Jack Harkness, Director of Torchwood, made his way down the stairs towards the basement of Torchwood One; the lights flickering continuously the further he descended into the bowels of the massive building.

Jack grimaced slightly as he rushed down the stairs, leaning over the railing to count the number of flights he had to descend before the lights failed completely once again. Jack grumbled as he reached into his pocket for a torch, finger clicking the light on so that he could continue his descent before the lights flared back to life once more.

The power in the building had been touchy for the last few weeks but the engineers had been able to reroute systems and usually the glitch would be corrected. The building had basically been rebuilt from the ground up after the Cybermen Wars, but good high-quality electrical cable had been in short supply. He scowled when he thought about pending projects that would shut down large sections of Torchwood at a time so that the building could be properly retrofitted in order to better handle the massive amounts of power that were associated with monitoring and using a temporal rift.

The last few days though something seemed to have changed, and even the best engineers in Torchwood couldn't figure out what was leading to the massive power drains that were now constantly overwhelming the system. Jack had wanted to ask Alec to look into the issues when he had come into work that morning as the man seemed to have an amazing affinity for circuits and wiring, but Alec hadn't shown up when he was supposed to and it was now well into the afternoon before Jack had been able to tear himself away and make his way down towards Alec's lab in the basement.

The fluctuating power meant that the elevators in the building were not the safest option if someone wanted to have any chance of a timely arrival at their destination and so Jack started the trek down fifty-one flights of stairs into the bowels of the building.

Something had changed with Alec about ten months earlier, it was like a switch had been flipped for the young man and his personality had suddenly begun to shine through for the first time since the end of the wars. He had become far more outgoing and gregarious and had engaged with his counterparts on a regular basis. Jack knew that he had let his flat outside Torchwood go and that he had moved into his lab full time around that time, but since the man had no family or ties outside of Torchwood, Jack hadn't objected to him taking residence full time in the bowels of the building. If it made Alec happy for the first time in years, then he was quite happy for him to live on site and it also meant that there was always someone nearby to monitor the rift for any unusual activity.

Alec's lab in the basement was shielded from the effects of the rift so many hundreds of feet below the actual interface of the rift with this reality, but he had wired his computer to continuously monitor the activity just in case something was missed. Alec had actually warned them a few times of impending spikes that otherwise would have been missed in the day to day rush of activities that seemed to increasingly fill all of their lives.

Finally arriving at the basement of the building, Jack paused for a moment to catch his breath, his finger clicking the torch off when it seemed like the power seemed to be stabilized for the time being. He pulled open the door from the stairwell and stepped into the small corridor that led towards Alec's lab.

There was a subdued roar of music from behind the door in front of him, a hum that rose and fell in some strange cadence before subsiding once more. It sounded almost like Alec was having a party in his little lab, which Jack knew was impossible since the man jealously guarded the privacy of his little domain.

Jack took his master key from his pocket, feeling a twinge of guilt as he was going to violate Alec's private space for the first time since the man had come to Torchwood. It's not that he was overly worried about Alec's health but the fact that he had missed the start of the day for the first time in years, definitely set Jack's nerves on edge.

Sliding the key into the lock and uncertain what would greet him on the other side, Jack turned the handle and stepped into bedlam.

The room was blazing with light that seemed to alternate at different times between red and blue hues as the computer consoles across the room had been cannibalized into a configuration that Jack had never seen before. Music seemed to be blasting from every corner of the room, a strange cacophony that seemed to be a mixture of some sort of classical piece and the screams of dying banshees.

Jack threw his hands over his ears in an attempt to block out the noise, his eyes watering from the bright lights that set off a pounding migraine.

"ALEC!"

He frowned when he saw a strange metal cylinder standing in the middle of the room, the object was roughly rounded with strange orange protrusions that somehow seemed to be a part of the overall surface of the object. The object was roughly three metres in diameter and about four metres in height, but there seemed to be no discernable marking on the object other than what he had already observed.

Jack reached for his sidearm as he continued to scan the room and could find no sign of Alec anywhere in the lab. He carefully cocked the weapon as he made his way further into the room, his eyes shifting constantly through the glare of the lights in case this object was of immediate threat to Torchwood and to the earth.

"Alec! I need you to answer me if you're able."

Jack jumped when a bright white line appeared along the side of the object in front of him, the line quickly spread until it took on a square shape and a portal seemed to open into the interior of the object.

Jack raised his weapon and focused his sight on the opening that suddenly appeared, his finger tensing on the trigger before he called out, "Whoever you are, come out slowly with your hands where I can see them!"

Jack waited tensely for any response to his order, his eyes trying desperately to focus through the strobing lights before Alec stepped out of the opening and looked at Jack with a puzzled frown.

Jack gaped when Alec appeared, his hands lowering in confusion as the man quickly made his way over to the console and tapped a series of buttons that instantly silenced the music and brought the lighting in the lab back to normal.

"What's wrong, Jack? Do you need me to come to work early for something?"

"Alec, it's 2:30 in the afternoon. You've missed nearly the entire day."

Alec's grimaced as he looked down at the computer console, his gaze growing distant before he mumbled, "I told her to remind me when it was time to go to work, she's usually very good about that."

"Who is, Alec? Who else is in here?" Jack shook his head, holstering his side arm before he pointed at the large metallic object sitting in the middle of the room. "Never mind that, what the hell is that thing and when were you going to tell me about it?"

The lights flickered fitfully for a moment in the lab before stabilizing once more and Alec looked sharply back at the object before speaking. "I told you to stop taking so much power during the daytime, Girl. You can't interrupt the operations of the building when so many people are here."

"What the hell are you talking about, Alec? Do you have anything to do with the power fluctuations the building has been experiencing? And who are you talking to?"

Alec nodded somewhat guiltily, his gaze darting back to the object before returning to Jack. "Remember I told you about that little experiment when I first came to this universe and that I needed to hide it in a safe place when the Cybermen first attacked?"

Jack nodded impatiently, his gaze bouncing between Alec and the computer console as he tried to make sense of the strange behavior that Alec was suddenly exhibiting. "Yes, I remember. You said you had a cutting from a Tardis, whatever that is and you even showed it to me. I'm sorry I never thought to ask how that experiment had survived the wars, but what does that have to do with this thing in your lab and the power fluctuations that we're experiencing right now?"

Alec ran his hand through his hair in a frustrated motion, his gaze suddenly hunted as he stepped closer to Jack and pointed to the object that dominated the space. "That is what happened to the small cutting that I showed you when I first arrived, that is what has evolved from that piece of Tardis that I was incubating and she is now nearing the point of flight worthiness."

Jack blinked stupidly at Alec, his gaze swinging back to the metal object, the cutting as Alec had described it and tried to reconcile the massive metallic object with the tiny piece of coral that Alec had cradled in his arms years earlier. "That's impossible, Alec. There is no way that thing could have grown out of the object that you showed me."

Alec grinned a cheshire cat grin, his entire demeanor changing to one of confident knowledge as he suddenly strode across the lab and placed one foot inside the darkened opening. "You're so certain of what is possible and impossible, Jack? You know that I have knowledge of things that I otherwise shouldn't have, why would this be any different? This is Time Lord technology, and I know that you don't quite know what that means because the Time Lords don't exist in this reality, but suffice it to say that they were masters of the impossible."

He reached a hand out to Jack, fingers beckoning for the immortal in a bid for the man to trust him even though he could tell that the world seemed to be tilting for him.

"I'll explain everything that's going on and why I had to keep her a secret until she was ready, Jack but please just trust that I would never do anything to harm you or the earth in any way."

It was those last words that persuaded Jack to take that first step towards Alec's outstretched hand before he stepped through the portal and into a different world.

Jack gaped when he stepped into the portal, his eyes widening as they scanned the vast, impossible space before him. It was huge, the walls were curved and sloped upwards to a domed ceiling that vaulted nearly five metres over his head. There were rounded depressions set in regular intervals along the walls, and an opening directly opposite from where he was standing that seemed to lead deeper into the space. Alec was standing atop a raised platform that had a railing surrounding it and was filled with monitors and levers and all sorts of devices that Jack couldn't begin to put a name on.

"It's…. It's bigger."

Jack shook his head, his mind refusing to accept what it was seeing and he very quickly ducked back out of the opening to stare wide eyed at the unassuming metal shape in front of him. He recognized the orange protrusions now as the same substance as the walls inside that impossible space seemed to be composed, but he still couldn't reconcile the difference as he walked around the object several times before poking his head back into the portal.

"How is this possible? How can it be bigger on the inside?"

He didn't miss the wistful smile on Alec's face at his question, his gaze dropping to the console with a frown before a spark flew from the wall and zapped Jack's hand. "Ouch! What in the world was that for?"

Alec tapped the console in response to Jack's question, his frowning countenance as he stared at the monitor in front of him changed when he turned back and made his way back to Jack's side. "You called her an it, the Tardis doesn't like to be referred to as a thing."

Jack shook his head, his hand rising to rub tiredly at his eyes before he asked, "She? Are you saying that all of this is alive?"

Alec grinned when he noticed how carefully Jack had worded his question so as not to offend the mysterious "she" that he had referred to, "Yes, Jack. This is a Tardis and she has been growing quite well in the years since we came to this reality. She's what I have been working on for all those sleepless nights and yes she is sentient as well. We're connected to each other, and she's finally ready for her first test flight."

Jack shook his head, his wild eyed gaze flying back to Alec before he muttered. "She can fly?"

"Oh yes! She can travel through all of time and space and in a much more comfortable manner than your vortex manipulator!"

Jack stumbled towards the railing that separated what he now knew to be a control console from the rest of the empty space, his eyes rising to the monitors that were flashing with strange circular symbols at regular intervals before he turned back to Alec with a note of accusation in his voice.

"Why didn't you tell me that you needed so much power? We've been chasing down power failure after power failure for weeks and now you tell me that you're responsible for all our problems?"

Alec had the grace to look chagrined at Jack's question, his gaze flicking accusingly to the monitors in front of Jack before he responded, "I didn't realize she was drawing as much power as she was and I had warned her to not do so during the daytime when the power was needed for the normal operation of Torchwood. However, she has grown tremendously in the last few weeks and so needed more and more power. I mistakenly thought that she would be able to draw on the power of the rift at this point, but it seems we're too far below the actual interface and so she needs to draw more on the traditional power grid than the limitless energy that bisects this building at the higher levels."

Jack frowned when he heard Alec's explanation, his mind already racing ahead to the question that he suddenly knew that Alec was going to ask. "You want to move this ship, don't you?"

Alec nodded before his head snapped back to the control console with a frown, his lips parting before he murmured "That's strange."

Jack straightened up, his body suddenly tensing when he heard the strange tone that had suddenly entered Alec's voice. "What is it? What's strange?"

Alec ignored Jack and swung under the railing to jump up on the control platform and swing a second monitor towards him. "She's just detected a huge spike in rift activity, but it's not the usual activity we see."

Jack jumped up beside Alec, his gaze darting over the unfamiliar gauges and monitors before he asked, "Something's coming through?"

Alec shook his head, his hands flying over the controls in front of him and sealing the portal that had opened before he responded, "No, it's different than that. It's almost like something is beginning to bleed through from another reality, and that can't be good news. Hang on, Jack. This is her first flight and it's liable to be bumpy."

Jack hated asking a million questions, but he truthfully felt like he was standing on shifting sands with the tide coming in. "Where are we going? What's going on, Alec?"

Alec ignored Jack as he threw several levers on the console and braced his legs widely apart before he threw one final lever home and a strange whooshing sound seemed to fill the cavernous space around them. Jack was thrown against the railing behind him, his back arching almost painfully over the metal bar before he was able to straighten himself and hold on for dear life.

Alec rode the waves of motion in the ship like an old sea hand, his one hand holding tightly to a bar that seemed to circle the control console while his other hand flew over various readouts and tapped commands that began to settle the rolling of the deck a moment before a sonorous bonging echoed through the space above his head.

"We're here, Jack. Time to see what's going on with the rift."

"Here? Where's here? What the hell is going on, Alec?"

He followed Alec towards the portal that reappeared in the wall of the ship, his eyes widening when he saw that they were now standing in the lab with the dimension cannon and that the ship had just travelled from the basement up to the fifty-first floor.

"How did we get up here?"

"I told you, Jack, she can travel through all of time and space. Walls and floors mean nothing to her."

Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying desperately to center himself so that he wouldn't be useless in what seemed to be a pending crisis.

"Doctor!"

Alec's head spun around at that cry, his hands clenching as he muttered, "Oh hell, what is she doing here?"

Jack followed Alec's gaze as Rose Tyler suddenly appeared in the doorway, her eyes were shining bright as she spotted Alec and she ran towards him with a near ecstatic smile on her face. "Doctor! I knew you'd come back."

Alec braced himself as Rose ran towards him, his dark eyes flashing sparks before he shouted, "The Doctor's not here, Rose. I don't know how many times I have to tell you that he is never coming for you and that the walls between realities are closed forever."

Rose stumbled to a confused stop, her gaze darting between Alec and Jack before it wandered around the room as if looking for something. "But I just heard the Tardis. He has to be here, I knew he would find a way back to me! Where's the Tardis?"

A muscle twitched in Alec's jaw when he saw Rose's gaze drift right over the Tardis standing behind them and move on as if the object was of no consequence. A flash of movement behind Rose caused Alec's gaze to rise up to see Pete Tyler follow his daughter into the lab, his hands clenched at his sides as he watched the spectacle in front of him.

Jack stepped away from Alec, making his way to Pete's side so that they could watch the confrontation between Alec and Rose from a safe distance.

"The Tardis is standing right behind you, Rose."

Rose glanced back to the metal cylinder behind Alec, her gaze dismissive before she turned back to Alec. "That's not a Tardis. Now stop lying to me and tell me where the Doctor is."

Alec threw his head back and laughed; laughed so hard his sides started to ache before he felt the sudden rise of a terrible anger that left him reeling as his mood swung from one dangerous extreme to another. "And you know exactly what every incarnation of a Tardis that ever existed looks like? You, a girl child from a backwards planet, think that you know everything there is to know about Time Lords and their technology?"

Rose blanched at the tone in the duplicate Doctor's voice before she felt a seething scorn flare to life, her hands clenched at her sides because she refused to call him by the name that he had chosen for himself years earlier. It was just another indication that the Doctor had made a mistake when he had trapped the two of them together and that he couldn't have known that the man he had stranded her with, was not the man that the Doctor had thought he was. If the Doctor had known how deranged his duplicate was, then he most certainly would not have trapped her with him in this universe. The man actually believed that he was Donna Noble's son, instead of just a poor copy of a truly great man. He even took on a name that perpetuated the lie so that people would accept him even though he was nothing but a fraud that tried to live on the great deeds that the Doctor had accomplished. She hated him, and hated that he had somehow poisoned Jack and her father against her so that she was barred from trying to use the dimension cannon to get back to where she belonged.

"I know what a Tardis looks and sounds like and that's all that matters. That thing is not a Tardis!"

"Well, I'm sorry to say that you're wrong, Rose. The Doctor didn't show you everything that you ever needed to know about himself, Gallifrey or Gallifreyan technology! He certainly never felt that he could trust you enough to show you some of the history rooms in the Tardis that would've given you a better understanding of his culture and his planet. Not after your escapades with Adam after you all escaped to the future all those years ago."

Rose stomped closer to the duplicate Doctor, feeling an overwhelming sense of outrage at his words before she yelled, "Stop acting like you know what he thought or felt! Stop pretending to be something you're not! You don't know what you're talking about, you have no idea what he would ever think or feel!"

"I AM HIM!" Alec screamed in response to Rose's words, the words leaving a taste of ashes in his mouth as he had tried so hard in the last years to build his own identity away from the legacy of a man that he knew he would never be able to truly live up to. "No matter how much you try to deny it, or refuse to see it, Rose, I AM THE DOCTOR. I have every memory, every emotion and every thought that the man ever felt tucked somewhere in this puny human brain and I know EXACTLY how he felt all the times that you ignored him or dragged some poor hapless soul along on some adventure. I know how he felt when you flirted with Jack and brought Mickey on board so that you could make him jealous of how you thought the Doctor felt about you. I know how he felt when you ignored him time and again and nearly destroyed reality for it, and if he actually knew what you have done to every single Jack across every reality, well I can say that he would definitely not be happy with you and might very well not be as forgiving as this universe's Jack has been."

Rose scoffed as she threw a glance back at Jack, her gaze slicing back to Alec before she retorted, "What does he have to be upset about? So I made them all immortal. What's the big deal; it must be nice to not have to worry about death."

Jack stepped forward at Rose's words, his hand grabbing Pete's arm to stop the man from storming to her side in anger. This was Alec's fight and truthfully, it had been looming for years. "Be quiet, Rose Tyler. I was willing to forgive your actions because you were supposedly under the influence of an alien power that filled you with the power of a god, don't make me regret that forgiveness."

Rose shook her head, her disbelieving gaze darting between Jack and her father before she muttered, "You're crazy, Jack. I gave you a blessing, you should be thankful for what I did to you. I knew when you told me what I had done, I remembered doing it and I remembered reaching through the barriers of reality in order to make sure none of you ever died. But I didn't remember until you had told me. I loved you all too much to risk losing you ever again, and if I had it to do again, I would in a heartbeat."

Alec's jaw dropped at Rose's words, his heart stuttering when he heard her words that she had a perfect memory of her actions as the Bad Wolf and felt absolutely no remorse for the suffering that she had inflicted on an untold number of innocent men. "Rose, you need to leave right now. You need to walk away before you say something that you will regret and that Pete can no longer protect you from."

She swung an angry gaze back to Alec, her stance shifting into one of obstinate refusal before she growled, "I have nothing to be protected from, you fraud. The only thing I regret is that I let the Doctor talk me into staying here in this reality with you. I don't belong here and you shouldn't even exist!"

She stormed around Alec's side, brushing off the hand that he reached out in order to stop her, before she stepped up to the side of the infant Tardis. Alec hesitated when he felt the curiosity in the back of his mind as the ship felt the approach of the angry human in front of her.

She had never felt anger before from any being, and this was a new and strange experience for her so Alec hesitated as Rose reached out to touch the coral that was still embedded in the side of the ship. The ship however was in tune enough with Alec's turbulent emotions that she wasn't willing to let the human actually touch her at this time.

A large spark leaped off the surface and connected with Rose's hand, enough to cause her blonde hair to stand nearly on end before it dissipated.

Rose shrieked at the pain that flashed through her hand, though it dissipated nearly instantaneously, her incredulous gaze swinging back to the duplicate Doctor before she shouted, "The Tardis would never do that to me! You're lying, you're lying about all of it!"

Alec sighed softly as he saw the denial in Rose's face, the fact that she would never accept a reality that didn't conform to what she felt it should be. He looked back to Pete and winced when he saw the look on the man's face as it seemed he had reached a decision where his daughter was concerned.

"You need to leave now, Rose. The Tardis will never welcome you like her parent did, she has too much of a recollection of what you did to her progenitor. Get out now with some of your dignity intact."

Rose stepped close to Alec's side, her sneering gaze sweeping from the tip of his spiky hair to the soles of his feet and coming back to rest on his smoldering dark eyes. She laughed up at him before she turned away and swept past her father, her hand raised in a mock salute to him before she called, "I'll find the Doctor yet, just you wait and see."

Pete watched as his daughter vanished into the hallway outside the main lab of Torchwood, his sorrowful gaze turning back to Jack before he muttered, "She can't keep on living like this, Jack. There has to be something I can do to help her regain some portion of her life back."

Alec crossed his arms over his chest, his body shaking with the unspent adrenaline that seemed to pound through his veins as he knew that the confrontation with Rose was far from over. She would come to realize that his little Tardis was indeed exactly what she needed in her mad quest to be reunited with the Doctor and he worried how quickly that time would come. He was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he nearly missed Jack's reply to Pete's comment, "There is something to be done, but it's dangerous. I think though, that you can't wait any longer to make a decision. She does have the power through her access to Torchwood to endanger all of reality once more."

Alec sighed softly when he saw Pete's considering nod, his heart breaking when he thought of everything that Rose could have accomplished and had thrown away when she had set her eyes on the Doctor.