TEN
The Doctor was in agreeance that their situation was, indeed disturbing. No-one could be sure which world was the original and which was the mirror. Not even the Doctor himself could tell. All of time and space at his disposal, but Mirror Worlds were an anomaly. If he was part of a Mirror World, he'd feel all things within his world, but not the artificial nature of the world itself.
Such were his melancholy thoughts, but then his ears perked up. "What's that sound?" he asked.
"I don't hear anything," Martha answered.
"You don't hear that?" he said, pressing his ear to the edge of the console and sliding round it, trying to find the source.
"What does it sound like?"
The Doctor made a noise. "Wong-wong. Wong-wong." His voice went high-pitched and comical.
Martha thought about it. "Is it sonar? Like, at a frequency only Time Lords can hear?"
He looked at her with wide eyes. "Some type of radar signal? Only Time Lords… because it's coming from somewhere in time! Or at least from a time energy-wrapped source!"
He dragged the screen over once more. "Cardiff!"
"Oh. The rift," she nodded.
He smirked. "Yeah. Well done, you."
He typed in a command, and the whole TARDIS rang from the inside out. It was a pleasant sound, like a moistened finger tracing rings round the rim of a crystal glass. "What is that?" she asked.
"I'm sending a sonar signal back. Someone meant that signal for me," he told her.
"But… what if it's someone bad?"
"Doesn't give away our total position, just lets them know we can hear. Gives them a frequency to use to communicate with us."
Martha came round to the screen and looked over his shoulder. She saw a line of orange numbers pop up. "What's that?"
"Coordinates," he said. "Someone wants us to land."
"What if it's a trap?"
"Then we'll use our good looks and wits to wiggle our way out."
She shrugged. "Oh. Okay."
The TARDIS came to a halt somewhere unknown. The Doctor opened the door. The place seemed deserted, but a familiar logo caught his eye. A T-shaped figure made of interlocking hexagons.
"Torchwood," he growled. "I should have known. Get back inside, Martha. We're leaving."
"No, please," a voice said. It came from somewhere below, somewhere behind where the TARDIS was parked. "Doctor, don't go."
The sentient vessel heaved in protest.
"No way," Martha whispered. "Is that…?"
"Jack?" the Doctor said.
Captain Jack Harkness, six feet tall, robust, blue-eyed and gorgeous, sauntered out from behind the TARDIS. He was dressed in a blue military shirt, braces, combat boots and a pistol at his belt. The police box shook as he got closer.
The Doctor extended the sonic screwdriver, and the TARDIS disappeared. In response to the strange looks from his friends, he said, "I put her up in the Plass. She needs a good recharge."
"So," Jack said, standoffishly. "Looking good. Pin-stripes suit you."
"Oh yeah, you haven't seen me in a while, have you? The face!" the Doctor responded.
"And your friend?" He smiled suavely at Martha.
"Oh my God," Martha sighed. "You're… oh my God!"
"Captain Jack Harkness," he said, dazzling her with beautiful teeth and bright eyes. "And who are you?"
She opened her mouth to respond, but there was a delay as she further marvelled at the healthful look of her sickly friend Jack. "I'm Martha Jones. I can't believe I'm seeing you like this! You look so strong, so… oh! I'm so glad to see you!" She fell forward and threw her arms around his neck.
Jack, of course, had no objection. He laughed and hugged her back, though he had absolutely no idea why she was so moved. The Doctor sighed. He wondered whether he should tell Jack the whole story… but there was so much to cover.
Martha let go, and by the time she did, she was in tears. She wiped them away, as the Doctor asked Jack, "Did you call for me?"
"Yeah," Jack confessed.
"Time sonar?"
"Eh, sort of. I've been trying to find you for a really, really long time. It took… well, something very weird to occur before I achieved the means to do so."
"Torchwood-issue technology?" the Doctor asked, crossing his arms over his chest authoritatively. "How could you? After everything they did, everything I lost? We lost?"
"Later, Doctor. I promise, I'll tell you everything. And I have loads of questions for you. Right now, there's something you need to know," Jack told him. "Come with me."
He led them across a short bridge and down a metal staircase to the base of a giant column. Martha and the Doctor looked up at the shiny glass structure. It stretched up well over thirty feet, and seemed to disappear beyond the ceiling of the facility they were in.
"Is that the water tower?"asked Martha.
"Yep," said Jack. "It connects the rift with… well, us."
The Doctor pulled his glasses from his breast pocket and put them on. He squinted and ducked under one of the guardrails to approach the tower. He was fixated on a display of readings toward the bottom.
The Doctor looked closely. "Blimey!" he said after a few seconds.
"I know!" exclaimed Jack.
"What?" asked Martha.
"It's a viewing loop!" the Doctor said. "That is completely mad! It's been ages since I've seen one of these!"
"Yeah?" asked Jack. "Well, all we knew was some kind of energy was coming out of the rift and it was being directed at something. I only realised it was you after Toshiko – our computer guru – analysed the destination coordinates."
"She worked that out?" asked the Doctor. "Clever girl."
"Tell me about it. She built a sonic device from scratch and scared the hell out of the government. But the point is, the coordinates led to a temporally unstable , spatially inconsistent vehicle. After further analysis, which took, oh, nigh on four months, we got an actual shape. It was a police box."
"So…" Martha said, squinting. "You used the same destination coordinates to send out that sonar signal to the TARDIS, yeah? Otherwise, how the hell would you find the Doctor?"
"Exactly. Been looking for him for over a hundred years." To the Doctor he said, "She's sharp. Where'd you find her?"
"On the moon," the Doctor answered offhandedly. "So… someone's been watching me. Watching us. In the TARDIS, for at least the last four months."
"Watching?" asked Martha. "So a viewing loop is like a surveillance system?"
"Yeah," said the Doctor, pulling the panel off the wall and beginning to fiddle with the wires. He sonicked something for a few seconds, and stopped. "Only this is very sophisticated. Usually you can only surveille across time. This can cross dimensions and time."
"That's creepy," Jack commented.
"Very," said the Doctor. "But the point is, Martha, you don't belong here. Something, or rather someone, brought you here, and stole away my Martha. It wasn't just an accident."
"Come again?" asked Jack.
"Mirror World," the Doctor said. "This Martha is from a mirror world."
"Oh. Is that why you seem to know me?" he asked her.
She nodded, smiling.
"And even more to the point, Martha, whoever did this used the rift," the Doctor continued. "And I now know how he or she did it! I can reverse it!"
"Okay," she said.
He looked at her seriously. "Are you all right with that?"
She put one hand on her hip and sighed. "What would you do if I said I wasn't all right with it?"
He thought about it for a moment. "I don't know. I suppose I'd reverse the surveillance and see if my Martha was happy there… then if so, I'd explore the idea of keeping you. But I'd have to be sure that she…"
"Don't trouble yourself, Doctor," she said softly. "I'm perfectly all right with going back the way things were. My Doctor's longing gazes are irritating, but… he's my Doctor. I do love him in my own way. My very abstract way."
"Good," he said. He stood up straight and pushed his hands into his pockets. His demeanour grew graver still. "And my Martha… I feel like I'm just now getting to know her, now that I know… I want a second chance with her, I think. Maybe I can make things right."
"Okay then," she said. "I guess this is goodbye, in a way, Doctor. Jack, it was nice seeing you so robust. I'll keep this memory forever. Honestly!"
The Doctor had turned his attention back to the wires.
"It was nice meeting you, Martha Jones," Jack said. "Maybe I'll like the other you just as well… but I doubt it." He winked at her, and she giggled. She was in disbelief. A flirty Jack Harkness simply was not in her realm of thinking!
"Okay," said the Doctor. "I think I can get this thing going. Whoever did this used the rift to look through realities like through gauze, then used that frailty to punch a hole. Then they must have used some sort a DNA homing device to extract my Martha, while sort of tossing this Martha into the hole. DNA homing devices are a dime a dozen…"
"They are?" asked Martha.
"Sure. It homes in on you and sort of teleports you away. Really easy science, actually."
"Whoa."
"But if I just do this," he sonicked something. "That ought to do it. The hole is already punched. All I have to do is cross these two copper wires and I can use their DNA device to find my Martha again. That's what's brilliant about Mirror Worlds – everything can be reversed! Martha, you… I'll have to toss you back in."
"Literally?"
"No," he said. "But the closer you stand to the rift, the easier it will be for you."
She ducked under the guardrail and joined him on the lower level.
"But here's the problem," he said. "I have to close that hole. In fact, while I'm at it, I have to repair all the damage that's been done. It's kind of my job."
"Okay. Which means what?" she wanted to know.
"Well, the Mirror World was created as a result of one kind of big ripple effect, probably when the breach at Canary Wharf slammed shut. That means it's my fault. It's not meant to be anyway, but now… it's my fault. I have to undo it."
"You can do that?"
"I can. I'm going to. I can, again, reverse what this guy did to punch the hole, turn the ripping agent into a patching agent. I can ramp the patching agent up to eleven. It should spread, then, seep into the cracks to repair the shatter from a year ago…"
"…and the Mirror World will cease to exist."
"Once the switch is made, yes."
"But you don't know which world is the original, and which is the Mirror."
"No. It could be yours, it could be mine," he said sadly. "There's now way to tell. So one of us will… disappear from existence in a few minutes."
"Wow. Are you sure you have to do that? The life you end may be your own."
"I know," he said. "But it's all very unstable. Both worlds are in danger as long as the Mirror Exists. Both are more vulnerable to attack, to void seepage and whole mess of other stuff that comes about when people and energies are spread to thin."
She sighed. "You're the Doctor, I guess."
"Are you ready?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Okay, patching agent," he said, sonicking a white column that seemed to run through the tower like a blood vessel.
"What I don't get," Jack said. "Is why, if this guy or gal is so clever, they didn't see you coming. They've been watching you, they know what you can do…"
The Doctor seemed vexed by Jack's words.
"What's wrong?" Martha asked.
"Well… you know how I said I hadn't seen a viewing loop in a long time?" asked the Doctor.
"Yeah."
"It just occurred to me, I haven't seen one since my planet was destroyed. And the more I think of it, I didn't know that anyone other than a Time Lord knew how to do it. And this… this is sophisticated."
"So, maybe there are other Time Lords in the Mirror World," Jack said.
"No, there aren't," Martha said. "Even in our world, the Doctor is the last."
"And even at that… this is… this is cool, this viewing loop," he said. "Familiar almost. Rigged up in an ingenious way, exactly how I would have…" His eyes grew wide. He looked at Martha, and she realised it two seconds after he did.
"And he woudn't know that Jack works here because he's not been watching Jack, just watching us," Martha shouted. "There's no way he would know that anyone who's watching the rift is associated with you! In our world, Torchwood watches the rift, but they're enemies of the Doctor! That's why he didn't see you coming!"
"I need to know," the Doctor shouted. "Some sort of device has to be used to manipulate the rift. Even from the inside I'm having to do some pretty creative things. If he doesn't have access to this panel, then he'll have…"
"Careful, Doctor, the opposing signal could be dangerous," Jack warned. "If someone's using some type of radiation probe or whatever, then…"
"It's not a radiation probe, it's…"
A spark came from within the panel and blew the Doctor backwards and off his feet.
"What was that?" she asked, helping him up off the floor.
"Feedback," he said. "The opposing signal came from my own sonic screwdriver."
"Make the switch, Doctor," Martha said. "I want to get back there. Now."
"Martha, if I were you, I would think twice before deciding to travel with him again," the Doctor warned.
"If I make it through this alive, I'll think twice about everything from now on. Believe me."
Martha stepped to the side and grabbed onto Jack's hand. They braced for the ripple effect as the Doctor touched the two copper wires together, and began the switch.