I'm not actually dead! It's been a while since I updated. If you're still reading this despite my weird update schedule, thank you so much! Still trying to work up the enthusiasm to write Lazarus Experiment; I've been experiencing a writing block in everything right now. And yes, the resolution of the cliffhanger is...not the best. But my original version was worse, so, it's an improvement, I think!

Disclaimer: J epo'u pxo Epduns Xin.

Chapter 16: The Time Agents

There were three 'pirates', all carrying massive grey guns and wearing black uniforms with sturdy combat boots. They had shining badges on their shirts with the letters "TA" engraved into the metal. All three of them wore Vortex Manipulators on their arms, and they formed a defensive circle, facing all the directions.

The first of them was startlingly young, appearing barely out of college, if that. She had dirty-blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes, her skin smooth and free of blemishes. The girl smiled sweetly, but her eyes were cold and hard, and April knew she wouldn't hesitate to kill.

Next to her was a man who appeared to be in his late twenties, his hair cropped short, military style. He had dark skin and hair, and was pointing his gun at Valerie, his face apologetic.

The third trespasser, though, made Harriet gasp and April's face morph into one of pure shock. He had black hair and blue eyes, and conducted himself as if he was in charge of the world. And both girls knew him very well. This was John Barrowman, no, Captain Jack Harkness—Time Agent, con-man, companion, and fixed point in time. And he was pointing a gun at Brannigan, smiling.

"Right," he said. "Let me make this clear. We're going to do this the easy way, because I'm not in the mood for games. You'll follow my instructions, or you won't have time to regret it."

"Out!" Brannigan shouted, brandishing his gun.

"Fake," Captain Jack said. "Am I right? Don't worry, we've been watching you on surveillance. Thomas Kincaid Brannigan and Valerie. You've got your children in the back. Hidden, along with the hitchhikers." He smirked, the silent threat very near to the surface.

"You two, out," said the blonde woman, motioning with her gun towards where April and Harriet were hiding. "Or we start shooting, and our aim isn't that good through a curtain. Who knows whom we'd hit? Kitties…kiddies…no difference."

Harriet looked at April questioningly, and they both pushed the curtain aside, coming out with their hands up. "What do you want?" April asked nervously. Captain Jack was one of the good guys in the show, but she remembered that he had used to be a con-man, and before that, a Time Agent. She wasn't sure what he was like back then, but if this was it, he certainly wouldn't be a hero.

"You didn't say they were kids," said the other male Time Agent. The female Time Agent who rolled her eyes.

"Who are you?" Valerie asked, turning around in her seat to look Jack in the eyes.

"Magnus Smith," said Jack. That must be another one of his aliases, thought April. "I'd offer you my hand, but I'm a bit busy right now." He hefted the gun. The young woman gave him a glare. "Grayle's telling me we're supposed to get on with our job."

"Which is what?" Brannigan asked. "Yer not pirates, that's for certain."

"Those two," he said, gesturing over to April and Harriet. "Someone has to get rid of them. Practically walking paradoxes."

What? April thought. How was Jack here anyway? This was in the year 5 billion, if she remembered correctly—since Cassandra was still here—far after when he came from, sometime between the fortieth and sixtieth centuries. She couldn't remember exactly when. Then again, he was a Time Agent, but she was pretty sure they were only able to travel into the past, rather than the future. Otherwise, they could've prevented being destroyed, right? Because the Time Agency isn't around for long. I think.

Focus on the people with guns trying to murder you.

"If you're going to kill us," April said, her voice wavering, "why haven't you already?" Were they here because of their knowledge? Did they want to use it to prevent them from being destroyed? If so, they were out of luck. She knew very little about the Time Agency.

Maybe you shouldn't point out to the people trying to kill you that it would be smarter to just kill you rather than talking about it.

"Because we've got some questions to ask you." One of the Time Agents used some strange device on his wrist to replace the part of the ceiling that they had removed. "The innocents'll be safe enough if you stay our of our way."

"We're innocents," Harriet pointed out.

"I'll be damned if I let you harm our guests!" Brannigan said.

"If I were you," Jack said conversationally, "I'd realize that there's three of us with guns against you with a fake gun and a metal pipe. Really, we have nothing against you, or against them either. This is necessary."

"Why's that?" Harriet asked.

"Oh, surely you know," Jack said. "I'm not expecting you to do the right thing on your own. But you've got to realize why it's got to be done? No? Don't pretend we didn't hear you talking, you-know-who doing you-know-what. Paradox detectors going off the wall—it took a while to hack the vortex manipulators to stop trying to teleport us away. You know very well your knowledge is dangerous."

"So, you're going to remove it," April said, her mouth dry. She wasn't sure how to get out of this, but she knew she had to keep them talking. "By killing us."

"You didn't say they were kids," the Time Agent who was watching Valerie repeated.

"I didn't know, Parker," he said, frustrated. "This is top-secret, they don't exactly give out information like candy."

"You get cold feet," said the woman, Grayle, "you get fired." Parker gulped, and April wondered if that would mean his death. He seemed nice enough, if he wasn't trying to kill them. "The questions, Smith."

"Right," he said. "Who have you told?"

"Why would we tell you?" April asked, even though she knew perfectly well why they would tell the Time Agents. They had hostages. "You're going to kill us either way, and, and you seem to want this over with, not messy."

"We kill the kids if you don't," Jack said. April couldn't believe he was saying this, Captain Jack Harkness, who had worked to save Earth so many times.

"You wouldn't," Harriet said quietly. Would he? April wondered. Could be bluffing, probably is bluffing. But what if he isn't?

"And why not?"

"'cos that'd attract attention," Harriet said.

"Just another death on the motorway," said the woman. "No one would notice, care. Smith, we're wasting time. Kill one of them."

Jack leveled his gun and spun around to point it at the back. "Aren't you supposed to be the good guys?" April asked. No clear reaction, though she thought she saw something flicker behind Jack's eyes. "Someone could trace you," April tried. "If you did that, someone could trace you here."

"Nice try," he said. "But it's not going to work. Just tell us who knows about you, and this is over. Nice, quick deaths, much more pleasant than if I brought you back to the Time Agency."

"What do we do?" Harriet whispered.

Use your knowledge of the future.

Yeah, like what?

"We're taking too long," Grayle said. "Kill one of them to show we're serious." There was a moment of silence, so she shrugged and pulled the safety on the gun, a finger on her right hand resting snugly on the trigger as she opened the curtain with her left hand.

"No!" Harriet shouted.

"Well?"

"The Doctor," April said. "We told the Doctor."

"Anyone else?" Asked Parker. What do I do? April thought. The Time Agents were serious about killing them, and it would take the Doctor too long to get there.

"Kill them," Grayle said.

"We have to be certain," Jack reminded her.

"Kill them."

"Wait!" April said. Top-secret, top-secret… "Don't we get a last request or something? A priest?" Grayle raised her gun. Top-secret. Jack was missing two years of his memories. What if this is why—going on missions to the future and hunting down people with dangerous information. Until they decide he's unreliable, and wipe his memories.

Briefly, she considered telling him this. He'd believe her, surely, but she remembered what the Doctor had said. There was a paradox hanging over them. If she told him this, to save her life, it might work. And the universe might also get destroyed.

Probably wouldn't work anyway.

So, this was it, was it? April was going to die for this knowledge, again. Somehow this was worse, more frightening than when she had gone to the Plasmavore. Then, she had known for certain that she would die, but it was alright. It was her choice, her choice to save the world, and however terrible it was, she at least had that. Her death helped. It was worth it. But here, she was going to die, and there was nothing she could do. She had always thought of how she would survive dangerous scenarios, and concluded that she could nearly always bargain with them, talk until someone more experienced than her showed up.

The Time Agents wouldn't bargain. She didn't have a way out. Yes, if it was her or they started killing people, she hoped she would choose to die, but at least then she'd know she had a decision. There was no decision here, just death everywhere she turned. Her death.

Unless the Doctor can help, somehow. Or a miracle happens.

"I'm really sorry," said Parker. Yeah, well, sorry doesn't cut it when your buddies are about to shoot us, April thought. Valerie looked like she was going to cry, and Brannigan was eying the metal pipe, trying to gauge whether he could ever stand a chance of beating them.

Jack pointed his gun at April and Harriet. "Is there anyone else?" He asked. "Because if we find there was anyone else, you will regret it." An empty threat, April thought.

"Sorry," Parker said again.

Grayle rolled her eyes and pointed her gun straight at Harriet. "Just shoot them before they try anything clever."

April closed her eyes, because that's what people did in books when they were about to die. Besides, she didn't want her body lying on the ground, eyes like the glass ones on a doll, unseeing…

There was a flash of blinding light, and April instinctively raised a hand to cover her face. April slowly opened her eyes as someone else appeared in the room. He was tall, with floppy brown hair and a large nose, and looked to be about April and Harriet's age. Somehow, he was carrying a sonic screwdriver in his right hand. Spinning around in a circle, he had it light up.

April blinked. What? But that's…

The boy turned towards the group of people staring at him in shock, and smiled. Brannigan took the opportunity to bash a surprised Jack in on the top of his head with his metal pipe, unleashing a strange battle cry that sounded something like a cat's yowl.

Jack tried to shoot him, but nothing came out of his gun. He cursed in anger.

"It did something to the energy conversion circuits. Wow, that sounds cool. Um, point and think, right, April?" Asked the boy. He raised the sonic screwdriver again, and the Time Agents disappeared in flashes of light. "Harriet. You're…"

"What…" Harriet said, squinting at him.

That's Jeremy Rice. Well, I think so, at least. Might just be mixing up faces.

"But…"

"Yes, it's me." He said. Right. So, there's one of them in this universe too. If there weren't too many already. And he knows us. And knows that we know him.

He's not the same idiot who ran over you with a car, April reminded herself. Grew up completely differently—he could be an amazing person, for all I know.

That doesn't change his high level of stupidity, does it? I don't think even a parallel universe could do that. So why the heck did the Doctor give him a vortex manipulator, because that's that thing that he's wearing. And how come he's got the sonic screwdriver.

"How did you get that?" Harriet asked, motioning to the vortex manipulator on his arm. "And how are you…here?"

"I'm here because of the Vortex Manipulator. You gave it to me," he said. "Wait—was I supposed to tell you that?"

"Did you know what those people wanted?" Valerie asked. "Are you fugitives of some sort?"

"I don't…I don't think so," April said quietly. She was traveling in a time machine—for all she knew, she was a fugitive at one point in the future.

"I better be going," Jeremy said. "But here." From his jacket pocket he took two envelopes and handed one to Harriet and one to April. Abruptly, April noticed that his accent was American. Didn't Mrs. Rice say that she and her son had lived in the UK all their lives? There's something here that definitely doesn't make sense.

"You're from the future?" Harriet asked.

"No, from the past. Um, well, sort of."

"Linearly?" April said. "I'm going to go with linearly. Subjectively, we're from your past and you're from our future."

"I don't really get what's going on, but apparently you do. Timey wimey." He shrugged. "April, open yours and memorize it. Then you've got to have it destroyed because—well, just do it. Harriet, April told me that you have to hold onto this, keep it safe. And you can't open it until after the sixth is over. Wouldn't tell me what of, but I've got suspicions. Of why, though, I've got no clue."

"Another hitchhiker?" Brannigan said, sizing him up. "Or are you a pirate too, sonny?" He brandished his pipe menacingly, and Jeremy held up his hands.

"Not a pirate, just passing through," he said. "I'm from the past."

"Oh, you're from the past, eh?" Brannigan asked, narrowing his eyes. Valerie put a hand on his arm.

"He's unarmed, dear," she reminded him.

"How do we know we can trust you?" April asked, shoving her envelope into her hoodie pocket. "And why, of all people, did we recruit you to help us with a stable time loop?" Even if the Jeremy in this world was a perfectly nice person—despite having a completely wrong accent and some serious discrepancies with his mother's story—she still would've gotten help from someone a lot more intelligent.

"Spoilers," Jeremy said. "You told me that should be enough to convince you. And well, you'd know. Seeing as this already happened for you when you told me."

"He wouldn't know to say that if we didn't tell him, would he?" Harriet asked April.

"Unless he saw the…you-know-what too," April reminded her.

"The Doctor says it doesn't exist," Harriet protested.

"Yeah, and he's not the one with the memories, is he?" April said. "Besides, we'd never ever try to get him as help; we'd go to UNIT or something."

"Does the Doctor know you're here?" Harriet asked Jeremy.

"You're saying that Doctor's also a time traveler?" Valerie asked, squinting.

"The Doctor's…" Jeremy's shoulders slumped. "No, he doesn't know."

"And you claim we sent you back to give us these envelopes?" April asked.

"Yeah. That's what you did."

"Jeremy Rice. Your name is Jeremy Rice."

"That's me," he said. "Look, you have to open the first one, and you can't open the second one yet. Until after whatever the sixth is. Unless that's already happened."

He looks like Jeremy Rice and talks like Jeremy Rice. And he's definitely as stupid as Jeremy Rice. But why would we ever get him of all people to help us? "Jeremy Rice's mother lives in the UK. And she claims you do too," April said suspiciously.

"What?" Harriet asked, as if startled. "Oh. Yeah, at the hospital."

Jeremy paused for a moment, and then shook his head. "Spoilers. I can't explain it to you yet; you told me." He looked at the Vortex Manipulator. "I've got to go. Just whatever you do, don't tell the Doctor about the envelopes." He pressed something on the vortex manipulator, and April shielded her face from the flash of light. What just happened?

"Can you explain to me," said Brannigan, setting his metal pipe down on the console beside him, "what manner of people those were, barging in here and trying to kill us. Did you know them?"

They were in the senate room of New New York. Behind them was a stone table with a decayed body, merely rags and bones. Above sat the senate of New Earth, their reign forever over, but their skeletons still lying in their seats. And at the end of the room was a shattered glass tank. The Face of Boe lay on the floor, his skin old and wrinkled and his eyes wise and sad. The Doctor, Martha, and the cat nun knelt by him as he breathed his final breaths.

"My Lord gave his life to save the city," said the cat-woman, "and now he's dying."

"No, don't say that. Not old Boe. Plenty of life left," the Doctor said as he too knelt beside the face lying on the ground.

It is good to breathe the air once more,Boe said slowly. His lips didn't move, and April could hear his voice inside her head.

"Who is he?" Martha asked. Jack, April thought. Captain Jack Harkness, who just tried to kill us. She stayed back, afraid to approach. Beside her, she saw Harriet looking at the face quizzically.

"I don't even know," the Doctor said. "Legend says the Face of Boe has lived for billions of years. Isn't that right? And you're not about to give up now."

Everything has its time. You know that, old friend, better than most.

"The legend says more," the cat-woman said.

"Don't. There's no need for that."

"It says the Face of Boe will speak his final secret to a traveler."

As they thought, April could feel a tickling in the back of her head. And then, she heard the Face of Boe speak. The storm is coming.

What does that mean? She thought. Storm—that means me, right? In symbolism. April Storm, the storm is coming. I'm coming? Where? From where?

Your choice. Your storm. Your moment. Time will run out.

What? Boe, Jack, what does that mean? April shook her head in frustration. Why do people on adventures always have to talk in riddles! Just tell me the truth so I can save everyone!

You have changed much, and the future must not be locked in place. It must be your choice and your trial and your war.

I don't understand.

Tell no one until the moment is at hand. And with that, April felt the tickling sensation vanish.

Boe! What do I do! How do I stop this? How do I fix this? Don't go! April realized that she had echoed the Doctor, and she knew what came next in the dialog.

I must, the Face of Boe thought. But know this, Time Lord.

"No," April whispered. She could see Harriet beside her, staring at the Face of Boe in horror. "No, no, no, no, no."

The Face of Boe spoke for the last time, spoke his final, dread secret. "You. Are. Not. Alone."

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