Chapter Twenty-Seven -
Rose groaned as her mind came too, she hated when her mind was forced into unconsciousness. She slowly blinked her eyes open and saw, in the dim light, that she was in Jack's Chula ship. She shifted on the bed that Jack had placed her on, wondering why he had needed her to pass out. What had he done? She knew from her past time with Jack that he would never take advantage of someone who was unconscious, but that didn't mean he hadn't done something to her.
She patted herself down. Her mobile phone was still in her pocket. Her TARDIS key was still around her neck. Her wallet was still in her back pocket. She pulled it out and checked inside it. She still had her money, her ID that had been tampered with by the Doctor to hide the year she was born in. Everything was still in it's rightful place. But that didn't mean he didn't look at it. Rose knew that he was great at putting things back exactly as they had been, it had been a game for them.
Once sure that nothing was missing, Rose looked over at Jack who had been silently watching her. "Better now?" He asked her.
"You got lights in here?" Rose asked and blinked when he suddenly turned the lights on. Rose looked around the ship. It was smaller than she had remembered. The humming of the ships engines sounded louder to her than last time.
"Hello." Jack said, gaining her attention back on him.
"Hello." Rose said.
"Hello." Jack repeated causing Rose to laugh.
"Dull, but thorough." Rose told him with a smirk.
"Dull, but thorough." He agreed.
"So, who are you supposed to be, then?" She asked him needing him to introduce himself so that she could start calling him by name. It was difficult not to do so, especially since he was her best friend, someone she could turn to with her complaints about the Doctor, someone that would sit with her in the theater room and eat pints of chocolate ice cream while watching 'chick-flick' movies (at least before the Doctor regenerated and took over that job). Jack was the person who she knew she would get an honest answer to 'does this make me look fat?'.
"Captain Jack Harkness, 133 Squadron, Royal Air Force. American volunteer." He introduced, pulling out his slightly psychic paper and handing it to her. She looked at the plank paper with smirk, knowing what it was supposed to say.
"Lier." Rose told him, and nearly laughed at the fear and panic that flashed through his baby-doll blue eyes. "This is psychic paper. It tells the person you hand it to whatever you want it to tell them. However, there are people out there that the paper doesn't work on either because they were trained to see passed it or just have a natural ability to see passed it."
"How do you know this?" Jack asked tight lipped.
"I am one of those people, and the thing is, Captain Jack Harkness, to me, this paper is blank." Rose informed him. "That, and my partner uses this all the time."
"Should have known." Jack muttered glaring off to the side, or maybe at one of the many scanners on his ship. He must have scanned her while she was out and the computer informed him that she would be an easy mark, or something.
"Don't worry, must people don't realize I can't be tricked with psychic paper, it's the hair." She joked handing the paper back to him with a mental message. Jack took it and read the message.
"Damn, you're taken." Jack muttered playfully. "But you are in the market for eye-candy and I fit the bill. Apparently." Rose laughed as he wiggled his eyebrows at her.
"Shell we try and get along without the psychic paper?" Rose asked him standing up from the bed and began to wander through the small cockpit.
"That would be better, wouldn't it?" Jack asked as he stood from the captain's chair, slipped the psychic paper back into his pocket, and made his way over to her.
"Nice spaceship." Rose said knowing what would happen to it by the end of the night.
"Gets me around." Jack told her with a shrug. In one of their many long night talks, Jack had admitted to her that he hadn't really cared about the ship, only took it because of its ability to travel through time. Traveling in a ship through time was much better, and safer, than traveling via vortex manipulator.
"Very... Spock." She joked knowing he wouldn't understand the reference. During his time, Star Trek wasn't much of a thing, neither was Star Wars, having been lost over time.
"Who?" Jack asked causing Rose to laugh.
"Guessing you're not a local boy, then?" Rose said as he followed her back to the captain's chair that she sat in and began to spin.
"A cell phone, a liquid crystal watch and fabrics that won't be around for at least another two decades." Jack pointed out reaching over and grabbed the arm rest of his chair, stopping her spinning. "I'm guessing you're a local girl."
"Guessing right." Rose told him with an amused smile wondering when he was going to lower his net on his 'catch'. Rose stood up, skating around Jack, using the ship's walls to balance herself before hissing in pain. She quickly looked at her hands and saw that they were still burnt. Why hadn't Bad Wolf healed her yet?
"Burn your hands on the rope?" Jack asked her.
"Seems like it." Rose told him.
"Can I have a look at your hands for a moment?" Jack asked, and though logically she knew that he wouldn't do anything to her, she also knew that logically she had just met this man and shouldn't willingly let him near her.
"Why?" She asked him, pulling her hands close to her.
"Please." Jack asked and she knew that he was actually concerned about her. He was a nice guy that didn't want to see people hurt when they didn't need to be. None of his cons involved people getting hurt. She held out her hands to him and allowed him to scan them. "You can stop acting now. I know exactly who you are." A shot of irrational fear shot through her, had she given away too much? Would this lead her pinstripe Doctor to her? "I can spot a Time Agent a mile away."
"A Time Agent?" Rose asked as relief flooded her, she hadn't given too much away, or if she had Jack hadn't caught it.
"I've been expecting one of you guys to show up." Jack explained. "Though not, I must say, by barrage balloon. Do you often travel that way?"
"What can I say, I like to make an entrance." Rose said and nearly panicked when she watched Jack as he took off his tie and tied her up. She hopped that the Doctor never found out this, Jack would be dead long before the Game Station. "What are you doing?"
"Try to keep still." Jack told her.
"My safe word is 'barbie girl'." Rose joked causing Jack to chuckle and wink at her before leaning over his chair to flip a switch causing the nanogenes to activate. Rose realized why Bad Wolf hadn't healed her, she had needed a reason for Jack to show her the nanogenes before the Doctor got on the ship.
"Nanogenes, subatomic robots. The air in here is full of them." Jack explained to her as the nanogenes healed her, tickling her a little. Once Jack was sure they had healed her enough, he flipped the switch once more and deactivated them. "They just repaired three layers of your skin." He quickly untied her.
"Tell them thanks." Rose joked rubbing newly healed hands together.
"Shall we get down to business?" Jack asked moving away from her towards the back of the ship.
"Business?" Rose asked watching as Jack pulled out a bottle of champagne from a cupboard.
"Shall we have a drink on the balcony?" He asked with a smirk that Rose knew, by him admitting it to her, was supposed to not only put her at easy but hopefully get her to fall for his charm. He hit a switch and a staircase lowered from the ceiling. "Bring up the glasses." He told her as he climbed the staircase. Rose looked beside her and found a cupboard open and saw multiple wine and champagne glasses, grabbed two champagne glasses and followed him up to the roof of the ship.
Once she caught sight of the ground miles below her through the invisible ship, Rose hesitated in her last few steps. "Logically I know I'm standing on something. But the fact that I can see through what I'm standing on is a bit unnerving." She told Jack, her voice more shaky than intended. He chuckled at her before pulling out a small cylinder remote, pointed it at the ground and seconds later the Chula Warship became visible. "Right, so you have an invisible spaceship tethered to Big Ben."
"First rule of active camouflage: Park somewhere you'll remember." Jack informed her before popping open the champagne causing Rose to give out a small squeak of surprise. As Rose watched Jack pour the champagne, she couldn't help but wonder what the Doctor was doing at the moment and how worried he had to be. Guilt flooded her. Here she was joking and having fun with the gorgeous looking Jack Harkness while her Doctor (that doubted how sexy he was) was out there running around a bomb riddled London looking for her.
Rose allowed herself a few sips of the champagne before she got to business. "It's getting a bit late. I should really be getting back to my partner." She told Jack, his eyes darkened in worry at the mention of her 'partner'. Rose knew that he wasn't jealous of her 'partner' that he hadn't meet, but was worried that his easy mark was about to leave before he could reel her in.
"We're discussing business." Jack told her.
"This isn't business, this is champagne." Rose pointed out with a small laugh.
"I try never to discuss business with a clear head." Jack told her. Translation: He tried to never discuss business while his mark had a clear head, made it easier to reel them in. Rose knew that Jack had some form of drug that he always took to keep his head clear of alcohol. Rose looked off into the distance as a bomb fell, wondering where in the city the Doctor was. "Are you traveling alone?"
"You already know that I have a partner." Rose told him with a small smirk.
"Ah, but do I really? You've only mentioned this 'partner' of yours a few times." Jack pointed out.
"I'm not traveling alone, Captain." Rose informed him.
"Are you authorized to negotiate?" Jack asked causing Rose to smirk.
"What would we be negotiating?" Rose asked and Jack smirked, his line had been cast and she had appeared to began nibbling at it.
"I have something for the Time Agency. Something they'd like to buy. Are you empowered to make payment?" Jack asked her.
"I'm not empowered to make that decision, I'm just the pretty face. You should really be talking to my partner: Doctor Spock." Rose told him knowing that it was time to get back to the Doctor. "Do you have the time?" Jack sighed in annoyance realizing that he had wasted his time on her before pulling out that cylinder remote and pointed it at Big Ben, lighting it up. "Right, forgot that was there."
"So, would this partner of your be mad if we shared a dance?" Jack asked quickly changing tactics. Rose could practically see his mind turning on how to get them to bite his bait. Would she be able to convince this Doctor Spock to buy the Chula Ambulance? Was she the voice of reason of the group? How close was she and this Doctor Spock? Was this Doctor Spock the person she was taken by?
"Depends on the dance." Rose told him as she allowed him close enough to wrap his arms around her and begin to sway them.
"Do you like Glenn Miller?" Jack asked her.
"Love him." Rose told him and smiled when Jack quickly pulled out that cylinder remote, clicked it, causing Glenn Miller's Moonlight serenade to play. The two of them began to gently sway to the music, as Rose kept the way they held each other in a friendly manner.
"It's 1941. The height of the London Blitz. The height of the German bombing campaign. And something else has fallen on London." Jack whispered to her, Rose smirked at how hard he was working this con. "A fully equipped Chula Warship. The last one in existence armed to the teeth." Jack pulled away from her to look at her. "And I know where it is because I parked it." Rose smiled at him knowing what he meant by that. "If the agency can name the right price, I can get it for you. But in two hours... A German bomb is going to fall on it and destroy it forever." He looked at her again. "That's your deadline. That's the deal. Now, shall we discuss payment?"
"I've already told you, Captain Jack, I'm not the one empowered to do that." Rose told him.
"So does this partner of yours, does he handle the business?" Jack asked.
"That's what I've been trying to tell you." Rose told him and Jack sighed.
"Maybe we should go find this Doctor Spock then." Jack said releasing her.
"And how are you going to do that?" Rose asked.
"Easy, I'll do a scan for alien tech." Jack told her before using his vortex manipulator to begin a scan of unknown alien tech.