Nine

Crackling electric current leaped along the steel rods of the sculpture like a seething nest of snakes, and Rose knew it was too late for the President to move away. But the Doctor was there, something flying out of his hand. It slid across the platform floor just as the electricity arced down the arm of the sculpture in a writhing blue bolt.

But instead of shooting straight down into the metal floor of the platform, the bolt zigzagged through the air and towards the device the Doctor had thrown.

Through the stunned silence that followed, Rose was already on the move.

The Doctor meanwhile hopped up onto the platform. "You all right, Madame President?"

"Yes. Thank you," she managed though her gazed was fixed on the small grey device on the floor as sparks shot out of it along with a wispy tendrils of smoke. "Now what precisely just happened?"

"Oh nothing much," the Doctor replied with a grin. "Just saved your life from some sort of massive bio-electrical feedback." He waved his hand above the device to clear the smoke and then reached for it. It spat a cluster of angry sparks and he jerked his hand back. "Ooh," he said and sucked on a singed finger. "Dimensional transporter. I switched the power cell to charge mode so it absorbed the electricity. Looks like it's overloaded the circuits, though."

"I see," Harriet said, while appearing entirely puzzled. Her security detail was already moving in and Rose had to flash her Torchwood credentials before they would let her onto the platform where the Doctor was just reaching out for the dimensional transporter again. This time there were no sparks. Instead, his fingers brushed the surface of the device and a flash of light enveloped him. And he was gone.

"Doctor!" Rose called even as she stumbled up the platform steps in her high heels. The flash was burned into her corneas, a white afterimage. Blinking furiously to try to clear her vision, it took Rose a moment to realize that while the Doctor was gone, the dimensional transporter was still resting on the platform floor. She stopped dead and stared at it.

Behind her, she could hear questions, someone–Harriet Jones or maybe Goddard–asking what had just happened. But all Rose could think was that the Doctor–the Doctor whom she had looked into the TARDIS's heart to save, crossed dimensions to find again, who'd stood on the beach, half-human, and offered her his life, her Doctor–was stranded out there. Somewhere. All alone.

Kneeling, she reached under the hem of her dress and tried to remove her own dimensional transporter, which was strapped to her leg, just above her knee. Dinner jackets had pockets. Dresses did not. She hoped she wasn't giving the onlookers too much of a show as she fumbled with the straps with fingers that trembled in spite of herself. Biting her lip, she concentrated on releasing the plastic snaps that held the straps together. Why couldn't it have been velcro?

Muttering several choice curses, Rose finally managed to release the straps and free the device. She didn't stop to explain as she shot to her feet and pressed the big yellow button. "I'm coming, Doctor."

ooo

Rose did not register her surroundings. All she could see was the Doctor, his unlikely hair ruffled, his hands stuffed into his dinner jacket's pockets, his gaze fixed upwards at the sky.

Relief surged through her. "Doctor!" she called, racing towards him. He turned, his face lighting up as he saw her. She ran into his open arms and hugged him fiercely, relieved to feel the warmth of him against her, and the thrum of his single human heart. "Were you waiting long?" she asked, face buried in his neck.

"Just a few minutes. The energy overflow from the transporter's battery expanded the dimensional vortex. Nasty little surprise, but I figured you'd come and fetch me home."

She drew back to look at him, holding his face in her hands. "I always do."

A little crinkle appeared above the bridge of his nose. "You managed to get your dimensional transporter from the leg holster?"

"I did, but I'll be lucky if the President and half of London society didn't get a look at my knickers while I was at it."

The Doctor's arms tightened around her waist. "I'm fairly certain I'm the only one who should get to see those."

"You'll get to see a lot more than that if we ever get home," Rose said and winked.

The Doctor heaved a dramatic sigh. "It'll be at least half an hour before that happens. I should've worked on reducing the transporter's charge time."

Rose nodded and took hold of his hand as they drew apart. "Right then. So where are–" And then she looked up at the sky. "Oh."

Instead of the blotchy grey-black dome of a London night, the sky was alight with gaseous swirls or purple and green. Suspended in the cascades of colour, several huge orbs loomed overhead. "Oh my God," Rose whispered. "We're..."

"In the Medusa Cascade." He nodded vaguely as he stared up at the sky.

Rose's stomach lurched. The last time she had stood under that sky she had seen the Doctor struck down by a Dalek. This time she did not have a huge gun and he didn't have any spare regenerations to use up. "We shouldn't stay in the open," she said, tugging him along. "The Daleks–"

"They've been and gone," the Doctor said, nonchalant as ever. "But there's something else here. "I can taste it!" He popped his index finger into his mouth and then held it up as if trying to check the direction of the wind.

Rose sighed and, casting him a sideways glance, "Why don't we ever go anywhere nice anymore?"

The Doctor shrugged. "That's the problem with using someone else's holes in the fabric of reality. It's sort of like hitchhiking really–you're likely to end up somewhere a bit dodgy." He began pacing, looking this way and that even though there was nothing in the street around them but still buildings and abandoned cars, running his fingers through his already mussed hair.

Sighing, Rose hopped up onto the bonnet of the nearest car. When he was in this mood it was safer to stay out of his direct path or you were likely to get bowled over. "So the bloke–or alien or whatever–who's been impersonating Thomas... He came from our world, killed Thomas at Canary Wharf, stole his dimensional transporter and crossed over to the parallel world, and started working at Torchwood. But why?"

The Doctor had gone from pacing to circling, round and round a sewer grate like a bit of flotsam caught in a whirlpool. "Could be for survival. The Cybermen were attacking and then Daleks too. It probably looked like the end of the world. And then he got stranded in Pete's world... just like you."

Her chest clenched. Pressing her lips together she stared up at the alien sky and forced herself to take a long, deep breath. "I spent two years trying to get back here." Trying to find him. Her work on the project had bordered on obsession–she'd known that... and hadn't cared. Her mum had worried and nagged as she always did. She'd told Rose that the Doctor had wanted her to be safe, to be happy, that she shouldn't waste her life chasing after a ghost. But how could she give up when there was a chance, even an impossibly slight chance, that she could find her way back? Perhaps the Doctor had given up hope because he was an all-knowing all-seeing Time Lord and was certain it was impossible, but she was just human, after all, and humans always flew in the face of what was impossible.

He paused and turned to face her, a toothy grin on his face. "Just to find little old me," he said as he straightened and adjusted his jacket lapels and his bow tie.

She laughed. "Shut up." He looked far too pleased with himself, preening like a peacock there in front of her.

Rose held out a hand to him and he took it, erasing the distance between them, and leaning over the bonnet of the car. But just as his lips brushed hers, he shot upright. "Did you feel that?"

"If you want me to feel something, Doctor, you're gonna to have to come a bit closer," she quipped, but he evidently hadn't even heard her because he was peering around, eyes wide, just about spinning in place.

"Bioelectric resonance. Of course, of course. It's right here–no–" He stopped and sidestepped to the left. "Here." He spun to face her, holding out his open hand. "Rose, the transporter."

"Just remember it's our only one," she said, handing it over to him.

He began tinkering with the settings, his face a mask of utter concentration. "There!" He pressed one of the side buttons and grinned triumphantly as miniature lightning bolts began to crackling in the air in front of him. They increased in number, growing into an nest of hissing, spitting blue bolts.

"What is it?"

"It's a dampening field, meant to divert attention from something. I managed to tune the transporter's frequency to match this little hiding place and voilà!"

Rose slid off the car bonnet and to inspect the mass of electricity, eyes narrowing as she peered into it. "Is there something... in there?" At the centre of the blue knot of electrical current was something that resembled nothing so much as a glowing, crystalline egg.

"It's a dimensional stabilizer. Bit like a car jack. Your Thomas imposter tagged along when you came back to this world but he wanted to make sure that this time he wouldn't get stranded on one side or the other. So, he set up this little beauty and masked it in an energy field."

"All right," she said with a nod, "so this... egg thing... it's what's preventing the dimensional retroclosure. But what about the other holes?"

"Cracks," the Doctor said, his expression serious as he tilted his head and observed the sizzling blue energy field. "Just like when Torchwood started experimenting with the breach. Smaller though. The damage isn't spreading nearly as quickly."

"Can you stop it?"

He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a defeated sort of "oof". "Not without causing a cascade effect that could bring down the walls between both worlds and sending us all spinning into the void."

"That would be a 'no' then." The night air was still except for the crackling hiss of the dampening field. London should never be this quiet. Rose looked up again at the sky, the stolen planets looming over the city like angry moons. And up among them was the Dalek fleet. It was strange to think that she was up there too–she and the Doctor. Did he–her human Doctor–even exist yet? Was he being born at this very instant somewhere up there in the firmament?

Circling the stabilizer, the Doctor inspected the dampening field from every angle. "I'd need to find what's generating it and shut it down at the source."

Rose tore her attention away from the sky and her past, which was happening right now, at this very moment. "Suppose we need to track down our imposter then."

"Looks like that, yeah," he said, still mesmerized by the crackling net of energy.

"I've been thinking about that. You suppose," Rose began slowly, "it could be a... Rutan?"

That was enough to draw the Doctor's attention away from the dampening field. "What makes you say that?"

Rose shrugged. "Just that who else would want to sabotage the Sontarans? With the coronic acid and all."

"Well," he drawled, "the Rutans aren't the Sontarans' only enemy–just their favourite. You see, the Rutans function as part of a hive mind so it's not often you see one all by its lonesome."

"What about the lizard thing from this morning? You said the Rutans use them. Where'd it come from?"

The Doctor paused to tug at his collar and then at his bow tie. "A derelict ship. The systems had activated on their own after a while–some sort of fluke reboot. Couldn't have been abandoned that long."

"Since Canary Wharf maybe?"

He nodded. He began to pace, his face scrunching up again. "They can generate bioelectrical fields and absorb electric current."

"So the dimming lights at the gallery–not an electrical problem."

"No. And then it tried to murder someone using the current it absorbed."

"The president," Rose said.

The Doctor stopped and held up a finger. "But she wasn't the only one on that stage."

Rose nodded. "The whole thing was metal so the current would've travelled right through it. But why bother? There was only Goddard and Jake and the Scotland Yard blokes."

The Doctor's expression turned pained. "I really didn't want it to be the Rutans. They're not individuals; you can't reason with them."

Eyebrow raised, Rose peered at him for a few seconds. "You've run into them before, yeah?"

"Stumbled across one on earth–ooh–ages ago. Back when I used to really like scarves," he said, tugging once more at the bow tie.

"And what happened to it?"

"I blew it up. With a mortar."

After all the adventures she'd had with the Doctor, nothing should surprise her, but somehow he always managed to anyway. "Right then. I'll check the vaults when we go back to work–maybe we have a spare mortar lying round."

"A flamethrower would work too. They're from an icebound planet so heat doesn't particularly agree with them."

"You know I left mine at home; it didn't go with the shoes," Rose said, raising the toe of one high heel.

He reached into his pocket and began tinkering with the dimensional transporter. "If I can get the timing just right we should be able to get back just after we left. Roberts the Rutan will have used up all his stored power so he may not be able to revert to his human form right away. Up for a chase?" And then he grinned at her.

Again, Rose glanced down at her high-heeled shoes and sighed. This was the last time she wore something impractical when she was out with the Doctor. He gave the dampening field with its glowing egg-like centre one more glance and then faced to Rose to return her dimensional transporter. Strictly speaking, they were meant only to be used by one person at a time, but she knew firsthand that they could carry two in a pinch as long as you kept close. She hooked her arm through the Doctor's, but she paused then to look up at him. "Doctor?"

"Hm?" He glanced over at her.

"I know that cracks in reality are bad and end of the world and all that, but I'm still glad we got to travel like this."

"Like old times," he said, smiling.

"'Cept for this part," she said, standing up on her tip toes to press her lips to his.

When he was free to speak again, he was smiling. "That part is a definite improvement."

And then, arm in arm, they returned to that other world.