon laying eyes on a lifeless soul. Death was just a fact.

Yet, when facing her own, as she seemed to be now, it terrified her impossibly.

Where the hell is everybody? There are people here, I know it, I remember! There were people here…

And terror, horror and sickness began to strangle her, as a new kind of fear was born…What had they done to her?

Oh God…she needed to see the Doctor. She needed to see him, then she would be okay. She would know where she was and what had happened to them.

But who was she kidding? He wasn't a God, vengeful or otherwise, he was another life, another man, and man couldn't achieve the impossible. He'd screamed at her in pain, over and over again before, I can't do impossible.

He'd been referring to Rose at the time.

She saw him enter the TARDIS after bidding old, brave Tim Latimer farewell, a smile on his face yet impossible darkness in his eyes.

"So…" The Doctor began, running a hand through his hair and trying to smile warmly at her. He couldn't though. Not yet. Maybe not ever. "Where to?"

Martha stared at him sadly for a long time. How was she suppose to make him talk? Properly? He'd told her about the Time War of course, but that was inevitable, she would have found out eventually. And she knew that she wasn't the first person to travel with him, he'd told her from the very beginning. There were many before her, in his long, long life, so many he must have loved along the way.

I mean, he loved her. She could see it…when he looked at her, sometimes. Just, fleeting glances. But it wasn't realy love. It was love someone felt for a life jacket when they were drowning, the love someone felt towards the only person left.

He only loved her because he thought he had to.

She swallowed before she spoke next.

"Do you remember much at all?" she asked slowly "I mean, being John Smith?"

"Pretty much most of it…" he said, but he was frowning, pressing random buttons without looking at what he was doing. "Some bits…bit foggy…"

She couldn't look at him.

"What about the journal?"

He looked up at her sharply.

"What about it?"

"I mean…d'you remember what you wrote?"

His frown deepened.

"Well, only what I already know up here," He pointed to his head "So…yes."

She nodded, pressing her lips together.

Should she say? Was it her place? But she wasn't sure how long she could endure the nagging in the back of her head. That had always been her fault. Curiosity.

"I um…I mean you wrote…you drew…"

"What is it?" he said darkly.

"Rose!" she finally said, feeling sick suddenly, unsure why she'd begun this."I saw her. You drew her, wrote about her. Pages and pages."

He didn't answer for a moment. His face was expressionless, his eyes hollow. He just stood there, staring at the center of the console as it heaved, the Time Vortex flowing within. The TARDIS itself seemed to tense after her outburst. Martha felt like she didn't belong here anymore. That she'd never really belonged here. Absently, she played with the key around her neck

The Doctor sighed, then looked at her. No. Glared at her.

"And?"

"Well…do you want to talk about it?"

"No."

"I think you should."

"Well I don't."

"Doctor."

"Martha." He said, his voice so low, his eyes so deep like he was looking into the deepest confines of her mind "Don't."

Martha, suddenly impossibly angry at him, stuck her chin up.

"How did she die?" she asked, determined to get it out of him for his own good more than anything. Because everyday she had to watch it slowly tear him apart. She'd dealt with greif before, husbands losing wives, mothers losing kids. It was the same with each one. Some small differences, but at the root of it all was that darkness that one only experienced after forever losing a loved one.

"She's not DEAD!"

His hands were in his hair now, and he turned away from her, pulling a lever violently, his face distressed. She knew she'd feel guilty beyond belief later, but right now, it was something she had to do. For him.

"Look, just talk to me!" she cried "I want to know!"

"Well I don't want you to know." He spat cruelly, leaning against the console as if physically weakened.

"Well if she's not dead, find her! Do something!"

"I can't." he almost whispered. "It's impossible…"

"I've heard that before…" she muttered. "Look, you…you're in denial Doctor! If you'd just-"

"I can't do impossible!"

He stood there, breathing heavily, his eyes shining. His face fell into his hands in tired frustration, then after a long moment which Martha thought might last forever, he looked back at her again, a curiously sad look suddenly in his eyes.

"What did it say?" he asked, his voice steady "What did I write about her?"

Martha swallowed, shocked by his sudden mood swing, and looked at her feet.

"I didn't see all of it. Only one line. It said 'Rose. Always with me, holding my hand. My rock. My mysterious beauty.'"

They gazed at each other for a long time then, just thinking, lost in their own heads. The Doctor's mouth formed into a small, tired smile, before he turned back to the console. He pressed a button and the TARDIS skidded to a landing. Grabbing his coat, he headed for the door.

Martha, feeling suddenly like she was falling, ran out to join him where they had landed. An old, dusty house, with strange, haunting figurines.

"Doctor- "

But before she could carry on, she blinked.

Martha, then, knew that his 'mysterious beauty' must be dead.

All talk of parallel worlds and hell and the void…the girl was dead. To the Doctor, she was dead.

Martha closed her eyes in frustration, screaming at herself for thinking about him when it was herself she needed to worry about.

Letting out another sob, she waited patiently for her legs to regain life.

Only then could she possibly have some hope.

"Oh my God." he breathed out, his eyes shining "It's him."

The two of them stood there for a long moment, each unsure of the other, the Doctor and the red haired man.

I know you the Doctor thought, staring intensely at him. I know your eyes.

He gazed deeply into those eyes, feeling sad. He didn't know why. Looking into those eyes, he felt alone.

Suddenly the enitre area seemed to shake with the force of an earthquake, people collapsing to the ground.

"Shit!" yelled a gruff voice. Eagle was running over to a system of advanced computers, a console of some kind. Screams were let out by many of the others. The red haired man…Tyler…gave the Doctor a long, meaningful look, before rushing to join Eagle at his station.

"What's happening?" he yelled over a bellowing crash, his accent unmistakable as that of a cockney.

"They've found us Tyler," Eagle said gravely "There trying to break through our defenses."

"Bollocks." Tyler shouted, rushing to another moniter. He stared at it darkly, before shouting to everyone in a mountanous voice "Move!"

The Doctor's eyes were flicking from one person to another, each one with rising panic on their faces, the small number of children clinging to their mothers, women clinging to their men, men gathering everything they could. He saw Archer rush over to where Eagle and Tyler had begun typing, followed closely by Rayn, a look of horror on her face.

"What do you mean they've found us?" she cried "I thought- "

"Rayn, shut up!" Archer spat at her cruelly. Rayn looked as though she'd just been slapped. "They've- "

"Don't you fucking speak to me like that!" Rayn yelled at him "If I- "

"Hey!" Tyler boomed "I don't need this from you two right now- "

"Listen!"

The three of them silenced immediately, as the Doctor roared at them, his eyes stormy. They all stared at him in unison, looks of aprehension and awe on all of their faces.

"Listen to me…" he began again, calmly. "Someone explain to me what is happening. From the beginning."

Tyler was suddenly glaring at him.

"There's no time to start from the beginning. We've got Outcasts coming from all directions, and I need to get my men armed and prepared."

Eagle stared at the base, a look of dawning fear on his old face.

"Tyler, we haven't got enough weaponry left, not enough men to fight these things." He yelled, the crashing above starting to become louder. "We don't stand a chance, we need to leave now."

"And where the hell are we supposed to take them?" Archer cried, running a hand through his hair and showing the horror of his scar, running along his hair line and through his skull.

The Doctor stood behind Tyler, staring at the monitor in front of him as the other three argued. The screen showed the view from a security camera above, the street crawling with creatures that where hard to distiguish in the darkness. They were large, about four of them, ape-like in structure, but dripping…some sort of liquid or slime pouring from them. The Doctor had never seen anything like them before in his life.

"Have you got back up defence systems?" He asked, examining the computer's workings with the sonic screwdriver. Tyler glanced at it breifly before returning to his work.

"Yup. They're fucked." He said. He took another look at the man behind him. "Doctor, we need to get em out of here, they can't fight."

"I know…." The Doctor said "Is there anywhere- "

He stopped suddenly and stared at Tyler sharply.

"You called me Doctor."

Tyler ignored him, typing rapidly. The Doctor grabbed his arms, staring deep into his eyes, his teeth gritted.

"Who are you?" he said, his voice so low with so much hidden authority. Tyler shoved him away, glaring right back.

"Tyler!" Eagle suddenly yelled. Tyler ran over to his station. "There's traces of life at Station 2."

"What?" he cried "We just checked that. All inhabitants desceased."

"Well we were wrong."

The screen showed a blue print of a building hidden deep underground, a tiny red dot blinking in the corner. Life.

"It's human." Eagle muttered, his eyes scanning streams of text that appeared on the monitor "Female…not infected…been there for about 4 hours…"

Archer shook his head violently.

"That's impossible." He yelled "It can't be human, it's not registering on the database!" The fear in his voice was hard to ignore, even though he was obviously trying to hide it "What if its one of them? They've…they've been humanoid before…"

"No they haven't." Rayn said, grabbing a gun and shoving it in her rucksack "Only the first army was humanoid. They haven't taken that shape for years."

"Whatever!" Tyler shouted "The point is, we've got somewhere to go. Eagle, get everyone going. Station two is uninfected. We'll take the underground route."

Eagle stared at him before rushing to assemble the others.

"Where is it, where are you taking them?" the Doctor cried, addressing Rayn who seemed to be the only one who truly trusted him.

"Station 2." She said, gathering more supplies as the roars above continued to rage "A whole network of stations were made after the virus to keep people safe from the outcasts."

The Doctor stared at her, trying to absorb what she was saying.

"Virus? What virus?" he yelled over a deafening boom "You said this was London, 2030. It can't be!"

Rayn stared at him with horror.

"The Virus…you must remember…" She said shakily, her eyes watering. The Doctor took her arms and bent down so he could gaze into her eyes.

"Tell me. You've got to tell me."

"2007." She said, staring at him with wonder "That's when it started. I was just a kid…The virus...it spread across the globe. Killing millions. No one could stop it. No one knew how."

The Doctor was shaking his head as she spoke. No…no, no, no…this was wrong. Something was so horribly wrong.

Rayn continued to speak as the others were screaming and crying, the creatures roaring for blood.

"Earth's defenses were stripped bare, and we were open to attack." She sobbed "The virus killed most life that got here, but one race…it stayed. Unaffected. Scavanging any human life that was left."

"The Outcasts we call them." Archer suddenly said, his face unbearably dark, his voice cold. "They've been here ever since. We just survive. Looking for a way to kill em all."

The Doctor ran both hands through his hair, his blood trobbing through his vains, sweat suddenly dripping from him.

"How did it happen?" he barked "The…the virus, what happened?"

"No one really knows anymore. Not even Tyler." Rayn said, staring at the red haired man as he continued to gather supplies. The Doctor followed her gaze. "He knows more than he lets on though. But he never says."

Tyler. Tyler. Who was he? He knew him, he was so undeniably sure, he could feel it in his gut.

Archer was suddenly staring at Rayn, a strange look in his eyes, one of sadness and hope and loss.

"Come on." He said, softly "We've gotta get going."

He faced the Doctor.

"We'll tell you everything when we're safe."

The Doctor, fear and confuson and that overwhelming need to help people battling inside him, nodded.

Tyler ran over to them, a gun slung over his back, looking like a warrior. A hero.

"Everyone set?" he said. Archer and Rayn saluted. The Doctor stepped towards him.

"Tell me everything." He said, darkly "When we get there. Tell me everything you know."

Suddenly a monsterous, blood soaked arm burst through the door the Doctor had originally come through. It looked like flesh, turned inside out, veins and scars and tissue brawling over it.

"Run!" Tyler suddenly boomed "Everybody get out of here!"

The three humans, complete, raw terror on their faces, bolted for the set of stairs the many others had just departed from.

The Doctor, his very foundations shaking, had no choice but to follow.