Chapter Fifteen
The Doctor stared at the monitor, desperately trying to analyse what he was seeing and mostly failing. Seeing the CCTV footage from Torchwood tower brought it all back. He clutched the mug of tea Jack had made during his second review as if it was a lifeline. Rationally he knew it was stupid, but he had caught himself hoping that this time Rose's grip on the lever wouldn't slip, that replaying the events would lead to a different outcome.
He pressed the replay button, his attention focused on the screen that showed footage of the Void Ship and only dimly aware of Jack watching him from the jump seat. Something was off, he was certain of it, even if he couldn't put his finger on it.
He turned around and faced Jack. "You know, Rose asked a couple of very clever questions about the Void."
"So? Wait, when? I wouldn't have thought she'd had the time during the battle."
The Doctor sighed. Not that it really mattered right now, but if he didn't answer Jack's questions the lad would pester him endlessly. "Time Lords have this little trick. If we desire so, we can establish a bond with our beloved ones. It's extremely rare, and it hasn't happened for millennia, but it enables us to meet at a place between dimensions. I've never heard of it working when the partners are in different universes, but with the help of the TARDIS it somehow does."
Jack grinned. "Don't tell me you can have inter-dimensional…"
He had the feeling that Jack was going to say something extremely inappropriate, but whatever it was, the sentence was interrupted when the TARDIS door opened and Donna appeared, her arms full of shopping bags.
"You owe me big time, you know," she said, completely ignoring the other man in the room. "Cardiff is probably the most boring town I've ever been to."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," Jack threw in. "At the moment we have a Weevil infestation and last week we had a shape-shifting alien that tried to kill half of my team. And it looks like you found a couple of shops anyway." He glanced at her bags. "Even if there are better lingerie shops than the one you chose."
Donna looked up and down his body appraisingly. "And you are?"
"That, Donna, is Jack Harkness," the Doctor said.
"Captain Jack Harkness." Jack sent Donna a megawatt-smile.
The Doctor recognised the signs immediately. "Stop it, Jack!"
"What? I'm just saying hello."
"I know your hellos, Jack." The Doctor sighed and turned to Donna. "Jack's probably the biggest flirt in the universe." Turning back to Jack he added, "Jack, meet Donna, biggest slap in the universe."
Jack broke into laughter. "You must have made quite an impression on him. Formerly that nickname was reserved for Jackie Tyler."
"Well, he deserved one for getting me imprisoned in the Tower," Donna informed him conspiratorially.
Jack laughed harder. "You did what, Doc?"
The Doctor shook his head, wondering if he could get away with accidently getting Jack arrested on Noia Five. The bureaucrats on this planet were the most annoying he had ever come across, and that included the pompous versions on Gallifrey. Noia Five had laws on everything, including flirting. As he had found out the hard way, it was only allowed if one had written permission of the guardian of the woman in question, in triplicate. He had never told Rose, but the lack thereof had been what had got them arrested there, not crossing the street. Although, knowing Jack, he would probably just introduce one of the guards to fifty-first century pheromones and be out of the prison before someone could say Raxacoricofallapatorious.
"Yeah, well, if we could get back to the problem at hand," he grumbled. "And don't call me Doc, Jack!"
"And what exactly is the problem?" Donna asked.
"Getting Rose back, without destroying two universes in the process," Jack informed her.
"You know her?"
Jack grinned. "Met her during the Blitz. She was dangling from a barrage balloon in the middle of an air raid."
"Really?"
"Yeah. The most jeopardy-friendly girl I've ever seen. And since the Doctor wants her back…"
"Yes, I do. And I'd really appreciate it if we could concentrate on that," the Doctor interrupted. He pointed at the monitor still showing a freeze frame of the Void Ship. "Something about this thing is off, but I don't know what it is."
"And what exactly is that thing?" Donna asked. "It just looks like a rather large sphere."
"It's called a Void Ship. Until I'd seen it in the lab I hadn't even thought it was possible. It should have been impossible. But somehow they built one…" He trailed off.
"So what does it do?" If anything, Donna was stubborn. "And who are they?"
"The scientists on my planet theorised that a Void Ship would be able to travel through the Void, the emptiness between parallel universes. Most of them didn't think it was possible. I didn't think it was possible until I'd seen it. And I've no idea who they are." He pressed the play button, and the sphere opened, released a group of Daleks and eventually dissolved into thin air.
"But what about the Daleks?" Donna pointed at the screen. If Jack was surprised Donna knew about them, he didn't comment.
"The Daleks? Donna, I've told you before. All they ever wanted was to destroy every race that was not like them." He spit out the words, his eyes never leaving the screen. "They don't have enough imagination to come up with the theory of trans-dimensional travel."
"Well, where did the sphere come from, then?"
The Doctor stared at the monitor. "No idea."
"You said, Rose had asked questions about what happened at Canary Wharf?" Jack threw in.
"Not so much about Canary Wharf, more what had caused the cracks in the other universe. We don't think it's the Cybermen. They have even less imagination than the Daleks. It's a wonder they found a way into the Void in the first place, let alone to this universe, even without Torchwood helping them along."
"Yvonne Hartman was an idiot," Jack said. "But I don't think she did have anything to do with the cracks."
"You're right, Jack, she didn't, at least not with their origin. But I think I know whose fault it is," the Doctor said slowly. "At least I know who made them possible."
"And that is?" Donna asked.
"Me." He was still looking at the monitor, though without actually seeing the scene displayed there. "When I used the Moment to end the Time War, it sent repercussions through time and space, like a shock wave. That must have caused tiny ruptures. But none of them would have been big enough to let something like the Void ship through, until Torchwood in their unfathomable wisdom decided to use the cracks as an energy source."
"Doctor," Donna said slowly, "didn't the trader say something about a shock wave?"
He turned around and stared at her. "Of course. He was displaced in time! I've been stupid."
"Hear, hear." That was Jack.
"Shut it. I'm thinking." He turned back to the console and typed a few commands.
"You're not exactly polite," Donna admonished.
"Jack's not exactly polite either," he gave back distractedly, still typing. A few seconds later long rows of figures replaced the footage of the lab in Torchwood Tower.
"Is that…" Jack suddenly stood next to him.
"That's the function describing the multi-dimensional trajectory of the shock wave I caused when I used the Moment." Another command, and the monitor showed a simulation of the wave. He followed its course, citing some of the various star systems it had hit. "The Denerian star cluster, the Reneb system, Xeriax." He paused. "Why does it ring a bell? Xeriax."
"In the Time Agency I heard stories about the system," Jack threw in. "Some people said it was haunted. No one believed them, but according to the reports I saw, at least two time agents vanished there without a trace, on one of the outer planets. We never found out why."
"Time agents vanished… Time… Wait! That's it! Time vanished!" the Doctor exclaimed, only to meet confused faces.
"How can time vanish?" Donna asked.
"It doesn't. It's a metaphor, Donna. When I was a child, the teachers in the Academy told us that Xeriax was off-limits, because Time didn't work there like anywhere else, that it would feel as if the timelines had evaporated. That must have been a result of the shock wave. No Time Lord with self-preservation instincts would ever go somewhere where their time sense could get confused, and according to the stories we were told that's what happened to an entire group of Time Lords when they visited Xeriax. From what I remember, the Xerian people were able to influence time in a way only a Time Lord normally would be able to, and they were said to have crossed dimensions."
"They crossed dimensions? But how?" Jack asked.
A strange light began to glow the Doctor's eyes. "Let's find out!"
He began to turn knobs and dials, only to be interrupted by his companion just when he was about to loosen the handbrake.
"Doctor, there's one thing I don't get. If the shock wave changed the laws of time or whatever on Xerox, and you are the one who caused it, how can you have heard of the results as a child?"
"Because time is not a straight line, Donna," Jack explained. "Just think of it as…"
"…a big ball of wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimey stuff," the Doctor continued the sentence.
"Wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimey?" Jack asked sceptically. "Is that a technical term?"
"Of course!" the Doctor replied indignantly, his hands still at the handbrake. "Are you ready?"
"Wait, Doc! Didn't you say a Time Lord with self-preservation instincts would never go there?"
A manic smile appeared on the Doctor's face. "Ah."
"But…" Jack never got to finish his sentence.
~o~o~o~
Rose Tyler, Vitex heiress, tumbled into the restroom, hair mussed, dress slightly disarranged. Two men were following closely behind, ties loosened, shirts partly unbuttoned. When the door closed behind them, she looked up, taking in the scene in front of her. Several people in various states of undress occupied the room, 'undress' including body suits being removed and revealing an appearance that struck her very Slitheen. A loud fart followed by a complaint about the lack of appropriate compression technology and problems with the gas exchange confirmed her suspicions.
"Looks like the orgy already started without us, boys." With that she straightened, Mickey and Jake taking positions slightly behind and to the side.
"Yeah, but we'll make sure it doesn't end without us!" Mickey drew out two bright red water pistols he'd been hiding in his jacket. "Good thing that Tony leaves his toys everywhere, including the kitchen."
Rose grinned, her eyes never leaving the group of aliens in front of her. "Mum told Pete that Tony wasn't old enough to play with water pistols, but maybe she was wrong."
"State name, species and planet of origin!" Jake said, addressing the alien in front of him that was yielding a dangerous looking weapon. "And intent, while we're at it!"
"And why would I do that?" the being that looked like the spitting image of a Slitheen asked. "You're nothing more than cubs playing at my feet, not even worth being hunted. Do you really think your toys are going to scare us with toys?" He gestured at the water pistols Mickey was holding.
"You didn't really think we'd fill them with water, did you? That's vinegar essence. Ever seen what acetic acid does to calcium-based species? Not a pretty sight," Rose said.
"I take the risk." He raised his weapon higher, so she was looking down the muzzle. She'd never really liked the view.
"Mate, one unforgettable night I exploded one of your sort in my kitchen with acetic acid. Took me months to get the stain out of the curtains," Mickey said.
"Mick, that's more because you don't know how to operate a washing machine," Jake threw in. "And you're not the only one wearing a weapon." He pulled out two extra-terrestrial looking weapons and passed one to Rose.
She looked at the gun for a moment and recognised the design instantly. "Villengard? You've got a sonic blaster from Villengard?" She felt for a certain switch Jack had once shown her, checked the setting and adjusted it slightly.
"Yeah. We found it on a crash site a few years ago. And the best thing is, the techies improved the energy yield. You can take down an entire battalion of Cybermen with one of these babies without draining the energy cell."
"Hey, why didn't you tell me you had those?" Mickey asked indignantly.
"Because I knew Rose would need a weapon, too."
"Yeah, ever tried to hide a gun under a dress like this?" she asked an alien that looked rather female, despite the really large gun she was holding.
Her opponent nodded sympathetically, only to return to her threatening demeanour.
Jake grinned briefly, his eyes never leaving what seemed to be the leader of the group. "Right, where were we? Oh yes, you were going to tell me what your intentions are."
"Or else we're gonna turn you into alien goo," added Mickey.
"Oh, I don't think so," the leader of the group responded, raising his gun, his finger slowly moving towards the trigger.
Rose didn't hesitate for a second. She aimed the blaster at his hand and pressed the button. He dropped the gun, rubbing the hand that had been holding the weapon with the other.
"That was the lowest stun setting," she said. "Paralyses one limb for a few minutes. The highest blaster setting would turn you into atoms. This is not a game. Tell us name, species and intention."
Her opponent practically growled. "We are the Chaskeen, and your species is going to bring our slave trade business to new prosperity. Celebrities, even if from another planet, reach high prices on Thalor Seven, and politicians sell even better. A few humans are not going to stop us."
Rose sighed theatrically. "Another universe, same difference. It all comes down to money." She paused briefly. "But unfortunately you made a mistake."
"Oh yes, you did. You chose the wrong party to crash," a voice Rose recognised immediately as Pete's interrupted her from behind. She suspected her stepfather had entered the room while she had been busy paralysing the alien. "You really shouldn't have tried to revive your business by intruding on my wedding anniversary. My wife is furious. And you have no idea what it means if Jackie Tyler is furious."
"Yeah, the Doctor is still rubbing his cheek," Rose muttered to herself.
"Well, it's not as if he didn't deserve it," Mickey murmured.
Rose glared at him.
"At this point she wants your heads on her wall," Pete continued, ignoring them, "even if it will ruin my living room. With a bit of luck I can persuade her that photos of your dead bodies in her album will do, too, but I'm making no promises."
"And you'll get our heads by what means exactly?" the leader of the alien group asked, still rubbing his arm. "You'll never be able to get all of us, before the survivors would kill you." He gestured awkwardly, and the aliens raised their weapons at Rose. "One move and we'll shoot your daughter!" Apparently the Chaskeen had done their research.
Pete didn't even blink an eye. "No, you won't." He pressed a button on his watch. "Team One, Team Two, now!"
Suddenly the window in the back of the room shattered and a man in Torchwood combat dress entered the room, followed by another, while the other members of the team covered them from the outside. At the same time the door crashed open and a second Torchwood reaction unit entered the restroom through the door.
"Drop your weapons or we'll shoot!" the commander in charge ordered, while two of his team members shoved Rose, Mickey and Jake into the background.
The Chaskeen leader slowly raised his hands.
Three hours later Rose, Jake, and Mickey sat in Pete's office at the mansion, waiting for him. He had ordered them here as soon as the remaining guests and the last Torchwood agents had left the estate.
Eventually they heard footsteps outside the door, and Pete mumbling something, then he entered the room, closing the door behind him. With four long steps he surrounded his desk and faced them.
"Do you have any idea what you've done?" he asked, sounding tired.
"Yes, sir," Jake replied. "We stopped a couple of aliens from selling your guests as slaves."
"No, you didn't! Instead of calling for reinforcements and letting Torchwood handle the situation, you went into a completely unknown and potentially hostile situation armed just with two sonic blasters and two water pistols, of all things!" he shouted. "What the hell were you thinking? Do you have any idea of the political fall-out you've caused? To the press, and don't tell me you didn't notice the paparazzi, it looked as if Torchwood agents arrested three influential MPs, the Mayor of London and the bleeding Education Secretary."
Outside the door there was a noise, but Pete ignored it and continued, "You can count yourself lucky that I saw you entering the restroom and called the cavalry when I heard what was going on, or you'd be dead right now. They had a bomb, and one of them was working on activating it, when the combat teams stormed the room. Have you never heard of back-up or reconnaissance?"
"Pete, we thought we should take a look, because a few of the guests were behaving weird. We just wanted to find out what was happening before calling in Torchwood," Jake said.
Unfortunately that didn't calm Pete in the slightest. "This was the most irresponsible thing I've ever heard of. If we weren't so short on personnel, I'd fire all of you. You will ride a desk for the next month. At least that should give you the chance to catch up on the paper work you seem to conveniently forget about whenever you finish a mission." He took a breath. "And if something even remotely like this happens ever again, I'll fire you, shortage of agents or not."
In the following silence, Rose could hear footsteps outside the door that eventually receded.
"I'm sorry," she apologised. "We didn't want to ruin your party. Mickey, Mum and I had a run in with this species before, and we thought the vinegar and the sonic weapons would be enough fire power, especially since we weren't even sure what was going on. I mean, it could have just been guests who had eaten something wrong, and calling Torchwood for that would have been overkill."
"Apology accepted." Pete sat down behind his desk and grinned suddenly. "And to be honest, I'm not really mad. That was just for Jacks." He nodded towards the door and the now-quiet hallway beyond. "But you'll still be confined to your desk for the next month."
~o~o~o~
The Doctor glared at his ship. His companions hadn't noticed yet, but for the last twenty minutes the TARDIS had been fighting him tooth and nail, so to speak. She didn't want to land, and she made her opinion known rather thoroughly. But even if she didn't want to land here, he didn't care. If Xeriax and their dimension crossing technology gave him a chance to get Rose back, he would take it, despite the ideas his decidedly stubborn time ship seemed to be having.
Half an hour later, after subsequently cursing her, threatening to fix the chameleon circuit and make her look like a grandfather clock, cursing her, promising to upgrade her navigation system, cursing her, and swearing that he'd been joking about fixing the chameleon circuit, the TARDIS finally relented. Of course that didn't stop her from acting like any annoyed female would have done: she dumped them in an alley that looked decidedly like a junkyard.
As soon as he opened the TARDIS door, the Doctor knew Xeriax was wrong, and when he set foot on the planet he knew why. It was as if Time had vanished here, like the legends had said. He could still feel the timelines, but he couldn't connect to them, as if they were out of reach somehow. It felt as if he was suffocating slowly. He closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment, but it didn't change how he felt. If this planet's technology didn't give him a chance to get Rose back, he'd be initiating the dematerialisation sequence this second.
He took a deep breath and adjusted his leather jacket, then turned back to his companions who were still standing in the doorframe of his ship. "You lot coming? We don't have all day." He still had the nagging feeling that he shouldn't be here, or at least that they should leave the planet as soon as possible.
"Relax, Doc. Time machine, remember? What about some sightseeing? On a planet you don't already know everything about before we've even landed." Jack grinned. "Besides, how long have you been separated from Rose? A few hours more won't kill you."
"Jack…" His voice was low and threatening, but before he could say more he was interrupted by Donna.
"Do you think they've got a market?" she asked, shoving Jack out the doorway so she could leave the ship, whose doors closed behind her immediately.
The Doctor could almost hear crossbars falling in place, securing the doors. Apparently his ship was still annoyed, and he doubted that would change anytime soon. They'd be lucky if she let them in again.
"Donna, you went shopping in Cardiff. Don't you think that should last for a while?"
"That's the point, Doctor. I had to go shopping in Cardiff. It's not exactly Rome or Paris!"
He could feel a slight headache building behind his eyes and sighed. When exactly had his life become an intergalactic shopping tour? Even if he hadn't minded shopping with Rose. Not much, anyway. But spending more time here than absolutely necessary was bound to drive him crazy. He could barely suppress the urge to leave this planet immediately. "Tell you what, you and Jack go shopping and I find out more about that dimension crossing technology. Should save us some time."
He stomped off without another word, his hands buried deep in his jacket. As soon as he left the alley and entered the street, he could feel the blazing sun glaring down on him. In the alley, the shadows of the surrounding buildings had protected them, but here the temperature already was reaching a level that would soon become uncomfortable for his companions, even if it was still early in the morning. Oh well, this was supposed to be a highly evolved planet. They'd have air-conditioned shopping centres.
Humans! If the universe didn't revolve around them, they became like a three-year old who'd lost his favourite teddy and threw a temper tantrum. He shook his head. This planet was grating on his nerves, and his headache seemed to be getting stronger. He knew he was being unfair, but he couldn't help it. Everything felt just wrong, more wrong than Jack ever had. As much as he tried, he just couldn't see the timelines properly, and that was supposed to be impossible. No wonder the Time Lords had declared this planet off limits.
The Doctor hadn't exactly paid attention to the direction in which he was going, but after a while he realised that he was definitely not approaching the city centre. Industrial areas looked the same in every part of the universe, slightly run down even if they were brand new, but the one he'd found himself in was more than a little run down. Factory buildings with broken windows, rusty company signs and fences, road holes; everything gave the impression that it had been left a few decades ago. He rubbed his forehead. On every other planet he'd have been able to tell how old the surrounding buildings were, how long they'd been in use, and when they'd been deserted. Not that he normally cared, but he could find out if he wanted. On this planet all he could see was a group of buildings sitting, truncated, in only three dimensions, temporally incomplete.
But even if the industrial area looked deserted, it had something that passed for a public information terminal on Xeriax. The column was rusty, and the screen had a large crack, but the monitor on the column slowly flickered to life when the Doctor touched the keyboard. A few minutes later he had a basic overview of the planet's history, the current developments in the commodities market, and the latest political manoeuvres of the governing party. What he didn't have was a clue where to look for the dimension-crossing technology. Whenever he looked up a terminus related to parallel worlds, he came up with literally nothing. It looked like the data banks had been wiped, because nothing was next to impossible. He'd never come across a culture at a certain evolutionary level that hadn't come up with a couple of science fiction stories about alternate universes. Apart from maybe the Cybermen, who lacked the imagination, and the Sontarans, who had bred the interest in stories out of their genetic code ages ago.
But then it was also impossible to wipe a database without leaving traces. And if he found those he'd find the people responsible for deleting the data, and he was fairly certain that they'd lead him to the technology he was looking for. He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the information terminal and began to hack.
~o~o~o~
"Stubborn alien git!" Donna glared at the Doctor's retreating back.
Jack changed a setting on his Vortex manipulator and narrowed his eyes. "He'll calm down eventually. I guess this planet is grating on his nerves." He showed her the screen of his manipulator. "See?"
She looked at the tiny monitor and turned her glare at Jack. "What exactly should I see on a black screen, Captain?"
"That's exactly the point, Donna, it shouldn't be black. On any other planet you would see a simplified illustration of the Time Vortex, but here we don't."
"And what does that mean?"
"For the Doctor, it means that he can't feel Time like he usually does, as if he was blind and deaf at the same time," Jack explained. "For us, nothing in particular."
Unfortunately that wasn't the entire truth. Even if the TARDIS had repaired his Vortex manipulator, without a reading he wasn't able to make a time jump. Jack just hoped that didn't apply to the TARDIS as well, because then they'd be stuck here. And he had the dim feeling that this wasn't exactly one of the universe's most interesting spots.
He put up a grin that was only partly faked and held out his arm to Donna. "Care to explore the planet for a while?"
When they reached the street they quickly discovered that the Doctor seemed to have vanished. Jack shrugged. "City centre is that way." He pointed.
"Don't you think we should look for the Doctor?"
"There's no need. Knowing the Doctor, he'll find us eventually. Besides, I can imagine better ways to spend my time than dragging along a Time Lord in that sort of mood." He grinned at Donna and offered her his arm. "Shopping?"
A/N: Reviews can be a source of inspiration. Just saying.