Chapter Two

New day dawning, rain is falling

Newspapers blow at my feet

Someone told me, take it easy

Take all the time you need.

Every step takes a beat of your heart

Through a city that's falling apart

On a night that's clouded by years

My anger is a form of madness

So I'd rather have hope than sadness

And you said something stupid like

Love steals us from loneliness.

The next morning, very early as the sky is just beginning to pale to grey, Rose is awakened by the pager on the table beside her bed. It buzzes and vibrates with such ferocity that it clatters onto the hardwood floor, and within seconds, her mobile rings shrilly. She blinks and fumbles blearily around for the pager - Torchwood. Alert. Rose yawns at it and sits up, swinging her feet to the floor and wincing at the chill.

There is always a class five alert, it seems. Rose is not quite sure if levels one through four even exist, or whom in their right mind came up with the system. A strange blip on the radar or an errant meteor crash-landing through the roof of research and development. Torchwood is, at most times, a constant and never-ending stream of activity and alerts. Rose's team has seemed to have firmly adhered to the belief that there is no such thing as being too cautious, and she cannot count the number of times that her pager or mobile or both have gone off with notifications of class five alerts.

Still, she moves quickly.

Jackie is downstairs already, and Rose can hear banging and shrieking and mild obscenities drifting from the kitchen before she even makes it down the hallway. The piercing shrieking is coming from the decidedly unhappy baby perched on Jackie's hip. The banging and obscenities are coming from Jackie yelling bollocks at the malfunctioning dishwasher which has leaked a veritable flood across the tiled floor.

"Morning, mum."

Jackie snits at the dishwasher and consoles her distressed daughter at the same time. "Pete swore up and down he fixed this thing. I'm going to kill 'im when he gets back." Pete is away, on business. She half-heartedly throws a few rags onto the puddle with dissolving malice, and the baby unexpectedly stops crying. "You off to work already, sweetheart?"

Rose says, "She doesn't like it when you yell at the appliances."

She kisses her mother's cheek on her way out, says goodbye to the baby. Jackie is happy here. She has an entire family back again. It is more than she would have thought possible. Rose is happy for this fact, but feels too much like she has returned home after being away for so long, and is now among strangers.

It has rained overnight and a layer of frost and ice covers everything, glinting like steel in the pallid sunlight. Rose shivers and watches her breath rise like puffs of smoke in the still air. Not cold enough for snow, yet. Her mobile urgently rings again as she is getting into her car.

It is Mickey, asking if she's left yet, sounding distracted. She assures him, and frowns down at the phone as she hangs up, wondering why he hadn't conveyed any helpful information.

She doesn't fathom that it is anything that would particularly galvanize her, nowadays. Not as she used to be astonished - This is the day the sun expands. Welcome to the end of the world.

Rose loves her job, every day, it is what keeps her waking up in the mornings and what keeps her resolved and determined and useful and needed. Torchwood keeps her connected to everything. Being a part of Torchwood means access to knowledge and information that is fast becoming boundless. Compared to the people she passes on the street, Rose alone is a wealth of information herself, but she knows it's peanuts compared to all that is out there. And so she needs desperately to be connected to something.

"We all just want to see you happy, Rose," Mickey had pleaded with her, last year, when everyone still was tip-toeing around her and watching her assiduously, and waiting for her to go off the deep end, as she'd put it.

"I am happy," she'd told him, a bit unconvincingly, but she'd become a decent liar. And he hadn't believed it but had looked past it, and the others at Torchwood stopped being so wary of her, and whatever was halfway to a normal life settled in. She had a backbone and decided that she would be dammed if she was going to spend another month weeping.

The guard at the front gate brusquely waves her in. There is no Yvonne at this Torchwood. Rose keeps an eye on Harriet Jones. There are fewer zeppelins now, and this world is peaceful. The institute itself is still like new, flourishing, rebuilt and up and running from the near-crumbling building it was when they first saw it. The wraiths of all that had once been still faintly haunt the corridors, but they are faint.

The halls and stairways Rose passes briskly through are glossy and shining, the polished appearance belies the messy actuality that is the institute's business . Downstairs, the last levels, where Rose's research and development teams are housed, are where it gets much more interesting.

Mickey is there already, in one of the cavernous rooms that is home to the countless number of alien technology that has fallen into their laps, anything and everything. He is frantically moving about the various amalgamations of weapons, transmitters, hair dryers, radars, all manner of assorted heaps of space junk.

"What's going on, Mickey?" She frowns, and begins to feel unsettled. No one else in the room is looking at her. "What couldn't you tell me over the phone? And how did you get here so quickly?"

He doesn't quite meet her eyes at first. "I've been here since three this morning...listen, Rose..." He is having difficulty with something. "There was a...purported...crash landing. Late last night, just off the coast, near Southend ...we've been having a hell of a time keeping it quiet, we just missed being on the news..."

Rose stares at him, perplexed. "Last night? Why didn't I hear about any of this? C'mon, Mick, what are you on about?" She glances about at the flurry of commotion. "Where's Jake, then?"

"Next door." He finally meets her gaze. "Couldn't fit it anywhere else."

She cocks her head to one side, and brushes past him. Walks into the hangar and stops short. Mickey nearly runs into her.

"This crashed at Southend?" She hears herself ask.

Jake sees her then and waves, radiating uncharacteristic ebullience from across the room. "Rose! Can you believe this? Honest to god spaceship! Had a bitch of a time getting it in here!"

Rose crosses the room and eyes it warily. It is slim and angular, and the size of the zeppelins that patrol the skies above their building. She hasn't seen its type before and cannot place it, but unexplained warning bells are going off inside her head.

Jake is still talking to her. "We lucked out that it's still intact. Everything else we get is fallin' to bits. Can't get inside of it. Not yet, at least."

She walks around the side of it, experiencing that same shivery feeling that being close to something from another world induces. The underside of the ship sports wide gashes of rust, and she is amused for some reason - all of this advanced technology, and machines still rust.

There is writing on the side, above her head, and she steps back and tilts her head up to get a better look.

And sees the words and freezes, paralyzed. An invisible blow to the head. She can feel ice in her veins and forgets to breath.

Bad Wolf.

badwolf badwolf badwolf badwolf badwolf badwolf badwolf badwolf badwolf badwolf.

Mickey is watching her, Jake hasn't noticed. The sound fades out.

She closes her eyes involuntarily. Blaidd Drwg. Always the same two words, following us.

Rose opens her eyes, gingerly touches her fingertips to the letters. It could mean nothing at all, and it could mean everything. Her thoughts swim with it.

"Have you been over to medical yet?"

She looks at Jake sharply, clears her throat. "What...what's in medical?"

He regards her oddly. "Mickey told you, yeah? That this thing was occupied?"

She briefly fights to keep her reticence, gives up, and three seconds later is sprinting up the stairwell towards the medical bay.