Donna looked around. The vaults were cold but the Doctor's question seemed to send the temperature plummeting down another few degrees. Her grandfather was holding her hand tightly, for his comfort or her own, she wasn't quite sure.
No one said anything for a long moment. Moira took a deep shuddering breath and Keira moved tentatively to her side.
"It happened here." John had come into the hallway with Ianto following close behind. He looked at the device in Moira's hand and he and Keira exchanged glances.
"Here?" Jack sound sceptical.
"In Cardiff."
"But you weren't based here."
"No. We came here. To study the Rift. There was nothing like that where we were. We were...we hardly did anything until we found the illuminator. That's what we called it. It was washed up on the beach and it took us months to figure it out. When we did..."
For a fleeting second, Moira's eyes brightened. "We could see so much. It showed us aliens that we never dreamt of! All these beings in our midst and we never realised!"
"You made them vulnerable," the Doctor said quietly.
"We made them visible, just like we did to you. We studied them."
"In other words, you confined them."
"Arming ourselves against the future," she corrected defensively. Her voice was slightly rushed now, as if the words which had taken so long in coming to her now couldn't be said fast enough.
"We thought there'd be more interesting creatures here to study. Rift in time and space and all that." She gave a small, cheerless laugh.
"But there was already a Torchwood here," Jack said.
"So? No one else had what we had to look for alien life. We arrived here one summer morning, really early. It was already warm...there was this lovely sunlight. It made everything look colourful."
"You're sure it was Cardiff?" Jack muttered.
"The illuminator could detect patterns as well as actual life," Moira said, ignoring him. "We'd seen that in certain places. It would pick up on atmospheres, temperature changes, anything really. And it went wild once we got here...like there was a million words sitting on top of each other. Some areas, you could just sense...like it was really excited, like it was alive. Doing its job.
The Doctor gave her a sharp look at that but said nothing.
"We picked this one point...the most ordinary place in the world...a little corner of a street. No shops. No houses. Just a long wall and a few weeds but the machine was going mad. I could hardly hold it. We set it down, and the six of us gathered around it. I pressed the lever. And we were taken."
"Taken?"
"Well, disappeared, pushed, whatever. It was like this mist came down and there was a sound, like a vacuum cleaner, only louder. Then...I don't know, it was like falling but I don't think any of us were fully conscious."
Keira shook her head, as if trying to clear it of something.
"You got pushed through the Rift," Jack said slowly. He turned to John. "Could you bring the machine down here? Please? I just want to look at it."
Before John could respond, the Doctor said sharply, "no! No one touches that machine." He turned back to Moira who appeared not to have heard anything, apart from the stream of memories in her mind.
"Go on," she said to her.
"We...not all of us survived the fall. I don't know what happened to them...Robert, Sam and Michelle. When we opened our eyes, we were lying on grass...well, some sort of grass. I was still holding the machine. And there were only three of us. We tried to tell ourselves that they'd been left behind, that they were still there, in Cardiff and they were fine. But when we got back here, we searched everywhere for them. And that pull, it was so strong, no one could have resisted it, standing that close. They were gone and we've never found out where.
We knew straight away that we weren't on Earth anymore but I don't know how. Isn't that weird? We could breathe and all that. It felt fairly normal but...it was completely different. Everything was just a bit off...the temperature, colours, the sky. As time went on, we noticed...no sun, no moon, space ships overhead...and the people. But right then, we only knew we were somewhere that no human had ever been. And it was...beautiful. I mean, we were so scared and three of us were missing and we had no idea if we could survive and for how long...but it was so beautiful we couldn't stop looking around and wanting to see more of it."
Donna almost laughed as the Doctor and Jack nodded in the same moment as if to reassure her that this sensation was completely understandable.
"There were these mountains, you see. They were shining...all these stars above them shone overhead all the time. And the more we tried to walk nearer to them...we never got close. And then we realised that we were on a mountain too, an identical one. There were no trees, just this strange grass...you could see for miles. It was so beautiful."
The Doctor suddenly put a hand to his forehead and groaned softly.
"The Glimstone Mountains."
"What?" Moira looked up as if only realising that he was still there. Then she nodded slowly.
"You could always see the whole planet from any point of it," the Doctor said. "That was the beauty of the Glimstone Mountains...its beauty was obvious from every point of it. The show-off planet, we used to call it. It was a tiny planet made out of mountains, nothing but these beautiful mountains that went on for miles." His face looked wretched.
"You know this place?" Jack asked.
"I knew it," the Doctor replied.
"You more than knew it, though, didn't you? You and your people?" Moira's voice lost its dreaminess as she glared at the Doctor.
"Wrong place, wrong time," the Doctor said quietly. Donna crept forward and held his hand, to remind him that he wasn't alone to relive some terrible memory and also because she couldn't bear to look at his face.
"What?"
"The Time War...it was more than a war with weapons and fighting. It was literally, a Time War. Paradoxes, time shifts...some of them so powerful they moved whole worlds. Like Glimstone. A quiet little paradise pulled into the middle of the most powerful war the universe had ever seen." He cleared his throat and continued quietly, "that's why it had to end."
"The people..." Keira started and stopped, her eyes filling with tears.
"Yes," the Doctor said.
"They were almost like us...same basic atonomy. Maybe a little smaller and they could certainly move faster. There was something so caring about them...like they were parents, every one of them. And their looks...they were so beautiful. We never learned their language but we communicated with them. Isn't that strange?"
The Doctor managed a faint smile.
"We knew each other's names. And we stayed with many of them in turn. They gave us house room without a word. We ate at their tables, walked the mountains with them. On our own, we felt the awful feeling that we were away from our world, completely isolated in space. And then, we'd be with them and it was like, it wasn't so different. We were looked after but never treated like royalty...or like we were a burden either, just as if we were meant to be there.
After a while, we found a way to communicate with them. Through the machine."
"Through your memories," the Doctor said.
Moira nodded.
"They used memory almost...as an art. They could change their memories, relive other peoples', they studied the power of memory. And the machine fascinated them. They found a way to work it so that we lived some of their memories. It was like they became ours. But they'd always reverse it at the end. They didn't do it to harm us...just to show us their past. And we could do it in reverse, they liked to see where we'd come from. They were so gentle."
Moira looked at the ground. "They were the only species we couldn't bear to study. And yet, we spent so long with them."
"And the war came," John said. His words seem to cut through the memories, as if he could no longer bear to hear them.
Moira nodded.
"It had been going on long before we got there, all around the planet. We saw amazing sights...and terrible ones. Ships in the sky, fires...all night sometimes. On a clear days, you could see whole worlds...stretching on forever."
"The Doctor's hand shook slightly in Donna's but his expression didn't change.
"But then, both sides...and allies of both sides...they started to land on Glimstone. At first, we thought they'd come to invade or to kill them. We helped the people build shelters and they invited us to share them.
But it seemed that anyone who came to Glimstone wanted to make allies of the people and to use their mountains as...I don't know...a vantage point, some sort of base. Sometimes we spoke to them. We wanted to learn more about the war. After a while, it got dangerous. The people...they told us to stay in the shelters. We helped with food distribution and first aid sometimes. Sometimes we'd share memories to keep each other's spirits up. We couldn't keep up on the outside anymore, you see, and we couldn't understand and when we began to, the damage had been done."
"They were completely split," John said. "The people... they had all decided on different sides to support. Some were terrified into it, some had been made promises of safety, prosperity, whatever. But between, they had started another war."
"We tried communicating with them," Keira said. "We tried to tell them that they should have nothing more to do with the war. It was pointless really, I mean, they were sitting targets anyway but to see them destroying themselves..."
"It didn't take long," Moira said tonelessly. "They were completely drawn into the War...without even the advantage of being able to stand together as a nation."
"And they changed toward us," Keira said, "suddenly they bargained with us over our safety, rather than offering protection as they had done since we arrived. They wanted the machine. They...they wanted to see our world again over and over and what we knew about other worlds. Our heads...sometimes it was like we had no control over our thoughts. It got to a point that in the middle of the fighting one day, we took a chance and made a run from it, from them."
"How did you get back here?" the Doctor asked.
"One day the cave we'd been hiding in...it was being watched by some of the Glimstone people...and we were sure they knew we were in there. But the Daleks came...the Daleks terrified us, the little we'd seen of them...and the people...even the mention of Daleks seemed to traumatise them."
Donna shuddered in sympathy, captivated with how weird it was to hear other people discussing Timelords and Daleks.
"We managed to get out and run. Didn't look back...just ran. We kept going for hours...and then we stopped at this one place for water," Moira said, "and...I had the machine. I carried it everywhere with me. It hadn't worked since we arrived and I thought it never would again but I still wanted to have it."
"It started jumping," Keira added, "the vibrations were so intense, it was just like Cardiff. And in a way, it was like, suddenly we remembered how much we wanted to go home...that it was meant to happen. I think we hugged each other, in case we didn't all make it. We took one last look...the mountains and those...beautiful people. And we were taken home."
"Years had passed," Moira said, "and no one cared about where we'd been. Our hub was long gone, we were Torchwood, risky job...we were just written off. We couldn't settle back...couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. So...we decided to go back to Glimstone. I think, maybe, being away, we forgot how frightening it was there. We came back to Cardiff, back to the same spot, same thing with the machine, I don't think any of us cared if we survived the trip or not."
"And..." the Doctor whispered.
"We landed on the bare earth. Bare, scorched earth. Flattened land. No more mountains, no more people, no more air. After a minute, we were sent straight back to Earth, as if the machine knew we couldn't survive."
"It had no incentive to work there anymore," the Doctor said.
"What we saw...was enough to know that it was gone," Keira said. "It is, isn't it?"
The Doctor nodded. "You wouldn't get anywhere near it now. But some of the people survived, I can tell you that."
"But why do this?" Donna asked, "Why come here and..." She waved an arm around the hallway.
"Because our hub was gone," Moira said, "and we needed a new one for what we have to do."
At this, Keira and John looked uncomfortable.
"Which is what?" Jack asked. "Destroy every alien being in sight because the ones you met were destroyed in a war? Or did you just want to put into practice what they taught you about memories? With a lot more malice than they had!"
"No! It's because we can't possibly arm ourselves against what's out there!" Moira shouted. "The only way we can ever, ever be truly safe is by ensuring that no alien can survive here!"
"But that's..." Jack began but the Doctor held up a hand.
"I'm sorry," he told Moira solemnly, "but I have to tell you this, Moira. You faced enemies in that world that you could never have anticipated. Worse still, you faced enemies that you thought were friends. But you never realised, did you, the worst enemy of all was the one you carried everywhere with you."
"What?"
"The machine."
"The machine saved us!"
The Doctor nodded. "It's not an illuminator and it's a lot more than an atmosphere perception detector. It tapped into your deepest desire, which was to see the universe. It took that desire and twisted it because that's how they manipulate people...and make them into manipulators in turn. It's giving you everything you want...at a great cost."
"Where's it from?" Jack asked.
"A ruined planet. One with inhabitants who anticipated the war and did everything they could to survive it. One of whom, Jack, is sitting patiently at the far end of this hall."
Jack's face cleared.
"The Feyad! She was found standing in the middle of Cardiff..."
"Yes. Waiting to be captured because she sensed that what belongs to her wasn't very far away. Those machines are like their souls. Without them, they're weak. Changing forms for our enjoyment, well, it's just a nice little trick, isn't it? But really...that machine is her strength. Literally. She's soaking up all that energy now. Next time any of us touches it, it'll be in her full control again. That's how they work. The more they're used, the stronger they are. You were lucky that it got you home. Maybe you confused it into thinking you were its master. Who knows?"
"She sent us there?" Moira asked quietly.
The Doctor shrugged. "You were using her machine independently of her. Her machine transported you. You thought you were taking over Torchwood to save the world. She was sitting here calmly waiting for you. Wheels within wheels."
"She dies first then," Moira shouted, turning around. Keira caught her arm and held it. In the brief scuffle, Donna saw her ease the small device with the red button out of Moira's hand.
"How come we found the machine in the first place?" John asked. "Did she lose it in the war?"
"Oh she didn't lose it," the Doctor said, "she sent it to you."
"What?"
"She sent it into the universe so that someone could travel to Glimstone and show them how to survive outside it. You couldn't bear to study them but they were happy to study you! Didn't you ever wonder how a race of people who lived such a simple life could use the machine so well?"
"What? What d'you..?"
"The Glimstone Mountains." He sighed. "A little Paradise to anyone who came there. Think about it! Daleks have no emotions and they can't be manipulated by desire. They even managed to hold them off for a while! That's why so many of them survived, Moira, in a place that was doomed from the beginning. They were whatever anybody wanted them to be. The one word we've all used about that planet? Beautiful. You've used that word countless times to describe them. It was beautiful to anyone who saw it."
"You mean?" Jack whistled softly.
"The Glimstone Moutains were inhabited by a race of people known as Feyads."