Sorry for the delay, I blame the real world, and the story-fairy deserting me... but I've got a couple of chapters ready to go up over the next couple of days. None are particularly long, nor have they been beta'd, so if you notice heaps of mistakes/typos let me now and I'll make sure I spell check in future.
"What's with the eye-patch do you think?" Amelia Pond asked looking at the captive.
"Unknown ma'am," Captain Williams responded, trying his hardest not to stare at the women who commanded the mission.
"They all wear them though," Doctor Song said contemplatively. "Every human I've ever seen working with them wore one."
Captain Williams took a deep breath before reporting to these intimidating women. He was finding it difficult to take his eyes off the red haired woman. "Purpose of the eye-patch is not known," he said concisely. "However the captive struggled strongly when we attempted to remove the patch. We left it in place only because we didn't have specific orders to remove it."
The women looked at each other, then Doctor Song approached the captive and leant down to remove the eye patch.
"Don't, please," the woman begged, struggling against her restraints. "Just, please leave it."
"Why?" Miss Pond stepped up. "After everything we've done, why should we remove it."
"Because," the captive woman answered. "If you take it off I won't even remember why you're holding me."
"Really," Doctor Song smiled evilly. "How would an eye-patch help you to remember anything?"
"It's not an eye patch, "Madame Kovarian said desperately. "It's an eye-drive. Without it I'm nothing, please, you have to leave it."
"Captain Williams, please remove the device," Amelia said firmly. "We need to study it in order to better understand the Silence."
Rory stepped up to the captive and gently removed the eye patch, then handed it to the red headed woman. The captive sobbed quietly as the three walked out of the cell carrying the eye-drive. Once the door closed, however, the sobbing stopped and a look of sly victory crept over Madame Kovarian's face.
"Does it work?" Amy asked hesitantly.
"It seems to," River replied, fidgeting with her eye-drive.
"These things are really uncomfortable," Amy observed as she fingered the edges of her newest piece of equipment. "And they really mess with my balance. Are you sure there's no way to have the eye-drive without it blocking our eye-sight? I mean, remembering the Silence is handy, but I'm kind of used to having depth perception."
River looked out from the edge of the pyramid, watching the sky change colour as the sun sank below the horizon. "According to the tech guys the drive needs to interface with the brain through the optic nerve, which requires blocking light input to that eye. They're looking at ways to upgrade the data stream to include some rudimentary visual information, but they're not sure how far away that upgrade is. Until then, try to use a gun with laser sights."
"Okay," Amy moved her hand down from the drive. "What does the message say? I mean, we've spent so much time working on the transmitter array, but I don't even know what we're saying."
"I thought we should keep it simple," River said, displaying the message on her computer. "What do you think?"
"I guess that says it all," Amy agreed. "Do you think anyone out there can hear it?"
River was about to put the computer back in her pocket when it beeped. She checked the screen, but before she could read the incoming message the device beeped several more times.
"They can hear it," River smiled broadly. "They're already answering us, wanting to know how they can help."
Somewhere beyond the Horsehead Nebula, 6020
The blonde woman rested her feet on the control console as her small spaceship cruised out of the orbit of a small earth-like planet. It had been an interesting week, between the personality altering virus being spread through the local population by a crime baron who was determined to take over every profitable enterprise on the planet, a band of street kids who were plotting to overthrow the cartel, and a certain love-struck male humanoid who had been relentless in his pursuit of her, she'd saved the world, made new friends, and most important of all had done a lot of running. Exactly her idea of fun, and she couldn't help but grin at the memory of who she'd inherited that penchant for running from.
Time to seek out her next adventure. She started adjusting her communications nexus, running the software she'd programmed for this purpose. It automatically scanned all broadcasts for any indications of trouble, mystery, crying children... or her father. Which made it sound like her father was lower in her priorities than he really was. Eight years of travelling the universe and she'd not found a trace of him. She'd discovered planets where he'd been, heard stories of things he'd done, but never a clue as to where he was now.
Until the computer flashed an urgent incoming message on screen.
With a smile Jenny started tracing the message, then reset her course and opened a communication channel. This was definitely going to be an adventure.
Torchwood hub, Cardiff, 2009
"Jack, look at this."
"What is it Tosh," Jack said, bounding up the stairs to look over her shoulder.
"It's a message," the small Japanese woman replied while staring intently at the screens. "I mean, for starters it appears to come from the future, probably three years from now."
"A message from the future, that shouldn't really rate an 'impossible' after all we've seen. Messages from the future come through the rift all the time."
"Well, that's not really the impossible part, but the thing is it didn't come through the rift," Toshiko said. "I mean, look at this..." she brought a world map up on one of the monitors. "I've traced the transmission, and it comes from Cairo. I can be even more specific, it's transmitting from a beacon on top of one of the pyramids."
"The pyramids?" Jack looked interested. "Is it coming from a mummy? Or some kind of Egyptian God?"
"Focus Jack," Tosh spoke sharply. "Give me a chance to finish explaining."
"Well, sorry for getting excited about my work. Now, what's the impossible part?"
"For starters, the transmitter is non-contemporary technology, way more advanced than can be explained by a couple of years development. Secondly, it would take years to build that kind of transmitter, it would have to be massive. But I've haced into the latest satellite images of the pyramids and there's nothing there."
"Hmm, an impossible transmission from the future. Sounds like something we should look into. What does the message say?"
"It's only short, but it's on repeat." Tosh brought the message up on screen, then turned back to her boss. "What do you think?"
"It's time to call in the troops," Jack said, staring at the screen as if he'd seen a ghost. "We've got work to do."
Pete's world, 2013
"Wait, what do you mean you got a message? How can you have gotten a message?" Rose asked her husband.
"Er, my mobile phone," John admitted.
"Your mobile? So, you bag out mobile phones when you're feeling all morally superior, but you still have one? And," she paused for emphasis. "You hide that fact from your wife."
"Well, you don't need to be able to call me, we're almost always together," John explained. "And I never use the phone, but Jackie, your mother, insisted on giving me a phone when you..." He trailed off into silence
"When I what?" Rose asked sweetly.
"She got nervous, that's all, that perhaps you'd go into labour and what with the hormones and everything you've bbeen losing things a lot lately."
"Hormones?"
John stopped and really looked at his wife. She still had a sweet smile on her face, but her eyes were hard. He knew he shouldn't have mentioned her pregnancy, or even worse the hormones that had her mood switching with lightening speed.
"You're missing the point," John said quickly, handing the phone to his wife. "Just read this and tell me what you think."
"'The Doctor is dying. Please help'." Rose read out loud. "But, there is no Doctor in this universe. Just you."
"Exactly," John said with a smile. "Which is why we need to head into Torchwood and find out where this message came from. Because if we're getting messages from another universe one thing's for certain?"
"And what's that," Rose asked.
"We're all in trouble," John answered.
"We are, aren't we?" replied Rose with a grin.
"Yes we are."
"You'll never succeed," Madame Kovarian. "You've altered a fixed point in time. The only way to unfreeze this moment is to create a short circuit. You can't even kill yourself to end this, you're both the focal points of this reality, which makes you the only two people here are aging, and the only peope who can't die. Until you give in to reality and let the universe carry on."
"I won't do that," River Song said. "There's another way, and we'll find it." She turned and walked out of the cell, slamming the door behind her.
"Is she right?" Amy asked.
"I don't know," River started down the corridor towards the main control room of Area 52, her red haired mother matching her stride for stride. "I'm sure there has to be a way, but even with all those people who've responded to the distress beacon, even sharing ideas with some of the best and brightest minds in the universe, we've got nothing."
"Nothing?" Amy stepped in front of her daughter, effectively blocking the corridor. "What do you mean nothing? What about John's idea for a paradox machine? Or Jack's plan to use a series of precise temporally spaced explosions at the edge of the bubble universe to break the time barrier? Or, there was something about psychic species, the Odd or whatever they were called."
"None of those ideas are going to work," River said with a sigh. "We've been working on this for years now Amy, we've tried just about everything possible. We don't have a TARDIS or a vortex manipulator, so we don't have anything to link into the time vortex to create a paradox machine. We tried accessing the rift in Cardiff, but it doesn't even exist in this reality, it's as though we're completely sealed in."
"What about from outside? There has to be a way!"
"We've tried it all. From outside the bubble universe, from the future and the past, even from Torchwood in a different parallel universe, and time hasn't progressed by so much as a pico-second." River leant against the wall, her head dropping in exhaustion. "We've tried everything I can think of, or that anyone we can contact could come up with. Kovarian's right, there isn't anything we can do to save him."
Amy was silent for several minutes, thinking hard.
"There's one thing we haven't tried," she said cautiously. "But you're not going to like it."
River's head came up, a faint light of hope returning to her eyes. "What is it?"
"We bring the Doctor here, show him what we've done, and see if he has any other ideas?"
"But you know the Doctor, he'll just sacrifice himself to save the universe."
"Maybe," Any admitted. "But what else can we do?"
Mother and daughter stared at each other, each trying to think of any alternative to this desperate plan. Finally River nodded her head in agreement.