Fic: Reunited (11/15)
Title: Reunited (11/15)
Author: aibhinn
Pairings: Jack/Rose, Jack/Ten, Jack/Ten/Rose, Ten/Rose, mentions of (past) Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13.
Spoilers: Doctor Who through "Doomsday", Torchwood through "End of Days".
Summary: The Rift is much more active than it was, and has been disgorging aliens and out-of-time people at an alarming rate… including one person Jack never expected to see again.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Everything belongs to Auntie Beeb. I'm stuck here on the far side of the wrong continent, playing in her sandbox.
Author's note: For those of you following joely_jo's story Myths and Legends, you may have noticed her description of Time Wraiths and mine are very similar indeed. This is entirely by design; the idea of sharing a baddie was too good not to run with. References to 'Aeswulf' in this chapter (and the last) are references to her story, which is definitely worth the reading.
Also, I have to apologise for the insanely-long delay in posting; between real life, a ficathon, and packing for a trip to England (during which I get to hang out with joely_jo and sensiblecat!), I got way behind. With a total of 27 hours on a plane, round-trip, staring me in the face, hopefully I'll be able to get more writing done so I can post again when I return. Thank you so much, all of you, for hanging in there with me!
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X | Part XII | Part XIII | Part XIV | Part XV
The Doctor fell to his knees as though all his strength had left him, leaning forward to place his shaking hands on the concrete. Jack staggered to a halt beside him. There was nothing left of Rose except her gun, which lay on the stones of the Plass, glinting incongrously in the weak sunlight.
"What happened?" Owen demanded, turning on the spot to look around, as though Rose had magically appeared behind him. "Where'd she go?"
"Into the Shadows." The Doctor's voice was quiet, controlled, and full of emotions Jack couldn't begin to name. He looked up and met Jack's eyes, and there, in their depths, Jack saw the Oncoming Storm, just as he had on the Game Station long ago. It sent a shiver down Jack's spine, not only for the memories, but for the pain and rage he could see in that deep brown gaze. No matter how human-like the Doctor tried to be, it was times like this that showed exactly how alien he truly was. "It's taken Rose into the Shadows with it, which means we haven't got much time."
Another shiver down Jack's spine, this time at the thought of Rose trapped somewhere with that…thing. Jack swallowed, closing his eyes briefly. He couldn't allow himself to be distracted by fear or grief; he had to focus. He had to get Rose back.
"What Shadows?" Owen asked sharply. He hadn't reholstered his gun, though Jack and Gwen already had. "Where's that?"
"It's not a where, it's a what." The Doctor climbed to his feet, slowly, like an old, old man. Jack reached out a hand to help him, but he ignored it. "I'll explain inside; I'd rather not stay out here any longer. Is your headquarters anywhere near, Jack?"
"Right below the Millennium Centre. The entrance is just over there." Jack gestured with a nod of his head. This wasn't exactly the way he'd imagined showing the Hub off to the Doctor.
"Then let's get down there. I assume you've got equipment to monitor the Rift?"
"Of course," Jack said. He was rapidly revising his initial impressions of this Doctor. The babbling, happy, energetic young man he'd met just a few minutes before had shifted abruptly into a focused brilliance much more like the version of him Jack had once known. It was telling, Jack thought, the way he was able to walk into the situation and take control, regardless of the terror he must be feeling on Rose's behalf-the terror that Jack himself was feeling.
"Then I'll need to borrow it. And your team as well. The more heads working on this, the sooner we can find a way in and I can rescue her. I might need to bring the TARDIS in as well-that all right?"
The last three words were added almost as an afterthought, and Jack felt oddly flattered by them; he didn't imagine the Doctor often bothered asking permission of anyone. "Go ahead," Jack told him. "Do you need something to home in on?"
"That would be useful. What can we-ooh, yes. Here, give me your wrist." The Doctor took Jack's left wrist, uncovered his wrist comp, and pointed the sonic screwdriver at it. The comp beeped, and he let go. "There. Now it's giving off a sort of beacon signal the TARDIS can pick up on. Go on down and stand facing the place where you want me to materialise, and when you're there, push this button." He pointed at one of the buttons alongside the screen.
Jack's eyebrows lifted, remembering how often they'd not quite landed where the Doctor had meant to. "No offence, Doc, but can you be that precise? I don't want to get accidentally squashed."
"I can with the beacon," the Doctor said shortly. "Go on. We don't have time to waste if we're to get her back alive and sane." He took off running toward the TARDIS, coat flapping behind him.
Alive and sane. The implication behind those words frightened Jack as not even the Time Wraith had done. Without another word he took off for the entrance to the Hub, bending to scoop up Rose's gun on the way. Owen and Gwen followed.
They made it into the Hub in record time, and Jack was giving orders before the circular door had finished rolling away. "Tosh, I want you to pull up the CCTV of the last fifteen minutes and correlate that with the deep Rift scanner, see if we can track down where Rose disappeared to and where she might be. Owen, get into the database, see what you can pull up about Time Wraiths. Gwen, same thing in the UNIT files. I want everything you can find, and I want it five minutes ago."
They scattered to their workstations, and Jack headed straight down to the mechanism for the invisible lift at the bottom of the Hub. He stood there, back to the mechanism, facing a space about eight feet deep; it was out of the way, a good safe place for the TARDIS to land, and easily accessible to everyone's desks. Hoping the Doctor's jiggery-pokery worked the way he'd said it would, Jack pressed the button on his wrist comp.
Immediately the room was filled with a familiar whooshing-grinding noise, slightly different when heard from the outside than it had been when he'd been in the control room as a passenger, but still recognisably similar. The familiar outlines of the blue box began to fade into sight, about four feet in front of him. Jack let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding.
As soon as the TARDIS had finished materialising, the Doctor was out and talking a mile a minute. "Right, we need scans of the Rift correlated with the appearance and disappearance of the Wraith-"
"Tosh is already on it," Jack told him. Toshiko glanced over at the two of them, flushing slightly, but smiled before looking back to her work.
"And any information you can get about Wraith sightings around here-"
"Gwen and Owen are working on that." He glanced over at them. Gwen didn't look up, but Owen did spare them a glance before turning back to his computer, brow furrowed in concentration.
"Oh." The Doctor blinked, looking a bit taken aback. "Yes. Well…well done! Carry on, then," he told the three of them, who paid him no mind. "You and I, Jack," he went on in a lower voice, "need a good, detailed map of the terrain around here, within about a twenty-mile radius. I don't think the Wraiths can operate over a much greater distance than that, especially as weakened as they are."
"That was weakened?" Jack asked, startled. "Looked plenty strong to me."
"Only because you've never seen a Time Wraith at full-strength." The Doctor began pacing back and forth before the TARDIS, one hand running absently through his hair. "I have, and the difference between full-strength and this one was like the difference between a rhinoceros at full charge and a miniature poodle with a muzzle on. I've seen Wraiths kill with a touch, cause panic with just a brush of their thoughts, destroy human minds in the blink of an eye. This one couldn't even work directly on our emotions; it had to use language, which is much, much, much less effective. And unless I'm entirely mistaken, taking Rose with it would have taken nearly everything it had. It'll need to recover before it can do anything else. That buys us a little time, though not a lot."
"Then let's get to work," Jack said firmly, quashing down the image of Rose being held captive by a Time Wraith-or worse, being killed and having to resurrect with that thing there, only to be killed again. "Maps are in the conference room."
He pointed up the stairs, and the Doctor dashed off, taking the steps two at a time and fairly leaping through the double doors. Jack ran to catch up, praying that they wouldn't be too late for Rose-or that they wouldn't overlook something important in their desperation to find her.
Hold on, sweetheart. We're coming for you.
***
Rose jerked awake, nerves jangling as though she'd been startled out of a sound sleep. But there was nothing there; above, around, and below her was nothing but white. No walls, no ceiling, no nothing-just whiteness stretching out into eternity.
Well, not exactly nothing, she realised as she pulled herself carefully into a sitting position. She was lying on a white plinth like a sacrifice waiting for a priest. Shuddering violently, and trying not to give into her urge to vomit, she went through her memories of the past few minutes: the Doctor, the TARDIS, and then that thing-the Time Wraith-appearing out of the stones of the Plass, drawn from her nightmares to find and take her.
What had it said? When you escaped the Rift, we searched for you, but were unable to find you again. Until now, when you and the Heart which gave you birth are so close. But she'd been here for months; why hadn't it found her before this? And what was 'the Heart which gave her birth'?
The answer was so obvious that she all but smacked herself on the forehead. The Heart of the TARDIS, of course. The thing-or being? She'd never been sure just how sentient it was-that had caused her immortality and Jack's. But why had the Wraith needed the TARDIS there before it could find her? And why did it want her in the first place? It had said something along the lines of needing her to be freed, but how could she free it? And, more to the point, could she avoid doing so? She knew what these things could do if let loose; the memories of what it had done to Aeswulf's clan in eighth-century Denmark hadn't faded one jot. No way was she letting that out on the streets of Cardiff.
Resolutely, she swung her legs over the edge of the plinth and shoved herself off. The floor was farther away than it looked, so she had to catch herself, but she landed safely. Her stumble made her more cautious, though; there was no way of judging distances here, nothing for her depth perception to use for comparison. A wave of dizziness washed over her, but she closed her eyes and forced it back down. She wasn't going to just sit here and wait for the Wraith to find a way back to her.
The dizziness settled, and she opened her eyes slowly, waiting to see if the world was going to tilt precariously again. When it didn't, she took a careful step forward, then another, and another. The ground-if 'ground' was the right word-seemed level enough, so she began walking a little faster. There had to be a way out of here, and if there was, she was going to find it.
Her footsteps glowed behind her, lit by crackling blue energy, as clear and sharp as though she'd been walking through damp sand. She wondered briefly whether she could find some way to wipe them out, but then dismissed the thought. This was the Wraith's own place; if it wanted to find her, it wouldn't likely need her footprints to do so, and she might not have the time to waste.
Though walking in a random direction probably won't do me much good either, she thought wryly. How am I meant to find a way out of here? Don't suppose there's such a thing as a 'way out' sign.
But was her direction random? She hadn't gone directly forward from the plinth; she'd turned slightly to the left. It was only a few degrees, but that was even more telling; surely if it had been purely random, she'd have either gone straight ahead or off to the side in a more-or-less ninety-degree angle?
Rose stopped walking, closed her eyes again, and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. She'd had enough psi training in the other universe's Torchwood to be able to put herself into a low-level trance fairly easily; she did so now, and sifted through her thoughts, trying to discover what had made her choose that direction.
There. A golden tendril of light in the back of her brain, stretching out into Time. She focused on it, then opened her eyes again. There it was, faint but definitely noticeable, just on the edge of her normal vision. It led in the direction she'd been going.
A corner of her mouth curled in a satisfied smirk as she started off again. The Time Wraiths had terrified and completely overwhelmed her when she'd met them the first time, but then, she'd just been plain Rose Tyler. Now she was not only Rose Tyler; she was still, and always, the Bad Wolf.
The Doctor and Jack would be working on a way to rescue her, she had no doubt. But there was no harm in meeting them halfway.
***
"What've you got?" Jack asked.
Tosh, Owen, and Gwen stood before him with their findings. Beside him, the Doctor was still poring over the contour map that was spread over most of the table in the conference room. It had only been about twenty minutes, but all three of them had something to show him-a tribute not only to their skill, but to their concern for Rose.
Tosh stepped forward first. "Here's the readouts on the Rift. There was a big energy spike just before Rose was…taken…and another one when she actually disappeared. I tried to trace how far down it went, but it didn't go into the Rift itself. It sort of went through it, and then it disappeared entirely. It didn't dissipate; it just wasn't there any more, as though it had gone somewhere else."
Jack spread the readouts out in front of him. The Doctor glanced up, looked over them briefly, and frowned. "What's this?" he asked, pointing at a diagram.
"It's intended to be a map overlay, but we're out of transparencies," Tosh said apologetically. Jack rolled his eyes. What a time for Ianto to be gone.
The Doctor looked sharply at her. "An overlay of where?" he demanded. "And to what scale?"
Tosh looked taken aback and a bit nervous, as though she thought she'd done something wrong. Jack touched her arm reassuringly. The Doctor's intensity could be overwhelming at the best of times; when he was trying to save Rose, it could knock even Jack over at arm's length. "Th-the same scale as that," she manged, nodding at the map in front of him. "And it's a twenty-mile section of the Rift. The beginning of the energy spike goes right over the Plass, and then it travels to-wherever it goes."
The Doctor looked down at the map again, then stepped back. "Show me," he said.
With another glance at Jack, who gave her a nod and a quick smile, Tosh shifted around her boss and over toward the map, bringing the diagram with her. She checked the map carefully for a moment, then positioned the diagram over it, adjusting it minutely until it was exactly where she wanted it. "There," she said. "Just like that."
The Doctor swooped down beside her and stared down at the map, then carefully lifted the corner of the diagram up, trying to pinpoint where the end of the energy spike was. "There," he said, marking the spot with his finger and sliding the diagram out of the way. Tosh scooted off to the side out of the way, but bent over the map along with everyone else. "What's there?"
"Woods," Owen said with curled lip. "Trees, bushes, bugs, and other foul things."
"It's a system of limestone caves," Gwen added with a sideways glance at Owen. "Rhys and I went to explore them once with a mate of his who likes to do a bit of spelunking. We couldn't go in very far without proper equipment, but even the ones we saw were incredible."
"Caves," the Doctor breathed. "Right on the Rift. That's it." He looked up. "What have you found about recent Wraith sightings?"
"Four 'dragon' sightings in the past twenty years," Owen said, handing over his findings to the Doctor and Jack. "All of them, coincidentally, in that very area. Hikers, campers, that kind of thing. Made a couple of headlines in the early nineties, but nothing ever came of it."
"UNIT doesn't have much," Gwen said when the Doctor's eyes shifted to her. "But they do mention sightings in Denmark, eastern France, and the ones that Owen found here. The information is spotty at best, but from the descriptions, they're definitely Time Wraiths."
Jack sat up, excitement zinging through him. "Eastern France?" he repeated. "You mean, like where André came from?"
"André?" the Doctor asked, as the others reacted with varying forms of surprise and comprehension.
Jack filled him in quickly on André and what he-or the power that had possessed him-had said to Rose. The Doctor nodded slowly. "'Time searches for you,'" he said. "Yes, that sounds about right." He ran a hand through his hair, pacing around the room. "Okay, so they're coming through the Rift into these limestone caves, which doesn't surprise me; caves are good places for breaches into the Shadows to form or be created. But why Rose? And why now? All we need to be freed is her, it said. What about her could they possibly need?"
"It said, Or, rather, the Heart she carries," Jack reminded him.
"Yes!" the Doctor exclaimed in realisation, looking up again. "Yes, you're right. But what does that mean? Her heart's perfectly normal, just like every other human heart out there. Why hers?" He started pacing again, hand running through his hair until it stood on end, though he seemed not to notice.
Jack glanced at the others. Did the Doctor not know about the effects the Vortex had had on the two of them? "Doctor," he said, "there's something I haven't had a chance to tell you about her. Well, about us."
"Us?" The Doctor stopped dead, staring at him with wide, startled eyes. "What do you-oh." Understanding seemed to pour through him, and he seemed to-almost to shut down, Jack thought. His walls went back up, his demeanour calmed, his shoulders straightened. "Right. Erm. So I'll help you get her back, and the two of you can go on with-"
"No!" Jack exclaimed. The Doctor looked up hopefully as the others turned to him in surprise, and he amended, "Well, yes. Sort of. But that's not what I meant. I meant…Doc, something happened to me on the Game Station. And to Rose, too."
The Doctor went very still. "What sort of something?" he asked, his voice full of unease. "Rose was fine afterwards. Completely fine. We travelled together for a year, and there was nothing wrong with her. I'd've seen. I'd've known."
"I'm not sure you would've seen this, Doc. It's…not something you can tell just looking. I mean…." The Doctor was staring at him, eyes wide, begging for him to just come out and say it. Jack took a deep breath, then said bluntly, "Doctor, Rose and I can't die."
Author: aibhinn
Pairings: Jack/Rose, Jack/Ten, Jack/Ten/Rose, Ten/Rose, mentions of (past) Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13.
Spoilers: Doctor Who through "Doomsday", Torchwood through "End of Days".
Summary: The Rift is much more active than it was, and has been disgorging aliens and out-of-time people at an alarming rate… including one person Jack never expected to see again.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Everything belongs to Auntie Beeb. I'm stuck here on the far side of the wrong continent, playing in her sandbox.
Author's note: For those of you following joely_jo's story Myths and Legends, you may have noticed her description of Time Wraiths and mine are very similar indeed. This is entirely by design; the idea of sharing a baddie was too good not to run with. References to 'Aeswulf' in this chapter (and the last) are references to her story, which is definitely worth the reading.
Also, I have to apologise for the insanely-long delay in posting; between real life, a ficathon, and packing for a trip to England (during which I get to hang out with joely_jo and sensiblecat!), I got way behind. With a total of 27 hours on a plane, round-trip, staring me in the face, hopefully I'll be able to get more writing done so I can post again when I return. Thank you so much, all of you, for hanging in there with me!
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X | Part XII | Part XIII | Part XIV | Part XV
The Doctor fell to his knees as though all his strength had left him, leaning forward to place his shaking hands on the concrete. Jack staggered to a halt beside him. There was nothing left of Rose except her gun, which lay on the stones of the Plass, glinting incongrously in the weak sunlight.
"What happened?" Owen demanded, turning on the spot to look around, as though Rose had magically appeared behind him. "Where'd she go?"
"Into the Shadows." The Doctor's voice was quiet, controlled, and full of emotions Jack couldn't begin to name. He looked up and met Jack's eyes, and there, in their depths, Jack saw the Oncoming Storm, just as he had on the Game Station long ago. It sent a shiver down Jack's spine, not only for the memories, but for the pain and rage he could see in that deep brown gaze. No matter how human-like the Doctor tried to be, it was times like this that showed exactly how alien he truly was. "It's taken Rose into the Shadows with it, which means we haven't got much time."
Another shiver down Jack's spine, this time at the thought of Rose trapped somewhere with that…thing. Jack swallowed, closing his eyes briefly. He couldn't allow himself to be distracted by fear or grief; he had to focus. He had to get Rose back.
"What Shadows?" Owen asked sharply. He hadn't reholstered his gun, though Jack and Gwen already had. "Where's that?"
"It's not a where, it's a what." The Doctor climbed to his feet, slowly, like an old, old man. Jack reached out a hand to help him, but he ignored it. "I'll explain inside; I'd rather not stay out here any longer. Is your headquarters anywhere near, Jack?"
"Right below the Millennium Centre. The entrance is just over there." Jack gestured with a nod of his head. This wasn't exactly the way he'd imagined showing the Hub off to the Doctor.
"Then let's get down there. I assume you've got equipment to monitor the Rift?"
"Of course," Jack said. He was rapidly revising his initial impressions of this Doctor. The babbling, happy, energetic young man he'd met just a few minutes before had shifted abruptly into a focused brilliance much more like the version of him Jack had once known. It was telling, Jack thought, the way he was able to walk into the situation and take control, regardless of the terror he must be feeling on Rose's behalf-the terror that Jack himself was feeling.
"Then I'll need to borrow it. And your team as well. The more heads working on this, the sooner we can find a way in and I can rescue her. I might need to bring the TARDIS in as well-that all right?"
The last three words were added almost as an afterthought, and Jack felt oddly flattered by them; he didn't imagine the Doctor often bothered asking permission of anyone. "Go ahead," Jack told him. "Do you need something to home in on?"
"That would be useful. What can we-ooh, yes. Here, give me your wrist." The Doctor took Jack's left wrist, uncovered his wrist comp, and pointed the sonic screwdriver at it. The comp beeped, and he let go. "There. Now it's giving off a sort of beacon signal the TARDIS can pick up on. Go on down and stand facing the place where you want me to materialise, and when you're there, push this button." He pointed at one of the buttons alongside the screen.
Jack's eyebrows lifted, remembering how often they'd not quite landed where the Doctor had meant to. "No offence, Doc, but can you be that precise? I don't want to get accidentally squashed."
"I can with the beacon," the Doctor said shortly. "Go on. We don't have time to waste if we're to get her back alive and sane." He took off running toward the TARDIS, coat flapping behind him.
Alive and sane. The implication behind those words frightened Jack as not even the Time Wraith had done. Without another word he took off for the entrance to the Hub, bending to scoop up Rose's gun on the way. Owen and Gwen followed.
They made it into the Hub in record time, and Jack was giving orders before the circular door had finished rolling away. "Tosh, I want you to pull up the CCTV of the last fifteen minutes and correlate that with the deep Rift scanner, see if we can track down where Rose disappeared to and where she might be. Owen, get into the database, see what you can pull up about Time Wraiths. Gwen, same thing in the UNIT files. I want everything you can find, and I want it five minutes ago."
They scattered to their workstations, and Jack headed straight down to the mechanism for the invisible lift at the bottom of the Hub. He stood there, back to the mechanism, facing a space about eight feet deep; it was out of the way, a good safe place for the TARDIS to land, and easily accessible to everyone's desks. Hoping the Doctor's jiggery-pokery worked the way he'd said it would, Jack pressed the button on his wrist comp.
Immediately the room was filled with a familiar whooshing-grinding noise, slightly different when heard from the outside than it had been when he'd been in the control room as a passenger, but still recognisably similar. The familiar outlines of the blue box began to fade into sight, about four feet in front of him. Jack let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding.
As soon as the TARDIS had finished materialising, the Doctor was out and talking a mile a minute. "Right, we need scans of the Rift correlated with the appearance and disappearance of the Wraith-"
"Tosh is already on it," Jack told him. Toshiko glanced over at the two of them, flushing slightly, but smiled before looking back to her work.
"And any information you can get about Wraith sightings around here-"
"Gwen and Owen are working on that." He glanced over at them. Gwen didn't look up, but Owen did spare them a glance before turning back to his computer, brow furrowed in concentration.
"Oh." The Doctor blinked, looking a bit taken aback. "Yes. Well…well done! Carry on, then," he told the three of them, who paid him no mind. "You and I, Jack," he went on in a lower voice, "need a good, detailed map of the terrain around here, within about a twenty-mile radius. I don't think the Wraiths can operate over a much greater distance than that, especially as weakened as they are."
"That was weakened?" Jack asked, startled. "Looked plenty strong to me."
"Only because you've never seen a Time Wraith at full-strength." The Doctor began pacing back and forth before the TARDIS, one hand running absently through his hair. "I have, and the difference between full-strength and this one was like the difference between a rhinoceros at full charge and a miniature poodle with a muzzle on. I've seen Wraiths kill with a touch, cause panic with just a brush of their thoughts, destroy human minds in the blink of an eye. This one couldn't even work directly on our emotions; it had to use language, which is much, much, much less effective. And unless I'm entirely mistaken, taking Rose with it would have taken nearly everything it had. It'll need to recover before it can do anything else. That buys us a little time, though not a lot."
"Then let's get to work," Jack said firmly, quashing down the image of Rose being held captive by a Time Wraith-or worse, being killed and having to resurrect with that thing there, only to be killed again. "Maps are in the conference room."
He pointed up the stairs, and the Doctor dashed off, taking the steps two at a time and fairly leaping through the double doors. Jack ran to catch up, praying that they wouldn't be too late for Rose-or that they wouldn't overlook something important in their desperation to find her.
Hold on, sweetheart. We're coming for you.
***
Rose jerked awake, nerves jangling as though she'd been startled out of a sound sleep. But there was nothing there; above, around, and below her was nothing but white. No walls, no ceiling, no nothing-just whiteness stretching out into eternity.
Well, not exactly nothing, she realised as she pulled herself carefully into a sitting position. She was lying on a white plinth like a sacrifice waiting for a priest. Shuddering violently, and trying not to give into her urge to vomit, she went through her memories of the past few minutes: the Doctor, the TARDIS, and then that thing-the Time Wraith-appearing out of the stones of the Plass, drawn from her nightmares to find and take her.
What had it said? When you escaped the Rift, we searched for you, but were unable to find you again. Until now, when you and the Heart which gave you birth are so close. But she'd been here for months; why hadn't it found her before this? And what was 'the Heart which gave her birth'?
The answer was so obvious that she all but smacked herself on the forehead. The Heart of the TARDIS, of course. The thing-or being? She'd never been sure just how sentient it was-that had caused her immortality and Jack's. But why had the Wraith needed the TARDIS there before it could find her? And why did it want her in the first place? It had said something along the lines of needing her to be freed, but how could she free it? And, more to the point, could she avoid doing so? She knew what these things could do if let loose; the memories of what it had done to Aeswulf's clan in eighth-century Denmark hadn't faded one jot. No way was she letting that out on the streets of Cardiff.
Resolutely, she swung her legs over the edge of the plinth and shoved herself off. The floor was farther away than it looked, so she had to catch herself, but she landed safely. Her stumble made her more cautious, though; there was no way of judging distances here, nothing for her depth perception to use for comparison. A wave of dizziness washed over her, but she closed her eyes and forced it back down. She wasn't going to just sit here and wait for the Wraith to find a way back to her.
The dizziness settled, and she opened her eyes slowly, waiting to see if the world was going to tilt precariously again. When it didn't, she took a careful step forward, then another, and another. The ground-if 'ground' was the right word-seemed level enough, so she began walking a little faster. There had to be a way out of here, and if there was, she was going to find it.
Her footsteps glowed behind her, lit by crackling blue energy, as clear and sharp as though she'd been walking through damp sand. She wondered briefly whether she could find some way to wipe them out, but then dismissed the thought. This was the Wraith's own place; if it wanted to find her, it wouldn't likely need her footprints to do so, and she might not have the time to waste.
Though walking in a random direction probably won't do me much good either, she thought wryly. How am I meant to find a way out of here? Don't suppose there's such a thing as a 'way out' sign.
But was her direction random? She hadn't gone directly forward from the plinth; she'd turned slightly to the left. It was only a few degrees, but that was even more telling; surely if it had been purely random, she'd have either gone straight ahead or off to the side in a more-or-less ninety-degree angle?
Rose stopped walking, closed her eyes again, and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. She'd had enough psi training in the other universe's Torchwood to be able to put herself into a low-level trance fairly easily; she did so now, and sifted through her thoughts, trying to discover what had made her choose that direction.
There. A golden tendril of light in the back of her brain, stretching out into Time. She focused on it, then opened her eyes again. There it was, faint but definitely noticeable, just on the edge of her normal vision. It led in the direction she'd been going.
A corner of her mouth curled in a satisfied smirk as she started off again. The Time Wraiths had terrified and completely overwhelmed her when she'd met them the first time, but then, she'd just been plain Rose Tyler. Now she was not only Rose Tyler; she was still, and always, the Bad Wolf.
The Doctor and Jack would be working on a way to rescue her, she had no doubt. But there was no harm in meeting them halfway.
***
"What've you got?" Jack asked.
Tosh, Owen, and Gwen stood before him with their findings. Beside him, the Doctor was still poring over the contour map that was spread over most of the table in the conference room. It had only been about twenty minutes, but all three of them had something to show him-a tribute not only to their skill, but to their concern for Rose.
Tosh stepped forward first. "Here's the readouts on the Rift. There was a big energy spike just before Rose was…taken…and another one when she actually disappeared. I tried to trace how far down it went, but it didn't go into the Rift itself. It sort of went through it, and then it disappeared entirely. It didn't dissipate; it just wasn't there any more, as though it had gone somewhere else."
Jack spread the readouts out in front of him. The Doctor glanced up, looked over them briefly, and frowned. "What's this?" he asked, pointing at a diagram.
"It's intended to be a map overlay, but we're out of transparencies," Tosh said apologetically. Jack rolled his eyes. What a time for Ianto to be gone.
The Doctor looked sharply at her. "An overlay of where?" he demanded. "And to what scale?"
Tosh looked taken aback and a bit nervous, as though she thought she'd done something wrong. Jack touched her arm reassuringly. The Doctor's intensity could be overwhelming at the best of times; when he was trying to save Rose, it could knock even Jack over at arm's length. "Th-the same scale as that," she manged, nodding at the map in front of him. "And it's a twenty-mile section of the Rift. The beginning of the energy spike goes right over the Plass, and then it travels to-wherever it goes."
The Doctor looked down at the map again, then stepped back. "Show me," he said.
With another glance at Jack, who gave her a nod and a quick smile, Tosh shifted around her boss and over toward the map, bringing the diagram with her. She checked the map carefully for a moment, then positioned the diagram over it, adjusting it minutely until it was exactly where she wanted it. "There," she said. "Just like that."
The Doctor swooped down beside her and stared down at the map, then carefully lifted the corner of the diagram up, trying to pinpoint where the end of the energy spike was. "There," he said, marking the spot with his finger and sliding the diagram out of the way. Tosh scooted off to the side out of the way, but bent over the map along with everyone else. "What's there?"
"Woods," Owen said with curled lip. "Trees, bushes, bugs, and other foul things."
"It's a system of limestone caves," Gwen added with a sideways glance at Owen. "Rhys and I went to explore them once with a mate of his who likes to do a bit of spelunking. We couldn't go in very far without proper equipment, but even the ones we saw were incredible."
"Caves," the Doctor breathed. "Right on the Rift. That's it." He looked up. "What have you found about recent Wraith sightings?"
"Four 'dragon' sightings in the past twenty years," Owen said, handing over his findings to the Doctor and Jack. "All of them, coincidentally, in that very area. Hikers, campers, that kind of thing. Made a couple of headlines in the early nineties, but nothing ever came of it."
"UNIT doesn't have much," Gwen said when the Doctor's eyes shifted to her. "But they do mention sightings in Denmark, eastern France, and the ones that Owen found here. The information is spotty at best, but from the descriptions, they're definitely Time Wraiths."
Jack sat up, excitement zinging through him. "Eastern France?" he repeated. "You mean, like where André came from?"
"André?" the Doctor asked, as the others reacted with varying forms of surprise and comprehension.
Jack filled him in quickly on André and what he-or the power that had possessed him-had said to Rose. The Doctor nodded slowly. "'Time searches for you,'" he said. "Yes, that sounds about right." He ran a hand through his hair, pacing around the room. "Okay, so they're coming through the Rift into these limestone caves, which doesn't surprise me; caves are good places for breaches into the Shadows to form or be created. But why Rose? And why now? All we need to be freed is her, it said. What about her could they possibly need?"
"It said, Or, rather, the Heart she carries," Jack reminded him.
"Yes!" the Doctor exclaimed in realisation, looking up again. "Yes, you're right. But what does that mean? Her heart's perfectly normal, just like every other human heart out there. Why hers?" He started pacing again, hand running through his hair until it stood on end, though he seemed not to notice.
Jack glanced at the others. Did the Doctor not know about the effects the Vortex had had on the two of them? "Doctor," he said, "there's something I haven't had a chance to tell you about her. Well, about us."
"Us?" The Doctor stopped dead, staring at him with wide, startled eyes. "What do you-oh." Understanding seemed to pour through him, and he seemed to-almost to shut down, Jack thought. His walls went back up, his demeanour calmed, his shoulders straightened. "Right. Erm. So I'll help you get her back, and the two of you can go on with-"
"No!" Jack exclaimed. The Doctor looked up hopefully as the others turned to him in surprise, and he amended, "Well, yes. Sort of. But that's not what I meant. I meant…Doc, something happened to me on the Game Station. And to Rose, too."
The Doctor went very still. "What sort of something?" he asked, his voice full of unease. "Rose was fine afterwards. Completely fine. We travelled together for a year, and there was nothing wrong with her. I'd've seen. I'd've known."
"I'm not sure you would've seen this, Doc. It's…not something you can tell just looking. I mean…." The Doctor was staring at him, eyes wide, begging for him to just come out and say it. Jack took a deep breath, then said bluntly, "Doctor, Rose and I can't die."