"Okay," Jack said from the head of the table. "How do we find this…Time Assassin? And when we do…how do you plan of fixing the timelines?"

"Finding him is the easy part. He'll be hanging around the 'me' of this time. Making sure I stay away from you." Mariah pointed at Jack. He nodded and she continued, "All I have to do is get him to see me twice…he'll follow me instead of past me."

"The we... what?" Owen shrugged as he haphazardly threw together a plan. "Catch him and kill him?"

"That would be ideal." Mariah nodded, slightly to herself. "That way he couldn't escape to an even earlier point in our timelines and screw them up further."

"And our timelines?" Jack asked sceptically.

"All we'd have to do then is get you and me to meet." Mariah smiled a small smile, knowing his next question.

"Yeah, slight problem." Jack raised a quizzical eyebrow in her direction.

"We've already met?" she sighed and smirked. "Yeah, all over it."

"Do tell then." Jack gestured for her to tell all she knew.

Mariah shook her head solemnly. "Sorry, Jack. That's the part of the plan you just can't know."

Jack narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously, about to ask again but was interrupted by Tosh. "What exactly am I looking for, Mariah?"

"An off the scale spike in rift activity for a start…" Mariah frowned. "Why?"

"Because… I can't find anything." Tosh looked at her computer screen worriedly. "I backlogged five months looking for it and there's nothing."

"It should be there." Mariah's eyes widened, scared. "No…but why? Is it? No…yes! No…but it is! Oh, that's clever! Is it clever? Why is it clever? Well, because it's Zed-neutrino energy, that's why. Oh, you idiot, Mariah! May I?" she smiled at Tosh as she took over Torchwood's computer systems, the whole team watching on in discomfort; that was understandable, she had just been talking to herself as she tried to figure out how the Time Assassin had been able to hide his entrance into this time-stream. "Thraneo readings…"

"Mariah," Jack began, standing very close behind her. "What are you doing?"

Mariah frowned momentarily at the present screen before a triumphant smile broke out across her face. "Ha! Got it!" she cried as a beeping sound filled the room and she pointed to several screens in turn, graphs and location grids seemingly jumping off the screens. "There! Do you see it? He came in in a rather unconventional way. You could say he used the back door. Come on! You must see it!"

"Is that… an energy reading from a time fracture?" Tosh began, her eyes widening with realisation. "Created when a time-dimension jump crosses fixed points in time using an unstable mix of residual Rift, Thraneo and Zed-Neutrino energies?"

"Oh, give the woman a medal!" Mariah beamed. "God, you are truly brilliant Toshiko! Yes, that is completely right! And you know what that means, don't you?!"

"It means that we wouldn't be able to detect him arriving." Tosh's face was blank.

"Why?" Gwen and Owen asked simultaneously, eyeing each other for a moment before looking back at Mariah and Tosh.

"Because, when unstable and incompatible energies mix with the rift," Tosh looked at them each in turn. "The readings come back as normal, or nothing, because the instruments and equipment we use to detect energies doesn't know what it's looking at, doesn't know what it's detecting because of the fluctuating nature of the Thraneo energy…so we don't get any readings, because the Thraneo energy cancels everything out…unless…"

"Oh, another medal!" Mariah grinned and hugged Tosh sideways as she began typing an equation into their energy detection software.

"But that's really difficult…" Tosh frowned slightly.

"Not when you're me!" Mariah hit enter. "HA! There he is! Right in the middle of Cardiff Bay. He's still got residual Thraneo energy flowing off him like it was yesterday. Tsk, tsk, he's getting sloppy! Oh, look, and there's me. Two hearts, see?"

"Alright team." Gwen grabbed her gun and jacket. "Let's go get this twisted son of a bitch!"

...

Jack watched on warily from the shadows. He could see Mariah looking out towards a set of benches overlooking the bay, where he presumed the Mariah from his point in time was now sitting. He frowned as she began to back up a few paces, her hands gesturing for whoever was looking at her to come and get her. He ordered everyone into position as she spun around, grinning triumphantly, and sprinted towards where he and the team were concealed…and that was when he saw him.

A figure in black, ragged robes that dragged across the ground, surrounded in a dark mist. He seemed to go completely unnoticed by everyone else around him as he ran after Mariah, glowing eyes trained on her form only. Mariah blew past him like she was running for her life, the creature known as the Time Assassin hot on her tail.

"NOW!" Jack yelled as she turned to face the hooded, dark figure and it stopped dead.

Five beams of light, energy configurations to be precise, appeared and joined around the Time Assassin, forming a portable, syndicated capture and execution cell configured from extrapolator technology they'd scavenged a few years back. The energy 'bubble-shaped' cell around the Time Assassin began to glow and then shrink in size, the prisoner still within…screaming. The cell glowed so bright the rest of the team had to look away, but not Mariah. She watched on as the cell broke down the electrical currents holding together the atoms that made up their prisoner. He evaporated, particles floating free of themselves, and the cell imploded, sending what appeared to be ink splatters everywhere…though apparently mostly at Mariah; well she was the epicentre of a metrological Time Crisis.

Jack saw Mariah breathe a sigh of relief as she fell back against a nearby wall, her head in her hands. They'd done it. They'd defeated the Time Assassin… but what now? How could she orchestrate their first meeting when he'd already met her…the wrong her… out of time and out of mind…

'Out of mind.' Mariah thought sadly as Jack sauntered over towards her, pulled her to her feet and , wiping the ink smudge on her cheek, kissed her again. 'That's how it'll work. When I'm out of mind…'

...

So? Whataya think?!