This is the second-to-last chapter, and I hope you like where it's going/gone. My idea for the mini-angels was sort of the driving force, the fact that they are all little and cute and a nuisance and they annoy the crap out of the Doctor and Martha. The solution to the problem, I think, is pretty clever (even if I do say so myself), but not the point of the story. As always, I love feedback!!
CHAPTER IX
A horrible banging-clanging sound came from beneath the floor, and Captain Jack Harkness began throwing all manner of debris out from underneath the water tower. A hose, some hand-held medical instruments, some discarded time equipment…
"Biscuit tin?" asked Jack to himself. "Who the hell was having a snack down here?"
"Jack? What are you doing?" asked Gwen, putting on her jacket, coming round the corner. Her boss had pulled up an entire floor panel underneath the giant column which connected the Hub directly with a rift in time and space, and was fully inside the hole, rooting around for God knew what. Only very recently, they had used this very tower as a hitching post to tow the Earth back home. And now, suddenly, Jack seemed to be treating it like a university student's backseat.
"Hunh?" he asked, before thinking. "Oh. Nothing. Just go home – you've earned a night off."
"Jack, if this is something that we all need to be in on…" she warned, putting a finger out toward him in an authoritative fashion.
"It's not," he assured her.
"If you're hiding something…"
"I'm not! I'm just doing a favour for the Doctor. Truth be told, I'm not sure what I'm doing."
She looked down. "Holy God, there's a whole room down there!"
"Yeah," Jack said absently. "One of the Hub supervisors back in the old days used to sleep down here sometimes, until the rift's energy started giving him nightmares."
"Nightmares?"
"Mm," Jack said, still throwing stuff out. "Wouldn't have been so bad, except he was hacking livestock to death in his sleep as a side-effect. Torchwood wound up paying the farmers of Wales a healthy sum."
"Ew," Gwen commented, nose crinkled. "So, are you sure you don't need help?"
"Yes, I'm sure. Go have dinner with your husband for once."
Just then, an otherworldly whooshing sounded across the insides of the Torchwood Hub.
"What the hell is that?" Gwen shouted.
Jack responded with a delighted cackle. "I never get tired of that sound!"
The TARDIS materialised in the white-panelled medical bay, and Jack struck a pose, leaning over the bannister toward the top of the winding stairs. When the Doctor and Martha emerged, however, they didn't seem to see him.
"This is cool," Martha commented. "It's like state-of-the-art, but alien."
"That's exactly what it is, yeah," the Doctor sighed. "Too bad they lost their medic."
"A-hem," Jack said.
They looked up, not surprised. "Hey, Jack," Martha chirped. "Looking good."
"Well, yeah," he retorted, as if to say duh! "Right back at you, Miss Jones."
"Have you got a space for me?" asked the Doctor.
"I think so," said Jack. "We just have to find a way to seal it."
"I'm good at sealing things. Show me," he said, taking the stairs two at a time.
"I'll show you," Gwen said, before Jack could answer.
"You're just determined to be at the centre of things, aren't you?" Jack smiled.
"Why would I let you have all the fun?" She winked at the Doctor, who smirked.
Jack came down the stairs. "What's going on? He was so cryptic on the phone."
"Oh, he's just preoccupied. Come in and see," Martha said, pushing the TARDIS door open.
Jack stepped inside, and was greeted by the sight of seventy stone cherubs, four of whom were overseeing the others. They were crowded into the console room as though the console itself were a conductor's platform, and they were an orchestra. "Whoa! What are they?"
"They're weeping angels," Martha said. "We found them in Paris. They feed on potential time energy, and if they touch you, you get zapped back in time."
"Touch you?"
"Yep," she told him. "They can only move if they're not being observed. That's why their friends have to watch over them. We tried locking them in the basement of the building, but then they started, well… sort of committing suicide, so we decided to try something else."
"They can move if they're not seen? That's… insane!"
"I know!" she agreed. "We ran into their bigger, badder cousins a couple of years ago. Those things will set you back years – much more dangerous. These guys are just annoying."
"They're kinda cute," Jack said, leaning on the rail. "Although, Martha, I have to say… what we have planned for them here isn't a whole lot better than locking them in a basement."
"I know," she sighed. "But at least it's a basement with amenities."
Jack nodded. Then, he switched subjects. "So how are things with you and…" he gestured out the door with his head.
"Fine," she said coyly, suddenly becoming an adolescent with rolling eyes and a cheek-to-shoulder magnet.
"Fine?" he asked. "What were you doing in Paris?"
"That is none of your business, Captain Jack Harkness," Martha teased.
"Have you seen a single tourist attraction?" he asked with a big, naughty smile.
"Yes!" she insisted.
"Ones you can't see through your hotel window from the bed?"
"Jack!"
"Well?"
"Jack, leave her alone," Gwen was saying as she entered the TARDIS with the Doctor in tow. The two men met each others' eyes, and the Time Lord gave Jack a look that suggested tedium. What am I going to do with you? he seemed to be asking.
Gwen strode out to the console platform and put her hands out at her sides, and faced her friends at the door. "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen!"
"And we thank you for your support," the Doctor said, making his way round the platform. "Now! Let's get these babies out of here."
"Where are they going?" asked Martha.
"Follow me," he said, picking up one of the cherubs and making his way back to the door. Martha, Jack and Gwen did likewise, and followed the Doctor to a large, empty space underneath the water tower.
***
Once all of the cherubs were in the space, the four of them stood back with their hands on their hips. Some faint light was coming through from above, and the sight of so many stone angels was rather eerie, like a graveyard. Moreover, Martha and the Doctor were utterly exhausted, this having been the second time they had moved all seventy angels by hand. It occurred to all of them at different times that they could and should move the TARDIS a bit closer to the column, but no-one voiced the idea, so it went untried.
"Is it just me, or is there a hum down here?" Martha asked.
"Not just you," Jack said. "What you're hearing is the rift."
"Energy from the rift bleeds," the Doctor said. "Remember the 'pit stop?' Well, the energy that it bleeds is time. Remember how I told you that time exists in blocks and is almost tangible? Well, occasionally, it can get splintered, especially around a rift. When time energy get splintered in some other parts of the universe where there's a rift, some of the excess comes right through here." He explained, and gestured to a giant ball that seemed to come out of the ceiling, above which was the giant water tower, connected to the rift. Purple pulses of powdery light were coming from it, like sonar waves.
The Doctor saw her eyeing this phenomenon and told her, "That's it. That's what the angels need."
She pointed. "The purple stuff?"
"Purple, such as it is," he replied.
"I think I get it."
