Dawn emerged over the unusually quiet city of London. Dorian hadn't slept a wink since starting his shift almost 24 hours ago, and was just finishing yet another cup of strong black coffee when Jack called again. The Torchwood team were holed up at Dorian's flat as Jack wanted nothing to do with Torchwood One at that point.

'We're getting a response from the Sycorax now,' Jack said.

Dorian waited expectantly for the translation. It didn't come. 'What are they saying? What's the response?'

'Uh,' Jack hesitated. 'It's just, it just reached out its hand. There was a blue light. That's all.'

Dorian deposited his coffee in the bin, sidestepping to avoid bumping into a man stood in the middle of the corridor.

'What do you mean "a blue light"? What sort of response is that?'

'I don't kn- hey! Owen! Where the hell are you going?'

'Jack?' Dorian called down the phone. 'What's going on?'

'Owen, he just got up- it's the same blue light! The same blue light the Sycorax used is around his head!'

Dorian almost walked into yet another patient. He glanced up to apologise and found that the woman had a blue light glowing around her head.

'Jack, I've got to go. The same thing is happening at the hospital.' He hung up without waiting for a reply.

All over the hospital patients suddenly got out of bed and started walking out of their wards. Members of staff too started leaving the work they were doing and followed the patients out.

'What's happening? Where are they going?' Oliver Morgenstern, another medical student, was asking no one in particular. He was trying to stop one of his patients from leaving the ward. 'Mrs Giles! You are supposed to be resting in bed. Where are you going? Mrs Giles!'

Dorian was about to go and help him when he spotted Mr Owen, the coma patient from his ward, walking along the corridor dragging his IV drip behind him. Dorian ran across to help carry the man's drip before it was wrenched out of his arm.

'Don't try to stop them!' Dorian called out, ignoring how impossible it was that a coma patient was suddenly wandering around. 'You'll only end up hurting them!'

'What the devil is happening!' Mr Stoker, one of the senior consultants and Dorian's mentor, demanded to know. 'Smith! Where is that man going? He's supposed to be in a coma!'

'You try telling him that sir,' Dorian replied, opening a door for Mr Owen before the man just walked right into it.

'Orderlies!' Stoker called. 'Keep these doors open.'

All those with the blue light around their heads seemed to be in a sleepwalking state. They showed no response to calling their names, they didn't even stop of someone was in their way - they just kept on walking. As far as Dorian could tell, they were heading for the stairs. He walked beside Mr Owen in a huddle of zombie-like patients and staff until they reached the very top floor. Many of the patients he saw definitely weren't fit enough to make the climb up the stairs when conscious, so he figured that whatever the Sycorax had done to these people it was controlling their bodies, not just their minds. Mr Owen was proof of that.

'They're heading for the roof!' Morgenstern yelled. 'Oh my God! They're going right to the edge! They're going to jump!'

When Dorian and Mr Owen emerged out into the sunlight on the roof he found lines of patients stood stock still on the edge of the roof. They didn't seem to be about to jump, they were just waiting. But for what, Dorian didn't know.

'It's like a warning.' Mr Stoker muttered to himself. 'Just waiting there before they jump.'

Dorian scanned the roofs of the surrounding buildings and saw lines of people, standing on the ledges and edges of those buildings.

'Somebody get the news up here!' Stoker bellowed. One of the young nurses supplied her iPhone and got a live feed of the BBC news. 'My God, it's all over the world!'

Dorian secured Mr Owen's drip to his gown with his stethoscope before joining Mr Stoker by the door to the roof.

'News reports estimate one third of the world's population to be affected by whatever this thing is. That's nearly two billion people.'

'But why aren't we affected?' Morgenstern asked. 'Why is it just that third of people?'

'Smith - find as many notes for these people and gather them in my office. Morgenstern - find whatever staff aren't needed up here and tell them to find blankets for the patients. I want at least two members of staff on each ward as well. Anyone left over goes to my office to help us figure out what's so special about these particular patients.' Dorian and Oliver nodded, bustling off to follow Mr Stoker's orders.

'So what have we got?' Stoker asked his office-full of doctors, nurses, students and helpers.

'It's difficult to find a pattern here doctor,' one of the senior nurses said. 'But we've looked at staff profiles and we think that whatever's going on is to do with their blood.'

One of the younger nurses explained. 'We checked the profiles of some of the staff and found that their partners who also work here aren't up on the roof, but then there are some staff with family - brothers, sisters, sons, daughters - who work here and they are up on the roof.'

'So we have a genetic link. Anything else?'

'I think I've got it!' A research assistant exclaimed, scanning through a number of patients' notes. 'All the people up on the roof have the same blood type - A positive!'

'What's so special about that blood group?' Morgenstern asked.

'I have no idea.' Stoker replied. 'But now we know why it's only these people on the roof. Okay everyone, back to work - remember we've still got two thirds of the hospital not on the roof.'

Dorian was just about to leave with the crowd of staff when Harriet Jones appeared on the little TV in Stoker's office.

'Ladies and gentlemen, if I may take a moment during this terrible time. It's hardly the Queen's speech, I'm afraid that's been cancelled.' The Prime Minister turned to someone off-screen. 'Did we ask about the Royal Family?' A pause. 'Oh, they're on the roof.'

Harriet Jones took a deep breath before continuing. 'Ladies and gentlemen, this crisis is unique, and I'm afraid to say it might get much worse. I would ask you all to remain calm. But I have one request: Doctor,' Dorian stiffened. 'If you're out there, we need you. I don't know what to do. If you can hear me, Doctor, if anyone knows the Doctor, if anyone can find him - the situation has never been more desperate. Help us.'

Dorian leaned his head against the cool glass of the window. 'Please Doctor, help us.'

'Who does she mean?' Morgenstern asked. 'What doctor?'

'I don't kn-' Stoker began to reply, but was cut off when all the windows over the hospital shattered.

Dorian staggered away from the window as it burst, covering his head with his hands to stop the glass fragments cutting at his face.

'What the-!' They heard screams from the wards nearby. More distant shattering of surrounding buildings. Dorian left the office with Morgenstern and Stoker close behind, they sprinted up to the roof and emerged into the light just in time to witness a gigantic volcanic-looking spaceship passing overhead.

'It must have been a sonic wave,' Dorian muttered. 'That's what caused the windows to shatter.'

They watched with horror and fascination as the ship hovered over Downing Street.

Back inside the hospital Dorian was trying to help calm down patients, and it seemed that the best way to do that was to keep a constant supply of tea. He was just taking a tray of tea up to the roof when he heard screams from above. Setting the tea down on a windowsill, Dorian leapt up the last flight of stairs and burst out onto the roof.

All the people who had been controlled seemed to have snapped out of it. The staff who had stayed on the roof were attempting to calm people down and direct them back inside. Dorian made his way through the crowd and found Tony holding up the once more unconscious Mr Owen.

'Give us a hand with him Smith,' Tony gasped. Together they carried Mr Owen between them until one of the orderlies turned up with a stretcher.

'What brought them back though?' Tony wondered as they leaned against a wall of the stairwell. Dorian shrugged.

Dorian was finally back at home in his flat after one of the most interesting shifts he had ever worked. The Torchwood team were still sat around on the sofa explaining to Owen what had happened while he was up on the roof.

A loud rumbling disturbed their discussion and the four of them ran outside in time to see the mighty Sycorax ship flying away back into space.

'Yeah! Good riddance!' Owen cheered with Tosh. They watched the ship go until it was merely a speck in the sky. Then, without warning, a spark of neon green appeared from nowhere in the sky. Then another, and another, until five spikes of green laser joined up over central London, arching up into space.

'What's happening?' Tosh asked.

'Torchwood's retaliation.' Dorian murmured, watching the sky above bloom with white.

Jack's vortex manipulator that he always wore on his wrist started going berserk. Distracted, Jack started to follow the signal to a shaded corner of the street. Dorian, Tosh and Owen followed him.

It was a broadsword with a two-handed grip, about as tall as Dorian's body, embedded in the pavement. But the sword wasn't what Jack's technology was picking up. Lying beside the sword was a severed hand.

'Is that a hand?' Tosh turned away, looking like she was going to be sick.

Jack scanned the limb with his vortex manipulator. 'Yes! Aha! I knew it!' Jack looked positively overjoyed at what the manipulator had told him. He seized the hand and jumped for joy.

'What's so great about the hand Jack?' Dorian asked.

'It's his! It's the Doctor's hand!' Dorian's stomach rolled at the thought. He also remembered Harriet Jones' plea to The Doctor earlier that day, obviously he had listened.

'My father's lost his hand?' Dorian didn't understand how that was good news.

'No! Well yes, obviously he did, but this hand is full of regeneration energy - that's what the vortex manipulator was picking up - so he should have been able to grow another one!

'But why are you so happy about the hand?' Owen asked.

'Because I can use it to find the Doctor!' Jack hugged and kissed each of the three of them before hiding the hand in his coat pocket and practically skipping back to the flat.

'Prime Minister, is it true you're no longer fit to be in position?' A journalist asked. Dorian and the three Torchwood Three team members were sat in front of the TV for Christmas Dinner, watching the news, with a turkey roast cooking in the oven.

'No, now can we talk about other things?' Harriet Jones replied curtly. The question "Unfit for duty?" subtitling the report.

'Is it true you're unfit for office?' Another journalist asked.

'Look, there is nothing wrong with my health!' Jones insisted. 'I don't know where these stories are coming from. And a vote of no confidence is completely unjustified.'

'Are you going to resign?' Another voice asked.

'On today of all days I'm fine. Look at me - I'm fine, I look fine, I feel fine.' She did look a bit haggard though.

'Is that snow?' Tosh asked, staring out of the window.

Dorian considered the white flakes descending from the sky. 'No, it's ash, bits of the Sycorax ship disintegrating in the atmosphere.'

'Nice to know misery-guts.' Owen muttered dryly.

Dorian, however, was lost in thoughts of the future. It was a new Earth, everyone knew there were aliens out there now. Somehow he just didn't feel right just going on with his life as though nothing had happened. But then, what else was he supposed to do?

It was New Year's Eve and Dorian was all packed. Ronan would be back in a week, so it was best for Dorian to be long gone by then. He carefully loaded all his belongings into the back of his car. The portrait of The Doctor perched on top of the collected works of Agatha Christie. All of Dorian's clothes were packed neatly into a suitcase, all bar the dark suit he was wearing.

With one last look back at the inside of the empty flat, and the letter to Ronan on the kitchen counter beside his key, Dorian closed the door of the flat and didn't look back.

He made his way slowly through the city centre until he reached the Tower of London. A red capped UNIT guard approached Dorian's car and tapped on the window.

'Can I see your ID, sir?' the guard asked.

Dorian slipped his old ID card from his pocket and showed the guard. 'Commander Smith. I've come to get my job back.'