Contact

He sat in a slightly uncomfortable straight-backed wooden chair at a large research table in the Archives, deep underground below the capital city. The massive wooden table was strewn with books and data sticks and a computer terminal, but the man's eyes were closed, almost as if asleep. He'd been there several hours, searching through the oldest of the ancient records, from the earliest days of the Archive. Now, he simply sat, waiting.

The wizened Chief Archivist paused in the doorway, studying the man for a moment. He was a tall man, slender but athletic, with unruly brown hair. He appeared fully human – a rarity for these times. The Archivist couldn't remember the last time he'd seen anyone so human. And his eyes...

The Archivist shook his shoulders at the memory of those haunted eyes, and bustled in as if he'd just crossed the threshold. "Here you are, sssir. Sssorry it took ssso long." He placed the ancient volume he'd fetched from the deep vaults carefully on the table.

The man opened his eyes and smiled – really, it was a very handsome smile, even if he did only have a shockingly sparse thirty-two teeth. Just a single row! The Archivist suddenly felt ashamed of himself for his automatic prejudice, and found himself trying even harder to suppress the sibilance of his gill slits."Will there be anything else, ssir?"

"Not at the moment, Archivist. I thank you."

"May I assk what it iss you are looking for, ssir?"

He smiled again. "Just catching up on a bit of family history."

^..^

Rose saved and sent the computer file she'd been slaving over and leaned back in her chair, rubbing her temples. Really, that blasted Quarterly Report to the Crown was more of a headache every year. Even though Torchwood had broken free of the most onerous aspects of government oversight when they'd become commercially successful, back when her babies were still babies, she still faced this delicate task of maintaining cordial relations with the government, which meant that every three months she did an intricate dance with her computer, saying just enough, but not too much, about certain ongoing projects, but never revealing all.

Really, sometimes it was just too much. At least it was done for this go-round.

Thirty years... she mused, as she was doing often these days. Thirty years she'd been in this world, since the day she'd slipped off the lever and almost been sucked into the void, before Pete had bounced in and grabbed her, pulling her here just before the walls between the worlds closed. She spared a thought, as she always did at this point in her musings, for her other self back in the other universe, bonded with the Doctor. At least she hoped so. She hoped they'd keep running from adventure to adventure forever – in her imagination, they did. Although, if the Doctor still can't regenerate, does that mean he's getting as old and creaky as the rest of us are? They might be hobbling rather than running by now.

It's probably Joshua doing all the running these days. She glanced down at the ruby ring on her right hand, catching the faintest of glows deep within. She'd had the crystal the Doctor had left her and Corin made into a ring, and had never once taken it off in the six years since it had first glowed to let them know he was all right, a few days after he'd disappeared back to other universe along with her twin. The glow had slowly faded over the ensuing weeks, but had never entirely gone out. She chose to think that meant he was still OK, as long as it had even the tiniest spark. Some day he'll make it back home again. Some day.

She thought again to the question Corin had asked her last month, when she'd remarked on the thirtieth anniversary to him. Would she trade, if she could? Would she go back and turn left? She smiled, tenderly, and gave herself the same answer she'd given him: no. Oh, of course she had regrets, certain things she'd do differently, but not that. She adored her life, adored her children, and most especially, she adored her husband. Her bondmate. Literally, her other half. Corin. All the best parts of the Doctor in a human-accessible package. And all hers.

The years certainly hadn't been continuous smooth sailing. They'd had their share of abysmal lows, and not just Joshua's disappearance. Only nine months after that fateful day, Pete's jet had gone down somewhere over the North Sea, with both her mother and father aboard (along with the pilot). No bodies or wreckage had ever been found. Her one consolation had been that they'd gone together, as they'd lived the previous twenty-three years since Jackie had jumped worlds. They'd been so much a part of each other that neither one of them would have long survived losing the other again.

She'd been thrust into the spotlight then, stepping in to run PTI as Pete had specified in his will, until Tony had turned twenty-five and taken over the helm. He'd done that with a vengeance, too, and set the world on fire. A string of brilliant innovations, both technological and management-wise, had catapulted the PTI back into the top one hundred companies in the world, and put its dashing young – and eligible – owner forever in the ranks of wunderkind. Pete would have been so proud.

Some of those technological innovations had come from Tyler, in fact. Rose and Corin's older son had been offered several positions in academia and research, but decided instead to join the "family firm", going to work for his grandfather. He'd watched the separate changeovers from the PTI lab, relieved to be on the sidelines. Management was not his forte, research was. Donna, meanwhile, was about to receive her MD up at Cambridge, and had already been accepted at her first choice of teaching hospital for her next three years of residency.

Rose had been quite relieved to leave the PTI boardroom that day four years ago after handing over the reins to her brother, and had managed to make good her laughing promise to Tony to never set foot in it again. She was content to return to her neglected Torchwood, which seemed a haven of sanity and rationality after the rarified corporate atmosphere up on the top floors of One Canada Square.

At some point in the future, she would turn Torchwood over to someone else and retire for good, but not for a good long while yet. She was only fifty-three, for heaven's sake. And she quite simply loved it, loved everything about it. This Earth hadn't seen the seemingly-constant alien invasions that had plagued the other one – she'd often wondered if the Doctor hadn't been a magnet for them, somehow – but that was one thought she didn't share with Corin. At any rate, it had seen enough incursions to make her Institute a worthwhile endeavor, even if some individuals – like her old nemesis, Lord Cutler, the former Intelligence chief – didn't agree.

She glanced at the clock on the wall: four o'clock. Time to go home. Enough for one day. She reached over to pick up her purse, just as her computer began beeping wildly, her desk phone and mobile phones both began ringing, and an alarm sounded from the outer office. She grabbed the desk phone first with its in-house ringtone.

"Gallifrey. Speak to me!"

"Alien spaceship sighted overhead, ma'am! We're tracking it now!"

"On my way!"

Ignoring the other rings, she ran for the stairs and dashed down one floor to the Control Room. She pulled out her mobile as she went, telling it to dial Corin's number; he was up at Cambridge that day, teaching. He probably wouldn't answer if he was in class, and she didn't want to disturb him until necessary. She clicked off when it went to voice mail as she strode into the Control Room, rapping out "Status!"

"One large spaceship in high orbit, synched right above us. Don't know how they managed to get there without anyone seeing them, but apparently they did. Several smaller ships have broken off from the main ship and are descending as we speak. Still determining their target, but they look like they're heading for the UK."

People were still streaming in to the room and heading to various workstations, bringing them online and reaching out electronically for their feeds from satellites, ground arrays, and government agencies all over the world. Rose paced from one to the next for several minutes as information continued to stream in. She was just about to contact Corin telepathically (handy thing, that Time Lord life bond) when Hawkins sang out.

"They're landing!"

"Confirmed! All six craft have landed, approximately 60 miles north of here – oh my god."

"What?" Rose whirled on the speaker, a steady, middle-aged woman manning one of the comms stations, a long-time friend of hers.

She looked up at Rose, concern and fear etched on her face. "They've landed at Cambridge. Right in the heart of the University."

Less than a mile from both Corin and Donna.