Event Horizon

Jenny

It was a bizarre but exquisite feeling jumping down out of a spaceship imbued with gravity and into outer space, where there was nothing. The brief flicker of free-fall immediately transformed into weightlessness as she fell into disorientation and a total lack of civilised forces. Jenny loved spacewalks deeply.

Floating backwards, she lifted up her feet to fidget with one of the boots and its jammed air jet. After pulling out a big bit of lint that had been caught on a hair (a dark hair, so she knew it was Clara's, though she couldn't think why Clara had been messing around with her spacesuit) the air flowed out enough to propel her jerkily towards the ship, where she banged against it.

"What was that?" Oswin asked over her comms.

"Me. The air jet was blocked with some hair. You're so lucky your hair doesn't fall out and Adam's is short."

"I don't know, he hasn't had a haircut since he got brought onto the TARDIS. I told him he should get one, but he asked me for specifics about exactly what kind of hair I wanted him to have. Which wasn't what I was getting at at all, he just keeps complaining about it bothering him," she said, "I guess you can't really tell because he never leaves the bathroom on a morning without doing it into that quiff which is apparently 'high fashion' in the 21st Century." Jenny only paid attention to roughly half of that, busy trying to orient herself in the 0G. The monstrous black hole hung pendulously beneath her. They were a mile out of the point where it would start sucking them into its ergosphere, though black holes weren't too much of a worry with teleporters and a ship that could travel faster than the speed of light. But there was still something about them and the utter oblivion they represented that made her want to avoid looking at it.

"That, uh, that boy – you know, the one who has the thing with Sally – he does his hair like that."

"They all do. Rory does his hair like that. It's such an old-fashioned lack of variety, you know? Although, I can't deny that Sally Sparrow's toy-boy is basically gorgeous. I didn't know you'd met him."

"I haven't, I saw his Facebook because Clara was talking about how she thinks he's hot."

"Do you not think he's hot?"

"I have a girlfriend."

"Oh, please."

"Well, he's over six foot tall."

"So you do think he's hot?"

"It's just a fact."

"Jack's over six foot tall."

"You're supposed to be my mission control, point out these rocks I'm looking for on the close-range scanner," Jenny said. She had her sonic screwdriver to test some of the meteorite chunks and bits of debris floating around, of which there were plenty, but the ship was equipped with the most advanced spacecraft technology in… well, the universe, probably. Now that the Time Lords weren't growing TARDISes anymore.

"You want to be going north."

"North!?"

"Yeah, north."

"North – what's north? There is no north! This is space!"

"No, no. Just look for a tree. Moss only grows on the north of trees."

"First of all, that's not true, moss actually grows on all the sides of a tree and that's an urban myth and a very poor bit of survival advice. Second of all, could you please be serious? There obviously aren't any trees here. Don't make me hang about with the black hole for longer than I need to, it freaks me out."

"Backwards. Opposite direction to the ship. Behind me."

"You're terrible at directions. The ship's drifting."

"I'll keep updating you, don't be a baby. Now get going, swimmer."

"It's nothing like swimming," Jenny said, moving through outer space with motions deceptively similar to swimming, propelled by the air jets rather than her own body. She could see the dark rocks in the distance, but it would be very hard to navigate without Oswin for guidance, even if she hadn't proven herself just yet.

"Why don't you like black holes?"

"I don't know. They make anxious."

"What about them, though?"

"They're empty."

"I like them."

"Why?"

"Because they're empty."

"Ha, ha."

"I'm serious. Wish I was empty." Jenny didn't know what to say to that. She continued to glide through the darkness towards the rock cluster, the main source of light coming from the particles of galaxies being pulled into the black hole. "You've got to dive a little bit, go down."

"I know, I can see them." She stopped the air jets and continued to drift through the chunks of rock. "You'd think it'd be glowing, or something, at least."

"Why would it be glowing?"

"Well I don't know what's so interesting about this bit of rock."

"The thing about rocks, Jenny, is they're basically all, you know. Rocks. Geology is one of the most boring of all the sciences. Too much like chemistry, and I've never liked chemistry. Or botany and biology. Anything earthy."

"But you make advanced medicines."

"I'm just very good, aren't I? I much prefer computers. Get to scanning those big boys. You've still got another forty metres in range of the tether," Oswin said. The tether was a magno tether, or more like a magno sphere, a large radius which would grab her and keep her moored to the ship if she went too far. Jenny took the sonic out of the belt on her suit and pulled the nearest rock towards her.

"Oswin?"

"Mmhmm?"

"What do you mean you wish you were empty?" She didn't know whether she would regret asking that question. Oswin didn't say anything for a few moments.

"Just, you know. It gets noisy. Being in my head. But not even sound can escape a black hole. Although…"

"What?"

"Nothing. Just taking a reading from it." Oswin sounded absent, like she was thinking about something else. She probably was. Jenny scanned her rock and found it to be little more than common refuse, predominantly iron, mildly irradiated. But everything without the protection of an atmosphere ended up irradiated in space. She moved onto another. "Are we in my century?"

"Thereabouts."

"Why? Who have you been dealing with?"

"Some criminal who runs a B-Earth out on the Perimeter," Jenny said. The 'Perimeter' was the very edge of the human empire of the period, just close enough to be safe from marauding alien threats, but far enough away that the Homeworld Alliance didn't care about policing it. "Pasznoxo." Oswin didn't speak. "I didn't know who he was until River introduced us. They're friends, he invites her to his functions in his ice mansion. Full of stolen trophies. I think he operates a black market. Do you know him?"

"No, but I can't say I pay much notice to criminal factions outside of Horizon. I'm sheltered, you know that," she joked. The next rock was another dud, so Jenny moved onto a third. "He could at least have given you a bit more information other than 'find a rock at these coordinates.'"

"None of these are anything special, just standard planet wreckage," Jenny said, "Unless he wants standard meteor chunks? What do you think? Could you use these for anything?"

"Of course you could, they're all metals. Asteroids are a handy source of construction materials. But I don't see what anyone who owns their own B-Earth would want with some basic construction materials."

"I've seen plenty of construction rackets. Lead into insurance fraud a lot of the time, worker extortion. But, no, it must be something different to all this iron, at least."

"Why did he want you, then? You specifically? And not Jack, or River, who are also proven in their fields?"

"Oh, please. Don't compare me to them. They're messy, leave calling cards, clues, can't resist. Want all the credit, everyone to know how clever they are," Jenny said, "Get their faces across all the wanted posters. Pasznoxo doesn't want River stealing for him, Pasznoxo wants Zero."

"Zero!? God, why does everyone get a cool alias except me? 'Smartest girl in the universe' is such a mouthful. It's bad enough now Clara's started fancying 'the Phantom' as a nickname, which is all the Shadow's fault. Someone who also has a cool bloody name."be

"Well, anyway. Have you heard of Akwana?"

"Who's that?"

"Nobody, a planet," Jenny pulled another rock towards her, slowly rotating so that she was completely upside down in relation to the spaceship and its drift, the black hole burning a mark on her periphery.

"Nope."

"It's in Andromeda, right on the edge, practically a dead zone in orbit around this tiny, tiny white dwarf. It's got this canyon, totally surrounded by mountains and dug into with caves, then filled with water. To the Alliance, when they scan, the settlements on Akwana are invisible, because all the buildings are underwater. Underwater, in the caves and the canyon, totally submerged and kept crystal clear by this filtration algae. It's a shame you don't like botany, because the algae is actually a miracle worker. All the water's drinkable, and it's a tropical climate so it rains a lot. All the foliage is blue, too, and the fruit?"

"What's special about the fruit?"

"Bioluminescent. Crazy. So are all the fish, they're all ultraviolet, it's incredibly weird. I love it there, it's beautiful. I'd love to take Clara, but… anyway, it's where the Blacklight Society is based."

"In my non-professional medical opinion, you shouldn't really take a vampire to a place overflowing with naturally occurring UV light."

"I suppose so…"

"I mean…"

"What?"

"I'm not a complete recluse. If you want to show it off to someone, I'll go with you."

"Like a date, you mean?"

"A date where I bring my boyfriend because it sounds like the kind of place he'd think is totally cool."

"So I get to third-wheel?"

"We can bring Nios for you to play with. Or have a three-way. I think poor Mitchell's brain would explode at that idea, though."

"Nothing here. With the rocks. Point me somewhere else."

"If you insist," said Oswin, pausing. The ship had drifted away and rotated (as had Jenny) so that she was now directly facing its underside. Good thing for the magno tether keeping her invisibly attached to it, and the air jets in her boots. Still, without any kind of physical rope it did feel a bit like being stranded in the middle of space, which would be relaxing if it wasn't for the perilous black hole. "You want to head back towards the ship and then go up, there's a cloud of debris I'm getting just above me here. I'm trying to alter the scanner to pick up on anything funky-"

"Funky?" Jenny questioned, the jets whooshing and propelling her along like a very, very slow Superman.

"Radiation. It's just tricky because space is all radiation. I really don't know enough about rocks, and this ship doesn't have the equipment for a remote geological analysis."

"Seems like a flaw in your design."

"Ha, ha. Criticise my intelligence. I'm a lot cleverer than you, you know. You can always hang around on the TARDIS for a few more days and I can do some reworks if you're so desperate for the ability to do long-range geological surveys."

"Your tinkering will never be complete."

"Not when I'm tinkering with YOU."

"You just want me to stay on the TARDIS for longer."

"I resent that assertion. I happen to find rocks incredibly dull, as we have already established, and don't actually want to build you a geo-scanner. Besides, your screwdriver seems to be working well so far."

"Probably because it wasn't designed by you."

"Wow!"

"Human engineering never really holds up."

"I'm a Dalek. I'm going to get the Davros-esque wheelchair to prove it, and then you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to scare the absolute shit out of your father. Also, my cane is outfitted with some very complex sonic technology of my own design which is far more efficient than your poxy screwdriver." Jenny pushed herself against the sleek rim of the circular ship, giving herself a boost to reach another cluster of rocks bobbing around just above it. She went for the largest one first. "There are quite a lot of rocks out there, you know. It might take us a while to go through them all. You should call this guy back and get more information."

"What about Helix?"

"Helix is down, I'm running a software update. It's a biggie, still has two hours left."

"What are you updating it to do?"

"Strategic thinking. Well, strategic thinking is generous, it's more probability analysis and recommendations based on the probabilities. Probability calculations are inherently vague, though; it's taken me nearly a week to write the coding and check it over."

"An entire week to build an advanced predictive algorithm for an alien AI? You're getting sloppy." Oswin laughed.

"Helix isn't really an AI, he's incapable of thought. Not even shackled, just… has no self-awareness or ability to think. And given the access he has to the TARDIS it would be much too risky to ever write a program to allow him sentience," Oswin said, "But hyperspeed probability calculations, despite purveying the illusion to people un-versed in the specifics of AI functions of rational thought, are little more than a… party trick. If I try really hard one day I might be able to make it seem like he can predict the future."

"These rocks are a dud, Oswin. We need a better plan," Jenny said after scanning even more.

"You gave me some incredibly vague coordinates to plot for a very large area of space and the sole instruction to 'look for a funny rock.' The scanner capabilities are depleted at the moment, anyway. Has anybody ever told you that patience is a virtue?"

"Why is the scanner depleted?"

"I'm running a long-range diagnostic on the black hole."

"Why?"

"It's giving me some unusual readings. And not the good kind of 'unusual' that makes me cum, the other kind."

"Why would something unusual make you – actually, I don't want to know. Unusual like what?"

"I don't know like what, hence why I'm scanning. God, you ask a lot of questions, don't you? I know I'm a very sexy genius, but I just don't have all the answers. Sorry to burst your bubble." Jenny scowled to herself and secretly wished she had brought River along, annoyed that Oswin had chosen that day to upload a big rewrite to Helix rendering them somewhat blind in a vast and relatively empty quadrant of space. "You know, you could have always refused to run this errand."

"And then what? He would have come after me."

"You see, you're very pretty, but sometimes I do wonder how much activity is really going on, y'know, up there. Like, you do realise that even if you do retrieve this rock, now that Pasznoxo knows exactly what buttons of yours he has to push – i.e., threatening the people you care about – he's essentially got you under his thumb forever?"

"It's a favour for a favour."

"And you really trust him that much?" Jenny went quiet. Did she trust Pasznoxo that much? Oswin might be right, she realised, about him now knowing how to get to her. "See what I mean? You don't think. Which is funny, because you always seem to be thinking very carefully about this or that. Or maybe you just want an excuse to go out and have a bit of fun, sort of like your own impromptu-hen-party before you move in with Clara. And I'm the best man."

"First of all," Jenny said, giving up and plucking another random rock out of the air, "You won't be my best man when we get married. Second of all, I'm not moving in with her, I'm living on the ship."

"Mmm, you say that, but you've basically already casually moved-in with her. By the way, I'm absolutely in love with you saying 'when' and not 'if.'"

"Don't start, you're as bad as my dad. He's convinced himself we're engaged."

"You're engaged to your dad?"

"Shut up. To Clara. And we're not."

"I'd be the best man, though."

"You wouldn't."

"I would. I'm writing my speech already. It goes a little something like this," here she elaborately cleared her throat over the comms, generating a very annoying degree of feedback in Jenny's ear as she floated around next to the ship in borderline oblivion. "Oh, shit all over my dick."

"Excuse me?"

"Shiiit. That's an extra helping of shit in an already overloaded shit sundae. A shit smoothie. A big fucking cocktail of ripe, crispy, steaming, faecal discharge. You need to get back into this ship right now."

"What? Why?" Despite her questioning, she was already hastening to get back to the ship's underside where the door back in was.

"It's called the 'digging in the wrong spot' narrative cliché. Very classic trope in adventure movies."

"So we're… digging in the wrong spot?"

"Yep."

"What's the right spot?"

"Well, Jenny," Oswin began putting on a faux-polite demeanour, like a phone voice, "If you'll look to your left, you may see a gigantic, fuck-off, bright red asteroid heading straight into that black hole." Alarmed, Jenny turned her head and saw, way off in the distance, exactly that. A big chunk of very distinctive space rock.

"Uh… how fast is that thing going?"

"About a hundred kilometres per second. So don't think about trying to go anywhere near it or it'll hit you so hard you'll just be very attractive goo. And as much as I'd love to get wet in a Jenny-puddle, well… I haven't brought my swimming costume."

"Remind me again how Adam Mitchell puts up with you on a constant basis?" Jenny climbed around the edge of the ship, the porthole opening up to greet her. Lucky it was a complex forcefield that kept the atmosphere within rather than an airlock, airlocks were so ancient.

"He thinks I'm charming. And in the deep, damp recesses of your genitalia, so do you."

She clambered up through the hole and back into the ship, feeling the heaviness of the gravity dragging her back down and making every movement take a heap more effort. The entrance closing behind her, she barely had time to remove her helmet as she stumbled over all the unpacked boxes and into the pilot's seat of the ship, engaging the thrusters and taking control while Oswin kept her eyes glued to the various screens and read-outs.

"What's the plan?"

"Depends how fast you are," Oswin said, "Hurry up and get after it though."

"Oswin, it's going into the black hole," Jenny argued, though she was already ramping up the speed and heading straight towards the red mass.

"And if you're quick it won't make it, alright? The ship has a kinesis-ray – or 'tractor beam' as my boyfriend would say – so, essentially, we can grab it. But it'll take a while to lose the momentum, especially when fighting against the gravitational pull of that black hole."

"I really don't think that flying into a black hole is a good idea."

"Well, try not to squirt too much when I tell you that it's not actually a black hole. My readings just came back and that sensual orifice over there is a wormhole ripe for penetration."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's spitting things out as well as sucking them in. It's the sloppy blowjob equivalent of quantum phenomenon, and we're gonna slip right inside and find its g-spot."

"And here you said you were trying to keep me out of danger…"

"Jenny, I'm one-hundred percent sure it's a wormhole, absolutely guaranteed to just end up in some other area of space, which really doesn't matter when we're in my super-sexy time-ship I built with my own dextrous fingers. Now please floor it because that rock is made of a highly volatile anomalous element."

"Hang on, volatile?"

"Yes, volatile."

"Volatile how?"

"A highly explosive geological catalyst that could wreak all kinds of havoc if somebody combines it with the right other elements. Unfortunately – though this is just pure speculation based on its chemical signature and my wealth of experience when it comes to incendiary devices – it looks like it could be destabilised by a very potent nitrogen concentrate so get going!"

"I AM!" Jenny shouted at her.

It was at that moment that they passed the event horizon of the hole, which was when space and time began to deteriorate around them. It was also the point-of-no-return for anything that couldn't exceed the speed of light, and while that didn't apply to them it was still unsettling.

"You're sure we're not going to be spaghettified, right?" Jenny asked as they went deeper and deeper into the invisible nothingness with only that red, burning asteroid in sight.

"An hour ago you told me I worry too much. Yes, I'm sure. But you really want to hurry up, because at this distance-"

"What?"

"Time isn't going to behave itself. It's a flighty mistress."

"You're so disturbing."

The rock disappeared, but before Jenny could react and even mention what she had seen, so did they. They exceeded the speed of light inside the wormhole and passed into what Jenny recognised clearly as the time vortex, but only for a brief second until being spat back out again into vibrant blue light.

"Oh, shit!" Oswin exclaimed, pointing, "Look out!" Jenny swerved the ship and it went into a wild corkscrew, the outside world spinning around violently until the blue was replaced with slate greys and neon and they were plunging towards a ground of some description, after she had almost crashed through a stream of flying vehicles. She veered upwards back towards the sky again until finally orienting herself enough to manoeuvre way out of the way of an elevated highway and above a futuristic metropolis. The rock, however, was not in sight.

"Where are we? Where did the asteroid go?"

"How exactly do you get anything done on your own? Nothing but questions. It is the 10th of April 5132, and we have just arrived in… Tokyo! That's so cool! And I've got you a temporal trace on the trail that rock left behind when it came through," Oswin plotted a course which appeared on Jenny's piloting radar in front of her, "Also, the ship's not cloaked. A million people probably just saw this ridiculous flying saucer appear out of nowhere and nearly crash into their cars." Jenny flicked the switch to activate the cloaking at that point and really hoped they hadn't done any irreparable damage. "Trail's old, though, nearly gone."

"We must have come through later… this is why I hate those things. Black holes, wormholes-"

"Bum holes?"

"No, I don't hate those. Unless they can bend the rules of time and space."

"Yeah, three seconds to us has been longer than three seconds to Earth," Oswin said, looking at the analysis on her own green holographic screens as well as the glass hologram readouts of the ship. "Landed in the bay."

"The bay, the bay…" Jenny muttered to herself, spinning the ship to get a visual while the automatic terrain scanner worked on constructing a visual image of the hundreds of enormous skyscrapers behind them. Once she spotted the open water she made a beeline straight towards it with Oswin desperately typing and calculating.

"We're weeks out. Maybe even a month. Fly as close towards the water as you can, we should be able to see it on the long-range if it's in there, though it's probably burned up a lot after being spat out. Which on the one hand makes it a lot less dangerous, but on the other hand makes it way harder to find. Especially in the middle of a city." Jenny guided the ship down and skidded it along the water between the very few ships that were moored, including one the size of an aircraft carrier with what looked like an enormous biome on the back of it.

"Anything?"

"No, nothing where the temporal trace runs cold, just the metal coating at the bottom."

"Why is there metal coating?"

"This bay has been completely separated from the rest of the ocean, there's a lock system to get out into the actual sea. Because of the pollution. It's also full of atmosphere scrubbers I really ought to take a look at… anyway, the silt in the seabed is too toxic to be allowed to touch the water. The rock definitely isn't here, though, it'd stick out like a sore thumb."

"Oh, great. This was supposed to be a quick job and now, what? We're going to have to search all of 52nd Century Tokyo looking for a tiny meteor?"

"On the bright side, though, you've got me for company! And I've always wanted to go to Tokyo."

"Fantastic…"

AN: Full disclosure, I am also currently working on the next storyline in "Retrograde" right now (which you should all go read and review) so I'm unsure how long this one will take as I'm balancing them both and "Retrograde" arcs are typically my longest story arcs in any of these fics, they're basically short novels while the others are novellas. But I am still writing, even if updates thin out.