A/N: Sorry about the wait; I've been on vacation. It was nice to get to visit my family, first time I've been home in months. But it also meant I didn't get up to much writing.


Chapter Six
Back, At the Site of Renewed Grief

When Donna Noble got up and dressed, the first thing she became aware of as she approached the console room was the sound of a phone ringing. When no one seemed to answer it, she hurried in, assuming that she had gotten up before the Doctor… which would be a first. If he hadn't gone to bed after such a difficult, traumatic day, he'd never hear the end of it.

But rather than find an empty room with a ringing phone lying on the console, she found that the Doctor was up, dressed except for his suit coat and tie, and looking tired and worn; and to her bemusement, he was holding the mobile phone, not answering it, just staring at it.

"Well, aren't you going to answer it?" she demanded.

The Doctor jerked and whipped his sonic screwdriver from his pocket, pointing it at her wildly. Startled, Donna held up her hands defensively. For a moment they just stared at each other, waiting for the other to move first. Then the phone stopped ringing and the Doctor, seemingly recollecting himself, stowed away the sonic screwdriver.

"Sorry," he mumbled sheepishly.

"Blimey," Donna breathed. "It's only me. Ease up a bit."

"Ease up?" the Doctor said with false cheer. "I'm perfectly at ease."

"You just jumped thirty feet!" Donna scolded. "I've never seen you so on edge."

"I'm usually not," the Doctor protested. A dark look crossed his face, and he eased himself onto the captain's chair and placed his feet against the rim of the console.

"Bad night?" asked Donna sympathetically. "I had trouble sleeping just from hearing about your road trip yesterday."

"Yeah." To his credit, the Doctor didn't shudder at the memory, his usual restraint returning after its lapse only seconds ago. Most would hide in a corner for a few days. "Visit Midnight, go on a bus tour, encounter a body-snatching monster, get possessed, get tormented by one's own subconscious, and have a very unusual morning. Not a good combination."

Donna frowned at his words, but she recognized his flippant babble, downplaying both what had occurred on Midnight and whatever an "unusual morning" meant; he was walling himself up, forbidding her to ask any further. Donna warred between respecting his privacy and her usual impulse to try to help with whatever it was. But before she could make up her mind, the phone began ringing again.

The Doctor and Donna both looked at it. Then Donna looked back at the Doctor, but he made no motion to answer it. He was staring at it with an expression that bordered on dread.

Finally, Donna said, "Well, are you going to answer that, or shall I?"

The Doctor said nothing.

"If that's Martha, she's sounding pretty insistent," Donna pointed out, and then looking between him and the phone pointedly, she added, "I hope it's not too urgent."

The Doctor deflated, and reached for the phone. "Put it on speaker," Donna said. "Martha doesn't usually call to make small talk. If something's happening I want to hear about it directly."

The Doctor nodded, flipped the phone open, and pressed the right key. "Hello?"

"Hello, Doc."

It was a male voice Donna didn't recognize. She looked at the Doctor curiously, and he looked rather taken aback himself.

"Jack?" he asked.

"Who?" Donna mouthed.

The Doctor ignored her. "Why are you on Martha's phone?" he demanded.

"Asking you out on a date?" the man on the other end deadpanned.

Donna raised her eyebrows at the Doctor, who repeatedly looked between her and the phone, looking extremely self-conscious. "In your dreams, Jack," he snapped.

"Can't say I didn't try," 'Jack' said dryly.

Donna couldn't help the smirk that crossed her face: a discomfited Doctor being openly flirted with by another man; that was a side of him she hadn't ever seen before. Unusual morning, indeed. Although she couldn't help but feel charmed by Jack's pleasant baritone and his American accent.

Unfortunately, she was only given a very short window for her amusement before Jack spoke again, and this time he sounded very grim. "Look, Doc, something's happened. It's very serious, and it's a bit beyond my abilities."

The Doctor's eyebrows went up. "You don't often ask me for help," he said. "And since you're on Martha's phone I assume you're with her? Torchwood doesn't usually work with UNIT."

"Yeah. Should tell you something, shouldn't it?"

Donna could tell by the Doctor's expression that it did tell him something. "What's going on, Jack?" he asked soberly.

"It's simpler if you just come."

The Doctor's mien turned even more grave, and he moved to the console's controls. "All right," he said. "I'll follow your signal."

Donna watched as he began working at the Tardis controls. The console revved loudly, and its tell-tale grinding sound began. The Doctor was carefully watching the monitor as he worked.

"Got a lock on it now," he said. "Should get me there shortly."

"You sure about that?" Jack asked coolly. "You've had companions who disappeared for twelve months because of your driving, as I recall."

The Doctor growled irritably. "That happened once. And you weren't even there. I've got a lock on it, Jack. Can't fail."

"You'd better be right about that," Jack answered.

"I am," the Doctor snapped. "See you shortly."

"Theoretically. Oh, and Doctor?"

"Yeah?"

"Just so you know," Jack said, "you can't draw too much attention to yourself this time."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, and Donna looked at him in surprise.

"I mean that completely seriously." The tone in Jack's voice left no room for them to think otherwise. "I'll explain once you get here."

The line went dead. The Doctor sighed, and pocketed the phone. As he continued working the controls, Donna asked, "So… who was that?"

"An old friend of mine," the Doctor answered. "He used to travel with me and… well, with me."

An old sadness that she instantly recognized crossed his face, and she knew better than to inquire further.

"So why does he need your help?" she asked.

"No idea, but it doesn't sound good. It's not really like Jack to be so tight-lipped about it, and as I said, Torchwood doesn't usually work with UNIT." He shook his head.

Torchwood. Donna was sure she'd heard the Doctor mention it before, but she couldn't quite place where. But she guessed she'd find out shortly.

"And we're supposed to be surreptitious about this, whatever it is?" she asked.

"So he said."

"You?" Donna asked with an incredulous laugh. "Now this, I have to see."

"Oi! I can be surreptitious!" the Doctor retorted.

Donna raised her eyebrows at him pointedly. He looked sheepish.

"Never mind," he said, shaking his head. "Let's just see what this is about. Hang on tight."

He slammed a lever down. The console room began shaking violently, and Donna seized the rim of the console, steading herself, and waited as she usually did.

When the shaking stopped, the Doctor pulled on his trench coat and dashed to the door, Donna close behind. The Doctor swung open the Tardis door with a creak, and together they stepped outside.

At first, Donna thought it was night; it was almost pitch black, except a small area of light from a lamp held by one of two men standing nearby, a soldier in a heavy coat, under which Donna could see the black uniform and red beret of UNIT. The other was a tall man in a long grey 1940s-style coat, whose face was still mostly in shadow. Then Donna realized that it wasn't night at all; or rather, it could have been day. They weren't outside. They were in a tunnel. As Donna cautiously stepped out of the Tardis, she almost stumbled as her foot slipped off a heavy wooden timber and onto some rocks. Looking down, she realized she was standing on train tracks.

The man in the grey coat stepped forward. The light from the console room revealed his face, and Donna's eyebrows went up. He's gorgeous, she thought.

The Doctor and Jack Harkness merely looked at each other for a moment, as though sizing each other up. Then both smiled and thumped each other on the back.

"Good to see you, Jack," the Doctor said.

"And you." Jack looked at Donna curiously. "And who's this?"

"Donna," the Doctor introduced. Donna noted a sudden wariness that entered his voice, and when Jack grinned and opened his mouth, the Doctor cut him off with, "Don't start."

"Relax, Doc," Jack said dryly, and he held out a hand for Donna to shake. "Good to see someone's keeping him in line."

Donna felt slightly disappointed; for a moment she'd been gearing up for banter with a man she could tell was a practiced flirt. But instead Jack's manner of greeting had been only friendly, and even the Doctor looked surprised. Jack then pointed at the soldier.

"And this is… Sergeant Davis, wasn't it?"

The soldier nodded, and saluted the Doctor, who grimaced.

"Don't salute," he growled.

"You let me salute you," Jack retorted. He then held something up for the Doctor to take, and Donna realized for the first time that he was holding a hooded black coat. The Doctor accepted the coat, looking confused.

"What's this for?" he asked.

"Lose the trench-coat and put that on," Jack told him, in a voice that brooked no argument. "And keep the hood up."

The Doctor looked at the coat with some distaste, back at Jack, and then upward. Donna watched him survey their surroundings, from the railroad tracks they stood on, to the tunnel ceiling, and then the third rail running alongside the tracks. As he did, Donna heard a distant rumble, which grew louder and louder from somewhere nearby, then seemingly passed over them and died away.

The Doctor looked at Jack with raised eyebrows. "This is a Tube tunnel."

Jack nodded. "Don't worry, this tunnel's not in operation. It hasn't been for a couple of years. We needed to get you somewhere where the Tardis could be almost on site but out of sight, if you take my meaning."

The Doctor frowned at this. Then he complied and took off his coat, which he threw back through the Tardis doors. He then started putting on the new coat.

"It's a bit big for me," he complained.

"All the better, then," Jack shrugged. "Let's go. Keep the hood up."

The Doctor closed the Tardis doors, and then drew up his hood. Jack and Davis led the way forward, Donna trying to keep close behind; avoiding tripping over the tracks was made tricky by the lack of light. As they walked down the tunnel, Jack began, "As I said, the tunnel's not in use. The Tardis will be perfectly safe there, and UNIT might find a way to smuggle it closer to the site of the explosion if you need it."

"Explosion?" the Doctor queried.

Jack went on as though there had been no interruption. "We're going to a closed station that only UNIT has access to."

"Which is where?" asked Donna.

Jack then stopped, and turned back around. Davis held the light higher so they could better see each other, but Donna noticed that he seemed to also be holding back a bit, looking uncomfortable. Jack himself seemed to be eyeing the Doctor somewhat uneasily.

"You're not gonna like it," he said quietly.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "I generally don't like anything Torchwood gets me involved in."

Jack winced. "Great. That makes this that much easier. Thanks, Doc."

The Doctor said nothing. Instead he folded his arms and waited. Donna looked back at Jack, who seemed to be readying himself. A strange tension seemed to have erupted between them, between the Doctor's suspicion and Jack's restless demeanour.

Finally, Jack admitted, "We're going to Canary Wharf Station."

"That's been closed for years," Donna said, frowning. "It disrupted the Jubilee line for months. Half of central London's was complaining about it. So go on then, why's it closed… off?"

She faltered when she saw that the Doctor had gone very still. His face was slowly draining of colour, and his earlier suspicion had been replaced with a haunted look she knew all too well; she'd seen it when Jenny died, when the Doctor drowned the Racnoss, and when he returned from Midnight. The dim light from Davis's lamp made the Doctor's expression, a mixture of grief and anger, look all the starker. Disquieted, Donna looked between the Doctor and Jack, who seemed to be wearing a similar expression.

The Doctor finally managed a shaky, "Jack…"

"It's not easy for me to be here either, Doctor," Jack interrupted quietly. When the Doctor remained silent, Jack managed with a half-hearted smile, "If you still think I ought to clout you, I'll happily oblige if it makes you feel better."

Donna looked at Jack in disbelief. The Doctor, though he didn't look cheered in the slightest, deflated a bit.

"You say there was an explosion here?" he finally asked. "What kind of explosion?"

Jack's expression, however, grew more serious. "It's the breach."

Donna had no idea what that meant, but she could tell from the Doctor's expression that it wasn't anything good. "What the hell have you idiots done now?" he snarled.

"We didn't do anything," Jack bit back, furious. "You think that UNIT would allow it, after what happened last time?" He exhaled shakily, and then, in a softer voice, he added, "You think I would, after what happened to Rose?"

So that's what this was all about, Donna realized; the strange tension the Doctor and Jack both exhibited, and their sudden, irrational anger, boiled down to the Doctor's long-dead companion. The Doctor had always been very tight-lipped about Rose, and what had killed her; and Donna had never dared to ask. Now she had a feeling she was about to find out.

Abashed, the Doctor stepped back from Jack. "Sorry," he murmured.

Jack nodded, accepting the apology. He then returned to the matter at hand. "UNIT was monitoring it, which I believe you told them to do. It's possible that someone else was messing with it, but none of us."

The Doctor looked at Davis questioningly. The soldier nodded. "That's right, sir. We kept a constant eye on it, and archived reports, but that was all. There was no unusual activity until now."

"Then what caused it?" asked the Doctor.

"We have no idea," Jack responded. "We know that there's alien involvement, but we don't know what sort of aliens. We know the breach opened, but we don't know if it was from the inside or the outside. We know that something came out of the breach, but we don't know exactly what it was."

The Doctor snorted. "Great. That's a load of information to start from."

"Look, we need you," Jack said irritably. "I don't know enough about existential trans-dimensional physics to make headway in this."

"No, you wouldn't," the Doctor shrugged. "It's way beyond you. It's even a bit beyond the Time Lords."

Jack stared at him, then sighed in frustration. "Don't tell me you can't make headway either."

"Watch it," the Doctor retorted. "I can do a hell of a lot more than anyone else here."

Jack grinned. "Glad to have you here, Doc."

The tension seemed to have passed. Looking around the tunnel, Donna asked, "So why are we sneaking in? We could have just had the Tardis land there."

"Good point. Why the secrecy?" asked the Doctor. "UNIT's summoned me plenty of times, but they've never bothered smuggling me in like this."

"Normally there's no need," Jack said grimly. "But during the preliminary investigation they received an anonymous recorded message warning UNIT against seeking off-world assistance, threatening Earth if they did. Specifically, it mentioned you."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "The aliens who caused this?"

"We think so," said Jack. "We're hoping to bring you in without these aliens realizing it.

The Doctor nodded and without further ado, he and Jack started forward at a brisk pace. "I need to see this message," he said firmly. "I assume it was recorded?"

"Of course."

Both were wearing hardened expressions, and said no more throughout the walk through the tunnel, slowed only by the need to keep an eye on their footing. Sergeant Davis held the light up high as the tunnel sloped upwards. Presently they arrived at a small, metal staircase on the side of the widening tunnel, and Donna could see a dim light somewhere ahead. Jack gestured for them to go up the stairs, which led to a short hallway. At the far end there was a metal door with a card swipe. Jack stood aside and allowed Davis to step forward, taking a card from his pocket. He swiped it, and swung the door open.

The Doctor and Donna stepped onto the platform of Canary Wharf station, with Jack and Davis close behind. The tracks were walled off, and the platform itself was full of UNIT barricades, and a number of soldiers. At the nearest barricade Donna saw Martha Jones waiting for them beside a UNIT officer Donna didn't recognize, also wearing heavy coats. They both moved to greet them.

The officer saluted Jack. "I'm glad to see you didn't get lost in the Tube, Captain," she said, smirking.

"Nope. No problems." Jack looked at the Doctor. "The guest of honour. Doctor, this is Captain Magambo."

Magambo promptly saluted him. "Sir!"

The Doctor winced, but before he could reprimand her, Martha cut him off. "Glad you could make it, Doctor."

He managed a small smile at that. Martha then looked at Donna, and pulled her into a hug.

Jack cleared his throat. "Much as I love parties and get-togethers, we've got work to do."

Magambo looked towards the escalators (which were not operating). "If you'll follow me, Doctor…"


The Doctor's own time sensitivity told him that it was evening, and the middle of winter before Magambo led him and the rest of the group out of the Tube station, but the cloud cover and tilt of Earth's axis made it even darker outside. When they stepped out from the station, a biting cold swept over them, surprising even for the current time of day, season, and weather.

"Blimey, it's freezing," Donna hissed.

The soldier, Sergeant Davis, took his coat off and offered it to Donna, who accepted it gratefully. The Doctor, less bothered by the temperature (although its unusualness worried him; his senses were better tuned to time than to the exact temperature, but he was pretty sure that it was at least negative 20), looked around the block, and soon his eyes fell upon Torchwood Tower. It was dark, and the cloud cover and snowfall seemed to obscure the upper floors, so he couldn't see any damage. Unlike the surrounding buildings, the lights were all turned off in Torchwood Tower, save for a few on the bottom ten floors.

But his eyes were drawn towards the top of the tower, even though he couldn't really see it. Where she died. Since that awful day, any time the Doctor visited London he avoided looking in the direction of Britain's tallest skyscraper, not wanting a fresh reminder; and now, just when he thought he was finally beginning to recover from the loss, he had been dragged back in.

He couldn't look up at the tower for long, however, before the others began to move on, going to one of the other buildings rather than Torchwood Tower itself. It was then that he caught a metallic taste in the air, one he knew very well. Radiation, he thought grimly. Not enough (at least on the ground) for there to be any cause for concern, but nonetheless present to an unusual degree. Evidently the explosion had been worse than Jack described.

Magambo and Martha led the group to a communications room on one of the lower floors, where they found Colonel Mace and Captain Price talking to another UNIT officer on a video call, on one of the display screens. The Doctor recognized the uniform of a UNIT general in the video. Neither the general, nor Mace and Price, seemed to notice the party's entry, and the Doctor supposed that the angle of the web cam was such that the general couldn't see them at all.

"…and you can tell me why you've got a Torchwood agent there with you, or why you responded to his information without consulting me first," the officer ground at Mace. He had a pronounced Alabama accent. As the Doctor slowly stepped in, he took note of the general's overall appearance. He could tell, even from the video call, that he was a tall, imposing man with a square face, a firm jaw, and an authoritative mien that gave him every appearance of a military general, to a degree that he thought even Sontaran High Command might approve; but he also had a calculating look in his eyes that made the Doctor wary of stepping into the man's view. It was like Stonewall Jackson had had a love child with Frank Underwood.

"This is a former Torchwood site and still contains a lot of old Torchwood records and equipment, some of it uncatalogued," Mace explained. "We believed it would be beneficial to get input from what little of Torchwood is left. And we do have information we may not have had otherwise, thanks to them."

"I'm aware of the information they gave you, Mace," snapped the general. "But look what has occurred. Two Thunder Horse marines are dead, Mace, and it's because of this Torchwood agent."

The Doctor looked at Jack with surprise and concern. His gaze was downcast.

"What's he talking about?" he whispered.

"You'll found out soon," Jack muttered.

"I understand your reservations," Mace said, trying to sound conciliatory.

"I'd be a fool if I didn't have reservations!" the general snapped.

"Dr. Jones vouches for him," Mace informed him. "She's worked with him before. She tells me he's trustworthy."

"And you're prepared to take her word on this?"

The Doctor stiffened indignantly, as did Donna and Martha.

"She is competent and trustworthy," Price defended her. "And well-recommended.

The general brushed this aside. "I'm familiar with her history, Price," he snapped impatiently. "I don't confirm appointments to UNIT without finding every detail of their background. I also don't trust anyone who is even remotely connected to that Hartman bitch, which Harkness was and Dr. Jones indirectly was." Martha visibly winced, and at this point even Jack, in spite of his guilty demeanour, looked angry. But before anyone could protest, however, General Jackson-Underwood ploughed on, "If you want to bring Torchwood back into Canary Wharf just to dig up some old buried chicken-shit, then you'd better present me with a damn good reason, or it will all be on your head. Have I made myself clear?"

Mace was visibly angry but powerless. "Yes, sir," he growled.

"Good. I want your report by eight o' clock tomorrow morning, EST."

The screen went black.

"Bet you can see why I left UNIT now, Colonel," the Doctor commented.

Mace and Price turned abruptly. The former stepped forward. "Doctor. I'm very relieved to see you." He then looked at Jack and Martha. "I apologize for that."

Jack shrugged. "I'm just surprised he didn't start yelling at me as soon as I walked in."

"I don't think he could see us from that angle," Martha said. "Good thing too."

Mace looked at Magambo and Sergeant Davis. "Good work, both of you. Magambo, I need you to resume overseeing the ATOs' work."

Magambo and Davis saluted him and went back through the door. The rest of them slowly filed into the room. Once the door closed behind them, Mace said to Jack, "I've sent Mr. Jones and Ms. Cooper to the archive, try to find out all Torchwood One knew about the breach."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "They'll be at it for a while."

Mace looked at Donna. "Perhaps Miss Noble can help them. Her ability to look through records got UNIT on the right trail last time."

Donna rolled her eyes. "Shut up." But she looked rather gratified. Then, pointing at the screen, she asked, "So, who was Robert E. Lee?"

"General Jed Conner," sighed Mace. "My commanding officer."

"I'm sorry to hear it," the Doctor said wryly. He then looked between Mace, Martha, and Jack. "Well, since we're all here, I want all of you to tell me everything you know so far, everything you've been doing."

"Certainly." Mace gestured at couple of empty seats. "You and Miss Noble might as well make yourselves comfortable. There's a lot to cover."


"I know, I'm sorry," Gwen said into her phone. "I'll come home as soon as I can. It just won't be tonight."

"What's happened, exactly?" Rhys remarked on the other end.

"I can't give you any details," Gwen said. "Not this time, Rhys. This time the government's involved, and that's all I'm telling you."

She could tell that this did little to assuage Rhys's concerns, but he wouldn't ask more. "Right. Well, keep yourself safe, Gwen."

Gwen looked around the room, a vast space filled with numerous rows of filing cabinets and microfilm drawers. "I assure you, right now I think I'm safe enough," she wryly commented.

"Okay. Give me a call when you're done," Rhys said. "Love you."

"I love you too. Bye." Gwen ended the call, and stowed her phone back into her pocket. Ianto was at a computer at a carrel nearby, and she moved over to join him. "That's one duty done for the night. Pretty much the only part of this job I hate."

"Wouldn't know," Ianto said. "My love life tends involve my colleagues, so I generally don't have to explain anything to them."

"Lucky you." Gwen leaned against the carrel, watching Ianto load some microfilm into the digital reader. "So I guess we finally get to meet this Doctor bloke Jack keeps mentioning."

Ianto paused. "I can't quite believe he actually exists," he remarked. "Torchwood always made him a sort of legend, and not in a good way."

Gwen shrugged. "Jack trusts him. That's good enough for me."

Ianto returned to work and said nothing. Gwen recognized his sad expression from the weeks following Lisa Hallett's rampage and death, and fell quiet, recognizing that, for now, the topic was closed. Being present at Canary Wharf undoubtedly mired Ianto in bad memories as much as it did Jack, although Jack's connection with the Cyberman attack was more of a mystery to her, particularly this Rose Tyler, whom Jack had never mentioned before, yet her death seemed to have particularly affected him. But if Ianto was going to be tight-lipped about it, there was no doubt that Jack would definitely be tight-lipped about it.

Therefore, knowing she likely wouldn't get any answers at the present time, Gwen looked from the computer monitor to the pile of reels Ianto had gathered, and asked, "So just how far back are we going to be looking?"

"Mace wants information going back to when it all started, when Torchwood One first detected the spatial disturbance," Ianto informed her. When Gwen continued to frown at him, he sighed and clarified, "That was about twenty, twenty-five years ago." Pointing at the microfilm reels, he added, "These are just the last two years before One started keeping digital records."

"You balked just from looking through our own archives covering a single summer," Gwen reminded him, smirking.

"It's a lot to cover," Ianto protested.

"We look through people's histories all the time," she pointed out.

"Torchwood's records are different," Ianto retorted. "The Torchwood archives cover just about everything, including everything in said histories we gather about people. And unlike most archives, Torchwood's didn't throw anything away. They had a huge vault where they store everything from more than thirty years back, which they had to expand every now and then." He shook his head. "Twenty-five years. We're going to need a few people helping with this."

Gwen grimaced. "So how are we going to approach this?"

"For now, maybe we could start just by gathering all the relevant records. I'll look through the catalogue, and you start gathering reels."

Gwen looked back at the drawers containing thousands of microfilm reels with a pained expression. She hoped they'd soon have more people helping them with this process because this was going to take a while.


The Doctor ran his hand through his hair for what had to be the fiftieth time, leaving it thoroughly mussed. A sure sign of terrible stress and/or confusion, the others knew. He was thinking hard, but his thoughts weren't going anywhere. Jack, and Colonel Mace waited patiently. Donna, still piecing together everything they'd been briefed on, only wanted to know what all the technobabble added up to.

"This is wrong," the Doctor finally said. "All of it. This shouldn't be happening."

"I know," Jack said quietly. "I'm sorry. It should have ended that day. But we'll find out why it opened again and find a way to fix it. Hopefully for good this time."

The Doctor shook his head fervently. "This is different, Jack. This thing you saw in the breach room obviously wasn't the same. You could look at it without feeling scared or weird. There wasn't an explosion last time, but there was this time. And the Daleks' Void Ship didn't blast Torchwood Tower with ionizing radiation, but this thing did."

Mace raised his eyebrows. "Then you don't think the radiation came from the breach itself? It came from this… what did you call it?"

"Truncated icosahedron," the Doctor repeated.

Donna grimaced. "I think I prefer 'almost-sphere'."

Jack managed a small smirk at that.

"And no," the Doctor continued, ignoring them, "the radiation didn't come from the breach. It can't have. Space-time breaches do emit a form of radiation, but not ionizing radiation. I call it Void-stuff, which is harmless… to a degree." His voice wavered a little, and his expression briefly darkened again.

"Maybe," Jack conceded, "but if the radiation came from this icosahedron, then the breach room should have been the most contaminated room in the building. Yet it, and the hall outside, were completely clean."

The Doctor frowned, deep in thought. "Yes, that is odd. Perhaps your giant football reabsorbed some of the radiation." He looked at Jack questioningly. "Torchwood had been probing the breach for ages before the Void Ship came through. I don't suppose there was anything else they noticed during that time? I don't imagine Yvonne Hartman was very inclined to tell me every detail about it."

"I know as much about it as you do," Jack told him, grimacing. "That's why we've got Gwen and Ianto going through the archives."

"But you are Torchwood," the Doctor said, surprised. "You weren't ever briefed on it?"

Jack sighed. "I keep telling you, Doctor, Torchwood Three is a different operation from Torchwood One. We were in communication with each other, but worked independently. After the battle, I severed all Three's remaining connections with One, not that there was much left of One to have ties with anyway."

"But before the battle?" the Doctor persisted.

"Yvonne started running the London branch about five years before the ghost shifts," Jack told them. "But even before that started, she made a point of keeping things from me."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Did she know about your association with me?"

"Torchwood knew about my condition," Jack said. "They also knew that I'd been looking for you. That I repeatedly made inquiries about your whereabouts. But I never briefed them on how I knew you."

"I don't imagine it would have been to your advantage if they did," Mace said.

"To put it mildly," agreed Jack. "All the same, Hartman would have known enough to not entirely trust me. And anyway, I had opposed too many of Torchwood's past decisions. Not to mention, she was always as arrogant as she was ambitious."

Donna snorted. "Sounds like quite the work relationship. And they still kept you on all that time?"

"What can I say? I'm too useful an asset," Jack boasted. "Point is, Hartman knew full well what I thought of her. So you can imagine that she did not keep me in the loop. She certainly did not brief Torchwood Three about the appearance of the Void Ship or her plans for it." He shook his head, angry at the memory. "When the ghost shifts started, all she told us was that it was a side effect of Torchwood One's own research, and that the situation was under control. Her way of telling us to butt out, of course."

"Did you believe her?" asked the Doctor.

Jack considered his answer. "No," he said after a minute. "Or rather, I didn't believe she was as in control as she thought." He looked at the Doctor with a mildly pleading expression. "I tried, you know. I did my best to monitor the situation, figure out what was going on. But Hartman blocked most of my efforts. Most of what I do know is what you yourself told me."

The Doctor nodded, accepting this. "Jack, you didn't know Rose and I would get caught up in it."

Jack said nothing, but he still looked regretful.

"So… this breach," Donna said, steering the conversation back to the matter at hand. "It should have been closed, right? And suddenly it's open again and something pops out. I don't suppose anyone saw it happen?"

She looked at Jack and Mace curiously, and was very satisfied when they gave each other significant looks.

"Yes," Jack said quietly. "Someone did."


The Doctor, Donna, Jack, and Mace watched as Martha and Dr. Rosas tended to the scientist the Thunder Horse marines had dragged out of the rubble of the 50th floor. Strickland lay on a stretcher, sweating and shaking feverishly, as Dr. Rosas injected a drug into his shoulder.

"How much radiation did he absorb?" asked the Doctor, watching Martha wipe Strickland's sweating forehead.

"It's hard to say," answered Dr. Rosas. "His lymphocyte count is at 1,400 after nine hours, which indicates a very severe dosage. At least six or seven hundred rads, possibly more."

The Doctor looked at Strickland with a pitying expression. "How long would you say he has?"

"A few weeks at most," Rosas answered quietly. "If he absorbed more than eight hundred we're looking at two to fourteen days."

Mace nodded grimly. "I need to question him, Dr. Rosas. Is he up for it?"

Rosas hesitated. "It's not ideal."

"I'm not blind," snapped Mace. "I can see how sick he is. But by the sound of it, he's not going to get better."

"He might enter a latency period in the next couple of days," Rosas told him, "in which he might appear quite well. To be followed, unfortunately, by a steep decline he's not likely to recover from. That latency period would be the best time to interrogate him."

"I see," said Mace. "And if he absorbed a thousand rads or more?"

Dr. Rosas hesitated. "Then he might not have a latency period at all," he admitted. "If he does, it will only last a few hours."

Mace nodded, fully decided. "Then wake him up."


A/N: Depending on how much work my classes give me, I expect Chapter 7 will be up in about one or two weeks. In which the Doctor does some investigating, and visits the site of Rose's death.