The Doctor knew that something was wrong the moment that Jackie first showed them one of the supposed "ghosts" that seemed to have the entire human race completely infatuated. However, it wasn't until they stumbled upon Torchwood that the Doctor began to realize how very horribly, completely wrong it all was - in fact, it was drifting dangerously outside of the parameters of wrong and bordering on terrifying.

He tried desperately to keep Rose out of it and safe (the unfurling timelines in his head urging him to keep her away from all danger as much as possible), but as per usual, she refused to heed his warning. Through their bond, he knew the exact second that she stepped off of the TARDIS and set off through Torchwood Tower on her own, intent to explore and find more information about what was going on.

The Doctor's thoughts instantly flooded with fear and he silently begged for her to turn back around and stay hidden, but she shuttered her mind away from him and gave him the mental equivalent of a pat on the head and a quick reminder to stop worrying before their connection went horribly, eerily silent.

The only thing that managed to pull his attention away from actively seeking Rose out and attempting to use every trick that he could think of in order to get her to open back up to him again was the sight of the empty white wall that Yvonne led him to. The very air around the place tasted metallic and energized and so drastically, dreadfully wrong that it made the Doctor shiver. Through his 3D glasses, he could see that the wall was covered in void stuff and bristling with a dark, ominous energy.

More than all of that, however, were the timelines that converged on this spot in space. There were so many of them - all of them frayed almost beyond recognition and twisted together into patterns that the Doctor had never seen before in over nine-hundred years of time traveling. The sight of them behind his eyelids made his head spin and his stomach turn, and he found that he was more eager than ever to find Rose and get as far away from this place as possible.

He got to see her one last time - just a quick, thirty-seven second moment on Yvonne's small laptop screen (because of course she ended up getting caught - did he try to warn her?) - before the ghost shift started up again and all hell began to break loose as the Doctor and Yvonne stumbled upon a small group of cybermen hiding in one of Torchwood's many back rooms. Still, the brief moment was enough for Rose to relax her hold on the shields that she had put up around her mind, and as the entire building suddenly descended into chaos, her fear and adrenaline opened their bond the rest of the way as she reached out for him on instinct.

He could see through Rose that Mickey had returned, and the Doctor suspected that the infamous Idiot and these few cybermen weren't the only things that were sneaking through across the void and popping up where they didn't belong. His suspicions were (unfortunately) confirmed as the cybermen admitted that the void ship was not their own, and then Rose's adrenaline spiked as one simple word ran through her mind on an endless, terrified loop - exterminate.

Despite everything going on around them, though, the Doctor couldn't help but smile as he felt his bondmate's flare of righteous anger and bold confidence over their shared connection. The thought crossed his mind unbidden as the Doctor eagerly embraced her fearless shock of adrenaline - where had this woman been during the Time War? He might have quite enjoyed watching this one, human girl put thousands of stuffy Time Lord generals and tacticians to shame as she faced off against the oncoming dalek fleets with nothing but her brash sense of hope and confidence. It would have been a sight to behold.

Her mother, however, was far less assured as they faced off against the dual threat of invasion.

"I brought you here, I'll get you both out - you and your daughter," the Doctor vowed solemnly as he met her eyes with a firm, no-nonsense expression.

However, the flare of confidence that he had received from Rose just a few moments before quickly dissipated in the wake of the cybermen publicly threatening the entire human race and the daleks sacrificing an innocent man simply to gain information.

The Doctor gritted his teeth as he watched the laptop screen that the Cyberleader had commandeered from Yvonne light up with an image of the four daleks hidden deep within the bowels of the Torchwood Tower. The argument between the two killer species really would have been funny under any other circumstances, and the Doctor dearly wished that he could laugh, but his hearts were pounding far too fast and fear was slowly choking him as he was forced to simply sit back and watch the two species antagonize one another.

It was Jackie's terrified, whispered words that finally broke him out of his trance, and the Doctor reached for Rose over their bond at the exact same moment that he used her mum's cell phone to call her. Pick up, he begged her silently. Her own thoughts were so tightly-wound with fear that it was difficult to understand what was going on on her end with the daleks.

Thankfully, Rose seemed to catch his mental plea and she breathed a few deep, calming breaths and let her phone connect to his so that the Doctor could clearly hear both sides of the conversation going on between two of his oldest foes.

He slid the 3D glasses back over his eyes as he watched the two creatures face off against one another. They were all of them bristling with void stuff, and the seed of a plan was beginning to hatch within his mind. The only thing that he needed to figure out now was what this "genesis ark" of the daleks' was.

The Doctor fought desperately to keep his hopes up when Rose finally ended the call and the cybermen and the daleks determined to face off against one another. All things considered, he supposed that he should have been grateful that the two deadly robotic races seemed insistent on remaining enemies. The Doctor wasn't sure if any planet in any universe would be able to withstand their onslaught if the daleks and cybermen ever actually decided to team up with one another.

However, as the cybermen swiftly separated him from Jackie and began to prepare her and the rest of Torchwood's human employees for upgrading, the Doctor felt his hopes beginning to waver. How was one man - even one as clever and as brilliant as himself - meant to save his bondmate, her mother, and the entire rest of the world from two of the greatest, most powerful armies in the universe?

Thankfully, they were odds that the Doctor always seemed particularly good at playing, and he was more determined than ever to ensure that they would all make it out of this one alive.