Fic: The Cold Heaven 1/7?
Story: The Cold Heaven
Author: wmr wendymr
Characters: Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor (Duplicate), other canon and original characters
Rated: PG13
Disclaimer: I think you all know by now that I don't own them!
Spoilers: DW: up to Journey's End; TW: up to Children of Earth. Warning: do not read if you haven't seen CoE
Summary: "They say black holes are like gateways to another universe" - Rose Tyler, The Impossible Planet
With very many thanks to
dark_aegis and yamx for beta-reading and allowing me to bend their ears on and on about this fic!
The Cold Heaven
Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
By the injustice of the skies for punishment?
- The Cold Heaven, by W.B. Yeats [http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1605/]
Chapter 1: Gateway
It’s taken him months of wandering, searching, building relationships and gaining people’s confidence to get to this point. And, finally, he’s right here, in the centre of the Milky Way, in a stolen ship.
“Told her I’d be back in five minutes.” Oh, yes, he never really left the conman behind him, did he?
It’s been surprising, all the same, how much he’s forgotten in that near-century and a half on Earth, tied to one planet and to linear time, his one-time facility with most of the languages in this galaxy largely gone. Much more difficult to charm his way into people’s confidence when he can’t speak their language. And also difficult to find the kind of technology he needs - a ship capable of travelling through space - when he’s stuck in the early twenty-first century by Earth’s calendar.
Finally, though, the right leads and a lot of hitch-hiking took him to this ship, a primitive - by fifty-first century standards - exploratory cruiser moored on the outer edge of Saturn. A clever distraction and some quick hotwiring and she was his.
Just in time, too. He’s been hearing rumours recently about a man with no name, wearing a brown suit, who’s searching for someone referred to only as the Immortal Man. He’s done a good job of staying several steps ahead so far, but that won’t last. Not with all the advantages the Doctor has on his side.
So this ship came along at just the right time. Shame she’ll be crushed instantly once he’s past the event horizon.
Being crushed to death for eternity - it’s certainly an interesting way to die. One he hasn’t tried before. And one that should, if his calculations are correct, leave him dead, or at least in a limbo-like state, for ever. After all, the one thing he’s learned about this immortality curse of his is that he comes back to life as soon as conditions are sufficient for him to be viable - even if the flesh hasn’t yet grown back on his body. Inside a black hole, there is nothing to sustain life. Therefore he will stay dead: it’s that simple.
And appealing.
Gwen would say he’s running away. Again. And maybe he is, but so what? The trouble is that he hasn’t stopped running, but no matter how far he goes he can’t escape the memories. Can’t forget a single second of all the mistakes he made, or the faces of everyone who died because of him.
Everyone he killed.
He deserves to be punished, of course, but what punishment? If he was anyone else, he’d be dead for what he did. Death’s the easy way out, but he’s tried the hard route, living with what he’s done, and it’s too much. Besides, what use is he? What the hell use is he to anyone? Better that he lies in limbo inside a black hole, unable to affect anyone else’s life ever again, than that he gets yet more opportunities to screw up.
Time to go. He checks his instruments and then verifies the readings through observation. Ahead, there’s nothing but swirling darkness, broken up here and there by faint red pulses. Particles passing through gravitational shift, of course, as they’re drawn through the event horizon and into the hole.
One deep breath, and he engages the thrusters. The ship leaps forward, then surges faster as it’s caught in the accretion disk. Gravity forces him back hard into his seat; he’s past the point of no return. There’s nothing but darkness around him now.
And then it starts, the crushing, air being forced painfully from his body, bones and muscles meeting an irresistible force, his lungs gasping for breaths he can’t take. The ship’s already disintegrating, and he... he...
He cries out, a scream of agony from burning lungs, but no sound emerges.
***
“Captain, this is impossible," Lieutenant Davis says, pointing at the monitors in front of her. "It says there's something coming out of the black hole.”
“Sensor blip? Reflection of the Odyssey?" Captain Lambert asks, leaning over her shoulder. "It did cross into the event horizon several years ago. Scientists say that we'll be able to see its reflection for the rest of time.” One of the reasons why the Tutkium Mission is out here, of course: trying to gather more information on the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way. A dangerous mission, because if they stray off course by just a little way they risk getting sucked in themselves.
“No, it can't be. The Odyssey is here.” Davis points at the monitor, indicating one part of the black hole. “This-” She points at the opposite side of the monitor. “-is where our new object is emerging. And that's impossible.”
“How can it escape the gravity well?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Captain,” Davis says, shrugging. “Should be impossible.”
Lambert nods. Of course, a lot of things have happened over the past half-dozen years or so that should be impossible. Alien invasions, the stars going out, planets disappearing and then reappearing - he’s learned to treat the word impossible with suspicion these days. “Let me get a visual. See if we can work out what it is.”
Davis moves aside, letting him activate the cameras and focus them on the spot where the monitors are showing the object. It’s dark, of course, even darker with the black hole right behind the object. Even with the latest in thermal and infra-red imaging and night-vision cameras, it’s going to be difficult to get a clear view.
The two of them scrutinize the split-screen showing images from four different cameras. The object’s little more than a blur at first. He increases the zoom and adjusts the light filters, and stares with narrowed eyes at what’s revealed.
It can’t be.
“That’s impossible,” Davis mutters.
“There’s that word again,” he says, shaking his head.
“Captain?” Davis turns from the screen to give him a questioning look.
“Impossible. How many times have you heard that word in the last few years? How many times have you seen the impossible with your own eyes, eh?”
Davis turns her attention back to the camera. “Yes, sir. But this... Even after all that, I’d never have believed we’d see anything like this.”
She’s right, he supposes. Even with alien invasions and planets disappearing, it’s beyond anything he’s ever thought possible.
“Yeah. This really is something else.” He leans back in his seat. “They’ll never believe us at Mission Command.”
A humanoid body emerging from a black hole at all, let alone mostly intact? Nah. The top brass’d think the two of them are insane.
Davis studies him for a moment, then smiles. “So let’s show them, eh?”
***
It’s not easy. They have to wait until the body clears the event horizon, and then it has to be caught and held securely without damaging it any further. And it has to be done without attracting the attention of any of the crew, beyond the first engineer, who’s needed to help with the grappling arm. A couple of hours later, though, the body’s safe in the airlock, where - with the freezing temperatures in the depressurised area - it’ll stay safely frozen until they get to Earth.
Davis wanted to bring it inside the Tutkium, but Lambert holds firm. The danger of contamination’s too severe, on a space exploratory vessel with minimal medical crew - after all, no-one was expected to leave the ship at any time, so what risks were there other than routine injuries? It’ll be fine in the airlock.
Once the exterior door’s closed again, he takes a visual once-over through the small window. Definitely a human - or humanoid; can’t rule out alien origins, of course - body. It’s been affected by the freezing cold out there; several extremities are missing and what’s left is covered in frostbite and ice-burn. That’s not a problem, as it’ll help to preserve the body for the few days it’s going to take to return to base. Their mission was just about complete, anyway. They’ve collected enough scans and photographs and readings to satisfy the scientists. And this cargo is going to be of far more interest to them, anyway.
“How in the hell did he get out there?” Davis asks, her voice a low, disbelieving whisper.
He - yes, it’s definitely male. Male, and completely naked. So at least it didn’t have indestructible clothing, whatever about the body. “Hell if I know. He must have had a ship, though - but there’s no other spacecraft on Earth capable of flying this far out of the atmosphere.”
“Might not be from Earth,” Davis answers, voicing what he knows they’ve both already considered. “And if there was a ship, it’d be crushed to molecules. No way it’d have escaped the black hole in one piece.”
Nor, of course, should the body. It should be pulverised too. It should never have made it out of the black hole and back into space.
Well, it’ll be up to the scientists to try to work out how this happened. It’s not like they can just interrogate a dead man. Dissecting the corpse and testing it cell by cell should keep them busy - and happy - for quite a while.
Back on the flight deck, he activates the intercom. “Calling all crew. This is Captain Lambert speaking. All hands prepare for immediate departure for Sol 3.”
And with this early departure, he might even make it back in time for his daughter’s birthday. A smile on his face, he turns to Davis, now seated beside him again at the controls. “Let’s go home.”
***
“Tutkium Mission calling base. Tutkium Mission calling base.”
Inside the World Space Exploration Consortium control centre in Ottawa, the night operator depresses the communication button to talk to the incoming spaceship. “Go ahead, Tutkium Mission. We read you.”
“Captain Lambert to base control. Patch me through to General Mwenga, please.”
The operator swings around in her seat, making eye contact with the base supervisor who’s in an office just above the communication level. Might be a problem, might not. They’ve all been wondering, ever since the Tutkium’s ident details were picked up on the radar, what’s brought the ship home ahead of schedule.
“Patching you through now, Captain,” the operator replies, pressing the requisite key combination as she waits for the supervisor to come down to join her. If there’s a problem, they’ll know soon enough, but best to be prepared, after all.
They don’t have to wait long. Five minutes later, the internal phone on the comms desk rings. Morgan, the supervisor, answers it, listens for about half a minute, says only “Yes, sir. Wilco,” then hangs up.
“What’s up?” the operator asks.
“You’ll never believe this.” Morgan has already picked up a clipboard and she’s making notes. “Apparently the Tutkium picked up a passenger.” She picks up the phone again. “Adams, the Tutkium’s going to be landing in the next hour. I want a freezer truck ready to meet it, with a crew in HazMat suits, and I want a contamination zone ready in the tech wing. Have a sterile lab set up and ready by the time the ship’s here.”
“A passenger?” the operator asks as soon as Morgan hangs up. “How’s that possible? Out in space?”
“It’s not,” Morgan answers. “But apparently they did. A dead humanoid male, body partly crushed and missing some parts, and they’re bringing it back for analysis.”
The operator shakes her head in disbelief and glances down. On the radar in front of her, the dot representing the Tutkium moves closer, and if she focuses on the night sky she can see a light that might just be the incoming ship. She hums a few bars of the Twilight Zone theme. “Welcome to Canada.”
***
His lungs are on fire. They’re starved of air and, as always, that first breath is agony.
It’s reflex to gasp in as much as he can take at once, wrenching his body upwards at the same time, eyes opening as he strains to remember. The same routine: where is he? Where was he? Where should he be?
In darkness. On a cold, hard bench, or maybe a table. Naked. There’s machinery humming somewhere, and-
With a growl, he wrenches out the needle that’s crudely stuck into the vein of his arm. Whatever that was for, they can take it up with him in person.
He swings his legs over the edge of whatever he’s lying on. There’s no immediate floor below - yes, a table. Where the table is, and what he’s doing here, are priority questions.
How come he’s not still being crushed to tiny molecules inside a black hole... that one will have to wait a little bit longer.
***
“Professor Carlton! Professor Carlton, you need to see this!”
A tall woman wearing thick glasses turns away from the chart she’s reading. “What is it, Jason? Can it wait?”
“I don’t think so. That dead guy you told me to check the blood typing on? I noticed the flow had stopped, so I took a look into the lab. It’s dark, so it’s kinda hard to see, but the guy’s moving.”
The professor’s expression turns instantly sceptical. “You’ve been watching too many zombie movies, Jason. That man is dead. He was a block of ice when they brought him inside at four am. Even if Captain Lambert hadn’t found him floating on the edge of a black hole, nobody could survive that kind of temperature and live.”
Jason leans away and presses a switch. Instantly, light floods the room on the other side of the door. Professor Carlton leans forward, impatient to prove the lab assistant wrong and get back to her work.
Her breath catches and she stares, jaw slack.
Jason was right. The mystery man from the black hole is marching towards the door, fully thawed although nowhere near enough time has passed for that, with hands, feet and facial extremities all very much in place, looking both healthy and furious - and very much not dead.
***
“Ow!” The Doctor rubs his head, glaring at the work-bench above his head that he’s just banged it off, and then reaches for the ringing phone that made him jerk his head up in the first place. At the caller display, he sighs and looks at Rose. “One of these days we’ll have to explain to Pete the concept of a day off.”
She squats, leans in and rubs his head gently. He’ll have a bruise there later, not that anything like that seems to bother him. He certainly never learns from the experience. “Could just not answer it.”
The Doctor glares at the phone. “Too late now.” He presses the green button. “Yes, Pete?”
There’s a pause while he listens. She strains, trying to hear her dad’s side of the conversation, but the most she can manage is the odd word: space exploration, Canada and asking for you.
She can tell instantly, though, when the Doctor’s interest is engaged, and it’s obvious that their day off is already history. “I want photographs,” he says crisply, the demand clearly one he expects to be fulfilled. “They can send them to my computer here. Tell them it’s even more secure than Torchwood’s.”
That’s certainly true. He’s turned that machine of his into a supercomputer, even more secure than anything the world’s best scientists can produce. He has tried to explain some of what he did to her, but even with everything she’s learned since working for Torchwood, and the university-level courses she’s now taking in physics and engineering, it’s still over her head.
“Not until I get those photos,” the Doctor says after listening for a few seconds. “You can tell them that. As soon as I’ve seen them, I’ll talk to whoever’s in charge over there.” He snaps the phone shut and lays it on the bench, at the same time dragging the rest of his body out from underneath, where he’s been doing something incredibly complicated with bits of technology salvaged from the Torchwood basement. This room is, in theory, their shared office, but she conceded from the day they moved into this house together - to have a home that’s theirs, as opposed to the flat she lived in before, which was hers - that it was going to be his room far more than hers. It’s only right, after all. He used to have an entire TARDIS to muck around in. Now he’s got to keep it all to this room and his lab in Torchwood.
“Take it this means it’s the end of our day off?” She groans inwardly; it’s been a hell of a week and they both really needed the time. Well, she did, really; the Doctor, even though he’s half-human, still seems to have far more energy than she does.
Scrambling to his feet and then dropping into the chair at his desk, he says, “Yep. Sorry.” His computer’s on now and his fingers fly across the keyboard. Seconds later, his email software, something he wrote himself and he says is far superior to any commercial product, is on the screen and he’s compulsively refreshing.
“The Tutkium Mission is back in Ottawa after a research flight to the Milky Way,” he explains at breakneck speed without looking up from the screen. “En route, they picked up a passenger. A dead body came floating out of a black hole. Out of a black hole, Rose. How could that happen? You’ve seen what a black hole does. It’s an impossibility.” Both hands rake through his hair briefly, then he refreshes his email again.
It’s not likely that she’ll ever forget Krop-Tor and that black hole, or Scooti’s dead body floating in the event horizon. It eats and eats, the Doctor told her. “And they want you... what? They think you can figure out how it got there?” A thought strikes her. “Is it human? Or alien?”
“Humanoid.” For a split second, he turns and looks up at her. “And that’s not all, Rose. They brought the body back to Earth. Put it in a sterile lab at the World Space Exploration Consortium to analyse it. And a few hours after they did that someone checked on it... and found it alive.”
“You’re joking!” Okay, she’s seen some weird things in her time, but this...? “What kind of person can fall into a black hole into space an’ be alive at the end of it all?”
“Not to mention the effects of the lack of oxygen and the extreme cold. Leaving aside the black hole, Rose, that man, whatever he is, should be dead. He's been exposed to vacuum for much longer than the nine to eleven seconds it'd take to be able to survive without any issues. Hypoxia, tissue damage, his nose and mouth would be frozen and, if he's been out there for a long time, his entire body would be too cold to sustain life. No-one should be able to survive that. Any part of that, given the amount of time he's been exposed.”
Right. A chill sensation runs down her spine.
“Got it!” he exclaims, and clicks on something that’s just appeared in his inbox. A split second later, the screen’s filled with a full-colour photograph.
She’s looking at a picture of a naked man strapped to a lab table, with probes all over his body, clearly trying to struggle against the bindings around his wrists, ankles, chest and neck.
But what sucks the breath right out of her body is that the man on the table is Jack Harkness.
***
His body’s already black and blue from fighting against the restraints. It’s worse than the way that bitch Johnson had him chained up - though this time being buried in concrete might even be welcome.
There’s no Ianto to free him from it this time, after all.
Why does he have to be cursed? Was he born under the wrong star or something? And now he can’t even stay dead inside a black hole.
These bastards won’t even tell him where he is. They’ve been in twice so far, dressed in full HazMat suits - what, they think his immortality is catching? If so, at least they’ve got enough sense to realise it’s a curse - and firing questions at him, questions he has no intention of answering until they answer some of his first. They’ve got the advantage over him, after all, especially given those probes and needles they’ve got in his body, sending them lots of lovely blood and cells and DNA to analyse.
They’re Americans, by the sound of it - though, on second thoughts, he should know better than to jump to that sort of conclusion. He’s not American, after all, despite his accent and the assumption everyone’s made about him in the past hundred and forty years. Though they’re definitely not Time Agency, and this is not the fifty-first century, or anything like it.
Though whether it’s Earth or not there isn’t enough evidence yet to tell. Human, or humanoid, bodies under those HazMat suits, yes; and in those few seconds before five of them rushed him and wrestled him back onto this table he did see a couple of human-looking people through the small window in the door.
Maybe he can convince them that he’s dangerous, and they’ll kill him. Even a few seconds’ oblivion is better than this, lying here helpless with nothing to think about but the knowledge of what a worthless specimen of humanity he is.
***
Sometimes it still surprises her how quickly things can happen when you have money - and Torchwood - behind you.
Within three hours of her dad’s phone call, they’re on a plane to Ottawa. Not a zeppelin, a real plane, and a supersonic one, too. The Doctor insisted. He went very quiet as soon as they recognised Jack, and it’s not just worry over an old friend - or a version of their Jack. It’s something else. Guilt, maybe? Which reminds her of so much she’s wanted to know about Jack, all the things he’s avoided explaining to her.
He’s still quiet now, and very still, which for him is unheard-of. Even after two years in this universe, and adjusting to life as a half-human and in linear time, he still wants to be on the move all the time, restless and impatient if he has to wait. He’s a terrible passenger, whether in a car, train, zeppelin or plane - worse than Tony, her mum says. Though she would be too, if she’d had to get used to life at this pace after nine hundred years travelling through time and space, always moving on.
They’re flying over Greenland when he finally drops the book he’s been pretending to read and looks at her.
“I suppose it only makes sense that there’d be a Jack Harkness in this universe as well. I mean, there’s versions of just about everyone else here. Except you.” His brown eyes are very wide, very soft. “And me.”
“Yeah.” Moisture’s welling behind her eyes. “Jack, here? It’s... god, I can hardly believe it.”
“Unlikely to be our Jack,” he says softly, and she realises he’s misunderstood her. “He’s probably not even called Jack.”
She frowns. “Why not? I mean, everyone else has the same name. Well, all right,” she adds, remembering, “Mickey didn’t. He was Ricky.”
“Yes, but that’s not what I mean.” The Doctor takes her hand, folding his long fingers around it. “Jack Harkness wasn’t his real name. Our Jack, I mean. He just called himself that - probably one of the many names he used in his life.”
“Oh.” Her voice is very soft, and she swallows. He never even told them his real name? And yet she thought... “Why didn’t he-?”
The Doctor shrugs. “Probably habit, by the time he met us. Or he’d got to like that name and didn’t want to change it.” He tugs at his ear. “I don’t think he was deliberately deceiving us - not about that, anyway. Other things? Who knows? There’s a lot about Jack we never knew. A lot I still don’t know, and I ran into him a couple of times after I lost you. Spent a lot of time with him at one point, too.”
She bumps his shoulder with hers. “Yeah, an’ you still have to tell me about all that. And about how he wasn’t killed by that Dalek on the Crucible. You said you would, but you keep finding ways of changing the subject.”
He nods. “I will. But it’s not important now, is it? I mean, this Jack, whatever his name is, he’s not our Jack. Gingerbread houses, remember?”
Yeah, yeah. It’s not like she needs reminding. But still... “There’s something I don’t understand, Doctor.”
“What’s that?” He gives her a quick, reassuring smile, and she smiles back. They’ve still got that, and it’s one of the things she loves most about being with him. They each know when the other needs a bit of extra support, and they each give it unconditionally.
“You said this bloke should be dead but isn’t. That he was clinically dead according to all indicators, yet he just woke up alive and well.”
“Yes.” There’s a sombre note to his voice now, and she knows he’s already reached the conclusion she’s grasping for.
“If I’m guessing right - cause you still haven’t told me the truth about Jack, Doctor, an’ don’t think I’ll forget it - then our Jack doesn’t stay dead. What are the odds of this universe’s Jack bein’ the same?”
The expression in his eyes is very dark, very worried, as he stares back at her. “Impossible.”
***
tbc - Chapter 2: Impossible and Immovable
Author: wmr wendymr
Characters: Jack Harkness, Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor (Duplicate), other canon and original characters
Rated: PG13
Disclaimer: I think you all know by now that I don't own them!
Spoilers: DW: up to Journey's End; TW: up to Children of Earth. Warning: do not read if you haven't seen CoE
Summary: "They say black holes are like gateways to another universe" - Rose Tyler, The Impossible Planet
With very many thanks to
dark_aegis and yamx for beta-reading and allowing me to bend their ears on and on about this fic!
The Cold Heaven
Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
By the injustice of the skies for punishment?
- The Cold Heaven, by W.B. Yeats [http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1605/]
Chapter 1: Gateway
It’s taken him months of wandering, searching, building relationships and gaining people’s confidence to get to this point. And, finally, he’s right here, in the centre of the Milky Way, in a stolen ship.
“Told her I’d be back in five minutes.” Oh, yes, he never really left the conman behind him, did he?
It’s been surprising, all the same, how much he’s forgotten in that near-century and a half on Earth, tied to one planet and to linear time, his one-time facility with most of the languages in this galaxy largely gone. Much more difficult to charm his way into people’s confidence when he can’t speak their language. And also difficult to find the kind of technology he needs - a ship capable of travelling through space - when he’s stuck in the early twenty-first century by Earth’s calendar.
Finally, though, the right leads and a lot of hitch-hiking took him to this ship, a primitive - by fifty-first century standards - exploratory cruiser moored on the outer edge of Saturn. A clever distraction and some quick hotwiring and she was his.
Just in time, too. He’s been hearing rumours recently about a man with no name, wearing a brown suit, who’s searching for someone referred to only as the Immortal Man. He’s done a good job of staying several steps ahead so far, but that won’t last. Not with all the advantages the Doctor has on his side.
So this ship came along at just the right time. Shame she’ll be crushed instantly once he’s past the event horizon.
Being crushed to death for eternity - it’s certainly an interesting way to die. One he hasn’t tried before. And one that should, if his calculations are correct, leave him dead, or at least in a limbo-like state, for ever. After all, the one thing he’s learned about this immortality curse of his is that he comes back to life as soon as conditions are sufficient for him to be viable - even if the flesh hasn’t yet grown back on his body. Inside a black hole, there is nothing to sustain life. Therefore he will stay dead: it’s that simple.
And appealing.
Gwen would say he’s running away. Again. And maybe he is, but so what? The trouble is that he hasn’t stopped running, but no matter how far he goes he can’t escape the memories. Can’t forget a single second of all the mistakes he made, or the faces of everyone who died because of him.
Everyone he killed.
He deserves to be punished, of course, but what punishment? If he was anyone else, he’d be dead for what he did. Death’s the easy way out, but he’s tried the hard route, living with what he’s done, and it’s too much. Besides, what use is he? What the hell use is he to anyone? Better that he lies in limbo inside a black hole, unable to affect anyone else’s life ever again, than that he gets yet more opportunities to screw up.
Time to go. He checks his instruments and then verifies the readings through observation. Ahead, there’s nothing but swirling darkness, broken up here and there by faint red pulses. Particles passing through gravitational shift, of course, as they’re drawn through the event horizon and into the hole.
One deep breath, and he engages the thrusters. The ship leaps forward, then surges faster as it’s caught in the accretion disk. Gravity forces him back hard into his seat; he’s past the point of no return. There’s nothing but darkness around him now.
And then it starts, the crushing, air being forced painfully from his body, bones and muscles meeting an irresistible force, his lungs gasping for breaths he can’t take. The ship’s already disintegrating, and he... he...
He cries out, a scream of agony from burning lungs, but no sound emerges.
***
“Captain, this is impossible," Lieutenant Davis says, pointing at the monitors in front of her. "It says there's something coming out of the black hole.”
“Sensor blip? Reflection of the Odyssey?" Captain Lambert asks, leaning over her shoulder. "It did cross into the event horizon several years ago. Scientists say that we'll be able to see its reflection for the rest of time.” One of the reasons why the Tutkium Mission is out here, of course: trying to gather more information on the black hole in the centre of the Milky Way. A dangerous mission, because if they stray off course by just a little way they risk getting sucked in themselves.
“No, it can't be. The Odyssey is here.” Davis points at the monitor, indicating one part of the black hole. “This-” She points at the opposite side of the monitor. “-is where our new object is emerging. And that's impossible.”
“How can it escape the gravity well?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Captain,” Davis says, shrugging. “Should be impossible.”
Lambert nods. Of course, a lot of things have happened over the past half-dozen years or so that should be impossible. Alien invasions, the stars going out, planets disappearing and then reappearing - he’s learned to treat the word impossible with suspicion these days. “Let me get a visual. See if we can work out what it is.”
Davis moves aside, letting him activate the cameras and focus them on the spot where the monitors are showing the object. It’s dark, of course, even darker with the black hole right behind the object. Even with the latest in thermal and infra-red imaging and night-vision cameras, it’s going to be difficult to get a clear view.
The two of them scrutinize the split-screen showing images from four different cameras. The object’s little more than a blur at first. He increases the zoom and adjusts the light filters, and stares with narrowed eyes at what’s revealed.
It can’t be.
“That’s impossible,” Davis mutters.
“There’s that word again,” he says, shaking his head.
“Captain?” Davis turns from the screen to give him a questioning look.
“Impossible. How many times have you heard that word in the last few years? How many times have you seen the impossible with your own eyes, eh?”
Davis turns her attention back to the camera. “Yes, sir. But this... Even after all that, I’d never have believed we’d see anything like this.”
She’s right, he supposes. Even with alien invasions and planets disappearing, it’s beyond anything he’s ever thought possible.
“Yeah. This really is something else.” He leans back in his seat. “They’ll never believe us at Mission Command.”
A humanoid body emerging from a black hole at all, let alone mostly intact? Nah. The top brass’d think the two of them are insane.
Davis studies him for a moment, then smiles. “So let’s show them, eh?”
***
It’s not easy. They have to wait until the body clears the event horizon, and then it has to be caught and held securely without damaging it any further. And it has to be done without attracting the attention of any of the crew, beyond the first engineer, who’s needed to help with the grappling arm. A couple of hours later, though, the body’s safe in the airlock, where - with the freezing temperatures in the depressurised area - it’ll stay safely frozen until they get to Earth.
Davis wanted to bring it inside the Tutkium, but Lambert holds firm. The danger of contamination’s too severe, on a space exploratory vessel with minimal medical crew - after all, no-one was expected to leave the ship at any time, so what risks were there other than routine injuries? It’ll be fine in the airlock.
Once the exterior door’s closed again, he takes a visual once-over through the small window. Definitely a human - or humanoid; can’t rule out alien origins, of course - body. It’s been affected by the freezing cold out there; several extremities are missing and what’s left is covered in frostbite and ice-burn. That’s not a problem, as it’ll help to preserve the body for the few days it’s going to take to return to base. Their mission was just about complete, anyway. They’ve collected enough scans and photographs and readings to satisfy the scientists. And this cargo is going to be of far more interest to them, anyway.
“How in the hell did he get out there?” Davis asks, her voice a low, disbelieving whisper.
He - yes, it’s definitely male. Male, and completely naked. So at least it didn’t have indestructible clothing, whatever about the body. “Hell if I know. He must have had a ship, though - but there’s no other spacecraft on Earth capable of flying this far out of the atmosphere.”
“Might not be from Earth,” Davis answers, voicing what he knows they’ve both already considered. “And if there was a ship, it’d be crushed to molecules. No way it’d have escaped the black hole in one piece.”
Nor, of course, should the body. It should be pulverised too. It should never have made it out of the black hole and back into space.
Well, it’ll be up to the scientists to try to work out how this happened. It’s not like they can just interrogate a dead man. Dissecting the corpse and testing it cell by cell should keep them busy - and happy - for quite a while.
Back on the flight deck, he activates the intercom. “Calling all crew. This is Captain Lambert speaking. All hands prepare for immediate departure for Sol 3.”
And with this early departure, he might even make it back in time for his daughter’s birthday. A smile on his face, he turns to Davis, now seated beside him again at the controls. “Let’s go home.”
***
“Tutkium Mission calling base. Tutkium Mission calling base.”
Inside the World Space Exploration Consortium control centre in Ottawa, the night operator depresses the communication button to talk to the incoming spaceship. “Go ahead, Tutkium Mission. We read you.”
“Captain Lambert to base control. Patch me through to General Mwenga, please.”
The operator swings around in her seat, making eye contact with the base supervisor who’s in an office just above the communication level. Might be a problem, might not. They’ve all been wondering, ever since the Tutkium’s ident details were picked up on the radar, what’s brought the ship home ahead of schedule.
“Patching you through now, Captain,” the operator replies, pressing the requisite key combination as she waits for the supervisor to come down to join her. If there’s a problem, they’ll know soon enough, but best to be prepared, after all.
They don’t have to wait long. Five minutes later, the internal phone on the comms desk rings. Morgan, the supervisor, answers it, listens for about half a minute, says only “Yes, sir. Wilco,” then hangs up.
“What’s up?” the operator asks.
“You’ll never believe this.” Morgan has already picked up a clipboard and she’s making notes. “Apparently the Tutkium picked up a passenger.” She picks up the phone again. “Adams, the Tutkium’s going to be landing in the next hour. I want a freezer truck ready to meet it, with a crew in HazMat suits, and I want a contamination zone ready in the tech wing. Have a sterile lab set up and ready by the time the ship’s here.”
“A passenger?” the operator asks as soon as Morgan hangs up. “How’s that possible? Out in space?”
“It’s not,” Morgan answers. “But apparently they did. A dead humanoid male, body partly crushed and missing some parts, and they’re bringing it back for analysis.”
The operator shakes her head in disbelief and glances down. On the radar in front of her, the dot representing the Tutkium moves closer, and if she focuses on the night sky she can see a light that might just be the incoming ship. She hums a few bars of the Twilight Zone theme. “Welcome to Canada.”
***
His lungs are on fire. They’re starved of air and, as always, that first breath is agony.
It’s reflex to gasp in as much as he can take at once, wrenching his body upwards at the same time, eyes opening as he strains to remember. The same routine: where is he? Where was he? Where should he be?
In darkness. On a cold, hard bench, or maybe a table. Naked. There’s machinery humming somewhere, and-
With a growl, he wrenches out the needle that’s crudely stuck into the vein of his arm. Whatever that was for, they can take it up with him in person.
He swings his legs over the edge of whatever he’s lying on. There’s no immediate floor below - yes, a table. Where the table is, and what he’s doing here, are priority questions.
How come he’s not still being crushed to tiny molecules inside a black hole... that one will have to wait a little bit longer.
***
“Professor Carlton! Professor Carlton, you need to see this!”
A tall woman wearing thick glasses turns away from the chart she’s reading. “What is it, Jason? Can it wait?”
“I don’t think so. That dead guy you told me to check the blood typing on? I noticed the flow had stopped, so I took a look into the lab. It’s dark, so it’s kinda hard to see, but the guy’s moving.”
The professor’s expression turns instantly sceptical. “You’ve been watching too many zombie movies, Jason. That man is dead. He was a block of ice when they brought him inside at four am. Even if Captain Lambert hadn’t found him floating on the edge of a black hole, nobody could survive that kind of temperature and live.”
Jason leans away and presses a switch. Instantly, light floods the room on the other side of the door. Professor Carlton leans forward, impatient to prove the lab assistant wrong and get back to her work.
Her breath catches and she stares, jaw slack.
Jason was right. The mystery man from the black hole is marching towards the door, fully thawed although nowhere near enough time has passed for that, with hands, feet and facial extremities all very much in place, looking both healthy and furious - and very much not dead.
***
“Ow!” The Doctor rubs his head, glaring at the work-bench above his head that he’s just banged it off, and then reaches for the ringing phone that made him jerk his head up in the first place. At the caller display, he sighs and looks at Rose. “One of these days we’ll have to explain to Pete the concept of a day off.”
She squats, leans in and rubs his head gently. He’ll have a bruise there later, not that anything like that seems to bother him. He certainly never learns from the experience. “Could just not answer it.”
The Doctor glares at the phone. “Too late now.” He presses the green button. “Yes, Pete?”
There’s a pause while he listens. She strains, trying to hear her dad’s side of the conversation, but the most she can manage is the odd word: space exploration, Canada and asking for you.
She can tell instantly, though, when the Doctor’s interest is engaged, and it’s obvious that their day off is already history. “I want photographs,” he says crisply, the demand clearly one he expects to be fulfilled. “They can send them to my computer here. Tell them it’s even more secure than Torchwood’s.”
That’s certainly true. He’s turned that machine of his into a supercomputer, even more secure than anything the world’s best scientists can produce. He has tried to explain some of what he did to her, but even with everything she’s learned since working for Torchwood, and the university-level courses she’s now taking in physics and engineering, it’s still over her head.
“Not until I get those photos,” the Doctor says after listening for a few seconds. “You can tell them that. As soon as I’ve seen them, I’ll talk to whoever’s in charge over there.” He snaps the phone shut and lays it on the bench, at the same time dragging the rest of his body out from underneath, where he’s been doing something incredibly complicated with bits of technology salvaged from the Torchwood basement. This room is, in theory, their shared office, but she conceded from the day they moved into this house together - to have a home that’s theirs, as opposed to the flat she lived in before, which was hers - that it was going to be his room far more than hers. It’s only right, after all. He used to have an entire TARDIS to muck around in. Now he’s got to keep it all to this room and his lab in Torchwood.
“Take it this means it’s the end of our day off?” She groans inwardly; it’s been a hell of a week and they both really needed the time. Well, she did, really; the Doctor, even though he’s half-human, still seems to have far more energy than she does.
Scrambling to his feet and then dropping into the chair at his desk, he says, “Yep. Sorry.” His computer’s on now and his fingers fly across the keyboard. Seconds later, his email software, something he wrote himself and he says is far superior to any commercial product, is on the screen and he’s compulsively refreshing.
“The Tutkium Mission is back in Ottawa after a research flight to the Milky Way,” he explains at breakneck speed without looking up from the screen. “En route, they picked up a passenger. A dead body came floating out of a black hole. Out of a black hole, Rose. How could that happen? You’ve seen what a black hole does. It’s an impossibility.” Both hands rake through his hair briefly, then he refreshes his email again.
It’s not likely that she’ll ever forget Krop-Tor and that black hole, or Scooti’s dead body floating in the event horizon. It eats and eats, the Doctor told her. “And they want you... what? They think you can figure out how it got there?” A thought strikes her. “Is it human? Or alien?”
“Humanoid.” For a split second, he turns and looks up at her. “And that’s not all, Rose. They brought the body back to Earth. Put it in a sterile lab at the World Space Exploration Consortium to analyse it. And a few hours after they did that someone checked on it... and found it alive.”
“You’re joking!” Okay, she’s seen some weird things in her time, but this...? “What kind of person can fall into a black hole into space an’ be alive at the end of it all?”
“Not to mention the effects of the lack of oxygen and the extreme cold. Leaving aside the black hole, Rose, that man, whatever he is, should be dead. He's been exposed to vacuum for much longer than the nine to eleven seconds it'd take to be able to survive without any issues. Hypoxia, tissue damage, his nose and mouth would be frozen and, if he's been out there for a long time, his entire body would be too cold to sustain life. No-one should be able to survive that. Any part of that, given the amount of time he's been exposed.”
Right. A chill sensation runs down her spine.
“Got it!” he exclaims, and clicks on something that’s just appeared in his inbox. A split second later, the screen’s filled with a full-colour photograph.
She’s looking at a picture of a naked man strapped to a lab table, with probes all over his body, clearly trying to struggle against the bindings around his wrists, ankles, chest and neck.
But what sucks the breath right out of her body is that the man on the table is Jack Harkness.
***
His body’s already black and blue from fighting against the restraints. It’s worse than the way that bitch Johnson had him chained up - though this time being buried in concrete might even be welcome.
There’s no Ianto to free him from it this time, after all.
Why does he have to be cursed? Was he born under the wrong star or something? And now he can’t even stay dead inside a black hole.
These bastards won’t even tell him where he is. They’ve been in twice so far, dressed in full HazMat suits - what, they think his immortality is catching? If so, at least they’ve got enough sense to realise it’s a curse - and firing questions at him, questions he has no intention of answering until they answer some of his first. They’ve got the advantage over him, after all, especially given those probes and needles they’ve got in his body, sending them lots of lovely blood and cells and DNA to analyse.
They’re Americans, by the sound of it - though, on second thoughts, he should know better than to jump to that sort of conclusion. He’s not American, after all, despite his accent and the assumption everyone’s made about him in the past hundred and forty years. Though they’re definitely not Time Agency, and this is not the fifty-first century, or anything like it.
Though whether it’s Earth or not there isn’t enough evidence yet to tell. Human, or humanoid, bodies under those HazMat suits, yes; and in those few seconds before five of them rushed him and wrestled him back onto this table he did see a couple of human-looking people through the small window in the door.
Maybe he can convince them that he’s dangerous, and they’ll kill him. Even a few seconds’ oblivion is better than this, lying here helpless with nothing to think about but the knowledge of what a worthless specimen of humanity he is.
***
Sometimes it still surprises her how quickly things can happen when you have money - and Torchwood - behind you.
Within three hours of her dad’s phone call, they’re on a plane to Ottawa. Not a zeppelin, a real plane, and a supersonic one, too. The Doctor insisted. He went very quiet as soon as they recognised Jack, and it’s not just worry over an old friend - or a version of their Jack. It’s something else. Guilt, maybe? Which reminds her of so much she’s wanted to know about Jack, all the things he’s avoided explaining to her.
He’s still quiet now, and very still, which for him is unheard-of. Even after two years in this universe, and adjusting to life as a half-human and in linear time, he still wants to be on the move all the time, restless and impatient if he has to wait. He’s a terrible passenger, whether in a car, train, zeppelin or plane - worse than Tony, her mum says. Though she would be too, if she’d had to get used to life at this pace after nine hundred years travelling through time and space, always moving on.
They’re flying over Greenland when he finally drops the book he’s been pretending to read and looks at her.
“I suppose it only makes sense that there’d be a Jack Harkness in this universe as well. I mean, there’s versions of just about everyone else here. Except you.” His brown eyes are very wide, very soft. “And me.”
“Yeah.” Moisture’s welling behind her eyes. “Jack, here? It’s... god, I can hardly believe it.”
“Unlikely to be our Jack,” he says softly, and she realises he’s misunderstood her. “He’s probably not even called Jack.”
She frowns. “Why not? I mean, everyone else has the same name. Well, all right,” she adds, remembering, “Mickey didn’t. He was Ricky.”
“Yes, but that’s not what I mean.” The Doctor takes her hand, folding his long fingers around it. “Jack Harkness wasn’t his real name. Our Jack, I mean. He just called himself that - probably one of the many names he used in his life.”
“Oh.” Her voice is very soft, and she swallows. He never even told them his real name? And yet she thought... “Why didn’t he-?”
The Doctor shrugs. “Probably habit, by the time he met us. Or he’d got to like that name and didn’t want to change it.” He tugs at his ear. “I don’t think he was deliberately deceiving us - not about that, anyway. Other things? Who knows? There’s a lot about Jack we never knew. A lot I still don’t know, and I ran into him a couple of times after I lost you. Spent a lot of time with him at one point, too.”
She bumps his shoulder with hers. “Yeah, an’ you still have to tell me about all that. And about how he wasn’t killed by that Dalek on the Crucible. You said you would, but you keep finding ways of changing the subject.”
He nods. “I will. But it’s not important now, is it? I mean, this Jack, whatever his name is, he’s not our Jack. Gingerbread houses, remember?”
Yeah, yeah. It’s not like she needs reminding. But still... “There’s something I don’t understand, Doctor.”
“What’s that?” He gives her a quick, reassuring smile, and she smiles back. They’ve still got that, and it’s one of the things she loves most about being with him. They each know when the other needs a bit of extra support, and they each give it unconditionally.
“You said this bloke should be dead but isn’t. That he was clinically dead according to all indicators, yet he just woke up alive and well.”
“Yes.” There’s a sombre note to his voice now, and she knows he’s already reached the conclusion she’s grasping for.
“If I’m guessing right - cause you still haven’t told me the truth about Jack, Doctor, an’ don’t think I’ll forget it - then our Jack doesn’t stay dead. What are the odds of this universe’s Jack bein’ the same?”
The expression in his eyes is very dark, very worried, as he stares back at her. “Impossible.”
***
tbc - Chapter 2: Impossible and Immovable