Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Donna and Ten - The Inbetweens and backstories ❯ Chapter Eighteen ( Chapter 18 )

Rose Marion Tyler had been working for Torchwood in the parallel universe for around three and a half years now, and had become an experience Special Operations Field Operative. It had been nearly four years now since the worst day of her life, when she was separated from her love, the Doctor, and not a day went by where she didn't think about him, especially now.

 

It had been five months since the Government scientific advisor, Malcolm Taylor, had come back from a high level meeting with the British President, the American President, and a bunch of scientist from NASA on video conference, to tell her dad, the director of Torchwood, that the Hubble telescope had seen a galaxy at the edge of the universe, fade out of existence.

 

Reality was being manipulated, and the walls between universes were starting to thin and wobble. Would `he' be able to come through, she wondered. Then she started to have doubts, after all, it had been nearly four years, did he still love her, or had he moved on? She had to keep telling herself that he loved her and would still be there for her.

 

And then, just this lunchtime, her dad, Pete, had called her to the laboratories to watch a demonstration of a theory proposed by Dr. Taylor and Dr. Roger Stansfield, a brilliant physicist from Oxford who had joined Torchwood to produce the original dimension buttons that brought her here in the first place. Was this going where she thought it was? Were they proposing what she thought they were, what she had hoped for these four, long years?

 

'We are writing a paper, `The Dimension Cannon Effect of the Manipulation of Trans-Dimensional Quantum States',' Malcolm told them. 'Director if we can re-assemble and modify the lever room, we believe with the knowledge gained from the dimensional transport project, that we could build a working dimensional cannon,' Malcolm declared, pushing his spectacles onto the bridge of his nose.

 

Rose's jaw was on the floor. 'Are you tellin' me you will be able to send someone . . . me, through the void?'

 

'Once the cannon is energized and has opened a hole, it will be a piece of cake.' Malcolm pushed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose again.

 

'Oh-my-God!'

 

 

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'Shan Shen is a planet inhabited by humans and humanoid species with a Chinese culture,' the Doctor told Donna as they stepped out of the TARDIS into a market street filled with flags, paper lanterns, pagodas and various crowded stalls. The sound of traditional Chinese folk music floated down the street, giving a magical atmosphere to the neighbourhood.

 

Donna looked up, and saw flying cars buzzing overhead, and beyond that, she could see several moons or planets, pale in the daytime sky, one of which had a ring system. They wandered in between the various stalls, the Doctor inspecting the contents of a wok, where some exotic, fragrant food was being prepared.

 

The Doctor found what he was looking for on one stall, and handed Donna a mug of foaming drink.

 

'Oh, ho, ho,' he chuckled as he looked at the frothy milk shake.

 

'I'd rather have a water,' she said, looking at the mug suspiciously.

 

'You are going to love it,' he said light-heartedly. 'One, two, three!'

 

They took a mouthful, and Donna squealed with delight. 'Lovely!' she said with a frothy moustache that he'd warned her about.

 

When they'd finished their drinks, they carried on through the market, looking at the bewildering array of fruits and vegetables on sale.

 

Donna had gotten ahead of the Doctor. 'You want to buy shukina? Or peshmoni? Most beautiful peshmoni in all of Shan Shen?' a young oriental girl asked her.

 

'Er, no thanks.' She looked back down the street, and saw the Doctor enjoying himself talking to a trader about a prickly looking vegetable.

 

She turned back down the street and carried on exploring, enjoying the sights, the sounds, and the beautiful alien odours of fruits, flowers, and incense.

 

'Tell your fortune, lady. The future predicted. Your life foretold,' a tanned Asian woman called her.

 

Donna turned to look at her. 'Oh, no thanks.'

 

The woman frowned. 'Don't you want to know if you're going to be happy?'

 

'I'm happy right now, thanks,' Donna said with a smile. She really was, this place was amazing.

 

'You got red hair . . . the readings free for red hair,' the woman said, indicating an open doorway, framed with dangling jade beads and red paper lanterns.

Donna laughed. 'All right, then.'

 

 

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Jack Harkness sat at his desk in the Hub, the name of Torchwood Three in Cardiff, with that niggling feeling at the back of his mind that he'd had for months now. It wasn't that the Doctor was dead, although that in itself was bad; no, it was something else, something his years as a Time Agent had tuned his senses to.

 

Something wasn't right.

 

There were only three of them now, and although they were still grieving the loss of Owen and Tosh, the planet still needed defending, and so, life went on. It was only when the Doctor wasn't there to save them that they realised how much he did on his own to keep Earth safe.

He took a bottle of whiskey from the draw of his desk, poured a shot, and drank. He wiped tears from his eyes as he remembered that Christmas day when UNIT called and asked if he could identify a body they had recovered from under the Thames barrier.

 

When they pulled back the sheet, he'd breathed a sigh of relief, it wasn't him. Whoever the poor guy was, he wasn't the Doctor. But then they'd shown him the chest x-ray, with the two hearts, the sonic screwdriver, a key on a chain, and then the nail in the coffin, the TARDIS.

 

He knew then, because he could feel her, even before he used the key to go inside. He had closed the door, walked up the ramp, and gently caressed the console, before collapsing on the jump seat and breaking down in tears. The TARDIS had joined him, singing a Gallifreyan lament for the dead.

 

It was fair to say, that since that day, the Earth had gone to hell in a hand basket. The RoyalHopeHospital had disappeared, only to be returned hours later with only one person alive, a medical student, Oliver Morgenstern, who told the press that they had been taken to the moon by a Rhinoceros army.

 

Then there was that professor, what was his name? Lazarus; that was it. He'd tried to reverse the aging process and turned himself into a prehistoric mutant, which had run amok through Southwark, killing hundreds of people before a team of marksmen shot him.

 

Don't get him started on those damn weeping angels at Wester Drumlins. Gwen had gotten a call from an old police colleague, Billy Shipton, asking if they could help him on a case of missing persons. Jack had gone along to investigate, and quickly realised that the stone angels seemed to be moving around when he wasn't watching them.

 

He'd had to live through thirty eight years of time, moving to Bangkok to stay out of his own timeline, before he could go back to Wester Drumlins with a full platoon of UNIT soldiers. Each angel had half a dozen soldiers looking at them, as they were lifted by crane into a nuclear container filled with liquid concrete, before being taken to the black archive at UNIT headquarters.

 

After that detour, he was able to resume his own time line, only to see a large alien replica of the Titanic fall on London, killing millions of people and making large areas of southern England uninhabitable. The Titanic . . . was that some sick, alien idea of a joke.

 

He had since seen millions of people around the world killed, as they were turned into Adipose aliens. And now, there was the suspicion that the Atmos device fitted to the majority of vehicles was responsible for fifty two mysterious, simultaneous deaths all over the world. UNIT were asking for their expertise, and he, Gwen and Ianto would be leaving for London as soon as Gwen returned from saying goodbye to her husband Rhys.

 

Ianto Jones, drove the Torchwood Range Rover through the gates of the Atmos factory, along with a convoy of jeeps, trucks, a squad of UNIT soldiers and a car with Army top brass.

 

A soldier called out through a loudhailer. 'All workers lay down your tools and surrender.'

 

Captain Price spoke into her radio. 'Greyhound Six to Trap One. B Section, go, go, go. Search the ground floor. Grid pattern delta.'

 

'Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood.' He saluted the young captain. 'What are you searching for?' Jack asked her as they followed her towards the entrance of a factory that had the sign `ATMOS' on it.

 

'Captain Marion Price, UNIT,' she said, returning the salute. 'Illegal aliens,' Price replied.

 

The soldier on the loudhailer spoke again. 'This is a UNIT operation. All workers lay down your tools and surrender immediately.'

 

'B section mobilised. E section, F section, on my command,' Price said into her radio, as she ran off to join the troops under her command.'

 

When all the excitement was over, the Torchwood team followed Price into the back of a pantechnicon truck.

 

'Operation Blue Sky complete, sir. Thanks for letting me take the lead. And, this is the Torchwood team, lead by Captain Jack Harkness. Captain, Colonel Mace.'

 

'Captain,' Mace saluted.

 

Jack returned the salute. 'Colonel . . . A nice set up you've got here,' he said, admiring the high tech interior of the truck.

 

'We've got massive funding from the United Nations, all in the name of Home World Security,' Price told them.

 

'A modern UNIT for the modern world,' Mace added.

 

'Tell me, what's going on in that factory?' Gwen asked.

 

'Yesterday, fifty two people died in identical circumstances, right across the world, in eleven different time zones. Five a.m. in the UK, six a.m. in France, eight a.m. in Moscow, one p.m. in China,' Mace informed them.

 

'Yeah, we intercepted that report,' Jack said.

 

'How did they die?' Ianto asked.

 

Mace was impressed that they had accessed a confidential report. 'They were all inside their cars.'

 

'They were poisoned. No toxins. Whatever it is, left the system immediately,' Price told them.

 

'What have the cars got in common?' Gwen asked.

 

'Completely different makes,' Price said. 'They're all fitted with ATMOS, and that is the ATMOS factory.'

 

'Our engineers have disassembled one of the units in a workshop inside the factory, perhaps you would like to examine it?' Mace offered.

 

'Well, that's why we're here,' Jack said with a smile.

 

Mace led them out of the truck and into the factory, where they went into a research and development workshop.

 

'And here it is, laid bare. ATMOS can be threaded through any and every make of car,' Mace said.

 

'You must've checked it, before it went on sale,' Gwen said.

 

'We did. We found nothing. That's why we thought we needed an expert,' Price said.

 

'Okay. So why would aliens be so keen on cleaning up our atmosphere?' Gwen asked Jack.

 

'A very good question.'

 

'Maybe they want to help. Get rid of pollution and stuff,' Ianto offered.

 

Jack shook his head. 'Do you know how many cars there are on planet Earth? Eight hundred million. Imagine that. If you could control them, you'd have eight hundred million weapons.'

 

Jack examined the dismantled unit. 'Ionising nano-membrane carbon dioxide converter. Which means that ATMOS works. Filters the CO2 at a molecular level.'

 

'We know all that,' Mace said. 'But what's its origin? Is it alien?'

 

'No, I don't think so. Decades ahead of its time though. Right team, what do we know about Atmos?' Jack asked. Price produced a folder and was about to consult it, when the Torchwood team went into action.

 

'Founded by Luke Rattigan, Child genius' Ianto said.

 

'Invented the Fountain Six search engine when he was twelve years old, made him a millionaire overnight,' Gwen added.

 

'Now runs the RattiganAcademy. A private school, educating students handpicked from all over the world,' Ianto finished.

 

Jack smiled at his two colleagues. 'Well then, it sounds like we need to pay a visit to young master Rattigan.' He turned to the colonel and saluted. 'I think we can take it from here Colonel.'

 

Mace and Price returned the salute. 'Very well, Captain, and thank you for your assistance.'

 

They left the Atmos factory, and drove to the country estate that contained the RattiganAcademy. They got out of the Range Rover, and walked up to a geeky looking nerd who was standing still whilst his students were running around the building.

 

'I suppose you're Torchwood?' the young man said, seemingly unimpressed.

 

'Hello,' Jack said, giving him his perfect smile.

 

'Your commanding officer phoned ahead.'

 

'We haven't got a commanding officer,' Gwen said tersely. 'Have you?'

 

Rattigan seemed to be rattled by Gwen, and Jack tried to keep him off balance. 'Let's have a look, then,' he said walking to the door of the academy. 'I can smell genius! In a good way . . . used to travel with this guy . . . now there was a genius.'

 

Inside a busy laboratory, several young people in orange tracksuits were working on various experiments. Jack's experience with fiftieth century technology, gave him an insight into what was going on.

 

'Oh, now, that's clever. Look, single molecule fabric, how thin is that?! You could pack a tent in a thimble.' He moved over to another workbench. 'Ah, gravity simulators, terraforming, biospheres, nano-tech steel construction. This is brilliant. Do you know, with equipment like this you could, ooh, I don't know, move to another planet or something?' Jack said, looking knowingly at the young geek.

 

'If only that was possible,' Rattigan said with an innocent smile.

 

'If only that were possible,' Ianto corrected. Jack and Gwen looked at him questioningly. 'Conditional clause,' he said with a shrug.

 

Rattigan's smile vanished. 'I think you'd better come with me,' he said angrily.

 

'You're smarter than the usual grunts we get from UNIT, I'll give you that,' Rattigan said as he led them into a large living room with a swimming pool, and a short, tunnel like piece of art in the corner.

 

'That's because we're Torchwood grunts, Gwen said. 'We do a whole different kind of grunting,' she finished with a cheeky grin.

 

'What exactly do you want?'

 

'We were just thinking. What a responsible eighteen year old. Inventing zero carbon cars? Saving the world,' Jack said.

 

'Takes a man with vision,' Rattigan said proudly.

 

'Mmm, blinkered vision,' Ianto said. 'Because ATMOS means more people driving. More cars, more petrol. End result, the oil's going to run out faster than ever. The ATMOS system could make things worse.'

 

Rattigan had a smug look on his face. 'Yeah. Well, you see, that's a tautology. You can't say ATMOS system because it stands for Atmospheric Emissions System. So you're just saying Atmospheric Emissions System system. Do you see, Mister Conditional Clause?'

 

Jack stepped in between Ianto and Rattigan. 'It's been a long time since anyone said no to you, isn't it?'

 

'I'm still right, though.'

 

Jack thought about the Doctor. 'Not easy, is it, being clever. You look at the world and you connect things, random things, and think, why can't anyone else see it? The rest of the world is so slow.'

 

'Yeah.'

 

Gwen joined in, trying to empathise. 'And you're all on your own.'

 

'I know,' Rattigan agreed.

 

Jack took an Atmos unit out of his grey coat pocket. 'But not with this. Because there's no way you invented this thing single handed. I mean, it might be Earth technology, but that's like finding a mobile phone in the Middle Ages.'

 

Jack moved over to the tunnel-like work of art. 'No, no, I'll tell you what it's like. It's like finding this in the middle of someone's front room. Albeit a very big front room . . . with a swimming pool, I quite like that.'

 

'Why, what is it?' Gwen and Ianto asked together.

 

'Yeah, just looks like a thing, doesn't it? People don't question things. They just say, oh, it's a thing.'

 

'Leave it alone,' Rattigan demanded.

 

Jack steps into the artwork. 'Me, I make these connections. And this, to me, looks like a teleport pod.' He pushed a button and vanished.

 

A few seconds later, Jack appeared in a flash of white light at a run, his grey coat flapping behind him.

 

'EVERYBODY RUN!' he shouted, not waiting to see if anyone was following. If they didn't follow him, they would die, because he was sure a Sontaran would be coming through the teleport in the next few seconds. Gwen and Ianto knew Jack well enough to know that if he said run, you ran first, and then asked, how fast, how far, before finally asking why.

 

They made it outside and leapt into the Range Rover, where Jack floored the accelerator and zig-zagged down the gravel drive, as bolts of red energy flew past and exploded each side of them.