Reinforcements

Flicking switches and throwing levers with all the mad panic he used to employ at the TARDIS console, Jared brought the Dimension Cannon online and began searching out Rose's timeline. It wasn't hard to trace – suddenly it seemed that every timeline in their universe was converging on hers. Some thought was trying to get his attention, but he furiously batted it away as an unwanted distraction. Widening the view to include the parallel worlds, he then stretched out the time parameter to include the few past years – no sign. Before searching further back, he switched it to the future view. Even with his enhancements, the Cannon could only see about one hundred years into the future, and that increasingly hazy and wildly uncertain at the far end. Hope to high heaven she wasn't taken further up than that. If it couldn't find her, he'd search further back into the past. But then he didn't need to – her timeline's distinctive signature jumped out at him again, about fifty years ahead, and in the Alpha universe. (Stopping to think: had she been at that time and place with the Doctor? No. This was her 'current' whereabouts.) He stared for a moment at the knot of activity represented – Rose's timeline was not only being reinforced somehow, but it seemed everything was bending around her there, too.

Whatever she had been dragged into, it was going to shake the multiverse.

And he wasn't going to let her go it alone.

Even though the Cannon could see far into past and a short way into the future, it couldn't send people or things across time, only to the same time in the parallel worlds. Not to worry, though – he knew how to solve that problem, as well. More correctly, he knew someone who could.

He double-checked the date in question to settle it firmly into his mind, then, setting the Cannon's destination to Alpha Universe, Cardiff, Torchwood Rift Hub, Jared dove through the gate and across the parallels.

With Tock, unnoticed and unbidden, right on his heels, as always.

And in the empty room they left behind, on the eight huge 3D plasma screens, and the myriad smaller displays, the swirls and lines and symbols that represented the worlds and the lives within them began to fade to black.

^..^

Jack Harkness was hip deep in his third favorite activity: tinkering. Specifically, working on the Dimension Cannon he was trying to develop to the hints and suggestions from Rose and Jared off in Beta World, on the rare occasions when the superphone they'd sent him actually worked. He wasn't sure why he was devoting so much time to the project; he wasn't at all certain he'd ever get it to work. But after spending a few years in America, and a couple of decades traveling elsewhere and elsewhen, something kept drawing him back to this spot. So he'd rebuilt the Hub, refurnishing it with flotsam trawled and conned (his fourth favorite activity) from far corners of the universe which might prove useful someday. The Rift had been quiet these past few years; even the Weevils seemed to have abandoned Earth. Gwen and Rhys popped in occasionally, but the Torchwood action team was only rarely needed these days. Their growing family captured all their attention; and that was just as it should be. Jack would never begrudge a child having his own parents on hand, alive and involved.

Something was wrong with the blasted timeline readouts again. They kept flickering in and out. He ducked his head back into the cabinet and sighed, then laid out flat, reached for a spanner without looking, and began troubleshooting once again. The cabinet doors had never yet been closed; he might as well take them off.

Without warning, a brilliant flash of light from outside the cabinet seared his eyes, while a rolling thunderclap deafened him. Did somebody just set off a lightning grenade in here? Jerking upright, he inevitably koshed himself on the frame, adding some shooting stars to his visual field.

"JACK!" came a familiar yell, and he groaned in reply, rubbing his eyes to attempt to restore his sight. A pair of trainers at once appeared next to his legs, followed by four distinctly canine paws.

"Just shoot me already and get it over with," he continued groaning, "I'll feel better faster."

The owner of the trainers squatted down, and two familiar visages grinned at him in unison. Jack squeezed his eyes shut again, rubbed them harder, and tried again; this time the two melted into a single man. "Doc?" he tried cautiously.

"No. Jared."

"Ah. I was going to say your taste in Companions has changed."

Following Jack's tipped head, Jared swung around, only then realizing that Tock had followed him. He frowned. "He's certainly as persistent as some of them, though." Sending a last glare at the unrepentant pooch, he turned back to Jack and gave him a hand up to his feet.

Jack kept his hold, changing it into a handshake while a wide grin split his face. "Damn, it's good to finally see you again, Jared!" Though they'd been talking through the Rift since receiving the superphone from Beta, neither had made the jump to the other world. He looked around expectantly, but was disappointed. "Where's Rose?" That she hadn't come with her fiance seemed impossible.

Jared's answering grin melted away, and his eyes turned steely. "She's been kidnapped, Jack. She was nabbed right in front of me by a goon with a Time Jumper, and then somehow brought back to Alpha. That's why I'm here. I need your help."

"You got it!" Without a second's hesitation, Jack reached for his Navy greatcoat draped on a nearby chair and slipped his gun into its holster. Then he held up his arm, prepared to punch in coordinates, when a thought hit him. "You aren't going to deactivate this on me again when we're done, are you?"

"No," was Jared's quiet, level reply. "I'm not the Doctor." As if in proof, he picked up the pistol that had lain beside Jack's and slipped it into his pocket.

"No, you're not." Jack agreed, then nodded. "Where and when?"

"Right here, fifty years up." He reeled off the date he'd memorized in Beta.

"Here? In my Hub? Oh, no. Nobody takes over my place AND kidnaps my girlfriend into the bargain!"

^..^

Deciding (for once) to use a tiny bit of caution, the rescue party flashed into the future Hub within the side tunnel leading back to the cold storage vaults. Creeping to the doorway to the Hub proper, they peeked through the crack just in time to see Rose led away to the far side door, "down to the cells" Jack informed Jared in a whisper.

"How many men are out there?" came the growled response, Jared just barely keeping himself from jumping out immediately after his beloved.

"Three here, one with Rose, and..." Jack craned to hear, "a few more over in the 'break room' yonder." He indicated the man now leaning over the machinery in the center of the Hub. "He looks like the one in charge. Do you recognize him?" Jared shook his head. "Me, neither. Those other two seated look like techs."

"That's all of them then," came from the man in charge. "We'll let things settle for a day, then contact my other selves again tomorrow. In the meantime, I think I'll have a talk with our... guests." He turned to follow after Rose.

Leaving Tock in the tunnel with a fierce whispered exhortation to lie down and be quiet, the two time travelers took the opportunity to slip out of their hiding place and capture the two techs, making sure they weren't armed (they weren't) and then shoving them into the break room. There they used their human Trojan horses to get the drop on the half dozen goons sitting around the table, disarming them, then simply locking the door on the way out. "Escape proof," murmured Jack, and Jared merely grunted as he slipped quietly across to the far door.

They surprised the goon who'd escorted Rose out on his way back up; Jack simply punched him between the eyes before he could make a sound and he slid silently to the floor, Jared shoving him to one side as Jack leapt over him – and relieving him of the Time Jumper on his wrist, as well. Then he snuck after Jack in time to see him pistol-whip the leader at the cell door.

"Sorry, buddy, but the only one around here allowed to have a harem is me," was Jack's mysterious comment through the window set into the door. Jared started to clear his throat in annoyance, when a precious, familiar voice rang out from beyond it.

"Where the hell have you been?"

Jared whipped out his sonic and whizzed it against the lock, then shoved Jack wordlessly to one side and ripped open the door. Just on the other side...

… stood Rose. She gasped out his name and fell into his arms and he pulled her in and held her so close so tight burying his face in her hair never let you go again never never...

An endless precious moment later, she pulled back to grin tearily up at him. "I knew you'd come after me. Though I admit I didn't expect to see you this quick."

He started to grin back, but then his mind finally began to register what his reopened eyes were telling him from their periphery, and he looked around the bare rock cell in astonishment. One, two... SIX other Roses were staring at him – one grinning, the others agape in mixed hope and bewilderment. He glanced back down at the one in his arms and gulped.

"Well, you've got the right clothes on..." came his invitation for her confirmation.

She giggled, saying "So do you!", obliquely giving him HER method of identifying HIM from his twin: the cutoffs he'd been wearing to the beach. Then she leaned up to whisper in his ear, "We're supposed to be getting married today. If we make it back in time." Suddenly she groaned, her head wilting onto his shoulder. "Oh, crap, Mum is going to MURDER me..."

His grin returned, greatly relieved. "OK. It's you."