Disclaimer: Doctor Who (c) to the BBC.
For the hundredth time since joining Torchwood, Rose glanced out of the window at the view of London, the exact copy of her own. Exact except for the intense heat beating through the thick glass. This high up, there was no shade to protect from the burning rays. She desperately missed the old London, where Global Warming was still just a looming threat, and felt a flash of relief that they no longer had to wear the sweltering black uniforms of the People's Republic. The PR had been swiftly converted into the Investigations division of Torchwood after the Cybermen changed worlds.
Getting rid of the uniform was Rose's idea; she remembered something the Doctor said once: "Don't be conspicuous. The only way you can help anyone is to look like anyone else." She wore denim cut-offs and a T-shirt with her trainers, rapidly growing blonde hair brushed into a ponytail – in other words, like any other twenty-year-old London resident.
The main job of the Investigations unit was to travel to different countries, anywhere where Communications picked up a distress signal or other sign of alien life. Rose had yet to travel further from the house than the Torchwood building, but she already loved the feeling of being back in the world of aliens. She was proving to herself that she could manage on her own, without the Doctor. Even if she never stopped thinking about him. And talking to him inside her head…
"And Communication picked up a transmission last night. I want you all to take a look at some of the possible alien races the language is from." Her father was saying, and she hastily dragged her mind back to the present. Mickey, on her right, was elbowing her in the ribs, and she realised they were the only ones left sitting down.
"Ow. I know, I'm coming." They made their way to the lift after the few other members of Investigations, who were chatting about their plans for the weekend, or what the other division might have found. But Rose's mind was on other things, and she barely noticed when Mickey steered her out of the lift onto the next floor down.
"These are the alien races we think the signal may have been from," a young man was saying. Rose didn't know his name, but recognised him as being one of the few who had recently been found by Recruitment. He was writing an essay for University on something alien, which had alerted the attention of the headhunters, and had agreed to work for them. Stuff like that was always happening; people being plucked off the street or out of college, and persuaded to join Torchwood (not that much persuasion was needed; most of them would willingly give their right arm for such an opportunity). They were engineers, language specialists, influential figures. Nobody like Rose - but that was how she preferred it.
They all crowded round the table he was standing at, photographs of different aliens carefully laid out in rows on the surface. The young man from Communications avoided her eye as Rose pushed her way to the front of her team to examine the photos, but she ignored him. There were few people who did manage to meet her gaze or Mickey's, and yet she could see them staring from the corner of her eye whenever she looked away. Everyone knew they were outsiders, from another Earth and another London; nobody was allowed to keep secrets like that in a place like Torchwood.
A transmission was repeating on a loop from a nearby computer, but it wasn't anything she recognised. She felt worried when none of the alien gibberish organised itself into English inside her head, but dismissed it. The TARDIS couldn't have taught her every language in the universe. But she was left with a niggling worry at the back of her mind, that she wouldn't let herself think about.
What if the translator doesn't work in this -
Quickly pushing her thoughts away, Rose quickly eliminated a lot of the aliens she recognised from the list. By the time they broke off for a tea break, just over half of the images were left, and the man was busily organising them into neat rows. She rolled her eyes; nothing could be neat with aliens, nothing ordered or organised. She doubted he had ever encountered a real alien in his short time here.
She followed Mickey to the kitchen and poured herself a mug of tea. That was another thing disconcerting about this world: the tea. She made it exactly the same as she had back home, and yet there was something distinctly…'not tea' about it, unrecognisable unless you were paying attention. She sipped it and scowled.
"Something wrong?" Mickey swallowed a mouthful of tea without seeming to notice the difference. She shook her head, and they made their way back up to the next floor, where Rose sat at her computer in a daze, flicking through obscure blogs and forums, anywhere that had a mention of anything alien. If she had found something concrete her father would have to be alerted, but after spending a year with the Doctor, she could easily recognise the real descriptions. "A small green man standing in my front room making 'bleep bleep' noises", for instance.
Nothing remotely important came up, and her father sent her home at half three, saying she looked peaky. She didn't go back to the house, choosing instead to wander through the London streets, trying not to notice everything that was different to home. She stopped to eat at a chippy she didn't recognise, slumped at a table near the window munching chips that were almost identical to any she'd ever tasted, and stared at the cars roaring past, belching poison into the already tattered atmosphere.
Rose had just taken another mouthful of chips when her phone trilled in her jacket pocket, gaining an accusatory glare from an old woman. Grimacing apologetically, Rose ducked out of the café, dropping the remains of her lunch into the nearest bin when she realised she wasn't hungry.
"Hello?" said Rose as she answered her mobile, and Mickey's excited voice floated from the other end. He was talking almost too fast to hear, and it took Rose a few minutes to make him slow down.
"Pete says we can't solve the transmission without outside help," her friend repeated, fighting to keep his voice steady. "He says we need to find the old head of Communications, someone who left years ago. Years and years. Oh my God, Rose!"
"What?" Rose didn't get why he was so bothered about this old retired guy. "Who is it, Mickey? Don't keep me in suspense." She was smiling at his childlike enthusiasm despite herself.
He told her. And the grin slid off her face as her mouth dropped open in amazement.