- 7 -

"Pull up here," said Joanna, shouting to be heard over the roar of the Rover's engine. "This is us."

"But this isn't the rail station," said Jack, cruising to a halt and staring at the object illuminated by the streetlight it was beneath. "It's the police phone box Mary had me take a picture of."

"Really?" said Joanna, raising an eyebrow at me as we climbed out of the Rover.

"Because it doesn't belong here," I replied. "They have this design in London and Glasgow but not here in Wales. I was intending to look into it further."

"I really must get that chameleon circuit fixed one of these days," she said, taking a key from her waistcoat pocket and opening the door."

"Why are you getting into it?" asked Jack, looking puzzled.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Jack, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," Joanna said with a grin. "Watch, and be amazed."

She closed the door behind us while I stood inside, taking in the sight before me.

"I'd heard stories," I said, "but to see it for myself..."

"Bigger on the inside or smaller on the outside, depending on your point of view. Right, let's get moving."

She operated various controls on the hexagonal control console causing the central column to move up and down accompanied by the same 'vworp vworp' sound I'd head in Margo's room. After a few seconds this stopped and the column settled down.

"We've now entered the time vortex, and given Jack Kennedy quite a shock when we dematerialised."

"Was that wise?" I asked.

"It was necessary. You heard his scepticism. If he's going to set in motion the important things he does a few decades from now he needed to be shaken out of it."

"He becomes an important figure, then?"

"He does."

"I have questions."

"Shoot."

"That's appropriate, since my first is about your gun."

"Unloaded, of course. I'm not a barbarian."

"And that thing you used on them?"

"A one-off," she said, "a device that fell through the Rift from somewhere and came into my possession which I felt compelled to call a 'neuralyzer'."

"Compelled?"

"My people are mildly telepathic and for some reason it seems strongly imprinted with that name."

"So, Joanna, your people... It's obvious you're a Time Lord and so was Margo Chadwyck, but who are you, really? You're not Joanna Smith, reporter."

"No, I'm not. I sometimes use 'John Smith' as an alias so it seemed an appropriate name to use now that I'm female."

"Now that...?"

"It's called regeneration. Before this one was forced on me I was male. As for who I am...I'm the Doctor."

"So you're the one Queen Victoria tasked Torchwood with, and I quote 'protecting the Empire from the traitorous malcontent known variously as Sir Doctor of Tardis, the Doctor, or Doctor James McCrimmon. His capture or death is Torchwood Edict One.'."

"Blimey. What has Victoria got against me?"

"You don't know?"

"No, I don't. Whatever it is it hasn't happened for me yet. One of the perils of time-travel, I'm afraid."

"And Margo Chadwyck?"

"A renegade Time Lord called the Rani with a fondness for experimenting on sentient beings. I last tracked her down to Germany in 1944 where she was creating abominations for a regime that furnished her with an endless supply of human subjects on which to conduct her experiments. She was male then, a blond, blue-eyed giant of a man who went by the name of Klaus Niebuhr. She escaped my clutches, regenerated, and Margaret Chadwyck was born. Soon afterwards she found a human confidante - Harry Conway - then used her chameleon arch to become human herself and so undetectable by me."

"But Margo has been making movies for ten years!"

"The blink of an eye to a Time Lord. The Rani managed to obscure her initial trail but thanks to the shielding on her TARDIS's chameleon circuit developing a small energy leak I was able to pick it up in this year and this vicinity, but no more than that. I masqueraded as a reporter because I had no idea who he or she might be now and it seemed the best way to study people. Given who was present at the castle I was particularly worried she might have stolen the identity of someone historically important. That would have caused no end of trouble."

"What happened to your own chameleon circuit? You said it broke...?"

"The last time it worked was in 1963 London. We left there on November 22nd... just before..."

"Before what? What is it?"

"Hmmm? Oh sorry. I just made a connection I hadn't made before. Strange. Anyway, when we travelled from there to the prehistory of cavemen the TARDIS remained a police phone box. It's stayed in that shape ever since."

"And have you always hunted fugitive Time Lords?"

"No. When this regeneration was forced on me I was sentenced to work for the Division, a sort of Time Lord black-ops unit. I'm happy to hunt someone as monstrous as the Rani for them, but they've had me do other things I profoundly disagree with. Now, finally, I have a way of getting out from under their thumb."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out Harry Conway's fob watch.

"This is a biodata module," she said, "and a fob watch is just one of many casings it can be installed in. Without it a chameleon arch is useless. My own was confiscated, but now that I have a replacement escape is finally possible for me."

At which point the control console's central column began moving up and down once more.

"Looks like we've landed," said the Doctor. She held out her hand and we shook "It was nice meeting you again, Mary."

"Again? What do you mean, again?"

"You'll find out in time. Now I really must be going."

She activated a control to open the door. I wanted to find out more about this other meeting but it was obvious my audience was over. I stepped out into the ill-lit darkness of a Butetown street, hearing the vworp vworp behind me almost immediately. I turned just in time to see the TARDIS dematerialize, fading away to nothing.

- 8 -

When Mary finished her tale I shook my head.

"I had wondered why the Doctor didn't neuralyze me with the others," she said, "but it's obvious when you think about it, Toshiko."

"You must tell her - or him - something about all this when the Doctor first meets you, so in order to preserve temporal continuity she couldn't wipe your memory."

"Exactly, and when that meeting happens I couldn't tell her anything she didn't already know. So my imprisonment and being Arcateenian yes, the Rani no. Oh, and speaking of temporal continuity, I've been happy for you to transcribe my adventures for Jack Harkness so far, but you have to promise me you won't transcribe this one. I think it will be safer if you don't."

"Okay, I can see that. You've met some amazing people, Mary," I said, enviously.

"I've lived a very long life."

"Did you ever see any of the others again?"

"Yes, Jack Kennedy."

"And I don't suppose you're going to share that story with me."

"No, not yet," she grinned. "That's a tale for another night. Ready for sleep?"

"With you my love? Always."

The following day, in the Hub, I looked up Sir Charles Miller. I thought I knew the name and I was right. In 1960 he'd been made a life peer, becoming Lord Ravenglass. One of the founders of UNIT, he went missing during the 1970s in somewhat murky circumstances, and UNIT's files on the incident are sealed. They later took over his businesses and, in the absence of any heirs, his fortune. I could find no evidence of any will so this all seemed a bit fishy to me. Still, it was none of my business and nothing I could think how to dig into any further.

William Randolph Hearst's great wealth was already illusory by the time of Mary's visit to St. Donat's castle. Though he managed to retain control of his newspapers, he was so deeply in debt during the Depression that he had to sell off almost everything. By 1939 this included the castle.

I didn't need to research John F. Kennedy, of course. At the end of June 1937 he and his friend Lem Billings did indeed embark on a two-and-a-half-month tour of Europe aboard the S.S. Washington. When his brother Joe was killed during World War II, their father successfully transferred his ambitions to Jack. And as President, JFK committed America to landing a man on the moon within a decade. Whether or not seeing the TARDIS dematerialize gave him the nudge the Doctor claimed it would I couldn't say.

Next I looked up Sydney Storm, a name I hadn't recognised. Given her betrayal I was pleased to see her film career had never amounted to anything. In 1941, after washing out in Hollywood, Trudy had returned to her native Wyoming, chosen respectability by marrying a local guy she'd known in high school, had three kids, eight grandkids, and died of lung cancer in 1969 at the age of 56.

After this I pulled a box out of secure storage. From Mary's description of it the device inside it was the one the Doctor called a 'neuralyzer'. It had turned up in Tremorfa, its operation quickly figured out by some teenagers who used it to rob shops, yet another gift of the Rift from who knows where. Torchwood had eventually secured it and I'd been given the job of analysing it. There was some thought at first of us adapting it for our own use but we already had retcon so it was redundant. I tried opening the casing a few times and only succeeded in putting a couple of gouges in it - the gouges Mary had described. So this was the very same one. Which meant that sometime after this it would fall into the hands of the Division. The thought that they might get into our secure vault in the future was worrying. The thought they could now and might already be doing so was downright terrifying. I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I'd done a full inventory.

I sighed. It looked like I had a long day and night ahead of me.

* The End *