A/N: I want to thank my two great beta readers Elfinium and Brownbug for all their work and help. You are making this story go girls.
Torchwood 3, Cardiff, Earth 2007
Lucy watched Ianto leaving the room and hastily made a decision to try and sweet-talk him into helping her. She couldn't just let him go without trying to speak to him.
"Wait, can't you stay a moment?" she asked him, using her best damsel in distress act, looking as vulnerable as she could. Her voice shook at the right moments and she even managed to shiver and sniff. "I've been locked in here alone, in the cold, with these creatures from nightmares, and now left in an empty white room. Please, I just need a bit of human company."
Ianto looked at her and hesitated for a moment. She wasn't sure if her pleading words or her helpless act had any effect on the young man, she couldn't read anything on his closed-up face. But then he turned his back again and said: "As I said, the Captain will be with you shortly, madam. You will have your company." Ianto nodded curtly and almost managed to close the door before he heard Lucy's voice again, this time more bold and arrogant.
"Do you think you will ever be something else than the tea boy around here?" Lucy asked, raising her voice, hoping that Ianto would hear her before he closed the door and that this would make him come back. "They will never appreciate what you do. I'm sure they all think that Captain Harkness hired you for your good looks."
It had the desired effect, as Ianto opened the door and returned to the room, looking for a moment distraught and nervous. But soon his closed off expression was back and he stood near the door in a cold professional way.
"What do you want, Mrs Saxon?" he asked coldly.
"I want you to help me get out of here and get my husband back. Then I can help you," Lucy told him, smiling at him with the most charming smile she could muster. Everyone thought her the dumb blonde that couldn't hold a single thought in her head without getting a headache. Well, let them think that, it did have its benefits. No one paid her much attention when they talked; even her Harry sometimes talked about his plans in front of her, thinking that she was harmless, not understanding anything. However, she was really good at listening and observing while playing the dumb bimbo. So she thought was Ianto. What was the saying about still waters running deep?
Ianto just chuckled in response, however, obviously thinking she was joking.
"You want me to betray my team and help you, just because you asked?" he said in disbelief.
"No, but I can talk to my husband when he is back. He can put you in charge of Torchwood," she offered. "Don't tell me you don't ever feel unappreciated here. They take you for granted, don't they? The tea boy that cleans everything up after them, or the archivist that always puts the papers in order, no matter how much they mess it up – and they never care how much time it takes you to do it all!"
Not receiving any response from the stony-faced, unmoving figure of the young Welshman, Lucy continued, refusing to be discouraged.
"Do you think they ever ask themselves how the Hub is so clean in the morning after leaving it as messed up, as a front line?" she kept pressing on, hoping for a reaction.
However, before he could respond to her words, the door opened and Jack Harkness entered the room and interrupted their conversation. He looked at Ianto intently, as if hoping to pull the details of what they were talking about right from Ianto's soul. Lucy wondered if Captain Harkness had been watching them on the CCTV and was skilled in reading lips. She wasn't too bothered if that was the case - she was a prisoner anyway. Ianto, however, was paler than usual.
"Go check the monitors for Rift activity," Jack dismissed Ianto curtly but firmly. He didn't start his interrogation until he was sure the archivist was out of the room.
"Trying to corrupt Mr Jones?" Jack asked, lifting an eyebrow. "I'll tell you now, it's not going to work. It doesn't matter how much money or how many high positions you offer him. He's very loyal to our team."
Lucy smiled sweetly. "Money!" she thought contemptuously to herself. Everyone always assumed that if you offered a person something, it would be money and success. But what she had learned from living in her father's house, and then with her husband, was that where money wouldn't work, envy and pent up frustration, manipulated in the right way, could work even better.
"Now tell me, sweetheart, how did you open the Rift? And please don't waste my time with playing dumb," Jack asked her straight away, not in the mood for matching wits or mind games.
"I didn't," Lucy answered, shaking her head.
"Bullshit!" Jack snapped and hit the table with his fist, making her jump on her seat. "I said I don't have time for playing. So unless you want to share your suite with a Weevil, you'd better start answering when I ask," he spat at her. Lucy could almost imagine him like some enraged Doberman, spitting saliva as he barked. It slightly amused her and a thin smile crept over her lips. She tried to hide it by lowering her head. It wouldn't help her to anger him further by finding him funny.
"I really didn't," she tried to sound serious, not amused. "I heard some people who are devoted to my husband talk about resurrecting him by placing his ring near the Rift when it starts opening. I talked them into using me because I wanted Harry not the Master. The Rift did give a reaction to the proximity of the ring but that is all I know." She decided to be sincere. It wouldn't hurt anyway, now she was caught and the ring was gone, who knows where.
Jack studied her features silently, outwardly looking completely relaxed, with his body leaning back into the chair and his arms crossed. He wasn't smiling, but there wasn't even a muscle moving or twitching in his face to suggest nerves. His eyes were as expressionless and closed as his face. Lucy wished that she could read this man; she wished she knew what he was thinking. Probably deciding that he would not be getting any more information from her, or at least not useful information, he let her go back to her cell.
"Please, not here, not with these creatures again." Lucy tried to appeal to Jack's humanity, but it had no effect, as he give no indication that he even heard her. He locked the door and she wondered if the Torchwood 3 commander possessed any sense of humanity at all.
Manchester, 1973
For as long as he knew, the light was all that his world consisted of. He tried to blink it away and open his eyes, but it proved harder than he thought. He wasn't even sure if he could open his eyes and wake up. For that matter- he thought - did he even have eyes? It felt like this out of body experience had been going on for far too long and he was starting to forget which was up and which was down. He was worried that he would forget his newly-acquired knowledge of who he was and what had happened. In fact he had already started to wonder about that. The oh-so-distinct lines between himself and that DI guy that he could draw a moment ago - or was it eons ago? - were starting to blur again.
"Sam…" He suddenly heard a gentle female voice, and in the next moment he felt even gentler hands shaking him lightly. "Sam, don't do that!" He started to hear the other noises around himself and recognised the woman's voice as Annie's. The other noises were the hubbub of the ever-busy police station.
He tried to open his eyes again, this time with more success, after first squinting against the too-bright glare of the neon lights in the station's med-room.
"Finally, Sam," Annie smiled at him, still looking concerned. She helped him lift himself up to sit rather than lie on the sofa and gave him a glass of water. "You OK?"
"I don't know," he told her, feeling too ill to try and explain what had happened. He wasn't sure he understood it himself any more. It all felt like some indistinct dream. Like a time line that he could just about glimpse but never really reach or see. One thing, however, he knew. He knew that in this place where he was now there was someone who knew about time travel. Someone who he could use to get him out of this stinking time and maybe even away from this whole planet. Then he looked at Annie and for some unfathomable reason at that moment he wasn't sure he wanted to leave this place and this time.
"What 'appened, Sam?" she chose that time to ask and the spell was broken. "The Guv said you just blacked out on them while you while you were staking out the gang."
He tried to remember what really happened after the drums started to pound into his head, but he could not remember anything apart from the pain and the noise.
"The drums, that never ending noise," he muttered.
"The, what now?" Annie looked at him taking his face in her hand and studying his eyes intently. She should have talked the Guv into giving Sam more time to recover from that blow on the head in the alley a few days ago. She was sure it had something to do with this.
He was about to snap at her to stop fussing about him when the door banged open and Gene Hunt saved him from being rude again and burning his bridges this time.
"Is our damsel in distress awake now?" Gene barked the question at Annie, and a moment later noticed Sam sitting up on the sofa. " 'Bout time Tyler we have another shout. For a murder this time an' it's brutal. Cause of death looks pretty clear, but it's another junkie."
He sighed. Just when he thought that his day couldn't get any worse, Gene Hunt had to make an appearance and demand his attention.
"I'm all right, Guv, thanks," he told Gene, before tentatively getting off the sofa. "I might have been dying here," he muttered.
"Don't be so dramatic Dorothy, you weren't dying, just had too much sun." Gene scoffed at him good naturedly and clapped him on the shoulder.
"Sun…?" he asked, looking around. Where did the Guv see sun in Manchester? He was sure they didn't even know what sun was. In fact, he was sure that of all the places around the universe he had been, Manchester would easily be the most foggy and depressing one. Sighing, he resigned himself to having to go along with being Sam Tyler and living in this stinky Manchester place for a little while longer.
"OK, where is the current body? Who was the victim?" The Master felt his head clear again and got back into the role of being the DI of the team.
"The body's still on the south side of the river. It's a girl...we still don't know her name," the Guv told him, handing him a manila folder. "'Ere are the pictures we took at the crime scene while you were having your afternoon nap . We left the body there, thought you might want to see it before someone touches it. We also have a suspect who we found nosing around the body. Ray's keeping him in the car."
The Master opened the folder and looked at the pictures. Anyone else but him would probably have felt sick at the gory images. In fact, he could hear Annie trying her best not to retch and gag after sneaking a glance at the pictures. The woman was covered in blood, and gutted. He wasn't sure, but it looked as if her reproductive organs were removed and none too gently. It made even him want to turn his gaze away. Who would do this?
"Who would do something so sick?" Annie asked, giving voice to his questions, while he was looking intently in the pictures.
"Someone who I would gut myself with me own hands," Gene spat, disgusted. He had seen plenty of murders before in his career, but never anything quite so ugly.
"Did you say you have a suspect that Ray is keeping in the car?" the Master asked.
"Yes, we do and if I wasn't in a hurry to come and get you, sleepin' beauty, before we get a crowd of spectators, I would have had his confession already." Gene said, and almost spat saliva in his hunger as he talked.
The part that was Sam Tyler in him was agreeing with Gene Hunt, he would want to leave the person who did that to the girl without teeth. But something in him wouldn't let him care too much; it was only distracting him from his real goal of finding a way out. Because it didn't look like it had much of a connection to the other murders, apart from the girl being a junkie.
When they left the med area and entered the main CID office area, he saw the girl from the park, who had talked to him before he blacked out. She was with a man that the Master knew all too well. The drums in his head started to get louder again and threatened to blind him. He made an effort to shut them out and muffle the sound, but he managed to only make them bearable enough to not pass out. What was the Doctor doing here? Did he knew who he was, and was he going to ruin it all for him and send UNIT on his trail? He was fairly sure that the Doctor was able to sense him; the Time Lords were always able to sense each other. However, if he did, the Doctor was hiding it well.
"DI Tyler, I see you are feeling better, sir?" the girl asked. He was sure he knew her, but he couldn't remember her name.
The Master ignored her concerned question and rounded instead on DCI Hunt.
"What are these two doing here?" he asked angrily. He could not risk working with the Doctor, however amusing it might be to see Gene trying to bully this particular incarnation into doing things Gene's way.
"You will have to excuse DI Tyler. He normally would have gotten out the special welcome doilies and the china tea set but he's not quite himself today, are you Gladys?" Gene said almost cheerfully. Not that Gene Hunt liked working with someone else, especially not when that someone was insisting that Gene had to hand the control over to them. However, he could not say no when the UNIT guy had patiently explained that his organisation had even more jurisdiction than Gene's Superintendent.
"Aren't you going to introduce them if we are going to work together?" The Master asked, matching Gene's false smile.
"Oh, yes, 'course," Gene harrumphed. "DI Sam Tyler, these are UNIT operatives Doctor John Smith and his assistant, Miss Jo Grant. Doctor, Miss Grant, this is my useless lump of a DI."
The Master snorted after hearing the name Doctor John Smith. The aforementioned Doctor Smith looked at him, frowning, but just muttered a quiet "Hmmm…."
They all thought it better to just go to the crime scene and try to get to know each other later. Trying not to notice the tension that was growing in the room, Gene led the way outside towards the Cortina, closely followed by the Master, who was trying to keep away from the Doctor while assessing what he might know about all this.
Gene looked at his DI and thought that Sam looked a bit nervous. He wasn't sure why, but it looked like Sam was uncomfortable around these UNIT operatives.
"What's up then, Tyler?" Gene asked. "You don't like UNIT? Have you had previous dealings with them?" He looked at his DI, trying to understand the situation.
"You could say that, Guv," the Master muttered. "If you give them the freedom to take over the case, they'll push you out completely. They don't work with other people. What were you thinking inviting them, Gene?" he asked angrily. "They're worse than Litton."
"Well, I didn't invite them," Gene harrumphed. "You think I'd invite someone to take my case off me?"
Their conversation was cut short by the others arriving at the Cortina. Gene just gave a nod and a look at the Master that said later and sat in the driving seat. Wherever they were going, the Master didn't think it was a place where the girls Annie and Jo should go, but they looked quite capable of looking after themselves and with working with the Doctor, he was sure that Jo had seen her share of gruesome stuff. Still a butchered body of a girl was something very different to toothy, slimy aliens. The part in him that was Sam Tyler still couldn't believe that someone could do something like this. The anger that rose inside him caused the drums to increase in volume and his eyes became unfocused. He started tapping on the dashboard.
The Doctor cast a glance at the DI sitting in the seat in front of him. Something about the man wasn't quite right and that slightly mad look in his eyes unnerved him, but he didn't know what to make of it yet. He would have to keep a close eye on him, the Doctor thought.
Lost in the sound in his head and the headache that was once again forming behind his skull, the Master didn't feel the car pulling to a stop until Gene Hunt stood in front of him waving his hand and clicking with his fingers.
"Earth to DI Tyler," Gene said, annoyed. "Come on, Dorothy, snap out of whatever crazy place you have gone to this time, we have a job to do."
The Master focused his eyes on Gene and rubbed at his face, before nodding his head and getting out of the car, just to be faced with something he didn't want or expect to see. Ray was standing beside the boot of a car, smoking, looking at the person in the car with disgust on his face. Chris was still retching on the side of the road, currently emptying his stomach. The Master shook his head and looked in the direction of the body. Unexpectedly, he felt sick, probably channelling too much from the Sam's persona. But he couldn't control the gag that rose in his stomach and he had to turn around, breathing deeply and trying not to follow Chris's example. The girl was lying in a pool of her own blood, with all her reproductive organs torn out of her body and lying scattered around.
"Get me that suspect!" he roared angrily at the unfortunate Ray, who was closer to him. When the Master was that angry even Gene Hunt look like the picture of serenity. "Get me that scumbag now!" he bellowed.
What he didn't expect to see when Ray pulled the suspect out of the car was a lanky man in brown pinstripe suit, converses and a long tan coat.
"WHAT?" the man exclaimed when he took one look at the Master.