Once they had relocated to the pub, Jack had begun work locking and barricading the back door as Owen finished treating her arm while the sun sank along the horizon and night crept in fast.

As soon as the Doctor released her, Rose swapped places with Gwen and managed to get herself settled on a barstool beside the dartboard before Jack noticed and could banish her to a bedroom.

In the corner of the room the teenager, Kieran had collapsed into the corner of a booth, stress and fear had sent him spiralling into an exhausted sleep, and Rose kept her free hand on her weapon, watching the front door until Jack came back from the kitchen area.

He'd shot her a sharp glare when he spotted her by the dartboard, as though he knew exactly what she was up to, but he didn't say anything before he moved to start stacking furniture, barricading the front door for the night as well.

With his silent, if irritated, permission, Rose picked up a piece of chalk and used the dart scoreboard to start scrawling out everything they knew so far.

She itched to help Jack block the entrances, or search the building for other access points, but she also knew, just from the look on Jack's face, that if she so much as stood up from the chair that the Captain would tie her down.

"If we barricade ourselves in, what happens to Tosh and Ianto?" Owen asked, his eyes glancing between Jack and the process of pulling pellets out of Gwen's arm, using the long bar as a surgical table.

"Why are we still talking about this?" Jack demanded, but as Rose looked around she saw him glance at Kieran before lowering his voice.

"Tosh and Ianto can look after themselves. The kid is our first priority. They've already been back for him once. Something tells me they're not gonna give up so easily."

"So, here's what we know," Rose said, interrupting the two men and tapping the chalk on the bottom of the board.

"Gotta be humanoid in form, cause they drove the SUV. Intelligent enough to lay traps and remain undiscovered until now, so presumably fully sentient. Capable of stripping flesh and organs from a body, most likely for food," she reeled off, running her mind over the last few hours as she considered anything else they could take into account to figure out what was going on.

"What do you think you're doing?" Owen snapped at her, scowling, his hands pausing halfway through wrapping a clean bandage around Gwen's arm. "You've been shot, you need to rest. I didn't waste all that time putting you back together—"

"Notice I'm not lifting tables and chairs," Rose told the doctor gently, ignoring his glare as he seemed to bite back the urge to continue reprimanding her.

"I'm compiling what we've got so far to see if we can make any sense of it," she explained softly, "maybe see if one of us recognises the clues when they're all laid out, right?"

Owen muttered under his breath but didn't push her any further, merely turning back to Gwen's bandage in silence, but the Welsh woman nodded at the chalkboard.

"Kieran said they were strong," she suggested and Rose nodded, adding it to the board.

"But strong compared to what?" Rose muttered, tapping at her chin with the chalk stick, eyes narrowing in thought, "Him? Jack? A four-by-four?"

"We have to assume that the others who disappeared have been killed too," Jack added, and Rose continued to add to their list.

"So at least seventeen deaths. These guys aren't new to this either, they know what they're doing," she agreed and Owen sighed as he began packing away his supplies, finally finished treating both Rose and Gwen.

"Okay, so all this suggests that the rift is spreading and it's dumping aliens and psycho's wherever it fancies?" Owen asked.

"Looks like that," Jack answered but Rose shook her head and turned back to them both, frowning.

"Not everything had to do with the rift. There's nothing to suggest that's where these things came from, besides their proximity to Cardiff," she argued. "They could just be your standard aliens, unrelated to the rift."

"Since when did any kind of alien become standard?" Gwen muttered, and Rose shot her a weak smile.

"Great, this conversation's cheered me up no end," Owen grumbled, and Rose ran her hand through her hair as she studied their list, still drawing a blank.

A series of knocks against one of the windows had them all spinning, weapons back in their hands as Gwen gasped loudly in shock, and Rose forced herself to bite back a groan of pain as the sudden movement pulled at her side.

"Did you see that?" Gwen whispered.

"Something outside?" Jack questioned and Rose nodded without taking her eyes off the window.

She'd seen the shadow move past, shift away, but if it had been Tosh or Ianto, she would have expected them to call out by now.

She heard glass break, and turned again, her gun in her right hand aimed at the other window, but the panes were in one piece and she quickly realised that the sound had come from outside.

It was intended to make them fear.

Rose drew in a slow, deep breath and slowly the tremor in her hand steadied.

"Was that the same one, or different?" Owen muttered, and Rose saw Jack's jaw tense.

"Assume different," she muttered back, keeping her voice low.

"He said they'd come back," Gwen hissed, and Jack shot her a steadying look.

"Let's not jump to conclusions. We don't know who they are or what their intentions are."

Rose blinked at Jack in surprise. She knew he was trying to keep Gwen calm, but even so, she thought that the ex-time agent was tempting fate with his words.

Just then several light bulbs popped as the power to the building was cut, plunging them all into shadow and Rose groaned softly.

"I'm thinking that's not a good sign," the doctor told Jack, his voice breathless as he fought off his own panic.

The handle on the front door turned, but when the door didn't open something outside pushed, rattling the door in its frame and sending shockwaves through the precariously thrown together barricade.

If the squeak of the turning handle and the hinges rattling didn't wake the sleeping teenager, then Gwen's terrified exclamation did, and Kieran sat up sharply, clutching the shotgun he'd been cuddling in his sleep tight to his chest and his frame trembling.

It had taken Rose's eyes a moment or two to adjust to the darkness, but when she did she made her way carefully across the room towards Kieran.

Jack had run through the building to check the other door, and Owen and Gwen had their guns trained on the still rattling door, so Rose kept her attention on the trigger-happy teen.

"Kieran, listen to my voice, okay?" She called gently, but the boy was trapped in his terror.

"They've come back," he moaned, and Rose could see him shaking.

"Hey, I'm right beside you," she coaxed gently, "don't shoot me again, alright?"

His wild eyes spun until they found her in the dark, and he nodded frantically as she carefully placed her hand on his shoulder.

The teen struggled to his feet and Rose let him grasp at her hand as she tugged his trembling form back towards Gwen and Owen, trying not to think about the door that was still rattling, and how close they were standing to it.

Instead, she guided the teenager behind the bar, using it as another barrier between them and whatever was trying to get in, and Kieran sank to his knees at her feet without resistance.

He sobbed brokenly as he wrapped his arm around her calf, fingers clinging to the fabric of her trousers and the sounds broke her heart as the teen clung to her desperately.

If they made it out alive, Rose wasn't entirely sure the young man would ever recover, but she forced herself not to think about that yet and gently pulled the shotgun out of his shaking hands, laying it on the bar in front of her without comment, as Jack quietly came back from the kitchen.

The shriek of unoiled metal had her tensing, and all of them turned to look at the cellar door to their left as the handle turned slowly, held closed by nothing more than a rusty old padlock, twisting and screeching inch by inch like something out of a badly made horror film

As she watched, Rose felt her throat go dry and a hysterical giggle bubbled at the back of her throat that she swallowed down, her eyes spinning to meet Jack's.

"Okay," he whispered slowly, "so we didn't check the cellar..."

Rose widened her eyes at him, a silent signal to do something, anything, but then the padlock snapped and the Captain dove for the door, shoving his shoulder against the wood. He jammed one foot at the base of the door and pressed his other against the nearest wall in a desperate attempt to make whatever was on the other side stay on the other side.

"You can't let them in," Kieran sobbed, his panic rising as and he began rocking himself back and forth, pulling back from Rose as his arms curled around his own body in fear, but Rose didn't dare take her attention from the two doors, both of which had something trying to force its way inside.

If there was another enemy at the back door, their small remaining chance of getting out of the pub alive would vanish.

Her heart thundered in her ears, and she could feel her breathing speeding up. She didn't want to die in some dingy little pub in the middle of the Welsh countryside. Not before she found the Doctor again.

"Don't let them in!" Kieran begged again, his rocking speeding up in time with his rushed, panicked breathing.

"We've got this under control!" Gwen told him, but her voice was shaking nearly as badly as Kierans.

"You don't understand," he sobbed, "you don't know what they're like!"

The rattling at the cellar door grew louder, and Rose's attention snapped back to Jack, just in time to see him point his gun into the thin gap that the cracked open door had provided and fire off three quick rounds into the dark.

The sound of the gun firing seemed to act like a catalyst for chaos to erupt, as the chairs and tables blocking the front door finally began to fall and Kieran's spiral finally burnt out and he snapped.

He leapt to his feet and before Rose could turn to stop him, the teenager had snatched up the shotgun and moved around to the front of the bar, inadvertently blocking Gwen and Owen's firing line and he pumped the weapon, firing repeatedly between terrified sobs.

The pellets were sending wood and chips of stone flying, but whatever was outside hadn't made it through the door yet, and all Kieran was doing was wasting ammunition, destroying the barricade from the inside and getting in the way.

Owen and Gwen were shouting for him to get back, but the teenager was lost in his fear now, so Rose moved around the bar after him. She didn't waste time trying to reason with him, just grabbed the back of his hoodie and tugged hard.

She'd wanted to tug him back behind the bar, or at least out of the way of Gwen and Owen's line of fire, but her touch startled him badly and he dropped the shotgun, jerking away from her with a sharp cry and flailing arms that caught Rose with a hard blow against her side.

She instantly released him and doubled over, the raw wounds lighting up in pain as Rose drew in a sharp gasp, just as the front door finally flew open. The stacked tables and chairs fell around her, knocking her over, and she felt something grab her ankle.

"Shit! Jack!" She shouted, letting go of her gun when she felt herself being dragged across the floor, her fingers scrabbling to hold onto something, anything to stop herself from being pulled out of the pub.

There was nothing until the stone doorway, and she caught hold of the edges, halting her movements for a moment as she heard Jack yell.

"Rose! Hold on!" He shouted, and she could hear gunfire fly over her head. Gwen and Owen were shooting, bottles were exploding on the bar behind them, and she saw them duck into cover.

Rose's eyes spun to find Jack, but it took her less than a second to realise that he couldn't do anything. He was also being forced into cover, and on top of that, he was the only one guarding the cellar door.

She could feel the strength in her arms fading and knew that all of them were too far away to reach her in time, and as the powerful grip on her legs began pulling again, harder this time, agony erupted down her side as her torso stretched and tore open her injuries.

With a sharp, terrified yelp, Rose was forced to let go of the door frame to relieve the pressure on her side, but she could feel the warm, wetness of fresh blood coating her ribs.

She slid across the hard ground, rough fingers grabbed at her body and pulled her sharply into the darkness. A humanoid hand and a filthy cloth were pressed over her mouth to silence her shouts, and before she could do more than realise she was up to her neck in trouble, Rose was carried away from Jack and the others and into the night.

The dark oblivion of unconsciousness was comfortable, the Doctor thought to himself, but you didn't realise just how comfortable until something pulled you out of it.

"Doctor!"

It was like that human saying; 'You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone'. Or was that a song?

"Doctor?"

Someone was shouting his name. Well, not his name, but his name, which was much more preferable. Usually.

Right at that moment, however, the person shouting his name was sparking pain along his nerves, and his head exploded with pain at every sound, and with every vibration of their footsteps through whatever he was laying on.

Even without the additional stimuli, his head was throbbing in time with the beat of his hearts and he briefly wondered what had happened to him, before flashes of memory began to slowly reassert themselves.

Dalekanium. Dropping the sonic. Seconds left. Gamma radiation. Lightning bolt... ah, yes. Now he remembered.

"Look what we found halfway down."

He could feel hands. Warm, human hands, touching him. Their heat soaked through his suit, and he felt himself frown.

He didn't want to look at anything. He could feel his body on the very edge of falling into a healing coma and briefly contemplated letting it.

It wasn't every day that you survived a lightning strike of that magnitude without regenerating, and what had possessed him to do something quite that reckless anyway?

Oh yeah. The Daleks.

"You're getting careless," came that voice again and the Doctor tried to turn his head towards the sound, unable to smother a groan of pain as his muscles screamed and his head continued throbbing in pain.

"Oh, my head," he muttered, cracking his eyes open as gusts of icy wind buffeted against his face as his gaze settled on Martha's face hovering above him.

She let loose a relieved laugh that was full of her concern for him, and grinned, "Hiya."

"Hi," he answered automatically, trying not to move too much as he acclimated to the new aches appearing across his body. "You survived then," he offered and the woman's relieved smile grew.

"So did you, just about," she responded and although he could still feel that his face was twisted into a grimace of pain, he couldn't stop a wry grin creeping across his features either.

"I can't help noticing though," Martha continued, her voice growing serious, "that there's Dalekanium still attached."

Her words were like a fresh bolt of lightning and with a grunt of pain the Doctor sat up, eyes staring at the panels of metal for a moment before he shook his head in a desperate attempt to clear away the dizziness, pain, and the fine layer of fog coating his mind.

"Come on, we need to get off this roof before you freeze to death," he told her, accepting his sonic screwdriver back and indicating that he'd follow her down as he tucked his favourite gadget away in his coat.

To get back down they used the spiralling catwalks of scaffolding that the builders had erected, now that they had a little more time to work with, and if he was being truthful the Doctor admitted to himself that he was feeling just a little too shay from his recent electrocution to risk any more feats of athletics.

As soon as his feet were back on the top finished floor he began explaining to all of them what would happen next, now that the Daleks thought they had the army they'd been after.

"The Daleks will have gone straight to a war footing," he told them, pacing across the room so that he could look out across the city, all four of the humans following close on his heels. "They'll be using the sewers, spreading the soldiers out underneath Manhattan."

He felt sick as he worked to calculate the most likely angle for the Daleks to attack, the process far too familiar in his mind and flashes of the Time War skittered across his memory, making him flinch away from his own thoughts.

He didn't want to go back to that. He'd not been the Doctor then, and it was a time he would rather forget about altogether.

"How do we stop them?" Laszlo asked, still brave and determined, and the man's focus helped the Doctor concentrate on the present.

"There's only one chance left," he admitted, "I got in the way. That gamma strike went zapping through me first."

"Yeah, but what does that mean?" Martha asked, her tone frustrated and he couldn't help but blink at her blankly for a moment, the part of his mind focussed on plans stuttered as he realised he was used to only half explaining himself.

Rose had been so good at picking up on the threads of his thoughts, and filling in the missing pieces, that he'd forgotten how he normally had to break things down for people.

The swift way his pink and yellow human had understood his plan involving the breach and the void dust came instantly to mind and stole his breath.

" Pulling them all in! "

He didn't have time to explain his plan to Martha and the others right now, so he ignored her question, shaking himself free of the memory.

"I need to draw their fire before they can attack New York," he told them instead, turning and walking back into the main floor space, the area cluttered with work tools and architect paper. He resisted the urge to wipe a hand across his face to rub away the lingering beads of sweat that his recent bout of electrocution had brought to the surface of his skin.

"I need to face them head on somewhere. Where can I draw them out?" He muttered, pacing across the floor again before he spun on his heel and returned to gaze out at the city. His eyes stared, unseeing, past the lights that glimmered like diamonds against the night sky as he considered and discarded place after place within the city.

The fact that it was a city was the problem, he realised quickly. He needed somewhere quiet. Low population, low risk of casualties...

"Think, think, think, think, think," he pushed his brain, still sluggish from the pain and the lightning strike, and the Doctor ran his hands through his hair in frantic frustration, "we need some sort of space, somewhere safe, somewhere out of the way— Tallulah!" He suddenly shouted.

When he spun on her, his eyes wide as an idea sparked within his mind, fighting through the headache, the Doctor found all four of the humans had been watching him pace in silence.

Each of them looked scared in their own way, to various degrees and he swallowed hard, but Tallulah forced her own fear back and offered him a tight smile.

"That's me. Three L's and an H," she chirped, and the Doctor blasted her with a bright grin in silent thanks.

"The Theatre. It's right above them and, what? It's gone midnight," he babbled, tapping into his time senses enough to be sure. "Can you get us inside?"

"Don't see why not," the girl agreed with a nonchalant shrug of one shoulder, and the Doctor spun around, eyes taking in the now out of service elevator that Martha had rigged to electrocute the pig-men before spinning back to the humans, having turned a full circle.

"Is there another lift?" he asked, not relishing the thought of nearly one hundred flights of stairs so soon after being electrocuted.

He also wasn't entirely sure they could spare that much time, but Martha gave a quick nod, and he breathed out a quick sigh of relief.

"We came up in the service elevator," she told him quickly, and the Doctor grinned.

"That'll do then," he announced, already indicating that she should take the lead, and show him the way with a quick swing of his arm, but his mind was racing ahead to the Daleks, and what he would have to do next as he fell into a run with a forcefully cheerful, "Allons-y!"