Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by the writers, producers, et al of the television show 'Torchwood'. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, internet persona, or other being, living or dead, is completely coincidental and unintentional unless otherwise noted.

A/N: Okay, so when I got to this point, I realized how this version of 'Day One' would turn out. Considering I had almost no notes for this ep, I hope I did it justice.

Synchronicity

Chapter Four: When Something is Better than Nothing

23 October, 2006
05:02

After helping Ianto position the body at the base of a tall building downtown – and tweaking the CCTV for the area to have suspiciously 'gone down' for an hour to either side of their arrival – Jenny returned to the Hub. Ianto disappeared to… go do whatever it was he did when not 'mopping up'. Jenny, on the other hand, quickly located the others in a small alcove. Jack was fiddling with an electronic map inset in glass on one wall while Harper watched. Tosh was, as Jenny had come to expect, typing on a nearby computer.

"Hey," Jenny greeted them. "We got that body taken care of – Ianto and me, I mean."

Jack let out a grunt-like noise that could have meant 'good' or 'about time' or possibly 'there any donuts left?', while Owen cast a glare at her. Tosh, however, looked up from her work. "And that didn't bother you?" she asked.

Jenny shrugged and leaned against the alcove's doorjamb. "Not really."

"But… it was a dead body," Tosh pressed, disbelief thick in her voice.

Jenny shrugged again. "Not like it had anyone home at the time."

"That's cold," Owen butted in. Despite being a doctor, he'd never been fully comfortable with dead bodies, and had argued with Jack more than once about using T3's store of bodies in their cover-ups.

"Don't see how it's any different than the medical professionals taking someone not even cold yet and harvesting their heart, liver, lungs, eyes and so forth so someone else can use them," Jenny replied. "Only real difference is that in this case, instead of preserving an individual's physical health, we're preserving a family's mental health."

"That's debatable," Owen argued.

"Not really – even though they still have to mourn him, it's always better to know what's happened to someone you care about," Jenny said, not rising to the animosity in Owen's voice. "At least as much as they're capable of knowing."

"You sound like you speak from experience," Tosh commented, metaphorically stepping between Jenny and Owen before the latter could pick another fight.

Jenny just shrugged once more. "I do."

Jack looked over his shoulder at the trio. "How's the ID coming, Tosh?"

"The video's still rendering," Tosh replied, glancing at her screen. "I don't know how effective it's going to be – the tape isn't in particularly good condition."

"What about that chunk of rock?" he switched his gaze to Owen.

"Basic iron-based alloy," Owen replied. "Residues lifted are still running, though."

Jack tucked the little green lighted gadget he'd been using on the map into his pocket. "Show me what you've got," he said, heading to the door. Owen trailed in his wake.

Tosh went back to her work for a moment, then glanced at Jenny. The girl was still leaning against the doorjamb, watching her. "Can I ask you a question, Jenny?"

"Sure."

"I read your official records, but there's a few things that don't ring true. I've worked for Torchwood long enough to be able to spot a cover…" She avoided Jenny's eye-contact by fiddling with her reading glasses.

"Your question?"

"Who are you?" Tosh finally met the girl's eyes. "Because you're not doing a particularly good job at following the official cover in the database. And your computer…"

Jenny smirked. "Not much reason to, Tosh. That cover was to keep me off of UNIT's radar, for the most part. Now that I'm here," she made a vague gesture that encompassed all of Torchwood, "I see no reason to stay within its confines."

"So who are you, really?"

"I think you'd call me a victim of the rift," Jenny said. "I crashed through it nearly seven years ago."

"From where?"

"Klaxin-Terrash-Nordin Three, on the outskirts of the Dogon Cluster," Jenny recited. "My puddle-jumper got caught in a rift storm, and I crashed north of Cardiff."

"From when?"

Jenny grinned. "Good question – roughly four thousand years atil," she said.

"Atil?"

"English doesn't have a real succinct way of describing future events – it all gets wordy and complicated rather quickly. Galactic Standard does have nice and short ways of doing so, even a specific tense for dealing with time loops on personal lines. 'Atil' is basically the forwards-reaching version of 'ago'."

"I take it that's the language your computer was displaying earlier?"

"Exactly. Lovely language, lacks all the confusion of English. Though I have to admit English is growing on me – particularly how the same set of syllables can have multiple meanings. GS is a very exact language."

Tosh was fascinated. "How so?"

"Well, there are over two hundred words alone that can be translated to English as 'green'. 'Sepran' is the shade of green of new-grown clover in springtime. 'Tenar' is the shade of green of high-quality emeralds. And so on," Jenny made a little circle with her hand.

"It must make misunderstandings almost nonexistent," Tosh said, a touch of envy in her voice.

"Nah, misunderstandings still happen. That's the downside to any verbal language."

Tosh conceded she had a point. She quickly checked the progress-bar on the computer. "So, if you're from four thousand years from now, why are you sharing your technology with us? Won't that cause a problem with timelines and your history and such?"

"I don't see a conflict. You – us – Torchwood, I mean. Torchwood's been using technology from alien cultures past, present, and future since the beginning. None of the technology used is mass-produced for general consumption, so it has little effect on what I consider to be history. Besides, time's not so fragile as you think." Jenny pushed off from the doorjamb and walked over to the glass map embedded in the wall.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean those paradox-thingies that the sci-fi writers love to play around with." Jenny lightly traced one of the curving green lines on the map, then turned around. "Okay, you're science-minded. Ever play around with the grandfather paradox?"

"Not personally," Tosh replied with a smile. "But yes, I've thought about it. Before coming to work here, it was the main reason why I'd assumed that time-travel was impossible."

"Time's just another dimension of existence," Jenny said. "The three spatial dimensions you already know, yes?"

"Length, width, and height. Of course."

"Time's just another set of the same dimensional coordinates, only in time's case, it's past, present, and future."

Tosh wrinkled her forehead. "I think I follow you so far, but that doesn't change the fact that you still couldn't travel back in time and kill your own ancestor."

"Exactly!" Jenny chirped. "Time's not that fragile. Usually, it heals itself around displaced events like myself – it's why I'm not too worried about being here."

"Okay, you've lost me." Tosh was starting to get a headache.

"Hmm…" Jenny thought for a moment. "Alright, consider this – say you invent a time machine. You wind up going back ten years before you were born, to the same town in which your mother lived at the time. Say you're a total psychopath and hunt her down in order to ensure you were never born. Time would keep you from being successful in your attempts to kill her. Either your gun would misfire or someone would step in and stop you. Something would happen to keep you from being able to kill her."

Tosh thought she was getting what Jenny was saying, but she wasn't entirely sure. "So you're basically saying that paradoxes are impossible because things are predestined."

Jenny shook her head. "No, that's not what I said. There's no such thing as destiny. I'm just saying that time tends to look after itself. Being successful in the previous example would be as impossible as eliminating length from your spatial existence."

There was no doubt about it, the conversation was definitely giving Tosh a headache. The computer let out a beep, interrupting their conversation. "Can we chat about this later?" she asked.

"Sure," Jenny replied, ducking out of the alcove.

Three hours later, and the team had managed to finally backtrace the girl shown in the CCTV tape from the nightclub. They arrived at her house, decked out in what Tosh explained as 'BSL-3 safety gear', consisting of a thin white coverall, safety glasses, and the same gas masks Jack had handed out at the crash site the night before. Some minor excitement later, and they had the girl – Carys – in custody.

On arriving back at the Hub, Jack told Jenny to see what she could find out before heading off to attend to other duties. Jenny escorted their 'guest' to an empty holding cell. After locking the girl in, Jenny crossed her arms over her chest and observed. A slight itch deep in the middle of her mind told her that, despite appearances to the contrary, there wasn't just one resident in the cell.

Carys was confused, and more than just a little scared. "Are you MI5? Where am I? What do you want?" she asked, on the verge of tears.

Jenny ignored the girl's questions. "You're not from here," she said, speaking to the entity which had taken Carys as a host, using Galactic Standard. "Would you let me know where you are from? What you're doing on this planet?"

Carys doubled over in pain for a couple of seconds before straightening up. Her expression was no longer terrified; it was blank, bordering on angry. "You broke my ship." Oddly, the entity used English.

"Not me, personally," Jenny pointed out, switching back to English. "Come on – what're you doing on Earth?"

"What are you doing on Earth?" the thing inside Carys volleyed back. "You belong here no more than I."

"You can't know that."

The thing wearing Carys' face smiled. "But I do. I can hear it. Doubled double-beat."

"True enough," Jenny allowed, knowing the only thing the entity could be describing was her double heartbeat. "However, I maintain I'm doing a sight better than you. At least I've not killed anyone yet."

"Let me out of here," the entity tried for pleading, stepping up to the small holes in the plexiglass. She reached up and poked a finger through one of the largest of the holes. "I'll leave. Fix my ship and go."

The itch in Jenny's mind that centered on the entity buzzed strangely, urging her to trust, to help. Jenny shook her head, partly in negation of the entity's 'promise' and partly to try to clear her head. The buzzing just grew stronger. Jenny took two steps back and it faded some. "I don't believe you," she said. What is it? I've not felt anything like that before. How could it be in my head? "Where are you from?"

The entity reached its other hand up and hung her fingers through the holes in the glass. "I just want the energy," it said, ignoring the question. "The climax. I live for it."

The incessant buzzing in Jenny's mind began to grow stronger once more. She rubbed lightly at her temples. "What is it to you? Food? A drug?"

"They taste so sweet," the entity licked its lips. "But you? Would you be even sweeter?"

Jenny backed up again, stopping only when her back hit the row of sealed doors along the wall. "What are you doing to me?" she asked, the pain in her mind rapidly growing worse. She closed her eyes and sank slowly to the floor, curling herself into a ball, her arms wrapped around her head and braced on her knees. "Quit it!"

The entity let out a cry of pain, and the buzzing in Jenny's head faded back to a barely-there itch. Jenny looked up and saw Carys crying. "I'm losing," the girl said, folding into a defeated kneel behind the plexiglass. "Help me," she begged. "Please. Help me."

Though the buzzing had gone, the pain it caused was still very much throbbing through Jenny's head. "I'll do what I can," she said, unwilling to promise anything. Slowly, she uncurled and climbed to her feet. Every small motion made her brain feel like it was trying to escape through her ears and eyes. She managed to get herself out of the cell-lined corridor, then simply crumpled on the stairs.

Tosh continued working on analyzing the samples collected at the crash site while Jack and Owen pulled up the CCTV from the vaults. The pair watched mostly in silence. I'm definitely going to have to get her to tone down the Galactic Standard, Jack thought as Jenny started her questions, but his intention to do so was rapidly shoved aside as he saw the effect the prisoner was having on his new-hire. "Damn it," Jack muttered. Mental attack. Classic. Something tells me Jenny's never developed decent shields, though. Wouldn't have hit her half so hard if she had. He grabbed Owen's keyboard and quickly pulled up the scant medical information UNIT had collected over the years on the Doctor. "Familiarize yourself with that, Owen," he ordered, then all but sprinted towards the vaults.

He found Jenny where she collapsed, only feet from the outer door to the hall of cells in which she'd interviewed Carys. He scooped Jenny up, grateful to hear her whimper in pain at the sudden change in position. "Shush," he muttered, hurrying back to the main level. "Don't talk – not yet."

Once he got her settled in the med-bay, he called Owen over. Owen transferred the file Jack had ordered him to read over to the medical station, then joined Jack. "What happened to her?"

"Telepathic attack," Jack said. "Over with now, but it results in a severe headache. Do what you can for her and make sure there wasn't any lasting damage." Before Owen could ask any further questions, Jack left to go speak with Tosh.

Owen had been working for Torchwood long enough not to discredit Jack's claims out of hand, but he was still somewhat skeptical. "Yes, sir," he muttered sarcastically at Jack's retreating form, then turned to his patient.

Jenny lay half-curled on the table, her arms wrapped protectively around her head. "Looks like a migraine," he said, then dimmed the bay's lights. He put together a syringe, then dug a vial of painkiller out of the stock. "Let's see – you weigh maybe forty kilograms…" He drew a measured dose out of the vial.

"I'm gonna give you something for that headache, alright?" he said, keeping his voice low. Despite the fact that he didn't think much of the girl, he was still a doctor, and any ill-will he bore her would simply have to wait. Jenny didn't respond. Owen pushed the sleeve of her battered blue canvas jacket up, revealing the long-sleeved shirt she wore beneath her rock'n'roll tee. When he attempted to move the sleeve, it wouldn't budge.

Frowning, he sat down the syringe and grabbed a pair of scissors. The cuff of her sleeve wouldn't stretch far enough to allow the blade between it and her skin. Letting out a frustrated huff, Owen shrugged and exchanged the scissors for the syringe – it wouldn't be the first time he'd given an injection through someone's clothes. "What the fuck?" he grumbled when the needle easily slipped though her jacket and tee, but halted completely before it could possibly have hit bone. He tried again on the exposed portion of her forearm. The grey material of the long-sleeved shirt obviously dented around the needle, but wouldn't allow the syringe to pierce through.

"This is gonna be something of a problem, you realize," Owen complained, his voice in that hazy area between thought and speech used when someone is unaware they're speaking aloud. He let out a long breath, then used an alcohol swab to clean the tiny bit of her exposed wrist. "Not ideal, but it'll work," he said, then injected the medication.

He sat at the bay's computer to finish looking through the file Jack'd pulled up while he waited for the drug to take an effect. The more he read, the more his suspicions bubbled within. "No bloody way," he muttered, glancing from a scanned-in image of an X-ray to the girl on his table.

Minimizing the file, he pulled up some of the control programs for the alien-sourced scanners in the bay. In nearly no time at all, a display projected on the white brick wall had chased away all doubt. The image displayed was two-part. On the right was a scan showing Jenny's ribcage – consisting of two extra ribs – wrapped around two hearts. On the left, a triple-helix of DNA – consisting of three base-pairs of proteins – ensured the image on the right wasn't just a defect in a human subject.

"You okay?" Jack's voice made Owen jump a little.

Owen glared up at his boss. Jack was leaning on the railing, looking like he always did – unflustered. "You knew."

"Of course I knew. Surprised you didn't pick up on her not exactly being local earlier. She's not been subtle about it."

"Anything in particular you know about her that I ought to know, too?"

"Allergic to aspirin," Jack replied. "Most other drugs either won't affect her at all or will need at least a double-dose to what you'd give a human her same size. Other than that, though, all we know about her people is in that file."

Owen closed his eyes and counted to ten mentally. As he hit 'eight', Ianto's voice cut in with, "I've got Chinese."

Jack left to go indulge in dinner. Owen returned to his patient. While he'd been perusing the file, she'd managed to uncurl slightly. He took that to mean the painkiller he'd given her was working, despite what Jack had claimed. He stepped over to her. "Better?"

Jenny cracked an eye open. "No," she replied. "Not particularly."

"Anything specific I can give you?"

She shook her head, then winced as the pain resurged. "No." She closed her eyes again, then tensed and rolled herself onto her back. A whimper escaped, despite her best intentions. "Go eat, Dr. Harper. I'll be fine in an hour or two."

Owen lingered and watched as her breathing began to take on a strictly measured quality, her dual heartbeat slowed dramatically, and the tension gradually faded from her face. He looked at the readout still displayed on the bricks. Her hearts were down to beating only once each every five seconds or so. The machine couldn't detect any respiration. Even as he watched, the heartbeats slowed again.

He hit a couple of controls, and the scanner switched to an EEG readout. The chaos of lines it displayed were so very far beyond what he was used to seeing that he felt completely out of his depth. He sighed. "One thing's for sure – you're gonna gimme some decent baselines as soon as we get done with that gas-creature possessing the girl downstairs."

Owen left Jenny and headed up to grab some lunch before the others ate it all.

Jenny slowly swam back to consciousness. She could hear voices, which made the process go slightly faster than it would have otherwise.

"…results of the bioscan. Yeah, but it's just a mess, like there's no definitive readings, because everything in her body keeps changing, nothing stays constant," Owen's voice was the loudest. "As soon as you think you've got something clear, the metabolic rate, the blood pressure, whatever – it all goes wild again."

He can't be talking about me. Jenny wasn't too clear on much, not yet, but on that point she was certain.

"Because she's fighting the alien for control of her own body," Jack's voice was only slightly lower than Owen's.

"Yeah," Owen agreed, and Jenny realized they were talking about the thing downstairs. "So, anyway, I decided to do a comparative diagnostic. Recreate the circumstances, accelerate the process a little, see what's gonna happen to Carys."

Bit by bit, Jenny's brain came back online. She cracked an eye open and let out a small sigh of relief when the light didn't feel like it was trying to stab her brain. Rolling her head to the side, she found the rest of the team clustered around a small, wheeled workbench on the other side of the medical bay.

Owen stepped slightly to the side and revealed a white lab rat in a clear box on the table's surface. "I infected the rat with a combination of the vorax and suranium gas traces we found at the crash site and the nightclub."

"Looks fine so far," Tosh commented. Jenny couldn't see her from where she lay, but since it came from the other side of Jack's distinctive broad-shouldered back, it didn't matter.

"Once the gasses start to flow 'round the body, the party really starts," Owen sounded a little too enthusiastic for Jenny's peace of mind. "The heart rate triples, the brain swells and presses against the skull. The lungs begin to shrink, making it impossible to breathe. The pressure on all the internal organs keeps increasing until –"

The rat inside the clear box suddenly exploded. Jenny grimaced. "That's gross," she said, causing three pairs of concerned eyes to land on her.

"Hey," Jack said, stepping over. "You doing alright now?"

Jenny nodded and slowly sat up. "Better than him, at any rate," she nodded to the ex-rat. "I caught most of the explanation. Is there any way to get the gasses out of the girl?" Jack steadied her as she climbed off the table.

Owen shook his head. "Not that I've found. Only way would be if the creature left on its own, but I don't think that'll happen – it's been ranting down in its cell for the last two hours. To be honest, she sounds like the junkies that I used to see come into A&E, hoping for a fix." He slid the wheeled table and its grisly contents up against the wall, then crossed the short distance. "Though I don't see any way of saving the girl, there is something useful I can do."

"And what's that?" Jenny asked, surreptitiously testing the strength of her legs before letting go of Jack's arm.

"Getting together a file on you, so that if you wind up needing my services again, I won't be quite so in the dark," Owen explained. "I did some basic tests while you were… sleeping," the pause before the word wasn't long, but it was noticeable.

"Healing trance," Jenny corrected.

"See?" Owen managed to control the urge to snark, but only barely. "Shit like that would be useful to know."

Jenny sighed and realized that there was no way to get out of it. A glance at Jack indicated if she disagreed, he would have no trouble making it an order. "Not gonna be a lab rat," she warned the doctor.

Owen twitched an eyebrow at her. "Got actual rats if I need them. In your case, I simply need to know what I'll be dealing with, should you wind up shot or stabbed or electrocuted or whatever else injuries you'll land yourself with working here."

"Fair enough," Jenny said, giving in. I can see his point. Don't like it much, but these people are still my best bet to return to my own time.

Over the course of the next six hours, Jenny patiently submitted to Dr. Harper's questions, examinations, and scans. She let him know all she'd learned during her first four years of existence, but warned him that she didn't know all there was to know.

As the exam drew to a close, Ianto called them over to Tosh's workstation. The CCTV of Carys in her cell was displayed. The bioscanner results were displayed on a second monitor. Owen looked at the readouts. "Any moment now," he said, then switched his attention to the girl.

Two minutes later, the cell which had contained Carys was suddenly painted from within in bright red.

"I am not cleaning that up," Ianto said as the CCTV revealed a cloud of pink gas pouring through the holes in the plexiglass wall of the cell. The gas didn't get very far before solidifying and raining down into a small pile on the floor.

"That's that, then," Jack said. "Could've been worse."

"She just exploded!" Tosh chastised. "How could it get worse than that?"

"She could've exploded in front of witnesses," Owen said. "That gas could've gotten into someone else. Who knows how many people it could've killed?"

"Go on home," Jack said, reaching up and switching off the monitor. "Take tomorrow, too. It's been a long couple of days. I'll deal with the cleanup."

A/N2: So, once I figured out that Owen wouldn't wind up 'seduced' thanks to his needing to understand an entirely new biology, this chapter came together faster than I thought it would. Also, he and Jenny aren't quite done bickering, but I couldn't see him adding to the pain of one of his patients, despite his personal feelings towards them.

Kindly let me know what y'all think. Thanks in advance.