Chapter Sixteen

The shopping centre was surprisingly empty. So was the entire city, now Jack came to think of it. There had been only a few native Xerians and humanoids from other planets on the streets, and even less non-humanoid species. According to the information terminal he had consulted earlier, Xeriax had trade agreements with several other planets in this quadrant. The city they were currently visiting was one of the largest on the planet, and served as a large cultural and governmental centre. According to the posters he had seen outside, a few hundred thousand tourists were expected to visit the opening of the cultural festival that would start tomorrow, but he had only seen a few dozen people outside. Something was going on here. He didn't know what it was, but he intended to find out.

"What do you think about an early lunch, Donna?" he asked when he discovered a small café that was completely deserted, save for the barman and two waiters. One of them was Terraxian, and the fact that his skin was tinged greenish-blue gave away that he was afraid of something. The other waiter just looked as if he was to bolt any second.

"I'm not really hungry, but I would kill for something to drink," she gave back, wiping her forehead with a tissue. "I don't think the air conditioning is working. It's almost as hot inside as it is outside."

It was warm in the shopping centre, but Jack had always thought that some shops on 21th century Earth overdid it with the air conditioning. He really didn't like to go shopping in a freezer. "At least we won't have the feeling of running into a solid wall of heat when we leave the building," he said. "What do you think about the café over there?"

"Looks good to me."

They ordered, and after a few minutes the waiter returned with their beverages. Jack waited patiently until Donna had finished about half of her drink, then he asked the question that had been nagging him since Cardiff.

"I've been meaning to ask you. You had a run-in with Daleks?"

Donna avoided his eyes and adjusted her glass of juice on the drip mat, but nodded eventually.

Judging from her reaction it had been pretty bad, and knowing the Doctor, Jack suspected he afterwards had avoided the topic altogether. Donna really looked as if she needed someone to talk to.

"What happened?"

She took a sip of her drink and placed the glass carefully on the table, then she looked at him again. "I don't know why, but one moment we were standing in the galley and he was telling me we were going to Cardiff, the next something hit us and the TARDIS went out of control."

"Something hit you? In the Time Vortex? That's supposed to be impossible!"

Donna laughed bitterly. "That's what he said. And then the TARDIS crash-landed us on the Dalek homeworld. We needed something to fix her, but she couldn't get us anywhere near. On our way back I got captured. All I did was walk around a rock nose because I'd heard something."

"And what did the Doctor do?"

"I don't know. All I know is that I spent a week imprisoned in a slave camp where they used children as mine workers and in the process starved them to death. He finally showed up while one of the humanoids working for the Daleks was torturing me."

"Let me guess. He went all Oncoming Storm on them? You know, this thing he does. 'This ends. Here and now,'" Jack said in his best imitation of a Northern accent. "And afterwards the baddies hide in dark caves or under the nearest table and hope he lets them live."

Donna smiled briefly at his imitation of a Mancunian accent, but quickly became serious again. "We got the slaves out, and then he told me that he was going to kill each and every Dalek in creation and send the planet back into the Middle Age." She gulped. "He was… He didn't care that he would kill not only the Daleks, but eventually also those people we had just freed. I'd never seen anyone so full of hatred before…" She trailed off.

Jack nodded. "He was like that when the Daleks took Rose from him for the first time… I've never been so afraid of someone in my life." He shuddered at the memory of the look on the Doctor's face when they'd found out that the Daleks were behind the Game Station.

"I… I told him I wouldn't let him, that it was wrong, but he only gave me this look… You know, the one that makes you think that you're nothing more than an insect in his eyes." Donna adjusted her glass on the drip mat once more, then looked back at Jack. "He said he was going to change history, and I don't even know why, but I told him I'd let him do it if he could tell me that Rose would agree. The look on his face when I brought her up…" She shuddered. "I was certain he'd kill me. But then he stopped. I still don't know why, but he stopped."

Jack took her hand. "You did what you had to do, Donna, what was right. Rose did the same for him. He doesn't think clearly whenever it comes to Daleks, and then he needs someone who makes him see reason. Ever since I met him in 1941 I've thought one of the reasons he keeps us around is that we're supposed to stop him if necessary. I don't think we've already seen what being a Time Lord really means, and to be honest, I hope I'll never find out." He paused, then smiled at her. "And I bet he didn't even apologise."

She smiled back, albeit a bit shakily. "Of course not! I was planning on guilt-tripping him into a visit to a spa planet, but then we ended up in Cardiff!"

"Cardiff is not that bad!"

They bantered back and forth until they had finished their drinks, and Jack signalled for the bill.

When the Terraxian waiter returned with it, Jack asked him, "I would have thought it was more crowded today, what with the festival beginning tomorrow."

The waiter stared at him in astonishment, his skin suddenly sporting yellow dots, even if the underlying colouring of fear didn't change. "Where are you from that you don't know the festival has been cancelled?"

"Oh, we've been travelling without access to the networks and have only returned today," Jack replied, waving his hand dismissively. "So what happened?"

"You must be the only persons on the entire planet who don't know. And they force us to work until three hours before shutdown."

"Know what? What shutdown?" Donna asked.

"A storm is coming," the waiter replied, took his tray, returned to the bar, dropped the tray on the counter and walked out of the little café.

Donna looked at Jack in confusion. "What does he mean, a storm? Something like a tornado?"

"I don't know, but maybe we should find out."

It took them only minutes to find an information terminal, and Jack touched the universally recognised symbol for weather.

A window opened, and a slightly green looking humanoid appeared on the screen. "The Meteorological Service has issued a class seven storm warning for the capital for today at 19 standard hours. The government asks everyone to leave the city, and where not possible, to seek shelter. The Meteorological Service will open their bunkers today at 12 standard hours." It was almost imperceptible, but his voice was shaking slightly.

19 standard hours was less than five hours away. Suddenly Jack Harkness, former time agent, former con-man, immortal, and currently leader of Torchwood Three was very, very scared.

~o~o~o~

The Doctor looked up from the monitor of the information portal and rubbed his forehead in frustration. His headache was getting worse, and he was getting nowhere with the information he was looking for. Whoever had purged the database had been extremely clever and covered their tracks. He was fairly certain that the government was involved in this, since an outside job would have left traces no matter what. Something was going on here, and he intended to find out.

He wondered briefly if he should go back to the TARDIS and let her scan for the technology he was looking for, but he was fairly certain that she was still furious with him and wouldn't let him in. With a sigh he turned back to the information portal.

Five minutes later he had just discovered something that looked like it might actually give him an idea of the whereabouts of whoever had cleansed the database, when he heard a hover car stopping behind him.

"Sir, please step away from the information terminal and raise your hands, so we can see them," a female voice said.

The Doctor silently cursed himself. He must have triggered an alarm in the system, maybe even before he had started hacking, just by using the search engine. He turned around and faced the humanoid female who had addressed him. Two uniformed Xerians were standing behind a hover car, training weapons at him, while the woman approached him, an official looking document in her hands.

"Sir, you are arrested under section 63/45 of the Restricted Information Policy Act. You will be taken into custody until the prosecutor decides whether you will be charged with a crime or not. If you put up resistance, the officers behind me will make use of their weapons."

The Doctor sighed. Was it really too much to ask for one trip where everything went to plan? Land, find whatever spare part or information he was looking for, dematerialise. But no, by landing on Xeriax he had not only pissed off his TARDIS, he also had acquired a killer headache, got himself arrested, and still had no idea where to look for the information he needed. He slowly raised his hands.

A short trip in the hover car later, he found himself sitting on a narrow bed in a small prison cell in a building that according to the signs belong to Xeriax's meteorological service, which in and of itself made no sense whatsoever. But then, the entire planet didn't. No wonder the Time Lords had declared it off-limits. His inability to perceive Time like he should was grating on his nerves, and the slight headache he had been developing as soon as he had set foot on the planet was slowly reaching dimensions where it would be measurable it on the Richter scale. He rubbed his forehead in frustration. Maybe the TARDIS had had a point in refusing to bring them here.

In a probably futile attempt to distract himself from the headache that just wouldn't leave him alone, he started to summarize what he knew. Point: Xeriax had been declared off-limits by the Time Lords because Time behaved strange here. Point: He remembered that Xeriax was known for its dimension-crossing technology. Point: There had been absolutely no evidence related to dimension-crossing technology in the databases, which screamed government at him. Point: He was in a prison that belonged to the meteorological service. Point: The meteorological service was part of the government.

Which brought him to the conclusion that this prison was most likely the place where he ought to be. The Doctor made himself comfortable on the bed, crossed his long legs and decided to wait for the things that would happen eventually while trying to ignore the headache that was getting worse by the second. Especially since staging a break out was much easier when he wasn't lacking his leather jacket and the sonic.

Some time passed, but to his utter dismay he couldn't tell exactly how long it had been since the guards had dropped him unceremoniously here. This planet was driving him crazy, slowly, but steadily. Not being able to perceive Time like usual was bad enough, but now the planet was starting to wreak havoc with his time sense. As much as he loathed admitting it, the TARDIS had been right about Xeriax. Now she would be insufferably smug for weeks.

~o~o~o~

Jack's shoulders slumped in despair. Ages ago, when the three of them had visited Cardiff for the first time, he'd programmed the number of the Doctor's mobile into his vortex manipulator, but the number hadn't worked ever since the Game Station. He hadn't even known if the Doctor still had the mobile and had purposefully ignored his calls after Satellite Five or if the device had been destroyed, but this time he had really hoped for an answer, especially since it was possible that the Doctor didn't even know what was coming.

"And what do we do now?" Donna asked.

"Back to the TARDIS. She's probably the safest place in the entire town."

"Why? I mean, even if she's bigger on the inside, the outside is nothing more than wood."

Jack shook his head. "The outside may look like wood, but it's anything but, and the inside is in another dimension. Otherwise the whole concept wouldn't work. Whatever happens here, it won't affect us if we are inside." Apparently Donna hadn't got the infamous 'the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan' speech yet.

"But what about the people in the city?"

"Donna, they've got bunkers. They will be safe inside." He hoped. Remembering the slight tremble in the voice of the news anchorman, he wasn't so sure.

They were halfway to the TARDIS, when suddenly a little boy barrelled headfirst into Donna. She stumbled, and Jack could only just stop her from falling.

The boy had hit the ground, but he already straightened himself, mumbled a quick "Sorry" and was about to bolt, when Jack caught his wrist.

"Do you always run across the streets like a horde of wild…?" One look into the boy's face, and Jack swallowed the end of his sentence. "What's wrong?" he asked instead, releasing him.

"I have to find Sergos. He has promised to help me with my mum. I can't get her to the bunker on my own. She's got a broken leg."

Jack sighed. "So… What's your name?"

"Artor."

"So, Artor, where do you live?"

It took them ten minutes to get to Artor's flat. His mum, who greeted them from her bed, was unable to walk more than a few steps, and on seeing their worn-down furniture Jack quickly buried his hope to find an anti-grav unit. One of those would have cost a lot more than the family could have afforded. So Jack improvised a transport frame that would allow him to carry her to the bunker, while Donna collected her medicine and Artor grabbed a few clothes and his favourite toy.

"I can't thank you enough for doing this!" Artor's mum, Seri, said when Jack told her that they were ready to go. "Most people would have ignored my son."

Donna smiled at her. "Artor was very brave, going after someone who could help him. It just happened that we were much nearer to your flat than whoever he was looking for."

Seri nodded. "Sergos. He is my brother-in-law. My husband died in an accident last year, and Sergos has been helping us whenever we needed someone. But he has his own family to look after."

Ten minutes later, Jack held up the finished transport device. "Nothing fancy, but it'll get you to the bunker."

It took them twenty minutes to reach their destination, through almost deserted streets. They saw several people going the same way, while others were heading in the opposite direction, mostly elderly Xerians. Jack frowned at the sight. Something was going on here, and he had the dim feeling he wouldn't like it.

After half an hour of queuing in front of the entrance to the bunker, he discovered that he had been right. He didn't like it one bit.

"Identification," a male Xerian with official looking insignia sneered at their little group, like he had at every group before.

Jack groaned inwardly, and produced his psychic paper.

"Harkness," the official read. "That your wife?" He looked at Donna.

"My sister," he lied smoothly. Thankfully he had centuries of experience of keeping his face straight, because Donna stomped on his feet. Hard.

"And the others?"

Seri fumbled in her pocket and presented hers and Artor's identification.

The official looked at them closely, then said, "You may enter. Except her." He pointed at Seri.

"And who are you to decide that?" Donna asked. Her tone betrayed her frustration with the whole situation.

"I'm the local evacuation officer. I'm responsible for the people in this district getting to safety in case of…," he boomed, but Donna interrupted him before he could finish his sentence.

"Then I'd suggest you reconsider your decision, or you won't be the local evacuation officer much longer."

Jack grinned inwardly. He could see why the Doctor had chosen Donna as a companion. She was stubborn, had an uncanny sense for what was right, and was not afraid to call even the Doctor on his behaviour. A bureaucrat on a backwater planet would never stand a chance.

The evacuation officer looked at Jack, apparently hoping for help. "But we can't let them all in. We don't have the capacity."

Even if it was true, that still wasn't a reason to stop letting people into the bunker while there still was space left. One look at Donna told Jack, that she was thinking the same, and about to make known her opinion with a tirade, possibly followed by slapping the bureaucrat into another dimension. He gave the official a hard look. "Mate, you've got no idea what you brought upon you with that sentence. So, to stop my sister here from exploding into your face, I suggest you answer us a few questions. One: How long until the storm hits?"

The other man consulted his data pad. "Two and a half standard hours."

"And how long is it going to last?

"They're estimating six hours, seven at the most."

"Let's say you close off the bunker in one and a half hours and keep it locked an additional two hours after the storm is supposed to die down, that would mean we'd need air for nine hours. Now, how many people can you let in and still have enough air for that long?"

A quick calculation on the data pad was followed by, "Six thousand."

"And how many are in here?"

"Four thousand three hundred and eighty-six," the evacuation officer told him after another glance at his data pad.

"Then I suggest you let everyone in, until you've reached six thousand," Donna threw in, with an expression that could have scared a statue to death.

The man in front of her paled considerably.

~o~o~o~

"Do you want to go back to the TARDIS, Donna?" Jack asked, after they had spent more than an hour helping organise the people already in the bunker, making room for more refugees. "She'd probably be safer than this bunker."

Donna shook her head. "They won't say it, but they need every hand they can get. One of the other evacuation officials told me that most of their volunteers left the city when the meteorological service gave out their first warning. Besides, if we leave the guy at the entrance might return to his 'you're only getting in here if I like your nose' attitude."

Jack grinned at that. "Valid argument."

For the next few hours they helped the evacuation staff keeping up some semblance of order. Donna was about to hand a child back to her mother when the buzz of voices around her was interrupted by a loud, rumbling noise. The bulkhead was closing, shutting them off from the outside.

She looked up to meet Jack's eyes. Now they were stuck.

~o~o~o~