The Doctor and Donna stepped out of the Tardis into the late afternoon light, the sounds of birds calling caused Donna to look up towards the water nearby.
She gasped softly, staggering when she was hit with a powerful wave of vertigo. All across the square in front of them she saw shadows, lines streaking across the air in crazy looping dances before disappearing into vast bottomless holes that appeared and vanished seemingly without pattern.
The Doctor grabbed a hold of her before she hit the ground, eyes riveted to her face in concern when he saw the beads of sweat that had instantly formed on her face.
His hand reached up to gently stroke her temple, the touch helping him to better see what she was seeing right at that moment.
She had squeezed her eyes shut to cancel out the sensory overload, but it still seemed to burn across her vision.
The Doctor cursed softly under his breath, not having expected the level of fragmentation that they were seeing in the city. The Tardis readings had warned him it was bad, but this took bad to a whole different level.
The Rift had always fractured time and space through the parts of Cardiff in which it ran, tiny little bubbles of disturbance that were usually highly localized and would dissipate on their own. He wondered if the tampering of Torchwood with the Rift Manipulator were actually making the instability worse or if it truly was merely reacting to what had happened in Kasterborous.
He brushed his fingers gently over Donna's forehead, murmuring softly to her that it was all right to open her eyes once more.
Her hand had grabbed his as soon as she was hit with that wave, her head had begun spinning so rapidly she felt like she was falling down a never ending chasm. His voice was the lifeline that she clung to before she took a deep breath and carefully pried first one eye then the other open.
The square was once more just a large open space, the strange holes and lines of energy had all faded away.
"Doctor, what in the world was that?" Her voice was shaky, but her legs were quickly regaining their strength now that the overload had faded.
"Time is fracturing here, Donna. Worse than usual anyways, and you just saw a flash of that fracturing." His voice was grim, his eyes scanning the square before returning to lock onto her own terrified gaze.
"Why can't I still see it?" She blinked her eyes a few times experimentally, waiting with breath held for the crazy images to return.
"Oh you will see it again, Donna. But it's surging right now, I can still feel it. It's making my skin crawl actually, but the surge seems to have died down. That was a particular powerful spike that you just happened to walk into though." He paused for a moment in thoughtful silence before adding. "Well at least now we know one way in which you will be able to sense powerful disturbances in time."
She grunted at that, pushing almost roughly away at the faint note of excitement in his voice. "This is NOT something to get excited about, Spaceman! How the hell am I supposed to do anything to help if it will keep doing that to me?"
He reached out to grab a hold of her shoulders, pulling her close to him once more even while he gently shook his head at her words. "I'm sorry, Donna. I didn't mean to sound so callous. I honestly don't know what to expect any more than you do, but now that I know at least one way that you can sense this I can help you balance and protect against it." He let go of her shoulders, scrubbing his hands over his face before turning away and letting his head fall skyward with a soft growl of frustration. "I hate this, Donna. I hate the not knowing, and I hate the fact that every time I don't know something you or someone else I care for ends up paying the price for my ignorance."
He turned around, eyes dark fathomless pools of rage and near unbridled power before he stepped close to her. "I will tell you this though, we WILL figure this out together. I have promised you that you are not alone on this journey, and I will make sure that no matter what happens you have all the time you need to make sense of all of this."
She trembled when she felt the resounding promise in those words, his eyes filled with the fire of the Oncoming Storm as he prepared to walk into the fires of hell to do what he did best. To save people, people who sometimes didn't even know he existed.
She reached out her hand, wincing as at the edge of her vision dancing lines of energy began to surge across the square once more. She kept her eyes focused on his, her mind already reacting to the influx of new sensory information and beginning to learn the best ways to sort and catalogue it.
He couldn't help the faint smile that turned up the corner of his mouth when he felt her amazing mind already adapting to the new information it was being bombarded with, relegating the overload to the sidelines for processing even while it took in each new sensation and broke it down piece by piece.
He took her outstretched hand, making sure to hold tight to her when he felt the energies from the rift begin to surge once more, pouring over him in unfettered waves of power before screaming out across the bay into the rest of the city.
They made their way from the fountain towards the water, his arm around her waist to hold her tight while the powerful waves of energy buffeted them from all sides. She was fast learning to control how much she saw, and to process each bit piece by piece in order to keep from being completely overwhelmed but it was an exhausting process that was fast bringing on a blinding headache.
The Doctor let his gaze roam over the boardwalk while they made their way to the little shop that Jack had directed him to in the past, gaze intently searching for any other disturbances beyond the temporal anomalies. Jack had said the ghosts were localized around the area of greatest disturbance, which obviously was not here, though that in itself was strange as this area had always been the focal point for the energies of the Rift.
He didn't like when things suddenly started changing established patterns of behavior, it usually meant that there was something else involved, something that had at least a rudimentary understanding of how to harness rift energy for its own purposes.
Mind already running through every possible scenario that he could think of, the Doctor reached open to hold the door open for Donna before following her in to the little tourist shop.
A man in a neat black suit with silver tie stood waiting tensely behind the counter, the Doctor smiled when he recognized the man from his brief appearance on the screen that fateful day when they had had to tow the earth back from the Medusa Cascade.
The man stood up even straighter if that was possible when the Doctor walked into the shop, coming around the counter and sticking out his hand before speaking. "You must be the Doctor. I remember you well from before and just wanted to say thank you so much for saving the earth!"
The Doctor was suddenly abashed at the gratitude, a blush creeping up his cheeks while he reached out his hand to take the young mans in a hearty handshake. "Well, I only try to help. Save things that need saving that is…" He paused. "I'm sorry Jack never told me your name."
The man pulled his hand back with a laugh. "It's Ianto Jones, Sir. An honor to meet you."
The Doctor shook his head with a grimace at that. "Just the Doctor, no Sirs please. Make me feel positively ancient."
Donna couldn't help the sarcastic retort to his comment. "That's because you are, Spaceman."
He turned back to her with a laugh. "Oi, Earthgirl! No more digs about my age." He reached up to straighten his jacket as he preened. "I look good for 904!"
"And still modest as ever, Timeboy!" Donna rolled her eyes with a laugh and reached out to take Ianto's hand in greeting, turning shining blue-green eyes up to him. "I'm Donna Noble. It's a pleasure to put a face with the voice."
Ianto jerked at the teasing between the Doctor and Donna, surprise etched on his face when he heard the Doctor casually mention his age as if it were the most normal thing in the world. He had met many aliens in the past, many strange manner of creatures who were mostly not very friendly but none of that had prepared him for the extreme likeability of this Doctor and how instantly he wanted to trust him with his life. He now finally was beginning to understand what Jack had meant when he said he was waiting for the right kind of Doctor.
Focusing his attention back on the petite redhead in front of him, he put on his most charming smile. "It's a pleasure, Ma'am. Please come this way."
Donna winced at the formal title, shooting a scathing glare at the Doctor whose idiot grin was firmly in place when he felt her reaction to the young man's honorific.
Ianto turned to lead them towards a hidden door that was just sliding open, bidding them to follow him into the corridor beyond.
The Doctor leaned close with a chuckle, warm breath tickling the side of her neck where he murmured. "Positively ancient huh, Donna?"
She shook her head and swatted playfully in the general direction of his head. "Oh stop it, Prawn."
Ianto led them to a large lift, shifting nervously on his feet while waiting for the lift to arrive. He had been completely unprepared for this visit, though Jack had told him that he had sent a message to this mysterious Doctor. He had gone digging into Torchwood's old files on the man right after he had saved the earth from the Daleks, curious about this enigmatic stranger that had figured so prominently in the history of the earth and who sometimes was not there to save them when they needed it most.
Torchwood had been founded specifically to hunt this alien down, to capture him by any means necessary per the edict of Queen Victoria even though he had been nothing but a steady driving force always striving to save humanity from its biggest foibles. Yes, disaster seemed to follow this man around like a lost puppy, although now that he thought about it couldn't it be the other way around?
He settled back into his comfortable role of observer when the lift arrived, the Doctor was chatting away with his companion while the lift descended towards the bowels of the hub. The Doctor's eyes were darting about the lift unconsciously, his hands jammed into the pockets of his brown pinstriped trousers while he bounced on his toes with far too much enthusiasm. He wondered if it was common for the alien to show this much nervousness, or if it was merely because he was descending into the base of an organization that had been trying to hunt him down for over a century.
He leaned back at that realization, feeling like he had been hit in the head with a hammer when it all seemed to click in place. Jack had been the reason for the change in Torchwood Three. It had been Jack that had tempered all of them in a bid for a more human approach to the constant threat of alien incursion. He remembered well the indoctrination he had received when he had first joined the Torchwood Institute in London, though the Doctor was a closely guarded secret that only those in the highest levels of command were completely versed in, every new recruit at least knew the fundamentals of their main target should they ever happen across him.
Torchwood Three had been different, and now Ianto finally understood that it was all because Jack knew the man better than anyone at the institute ever did, and thus knew the nature of this being better than they did as well.
Ianto smiled softly when he realized that they would be the first from Torchwood to ever meet the Doctor as potential allies instead of a threat to be deftly avoided. Too bad the organization was shattered and no longer existed except for their little group still fighting, it would have been amazing to have witnessed such a transformation first hand.
The lift bumped gently when it reached the bottom, the doors sliding open to reveal a circular opening sealed with a large blast proof door at the end of a short corridor.
Donna winced when the doors open, more of those hazy lines of energy were radiating out from the center of that door before fading away once more. There was a huge amount of temporal energy behind that door, even she could feel it surging and raging through her.
The Doctor paused, taking a deep breath to gather his courage before he stepped out of the lift. This was Jack's Torchwood, not the same one he had encountered in London. He had to shift his thinking, let go of the years of mistrust and worry that had hounded him every time he heard the name of that organization. The stories that he had found in regards to their treatment of aliens still made his skin crawl, the casual executions, the xenophobic fear with which they had ruthlessly shot down any alien ship that dared to violate earth airspace before scavenging all tech that they could get their hands on.
Torchwood Cardiff had been no different under its previous directors, shooting and killing any poor being that had the misfortune to fall through the rift onto their turf. He had known that Jack worked for Torchwood for several years now, had actually found out during the year that never was and even then let his disgust be well known. Jack had defended his actions, claiming that he was rebuilding a different Torchwood in the Doctor's honor. Now, he would finally be able to see the results of Jack's handiwork.
Donna gently touch his arm, her mind softly questioning the sudden trepidation that had filled him when he had seen that portal.
The Doctor looked down at her with a start, the presence of Ianto Jones momentarily forgotten while he hauled himself out of his dark musings. "I'm sorry, Donna. It's hard sometimes for me to shift my perceptions. I have avoided Torchwood for years, and now I feel like I'm willingly walking into the den of the beast. A bit troubling is all."
Ianto ducked his head and turned away, feeling a sting of shame when he thought of all that the organization that he had originally idolized had done to hound and terrorize this alien. It had taken a charismatic immortal from the future to show him just how tiny humanity really was, but also to show him how the human race could aspire to so much more.
Donna shook her head, hand closing tightly over his arm when she murmured. "It's Jack, Doctor. He said it was different, and we have seen those differences when we have dealt with them in the past." He was nodding to her words, taking one more deep breath before letting the shutter fall over his emotions once again.
"Quite right, Donna. Let's go see what we're up against."
Ianto looked up at the Doctor's words, nodding softly before turning towards the door and sliding his access pass over the panel. The ringing alert echoing through the vast space beyond, alerting the occupants that the door was opening.
The Doctor followed Ianto into the hub, his eyes instantly riveted on the shining steel column that rose from the floor of the large space into the upper reaches before piercing the concrete sidewalk above. The huge space was punctuated with catwalks and rooms at various levels, all reached by means of metal stairs and what looked like rickety walkways.
There was a large bank of computers up the steps to the left, by which stood Gwen Cooper, the woman who had helped coordinate earth's return to its proper place. She was fidgeting nervously as his eyes lit on her, his smile brief before his gaze continued to roam the space.
He felt his jaw clench when he saw the room full of weapons on brazen display, though he knew all too well just how violent Jack could be and sometimes had to be in his chosen role. The hub was still in disarray, obviously still in the process of being retrofitted after the events of a few months before. He had thought that Jack had once mentioned more members of his team, but so far he could only see Gwen and Ianto.
Donna gasped as her eyes were drawn to the crazy hodgepodge of electronics in the hub, her gaze involuntarily rising along that glistening metal column before she shook her head and came back to herself with a start. Her hand rose to bat absently at the back of her hair, feeling once more as if a bug were buzzing around her head before the sensation faded away.
Jack was coming down the steps towards them, the smile on his face for once nervous while he watched the Doctor look his fill. Jack had wisely stripped his gun off as soon as he had come into the hub, he knew full well how the Doctor felt about guns and even though the Doctor abhorred them personally he always seemed to be even more affronted when his companions wore them around him.
"Well, Doctor, what do you think?"
The Doctor's lips pursed as he walked towards Jack, unable to stop the playful quip from slipping out. "Going for a shabby chic look? Or more of a grunge feel?"
Jack snorted in response to that comment, shaking his head as he led the way up the steps. "Hardly, Doctor. More like underground bunker meets secret base."
He led the way over to Gwen Cooper who was staring at the Doctor with a somewhat befuddled expression on her face. "Gwen, now that I have the chance to properly introduce you. This is the Doctor. Savior of earth, doer of good deeds and so on and so on…"
The Doctor threw a smirk to Jack before taking Gwen's hand in his and brushing a soft kiss against her knuckles. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person Gwen. I had met one of your ancestors several years ago, I must say you are her spitting image."
Gwen jumped at the Doctor's words, feeling herself fall into the stormy depths of his dark eyes where she felt herself nodding like an idiot. "You had mentioned that before Doctor. Something about Spatial Genetic Multiplicity or some such."
He grinned unrepentantly. "When people spend a great period of time near a rift in time and space, certain things tend to repeat themselves. If a group of people were to spend generations near such an anomaly the repetition becomes greater over time until later generations seem to be mirror images of earlier generations."
Her eyes widened at that explanation, for a moment forgetting the very grim purpose for the Doctor's visit in the first place. "Is it safe to stay, Doctor? I've only recently gotten married and don't want to put any of my future children at risk."
He laughed and shook his head, reaching out to lay a soothing hand on her shoulder. "No, its fine Gwen. You're here and you're perfectly fine. It is just a funny way time plays with genetics over time is all."
She took a deep breath at that, trying to still the pounding of her heart as she looked over the Doctor's shoulder to the petite redhead behind him. She was not the same woman that had been on the screen with the Doctor before, but she could tell just by looking at her that she belonged with this man.
She reached out her hand to the woman, deciding to make the first step towards trying to get everyone to relax. "I'm Gwen Cooper. It's wonderful that you both were able to come."
The woman reached a hand out, gripping it in a surprisingly firm grip as she nodded. "Donna Noble. It's a pleasure to meet another woman in the midst of all this insanity."
She laughed softly, eyes traveling over to the Doctor and Jack as they were huddled over a piece of tech that had recently fallen through the rift. "Sometimes it can get a bit trying, let me tell you! But someone has to keep them all in line."
Donna laughed and nodded, feeling the tension begin to drain away though her hand rose once more to absent mindedly swat at the back of her head. "It's a thankless job!"
"What is?" The Doctor piped up from his inspection of the gadget that Jack had shown him.
Donna just shook her head, mouthing the word oblivious to Gwen before replying sweetly. "Oh just saving the universe, Doctor."
"Indeed! No rest for the weary that's for sure!" He rummaged about in his voluminous coat pockets before pulling out his glasses and perching them on the tip of nose. "You do realize that this is a Solariun Neural Relay, don't you Jack?"
Jack's eyebrows nearly climbed into his hair, though he shouldn't have been surprised at how quickly the Doctor had classified the strange device. He had heard of the neural relays, they had been outlawed by the 44th century because they had a nasty habit of opening the users mind to all sorts of persuasion, but he had never actually seen one. They could change a being before that being ever even knew that they were being changed, and they had been used by several marauding species to take over whole planets without any bloodshed. The fact that the user would experience euphoric pleasure whenever worn had made them a particularly useful tool when enslaving a people.
The Doctor was staring with frightening intensity at the device in his hand, remembering well a time in the past when he had come across this particular piece of tech. It had been one of his darkest hours, when he had had to fight not only an enemy bent on the destruction of a planet but the planet's inhabitants themselves who had been so brainwashed that they thought that their fall was well and truly just.
"Destroy it, Jack. That can't fall into anyone's hands, especially not here on earth. You know what it would do if it did."
"I'm sorry Doctor, but what does a Solariun Neural Relay do?" Gwen stepped up beside them, her eyes riveted to the seemingly harmless head piece before her. She felt cold just being near a device that elicited such a strong response from this strange alien.
"Mind control, Gwen. A particularly insidious and nasty form of mind control. It only served one purpose, to enslave people." His hands had tightened about the device unconsciously, almost as if he could crush the delicate filigree in his hands just by force of will alone.
Gwen took a frightened step back from the device, as if just by being near it she would start to be affected by it. Thankfully none of them had been stupid enough to try the device on just as yet, they had still been in the testing phase before the Doctor came by. She shuddered, barely noticing the Doctor continuing to browse through all the equipment they had as well as some of the items that they were still in various stages of cataloguing.
Donna's own eyes were constantly moving around the hub, flitting from point to point while she stood stock still next to Ianto. He was standing before one of the biggest bank of computers, fingers flying over the keyboard while he continued to scan Cardiff and surrounding areas for rift activity.
Now that she was more aware of her natural tendency to reach out to people, she was able to better control her mind and stop it from invading too deeply into people's thoughts. The Doctor had admonished her several times that doing so was extremely rude and an invasion of their privacy.
It was a skill that he had centuries to hone while she had only had a few short weeks, so the constant struggle was exhausting for Donna and one that often ended in dismal failure.
She was distracted once more by the thin filigrees of energy radiating out from the central pillar, the inky black lines of force spiking through the entire hub before disappearing once more into the concrete beyond.
She felt that buzzing in the back of her head again, causing her to swat at her hair in annoyance once more before the sounds of an alarm blared from the console right beside her.
"Rift Spike, Jack. It's a big one this time."
The Doctor's head snapped up as he dashed to the console, his hand already taking out his sonic screwdriver to point at the monitors before them. "Hold on! I can't track the energy surge if you do that."
"Let him take control here, Ianto. He's got more experience at this than all of us put together."
The Doctor barely noticed Ianto's protests while he essentially hotwired the system to patch into the Tardis, twirling a few dials on the device in his hand before bringing up her systems on one of the screens to the left. The mad scroll of Gallifreyan text instantly began to flow across the screen.
Both Gwen and Ianto felt their jaws hit the floor when they saw that strange, frighteningly beautiful script appear on the screen. Their eyes were barely able to grasp the strange shapes while the Doctor and Jack were working the controls to fine tune the connection.
Meanwhile Donna's hands were clenched around the railing before her, eyes riveted to the shining column in front of her as she seemed to be staring straight into the heart of time itself. There was a bottomless pit somewhere deep within that pillar, a gaping wound in the fabric of reality that for some reason was pulling strongly against her very essence.
The Doctor was engrossed in his work with Jack as the two of them measured the spike and tracked its main location that he didn't even notice Donna leaning further and further over the railing. The inky black lines all seemed to emanate from that abyss, shooting out in terrifying streams of force that were quite literally beginning to tear their reality apart.
The Doctor felt a strange buzzing in the back of his mind, the sensation pulling him out of his thoughts while his gaze unerringly focused on Donna. He felt his hearts leap into his throat when he saw her leaning out over the railing, he leaped to her side and yanked her back just before she tumbled over the railing to the floor of the hub below.
She cried out at the painful bite of his grasp, coming back to herself with a start where she found herself cradled against his chest in an almost painful embrace. His mouth in her hair whispering that she was all right, all while his mind raced through hers trying to make sense of what had just happened.
"Donna? Donna what just happened?"
Jack looked to Ianto, motioning with his eyes to go make everyone something to drink and to check on the progress of the pizza they ordered because it looked like this was going to be a very long night indeed.
Ianto nodded in response, feeling suddenly useful rather than helpless that he hadn't even noticed the Noble woman leaning so dangerously over the railing before her. He had been engrossed in what the Doctor and Jack were doing, trying to make sense of the numbers and letters scrolling across the screen before his eyes to the exclusion of all else. He could tell by the look on Gwen's face that she felt just the same.
"I saw the surge Doctor, right before it happened. I saw those lines shoot out from the column just a split second before the alarm sounded."
"No that's not possible, we have recorded no trance of temporal disturbance here in the hub. It's all focused across the bay." Gwen spoke up, her fingers flying over the keyboard to bring up the map of the highest density of micro rifts that had formed in the last two weeks. "All the activity is focused there, Doctor and Donna. That is where the ghosts are and that's where we have found the dead bodies."
Donna was shaking her head at Gwen, absent mindedly smoothing her hand over her hair even though the instruments were disputing what she knew she clearly saw. "No, the focus is here. I saw the abyss within that column, or maybe through that column?" She blew out a frustrated breath, eyes rising to the Doctor's for some help or clarification of the strange sensations she had just experienced.
"An abyss within the column? I'm sorry I do not understand. We are on the rift yes, but it only runs through part of this building, just enough for the rift manipulator to have a toehold when we need to activate it."
Donna reached out a finger, pointing at the huge spike that had appeared on the screen over the last few minutes. "Right before that spike hit, I saw lines of force shoot out from this column and disappear into the concrete, and they seemed to radiate from a deep bottomless hole within the column."
The Doctor was frowning thoughtfully at Donna, his mind carefully moving within hers to try to make sense of what she had seen and sensed. She perceived time in a strange way, one that he had never really encountered before, so it was hard for him to truly grasp what was really there and what was her interpretation of what she was seeing.
However, he too had felt the surge before the spike, he just hadn't experienced it the same way that she had.
"Jack, have there been any ghosts here in the hub? Any micro rifts that you are aware of?"
Jack shook his head, his gaze still locked on Donna who was staring at some point beyond the far wall. Her head cocked slightly, while her eyes were racing over the tiles almost like she was trying to make sense of half seen images that wouldn't leave her be. "No, Doctor. We haven't detected any strange activity here."
"Well it's here Jack, you may not be able to detect it yet but it is definitely emanating from this point." The Doctor growled softly, pushing his glasses back up onto his nose so he could lean closer to the monitors while he tried to figure out the pattern to the disturbances.
"Oh it's definitely here Doctor, though it doesn't feel like this is the source. More like maybe… a power source for something else? Like this place is powering something bigger."
The Doctor stood up in slow increments at her words, once more finding himself reeling at the simple brilliance in her deductions. "Of COURSE! If all the temporal rift activity is focused across the bay, then who or whatever is over there must be using the rift energy to create their own rifts in order to do whatever it is they're doing." He laughed and grabbed Donna up in a huge hug, startling her enough that she yelped before she hugged him back uncertainly. "Oh, Donna you are brilliant!"
She blushed at his words, the lines once more receding to the edges of her vision when she blinked a few times. Gwen reached out a hand to her, she was holding a steaming cup of tea that Donna gratefully took. Murmuring a soft word of thanks, she lifted the steaming cup to her lips and simply inhaled the delicious aroma before taking a long sip.
"How is it you can see the rift energy, Donna? Aren't you human?" Gwen led her over to a low sofa, settling her on the cushions and joining her with her own drink while the Doctor's gaze watched her protectively before he turned back to the monitors. Fingers flying over the controls, fine tuning the readings from the machine in front of him.
The Tardis was filtering rapidly through weeks of readings, extrapolating spikes and valleys and quickly developing a graph of peak activity. The ship cross-referenced against previous readings of the rift from previous visits and was quickly beginning to paint a pattern that pointed to nearly the exact moment in time when the Doctor had felt his own timelines tear and reshape. The events halfway across the cosmos had indeed had an effect on the rift, there had been a huge surge in temporal activity at nearly that exact instant that had begun to tear the rift open. If it wasn't patched and soon, then the whole planet was at risk.
Donna was silent for a moment while she tried to sort through the thoughts flitting through the Doctor's mind, her hand once more batting in annoyance at the back of her head before she turned her attention back to Gwen.
"I am human, but something happened a few months ago. Something which changed me." She took a bracing sip of tea, hands wrapped about her cup for courage. "It imprinted some of his abilities on me, though I still don't know quite how to interpret or control it."
Gwen turned back to look at the Doctor, her eyes flickering back and forth between him and Jack. The two of them were so comfortable together, working in such a way that spoke of long standing familiarity. She wondered how the two of them had met, more importantly she wondered how the Doctor had been responsible for the change that had turned Jack into an immortal.
"What is he that he can so change people, Donna?" Gwen gasped at her own question, hand flying to her mouth as she murmured. "I'm sorry that was rude of me."
Donna leaned forward, setting her tea cup aside and taking Gwen's hands into her own. "He's a Time Lord. The last of the Time Lords, and he truly is one of the best men you will ever meet in the universe. We are all drawn to him in different ways at different times because he needs us, or we need him." Her head paused at that last. "The universe draws us together I guess because he truly is the guardian of all time and space. Sometimes, he's all that stands between us and total destruction."
Donna fell silent at that as did Gwen, the two women sat there in companionable silence watching Jack and the Doctor pouring over readouts and screens as they slowly began to piece together just what was happening in Cardiff.
Donna jerked awake when she felt a gentle nudge on her arm, Ianto Jones stood over her with a soft smile. "The pizza's here, Ma'am. I got a variety because I wasn't sure what everyone liked, please feel free to help herself."
Donna smiled up at him. "Thank you, Ianto. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to fall asleep on everyone."
His answering smile was gentle. "You obviously needed it Ma'am."
Donna huffed at that, looking up at him with a flash of annoyance even while she chuckled. "Can't you just call me, Donna? Blimey, you're making me feel like your gran or something!"
He only laughed in response to her annoyed request before he moved off to check on the Doctor and Jack.
Donna sat up with a big stretch, arms reaching over her head before her hand fell to rub the ache in the back of her neck. She wasn't sure how long she had been out, but the gritty feeling in her eyes told her that it hadn't been long enough.
She made her way to the low table set by the monitors, the black boxes with a little Italian flag on them were all laid out neatly with plates and napkins nearby. The Doctor glanced over at her, his hair even more disheveled then usual causing the grin he flashed at her to seem positively rakish.
She shook her head at the two empty plates next to the keyboards and the half empty boxes in front of her, they obviously had already vigorously attacked the food the moment it arrived.
She picked up a slice of what looked like Hawaiian pizza and took a bite before making her way over to the Doctor's side, leaning companionably against him while he worked. He was babbling away to Jack, fingers ghosting over the screens before he would punch some numbers in and watch the figures dance once more.
The Tardis was still firmly enmeshed in their systems, making her own calculations and feeding them back to Torchwood for ways to use the Rift Manipulator to close the rift once more and stitch the tear that had been opened all those weeks before. However, not before they found out what was using the rift energy and whether they would have the opportunity to simply rip the rift completely open once it was closed in an attempt to once more access the unlimited power that flowed through the city.
The Doctor looked up at her, his mind reaching out to hers with a gentle question to which she nodded. "Yeah, Doctor, I'm doing better now."
Jack shook his head while he reached over them for another slice of pizza. "You two are really starting to creep me out with how you do that."
The Doctor turned innocent eyes to the handsome immortal, his own face the look of boyish innocence. "Do what?"
Jack finished chewing the bite he had taken, gesturing in a vaguely voodoo like motion towards the two of them. "The way you talk without talking. It's just creepy." He added a theatrical shudder for emphasis.
Donna couldn't help but laugh at his theatrics, though her eyes jumped to Gwen who had come up behind them while they were teasing. Gwen's eyes were locked on Donna when Jack had spoken about how she and the Doctor communicated without words, the intensity of that gaze suddenly made her feel suddenly uncomfortable. She took another bite of pizza, turning her gaze back to the monitors in an effort to quickly end the speculation of the woman on her abilities.
Once more, the strange swirls on the left most screen nearly made sense to her, tickling the memories that lay deep within her mind of when she had been so firmly enmeshed with the essence of the Doctor. There were brief flashes of the stunning symmetry in those calculations, the absolute simplicity of the lines of code were nearly breathtaking.
The Doctor looked up from the screen when he felt the flashes of understanding in her mind, his eyes trained on her eyes while they scrolled over the feed from the Tardis. It still worried him sometimes when he felt those flashes within her, worried him that she was still in danger from the power of his mind. He knew that the Ood had said she was safe from that danger, but that didn't stop the pang of fear that would lance through him during those times.
She had raised her hand to the back of her head a few times while he was watching, batting against the back of her hair before returning her attention to the screen.
The Doctor frowned at that motion, his eyes travelling around the hub to see if there were any insects flying about that he wasn't aware of, though no one else was reacting like Donna was. It was almost like she was unaware of the gesture, and it was only a quick irritated swat before she would return to whatever it was that she was doing.
The rift had quieted for the time being, so they were able to take a breather while the Tardis and the Hub's computer continued to analyze all the raw data that they had on hand. The Doctor opened his mind fully to Donna's, letting his thoughts reach into hers in a gentle caress even while he set aside her plate and took her hands in his.
Donna's eyes flew to his in shock when she felt the strength of his thoughts, their intensity near blinding while he reached into her thoughts for something she knew not what.
"What is it, Doctor?"
Jack's head snapped up at Donna's question, his gaze riveted to the Doctor's eyes which were staring at Donna with an intensity that was frightening. Gwen and Ianto came up behind Jack, Ianto's hands coming to rest comfortingly on Jack's shoulders while all three watched with baited breath the scene that was unfolding before them.
The Doctor did not respond to Donna's question, he only lifted his fingers to once more settle on the familiar touchpoints on her face in order to better feel the strange perception that was seething just below the level of Donna's consciousness. His eyes slid closed while his mind probed even deeper, brushing against a cluster of sensation that caused Donna to flinch in response before his touch moved on to feel along the barriers that were still in place.
He frowned when he felt that strange buzzing in the back of her mind, now understanding why she had been swatting at the back of her head but wondering what had caused it. He eased his own formidable mental shields just a crack, and cried out at the blast of agony that washed through the break. His hand flew to his head and his mind hastily pulled out of Donna's to spare her the pain, but it didn't pull out fast enough. She cried out when she was buffeted by the same wave of agony that the Doctor felt, a wave that caused the buzzing in her head to explode in terrifying sympathy.
Jack jumped up from his seat, hands grabbing Donna as she swayed where she stood, barely even noticing that Gwen and Ianto both had instantly leapt to the Doctor's side to see if he was all right. None of them knew what had just happened, but they were all concerned that whatever it was seemed to have hit both the Doctor and Donna very hard.
"Donna? Doctor! Are you all right? What just happened?" Jack tried to get either of their attention, waving his hand in front of Donna's suddenly unfocused eyes to try to snap her out of whatever had just shocked her.
"Ianto, get some water for them both now! Gwen, check for any rift spikes that we missed. I don't want anything else to hit them right now unaware." He watched the two remaining members of his team dash away, filled with pride once more at how much they had grown in the last few years and how they instantly responded so cool under pressure before he turned his attention back to the stricken woman before him.
Donna was vaguely aware of Jack asking her if she was all right but she was completely lost in a sea of agony that seemed to be coming from somewhere within the hub itself. She finally remembered where she had felt that sensation before, that strange almost there brush of sensation against her mind. It had been when the Master had been testing the barriers in her mind before blasting them away, feeling and finding the weaknesses in order to better exploit them. This had felt similar to that, but not in the same insidious way. It was more the pressure of emotion behind the wave was pushing against her barriers and causing them to vibrate within her mind under the strain.
Donna jumped when a glass of water was thrust nearly in her face, eyes coming sharply into focus on the concerned blue depths of Jack's so close to her own. She took the glass gratefully, quickly draining the contents before turning her attention back to Jack. "What just happened?"
Jack looked from Donna to the Doctor who was just lifting his head out of the cradle of his hands, his eyes glazed with whatever he had felt before he shook his head to clear away the residual pain. "I'm sorry I didn't pull out fast enough Donna, I was not expecting that to hit so hard."
Jack, Gwen and Ianto's heads all swung to Donna as she responded. "It's all right, Doctor. I remember now where I had felt that sensation before. It was when the Master first ripped my mental barriers away in Chiswick." Jack recoiled when he heard her mention the Master, nearly falling over Ianto in his rush to the monitors on the other side of the walkway. His fingers punched up the codes to bring up the view of the vaults below just in case something had managed to slip in during a rift surge while they all had been distracted.
The Doctor hissed sharply when she mentioned that, his eyes turning to pin Gwen and Ianto in place where he demanded. "Do you have any telepaths here?"
Ianto flinched at the intensity of his gaze, Gwen however stood her ground. Confused over what had happened, but wanting to get to the bottom of it just like the rest of them. "No telepaths, Doctor. Just some weevils that have been here for a while."
The Doctor's face scrunched up at that name. "What the hell is a weevil?"
Jack however was frowning when Gwen mentioned the weevils, his eyes jumping from the monitors to the Doctor before he shook his head. "Actually the weevils do possess some sort of telepathy, though we have never been able to accurately measure how strong that ability manifests."
The Doctor stood up, his face grim as he stalked across the walkway towards where Jack was standing. He looked down on the monitors below, seeing a row of cells each with a vaguely humanoid creature sitting on their haunches within. Their eyes all were unerringly trained on the camera that gazed with an impassive eye down at them.
"I've never seen them do that before." Ianto breathed behind them. His voice shaky when he felt the disturbing touch of those alien eyes.
"It's like they're trying to watch us back. What could've made them do that?" Gwen breathed.
The Doctor turned to look at them grimly, his eyes flashing with some dark emotion that none of them could name. "That would've been me. They know that there is someone or something here that can feel them."
Donna came up beside him, her breath catching in her throat at the sight of the creatures staring with such intensity up into the camera. Now that she knew what that sensation was, she found she couldn't stop the winging of her mind back along that link to the source, her thoughts brushing up against agony and absolute never ending despair.
"Donna, DON'T!" The Doctor grabbed hold of her, his own mind reaching out to hers and yanking it back with an uncharacteristic brutality.
She glared up at him, slapping his hands away as she shouted. "What the hell was that for? I was trying to let them know it was all right."
He was shaking in near violent fear, reaching out to her once more and holding on despite her protests. "You would've lost yourself completely in them. There is nothing but base emotion there, fear, hunger, rage… All consuming, never ending. You would've been completely swallowed up and I would not have been able to bring you back."
She shuddered at his words, huddling in very tightly to herself and suddenly feeling completely overwhelmed with all the dangers that seemed to loom on every side. She no longer felt like she had solid ground beneath her feet, the sands were constantly shifting and only the sure presence of the Doctor beside her kept her from descending into a pit of madness from which she would never escape.
"Doctor, what is going on here? You both can sense the weevils?" Jack was on shaky ground himself here, he didn't know what all was going on but it seemed the weevils were somehow connected to everything else. The Doctor and Donna were both acting even more erratic than usual and it scared the living daylights out of him.
The Doctor held onto Donna a moment more, letting his mind gently brush against hers in reassurance before he turned back to Jack. "They're not called weevils, Jack. They're evolutionary throwbacks, a breakdown of higher species basest urges and drives. They exist on a thousand different worlds, living on the refuse that others leave behind. Feeding on what they can find, killing in pure instinct." He grimaced at the thought. "Blimey, Cardiff really is the dumping ground of the galaxy, isn't it?"
Gwen found herself unwillingly fascinated by the Doctor's words as he finally started to shed some light on just what the creatures were that had plagued Cardiff for so long. This man was an absolute treasure trove of information, she found she wanted to sit with him and just ask him a million questions. All the questions that had been burning inside her since she joined Torchwood, to finally understand at least some small piece of the bigger web in which they were all being spun.
"Doctor, have you encountered these creatures before?" Gwen asked.
"Yes, I have. On hundreds of worlds, but they usually stay to the shadows and dank places. Only coming out when they need to feed. I hadn't realized they were dropping through the rift onto earth."
His eyes were riveted on the screens, watching when the weevils had reacted to the brief touch of Donna's mind, jumping up to their full height and howling at the ceiling before subsiding once more into that strange watchful crouch.
"I need to see your vaults Jack. I need to get close to these creatures to be sure."
Jack nodded softly at that, reaching out for the gun that Ianto automatically held out to him not failing to notice the grimace that flittered over the Doctor's face. "I know you hate guns Doctor, but since you have met these creatures before you know what they are capable of."
The Doctor said nothing, merely arched a brow at him in response while he waited for Jack to lead the way.
Jack growled in self-disgust at the feeling of shame that had surged through him at the Doctor's instant revulsion of the weapon he slid into his holster, wishing that it hadn't hurt so much to be the focus of that revulsion. The Doctor knew full well what Jack was capable of, and that he had made a habit of surviving when others would've just given up and died although Jack was forever denied the luxury of death he felt the sentiment was the same.
"Come with me. Ianto, watch the monitors make sure to let me know the instant anything spikes on that screen."
"Roger, Jack."
The Doctor swung around when he felt Donna fall into step right behind him, his temper flashing nearly out of his control as he rounded on her. "Where do you think you're going?"
Donna stopped short, pulling herself up to her full height even as she stepped closer to him, not at all intimidated by the agitation she felt pulsing off him nor the low menacing growl of his words. "I'm coming with you, Sunshine. There is no way you are leaving me behind. I have just as much right to know what's going on as you."
With that, she swept past the startled Doctor and motioned Jack to lead the way towards these vaults.
Jack wisely turned quickly away before the Doctor could see the smirk on his face, making sure to keep his face completely impassive and his mouth shut for once. It was not often that Jack had seen the Doctor put in his place, but he now realized that he had seen it more at the hands of this woman than any of his previous companions.
He led the way down the spiral stairs while Gwen brought up the rear, not because they didn't trust the Doctor or Donna but merely because they were on edge with so much that they didn't understand going on. Gwen was determined to be there as support for Jack, determined to make up for the failing that she still felt when his brother had managed to track them all down and nearly destroyed everything that Jack had held dear.
Jack took a deep breath at the solid steel door in front of them, looking back over his shoulder at both the Doctor and Donna. "Are you sure about this Doctor?"
The Doctor nodded. "Yes, Jack. I need to be close to them."
Donna only took a deep steadying breath before she replied. "I need to know too, Jack."
Jack turned back to the door and entered the key code. "All right then, hold on to your butts."
The door lock popped with an audible click before the sound of air releasing whooshed past the open seal. The door swung open on automatic hinges, revealing a short corridor with three cells down the left side.
The weevils turned in unison, all three eyes instantly riveted on the party that entered before two of them began a low keening that seemed to echo off the walls.
"They've done this from time to time. We figured out that it was when they were feeling pain from one of their fellows. There had been a ring of humans a while back that was kidnapping them and using them for sport and that was the first time we saw this kind of behavior in them."
Donna lifted her hands to her mouth to muffle her strangled cry of anger that humans would ever do such a thing, especially to creatures that were at least sentient enough to have developed telepathy. It was no wonder why the Doctor sometimes turned away from the earth in shame, she sometimes wanted to turn away as well.
"These three were the last ones that we have seen come through the rift in the last two weeks. There have been no further sightings, it's almost like the rift stopped taking them."
The Doctor didn't hear a word Jack said, his gaze was locked with the creature in the center cell who was the only one that had not joined in that keening dirge. His mind was reaching out to the beast, fighting through the base emotions, the rage and agony that were not its own to try to understand just what it was that it was feeling.
He saw brief glimpses of an open field under an alien sky before he suddenly found himself running through what looked like an old abandoned warehouse. He could feel the terror building inside at finding himself in that warehouse, he felt the animal drive to escape pushing all other thought out of his mind. He heard that laughter in the distance again, that faint brush of childlike giggles before a searing flash of agony and the Doctor was suddenly back in his own body again.
His hand flew to his head, trying to get his bearings straight once more after the intense immersive contact. The creatures eyes were still focused on him, its lips pulling back to reveal a jutting jaw filled with razor sharp teeth before its mouth slid closed once more.
Donna looked to the Doctor, for once she hadn't felt anything from him during that contact and she knew that he had purposefully shut her out so as not to cause her any more pain. She shook her head at the overprotective gesture, though she was secretly grateful she hadn't had to experience the trauma first hand that she now felt pouring from the Doctor in an uncontrolled flow.
"Doctor, are you all right?"
He was shaking his head, eyes blinking rapidly while he tried to clear away the cobwebs. His thoughts had settled into a grim sense of purpose at all that he had felt from the creature before him, the creature that was tormented by the death of each and every one of its fellows.
"You said these were the last three you saw coming from the rift, Jack?"
Jack nodded, both Gwen and he making sure to keep a watchful eye on the weevil just in case it tried something else. "Yes, Doctor. Like I said, it's almost like the rift has stopped taking them."
The Doctor shook his head. "No the rift is still taking them, it's just that these three have been the last three to survive the crossing."
Gwen felt her jaw drop in shock, eyes darting up to the Doctor's at the enormity of his words. "But how is that possible Doctor? They were coming through fine over two weeks ago, we were almost overrun by the beasts at one point."
The Doctor shook his head. "I don't know, but that is what I felt from them when I connected. They are feeling others of their kind die almost as soon as the rift dumps them here, and they can't see what is killing them nor do they know how or why only that it is gruesome." His hands reached up to rub his temples tiredly. "That's what Donna and I felt. That pain and hopeless despair as they each get to experience the death of others of their kind."
Jack gasped and Gwen's eyes widened in horror at the thought, unable to even imagine feeling death over and over again and being unable to do anything to stop it.
"You said that people had been dying, Jack. Do you have any of the bodies here?"
Jack shook himself out of his reverie, nodding curtly in response. "Yes, Doctor. There have been a total of 5 fatalities so far, we have all the bodies here."
Donna was unable to look away from the creature in the center cell, her mind cowering behind its own barriers while that buzzing in the back of her mind built to an almost painful intensity. She was afraid of losing herself in all that pain and suffering, terrified of opening her mind once more and becoming lost on a sea of agony. Her hand reached out blindly to the Doctor's, sighing softly when his long fingers wrapped about her hand in an unbreakable grasp.
The Doctor squeezed Donna's hand tight, knowing that just the simple sensation of holding hands was helping her claw her way back from the abyss that she had nearly fallen headlong down. She was overwhelmed right now, she was terrified that her new ability would only bring her pain and suffering and that nothing good could ever come of it. He wished he could take the time to allay her fears, to show her the beauty in her gift and all the wonder that was now open to her. However, he just didn't have the time now. He was terrified that he already knew what had come through the rift and what was harnessing the rift energy for its own purposes and he didn't know what he was going to do to stop it.
"I need to see the bodies, Jack and anything else that you may have found nearby them. Then we need to go to where these rifts are concentrated and start poking around."
Jack nodded and turned to lead the way back up the stairs, all four of them acutely aware the minute the dirge stopped and three sets of eyes followed their progress out of the room and up the stairs towards the morgue.
The Doctor held tight to Donna's hand, guiding her up towards the main part of the hub to where they could finally start to understand just what they were dealing with here.
Author's Note: I have a few episodes to watch before writing the next few chapters, I will try to get them up as quickly as possible but want to make sure I get the pace and feeling just right.