A/N 1: Sorry for those of you who have read this already. I noticed the traffic graph on this chapter was wonky, so I'm re-posting. From what I've been told, a lot of people have not gotten a notification that this chapter posted. I only had a single review and I know at least 15 of you out there are regular reviewers! One review was just horribly discouraging.

Anyway, if you haven't read this, TGIF... and I hope this is a good start (or end) to your day!

Allons-y!

The Doctor grumbled, leaning back against the file cabinet beside the window. Jenny had managed to sweet talk Nico into fetching her some tea, leaving her alone with his computer and the scientist under the assumption she was merely checking employee time cards.

And she was. In one of the windows she'd opened.

The elder Time Lord was far from content with being relegated to watching. Now he knew how the majority of his companions had felt.

The clicking of her fingernails against the keys filled the room. "I have six employees who have gone missing this month alone. Eleven total for the year." She chewed on her lip, pulling up the individual employee pages. "Hmm."

"What is it?" he asked and hunched over her chair to focus on the screen.

"All eleven of them disappeared from different places, so I checked the last module they swiped their badges through…" Jenny tapped at a few keys and smaller pages distributed across the square. "Then I went into the individual module files, plus and minus an hour from their timestamps."

The Doctor narrowed his eyes, gaze drifting from the missing employee's identification codes. He poked a finger at the glass. "1183730 appears in every time frame."

The blonde nodded. "Exactly." She rolled the cursor over 1183730 and clicked the mouse twice. Her action triggered a flashing red rectangle box. "And this is where it got interesting." She clicked on other random numbers for effect. "It's the only file Dr. Gregori doesn't have the clearance level for."

"Your tea, Miss Smith…" the young scientist announced as he walked back through the door and she quickly closed out all of the windows. "I mean, Jenny. Sorry." He glanced at his dress shoes sheepishly. "I put a lid on so you can take it with you on the rest of the tour."

She waved him up and stood to take the paper cup from his hand. "Thank you, Nico. That was very thoughtful of you… but Dr. Smith has informed me that we have everything we need for now."

Dr. Gregori's face noticeably fell. "Are you sure?"

She pulled a stack of papers from the printer and looked expectantly at the Doctor. "Oh… oh yes. All done for today." It took a lot of effort not to frown. He very much enjoyed taking the lead. "Jenny will phone if I require anything more."

"Very well, then." Nico nodded curtly. "Allow me to show you to the lobby."

The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver across the lobby at an electrical panel, causing an alarm to sound. The monotonous voice over the speakers informed the staff that low electrical levels had been detected in the Biochemical Lab, meaning their unstable samples in refrigeration-induced stasis were at risk of thawing and becoming a biohazard. At least, that's what the voice was telling them.

Jenny tried to fight a laugh as he unlocked the door to the TARDIS. "I'm assuming you didn't really kill the electric."

"No, not at all." He shook off the idea and moved toward the console. "Just wanted to divert their attention a bit." He reached out and cranked a handle. "A little more creative than flirting, but equally as effective."

"Yeah, well… I learned from the best," she returned defensively. The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her and she halted in her tracks. "Books, obviously. I had to learn social convention on Earth somewhere, Dad." He didn't need to know that somewhere was in the Hub.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably and the central cylinder jolted to life. "So."

Jenny groaned internally. Their first awkward father-daughter conversation had just taken place, yet the normalcy of it didn't bring much satisfaction. "So..."

"Right." The Doctor's eyes shifted to the monitor as he turned a dial. "Off to question the families then."

Jenny smoothed down her jacket as they crossed the dirt street in step, currently 0-3 on sticking the landing. Her father attempted to hide his amusement, but failed miserably.

They approached an old, stone-faced house where a middle-aged woman in a large-brimmed hat was snipping away at a plant. She was kneeling on the lowest of the shallow stairs, made of the same stones as the edifice.

As they drew closer, the pair noticed the variety of small trees, shrubs, and low, creeping flowers lining the left side of the steps. It was soon apparent that she was cutting the spent blooms off of her pink hydrangeas with great care.

Sensing that the pair was approaching, she let her pruning shears drop onto a patch of moss. "May I help you?"

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Padua," The Time Lord greeted her, flashing her his psychic paper. "Dr. John Smith from the International Research Accreditation Board. This is my assistant, Jenny. We're here as part of our investigation of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory."

She slid her soiled gloves from her fingertips. "Marta." Marta extended a hand, which both shook in turn. "I imagine you came about my husband."

He nodded in reply. "Yes. The lab's accreditation status is up for review, so you can understand why I'm reluctant to grant it without further investigation."

Marta Padua's lips pursed. "I'm glad to hear that someone is attempting to hold them accountable." She plucked her shears and trowel from the ground. "I'm going to put these away. If there was one thing Antonio married me for, it would be difficult to argue with my ability to keep a tidy home." She let out a laugh that failed to reach her eyes. "Go on inside and make yourself at home. I'll be along in a minute."

They watched as she disappeared around the side of the house, the tell-tale squeak of a hinge swinging open making them wince. "The shed," Jenny murmured, following her father through the ivory archway beneath the narrow balcony above.

"I suppose it's a good thing I parked down the road." He grinned, hands firmly rooted in his pocket.

The Time Lady chuckled. "You still owe me a lawnmower, you know."

"Faltoon has excellent landscaping equipment," he informed her, eyes darting around the interior.

The parabolic doors had led them into the sitting room, painted in a peach hue. The caramel-colored wood tiles seemed to be as lustrous as they likely were on their first day of installation, a credit to Marta's self-proclaimed tidiness. They sat in a wood-armed cream couch that was likely from the 19th century, waiting for Mrs. Padua to return.

The inside of the house was certainly clean, but seemed a bit out of date. And with the disappearance of Antonio Padua, it was unlikely that his wife would even consider changing it now.

Jenny glanced at the frame on the coffee table, holding a picture of the Paduas in front of their house. Mrs. Padua's hydrangeas were significantly smaller, so it had to be a significantly older picture.

"Can I fetch you something to drink?" Marta's reappearance shook them from their studies. They both shook their heads. "Very well," she sighed and made her way to a chair opposite the Time Lords.

The dull thuds against the hardwood caught the Doctor's attention. "You must really love your plants," he remarked, gesturing towards her foot.

The older woman glanced down at her cumbersome boot. "I just can't give it up. Keeps me busy." Her face crinkled with a more genuine smile. "I'll be thrilled to see this thing go next week."

"Watch out, weeds!" The Doctor exclaimed brightly, drawing an odd look from the Italian. "How'd it happen?"

"It was raining last week and I slipped on the steps out front. They get very slick," she noted, sliding into the chair. "I heard it break," Marta recalled with a shudder.

"We don't want to keep you from your garden very long," Jenny insisted with a sympathetic curl of her lips. "I promise, Dr. Smith and I will be brief."

"I don't know how much I can tell you, but I'll do what I can to help."

The Doctor nodded and took over the conversation from his daughter. "When was the last time you saw your husband?"

"The morning he went missing," Marta replied. "But I talked to him on the phone at the start of his lunch break. Married thirty-five years and we talked at the start of every one, no matter where he was working."

The Time Lord gave her a small smile of understanding. "His lunch break was at 12:15, correct?"

"Yes."

"Did anything he said strike you as odd?"

Mrs. Padua glanced down at her hands and shifted in her chair. "Nothing he said, no."

His face softened. "Marta?" he asked quietly. "Did something happen?"

She began to wring her fingers. "The call dropped." Her eyes returned to stare at the visitors. "He stopped in the middle of a sentence, like something caught his attention. And then the line went dead."

Explosions had always made her tense. But when followed by silence, every one of her synapses went into overdrive.

She tapped a finger to an earpiece, eyes darting around the darkened third floor of the office building. "Is his tracker still active?"

There was a furious clicking of keys before an answer came. "Yes, seventh floor. I'm going to see if I can divert the remaining power…" As if on cue, the entire floor lit up. "Take the door on your right and make a left. At the end of the hallway is a stairwell."

Jenny broke out in a sprint, the gray walls blurring as she passed them by. She pushed open the door to the stairs, barely flinching when it connected with the concrete behind it. Smoke had already begun to fill the narrow space, growing thicker with each passing level. As she reached the door marked with a large 7, her heart was pounding in her ears.

The strongly-accented voice cut through the orbital assault. "First left, second right, first right."

The Time Lady was forced to stop running within a few footfalls. The corridor was entirely hazy and she was virtually moving blind. Her fingers felt along the concrete walls, searching for gaps. The emergency lights were beginning to fade. "Donna… the lights."

"I'm on it!" The redhead exclaimed, rapidly typing. "Just keep moving. I'll get it." Suddenly, a hint of brightness filled the corridor again. "Take that, you dumb alien!"

Had the circumstances been different, Jenny would have found the humor in Donna's commentary. She tried to suppress a cough, kicking her respiratory bypass system into action. After finding the first of the right turns, the orange flicker in the distance signaled the next right wasn't too far off… and at the heart of the detonation.

She covered her mouth with her sleeve and inhaled. "What's the damage?"

There was a short pause. "Well, there's a giant hole in the floor, for one. But initial scans imply he's there. Just be careful where you step."

Jenny slowed significantly after the last turn, tentatively tapping a foot ahead of her to ensure she didn't fall through. "Am I far?"

"No…" she started. "But heat signatures indicate the presence of another person in the room. Jenny, be…" Donna's words were cut off by the loud crack of a gunshot. Silence fell over the comm.

There was a shallow gasp of air, followed by the crackle of the younger woman's voice around the sole occupant of the Hub. "I've got him."

Jenny swallowed hard. "We're going to find out what happened, Marta. I promise."

"I just want closure," she murmured sadly.

Noting her sullenness, the Doctor silently decided it was time to move on. "I'll come by as soon as we find anything." He rose to his feet. "We'll show ourselves out."

The blonde pressed herself against the console, visibly shaken by the conversation with Marta Padua. She ran a trembling hand through her hair, letting out an unsteady breath.

It was difficult to put a finger on exactly why the disappearance of Antonio Padua was affecting her so greatly. This would have been rather run-of-the-mill at Torchwood. In fact, two weeks before her father's arrival, she, Jack, and Donna had dealt with a series of missing person cases. Well, they weren't so much missing as they were ashes at the bottom of Cardiff Bay. But that was just getting technical.

Sadly, tragedy was routine, albeit no less devastating, when you worked for Torchwood. Jack always undertook the task of breaking the news to loved ones, a responsibility she did not envy in the slightest.

The thought triggered a new train of logic in her head. No matter what happened to her or Captain Harkness, they were always able to go home together at the end of the mission. Like all other humans, Mr. and Mrs. Padua did not share that luxury. Traveling with the Doctor, whose adventures had always been heralded for their excitement and joy, had revealed the fact that this was a universal truth throughout all of time and space, revealed a darker side she was emotionally unprepared for.

Feeling a hand rest atop her shoulder, she looked up to find the Doctor studying her with great concern. "Are you alright?" She shook her head at him and he pulled her into his arms. "I know it's hard," he soothed his daughter. "Having two hearts makes it hurt twice as much."

Jenny nodded into his chest and inhaled deeply. She couldn't peg the makeup of his scent quite yet, but it was enough to comfort and calm her. Her wise, strong, brave father. He was everything she had hoped he would be.

"We can wait a bit to go to the hospital," the Doctor told her and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Beauty of the whole time and space thing."

Her arms loosened around him so she could pull back slightly. "Hospital?"

"Do you remember what Marta said about her foot?" he asked, to which she dipped her head in affirmation. "She broke it last week, but the doctors said she could take off the boot next week. Bit too quick for the twenty-first century, don't you think?"

The Doctor helped lower her into the chair beside him, so she could regain some composure. Now steadied, Jenny scrunched her nose. "So you think it isn't a coincidence."

"Rule number one," he held up a finger and grinned. "Nothing is ever a coincidence." He stopped, cocking his head to the left. "Wellllll, more like rule number two." The Time Lord turned back to the dashboard. "Wellll, actually, rule number twenty-three, subsection A."

His daughter looked on with a shake of her head as he cranked a handle. "I really think you just make them up as you go."

The TARDIS jolted to life, hurtling into the air. The Doctor chewed the inside of his cheek in an attempt to stifle his burgeoning smile. "And I really think, with your genetics, you should have learned to stick the landing by now."

"I am going to bloody kill you!"

"Alright." The man held up his hands in an attempt to quiet her. "Just calm down…"

The redhead sat up sharply and scowled. "I will not calm down. What part of don't cut that rope did you not understand, Jack?"

"Donna." Jack rolled his eyes and pulled a large scanner toward them from its crane in the exam room. "I said I was sorry."

"Tell that to my broken leg!" Donna sniped at him, swatting at the apparatus. "And before you ask, it's the tibia, if you must know."

He resisted the temptation to lean in to apologize to the limb. The last thing he needed was to be on the receiving end of one of her slaps. His blue eyes glimpsed at the monitor, confirming her diagnosis. "If I don't know, I can't fix it," he retorted, reaching for an item that looked like a shiny black hair drier from the tray of instruments behind him. Jack held it up for her benefit. "Sub-epidermal compound calcifier. Fell through the rift last year."

"If your girlfriend was here, she wouldn't have cut the rope," Donna grumbled, continuing to dwell on the circumstances of her injury and paying no mind to the man in the room.

"I'm sure," Jack muttered. He gingerly rolled up the leg of her trousers. "And I wouldn't have to be on the receiving end of your mouth, either."

"Oi!"

The Captain stopped, a slow, toothy grin spreading across his face. "Oh, that sounded erotic… didn't it?" He pressed the device to her skin and held out his other hand. "This is going to sting a little…"

Donna grasped his hand within her own, taking a turn at eye-rolling. "You do remember my brain burning up in your baseme- OW!"

Jack smirked, disentangling his fingers from her grip. He patted her shin. "Good as new." She eyed him suspiciously. "Hop down and see for yourself."

Donna hesitantly extricated herself from the cold metal, lowering herself until one of her black pumps connected with the floor. She delicately set her left leg beside it, testing its weight-baring ability. Satisfied, she tilted her head to one side with an impressed jut of her lower lip and turned to face Jack, who abruptly twisted from the force of her hand connecting with the side of his face.

A/N: Hello again, my lovelies. I'm so sorry for the delay in posting. As you know, law school started back up for me a few weeks ago and I'm trying to keep up. I finally got a little break after finishing a major aspect of a project this past weekend, so here you are!

I'm thinking of going back and naming the chapter, like I would name an episode. Obviously, some will feature Parts 1-3 because of the way the chapters fall, but I already have named some in my head! What do you think of that idea?

I know a lot of you miss Jack, so I thought we'd take a little peek at what he's up to at the moment. As you can see, he's got his hands a bit full with Donna.

The next chapter is going to wrap up this adventure for the Doctor and Jenny. Have you guessed the alien yet? It might be a little hard until you find out the root of the "coincidence." Here's a hint: It's an alien that they have encountered before in New!Who. If you guess it right, you're going to win a cameo in the next adventure!

Surprisingly, not a lot of you showed up to review this one. :-/ Not quite sure what I'm doing wrong. Perhaps, I should start posting late at night, my time in the US, so it's mid-morning, early afternoon in the UK and everyone can read it when they come home from work and/or school. Hmm. I'm totally stumped.

If you are feeling like something is missing in the story, or just not quite right, let me know. I'm always open to constructive criticism. I hope it's not the absence of Captain Harkness, though I do miss writing him. Everyone was dying for Ten to enter stage TARDIS! Though, I don't want to torture you like the Moff does! That's why you're going to see little flashbacks and mentions of him here and there.

On a side note… BLOODY HELL, 300+ reviews. You all rock!

AnyWHO… onto the review replies!

Web of Obsidian – I'm just done. I love Sherlock. I love John. I love Sherlolly. I love this show that tortures me with all of these feelings. ACH. And thank you so much for your lovely compliments. I'm glad you think that Jenny and the Doctor are true to the show!

Saint Ginger – Thanks!

Thetimeladyneverfound – Oh, it's more than alright. I hope you had a fun time! I'm a little bit jealous! :-D

DoctorWhotaliaandtheOlympian s – Was that as hard to write for you as it is for me to spell your handle properly? Haha!

KLR – Aww, thank you, my dear. No Jack quite yet, though I think he'll come back sooner than I originally planned. Because I miss him. A lot. But I am toying around with a little Wibbly Wobbly, Timey Wimey magic. Just a bit.

LynnO.o – No worries, I've seen some pretty bad autocorrects and that's not even in the top 100. I have seen all of the manips… and the gifs… and worse, the drawings. Dear God, my eyes. And I'm so glad you like their adventure! I think there might be one more (that we see) before a return to Earth is in order. Maybe. Possible. Probably.s

Mylia11 – Oh, I know. Poor Ben. I adore him. I saw the Hatfields and McCoys and it was not nearly as good. And Kevin Costner wasn't nearly as good. Oh well. Series 3 will take the cake! The man, at least, needs a BAFTA. Or an Oscar. Or a legit award. He's too absurdly talented not to. Maybe this new Wikileaks movie will generate some Oscar buzz, but then we'll have to share him with the WHOLE world. And I don't know that I'm quite ready for that!

Turtlethewriter – Thank you, deary! I'm so happy to hear that I'm writing believably in terms of the Doctor and Jenny, especially because it's a bit of unchartered territory at the moment. I think there's a dash of awkwardness mixed in with the joy and excitement and love, mainly because she's an adult and he missed the whole childhood thing and she's very much a woman. Well, thanks to Jack. That's a whole different issue altogether! I know they're all lying and being super secretive and sneaky. I'd bank on Billie, David, Freema, and Christopher, at the least. Wouldn't consider Arthur and Karen, at this point. Certainly, Alex will come along for the ride with John because they're now on the same show! A little bit of Jack and River vicariously! Anyway, rule #1 isn't that the Doctor lies. It's that Steven Moffat lies. And then makes everyone else lie! (BTW, if there is no Jack… I'm staging a revolt.) I am quite a bit of a SuperWhoLockian now! Very proud of it, too. The episodes since the halfway break have been good and I'm going to watch on my DVR tonight's episode (with Grandpa Winchester) as soon as I post this. I love those boys. That show was my very first obsession. Then came Doctor Who. And now Sherlock. It holds a special place in my heart!

Me – Thanks, chica! Served up a little Jack Attack in this one! Oh, that was rubbish. Never saying that again. Ever. Lots of missing people, indeed.

Pebbles – I love the Jenny/Doctor moments. They're so fun to write.

Madame Harkness – See! I delivered! And thank you!

VivaWho – Well, if you don't review, I guess I know to phone for help! Haha. Thanks, dear!

Geekchic20 – Oh, you caught that. It was my little salute to Ianto. I love and miss him. A LOT.

Snaptastic34 – LOTS and LOTS of research. And not knowing what 99 percent of it means!

10sladydoctor – Thanks! I hope I continue to do so!

Winchester Lover – I'm already doomed.

Willowwhip – Welcome aboard the review train, my dearest! Thank you for your lovely review! Yeah… the whole Jack/Jenny relationship reveal to the Doctor thing… There really isn't a way for it to go well, is there? I have a lot of that dialogue written already. It's… intense.

Well, thank you again to my lovely reviewers. I hope you're all doing well and enjoying this last day of January! We're having some majorly temperamental weather that is 25 degrees and rainy one day… 62 and partly cloudy the next… and then 38 and windy the day after. So… I hope it's warm and sunny where you are!

Thank you again for your support! Love you all!

Geronimo!

Danielle