Chapter 3:

Earth/Cardiff

It was dawn by the time the Doctor returned from his romp around Cardiff. He'd hit a few local tourist spots, grabbed some fantastically greasy chips, reprogrammed a public arcade game to something a tad more entertaining, and he very nearly ran everyone out of a public theater by commenting every five minutes on the historical accuracy of the movie. All in all, a peaceful day.

…and it disturbed the hell out of him.

In all of his 900 plus years he'd never once had a truly peaceful day, though not for lack of trying. Something catastrophic always seemed to come up. It was a fact of life he'd learned to accept and, in a weird way, kind of enjoy. As for today, well, he was frankly flabbergasted, which wasn't a word he got to use often in relation to himself but very much liked the ring of.

He'd hidden the TARDIS well enough, but by the time that he twisted the key in the lock and opened one door he knew something was very, very wrong. He'd found his catastrophe.

The ship was unnaturally dark and the slight warble she'd had earlier had progressed to something that rang almost painfully in his head. Within seconds he was at the controls, one hand stroking the panel comfortingly whispering things he really didn't knowing the meaning of and didn't really care to pay attention to. The TARDIS was in pain, fading fast, and his only goal at that moment was helping her.

The Doctor circled the terminal, rapidly twitching dials and flipping switches, not even looking to see the reaction before he moved on to the next one. Lights were popping out of existence behind him as he skidded around for the fourth time, stopping and twisting the screen around so he could see it. The Doctor covered his eyes dramatically and dropped a finger down on the last button. Finally, with a shudder and a single toll of the cloister bell, the ship fell silent.

"Come on…" He rasped under his breath, fingers tapping anxiously. He straightened and gave the ship a slow count to three. Just as quickly as the lights and sounds had ceased, they rose up again, reassuring but weak. The Doctor grinned widely getting the distinct urge to high five someone but, for lack of someone to do it with, he simply patted the controls.

"Little bit of a scare. Now," He said, rubbing his hands together, "let's see what that was all about."

–––-

At that precise moment, Owen Harper was feeling completely bored and distinctly left out at the exact same time. Helen and Ianto had hit it off famously, leaving him to sit in the back of the SUV like a disobedient child, listening to them banter back and forth about rules and regulations. The two of them were way too alike for Owen's comfort, the woman had totally trashed any hopes he had for her the second she'd gotten over her whiplash. No human should be that interested in protocol, it was just unnatural.

Ianto seemed to be enjoying himself, though. He rarely got a chance to exhibit his memorization skills. Owen, on the other hand, was only getting to exhibit his manly brooding talents which were admittedly fairly formidable these days.

By the time he tuned back into the conversation they'd managed to progress onto more interesting topics, ones that he could actually participate in.

"…I didn't actually ask to come here." Helen was saying from her perch on the front seat, "I was actually in the middle of a project of mine. I've been working on it for a while, and really, without explanation I get ordered out here. No offense," The blonde hurriedly tagged on at the end, "It's just one roadblock after another. If I didn't know better I'd say they were trying to make my life difficult!"

Owen pushed himself back up from where he'd been stretched in the back seat, suddenly interested in the conversation.

"What's your project about?" He asked bluntly.

Helen looked back at him, slightly surprised he was joining in, "Ah, well, it wasn't originally my project, it was my Husband's…my Late Husband's." Her eyes tightened, "Honestly, I'm fairly new at all this whole thing. I inherited his job after he passed away."

The woman shook her head, expression shifting with the memories they were attached to. Despite himself, Owen felt a twinge of sympathy towards her, thinking back to how he had ended up joining Torchwood. He knew Ianto was probably thinking much the same thing. It hadn't been so different, and, really, most people had gotten into the business for similar reasons. It was one sad story after another.

Luckily, Helen had learned how to deal with it as they all had, to brush it away and move on. She let out a deep sigh and continued, "His research, the project, was a historical one, and I've almost figured it out… From what I've seen so far, something is off about this world."

She looked steadily at them, "All of these things, the Weevils, the rift, it's not by chance, something is playing god with this world as if it was a toy and I worry that, soon, even that won't suffice. "

–––––––-

"Ooh…That's not good."

The Doctor frowned at the display in front of him, the rapidly changing circles and symbols spelling out exactly how entertaining of a week this was really going to be, thought it wasn't being really specific as to why. Since the TARDIS's little shut down act he'd been forced to drop down to the very bare minimums of power. All unnecessary processes in the TARDIS had been stalled until he could get everything up and running again.

Trick was, with the console currently only allowing for minimum testing, he couldn't figure out the solution to his problem, and his usual secondary systems for situations such as these had been moved into another wing. Which would be fine and dandy, if he could just get to it. As it happened, though, one of those "unnecessary" processes happened to be the really fancily named gadget that stabilized the rest of the TARDIS in time and space. Technically, he could brave it anyway, and he even briefly entertained the idea, until he realized exactly how horrible it would be to get lost in his own TARDIS for the rest of eternity. That would just be embarrassing.

With what was available to him, The Doctor had been able to figure out the problem had something to do with the energy of the world itself. Not a particular mechanical feat in itself. All he had to do was stir up the barest of concentration to feel how wrong it felt. The natural power source that was the Cardiff Rift was corrupted and that taint was acting as a poison to the TARDIS. If he could just figure out exactly what was causing the corruption, then it would be a synch to figure out a metaphorical antidote.

The Doctor drummed a beat out on the controls, considering his options. If he didn't have technology to work with himself, well, he'd just have to borrow some, Unit would help without any coercion involved but it was all the way over in London, and the idea of public transportation had never sat well with him. Besides, why make the trip if a perfectly good secret underground base was just a skip away? He also had to admit to himself that he'd wanted to break into it since the minute he'd found out about it and this was the prefect opportunity.

With a quick pat to the controls and a short pocket check, the Doctor grabbed his coat and headed towards the centennial building.

–––

Earth/UNIT HQ, London

Doctor Martha Jones was hunched comfortably over her desk, steeped in paperwork when the knock interrupted her. She barely had time to turn before a soldier in a red barret leaned into the room. She leveled a cool but still slightly annoyed 'Can't you see I'm working' look on the unfortunate man.

"Yes?" She said finally, laying the tension on thick.

"Uh," The man paused awkwardly, "I was wondering if you've seen Captain Jack Harkness, the one from Torchwood?"

"Nope," She popped the word irritably, "and I'm getting annoyed about it. I see how good a friend he is, not even showing up when he's in the area."

"Oh," The soldier said, and Martha felt bad for him, he was obviously new.

She softened her voice, letting a small smile come onto her face, "If I do see him I'll tell him you were looking."

The man snapped back into his confidence now that the Martha Jones wasn't glaring at him. His superiors had told him she was someone special, though they hadn't really stated why.

"Thank you," He replied, straightening up and adjusting his shoulders, "Major Cramer was looking for him."

"I'll tell him if I see him." Martha heaved a frustrated sigh. The soldier took the opportunity to back out of the room in a hurry, shutting the door behind him. Martha carefully watched his silhouette ghost down the hallway, obscured by the frosted glass that made up the entire west wall. She gave the soldier time to round the corner completely before speaking again.

"You can come out now," She called, casting a glance around the room until she saw a spiked head of hair peek out from behind a filing cabinet. She was mildly impressed for a moment, given as they'd only had a short second of warning for him to hide in and he was all the way across the room. The leader of Torchwood 3 stepped out from behind the cabinet as if it was his natural right to be hiding in a UNIT laboratory, all swagger and smiles. He was most obviously pleased with himself.

"This might be a silly thing to ask," Martha asked after a beat, "but is it really a good idea to be ducking your duties?"

"Not at all!" A sour look took over Jack's face for a moment, "It's all political anyway. I can deal with a little bit of it but after a while I get tired of the chit chat. It's all, 'Nice weather, right?' 'How's the team?' 'Seen that new chronovariable drill they just found?'" Jack reenacted the questions in a high voice with accompanying hand motions, "Makes a guy sick."

He almost looked like he was done ranting for a second, stewing silently for a second before launching right back into it, "and the worst part is that I don't even know if we're going to get any help in this. They said they sent some guy yesterday, but who knows what that means."

"It was a woman, actually," said Martha, chiming in, "I talked to her before she left, nice girl, a researcher."

"Aw," Jack made a disapproving noise, "A researcher? –and don't look at me like that, we both know you're different." He had seen the look developing on her face before it'd even had a chance to fully form. She let it pass, hands going up in admittance.

Martha couldn't help but notice that Jack was been broodier than usual and while she could understand in part, she felt that there was something there that didn't lie entirely within the fault of the chatty military folk. This had been the first time he'd been away from his team since The Year That Never Was though she couldn't imagine it was a trust issue. Though perhaps it wasn't his team he didn't trust…

She remembered back to when she'd visited Torchwood, how her superiors had been ecstatic about it. Apparently Jack had kept UNIT at an arms length for a very long time, preferring to keep in touch only through reports and not people. As a matter of fact, she couldn't think of a single other UNIT operative who'd been in the Torchwood Cardiff Hub.

"Jack…" She tapped a pen to the desk idly, "do you not trust UNIT?"

The Captain gave her a long look as he made himself comfortable on a table top, buying time to weigh his answers.

"You and I both know that UNIT and Torchwood don't see so much eye to eye on some issues," He began, "but I don't think that UNIT realizes that quite yet and we're going to have to deal with that sometime, but I really don't want that to hit the fan right now."

Martha nodded in understanding, having noticed the natural differences. UNIT, to say the least, was a little heavy handed in the way that they went about things and their diplomacy was lacking, to say the least. Well, there was also their view of using alien technology. Martha quickly realized that he was probably right…They probably wouldn't understand some of Jack's management choices, one person came to mind in particular.

"Owen…" She said.

"Forget him! I was talking about Janet!" Jack retorted.

"The Weevil?"

"Of course," Jack said with a smile, "She and I are starting to hit it off and I don't want any big mean UNIT soldier to take her away from me."

Martha stared at him in good humor, "The scary part is, I don't know if you're joking or not."

"Keeps you on your toes, doesn't it?" He replied cheerily. Martha could only shake her head and laugh, turning her back to tap quickly on her nearby laptop. Jack took it as an obvious hint to her wanting to round back to the business at hand and he was only too happy to oblige. "You had something you were wanting to show me?"

"Yep," Martha motioned for him to look at the screen as she leaned away from it, revealing a graph over a rapidly changing waveform. "This," She pointed at the latter, shifting to the side so he could see better, "This, is the Cardiff Rift. I've been monitoring it for almost two weeks now."

Jack leaned in, but didn't see anything noticeable, "For what?"

"I've been experiencing something, as if, for a split second, I'm somewhere else." She said plainly, two weeks ago she would have had a harder time explaining it, but she'd written so many reports about it so far that the words were practically imprinted on the back of her eyelids. Jack hadn't wasted any time in getting into full out Torchwood mode, eyebrows lowered in concentration.

"So, what is it? A psychic thing, astral projection, global teleport, what?" He supplied.

Martha shrugged, "I don't know, haven't had the opportunity to test very much, I tripped over this just on accident. It's only happened a handful of times, each time more pronounced, and I noticed that every time it does happen, I see the readings from the rift start showing this pattern."

She pulled out a piece of paper from underneath her laptop with a still version of the waveform showing a pattern of four distinct spikes. It was simply by accident that he looked up from the paper right then. He blinked, still staring as Martha went on talking, but he wasn't imagining it.

"Martha?"

"What?" She frowned as Jack slowly raised a finger to point at her computer. She turned to find the pattern starting, plain as day on the readings of the rift, soft at first, but rapidly becoming more pronounced.

Martha barely got half of a word out before she was falling out of her chair. Jack caught her awkwardly around the shoulders as she went, lowering her softly to the floor. The doctor's eyes were closed, though the eyes were still spinning at a mile a minute underneath the lids. It was as if she were caught in a dream, and then she woke up…

"Martha?" Jack questioned cautiously.

Her dark eyes were unfocused for a moment, circling around the room once before settling on him as he said her name. They weren't the eyes he was expecting though, these were the eyes of someone who was, very, very confused, and the confusion quickly turned into fear.

Martha suddenly jolted free of his hands, eyes deer-in-the-headlights wide as she skittered back away from him, running up against a cabinet.

"Where am I?" She asked shakily.

"Martha?" Jack questioned, slightly confused.

"How do you know my name?" The woman jolted again, "Answer me!"

Jack put out his hands placatingly, "Just calm down for a minute–" Even as he said it he could see the fear turn into heated anger.

"I will not calm down. Now, answer my questions!" the not-quite-Martha chanced a look around the room before zipping right back to Jack, "And where in the hell is Rose?"

…and for the first time in his long life, Captain Jack Harkness found himself completely and totally speechless.

––––-

A/N: I was totally considering making the Doctor do the One Mississippi, Two Mississippi but then I realized that probably wouldn't be too correct of me and held back. It brings up a point though, I am pretty obviously not British and I'm going to (unintentionally) mess up on the lingo, if I haven't already. I'll feel bad for a while about it but then I remember that the "American" Jack Harkness says things like "Car Park" and "Lift" instead of Parking Garage and Elevator. Everyone makes mistakes like that.

Next Time: Doctor styled breaking and entering (less breaking, more entering) and a rather Rose heavy chapter (Huzzah!) As usual, this is already written, just trying to space it out so I can get farther ahead. See you guys next time!