5x07: The Rift
5x07: The Rift
(Cardiff, Earth, 2009)
"Okay, people. What the hell is this thing?"
It's a good question. Jack and Mickey together managed to dig it out of a field just outside Cardiff. Now it sits on the conference table, an unassuming pale box in some unidentifiable metal, radiating an air of ominousness.
"Storage device?" Ianto suggests with the air of a man wanting to get the obvious out of the way.
"Have you tried touching it?" Gwen ventures.
"Dug it up with gloves on," Mickey says, waving a dirt-encrusted pair in proof. "Anyway, 's probably best not to. I've met all sorts of nasties that open up if you touch 'em with bare skin."
"Only question is, how are we going to find out otherwise?" Martha puts in. "I mean, we can put it down in a cell and -- I dunno, just Jack can have a go figuring out how to open it."
"If we can clear the cell space," Tom mutters; Martha gives him a Look and he smiles a little, apologetically. "It's great in theory, but we're overflowing with Weevils."
"We have control areas downstairs," Jack decides. "Okay; Ianto, Martha, with me. You're my backup if something nasty comes out. Gwen, Mickey, Tom, you guys get to work cataloguing the rest of this week's Rift debris."
"I see what you're doing," Mickey says. "You're trying to break me up from the guns."
"Yeah, yeah," Jack says, giving him a shove. "Go."
They go, Ianto taking Mickey's gloves and hauling up one side of the box while Jack takes the other. Martha follows them down into the vault, past the cells and to a back room where the door has iron bars. Martha grabs two stun guns -- she's never shot to kill in her life and she certainly isn't planning to start now -- and, once Ianto's set down his end of the box and come to join her outside the door, she hands him one.
"Ready?" Ianto asks Jack.
Jack grins at them lopsidedly through the bars. "If nothing happens when I touch this thing, I'm going to feel really stupid," he says. Goes to the box, and touches it with careful fingers. Martha, watching closely, sees the pressed impression left by his fingertips glow gold for a moment before fading. With a little sighing sound, the box slides open.
"Well?" Ianto calls after a moment.
"I don't know," Jack says, "but I don't think there's anything alive in there." He leans over it. "It looks like a weapons chest. I think you guys can come in."
Martha slides back the bolt cautiously; she and Ianto go into the room. "Alien weapons?" Ianto asks.
"Oh yeah." Jack carefully pulls out a number of elegant little objects with a passing resemblance to grenades. "Don't touch anything."
Martha laughs a little with nerves. "No fear of that." Watches Jack unpack, with great delicacy, a few more grenade things and pull out -- with Ianto's help -- what looks like nothing so much as an air raid bomb. "Er," Martha adds, "there's no way that fit in that little box."
"I'm not about to go feeling around inside," Jack says, meeting her eyes, "but I'm guessing it's bigger in there than it looks."
"Do you recognise any of it?" Ianto asks, looking at the bomb thing from one angle and then another, warily. "I mean, you've been around a bit. Of weaponry. In your time."
Jack grins briefly, but says, "I've never seen this kind of thing before. Except --" He darts another look at Martha, sighs, and adds, "We're putting all this away. Carefully. Martha --"
"Bigger on the inside," Martha says. "Want me to phone him?"
"Best idea I've heard all day," Jack says. "Do it."
Martha nods, goes out into the corridor, and calls the Doctor.
The phone rings for so long that she starts worrying she's calling while he's in the middle of being chased by something large, dangerous, and probably very angry. Then the call's picked up and a voice purrs in her ear, "He keeps a mobile? That's so sweet," and Martha nearly drops the phone from sheer shocked terror.
"What --" she manages after a moment, "What the hell are you doing with the Doctor's phone?"
"Martha Jones?" the Master's voice inquires, incredulous and with the edge of a laugh. "Oops."
I saw you die, Martha thinks. She doesn't say it. After all, she doesn't know exactly how Time Lord regeneration is supposed to work, or what the Master might have done this time. Instead she says, as steadily as she can, "Where's the Doctor?"
"Oh, he's --" the Master starts, and swears. The line goes dead. Martha stares at her phone in horror. "Jack," she says dully.
Jack sticks his head around the door. "Yeah?" he says, and, seeing the look on her face, comes the rest of the way into the corridor. "What is it?"
"I --" Martha starts, and in her hand her mobile rings. She stares at it for a long moment, then raises it slowly to her face and answers. "Yes?"
"Martha!" It's the Doctor's voice this time, and Martha's legs nearly collapse with relief. She leans back against the damp wall and breathes out. "Sorry about that," the Doctor goes on. "I just. Well."
"Just what?" Martha says. "Just somehow magically have the Master acting your secretary?" Jack gives a start and she waves a hand at him; shh.
"That's not my fault, really," the Doctor says. "I mean. He came back, and I couldn't -- yeah, he's on the TARDIS, but I didn't think he was going to answer the phone. It's better he's here than somewhere else anyway." This last nearly has a note of pleading, although Martha could well be imagining it.
"That's true." Martha sighs. Her heart's still racing, and she feels less than comforted. "What about Donna?"
"Oh, er, we sort of ... lost her." The Doctor has the grace to sound guilty about this. "She's fine! She's fine, she just wouldn't tell me where she is."
Martha's eyebrows go up. "Really."
"Martha," the Doctor says quickly, "what were you calling about?"
"Something funny fell through the Rift," Martha says, "but listen, you're not bringing the Master anywhere near Torchwood." She takes a deep breath to calm her anger and asks, in an admirably calm tone, "How's he there anyway, Doctor? I thought he didn't regenerate."
"Yeah, it's -- complicated." Martha can nearly hear the Doctor awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. "Look, I'll keep him locked up. He won't be able to do anything, I promise. I'd like to see you. Really. Funny things falling through the Rift. I'll be there in a moment."
"But --" Martha says, but he's already hung up.
"The Master," Jack says flatly.
"Apparently it's complicated." Martha pockets her phone, scowling. "He's not dead, Jack. He answered the phone."
Jack swears. "He's with the Doctor."
"Yeah." Martha pushes away from the wall, overwhelmed with the urge to pace. "And not locked up, cos hey! he's answering the Doctor's phone!" She turns to Jack. "Also somehow they lost Donna. Apparently she's fine but the Doctor doesn't know where she is. Doesn't sound a bit suspicious, does it!"
Jack winces a little. "Martha ..."
"If you're about to say the Doctor knows what he's doing, don't," Martha says quietly. "He -- Jack, when the Master died --"
"I know," Jack says.
"Done the last of those grenades," Ianto says, stepping out into the corridor. "What's happening, then?"
Jack opens his mouth to answer but is interrupted by the sound of the TARDIS fading in up in the Hub proper. As one, he and Martha dash for the stairs. The TARDIS is fully materialised by the time they reach it, and the others, drawn by the noise, are clustered around that familiar blue box. The Doctor hops out.
"Mickey!" he says. "Working at Torchwood, then?"
"That's right, boss," Mickey says, and grins when the Doctor claps him on the shoulder and moves on.
"Gwen Cooper!" The Doctor beams at her. "Nice to meet you properly in person. And you -- don't tell me -- Tom Milligan! You're Martha's ... fiancé, isn't it? Brilliant." He finishes shaking the hand of the slightly bewildered but smiling Tom, and turns. "Ianto Jones! Good to meet you at last."
"You too, sir." Ianto comes forward and shakes the Doctor's hand.
There's a slight uncomfortable pause.
"Hello, you two," the Doctor says. "So where's this thing that fell through the Rift?"
"Doctor --" Jack says.
"He's fine," the Doctor cuts him off. "Locked up. He's not getting out. I swear."
"Yeah, but you can't --"
"Show me," the Doctor says, in that awful quiet voice Martha's only heard him use a handful of times. It even shuts Jack up. He nods, says, "This way -- Mickey, Gwen -- all of you -- don't let anything else leave the TARDIS," and leads the way for the Doctor down into the vault, Martha following. This time Ianto stays behind, probably to tactfully avoid the tension.
"About Donna," Martha ventures after a moment. "What do you mean you don't know where she is?"
The look the Doctor darts in her direction is for a moment fierce and closed; then he seems to hear the question and his expression relaxes a little. "She asked me not to come for her," he says, and tells them the story, Donna finding the Master, both of them tracking the Master down together. Listening to the chronology of this narrative, Martha notes with some surprise that the Master was already back -- and completely loose -- when Donna came to the Hub. She'd certainly neglected to mention it. Martha wonders what compelled Donna's silence, what insight into the Doctor's mind would have made her keep it to herself. She finds she's suddenly very glad she's not in Donna's place.
"In here," Jack says, interrupting this train of thought. He shows the Doctor into the vault room, pointing at the chest. "It's full of grenades and bombs and things. Lots of them. I didn't poke around too much; didn't want to set anything off."
At once the Doctor frowns, pulls his specs from his pocket, and hurries over to peer at the box. "Dimensionally transcendent?" he asks Jack, and without waiting for an answer, has pulled out his sonic screwdriver too and is scanning the box. His eyes go wide. "Not just that," he murmurs; "this is Time Lord technology." He sticks a hand inside and pulls out one of the grenade things. "Martha!" Kneels briefly and tosses a large rock into Martha's surprised hands. "Throw that at the far wall, will you?"
"Now?"
"Yes, now," he says, and to Martha's alarm he twists the pin from the grenade. But the Doctor's still looking at her expectantly, so she throws the rock with all her strength at the indicated wall. As she does so, the Doctor casually lobs the grenade after it; a soundless explosion, the grenade's vanished and the rock is caught frozen in mid-arc.
"What --" Jack starts towards it.
"Don't get too close," the Doctor says quietly. "Time-freeze. Got a radius of about a yard." He sighs and pockets his specs. "It'll wear off after a day or so."
"So, what, we're talking Time Lord weapons?" Jack ventures.
"Yeah." The Doctor stares in contemplation at the rock hanging suspended in the air. "Which shouldn't happen, of course. The rift here accesses time and space at completely random points, yes, but it shouldn't be possible to access a point in a locked ... timeline ..."
"Doctor?" Martha prompts after a moment.
"Caan and Davros got through," the Doctor says, turning to Jack and Martha. "Yes? Reentry was catastrophic to Caan's mind, but once he'd punched that first hole into that timestream, Davros was able to get out without going mad. Well. Madder. So now -- if you know where to look --" His throat bobs, a distant look in his eyes for a moment before he flashes back to them. "Anyway! It means other things might start falling through. Just -- weapons and things. Lock that away. You're under no circumstances to use it. Ever. Anything else like that turns up, lock it away too, or call me if you're not sure. Understood?"
Jack and Martha both nod, and he relaxes a bit. "Right," he says. "Good. Okay. That means I'm off to close the Medusa Cascade rift. Didn't think I needed to do it again -- sloppy. But now stuff might be falling through ..."
"But not the Cardiff rift?" Jack asks, a touch dryly.
"We-ell," the Doctor says, stretching the word and looking quite awkward about the whole affair, "technically this rift is an historic curiosity and if I closed it I'd be violating not only a number of natural laws but quite a few interstellar ones also."
Martha can't hold back the laugh at that. "Seriously."
"Oh, yeah, quite serious." The Doctor sighs and runs a hand through his hair. It stands crazily on end. "The Medusa Cascade, on the other hand ..."
"So that's it," Jack says. "Just a bit of business."
"That's right," the Doctor agrees, not quite looking at him.
"What are you going to do?" Martha ventures after a moment. "I mean, are you going to keep him locked up forever, or --?"
"I don't know," the Doctor admits. Sees Jack opening his mouth and adds, "I know I can't trust him. I know he probably can't be changed. But he's not safe on his own and I can't -- can't --"
His throat works for a moment and Martha cuts in, firmly, "We understand." Glances at Jack and gives him a look; don't we, Jack. Jack grimaces but mutters agreement. "Anyway," Martha says. "We'll give you a ring if we find anything. And don't let him near your phone again."
"I won't," the Doctor assures her.
Up the stairs and a round of goodbyes later, Torchwood's seen the Doctor off and Jack retreats to his office. Ianto starts to follow him, hesitates, and glances at Martha, who gives Ianto a grateful look and follows Jack instead. "What do you think?" she asks, closing Jack's office door behind her.
"Honestly? Can't say. I mean, the Doctor's usually a pretty smart guy." Jack laughs a little, ruefully. "Obviously."
Martha's silent for a long moment. "Jack," she says.
He looks up at her. "Yeah?"
"If we spend enough time telling ourselves we're all right," Martha says, making sure she stays looking at Jack as she asks it, "that living so long, or surviving that year, or fighting the Daleks the way we did -- that it's fine, does it eventually become true?"
Jack considers this for a moment; then he grins, brilliant and painful. "Yes it does, Martha Jones. Of course it does."
(The Medusa Cascade, 2008)
It's barely fifteen minutes after the Master was locked away for his little time-out that he hears the door opening again. He doesn't look up right away, the Doctor's entrance being far less important than the nice letter he's reading on the subject of fictional wizard domination over the Muggles for their own good. Reaching the end of the paragraph, he glances up at the Doctor, who's moved a little ways into the room and is leaning against a bookshelf. "Back so soon? And after I'd found this nice novel all bookmarked and everything." He tosses it aside and watches the Doctor wince, nearly imperceptibly. "I do hope you apologised on my behalf for startling poor Martha so."
"It didn't come up," the Doctor says tightly. "A crate full of time missiles and freeze grenades fell through the Rift."
The Master springs to his feet, hearts pounding with excitement in the impeccable rhythm of the drums, books and associated mocking forgotten. "How?"
"A short while back a Dalek punched its way back into the Time War," the Doctor says, and before the Master can raise his eyebrows and say Back? the Doctor presses on, "And relatedly the rift at the Medusa Cascade's reopened. I thought I might go close it again."
The Master laughs. "How appropriate."
They'd gone to the Medusa Cascade together once, long ago. When the Master was a serious, studious boy he can sometimes only remember now in the most vague of terms; when the boy who would become the Doctor had leaned out for a better look over the vastness of space, heedless of the vertigo, and commented offhandedly that it was a wonder the rift there wasn't sucking in or spitting out all sorts of unfortunate things.
He'd sealed it later, all on his own. Everyone on Gallifrey knew about it -- even the Master, long gone from the Citadel by then, had heard the stories, heard how very impressed everyone was with their convenient renegade. But he still doesn't know how the Doctor managed it. "So that story is true," he says. "It wasn't some rumour started by Borusa in a fit of pride."
"Course it's true," the Doctor says, frowning to himself. Not even paying attention to the Master.
"So?" the Master prompts after a moment. "How did you do it? I hope you didn't use this old clunker for anything essential."
That does get the Doctor's attention, although without the usual accompanying indignation on behalf of his ship. "Well," he says. "I was --" Breaks off, turns on his heel, and actually leaves the Master standing there, gaping for a moment with astonishment. Then he recovers himself and follows the Doctor, out into the corridor, up the stairs to the console room.
"How, then?" the Master insists. "Or do you want me to guess? Maybe you've forgotten and you want me to come up with ideas until you hit on the right one."
"I only have to replicate what I already did," the Doctor says. "Fly through it from the warp side -- the anomaly will close itself up and then it's just a matter of charged ions out the top and a bit of a psychic nudge."
The Master stares at him. What the Doctor's proposing is the scientific and psychic equivalent of stopping up a cracked leak in a dam by mixing together cement from sand and chewing gum and then slapping it over with a bit of duct tape. "You're serious," he says, not a question. And of course the worst thing is that it's going to work. The Master can spend eighteen months carefully laying all his plans and checking for errors and making sure there are no mistakes, and the Doctor can foil those and probably save another star system into the bargain with the assistance of only a nearly obsolete Type 40 and a few jumped-up apes for cheerleaders. It's disgusting. He sighs. "Go on, then."
"Right." The Doctor brings the Medusa Cascade up on the monitor; across the room the Master pretends not to be interested in the beautiful bloom of it, even in miniature, the yellows and greens and the nearly-invisible blue of the rift. The Doctor glances back at him and smiles, a sudden brilliant smile of excitement that knocks the Master off-centre, says, "Hang on tight," and throws the brake.
The TARDIS soars spinning crazily through space, looping at improbable speeds around the warp side of all those clouds of stardust, and pulling. The Master gasps and hangs on hard to the rail and hears the Doctor laughing with exhilaration, a mad honest sound. Roundabout behind them he can feel the rift starting to knit together drawn in by the TARDIS -- improbable, insane, but working -- as the Doctor races around the console, pressing buttons in complicated sequence and venting a storm of ions out through the top of the ship; the Master can feel the crash of it, the complete bewilderment of this small patch of universe suddenly confronted with the Doctor's particular methods of doctoring. He braces himself, but the Doctor's burst of psychic energy following has all the nudging subtlety of -- well, of a neutron star, which is probably quite appropriate considering the scale and type of problem the Doctor's dealing with. The Master doesn't have to appreciate it, though. More accurately he's quite unable to, caught for a moment in the psychic wash and knocked to his knees. There's nothing specific in the flare, just a lot of Doctorishness, which is quite enough to make him feel he needs a long bath just to scrub off the phantom hair gel.
He pulls himself carefully to his feet with the TARDIS spinning placidly through space, a spectacularly pretty and at least mostly harmless collection of stardust floating behind them, rift-free. Taking stock, he finds the Doctor sitting slumped below the console, face very pale and teeth grit. Without thinking, the Master goes over to him.
"Typical," he says, crouching down next to the Doctor. "Get up. You just used too much energy."
Seemingly taking this as an offer to help him get up, the Doctor reaches out and crushingly grasps the Master's hand. The Master's completely unprepared for it.
This time the onslaught from the Doctor's exhausted -- and so, also, unshielded -- mind is absolutely overwhelming: fear, grief, a beach, diamonds, echoes, flames, a terrible deep loneliness, all piled on each other and overlaid with a horrible bewildering gratefulness that the Master's here. The Master hisses sharply in surprised pain, and somehow an attempt to pull away becomes gripping harder on the Doctor's hand. The Doctor's eyes meet his, wide and dark with shock, and slowly, slowly, taking care not to jostle each other's thoughts, they put the walls back up. The Master helps the Doctor to his feet.
"Thanks," the Doctor says.
"No more rift," says the Master.
"Yeah." The Doctor turns and fiddles aimlessly with a few dials on the console.
"I'll just get back to my book," the Master decides, shoving his hands in his pockets.
"Good," the Doctor says.
"Good," the Master echoes.
He flees.
His hands are shaking a little as he goes to retrieve his book. If they never talk of this again, it'll be too soon.
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