I think next chapter gets more exciting. I'm trying not to go too fast and rush into everything before I've set up the story. I make that mistake too often, but now I'm afraid I'm going too slow. Oh, well. :P

Jack wasn't a paranoid person (which was surprising considering the various monsters and aliens he had encountered in his abnormally long lifetime) but he certainly didn't ignore instincts and caution.

He was supposed to be alone in this section of the building. The doors had been locked, so there was simply no reason he should have been able to hear the soft shuffle of footsteps. Not paranoia; just caution.

He had been working late that night, looking into some strange occurrences that had been happening all over England involving spots that would simply vaporize low-density objects that went near it. It wasn't harmful to humans, but if someone happened to walk by with a bunch of paperwork, it would inexplicably vanish.

He was sitting at a computer looking over a map detailing the occurrences when he first heard the footsteps. He turned and looked around, his instincts kicking in. He reached for the gun on his shoulder holster, slowly taking it out. The footsteps grew closer. They were quick, uneven, but determined.

He'd been around a while and he had become familiar with his co-workers. He knew what they sounded like when they were coming. These footsteps belonged to none of them.

He stood from the chair and slowly approached the door. He had barely taken a step when the door (which had been locked) opened up and a man came walking hurriedly in.

Another thing about Jack was that very few things surprised him. He had seen too many weird and freaky things -the aliens and monsters included- for anything to really get to him. That being said, his brow rose in surprise as a tall man in a tweed jacket with elbow patches, bracers and a red bow-tie stepped into the room, twiddling his fingers and looking around in an absent-minded sort of way.

He stopped at the door, looked around for a moment and then his eyes fell on Jack and they seemed to light up, a big, childlike grin spreading across his face.

"Hello, Jack! Sorry to bother you. Am I interrupting anything?"

Jack blinked in confusion, gun held slack in his hand. "Who are you?"

The man looked equally confused by this and he simply stared at him for a moment or two before he finally spoke, "Oh, right! I forgot. I changed my hair. And my clothes. And my face." He looked around again distractedly.

A light-bulb might as well have appeared over Jack's head and he wondered how he had managed to miss it. "Doctor?"

The Doctor looked up at having been addressed and smiled.

"Yes, hello," he said cheerfully, then fully entered the room, looked Jack over briefly and then walked past him. "Mind if I borrow your computer?"

Jack opened and closed his mouth, flabbergasted. "...I heard you were dead."

The Doctor waved his hand dismissively. "Exaggeration. Where did you hear that anyway?"

"An old Time Agent buddy of mine," Jack replied, watching the Doctor skip over to one of the computers and plop himself down on the chair in front of it. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for someone," the Doctor replied. "Possibly several someone's. We'll see."

"Who?"

The Doctor spun himself in the swivel-chair and flung a picture at him like a Frisbee. It flew surprisingly smoothly through the air and he caught it easily. He then looked down at the six figures there.

"Where's the scanner? I need to run it through your database," the Doctor asked, looking around the room.

Jack took the picture to a scanner and ran it through, then went over to the Doctor, hovering over him as he easily got past the Torchwood computers' security protocols. He then began to run the faces of the men in the picture through the database.

"Looks like we need a new password," Jack commented.

"It wouldn't help," the Doctor said with a smug smile as he watched the computer work to match faces.

"Who are these guys?" Jack asked.

"No idea. That's why I'm here. I call him Mr. Boots," the Doctor said, pointing to the man in the long black coat and cowboy boots. "He's the ring-leader."

"Why are you looking for them?"

"Well, they're looking for me, so it seemed only fair," the Doctor replied with a flash of a grin.

The computer suddenly beeped and the Doctor's smile grew even wider. "Ah, good! Let's see what we got..." he said, clapping his hands together and rubbing them with child-like excitement. The expression dissipated as he read over the first page. "Oh, dear..."

"What?" Jack asked, leaning over the Doctor's shoulder to take a look at the screen. "Oh, wow. That's a lot of results."

"Jack, do you recognize Mr. Boots?"

"No. Why?"

"Because these results all come from different time periods with nothing in the way of identification. See? Just pictures."

He was right. Many of the dates on the matching pictures ranged from the sixteen hundreds to the present year. There were even a handful gathered from the Time Agency that went several hundred years into the future. The only constant was the cowboy-booted man. Apparently someone else had noticed this man appearing in pictures over history and had compiled them into one folder entitled-

"The Cowboy?" Jack read the title of the file aloud.

"That's stupid. He doesn't even have a hat," the Doctor said, scrunching his face in distaste. "He should have a hat. Stetsons are cool. He should get a Stetson."

"A black one," Jack said. "Wouldn't want to veer off that fabulous color theme."

The Doctor smiled and then leaned back in the chair, staring at the screen thoughtfully. "So... no name... shows up all over history..."

"Time Agent," Jack supplied.

"Ex," the Doctor corrected. "Gone rogue."

"You pull that out of your magical hat?" Jack inquired.

"I looked him up with the TARDIS," the Doctor said casually, standing from the seat and snatching the picture from the scanner.

"Wait... you already looked him up?"

"Yes."

"Then... what did you need the computer for?" Jack asked.

"Oh, I didn't. I just wanted to see if you recognized him. You were both Time Agents at one point and I wanted to see if he was familiar to you. And I've got my answer."

"You could've just asked, you know."

The Doctor gave him a puzzled look. "I just did."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Cryptically. Doesn't count." He then clasped his hands. "So, what do you need from me?"

The Doctor looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, how can I help?"

"You can't. I got everything I needed from you," the Doctor said hurriedly, already heading back the way he came.

"You mean that's it?" Jack asked.

"Yes."

"You came to Torchwood just to see if I knew this guy?" Jack pressed.

"Yes."

"You hate Torchwood."

"Good observation."

"You wouldn't come here just for that," Jack said, giving the Doctor a scrutinizing gaze.

"But I did."

"No, you didn't."

The Doctor looked at Jack evenly and Jack got the sudden impression that something was weighing on him heavily.

Despite his curiosity, he didn't want to question the Doctor about it. Not for lack of interest or care, but because if the Doctor felt Jack should know, he would have told him. He had only pressed as he had because he could tell the Doctor wanted something and just wasn't yet willing to ask. Why, he didn't know. But he had come to Torchwood, which meant it was important.

After several seconds of silence and staring at each other, the Doctor sighed. "Mr. Boots knows I'm not dead. Normally that wouldn't worry me too much, but the people that tried to kill me in the first place... well, they really don't like me. Obviously. They tried to kill me. Which, again, normally not something that would worry me. I get that all the time. It's the way they tried to do it. They involved my friends and... someone I care about. I won't tolerate that. It wouldn't matter to me if Mr. Boots knew I was alive, but what he does with that information is what really concerns me. The TARDIS had more information on him than your database does."

"What did you find?" Jack asked patiently, placing his hands on his hips.

"He was special forces in the army, got dishonorably discharged... no records as to why, became a Time Agent, went rogue, became a hit-man and dealer of top-secret information, has a cat allergy," the Doctor said.

Jack whistled. "Professional killer."

"More than that," the Doctor said. "There's no pattern. Every kill is different. And he only takes jobs that interest him."

"You're very interesting," Jack observed.

The Doctor nodded. "Exactly. If I only have to deal with him, it shouldn't be more of an issue than usual-"

"But if he decides to sell his information on you to the people who tried to kill you-" Jack supplied.

"It could involve my friends," the Doctor finished. The childish joy vanished from his features, making his expression drawn and worried. His current regeneration had a bit of a baby-face, but the eyes remained ancient and wise as ever.

"Right..." Jack said, thinking for a moment. His brows furrowed and he looked at the Doctor. "Cat allergy?"

"Apparently," the Doctor replied. "He turned down a job that should have interested him. It involved Cat-kind. I can't say I entirely blame him. I only met two I really liked, not counting the kids of one of them. Do you think calling Cat-kind children kittens would be offensive? Never thought to ask. But then I was a little busy at the time. I didn't even get to ask their names."

"Doc," Jack said, interrupting him before he could get into a rant. "What do you want from me? I'll help however I can."

"There's only one thing I need you to do... no, actually, two... possibly three. Maybe four. No more than six things."

Jack waited.

"First, I need you to keep everyone under surveillance. I'll try and get you a list."

"No need," Jack said.

The Doctor stopped just before getting into his next sentence. "No need for what?"

"Well, the list for one. And as far as keeping an eye on everyone, that's already been taken care of."

"It has? By who? When? Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Well... you were dead."

"Oh, right. Hmm... being dead is turning out to be more of a hassle than I thought it would," the Doctor mused.

Jack laughed. "Well, it got people talking about what we should do. With you gone, there was the possibility that your old companions could be targeted. Your allies got together and decided to watch them; protect them."

"My allies?"

"Torchwood- secretly, obviously- some Silurians who liked you, a couple of politicians, lots of grateful citizens, and more," Jack said.

The Doctor blinked.

Jack smiled. "You leave an impression, Doc."

"They're not in any danger, are they?"

Jack laughed. "It's nothing they can't handle."

"So they're safe. That's good. What else? The second thing. Has anything suspicious happened recently?"

"This is Torchwood, Doctor. Suspicious is in the job description."

"No, more than usual."

Jack thought for a moment. "Well... um... I might have a few things."

The Doctor plopped himself down on a seat and lifted his legs so that his heels rested on a table nearby. "I'm all ears. Not literally, of course, but I came fairly close to meaning it that way in my ninth regeneration. You remember. Quite glad to be rid of those. I mean, really, those ears were-"

"Do you want to hear what I have or not?"

"Sorry. Go on."

Jack sat down at his computer and brought up the file he had been looking at when the Doctor had shown up. "I've been finding these disturbances branching out across England. They look like distortions of some sort, unstable enough to cause some minor damage, but nothing dangerous. We have a team out right now fixing them."

"But?"

"But there's something weird about them."

"Weird how?"

"Weird as in it looks like a trail of bread crumbs."

The Doctor stood from his seat and then leaned over Jack's shoulder to have a look at the folder.

"At first I thought they were showing up at random, but-"

"But they don't branch out on the sides. They just lead up and away. It starts off here in Cardiff, not far from this very spot," he noted, "and then zig-zags off towards London."

Jack nodded.

"Those aren't distortions. They're pockets of molecules shaken up until they become agitated and unstable. They're easy enough to fix. Do you have a nucleus-formatter. What else?"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure this is anything important, but one of the distor- pockets... is different from the others."

"How so?"

"Well, it's bigger, for one. Secondly, we can't figure out exactly where it is. The instrument we use to track and repair the others started malfunctioning."

"How much bigger?"

"We can't tell. Anything we use on it starts malfunctioning."

"Ooh, now that sounds promising," the Doctor said, smiling in excitement. "Which pocket is it?"

"The first one. The one here in Cardiff."

"And you can't tell where it is?"

Jack shook his head.

"Well, Captain, I wouldn't worry about it anymore. I'll find it and fix it for you. Not to worry," he said, giving Jack a hearty pat on the shoulder.

"Wait, is that it?" he asked, turning in his seat as he watched the Doctor hop across the room, back in the direction he had come, where the TARDIS undoubtedly was waiting for him.

"Yes, for now. Not to worry, though! The Doctor is on the case," he said with a grin and a wink that didn't quite look right. Without another a word, the Doctor disappeared through the doorway, leaving Jack staring after him with a dumbfounded expression.