Author's Note: Once again, thank you to everyone who was kind enough to leave a review, follow or favorite this story! It really means a lot!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of this.
The Doctor was used to driving with music. He found it to be calming and distracted him from the fact that he was hearing the car's engine, rather than the TARDIS's. Never mind the fact that listening to the radio often kept him sane when stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. If he and Rose were in the car, the radio was tuned to the Beatles (who, in this universe, broke up in the mid-'80s after McCartney died in a car crash), Elvis (who continued to make music until dying of natural causes in 2009), or on occasion, Queen (who were all still alive and enjoying successful solo careers). If the kids were present, the Doctor plugged in his iPod and sang Disney songs with Katherine until they reached their destination. "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" and "Hakuna Matata" were crowd favorites.
Today, however, the Doctor was listening intently to a news station as he proceeded to break every traffic law in London.
"Reports of fire, structural damage, and numerous injuries are pouring in from all over the city…officials are giving this a 6.8 rating on the Richter scale…similar reports are coming in from Cardiff and Glasgow…reports of areal disturbances as well, all zeppelins have been grounded until further notice…still trying to determine the epicenter…no obvious cause of the three simultaneous earthquakes…President Harriet Jones declaring a state of emergency…the Torchwood Institute is reported to be involved in the ongoing investigation…"
The Doctor momentarily tuned out the announcer's maddeningly calm voice, slamming on the brakes as a man bolted across the road. A nearby building was smoking and people were streaming out in a panic. He swore under his breath and impatiently steered around an abandoned car. Emergency vehicles were clogging up the roads and damn it, what he wouldn't have given for his TARDIS right about now.
The Doctor wondered if this was what it was like for ordinary people, to wake up expecting a perfectly normal day only to have the world turned on it's head in an instant. He certainly welcomed the excitement after nearly six years of relative boredom, but not at this cost. Just this morning he was sipping tea through a travel mug and reassuring a tearful Katherine that yes, he would really be home from work in just a few hours. Just this morning he has kissed Rose goodbye, dropped the girls off at Jackie's, expertly found prime parking at the university, and did a fairly good job at maintaining his student's attention in the midst of a lecture on temporal physics. And just like that, the Doctor had lost his footing, the power had flickered, and his students began screaming.
Thankfully the worst to happen was Julia Talbot dislocating her left knee. As soon as he wrapped it and summoned a nurse from the university health center, the Doctor had called Jackie to check in on the kids and made a mad dash for Torchwood One. He could have patched up Julia on his own without a problem, but as much as he cared for his students, he couldn't afford to wait around just now. If Rose was correct in saying that the void was opened, then there were much bigger problems to deal with than a dislocated knee.
He swore under his breath and drove through the gated driveway leading to Torchwood One. The asphalt parking lot was littered with debris from the surrounding buildings of Canary Wharf, and three cars were badly damaged by a huge tree limb. Ahead of him, wedged between the Torchwood building and the Citigroup headquarters, the four-story parking garage was partially collapsed. Alarms were blaring from every building, none more so than Torchwood, and when the Doctor looked up, he could see that virtually the whole tower was alight with warning lights. Oh, that was bad. Very, very bad.
He seriously considered abandoning the car where it stood and running the rest of the way. It would be faster than this, that was for sure. He was in the process of pulling onto the grass when his mobile rang, vibrating against the cup holder and his travel mug of now-cold tea. In one swift motion he yanked the key out of the ignition, picked up the phone, and scrambled out of the car. "Where the hell are you?" Rose shouted. It was just as loud on her end.
"Outside the parking lot, I'm on my way up now. Where are you?"
"Top floor on the helipad. The lifts were knocked out so you'll have to take the stairs. Dad gave you full clearance, just come up."
The Doctor didn't have to be told twice. He made it across the parking lot and all the way to the top floor of the building in record time. Part of him was afraid of what he would find upon reaching his destination. He dimly recalled hearing reports of earthquakes in Glasgow and Cardiff. It was very likely that they were sending out helicopters to investigate. If those Torchwood branches were reaching out to the headquarters, then things were much, much worse than he'd initially believed.
The helipad was a specially-designed feature of Torchwood One that they'd added during the war with the Cybermen a decade earlier. During the war it had apparently been used to ferry Torchwood agents, soldiers, and civilians when the ground was overrun by Cybermen. Nowadays the helipad was used in times of extreme crisis, when cars and trains would not be fast enough, or when victims of extraterrestrial-related attacks had to be airlifted into the Torchwood medical facility. If Rose was at the helipad with her father, then she was going on a field mission, and a rather critical one apparently.
As promised, the Doctor wasn't stopped once on his way to the fiftieth floor, which existed mainly as a hangar for Torchwood's three helicopters, one of which was missing. A second helicopter was poised for takeoff and personnel were loading supplies into the cabin. Up above, a fourth of the pyramid ceiling had pulled away to reveal a perfectly ordinary blue sky.
Rose, dressed in her black and gray field clothes, was having a heated discussion with Pete in the far corner of the hangar. A pang of relief hit the Doctor squarely in the chest. He'd known that Rose was fine all along, but seeing proof of this was inexplicably comforting. Before he knew what he was doing, the Doctor sprinted over and enveloped Rose in a crushing hug. You're here, you're safe, you're fine. Thank Rassilon, you're fine. She reciprocated almost immediately. "You're all right?" he asked, just to be absolutely certain.
"M'fine," she said into his shoulder. "Bruised my hip but I'm fine."
"She's not fine," Pete said irritably. "She was almost pulled through the void and now she's insisting on going to investigate the crash in Cardiff. For god's sake, Rose, go to the infirmary."
The Doctor stared at Rose for a moment, unsure which thought to process first. Rose was almost pulled through the void…had he heard correctly? While he was in that bloody lecture hall trying to pacify his students, Rose was within an inch of falling into hell itself, with nobody to catch her this time. She was here now, she was safe, but a dull sense of horror had already curled around the Doctor's heart. He pulled Rose into his arms and held onto her with everything he had, forcing away all memories of Battle of Canary Wharf.
"I just heard from Mum. She and the kids are fine," Rose said. When the Doctor didn't answer, her voice lowered considerably. "We put that floor on lockdown. Nobody can get in or out, Doctor, the cannon is completely sealed off."
He nodded and reluctantly pulled away. Pete took this moment to enter the conversation. "When the earthquake hit us, it also hit Glasgow and Cardiff. Glasgow has a lot of damage and we sent out a team to survey the area. Now, there's been rift activity in Cardiff all morning. It started when the cannon began acting up. But when the void opened downstairs, a ship crashed right off of Tiger Bay. Torchwood Three couldn't get too close, but it's alien in origin and it's giving off funny readings. They think that something—whatever it is—survived the crash."
The Doctor still had a hand on Rose's shoulder, but he was staring intently into the distance, trying to put the pieces together. "Rose, what happened when you were down there?"
When Rose finished debriefing him on the details, the Doctor's grip on her shoulder increased and he wrinkled his nose in confusion. "But that's impossible! To just rip open the void like that would take a phenomenal amount of power!"
"What are you thinking?" Rose asked.
The Doctor frowned. "The cannon wasn't designed to open the void. It was supposed to seek out preexisting weak spots in the walls of the universe and make a…pathway, of sorts. Like picking a lock on a door. Whatever ripped open the void didn't bother trying to open those doors. It just plowed through the wall and made a hole of it's own."
Pete was quiet for a moment. "The rift spits out space junk every day. A ship is pretty…unusual, to say the least."
"So whatever it is plowed two holes in the wall," Rose said carefully.
"Maybe three, if they find anything in Glasgow," the Doctor said. He ran a hand over his face. "Blimey, this isn't how I expected the day to go."
The helicopter behind them had started its engine. Rose looked over her shoulder as the helicopter blades began to turn. Someone announced the final boarding call for Cardiff. "I've got to go," she said.
"Rose!" Pete exclaimed, grabbing her arm. "Go to the infirmary. Please. Don't make me call your mother." There was a note of desperation in his voice at the threat.
"I only bruised my hip! You said I know the cannon better than anyone," Rose said impatiently. "I'll know what to look for in the ship's wreckage."
"I'd like to take a look at the cannon myself," the Doctor said. "Rose and I can stay in radio contact and compare notes." He didn't add the part about how Rose would be much safer in Cardiff if the cannon decided to activate again.
Pete wavered for a moment, visibly torn between his duties as Director of Torchwood and his duties as Rose's father. He reluctantly let go of her arm. "I'm asking this as your dad, love," he said quietly, or as quietly as he could over the helicopter. "If your hip starts bothering you, if anything starts bothering you, get out."
Rose smiled and nodded in affirmation. She reached into the pocket of her black cargo pants and withdrew an earpod, which had been shrunk and completely redesigned in the aftermath of Lumic's reign of terror. It resembled an iPod headphone more than anything else now. Once it was securely in her right ear, she pulled the Doctor in for a kiss, and ran across the hangar to jump into the helicopter cabin.
The Doctor, Pete, and all remaining Torchwood workers exited the hangar and watched the helicopter take off through a massive observation window. Neither the Doctor nor Pete looked away until the ceiling hatch closed, sealing the pyramid and restoring the tower to its usual appearance. "Well," Pete exhaled heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose, "Let's get you an earpod and get you down to the cannon." The Doctor nodded wordlessly, looking over his shoulder for a moment before following Pete down the corridor.
By the looks of it, Cardiff was in much better shape than London, but the damage was still alarmingly extensive. Rose had surveyed the city as the helicopter flew them to the Torchwood Three base, and continued to do so after they'd landed and made their way to the Cardiff Docks by automobile. There was plenty of structural damage, along with a couple of fallen trees and flooding near the coastal areas.
The Docks, however, had the appearance of nuclear testing site. Most of the boats had capsized in the water. With the roads completely torn apart, the jeeps were forced to continue by off-roading. The houses and businesses closest to the marina were either engulfed in smoke or partially collapsed. And about a quarter of a mile down the road that no longer existed, a crater stood in place the boathouses.
The crater was about a mile in diameter. Eight other teams, filled with the combined forces of Torchwood bases One and Three, would be entering the crash site at different points of origin in order to cover more ground. As soon as her five-man team had their equipment secured and their protective wetsuits in place, Rose squared her shoulders and made her way to the edge of the crater. Her earpod made a slight "ping," signaling its activation.
"Can you hear me, Rose?" The Doctor's tinny voice rang in her ear.
"Wotcha," Rose said into her wrist communicator in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood. It failed spectacularly, but he had the good graces not to acknowledge this. She walked until her toes were touching the edge of the crater. About nine meters down, amid a shallow pool of saltwater, the wreckage of a small shuttle had plunged into the mud.
After grappling down the crater walls and wading through the saltwater (Rose found herself supremely grateful for the wetsuit, as the water was incredibly cold), they approached the hull of the ship. Upon closer inspection it looked more like a rocket, and one of the dive teams had sent out a message confirming that the vessel was much larger than initially believed. About half of it was buried in mud.
"Greg, Patrick, Sam, could you do a perimeter search of our branch of the hull?" Rose asked. The agents nodded and did as he was told.
"Rose," Jake Simmonds called, where he was wading about five yards away. "There's a breech in the hull. We can get in through here."
She joined Jake and inspected the breech. It looked like it once served as an escape hatch, but the metal was blackened from the crash and the hinges were in danger of falling off. Yes, they could certainly use this as a point of entry. After a quick scan for life forms and radiation, Rose fiddled with her communicator. "This is Rose Tyler. We've found a point of entry on the southern end of the ship. We're going in. Backup requested."
"Careful, Rose," the Doctor's voice echoed in her ear again.
With Jake's support, Rose grabbed onto a handlebar and hauled herself out of the water. Not for the first time, a childhood of gymnastics had served her well; she managed to swing herself up and onto the hull without loosing her balance and falling into the water. Jake followed in suit, and after another scan, gently coaxed the door open. The hatch opened with a grating screech, revealing a black pit.
"Which way is up?" Jake said dryly as he and Rose pulled out their torches. Even with the added light, there was no way of determining the floor from the ceiling.
"One way to find out." Rose stuck her torch between her teeth and, keeping a firm grip on the edge, gently lowered herself into the hatch. Her foot caught a ledge of some sort and she used it as a crutch on her way down.
"What do you see, Rose?" the Doctor said. He sounded slightly distracted, as if he was multitasking with the canon.
Rose found another handlebar and held onto it, using her other hand to pluck the torch from her mouth. She ran the light over every available surface. "Looks like a hallway," she said, nose wrinkled. It smelled sharply of smoke. "It's a really, really narrow hallway. Everything's white or sterling silver."
"Any markings?" the Doctor asked. Jake climbed in behind Rose.
"Not really," Rose murmured, shining the torch on the wall directly ahead of her. "Oh, wait—I think these are scuff marks. We're on the ceiling, Jake, that's the floor ahead of us."
"Well, that answers onequestion," Jake said. His eye-roll was practically audible.
"Scuff marks," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "Someone's been there a while, then. Always running in and out of the ship, they might be travelers. What else?"
Rose stuck the torch back in her mouth and continued to climb down, using an array of handlebars as a ladder. The ship was prepared for accidents, then—
She gasped as her foot slipped on a wet handlebar and she grabbed onto the nearest ledge. She managed to catch her fall, but not without dropping her torch and smacking the side of her head on the ceiling. "Rose? Rose!" the Doctor's voice was garbled and quickly eclipsed by static. Her earpod went silent and Rose swore under her breath as the torch made a splash down below. Fantastic. That meant the lower portion of the corridor was flooded.
"You okay?" Jake called.
"I'm fine," she said, checking her communicator and ignoring the dull ache in her skull. "My outgoing signals are clear. I can't hear you, Doctor, but you can hear me. It's partially flooded. We need a dive team down here."
"There's another corridor there. Let's check it out," Jake said, using his torch to point this out. Sure enough, a couple of yards down and at the waterline, there was a doorway leading to another hall. It's not that far of a jump, Rose thought, eyeballing the distance. Her torch was shining dimly at the bottom. No different than going off a diving board. She carefully descended a few more steps before hopping down.
For a moment she was underwater, but she quickly bobbed to the surface like a cork. She looked back up and frowned. Maybe the Doctor had rubbed off on her more than she'd thought. As soon as she crawled into the corridor, Jake did the same. The second hallway was as dark and narrow as the first; they had to make their way through the ship on all fours, even though said extremities were partially submerged in water. Rose fished a scanner out of the protective case on her utility belt and clicked it on. Jake kept his torch trained squarely ahead of them.
"Jake," Rose exclaimed as the scanner came to life, holding it up for him to see. She didn't have to press anything. The signals were spiking, indicating the presence of two sets of heartbeats. She spoke into her communicator. "We've got two survivors, Doctor. I repeat: we've got two survivors." Her earpod buzzed in reply, but the static was too thick to decipher anything.
Rose's gaze was flickering back and forth between the scanner and the hallway ahead of her. Without turning around, she gave Jake the signal to arm himself. He shuffled and the torchlight bounced erratically as he changed positions. A moment later, she heard the faint metallic hum of Jake's stun gun. Rose followed the scanner's lead, one hand poised to grab her own gun at a moment's notice.
They reached a mechanized door, which would have perfectly blended in with the wall had it not been for the tiny glass window giving it away. The scanner spiked considerably, and in the same moment, Rose felt her heart skip a beat. She looked over her shoulder to see Jake in a crabwalk position, holding the gun in one hand and the torch in the other. At their point of entry, the requested backup and dive team were slowly crawling into the ship.
She wasn't alone, then. Everyone was on edge. Whatever was in that room, it was alive and hasn't shown any signs of hostility thus far. Surely a malevolent creature would have attacked when they penetrated the hull. Rose carefully muted the scanner and, readying her stun gun, looked through the window.
For a moment Rose mistook the room as the ship's cockpit, but she quickly realized that it was an engine room or maintenance hatch. The nearest wall was covered in wires and buttons; the computers were far too advanced to be from the twenty-first century. The Doctor would be able to definitively identify the era, but Rose would have guessed the early 6000s, give or take. It was a shot in the dark, of course. This universe was quite different, after all. But that was a matter for later on. "The ship's from the future," Rose murmured into her communicator.
"Wah yr?" The Doctor's voice was barely comprehensible in her ear. "Ro?"
"About…sixty-first century?" she said, craning her neck to see the room from another angle. "I think it's human. The dimensions of the ship are right. Can't say for sure, though—oh my god."
"What is it?" Jake hissed, tensing.
"There's a girl in there. Jake, there's a girl in there! We need a medic in here now!" Rose shouted down the hall, where other field agents were gradually making their way over.
"A girl?" Jake crawled next to Rose and took a look. His eyes widened. "Oh, shit!"
The girl's back was to them, and she was sprawled behind a wall of computers, half of her body underwater. She was young, scarcely twenty years old, and if the scanner was any indication, then there was somebody else trapped in there with her. Rose pocketed her tools and, with Jake's help, patted down the wall until they found the mechanism to open the door. The mechanics were utterly shot. It took their combined efforts to pry the door open, and even then it was a near-impossible task.
But Rose wasn't paying attention to that. She had to get in there and determine how badly the girl was hurt. She was alive, yes, and likely in need of a doctor. Time traveler or not, nobody could have gotten out of this crash unharmed.
A logical part of her brain was telling her to slow down and think. Whoever this girl is, she ripped at least one hole in the fabric of reality. Nobody could do that. Granted, the Doctor had managed it, but he also had the most powerful ship in the universe at his disposal, and that was by accident. Rose knew a TARDIS when she saw one, and this girl was not piloting a TARDIS. It was an ordinary, albeit futuristic, spaceship. Ordinary ships didn't open the void.
Rose inhaled deeply and slid into the room, trying to differentiate the floor from the ceiling but quickly giving up as she crawled towards the girl. Innocent until proven guilty, she decided. There was somebody else in here too, after all, judging by the scanner's heartbeat detector. "Hello?" Rose said, taking Jake's torch and waving it around the girl's head to try and get her attention. The girl didn't move. She was out cold. Still, Jake followed Rose closely with the stun gun pointed squarely at the girl as they approached.
Her blonde ponytail was barely intact, and her green shirt had a large rip along the seam. Rose carefully crawled to the other side in order to see the girl's face. Her pulse was visible in her neck. She was thin, as if she hadn't had a good meal in ages. "My god, she's just a kid," she said, staring in disbelief. She reached into her belt and withdrew a pair of cotton gloves, pressing one to a gash on the girl's hairline.
Jake gently helped Rose roll the girl onto her back, the gun lowered but still active. The girl inhaled sharply and screwed up her face. "Can you hear us?" he said. A medic was crawling in behind him.
Keeping one hand pressed to the girl's forehead, Rose leaned forward and grasped the girl's hand. "Can you hear us? Squeeze my hand if you can hear us." The girl's face was locked in a grimace and her eyes did not open, yet she managed to give Rose's hand a light squeeze. "My name's Rose," she said, enunciating each word. The Doctor's muffled words buzzed in her ear before fading out all together. "We're going to help you, okay?"
The medic crawled past Jake and began to treat the girl's head wound. She winced at the contact and her whole body tensed. Her eyes flew open and quickly found Rose's.
"Jenny," the girl gasped. Her voice was hoarse, as if she'd been screaming.
"Your name's Jenny?" Rose said. "Jake, scan the room for the second person." Jake complied and the medic continued to treat the head wound. At the doorway, two field agents and another medic were discussing the best course of action in regards to removing the girl.
"Jenny," the girl said through gritted teeth. She spoke again, as if the fate of the world hinged on the next word. "Dad."
"Your dad's here, too?" Rose asked. When she got no response, she raised her voice. She had to keep her awake. "Jenny, is your dad here?" Her hand went slack in Rose's and her eyes rolled back into her head.
She and the medic simultaneously reached to check her vitals; the medic pressed two fingers to her throat and Rose did the same to her wrist. "Oh my god!" Rose exclaimed, dropping the girl's hand like a hot coal.
"Jesus," the medic gasped. He too pulled away as if he'd been burned. "You feel that?"
She couldn't formulate a coherent reply, and so she forced her mind to enter the Rose Tyler, Torchwood Agent mode of thinking. "Get her out of here. Airlift her back to Torchwood One. Now."
The medic eyed her strangely but complied. Moments later, a small team of medical personnel hoisted the girl onto a makeshift stretcher and discussing their plan of action. Someone strapped an oxygen mask onto the girl's face as they carried her out of the room.
"Jake, stop scanning. We're going with her."
"What? What about the second person—"
"There is no second person!" Rose snapped. Her mind was reeling. She had to get back to London. She had to talk to the Doctor; these bloody earpods were useless. She scrambled out of the room and back into the hallway, following the medics out and awkwardly talking into her communicator. "Doctor, I'm coming back. Meet me in the medical facility as soon as we get back."
"Rose?" her husband's voice was absurdly faint in her ear. "What's happening? Are you okay? What girl did you see?"
He'd mentioned her twice. Only twice, in all the years they'd been together, but Rose understood the significance nonetheless. Once when he was still brand-new to this universe and detailing his adventures during their separation. Again when Rose was pregnant with Katherine, and he was telling her about the children he'd lost.
Rose knew what she'd felt. That girl had that same strange heartbeat, a heartbeat Rose had never thought she'd feel again. Two hearts tapping out that four-beat pattern. She would know it anywhere. It was the sound she had associated with love and safety and danger and adventure. It was the sound she often found herself fondly missing when she fell asleep with a single human heart beating against her cheek.
It couldn't be.
The Doctor said she died.
"Rose!" The Doctor's voice was still incredibly faint, but the frustration was clear as day. "C'mon, talk to me! What's happening?"
Rose swallowed before allowing herself to speak. "She said her name is Jenny," she said as evenly as she could manage. "Doctor, she's got two hearts."
The Doctor never answered, but the static spoke volumes.
Author's Note: And thus ends chapter three! If you liked it, please leave a review :) Feedback means a lot to me and it really helps motivate me with my writing! I'm always open to constructive criticism. Thanks again!