When Mickey did return, nearly two hours later, it was with armfuls of papers and a cone full of chips.
"There's this chippy near where I lived, been craving it for years!" He jammed fried potato in his mouth blissfully as Pete spread out the papers across the conference room table.
"What, they fry them in oil made from fatted geese or something," Miles wondered, deftly snagging one from Mickey's outstretched cone, earning a glare of annoyance from the other man.
"Oi! You want some, jump yourself! These are all mine." Just to prove the point he crammed several more in his mouth, the ends sticking out as he chewed around the giant mouthful.
"Charming," Miles muttered, popping his purloined prize in his mouth before stopping to stare at Mickey in sheer amazement.
"Told you," Mickey gloated around mashed up potato. "Bet you wish you hadn't stolen some now, cause I'd have shared."
"You know I can put you and Jake on graveyard shift from now until Judgement Day if I felt like it."
"Such big talk," Mickey sneered, waggling his prize invitingly.
"You know Judgement Day will come a hell of a lot sooner if you two don't stop playing over there and help me with these." Pete scanned across the front cover of the Times, which was indeed nearly two years behind their own calendar. "Ghosts, then?"
"That's what everyone is saying," Mickey confirmed, chewing happily. "Even on the telly."
"Did your mate know anything about it?"
"Spike? Nah, doubt he'd notice on a good day, and today was a bong day."
It took Pete a long moment and some half-hazy memories of his own youth on the estates to catch on to the reference. "And he wasn't surprised to see you?"
"Oh, he was surprised, heard I'd taken off and was running from the law. Let him believe I was doing covert ops, all MI-6, which ain't too far from the truth. Close enough."
"And doesn't hurt your reputation in the old place, does it," Miles observed wryly. Mickey only smiled cheekily.
"But no sign of the Cybermen?"
"Nah. I looked, even got him to let me sit on his computer and scrolled the internet. Nothing."
Pete frowned. None of this made sense. "No Cybermen, but they say they have an influx of ghosts?"
"Yeah! Apparently everyone is seeing them."
"Mass-psychosis?"
"Or an alien prank," Miles offered. "It's been known to happen, even here."
"Oh maybe it's the hole the Cybermen have opened up." It was only after he spoke that Singh knocked on the heavy, wooden door, Jake behind him. "I apologize, Mr. Conner, I borrowed one of your team members."
"You made it back alive," Jake chortled, pushing past the scientist to slap Mickey on the back. "These your magic chips?"
"They'll change your life," Mickey promised as Jake snagged a handful.
"Now that we've established these are the most amazing chips in two universes, Dr. Singh, what's your point." Pete was fastly starting to lose his patience with all of this.
The scientist entered, a file brief under his arm rather than his tablet for a change. "I went to see my friend who lectures at Oxford. When Mickey mentioned ghosts, I thought of him. He's a theoretical physicists, works with quantum physics and space-matter transference. He had a theory once about the movement of matter between one physical dimension and the other."
As he spoke, he moved to the table, opening the brief and pulling out notes, flipping through them quickly. "The theory is complicated. I has to do with string theory and the idea of multiple dimensions, far too complex to explain here. But in brief, it's this. If the most basic idea of the universe and everything in it are these strings, vibrating. There is space between these strings. These spaces between are holes between everything made by matter, between amino acids, cells, people, planets, universes...even time and dimensions. An empty place, where there is nothing, essentially."
Pete nodded, understanding the basic gist. "So, what about it?"
"Well, my colleague supposed that this space is what allows for movement. So, when something moves from point A to B in physical space, it's moving through these places. Now, knowing what I know about teleportation and extended space travel, there is truth in his theory. These technologies utilize these empty spaces to move matter between two points. What he also postulates, however, is that when traveling from one dimension to another, that one moves through this empty space, this blind spot in reality. But the problem is, that to move through that blind spot, you need a great deal of force. We managed it with the jumper, they have a whole lot of power packed into them, they are essentially punching through the hole the Cybermen created, thus bypassing this nothing space."
"And you think the Cybermen haven't?"
"Not yet, not all of them at least." Singh spread out the papers he had on the table, on top of the various newspapers Mickey had brought. "This is all the notes my friend has collected over the years on ghost sightings in England. Specifically in places like Cardiff, Scotland, and most recently here, around Canary Wharf."
Pete picked up the newest file, a trashy little internet article about kids in some back alley nearby swearing they had seen their long dead gran sitting on top of a rubbish bin. "Ghost stories?"
"Not just any ghosts. I did some checking up on these grandmother in that article. Guess when and where she died?"
A horrible cold, sinking feeling hit Pete square in the chest. "Battersea?"
"All the most recent ones have been people who died there. My colleagues research has all been theoretical. No one in the community would take him seriously with this, but the idea is that there are places in the world where reality is weak for some reason, these tears and holes within the fabric open up, allowing people and things to sometimes fall through by accident. What we may be seeing as supposed ghosts may actually be aspects of those who've fallen through those cracks, trapped in these empty places."
"And Mickey's ghosts," Pete asked, holding out the Times to Singh.
"Like as not they are manifestations of those Cybermen who are trying to get through to the other side, only their physical bodies are trapped in the nothing space."
"I double checked our data," Jake offered quietly, looking solemn after Singh's explanation. "All the sights are ramping up, more and more are going through everyday."
"Chances are, they could be stuck in between worlds," Singh said. "The ghosts everyone have been seeing might be their way of trying to get someone on the other side to listen and let them through."
Thoughts of Jackie and Yvonne came to mind, the idea that they were haunting their counterparts on the other side. "Is it their souls?"
"I don't know what a soul is," Singh replied. "There is no physical aspect to a soul. For all we know, it could just be that the Cybermen are projecting something friendly and familiar to people, a manipulative signal, nothing more."
Ghosts overrunning the whole of Great Britain over there, as Cybermen attempted to flee from their plane of existence to the next, threatening them both. "We have to know what's going on there."
"How," Miles pipped up, studying the papers spread out.
"Same way we found this out." He glanced back to Mickey and Jake. "Think you two can do a bit of reconnaissance on the other side?"
Mickey looked delighted. Jake look petrified.
"Go back home and spy? Right!" Mickey chortelled. "You can see my world for a change, Jake. Show you all the places I used to hang out at, maybe introduce you to that guy I told you about, Spike?"
"This isn't a lark, Mickey. It's not old home week," Pete snapped, as Mickey looked contrite. He knew what the boy was feeling. He understood it. "I'll need the pair of you to do what you've been doing. Set up shop, do recon, figure out what these ghosts are, who has been seeing them, and what, if anything they have to do with the Cybermen. And more important, see if there's anyone on the other side who might be letting them through."
"How we going to communicate that back? The headpiece only has enough juice for twenty minutes."
"You have a solution for that," Pete asked.
"I can send multiple over. We can work on a charger of some sort, perhaps, or a longer battery life."
"Do it," Pete ordered. "Miles, work with these two, get a plan of action together, I want this run as a real mission and not just Mickey's trip home to show Jake his favorite chippy."
"Though, if you figure out the secret to those chips, feel free to bring it home with you. I could quit this place and retire to sell fried potatoes for a living." Miles shot at Mickey, despite Pete's exasperated glare.
"Cheers," Mickey laughed, holding up his now crumpled cone. "Jake, it's been a long time since I've been home. You'll love it."
Jake didn't look as convinced of this as Mickey did.