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Chapter Eight
Ex Nihilo, Part 2
This is not your end. In this, at least, you and I are allies. I do not know who these Meddlers are or what they want of us, but if they thought we have anything but nothing to give them, they will soon realize. But they will never understand beyond this. It is quite beyond the ability of man to comprehend that there is great value and potential and power to nothingness. If they do not yet know what they have in their grasp, believe me, before long they will understand its power.
Jack stared at the display screen intently, mulling over what he'd just seen. After a moment, he asked, "Could you play it again?"
Colonel Mace, astoundingly still awake, though keeping on his feet rather than sitting in order to remain that way, hit the play button, and they watched the forty-three-second transmission for the third time. Jack watched it, listening to the shouts and the sounds of both gunfire and plasma-fire. Then came the scream, and Jack instantly recognized the voice that emitted it. He sat up in his chair. "There. Rewind it to twenty-two seconds."
Mace did so, replaying the roar of pain from the gravelly, bionic female voice. As it sounded, Jack saw the Doctor watching him curiously.
"Does it mean something to you?" he asked.
Jack nodded. "I think I've heard that voice before. This morning, on the Torchwood intercoms, right after we started detecting the breach's energy emissions… basically, the emissions interfered with our equipment, blocking out almost everything, but then we started hearing that voice on the intercom."
"Why didn't you mention this before?" asked the Doctor. "It can't be a coincidence."
"Actually, it's perfectly possible that it's something unrelated that's happening at the same time," Jack said reasonably.
"You really think that?" asked Donna sarcastically.
"No, I don't," he answered coolly. "Just throwing that out there. And for the record, if I'd really thought the voice itself was related I would have brought it up immediately. But when it stopped and didn't come back on I thought it was probably a stray signal. We get those a lot. I found the energy emissions themselves a lot more interesting."
"Never mind that," the Doctor interrupted impatiently. "What did it say?"
Jack paused, thinking back to the strange voice briefly sounding on their speakers, struggling to remember. He had admittedly forgotten about it and its words in the midst of everything that had followed, but now, thinking about it, he could recall the gist of it, if not its exact words. "I think it started with 'Remember me, in case I do not'"—
"Which you obviously didn't," snorted Donna.
Rather than respond, Jack shot her a stern, warning look, and continued, "It then said something about wandering in eternal darkness and oblivion. It asked if there was an end to it, I think, and then if someone, whoever it was addressing, had forgotten something." He looked at the Doctor closely. "You think it's that important?"
The Doctor nodded uncertainly. "I think everything's important. Since we've just received this, I think we can discard the possibility that it was just a stray signal. Although I'd like to do a voice analysis, just to confirm it's the same voice. I don't suppose you recorded it?" He eyed Jack's Vortex Manipulator as he asked.
"Everything broadcast to Torchwood gets recorded automatically," Jack said, "although given the emissions were interfering with all our stuff, the recording might have failed."
The Doctor sighed. "I don't suppose it's too big a risk to take the Tardis there and get it?"
It was Mace who answered. "I won't presume to tell you what to do, Doctor, but if you want my opinion, I think you should use the Tardis as seldom as possible. We want you to avoid detection for"—
"As long as possible, I remember," the Doctor said grumpily.
"And I suspect that if these aliens are watching UNIT, it won't be long before they start watching Torchwood as well," continued Mace. He paused, and covered a heavy yawn, before continuing, "Assuming they haven't been already, that is."
"So how do you suggest we get this recording?" Donna asked Mace, although she was also looking at Jack.
"Actually," Jack said, "I was thinking of sending one of my team back to Cardiff. If there's anything we know for a certainty today, it's that the breach affects the Rift. With UNIT's equipment wrecked, it might be a good idea to monitor the breach as best we can from the Rift."
"The Tardis can monitor it too," the Doctor said.
"How close to the breach does it have to be?" asked Jack.
The Doctor hesitated. "It is possible that it won't be able to get the most accurate readings from its present location," he grudgingly admitted.
"Short of you flying it there, there's no way to get the Tardis up to the fiftieth floor unseen," Mace cut in. "And I don't think there's any way to hide it materializing up there if our alien friends are watching that floor."
The Doctor sighed. "Oh, all right. I'll have to monitor it with handheld equipment. And it's probably a good idea to keep an eye on the Rift anyway, if the breach is connected to it in some way."
"Good," Mace said, satisfied. "In the meantime, what do you propose doing next?"
Jack watched the Doctor curiously. With Strickland almost comatose, and there being nothing else to brief the Doctor on (as far as he was aware), there was only one more thing the Doctor could do to make headway, probably the thing he'd been secretly hoping to put off for as long as possible. Sure enough, after a long, pregnant moment, the Doctor looked up and said quietly, "I need to go up there and have a look at the breach myself."
Mace looked at the Doctor intently, then nodded. "Magambo will provide you with a radiation suit. Oh, and after she does, tell her to get some sleep."
Jack looked at Mace. "I'm going to accompany him up there. I'm not sure I'm of much further use down here at the moment."
Mace furrowed his brow, looking at Jack in a contemplative (if also tired) expression. Then he said, "Very well. I still have reservations after what happened earlier today, but I admit you two are probably the only qualified experts who can make headway up there. So I trust you'll keep each other in line." He yawned again.
"Thanks. You, however, should get some sleep too," Jack told him sternly. "You look like you're going to keel over any second. Haven't you got anyone to take over for you for now?"
Mace nodded. "Magambo's deputy can take over for both of us at least for a few hours."
He looked both relieved and uncertain about taking this respite. Satisfied, Jack then looked back to the Doctor, and saw that he had moved to the window, looking up at the dark edifice rising in the center of Canary Wharf, its top floors almost completely shrouded in nightfall and snow clouds.
As Jack watched, Donna approached the Doctor, and asked in a soft, concerned voice, "Is there anything I can do?"
The Doctor finally turned and looked at Donna with a sad, almost tortured expression, but his demeanor was equally adamant. He shook his head firmly. "I only want Jack up there with me. I'm sorry, Donna, but I don't think you should come with me this time." He looked back up the window. "This is too… personal."
Donna looked between the pair of them, and then said to Jack quietly, "You knew her too, I understand?"
Jack said nothing, but he could tell that she understood, and he was grateful. Looking back at the Doctor, she said, "All right. But I do want to help."
Hearing her, Mace said, "Last I saw, Ianto Jones was still awake. You could take over from him in going through the Torchwood One records while he takes a few hours' rest, although I want him back up at 0500 hours. He'll tell you what we're looking for."
Looking pleased, Donna said, "Now that I can do."
Mace smiled. "I know. I remember." He then yawned again, this time for much longer than before. Then he shook his head, and said to the Doctor and Jack, "Make sure Captain Buchtel knows to take over for a few hours before you head back up there. I'm going to get some sleep."
It was pitch black in the hallway beyond the landing of the 50th floor. Presumably the ATOs had found the building fuse box because the wires were no longer sparking, and the smoke had cleared. The Doctor and Jack, both in the specialty radiation suits the Thunder Horse squad had used earlier that day, cautiously made their way down the hall, the lights on their helmets lit. The only sound, apart from their footsteps and the occasional clatter as their feet made contact with debris on the floor, was the crackling of the Geiger counter in Jack's hands.
"Radiation level is still very high," Jack said, reading the device. "No change from earlier today, though I suppose that's only to be expected, really. We don't have much of a draft in here. Even if we did, they're going to have to completely seal off the upper floors and the exterior walls."
"Like Chernobyl," the Doctor observed, looking over Jack's shoulder. "Although the contamination isn't nearly as bad or as widespread. You were very lucky."
Jack lowered the Geiger counter and pointed ahead. "It's this way."
The Doctor only answered grimly, "I know."
They continued in silence. For the Doctor, coming closer to the site, even with his heightened time sense, seemed to take an eternity. It was said on Gallifrey that this phenomenon, in which time felt slower than it was when in an emotional or stressful situation, was simply a condition of mortality, that all who could experience death had to go through, even the Time Lords, who eventually came to death once their bodies had exhausted their capacity to regenerate. A condition of mortality, walking what felt like an eternity, to the site where he once looked into the gateway into infinite emptiness.
There is no life in the Void. Only death. (1)
Jack then stopped abruptly as they turned a corner, and bent his head downwards, shining the helmet-light on the floor. "Yes," he said. "There it is."
He bent down over the shard of Dalek polycarbide. The Doctor too squatted down for a better look.
"This was the first one you spotted?" he asked.
"Yeah, although they're all over the upper floors," Jack said. "Magambo's told us since our initial sweep that the ATOs have found hundreds of them in the lower floors and even in the plaza outside that fell with the debris. A few of the Daleks or Cyberman were somewhat better intact, although all were dead."
"Like I told you," the Doctor said sullenly, "in the end nothing can survive in the Void." As he spoke, he picked up the piece and looked it over.
"Careful," Jack said. "It's extremely radioactive."
"I'm a bit more resistant than humans," the Doctor said matter-of-factly. "Between that and the suit, I'll be fine."
"If you say so," said Jack coolly.
"I do say so," the Doctor said. He then took out his sonic screwdriver and began running a scan of the shard. When he finished, he looked at the result. The Time Lords had never had an exact measurement for the residual "void stuff", as he'd called it, instead using the old omicron unit. He'd never used in this way before, though, and had to program a control point to mark the size of the unit. When he was finished, he looked back at Jack and asked, "Has anyone attempted to clear out any of these?"
"No, at least not in the building. The head of the ATO squad told Magambo not to, I understand. He said their position would help them map out the blast pattern."
"And he was right," the Doctor said in a satisfied voice. "Perhaps more right than he realized. Can you map out that data on that contraption on your arm?"
"Sure," Jack said, and promptly pulled off the gauntlet of his suit, undoing his Vortex Manipulator, before replacing the gauntlet and then strapping the device around his armored wrist instead. The Doctor had started a little when he did so, before remembering that while Jack had no reason to fear the radiation except for the misery of poisoning, and even if that happened, he had a quick remedy in the holster strapped to his leg: the direct result of Jack's last real encounter with Rose, though he hadn't exactly been conscious for it. Then the Doctor stopped that thought in its tracks. He wouldn't be of real use here if he allowed himself to constantly dwell on the past. But perhaps the task of mapping out the Dalek and Cyberman pieces would keep him focused.
Eventually Jack opened up a hologram of the three-dimensional schematics of the upper floors.
"Right," Jack said to himself, pressing numbers into the device. "Putting in the coordinates, and…"
A red dot appeared in their exact location.
"That's the shard." Jack said. "Anything else you want me to put in the metadata?"
"Dalek polycarbide, hull of base segment," the Doctor answered promptly. "34.35698 omicrons per gram."
"Is that a unit I should know?" asked Jack dryly, as he did as directed.
"I'm not following any particular standard," the Doctor said. "The Time Lords used the unit 'omicron' to measure the residual radiation time travelers absorb. The Void also leaves a residue, although the Time Lords never really had a separate unit for it. So I just made up a standard."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "And what are you using for the control 'omicron?'"
"Me," the Doctor answered simply. He set down the Dalek piece, and stood up.
Jack did so as well, but still looking at the polycarbide shard, he said, "The fact that almost all these Dalek remains are in pieces," he said, "indicates that they were dead long before the explosion, because any shielding must have been nonexistent."
The Doctor nodded. "They also had no coordinates. I think, judging from what we've seen here, most of them appeared near the breach, but it's possible that you'll find odd pieces outside Canary Wharf." He looked back at the shard. "Even without the shielding, however, it must have been one hell of an explosion to blast a Dalek to pieces like that." He then frowned, and looked around at the walls, shining his light around, assessing the damage. It would indeed have taken a huge blast to do that to even an unshielded Dalek, but, heavy as the damage to the building was, this didn't look like the indicated "hell of an explosion".
"What are you thinking?" asked Jack.
"Nothing quite yet," the Doctor said honestly. "Early theory, but I'll tell you when I'm more certain."
They moved on then, and this time, now that he had a concrete task at hand, the trip seemed shorter. Before long, after turning another corner, they came to the dead Cyberman Jack and the team of marines had discovered. The Doctor paused before it, shining his light on it, and examining it closely. He then ran the sonic screwdriver over the steel alloy, scanning for the signature residue, filtering out the ionizing radiation that riddled the cybernetic construct. As he worked, the Doctor noticed something off about the Cyberman's metal armor, and moved his head, shining his light at its arm at a different angle. Yes, there, near the shoulder, the metal was smoothly warped, and the aesthetic juts and angles in the armor were nearly gone, flattened. He then looked at the Cyberman's head. The handlebar pieces were gone, but there he could see that the circular eye-piece had slightly bent inward, making the eye more elliptical than circular, and the metal jutting on the head had also flattened.
His scan finished, the Doctor read the results to Jack: "235.679 omicrons," he said.
Jack typed these results into his schematic, where he'd already programmed a new dot. "That's a bit of a jump from that Dalek piece."
"Yes, that is rather curious," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "I wish I could have scanned their residue levels back when they first attacked Canary Wharf; might have given me some idea why this Cyberman's level is so much higher than that Dalek's back there. Still, it's something to think about."
"Done, then?" asked Jack.
"Not quite," the Doctor said, and then, eyeing the odd warping in the Cyberman's shape at the shoulders and head, he then ran a cursory anatomical scan, trying to detect signs of the artificially-grown organic matter he knew was woven throughout the Lumic Cybermen's bodies as a central nervous system. But he found nothing. Nothing except…
The Doctor then looked upward and, noting an opened seam in the Cyberman's forehead, reached forward and, using the sonic to loosen the edges of the seam, began trying to pull it open. He could sense Jack watching him as he worked, but neither spoke until the Doctor managed to pry the head open. Almost immediately he saw black dust fall from the opening. The Doctor stepped back and looked around for something he could use as a stool; but unfortunately he couldn't see anything that would do. So he stepped on a piece of debris underneath the Cyberman and hopped up, grasping its head and trying to force it downward with his own weight. There was a dull creaking snap as the head bent forward, but it was enough. The Doctor couldn't see directly into the opening from his angle, it was enough for them to see a black, carbonized mass within.
"Thought so," the Doctor said grimly.
Jack took a look. "Its brain?"
"It's charcoal," the Doctor said. "There's no organic matter left in this Cyberman, it's all burned up." He pointed at the misshapen arm piece, and at the smoothed jutting on the head. "The metal's warped too; that's what tipped me off." He pointed his thumb over his shoulder, back towards the hallway where they'd examined the Dalek piece. "I couldn't quite see it with the first specimen; Dalek polycarbide is pretty heat resistant, but this particular group of Cybermen are constructed from a steel alloy; a unique one developed in that parallel universe, that melts at a much higher temperature than stainless steel, but steel nonetheless"—
"And steel warps when it encounters intense heat," Jack finished.
"Evidently it was hot enough not only to bend the steel outside, but completely incinerate the organic matter inside," the Doctor observed. "Although it doesn't appear to have been quite hot enough to melt the steel, although pretty close." He stepped back, and then looked at the plaster the Cyberman was submerged in. The edges of the break pattern were blackened. "Superheated when it appeared here," he observed. "That's interesting."
The pair of them stared at the Cyberman for another minute, ideas chasing each other in the Doctor's mind: the explosion was hotter than they'd realized? But then the damage would be far greater than what he had seen so far, and it didn't explain why Strickland was found near the epicenter with injuries no greater than a few minor abrasions and burns; although perhaps he was somehow sheltered from the blast. It would make more sense if the Cyberman had been stuck in a kerosene fire, hot enough to warp, soften, and weaken steel, even enough to collapse a building under certain circumstances if the trusses weren't insulated or if the insulation had been stripped off—that was what had caused the World Trade Center towers to collapse, after all—but this wasn't a kerosene explosion. For that matter, he wasn't sure what kind of explosion it was. He'd seen breaches in space-time before; this was the first time he'd ever known one to explode outward in this way. He didn't know enough yet to come to any conclusions. He needed more data.
Therefore, after a moment's silence, he said, "Let's go," to Jack, and then led the way forward to where he remembered the breach room to be. The entire way there, they observed Dalek and Cyberman pieces on the floor or embedded in the walls or ceiling, They moved slowly, occasionally stopping to record data on pieces, although the Doctor, knowing that he couldn't put off investigating the breach room forever, chose to only scan larger, more easily identifiable pieces, such as a Cyberman's leg or a Dalek's broken manipulator arm; enough to get at least a preliminary mapping. They could get a more complete survey later.
Before long they arrived at a large heap of debris that almost rose to the ceiling, although a large opening had been dug through it. The Doctor made to clamber through it, and as he did, he heard Jack say, "This is where we found Strickland. It was about 600 rads in here… still is, actually. But it's almost perfectly clean on the other side."
The Doctor carefully stepped through the hole and slid down the debris on the other side. Jack soon followed him through. Almost immediately the Geiger counter went silent, and they both pulled their helmets off. The Doctor could smell burned wood and plastic, but it was slightly faded, undoubtedly as a consequence of the area cooling down. No sooner had they done so when the sound of footsteps met their ears, and they saw a man in an identical armored radiation suit to theirs approaching them. He was holding a folded sheet of paper in his left hand.
"You're Harkness and the 'Doctor', I take it," he said, shaking hands with both of them in turn as he spoke. "I'm Caldwell, head of the ATO squad. Buchtel said you were coming."
"Pleasure," said Jack. "What have you got to report?"
"Well, it's very interesting, and unusual," Caldwell began. "If you'll follow me, I think I can give you a better idea of what we've worked out."
He then led the way forward, through the exact hallway Jack undoubtedly had taken the Thunder Horse marines through, before their ambush and murders, and the Doctor braced himself and followed. Before he even truly knew it, he was there. With a warning to watch their footing, Caldwell stepped cautiously over the same threshold the Doctor himself had walked out from two years earlier after closing the breach. Jack, having already been there, followed without hesitation. The Doctor, however, paused for a few seconds to take a deep breath, preparing himself for this moment, and then he too stepped through the doorway and set foot in the Breach Room of Torchwood Tower.
Standing on the ledge where the marines had been killed, the Doctor stared in amazement at the collapsed floor, the rubble, the wreckage of tables and desk chairs littering the debris-covered floor below. Almost instinctively the Doctor's eyes were drawn to the breach control lever on the right side of the room; all the floor around it had collapsed, and the lever had snapped off in the blast, but the generator remained, hanging almost mockingly in place by a couple of bolts and some heavy cables. As he stared at it, he could hear Caldwell and Jack talking, but at first he couldn't fully attend to their words.
Then he forced himself to look away, and noticed that Caldwell was pointing down to the floor below, where they could see two other ATOs with long tape measures gingerly making their way across the debris.
"…been trying to calculate the epicenter of the first explosion, based on the placement of the debris and these shards of yours."
"So it was definitely a lateral explosion?" Jack said.
Caldwell unfolded the paper to reveal a blueprint of the floor. There were dozens of little 'x' marks all over it.
"We spent the first hour marking the locations of these pieces you believe appeared here after the explosion," Caldwell explained. "But look at their placement." He pointed at a white line near the east side of the tower. "That's the breach wall there," he said. "Now look at the markings. The red marks are the Dalek and Cyberman pieces we've found, yellow are other pieces of debris. We've been able to calculate a blast pattern that indicates a lateral blast wave, moving eastwards, but where it originated is harder to determine." He pointed outwards. "Initially we assumed that the breach wall itself was at the epicenter, except first of all, it seems untouched, and secondly, the distance at which UNIT staff have found Dalek pieces would suggest differently."
"How so?" asked Jack.
"To put it simply, the placement of the pieces in the building might be consistent with a small-to-medium explosion, I'd estimate equal to ten to fifty kilograms of TNT," Caldwell answered.
"Yeah, that's what we saw on the footage," Jack said.
Caldwell nodded. "But the pieces scattered all over Canary Wharf and the surrounding area suggest otherwise," he said. "I know what you said about appearing in this world without coordinates, but all of the pieces are in a blast pattern, those in the plaza included. The distance at which we found pieces would be more consistent with a much larger and hotter explosion than what we saw… and if the epicenter of such an explosion was at the breach wall, then there probably wouldn't be a fiftieth floor at all." He shook his head, but looked very fascinated. "It's brilliant, even if it makes no sense to me."
"Hold on," Jack cut across him. "You say it was an eastward lateral explosion, but it looked more south-east in the footage. And a diagonal pattern, because it looked like it was coming from the 48th or 49th floors, which is why Mace was skeptical when I told him it likely had something to do with the breach wall."
"Well, that would have been the second explosion," Caldwell said matter-of-factly.
"Second?" the Doctor asked suddenly, raising his eyebrows.
"There were two," explained Caldwell. "But they were close together and a split second apart. That's why it resembled one larger explosion. Unlike the first, we've found the epicenter of the second, and we believe this to have been the cause."
He took his phone from a pouch strapped to his leg and showed them a photograph. The Doctor and Jack leaned closer and saw what he guessed to be a laboratory, although it was in no state for use. Plaster, wires, insulation, and even a steel beam from the tower's framework had fallen out, as though there had been an earthquake. The metal tables had been completely cleared, and the counters at the side of the room were covered with broken glass and melted plastic. The entire room looked blackened from the fire. Caldwell brought up the next photo, where they could more clearly see a circular blast pattern with one of the tables in the middle. The next photo showed what looked like a metal and glass cylinder embedded in a wall, while the next showed an item on the charred floor that could only be the other half of the cylinder, though it had clearly been blasted open. Caldwell likely had no idea what it was, but the Doctor recognized it instantly.
Evidently Jack did too. "Anaxian power core," he declared. At Caldwell's puzzled expression, he added, "It's used to power their D-class single-pilot fighters."
"They must have kept them well protected then, if they're that explosive," remarked Caldwell.
"Not necessarily," said the Doctor. "A lot of Anax fighters are cheaply made."
"They tend to be pirates, not military," explained Jack. "They therefore often use what they can. I've seen these things before, and believe me, if you shot an Anaxian pirate's warbird in just the right spot, then adios muchachos. If you hit one of these with a strong enough force, it definitely could explode."
This obviously meant nothing to Caldwell, but after a moment he simply remarked, "That explains that, then. The breach explosion went first and it immediately set off this power core. Anyway, that's what we've been able to piece together." The ATO shifted his gaze to the breach wall opposite their ledge. "But as for the breach itself, apart from mapping the blast wave I have no idea how to approach this."
"It's a good thing you've got me, then," the Doctor said. He too turned and looked at the breach wall contemplatively. As it always had, it had the innocent look of a blank white wall, eerily untouched by the explosion. Its appearance gave no hint of the presence of a dangerous, potentially planet-destroying gateway into the Void. "You're confused about the location of the epicenter of the first blast?" At Caldwell's nod, he continued, "I think that's because you can't see it. We examined the remains of one of the Cybermen and found its head and arm to be misshapen, likely by intense heat. Now even normal steel will start to soften at around four hundred and twenty-five degrees centigrade, but for the Cyberman to be as misshapen as we found, its exoskeleton would have had to be closer to forging temperature."
Caldwell raised his eyebrows. "I know steel. That's well over a thousand degrees."
"A thousand, one hundred and fifty, more like," the Doctor corrected him. "I suppose it's possible that part of the warping was a result of the blast, but even so, I suspect that immediately after the explosion the Cyberman's armor was somewhere between those two temperatures." He looked back at Caldwell and Jack. "A temperature that high, and an explosive yield powerful enough to send debris all over Canary Wharf and the surrounding area? Yet only a moderate explosion appeared on camera." Smiling grimly, he finished, "If I'm right, the epicenter of this explosion is on the other side of that wall."
Jack looked at the breach wall sharply, the blank plaster wall curiously untouched by the fire or blast, then back at the Doctor, understanding his. "You think the explosion originated from within the Void?"
The Doctor nodded. "I'll need more precise data, but I think you only caught a draft of the actual blast." He too looked back at the breach wall. "None of it makes sense if we're continue to assume that the blast was caused by this new spheroid emerging from the Void." He folded his arms and frowned at the wall, squinting, too searching for any sign either of damage or any other visible effects from the breach, but there was nothing. "Perhaps it was the cause," he said after a moment. "Perhaps the explosion was caused by the spheroid rocketing itself through the breach forcefully, except neither the Daleks nor the Cybermen needed to come out so violently."
"Yes, but that was because Torchwood had opened the breach," said Caldwell. "At least, that's what they told me when they briefed me on this."
But the Doctor shook his head. "I don't think the Daleks needed human help. Torchwood only accelerated the process. The Time Lords could travel across parallel worlds but they never figured out actually entering the Void and moving around in it. I don't understand what's happening here, but I do know that there's no such thing as creation ex nihilo. This thing emerged from the Void, but it wasn't borne of the Void. If it could enter the Void, it could also exit, and like the Daleks' ship, it probably didn't need an explosion to do so."
"But you say the explosion originated from somewhere inside the Void," Jack said, "but if it wasn't the spheroid emerging from the breach that set off the explosion, and if these Void ships don't need that kind of force to appear in this world, then what caused the explosion? Because it's as you said. Neither matter nor energy appear out of nowhere. Something caused the explosion."
The Doctor nodded, deep in thought.
Nothing appears from nothing. When something actually does seem to appear ex nihilo, in reality there always was something else there, unseen. The breach is a weak spot. And something found that weak spot. Something screaming for release.
And almost instinctively, the Doctor's gaze was drawn back to the generator at the side of the room. If only he had taken the right lever rather than the left.
(1) Sauron, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (film)
A/N: I'm sorry about the delay. I hated my first few attempts at this segment of the story, and there was no way I was going to post it then. After a few frustrating weeks I took a break, which I think I needed to refresh my thoughts. Now that I've come up with a chapter I'm happier with, here it is.
I'm not sure when my next chapter's going up (it and a few of the following chapters are going to require some research on computer programming, a skill I've never been any good at), but I hope to at least have something ready by Christmas or New Years.
