Notes: So after a slight detour along an alternate time line, the story gets back on track, and Torchwood tackle the pyramids.
Chapter 9
Jackie was in the living room, walking around cuddling EJ in her arms. She was talking to him and tickling him, which got a rewarding grin and chuckle. Tony had gone to his room to change out of his school uniform so that he could play on the floor with his nephew.
She had just switched on the TV when she heard the familiar noise of the TARDIS materializing within the room. They were making more and more journeys in that weird box lately, and she was worried that they were slipping back into that old life style.
The doors opened and Rose, John and Pete stepped out into the Living Room. EJ waggled his arms and legs when he saw his mother, and Jackie handed him over to her waiting arms.
"Where's my best little man then?" Rose cooed as she enveloped him in a gentle hug. Jackie noticed Rose looking at her and tried to put on a neutral expression.
"Are you alright Mum?" Rose asked her.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she said, although she knew she wasn't. When would be the last time that she would hand EJ back, never to see any of them again?
Rose knew that 'I'm fine', meant that she wasn't.
"John, I'm just going to have a walk around the garden with Mum. Okay?"
"Sure sweetheart. See you in a bit." He'd picked up her concern for Jackie and knew she needed to have a chat.
Rose was sending him the gist of the conversation. Jackie was worried that they were going to 'run off' in the TARDIS like they used to before, but this time never to return.
She didn't realise that he'd stopped running away from his past. Rose had helped him with that, and Donna. He had come to terms with his history, and had come to like who he had become.
He was still 'The Doctor', but he was THE Dr. John Smith, Nobel Prize winner, inventor and scientific advisor to the government. He was husband of the amazing Rose Smith, and father of the adorable Eyeulf Smith.
He'd got a house, a proper house, with doors and things. And carpets! Him, living in a house. Now that…. that wasn't as terrifying as he had thought. And he knew it was because he had Rose.
She had been wrong about one thing, though. They didn't need to get a mortgage. One advantage of marrying a millionairess.
He was drawn from his mental musings by someone calling his name.
"Dr. Smith, your wife called around earlier and asked me to give you this envelope," Alistair said.
"Did she? She never mentioned it."
"I think its supposed to be a surprise, part of a magic trick."
"Thanks Alistair." He looked at the infinity symbol on the front, it was the symbol for their forever. He opened the envelope as Rose came back through the French windows with Jackie.
John unfolded the paper and read the message as Alistair went over to Rose.
"It was some Torchwood tech wasn't it?" he asked her.
"Wha?"
"You know, the vanishing trick. There was no way you could have left the kitchen without me hearing you. It was some sort of alien teleport, wasn't it? That's cheating you know."
She was about to ask him what he was on about, because she really didn't have a clue, when John spoke up.
"Ah-ah Alistair, you should know better than to ask a magician how a trick was done."
"Hmmph, I suppose so. But using alien tech isn't conjuring, it's cheating."
"Well indirectly it did have something to do with alien tech, but I can assure you that she had no alien tech for the trick."
"John?" Rose started to ask him what was going on, when he thought to her.
["Play along love, I'll explain later."]
"Okay, maybe. But what about the prediction on the paper? She said it would freak you out."
"Oh yes! Its done that alright. Pete, I need to use your office to send a message to the other teams."
"What's up John? Is there a problem?" Pete asked him.
"No, not a problem. I've just received new intelligence and we need to synchronise and coordinate our actions."
John, Rose and Pete went down the hallway to his home office and he closed the door. John handed the paper to Rose for her to read.
"What is that paper John?" Pete asked. He could see the circles and lines written on it.
"It's a message, written in Gallifreyan," he told him.
"And what is the message?" Pete enquired.
Rose looked up from the paper. "It says, 'the Big Bad Wolf is afraid of a harmonic resonance feedback loop'. This is my writing John. What's all that about then?"
"Alistair told me that you came here earlier today and gave him the envelope."
"But we were at Torchwood all morning, how could I have done that? And why wouldn't I remember writing and delivering it?"
"It gets better. You performed a magic trick and disappeared right in front of him as you handed over the envelope. I've got to admit, that was a stroke of genius, he can't work out how you did it."
"So that's what he was on about. What does the message mean?"
"Well, the last time I had a Bad Wolf message from you, Donna Noble had a 'time beetle' on her back, and things were going to hell in a handbasket."
"Ah, and when she corrected the time line, she disappeared and things changed around the original Donna. That's how I disappeared when I handed over the message."
John grinned at her proudly. "Brilliant! Which means that I understood the message and acted on it. Otherwise you wouldn't have disappeared."
"So what does the message mean?" Pete asked him, just about keeping up with the conversation.
"Bad Wolf is Rose, warning me that the oscillator in the pyramid has a feedback of energy which causes a change of our time line."
"So I used our TARDIS to come back here to warn you," Rose suggested.
"Possibly, yes. But we'll never know for certain. I only know about Donna's time line because you were in a different universe when you fixed it and were able to tell me about it."
"So what are you going to do John?" Pete asked.
"Well, there are three oscillators on a global nexus. It appears they are linked so that if one goes off line, energy from the other two feeds back into the crystal, causing an alteration of reality to correct the problem. We have to take the three crystals off line simultaneously to prevent a feedback loop."
He logged on to Pete's computer and started to send a message to Jack, Gwen, Jake and Julia.
Jake and Julia were settling in for their 12 hour transatlantic flight to Mexico City. They were studying the maps and plans of the Pyramid of the Sun, that had been downloaded to their tablet PC's when a priority message popped up on the screen. It was from John, and it contained instructions for a coordinated shutdown of the pyramid oscillators.
Of the three teams, they had the tightest schedule. They would be landing at 03:00 GMT, which would be 22:00 local time. This gave them two hours to get to the pyramid, find the crystal and then disconnect it.
The journey from the airport to Teotihuacán was around 45 minutes, which would leave them just over an hour to find the entrance to the pyramid and coordinate their actions with the others.
"Our bodies will be working on it being 3 o'clock in the morning, while the local time will be 10 o'clock at night," Julia said. "We'd better get some sleep so that we can function at our best."
She reclined the luxury seat and turned the overhead light off, pulling the eye mask down. Jake on the other hand, needed to unwind a little. He put his headphones on and started to watch a detective drama on his tablet.
Jake was startled awake when Julia gently shook his shoulder.
"Wakey wakey Jakey," she sang into his ear.
Jake rubbed his hand over his face and straightened up in his chair. Somehow it had reclined and his tablet was switched off.
"Wha?" he said, still in a fog of sleep.
"We'll be landing in about an hour. I thought you might want a cup of coffee and a freshen up in the restroom."
"Mmmm, yeah. That sounds like a good idea. I don't remember reclining the seat."
"You didn't. Its part of business class, the flight attendants recline your seats, switch off your gadgets and give you blankets."
Jake yawned. "Talk about bein' pampered."
The trolley came down the aisle and stopped by them. Jake bought them both a strong cup of coffee, and a small packet of shortbread biscuits.
"It's two o'clock in the morning for your body. Your blood sugar will be at it's lowest, these shortbreads will give you a boost."
Julia smiled at him as she took the coffee and biscuits. "Thanks partner."
They sat in silence for a while why they drank and ate, feeling a bit more human when they had finished.
"Mmm, that's better," Jake said as he picked up his tablet again. "Let's check the messages for any updates."
"Ah, here we are," Julia said. "Gillian West from the Embassy will be waiting for us. She'll unlock the case with our gear in it, give us our permits and documentation to explore the site, and give us the keys to the hire car that Torchwood has arranged."
Jake was also reading the mission updates. "Oh that's useful. The Embassy have asked the Museo Universitario del Chopo, to send an archeologist, Marcos Becerra to meet us at the pyramid site."
Having caught up on their messages, they took it in turns to go to the restroom. Julia went first, taking her backpack with her so that she could wash, brush her teeth and change into some fresh clothes. They didn't have the luxury of staying at a hotel like their other team mates.
When she emerged, she looked and felt 100% better than when she had gone in. She was wearing a black blouse, blue jeans and a pair of hiking boots.
Jake stood up and they passed in the aisle as he headed to do the same. By the time he was back in his seat, wearing a grey sweatshirt, black jeans and hiking boots, the seat belt warning light was illuminated. The pilot gave the standard announcement about arrival time, temperature and weather conditions in Mexico City.
After landing ten minutes early, they moved quickly through the Customs & Excise Department and met the Embassy official who was holding up a sign saying 'Simmonds & De Graff'.
They went through the concourse and out into the evening air, where Gillian took them to their Chrysler Jeep. Resting the briefcase on the back seat, she broke the seal and unlocked the case.
"Right, I'll leave you to it. There's a fresh seal here for when you've finished so that you can go back through customs. Mr. Becerra will meet you at the gates to the car park at Teotihuacan."
They thanked Gillian for her help and took the keys for the Jeep. Once alone, they opened the case and started sorting their equipment into their backpacks.
Jack and Gwen were in business class on the jet airship, heading for Cairo. It was a five hour flight and they were due to land at around 20:00 GMT, which was 21:00 local time.
The diplomatic briefcase with their specialist equipment was in the overhead compartment along with their hand luggage. Gwen had already told Jack off for flirting with the flight attendants.
"Just saying hello," he had told her with his boyish smile.
They were going over the mission profile on their tablet PC's when a priority message popped up on the screen. It was from John, and it contained instructions for a coordinated shutdown of the pyramid oscillators.
Fortunately, John's Time Lord brain was unaffected by his Metacrisis and he was able to calculate and adjust for the different time zones so that everyone on the mission would work as one unit.
"It looks like he's received some new intel' on the oscillators," Gwen said reading the update.
"Yeah. I wonder where he got that from?" Jack mused. "We'd better RSVP so that he knows we've got the information."
Once that was done they started prepping for the mission, going over maps of the area and plans of the Great Pyramid. Torchwood Communications Department were arranging official clearance and documentation that would allow them unrestricted access to the pyramid.
The trolley came down the aisle and they bought some sandwiches and drinks so that they could snack whilst planning contingencies for any foreseeable problems. This was Andy McNab's credo, 'Perfect Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance'. He had drilled it into the agents during their basic training and it had stuck.
Once they had exhausted all the scenarios that they could think of, they reclined their seats and settled in to watch the in-flight movie.
The flight was uneventful, and they landed at Cairo International Airport without delays. They passed through the Customs and Excise Department and into the main concourse, looking for a man holding a sign saying 'Harkness and O'Toole'.
"Before you say anything Gwen," Jack said as he herded her towards the Embassy official. "I am definitely saying hello to him."
"Good evening. Welcome to Cairo. My name is Rex Patterson, Attaché from the British Embassy here in Cairo," the young man in a suit said.
"Well hello yourself, Rex," Jack said holding out his hand and giving him his winning smile.
Gwen cut in before Jack could really get going. "Gwen O'Toole, this is my field partner Jack Harkness. I believe you are taking us to the hotel?"
"Yes, that's right. It's the Le Passage Cairo, it's only two minutes down the road."
They went out into the comfortable night air and walked over to Rex's car. Jack put the case in the boot, their holdalls and briefcase went onto the back seat.
When everyone was settled, Rex leaned over and handed them the key for the briefcase. Jack broke the seal and unlocked the case. They would wait until they were in their rooms before sorting out the equipment.
Rex drove the short distance along the outside of the airport and along the one way system. They drove under the monorail track that shuttled people to and from the terminal, until they turned into the 'U' shaped drive that led to the entrance to the Le Passage Cairo Hotel and Casino.
A bellhop came to the car and took their case and holdalls to the reception. Jack carried the briefcase himself.
"Why don't you check in and I'll see you in the bar later," Rex said, looking at Jack with a questioning look.
"Are you staying here?" Gwen asked.
"No. I'm going to the Casino. I play a mean hand of poker."
"We'll see you in the bar then," Jack said giving him a wink.
Gwen rolled her eyes. "Jack. We're supposed to be working."
"Yeah, I know. But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. We'll be in bed at a respectable hour and raring to go in the morning."
They made their way to the reception desk where a pleasant young lady greeted them.
"Hello…. Nadia," Jack said, reading her name off her badge. "What a beautiful name."
Gwen cut through his flirting. "Harkness and O'Toole. We have reservations."
"You might have reservations Gwen, but I have none when it comes to saying hello," he said with a wicked grin and wink at Nadia.
The young woman gave Jack a sexy laugh as she handed over the room key-cards.
"I'm sure you're going to enjoy your stay here Mr. Harkness," she said.
"I'd enjoy it more if you called me Jack."
Gwen pushed him towards the lift, following the bellhop with their bags. They had rooms on the second floor that were opposite each other in the hallway. In Jack's room they sorted their equipment from the suitcase into their individual holdalls. Gwen put her holdall in her room and they went down to the bar.
At 11 pm, Gwen went up to her room to get some sleep before their 4 am start. Jack went to the Casino with Rex, promising Gwen that he would not be too late and would be ready to go by 04:00.
04:00
Knock, knock.
"Jack, are you ready?" Gwen asked as she gently tapped his door.
The door opened a little and Rex's face appeared in the gap, with his body wrapped in a hotel dressing gown.
"Oh hello Gwen." He opened the door to let her in. "Jack's just in the shower. He'll be dressed and ready to go in a couple of minutes. Would you like a coffee?" He poured a cup from the jug and handed it to her.
"Er, thanks." She went to the tray and put some milk in the cup.
Jack came out of the bathroom dressed in his RAF clothing and smiled at Gwen.
"Morning, partner. Are we ready to roll?"
"Yeah, just finish your coffee and we'll hit the road."
Jack swigged his coffee and picked up his holdall, as he moved over to Rex and kissed him on the cheek.
"Thanks for an entertaining evening Rex. I'll see you when we get back. Make yourself at home until you have to go to work."
He reached for Jacks hand and gave it a squeeze.
"Thanks, Jack. See you later."
