They landed at Lumic's airstrip. The place was deserted, but in the distance they could see the glow of the Battersea fires and the hear the growing panic of horns and sirens, as escaping people created mass chaos in the streets, trying to figure out what was going on. Rose immediately logged into the network on her phone, and it appeared to be just as chaotic, with the Cybus servers down.
"Lumic would have used the network to get everyone to Battersea. Chances are that their earpods don't work, the entire communication network is down." Pete stared hard into the darkness. They had all been so dependent on their communication system. It was how Lumic had played them all.
"Who would be in charge of it now," the Doctor asked.
"I don't know," Pete admitted, thinking of the disembodied voice and the sixty five hundred people already gone. "Chances are whoever it's supposed to be is dead."
His entire world was changed, overnight. Yesterday, he'd been a man of power and influence, with a glamorous wife and a secret life as a spy. Today, he wasn't even sure who was alive anymore, what parts of that life even remained. They were all going to be stuck like that, trying to figure out what their place was in this new world that John Lumic had left behind, formed because he was too afraid to die.
"What's going to happen now," Rose asked, wrapping her arms around herself. It occurred to Pete just how very cold it was outside. It was only February, six weeks till spring. The girl shivered.
"It's going to be chaos for a while," he admitted. "If the Vice President made it, she'll have to take over. That's if she lived. She might have done, Harriet was never one for the earpods, always said they made her ears itch."
The Doctor blinked at him curiously, a small smile tugging at his face. "Harriet? Not Harriet Jones?"
"Yeah," Pete frowned at him as if it should be obvious. "She was on Cain's ticket. Surely you heard about that."
"Nope, missed that! Not from around these parts," the Doctor breezed, turning to Rose with a grin. "So, Harriet Jones will be President in this world. How about that? Hope she turns out better than our Harriet Jones did, she would have been a fabulous Prime Minister if she hadn't ignored me and killed the Sycorax."
His words jolted Pete, who remembered what they had said earlier about another universe, saying something about "our world". He stared wildly between them, but the Doctor was already caught up in himself again, turning towards Mickey.
"Mickey, somewhere back at the mansion is my suit." He plucked at the tuxedo he wore with mild distaste. "Think I left it in a guest toilet. You and Jake can you go and fetch it for me?"
"What? Don't you have another? You want me to be your errand boy," Mickey whined immediately, clearly put out with this task.
"You just saved the world, Mickey Smith! What are you complaining about," the Doctor shot back. "The roads are clear at the moment, everyone's in the heart of the city, it will take you what...forty-five minutes? Bet Jake with his driving skills can get you there and back in an hour. Gives me time to work on the TARDIS."
He spun to face Pete as Mickey pouted and glanced at Jake, who shrugged gamely and eyed one of the large, military style security jeeps parked empty beside them. The Doctor ignored them as he studied Pete speculatively. "If I got a car running for you, can you take me to my ship?"
His ship? "Like a spaceship?"
"Well, more like a time and space ship, but yeah," the Doctor shrugged, as if it were inconsequential. "I have the power cell, it should be charged now, and I need to get her back home."
Pete didn't think he could take any more madness that day, but there it was. This strangely named, insane man had a time and space ship. Something about it all just made him laugh; an aching, hysterical laugh. "Sure, mate, whatever...I just...of all the things I've seen tonight, I'd be willing to take you to your ship."
"Brilliant!" Out came his strange device, glowing as he aimed it at the jeep closest to Jake. It started without a hitch. "Mind, keep that thing going when you run inside the house, else you won't be able to turn it on again to get back."
Jake looked stunned, but Mickey looked hardly surprised. "Sure, boss! Be back soon as we can." He climbed in before Jake could protest, and jerked his head at the other man. Jake quietly climbed inside, looking as if he were afraid the car might burst into flames around him.
"Meet us at the TARDIS, right," the Doctor called as Mickey peeled out of the parking lot and into the darkened street. "Will be a wonder if he doesn't kill himself."
"Doctor," Rose protested, though she looked as if she half agreed with him.
"Off we go!" He ignored her, flashing his device at the next jeep. It too started with a rumble. Pete stared at it, confused as to what it was even doing.
"What is that?"
"This?" The Doctor held it up as if it were simply a pen or a butter knife. "It's my sonic screwdriver."
"Your sonic...screwdriver?" Pete stared at it. It didn't look like much of a screwdriver.
"Well, it's more than just a screwdriver, yeah, it does so many other interesting things, like welding things, and heating things, and…"
"Screwing things," Rose offered with a teasing grin, her tongue peeking between her teeth.
The Doctor flushed, clearly put out with her interruption and her innuendo. "It's a dead useful device, is what it is."
Pete reached a hand out for it, curious. He'd always been handy with electronics and such, had a knack for it as a kid, but he'd never seen anything like this. The Doctor obliged, allowing him to study it, flipping it round and round.
"It works with sonic technology," the Doctor explained, as if he was showing off his first born. "Everything has a frequency that reacts to sonic waves. You resonate them the right way, you can make all sorts of things happen."
"Like make your toaster explode," Rose offered again, chortling at the Doctor's annoyed expression. Pete watched the pair of them, considering. Whoever this Doctor was and whoever this girl was, how they could be so light-hearted after what they had seen that night was beyond him. But then, he reasoned, perhaps that was how they coped with it, the tragedy of it, this banter. Lord knows he'd do the same thing if it were him, crack a joke, be a smartass, anything not to feel that horror.
"I'd love to look at something like this, sometime." Pete handed it back to its owner. "It would be a dead useful product."
"Oh, Pete," the Doctor sighed, a faint smile on his thin face. "Good, old Pete,! Always the schemer and planner. It's so good to see you succeed at it all this time around. But I can't. Not this. I think your world has had enough problems with technology it couldn't handle."
This time around? Pieces were falling into place for Pete, but he was almost too afraid to consider what it all meant, what the presence of these two meant for his reality. Not that there was much of it left, not after tonight.
"Come on," Pete growled, turning towards the running car. "Let me run you to your spaceship, yeah?"
They climbed inside the vehicle in silence.
Clearly, even if the Doctor wasn't from around there, he knew London enough to find his way. He guided them to a park not far from the river, with a quaint rock building that had been put there sometime during the Old Queen's reign as a lookout for water traffic up and down the Thames. There was nothing spectacular about any of it, just a small patch of grass with newspapers floating across it, frail as ghosts, and sprawling oaks that hung over an old, blue police box, the kind kind like Pete hadn't seen since he was a kid.
"So, I guess that your ship is somewhere around here?" Pete looked around, but didn't find evidence of anything even so much as a zeppelin. The Doctor nodded enthusiastically.
"That's her! The blue box. Camouflage." He climbed out, eagerly making his way across the lawn to where the box stood. He pulled a key out of his pocket and inserted it in, going inside. It was dark, whatever it was. Pete glanced at Rose dubiously.
"He's not making it up, believe me," she laughed, a broad smile that made even him grin. Despite himself, he liked her, this crazy girl that seemed to take it in stride.
"How does a good girl like you end up in...madness like this," he wondered aloud.
She blushed, shrugging. "I don't know. Just sort of happened. One day I went to work, like always, and this bloke showed up and blew it up. Turns out aliens were invading the store and he was saving the world." She snorted, rubbing her forehead as she considered what she just said. "Does that sound as mad to you as it did saying it?"
Pete chuckled. "Yeah, it kinda did, but on a night like tonight...I'm willing to believe just about anything, me."
"Aliens don't scare you then?"
He shrugged at her speculative look and decided not to mention the fact that he worked with a research institute that dealt with aliens everyday. "Guess after Cybermen, no."
"Right." She sobered, turning to stare at her feet in her trainers. "Anyway, I started traveling with the Doctor after that. Was better than what I had going on, living on the estates, working a dead end job. At least with this, I could go somewhere, see some stuff, do….do good things. Get to know people. Help them out. Be and do something more than just live on tea and toast and telly every night."
Pete studied this girl, this stranger who blundered into his lworld. She was so full of life, so eager and curious and wanting to see the world. She wanted to do great things, to be so much bigger than her chavvy roots. And she reminded him painfully of someone else he used to know, a long, long time ago. And that thought terrified him. His instincts screamed at him, told him he was right, that all this talk of others worlds, of Harriet Jones as a Prime Minister, of the way the girl looked at Jackie, of how she reacted when she discovered her fate, of the way she warmed to Pete. He knew it in his gut, and he didn't want to know it, not now, not tonight.
Banging sounded from inside the box, and what sounded like cursing. Rose jumped at the sound, glancing towards the open doors. "You all right?"
"Yes," came the hissed response.
She smiled, rolling her eyes. "He gets like that."
Pete nodded, staring into the darkened door, not seeing how the Doctor could be up to anything. Just as suddenly as the thought occurred to him, however, the box lit up with a golden glow, filling the cold night with light. Above its doors, the "police box" sign came to life. It was amazing...and beautiful.
And the thought of what it represented rankly terrified him.
"So, what happens inside that thing," he laughed.
"Do you want to see?"
Yes, his brain said. But the terror of the night, of everything, of what happened got the better of him. Hadn't Yvonne said those things came from another universe, originally? "No, I don't think so." The question lay there in his mind, waiting to be asked. He might as well. Whatever else he did. "But you two, you know...all that stuff about different worlds. Who are you?"
Even before the girl said a word he knew the truth. He could see it in the arch of her eyebrow, in the way her eyes flickered as she searched for words. And it hit him in the gut with the utter unfairness of it all.
"It's like you say," she replied, her lips pulling back in a tight, nervous smile. "Imagine there are different worlds, parallel worlds. Worlds with another Pete Tyler, and Jackie Tyler's still alive...and their daughter."
Jackie...still alive somewhere...and with his daughter. This...this he couldn't live with, not now, now knowing this so soon after his wife died. Not fair, not fair, not fair…
"I've got to go," he murmured, despite the utter hurt on the girl's face. His feet were already stumbling back from her.
"But if you look inside," she pleaded.
"No, I can't," he insisted, knowing it was an excuse, afraid of the temptation, of the enticement of what she was offering. Not like this, not with Jacks' ashes barely cooling somewhere in Battersea. "There are all those Lumix factories, all those Cybermen still in storage. Someone's got to tell the authorities, carry on the fight."
The disappointment from Rose was palatable. From the door, he could hear the Doctor call, softly. "Rose, I only have five minutes of power. We've got to go."
She was offering him a second chance, he knew it. But not with his wife. Not with the woman he had fallen in love with.
"The Doctor could show you," Rose insisted.
He couldn't do this. He turned, wanting to run, his mind already fracturing under the weight of everything.
"Thank you," he called, a part of him truly feeling that emotion, of knowing what these two did for the world. "For everything."
"Dad," Rose called. It lanced through Pete, right to his gut, aching nearly as badly as Jackie's brain in the cyber body had.
"Don't!" He looked at her, begging her not to say it again. "Just...don't."
Despite the tears in her eyes, he turn and ran.
He was three blocks away when he heard the sound of gears grinding and something wheezing and groaning. He slowed then, turning to see a flash of light that disappeared as suddenly as it had come. And he knew in his heart that the Doctor and the girl, Rose, who claimed to be his daughter, were gone.
He wandered after that, not caring where. The streets were still quiet, eerily so, though he could hear more chaos in the distance. He wondered if the stragglers were making their way home. He walked and walked, not even noticing where his feet led him. Through shopping districts, all their lights still on, their window displays looking as if nothing was wrong, past residential flats, still glowing with ghostly televisions, playing to empty rooms, a cinema where the doors stood open, the marque still lit for business. On and on he walked, for miles, more than he knew. And it was only when the eastern sky began to turn the faintest of pearly grays did he look up and find himself in a neighborhood he knew like the back of his hand.
The old building was just as square and gray as it had ever been been. The plaza still smelled of spilled beer, old piss, and hung over vomit. With aching steps, he crossed to the familiar stairs, up the four flights, down five doors to the one that he had stormed out of so many years ago. That had been the start. That had changed everything, that night had.
The door was wide open, the occupants still missing. He stepped inside, looking it over. The layout was different now, the way they did their furniture. The couch he used to make love to his wife on was gone, now replaced by a well worn, functional sofa, where someone's forgotten knitting lay. The picture that had once hung on the wall till Jackie had tossed a vase at him and broke it was now replaced by a different photograph, one of a retired looking couple. Their television still blared, however, as if trying to reach its likely nearly deaf occupants. A frantic looking newscaster was on, jabbering about the chaos and confusion in the city center. Pete reached across and turned it off.
Silence reigned in the tiny home.
He walked back out again, closing but not locking the door, in case the occupants returned.
It wasn't till he was down the steps again and across the plaza that he realized he was crying. It wasn't till he was down the block that it occurred to him he was sobbing. By the time he reached the bend in the road he was howling, his grief ringing off the stained concrete, his legs giving way as he fell to the cobblestones and pavement and openly wept. Hot tears burst through screwed up eyelids as covered his head with his arms, curled in on himself, and wished that he too could have died.
He hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep.
How long he had been there, he wasn't sure. The sun was fully up by then, but the streets were still just as eerily still. Some life was back, some voices in the distance, names called, the cry of a mother, or brother, or child. Pete blinked, wondering what had woken him.
A rough hand grabbed him by the shoulder, pulling him over and shaking him. "Oi, Pete, can't be lying here like this."
Pete blinked through gummy eyes up at the round, dark face of Mickey Smith. His brain buzzed in a foggy confusion. "What are you doing here?"
"I should ask you the same thing, lying in the street like that, thought you was dead." Mickey snorted, shoving a mug of something hot and pungent under his nose. "Coffee, Gran's, drink up."
Pete didn't even have enough brain cells to question it. He peeled his cheek off the pavement, pushing himself up to a sitting position. Dust and grease coated his skin, and his suit felt as if he'd drug it through a swamp, despite the chill air, but he took the mug and sipped it. The coffee was dark, strong, and had the flavor of burnt rubber tires, but it had the effect of waking him up.
"Yeah, always did taste like it would eat through metal, but don't tell Gran that." Mickey smirked fondly as he squatted in front of Pete.
"Gran? Your Gran?" Pete was finding the thread of reality was unraveling around him fast.
"Well, Ricky's Gran, yeah. But, she's the same as my Gran. Even down to the way she smacks me in the head." Mickey rubbed the back of his close shaved head gingerly. "Still stings."
"She's still here?" Pete looked wildly up and down the street, not seeing a soul, but hearing a television somewhere.
"Well, she's in the house." Mickey pointed to the door just behind him. "That's it. She was asleep last night when everything happened, took her earpods out. Missed the whole thing, she did, and then slapped me when I tried to tell her the truth."
Didn't even notice the world go upside down? Pete marveled as he glanced towards the door. "And she doesn't realize you aren't Ricky?"
"Well look and sound just like him, don't I?" Mickey shrugged, hardly looking ashamed. "Gran went blind when I was fifteen, I'm guessing the same happened here. She wouldn't notice."
Pete thought of Rose. Something deep inside of him rumbled with rejection of what Mickey was at. "She's not your grandmother, Mickey."
"She is in all but fact, isn't she?" He cocked his head, hardly looking ashamed by what he was doing. "Besides, her Ricky is dead. And she's all alone now. He'd take care of her if he were here, but he ain't. So who is? I'm all she's got."
It seemed so wrong, felt so wrong, this imposter as this poor woman's grandson. "You should tell her the truth."
"And what? Break her heart?" Mickey glared at him hard. "Ricky weren't the greatest of grandsons when he were alive. Neglected her. Same as I did my Gran, and believe me, when mine died, I regretted that every moment afterwards. I know he'd want someone to make sure she was all right."
Pete wanted to protest further. But there was truth in the boy's words, for all that they bothered him. All he wanted to do was take care of the grandmother of his double. And if she were blind, like he said, like as not she would never notice. She'd be alone otherwise.
"Fine," he muttered, gulping down another mouthful of the hot, putrid liquid. "So you stayed to take care of your Gran? You didn't go home with the Doctor and Rose?"
"Nah," he shook his head, setting on the pavement beside Pete, pushing his back against the concrete wall. "They do good enough on their own without me. Don't need Mickey the Idiot, the tin dog, around to get in the way of their fun."
There was more than a hint of bitterness in the boy's voice. He recalled the night before, the way Rose was so familiar with Mickey, but the intimacy that she displayed around the Doctor. She likely wasn't even aware she was doing it, the mixed signals. She perhaps didn't even understand the hurt she was causing a young man who seemed to be rather attached to her.
"The Doctor come in and steal your girl, then?" Pete asked it lightly, trying to tell himself he really didn't care about knowing more about Rose or her life.
"Something like that," Mickey muttered, shrugging as he tipped his head back to look at the sky. "I was a normal bloke once. Had a job at a garage, messed about with computers on the side, dated a nice girl, had a normal life. And then one day, this mad alien in a blue box shows up in my life and turns it all upside down."
"The Doctor is an alien?" Pete would never have guessed that looking at him. He appeared as human as Pete did. Well, except for those dark eyes. Those looked alien...foreign. Too old for such a young, handsome face.
"Oh, yeah," Mickey laughed. "Something called Time Lords. Pompous prats is what I call them. I guess he's all that's left of them or something. Anyway, he shows up one day, swoops Rose off with him, doesn't bother bringing her back for a year. Next thing you know, there's aliens flying into Big Ben, and blowing up Downing Street, and space ships showing up on Christmas Day, and bat things taking over high schools. Madness, I tell you."
Pete could only laugh at Mickey's disgruntlement, a long, loud, belly laugh that rang in the stillness around them. Aliens! That he could handle, those he knew. It just tickled him so much to hear Mickey carry on, as if Cybermen were nothing. He wasn't even terribly sure why he found it all so funny.
"You think it's hilarious," Mickey muttered, darkly. "I was up for murder suspicion 'cause Jackie had the word out in the neighborhood I'd kidnapped and killed her daughter."
The name of his dead wife sobered him. Mickey said it so casually, as if he knew her intimately. Perhaps, in his world, he had. "You knew Rose's family, then? Back in your world?"
"Yeah," Mickey snorted, meeting Pete's sharp gaze. "I know you want to ask, she's probably told you. Her name is Rose Tyler. Rose Marion Tyler. God's truth."
Rose Marion Tyler. His mother had been named Marion. He'd always wanted to use it, if he'd had a daughter. "And her parents were…"
"Her parents are Pete and Jackie Tyler," Mickey replied, giving Pete a hard look. "Yeah, she's just what she told you."
"She's not my daughter," he snapped, anger rising before he could stop himself. The coffee sloshed over the rim, and he switched hands, flicking it off.
"No, she's not. Her dad's dead."
Pete stopped, heart seizing. He whipped his hand around to regard Mickey's stony face. "What did you say?"
"Pete Tyler, the Pete I knew, died when Rose was just a baby."
Pete stared at the boy. He was dead in another universe? Had been for what...twenty years, give or take, judging the girl's age. "And Jackie?"
"Oh, she's alive and well. Still on the estate." Mickey's face softened as he chuckled. "The only other woman who'd slap me when I needed it, which was most of the time, judging by how often she done it. Jackie Tyler was mean."
The slapping. That sounded like Jackie. "So, she's alone back there, in your world?"
"Yeah," Mickey nodded. "I mean, Rose goes back and visits, but not enough if you ask me. Too busy running through space with the Doctor."
The idea that Jackie was alive and well in another universe. He thought of Rose's offer. Now he knew why she had made it. Her mother was alone. And her father was gone, never had been in her life. No wonder she had stared at him as if he was equal parts myth and mystery.
"How did it happen?" He had to know. As much as it sounded macabre to ask, he had to know.
"What? You dying?"
"Yeah," Pete pressed, despite the discomfort on the other man's face.
"I don't remember much," Mickey admitted. "I wasn't but five or so. Was at a wedding, Sarah Clark. You know her?"
The name rang a bell. A dark haired woman, one of Jackie's close friends back in the day. "Yeah, Sarah. Married some guy named Stu, didn't she? His family outclassed her a bit, but he'd got her up the duff and he wanted to do right by her."
"Yeah, that's her," Mickey nodded. "In our world they got married and moved out and had a house full of babies. Still married and living in the suburbs, I hear, happy as clams."
"Not the Sarah and Stu I know," Pete sniffed, thinking on what the last bit of gossip he'd heard from Jackie was. "He was caught stepping out on her, and she left with the kid and got a big fat alimony settlement from him."
Mickey whistled, shaking his head at the differences. "What a difference a world makes."
"Yeah, 'cause in your world, I have a daughter and I'm dead. How did it happen?"
"The daughter? There you're on your own, mate." Mickey held up his hands.
"The dead part, Mickey."
"Right," he sighed, giving in. "Anyway, Sarah Clark's wedding. I was there with Gran, but she'd stepped out. I don't know what happened. I just know I was there with Jackie when everything went down."
Mickey paused, a sad, far-away look in his eye as he looked anywhere but Pete. "Like I said, I wasn't more than just a little kid. I don't know what happened. Jackie said later she thought maybe you had realized you left something in the car. Maybe it was the wedding present, I don't know. All anyone knows is that you were in the middle of the street when a car hit you."
Mickey used the world "you", but Pete couldn't think of it in terms of himself. It was a stranger, some other man who carried his face and name, who had been unlucky enough to be hit outside of a wedding at a church. A wedding he could remember going to in this life, where no such thing had happened. But then, he'd been rich then already, still just flush in cash. He and Jackie had gotten the couple a set of silverware from Harrods or something.
"I don't know for sure how it all happened," Mickey continued. "I didn't see nothing. But I won't forget Jackie's scream." His voice dropped, his expression so grave.
"I was standing with her and Rose. I just remember her screaming. Like to tear your ears off, you would have, if you'd heard it. Don't think I've heard Jackie make a noise like that since. Screaming 'Pete' over and over, Rose in her arms. Gran found me by then, held me back, but I could still hear her crying and wailing." Mickey rested his forearms on his bent knees.
"You were dead before the ambulance got there. Nothing they could do. Rose was just a baby, and Jackie had to take care of her. She don't talk about it much, but it was hard. Real hard."
Pete listened to Mickey's story quietly, thinking of his own pain and grief at the loss of his wife of twenty years. That was unbearable. But even in that, he knew their love wasn't what it had been. It sounded, from Mickey's story at least, that the Jackie he knew had lost him in their prime, before the bitter years could build the distance between them. Worse, he had left her with their daughter, a child that this other Jackie wasn't afraid to have. And she had to bury all the grief, carry on, if nothing else to see that their daughter lived and survived.
And turned into the amazing young woman he met the night before. The brilliant, courageous, insane young girl he had identified with, because she was so very much like he had been once upon a time. And he had rejected her last night. He had pushed her away, when all she wanted was to get to know him, some version of the man she had longed for all of her life.
"I'm a right arsehole," Pete muttered, downing the rest of the bitter liquid in one gulp. Mickey watched him in amused silence, taking back the heavy mug when he was done with it.
"Why, because you ran away from her when she told you that you were her dad? Mate, I've seen lesser men do the same when kids they didn't even know about, with women they slept with decades before, show up. It's all over the telly, usually."
"But this is different," Pete spat, thinking of the hurt on Rose's face, the raw longing he saw when she watched Jackie. "I mean, I'm not her dad, not really. I didn't make her. My Jackie didn't want to have anything to do with kids. But...I just couldn't."
Mickey sighed sympathetically. "Look, no offense, but you just had your wife and most of your friends die because your boss was insane. Not exactly the best time to have that dumped on you, yeah? Can't say I blame you."
Well, that was somewhat encouraging, he thought. "But you still kind of want to punch me in the face, don't you?"
"You made Rose cry, of course I do. But in all fairness, so did I when I said I was staying. I mean, we'd known each other all our lives. I think she just thought I'd stick around, waiting for her forever."
There was the bitterness again. Poor bloke. He'd had it bad for the girl. "That takes guts, walking away from someone you love." He thought of Jackie and their separation.
"Yeah, well I think she just thought I'd always be there when she needed. I don't think she realized she didn't need me. She hadn't for a long time." Mickey sounded sad, but not regretful, at this realization. "And the truth is, I needed her. I needed her to feel like somebody. But I wasn't what she needed. Me, I was happy just fixing cars, doing nothing with my life. But Rose...she was always bigger than that. Even before the Doctor swanned off with her. I think she was trying to tell me that I could be bigger than that, too, if I wanted. But I was always too afraid, too scared. Rose, she's always been brave about things like that. Guess, I just needed a little bit of a push."
Pete considered last nights events, how shocked Rose had been at Mickey's bravery. "Everyone has to grow up." Even him, he thought sadly. "So, what are you going to do with yourself now, Mickey Smith? Take care of your Gran?"
"Yeah," Mickey nodded. "And maybe...maybe join the Preachers. Hook up with Jake to stop the Cybermen." He dug into one of his pockets, pulling out Rose's regular cell phone. "I still have the codes on this thing. I can do good work. I have computer skills. I may not be Ricky, using a gun, but if I can hack into Lumic's files, I can hack into anything. And I can do a fair bit of damage, right? Make my mark in the world. Do something good."
Something good. Rose had said something very like that. Pete stared at the phone and considered. This morning, he had wanted nothing more than to curl up in the street and die right there. But now, sitting on the pavement, talking to a boy who had spent his entire, gormless life panting after a girl he couldn't get, only to decide to do something great with his life, Pete felt slightly ashamed for what he had been doing. What would Jackie think of him like that? Likely, knowing Jackie, she'd have slapped him, and then yelled at him for being useless.
"Where's Jake," Pete finally asked, glancing at his wristwatch. That, at least, was not dependent on the network. It read nearly eight o'clock in the morning.
"He went back to Ricky's for a kip, dropped me off nearby. Why?"
"He has a phone. Think you can call him later."
"Yeah. What for?"
"I have a plan," Pete murmured, wondering if he could dredge up anyone at Torchwood and if they were alive. "And I have resources, maybe, if Torchwood isn't annihilated."
"Torchwood? What's that?"
"Not something you've ever heard of, I'd wager," Pete pushed himself off the pavement, trying as best he could to brush off the dirt and filthy of the night before, straightening his tie. Mickey scrambled up beside him, brushing off his own jeans. "Right. Think your Gran might have a bit of breakfast. Don't think anything will be open till things get settled down."
"She might, yeah," Mickey grinned, gathering the empty mug and leading the way across the street. "Might not want to tell her that you're the Pete Tyler, though, she may not believe it."
"Why not? Seriously, Cybermen in the streets, and Pete Tyler showing up at her house is the strangest thing she's going to hear all day?"
"Good point," Mickey conceded, opening the door. "Gran, guess who I've brought round for breakfast!"