((AN: Sorry this took so long to get up! I've been crazy busy with school recently. Also, if Cpt. Jack seems OOC, it's because I have practically no knowledge of Torchwood canon: I've only seen his appearances in Doctor Who, and am basing his character here from that.))

TEXT FROM: JOHN WATSON
16:48
Just go ahead and leave me here yeah that sounds like a good idea

TEXT FROM: SHERLOCK HOLMES
16:49
Why are you texting me? I was standing next to you fifty-three seconds ago.
SH

TEXT FROM: JOHN WATSON
16:49
Well you're not now are you

TEXT FROM: SHERLOCK HOLMES
16:49
Excellent deduction, John.
SH

TEXT FROM: JOHN WATSON
16:50
Bastard.

John, his medical instinct overriding his instinct to follow the detective, had stayed in the TARDIS, dropping to check the stranger's pulse (Jack? he thought his name was? they were never properly introduced). As he watched Sherlock and the Doctor's backs disappear down the sidewalk away from him, he realized he didn't know what on Earth he was doing.

What on Earth. He smiled wryly. He wasn't quite sure he was on Earth, though it definitely felt right; but what was he doing, inside a box that didn't make any sense, gripping the wrist of a dead stranger who had just been electrocuted by a … Cyberman? and they had been talking as if it were real, an alien of some sort …

His musings were disturbed by a gasp from beneath him. He looked down, wondering if his ears had deceived him.

They hadn't. The man on the floor was breathing heavily, looking at him with a positively face-splitting grin. "Bloody hell, what did I miss this time," John muttered.

"Captain Jack Harkness." The stranger twisted his wrist in John's grip into some sort of handshake. "Immortal, yeah?" That grin again.

John sighed, then moved over so they were both sitting on the floor. "So what exactly are we doing here, and what are they doing just running off with that thing?"

"Well, the Doctor's never been able to resist running off with the bad guys. That's why he keeps people around, I guess, to get him out of all the trouble he gets himself into," Jack answered.

John snorted. "Sounds like Sherlock."

"How long have you two been traveling with him, then?" Jack asked.

"Just since last night. He crashed into our flat through the window, and Sherlock insisted that we go off with him."

Jack chuckled. "I suppose he took to the whole time-and-space-travelling in a bigger-on-the-inside wooden box pretty well."

"Yeah, like always," John replied, scratching his head. "I still don't understand most of it."

"So you're a military man, then?"

"Oh, don't tell me you're like that too," John groaned.

"What?"

"Sherlock. He can look at you once and tell you your entire life story. It gets pretty irritating if you hang around him long enough."

Jack laughed. "No, I'm nothing like that. I just noticed the gun in your hand."

John looked down, unaware that he had instinctively pulled his pistol out of his coat pocket when the Cyberman had confronted them. He grinned sheepishly, tucking it back in.

The Doctor and Sherlock had been led by the Cyberman into a vacant shopfront several streets over, then left there while it disappeared into a room in the back. They could hear the tramping of several more of the metal men faintly through the walls, but it seemed they had been left on their own for the time being.

Sherlock brushed some dead beetles off the counter and sat down on it. "Tell me about this," he instructed the Doctor, handing over the object he had produced earlier.

The Doctor took it, furrowing his brow as he held it up into the afternoon light. It was both what he expected and what he hoped it wasn't: a small silver fob-watch with Gallifreyan symbols etched onto its cover, symbols even the TARDIS would not translate. He remembered the two times he had seen this technique used before, once by his own self and once by his rival, the Master, neither of which had turned out spectacularly well.

He looked up at Sherlock, certain that he had more questions than the detective did, and almost certainly several that neither of them would have answers to. "Right, then. For starters, can you tell me exactly what you know about this?"

Sherlock leaned forward, elbows on knees, and looked up at the Doctor. "I know its technology derives from the same source as your TARDIS, as the symbols etched on it are the same script as those found within your ship. Judging by the reaction you've had to it previously and the familiarity with which you have held it just now, I know you know what it is. I know that it is particularly difficult for me and only me to keep my attention focused on it, but anyone else that sees it seems to have no such difficulty, so it would follow that I am not meant to know that it exists."

The Doctor rubbed his face. "You're definitely right about that, you are not meant to know that it exists. It's called a perception filter, the thing that hides it from you, and normally the person that owns the watch shouldn't even care that it exists. You are clever enough, though — Have you ever tried opening it?"

"Yes, but it hasn't let me open it."

"Right, obviously, since you still have it. A fob watch, anyway, is a way that Time Lords — that's what I am, by the way, a Time Lord — can completely rewrite their biology, make them human and give them a human life and constructed memories, whilst making them forget who they were before and shielding itself from them so they have no desire to open it. Opening the watch reverts the owner back into a Time Lord and restores their memory."

"So I'm a Time Lord." If Sherlock was surprised, he didn't let on; his tone was as flat and emotionless as ever.

"Well, basically, yes."

"I was seven years old when I was changed, then. That explains why I have no clear memories before that age." Sherlock stood up and snatched the watch out of the Doctor's hand. He held it up to his face and moved his finger to the spring. He could sense the energy pulsing through it, begging to be set free — release me, let me go, I am ready —

A few blocks away, Jack and John were walking quickly down the sidewalk, following a signal on a small radio-like device that Jack said could track the Doctor.

Beep … beep … beep-beep … beep-beep … beep-beep …

Jack stopped, holding the device up and shaking it. "That's not right," he muttered.

"Hmm?"

"There's a second signal."