Author's Note: Here's chapter 2! It's not quite as strong as it's predecessor, I think, so of anybody has ANY constructive criticism, please share! Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Thank you so, so, so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited, or followed this story! You have no idea how much it means to me! :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or Torchwood.
The Torchwood headquarters were situated in Canary Wharf, London, just as they were in Rose's home universe. But, unlike their parallel counterpart, Torchwood was a widely known and renowned organization on par with UNIT and the CIA. As such, Pete and Rose Tyler were treated like royalty, even though their ownership of Vitex was more than enough to warrant such treatment.
Though her dual role as Vitex Heiress and Torchwood Agent had its perks, Rose generally could not stand the attention. Her home address was undisclosed to the public thanks to her pseudo-father's influence, but that didn't stop the press from hounding her as soon as she was driving through the city. She kept her sunglasses on despite the cloudy weather and refused to acknowledge the paparazzo that was driving alongside her. When she finally pulled through the gated driveway of Canary Wharf, Rose breathed a sigh of relief. Only Torchwood personnel were allowed beyond those gates. She was in the clear. Between a lack of coffee and Katherine's crying fit at the Doctor's departure for work, the morning had been a nightmare and the last thing she needed was to fend off another overzealous photographer.
It was nine o'clock on the dot when Rose swiped her card key to enter the Torchwood offices on the forty-fifth floor of the building. She exhaled quietly and squared her shoulders upon entry. Right on time. Good. One less thing to worry about.
After navigating through the maze of hallways and throwing around several standard greetings to her colleagues, Rose unlocked her office and promptly collapsed into her desk chair. She hated this part of her job. The sooner she could sort through her paperwork, the sooner she could go downstairs into the labs and check in on artifact identifications. It was the only remotely exciting thing about this job as of late.
Rose began to leaf through a stack of newly delivered paperwork and, not for the first time, felt a pang of boredom. No wonder the Doctor always griped about domesticity and jobs and mortgages. It was no secret that she'd always preferred traveling to stationary life, but this was just ridiculous. Before the dimension cannon project, there had been all sorts of alien activity to investigate. The collapsing walls of the universe equated to constant instability and the Cardiff Rift expelled foreign matter like there was no tomorrow. Always incidents to look into, malevolent aliens to stop, realities to save. Now that the walls between universes were closed, nothing ever happened.
Of course it was wonderful to know that the universe was, generally speaking, safe from destruction. Rose knew that better than anyone. But she itched for some excitement, that old spark of livelihood that came from traveling. Torchwood work, however mundane, would have to suffice. It would be several years before the TARDIS was finished growing in their attic.
"Can't come soon enough," Rose muttered under her breath, feeding an unimportant document into the shredder. She glanced at the framed photograph on her desk, one of the only personal items she kept in her office. It was a candid photo, one that her mum had managed to take on her mobile phone two months ago when Miranda was born. Katherine was seated on a plastic hospital chair, awkwardly cradling a newborn Miranda with unabashed interest. The Doctor was crouched next to her, one hand delicately cupping the back of Miranda's head for support, but his face was split into a manic grin. Nobody was looking at the camera, and the quality was a little grainy, but Rose couldn't thank Jackie enough for taking the photo.
She allowed herself a small smile. Just a few more years until the TARDIS was finished, according to the Doctor, and soon enough they could fly off and show the girls every last corner of the universe. Rose bit back a grin and busied herself with a stack of paperwork. Katherine would love the TARDIS and everything it had to offer. She'd love exploring new worlds and venturing into the stars. It was too early to tell with Miranda, but surely she'd feel the same. After all, they were the Doctor's daughters. To not provide them with a life in the TARDIS would be a travesty.
There was a quick, sharp knock on her door. "Hey, stranger."
Rose looked up and, upon recognizing her guest, grinned ear to ear. "What are you doing here?" she exclaimed, standing up and walking to the door with open arms. "You're not back already, are you?"
Lisa Hallett smiled and returned the embrace. "No, I'm back. Only half-days, but I'm back. The baby's finally taking a bottle so I figured, why not? I was tired of staying home. I needed to feel useful again."
"You haven't missed much," Rose said, gesturing weakly towards the paperwork on her desk.
"So Ianto tells me," Lisa said. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a mobile phone. "But I needed a change of pace. Elliot's a handful, look at him! Six months old and he's already crawling, gets his hands on everything in sight. His favorite haunt is the pantry. Look at this, I found the two of them like this last week." Lisa held up her phone, scrolling through photos of her infant son. The last photo depicted her fiancée, Torchwood employee Ianto Jones, and their son Elliot. The baby was grasping at a torn package of biscuits while Ianto smiled wearily into the camera.
"Anyway, you're one to talk," Lisa continued, pocketing the phone. "You've got a two-month-old at home and you've been back for ages. That's got to be some kind of record."
"I was also bedridden and generally useless for nine months. If I stayed home any longer than that, I…" Rose's voice trailed off and she shook her head. "I'd have gone mad. I can't do that."
Lisa raised her eyebrows in agreement. She opened her mouth to speak again, but her mobile interrupted her. Seconds later, Rose's own phone chimed from the desk.
Rose's brow furrowed in concern as she returned to her desk and picked up the phone. It's never just a coincidence, she thought. When multiple Torchwood phones went off at once, something was amiss. She punched in the passcode and opened up a message from her father.
Get to storage unit F3 ASAP. Dimension cannon acting up.
The abnormality of the message itself hit Rose just as strongly as Pete's uncharacteristically cold delivery. The dimension cannon was acting up? What the hell was that supposed to mean? It hadn't been active since the Daleks and the Crucible. It was nothing more than a piece of metal locked up deep inside the storage facility. It couldn't possibly function unless the universe was in danger of collapsing, and the Doctor had ensured that that would never happen again.
Worry gnawed at the base of Rose's stomach. She immediately regretted her wish for more excitement at work. Still, best not to jump to any conclusions. She'd have to take a look at the cannon herself. Biting her lower lip, Rose stuffed her mobile into her pocket and draped her Torchwood ID lanyard around her neck.
"I think we got the same message," Lisa said warily, following Rose out of the office and into the corridor. "That was Ianto. He said something about abnormal readings downstairs. They just got a message from Torchwood Three about rift activity in Cardiff about fifteen minutes ago."
"I got a call from my dad in storage about the cannon," Rose murmured. "Maybe the rift activity affected it." They reached the elevator and she assaulted the call button, willing it to speed up. She glanced over her shoulder at Lisa and managed a smile as the doors finally opened. "Welcome back."
They parted ways in the elevator. Lisa exited three floors down to join Ianto, but Rose continued all the way into the third sublevel basement of Torchwood One. The storage facility was well-lit but sparsely furnished; the corridors were starkly white, as if trying to compensate for the lack of sunlight. Rose buttoned up her blazer against the chilly air and jogged down the hallway. She could hear voices emitting from Unit F3, where the dimension cannon was locked up under constant surveillance. The storage unit was guarded by a computer system, and Rose had to swipe her ID and enter the correct passcode to get through the doors. Once this was achieved, she slid through the doors before they could fully open and entered the unit.
The dimension cannon sat directly ahead of her, and engineers were swarming around the circular structure like fruit flies. Pete Tyler stood off to the side, leaning over a computer screen and speaking quickly with the computer technician. Rose promptly joined him and took a look at the computers, tucking her hair behind her ears. "What's going on?" she asked.
"We were hoping you could tell us," Pete said dryly without looking up. "About forty minutes ago, the security cameras picked up on some activity in the cannon. It was active for about three seconds before shutting down. It did the same thing twenty minutes ago, and then again sixteen minutes ago—there, there, stop right there." Pete pointed over the computer technician's shoulder towards the screen. Security footage of unit F3 was displayed from four different angles, but Pete was focusing on the top right, which had the most direct view. "All right, play it again."
Rose leaned in, holding her hair out of her face and watching closely. The black-and-white footage was crystal clear, and the timestamp was running smoothly. Several seconds of footage passed without incident, and without any warning, all four cameras were blinded by a flash of light. It vanished as quickly as it came, and electricity began to snake around the metal frame of the cannon. Moments later, it stopped completely, and the unit returned to its usual uneventful state. The sequence repeated twice more as Pete fast-forwarded through the footage.
Rose stared at the screen, brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of the tapes. When she was dimension hopping all those years ago, the cannon was activated with a gentle hum, and the archway served as a portal of sorts for the time vortex. Once fully operational there would be a faint glow emitting from the center of the cannon, and that would vanish as soon as she jumped through. But this? This was not normal, and that kind of reaction couldn't have been caused by a simple technical error.
"What have you found so far? Maybe it's some sort of electromagnetic interference from upstairs? Maybe an artifact set it off? Have we been hacked?" Rose straightened and turned towards the engineers swarming the cannon.
"Tough to say, Mrs. Tyler," one of the engineers replied. Despite the fact that her name was legally Rose Tyler-Smith, it never caught on. "The cannon was definitely active. We've confirmed that beyond a doubt. There's traces of…what was your nickname for it? Void stuff? Well, anyway, there's traces of in the archway."
"I'm going upstairs," Pete said, already halfway across the storage unit. "Ianto Jones is in touch with Torchwood Three as we speak. They can tell us exactly what happened in Cardiff and hopefully that'll explain what the hell just happened here. Rose, I want you to stay here and figure out what you can from the cannon. You know it better than anybody."
Rose nodded in acknowledgement as Pete exited the unit and approached the dimension cannon. It looked perfectly normal, just an ordinary chunk of metal. There wasn't any outward damage sustained from the...whatever it was. She picked up a radiation monitor from one of the engineer's toolboxes and quickly scanned the room. Slightly higher than usual, but nowhere close to hazardous—
BANG!
The explosion knocked Rose off her feet and sent her flying across the storage unit, where she landed roughly on her side and rolled face first into the wall. Pain exploded in her right hip and she choked out a scream. What the hell?! She thought, frantically grasping at her hip in a futile attempt to contain the burning. There was a second bang, slightly louder than the first, and the storage unit was flooded with white light. Rose threw up her arm to shield her face, gritting her teeth as a high-pitched ringing threatened to burst her eardrums.
An unexpected wind rushed at her and whipped her hair in every possible direction. Rose squinted against the light, steadfastly ignoring the pain in her hip. She had to see what was going on, had to see whatever the security cameras missed. The light was blinding, but she forced her eyes open. She made out a faint outline of the cannon, and in the middle, a solitary figure faded in and out of her vision.
Another scream, shorter but just as intense, echoed into the unit and another gust of wind rushed out of the cannon. Rose gasped and clenched her jaw as it threw her into the wall a second time. She closed her eyes against the noise, the wind, the white light and grasped frantically for something, anything to hold. It was too much like the first time at Canary Wharf, too much like that goddamned wall and the Void that threatened to consume her.
She gasped as the wind threatened to rip her away from the wall. She was being pulled towards the cannon, just as she was when she was nineteen and battling the Daleks and Cyberman. Her hands frantically fumbled for something, anything that could keep her anchored in this universe. She wouldn't be sucked into the void—she could not, would not leave now, she could never leave the Doctor again—DOCTOR! No, no, no, this was not happening again, please no NOT AGAIN—
Her fingers closed around a bar of machinery for the security cameras. She clung to the bar with both hands until her knuckles felt ready to burst. She would not leave. She would not let this happen. She would not let this happen. She couldn't leave, couldn't be without the Doctor again, couldn't leave him behind, not alone, not with the kids, oh god oh god I can't leave them behind please no no no…
Everything was shaking. The room felt ready to fall apart. Rose felt ready to fall apart. She felt her legs and torso being pulled towards the dimension cannon, just as they were last time. There were no Daleks or Cyberman flying by, but how was this any different? Not again. Not again. She held onto the bar with everything she had.
Another bang, louder than its predecessors, burst from the cannon, and just like that, everything stopped.
Her body fell to the floor with a thud. It took nearly a full minute for Rose to open her eyes. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. Breathe. She was still here. Still in this room, still in storage unit F3. Her chest heaved with the effort of breathing and she collapsed against the wall. "Doctor," she murmured, and only after speaking did she remember that the Doctor wasn't at her side like last time. This was not like last time. He was here, in this universe. He was on the other side of the city, yes, in a lecture hall going on and on about temporal physics to a class of uni students, but he was here.
"I'm here," Rose whispered, closing her eyes again. "I'm here, I'm here."
She gingerly released the bar and realized that her hands were violently trembling. Her whole body was shaking, actually, and her hip was screaming in pain. But she was here. She was not in the void. She was in the same universe that she woke up in this morning.
A couple of engineers and computer technicians murmured faintly in the distance, but Rose's attention was focused elsewhere. She slowly glanced towards the cannon, which was slightly singed around the edges but otherwise intact, as though nothing had happened at all. A small part of her brain was screaming at her: What the bloody hell was that? The rest of her brain, however, was screaming something entirely different: Doctor. I need the Doctor.
She carefully withdrew her mobile from her trouser pocket. It took three tries to type the passcode, and several more to properly hit the Doctor's speed dial key. She used one hand to clutch at her aching hip while the other held her phone, and her head rested on the icy wall.
He picked up on the fifth ring. "Rose! Rose, are you all right?" the Doctor demanded. He sounded out of breath and his voice was strained, as though he'd been shouting.
How did he know to ask? Did other people feel the explosion, too? Did the whole city feel it? How much damage was there? Was anyone killed? "What?" she managed, still fighting to regulate her breathing.
"Are you all right?" the Doctor demanded again.
"How did you know about that?" Rose said. She grit her teeth against a flare of pain in her side.
"The earthquake!" The Doctor exclaimed impatiently. "The earthquake, Rose, we all felt it—Julia, stay down, I'm coming over now, don't move your knee—now come on, tell me, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, yeah," Rose looked back towards the cannon. "It wasn't an earthquake. It was here, at Torchwood-the dimension cannon, it—I don't know what it did, but I think it opened the void."
The Doctor's voice was muffled, as if he'd wedged his mobile between his ear and shoulder, like he always did when multitasking. "Okay, Julia, it looks dislocated, don't move—wait. What?" His voice rose in volume at the last word.
"It opened the void," Rose repeated, staring carefully at the cannon. "I don't know how, but it opened the void."
There was a brief pause before the Doctor spoke. His voice was an octave higher. "What?"
"The dimension cannon. Opened. The void." Rose said testily. "It's closed now, but I don't know when it'll happen again. Something's happening in Cardiff with the rift. Doctor, you need to get here. Now."
"I'm on my way." The line disconnected before he could finish saying the last word.
Rose returned the phone to her pocket, noting that she had half a dozen text messages from Pete inquiring about her wellbeing, but decided to ignore those until she could evacuate the floor. She grit her teeth against her throbbing hip and pulled herself to her feet. "Is everyone all right?" she called, surveying her colleagues. Remarkably, everyone was alive. Some were badly injured—one had clearly broken a leg—but alive. She braced on arm against the wall for support and squared her shoulders.
"Everybody out. Go upstairs, outside if you can. I'm putting this floor on lockdown until the Doctor gets here."
Author's Note: Any feedback you may have would be greatly appreciated :) Thanks for reading!