"In the 60's there lived a little girl named Kathy.

"She was smart, beautiful, always chewing her nails, though her mom told her not to. Mom's name was Phyllis. She just finished school and was enjoying her summer vacation when there was a knock at her front door. Her mom wasn't in, she was buying groceries down the street, she had no brothers or sisters and her dad had died when she was three, so she was all alone when a man showed up at her doorstep. She was barely thirteen years old and he took her."

"Where?" Gwen asked.

Jack looked at her, without tears in his eyes, just this hollow, like an old dead tree.

"I don't know. I never saw her again. Her mother never forgave me for losing her. She always insisted I knew what happened to her, but wouldn't tell her."

"Did you?" Gwen said, locking her gaze onto Jack's gaze, so as not to miss any blink or reaction in those ageless, immortal eyes.

"Yes." Jack simply said. "They dissected her. An Encarian science vessel visiting Earth wanted to buy a specimen, so he gave it to them."

"Who did?"

Jack paused for dramatic effect.

"Crane." he said, but Gwen wouldn't stop there.

"But I've heard that name before. There's something about that name…"

"Parallel Earth." Jack cut in.


"It's him, isn't it?" Mickey spoke excited as he ran back in the rain after Jack. "I knew it was him! I just knew it!"

"Go home, Mickey." Jack said and Mickey froze in mid step, feeling as if Jack had just slapped him in the face.

But he just stood there, with his back turned to him in the rain, looking at the leather strap around his wrist that contained his gizmo.

"But I know what's going on!" Mickey said. "I'm the expert on this!"

"You're not." Jack said. "We are."

"You need me Jack!"

"Wrong." Jack replied.

"Yeah, all right, I need you more! But you'll need my help!"

Jack finally turned around to face him. A blue light was buzzing on his wrist.

"Why are you here, Mickey?" he asked.

"Does it matter? Look, you know where this is going, Jack! Milton, Lumic, Crane! This here, this has all happened before!"

Jack straightened his back to look Mickey in the eyes. There was not a hint of anger in his voice as he said to him:

"You have no idea."

Without a moment's hesitation he hunched to fit inside the SUV and slammed the door shut.

Rhys and Gwen stood underneath the entrance to the police station, holding hands and looking into each other's eyes.

"I shouldn't have come, should I?" Rhys said. "It was stupid. I shouldn't have even thought it."

She placed her finger on his mouth, in a both blunt and gentle gesture.

"I have to go, and I'm leaving you here, because I don't want you to get hurt."

Rhys knew.

"You know that, right?"

"I miss you, Gwen." Rhys suddenly said. "I just do. This was supposed to be our day, remember? Sitting in our jimjams, making toast. You love that."

Gwen felt the clock ticking inside of her mind, constantly reminding her that a young woman's life was at stake, and every moment they spent talking here could mean losing her.

She gazed fiercely in Rhys' eyes with all the love in her heart, yet she could not restrain herself from saying this:

"I love this." she said, as the rain kept pouring in on the small glass roof above their head, a rattling muffled in the dark. "Doing this."

She squeezed his hand.

"I'll make it up to you. I swear. I love you."

"I love you too."

"You know where the car is, yeah?" she asked as she walked into the rain.

"I'll find it!" Rhys said, putting his hands into his pockets as he suddenly felt the cold, wet weather.

As the blue light fired up, the SUV's tires raged through the dark wet streets in brutal red terror.

4 hours later

The cold, hard wind was buzzing in their ears. The early sunrise gifted the world a pale white heaven, and the air itself was still dark and blue, and filled with shadow, as if morning itself was still waking up from a dark and endless night.

Their shoes sunk into the moist, wet mud. The grass danced in the wind, like a green ocean, reflecting sunlight in its lingering raindrops, spread over the land like a blanket of drops.

And whenever the wind blew it blew some of these drops into their faces, to wake them up if they would've gone to sleep that night.

"Over there!" Jack cried as he narrowed the sensor range on his wrist device, to focus on the screaming signal, bleeping in the morning light.

Ianto stumbled down the grassy hill and into the sunlight, seeing Gwen search the ground on the other side, but there was nothing to see but grass, dirt, and water, lots of water.

Persistent and refusing to give up, he finally glanced at something silver in the mud, in the direction Jack pointed to. It was Abigail's cell phone.

He picked it up and raised it into the air.

"Found it." he spoke.

But they lost Abigail.

Jack closed the leather strap around his wrist device and when Gwen and Ianto approached him again, standing by the side of the road, he joined their stride to walk back to the SUV.

"We never should have let her go." Gwen said.

"We didn't know." Ianto said, defending Jack.

"We should have." Gwen spoke tired.

Jack's pea coat flapped around in the hard wind, and Gwen's hair was uncontrollable.

"We need to get back control of the game." Jack said. "Now, before we lose everything."

"She could have lied to us. Maybe she knew all along." Ianto said.

"Nobody could've thrown that far." Gwen said, referring to the cell phone and where they found it.

"Well, if she doesn't know, then who does?" Jack asked as they approached the SUV.

The sun reflected coldly in the SUV's black exterior.

"Someone knows. They all seem to know something we don't. Whatever Abigail knows, or whatever they think she knows, I want to know."

"How?" Ianto said. "Without Owen?"

"Is there a connection between the fire of last night and Lumic?"

"You mean the demonic disciples and the disabled doctor?" Jack said.

"Owen." Ianto said. "It has to be Owen."

They opened the trunk of the SUV and looked down upon the white plastic bag within.

When they zipped it open, Joseph Milton's white corpse gazed back at them, but wasn't moving.

"I would not stop for death…" Ianto said and Gwen and Jack looked at him.