Doctor Who - 01 - Past Future Continuous

08. The Journal of Impossible Things

"You travelled with the Doctor!"

"It doesn't mean I can fly the TARDIS!"

"You still have got the key!"

"And I did let you in, remember? You held the controls as well and I was under impression you knew what you were doing! Why does it have to be my fault?"

"I knew what I was doing!"

"Me too!"

"But I can't remember why I was doing it!"

"Neither do I!"

"You try to be so clever, all of you," said Mickey, getting in between Jack and Martha. "But none of you have any idea what had happened then. Rose said one day that the Doctor was... eerm... a part of the ship, so to say, and when the Doctor was broken... I mean ill... we couldn't understand the Sycorax's speech, even though she should have translated it all the time... in our heads. Take away the Doctor, and TARDIS is just a wooden box... Slightly bigger on the inside. But just a box."

"Rose had managed to get back to the Game Station." With some difficulty Jack turned his flaming gaze from excited Martha's face. "As far as I'm aware, against the Doctor's will. She had flown the TARDIS. How did she do that?"

"Rose..." Mickey hesitated slightly. "Rose had never flown the TARDIS. She looked into her heart. She asked TARDIS to take her to the Doctor."

"I have been asking her to do that for the last twenty-four hours," grumbled Martha. "I'm asking, and I'm threatening, I'm pleading and I'm imploring. At times I'm begging."

All three of them turned towards the blue police box placed in the middle of the underground hall in the Torchwood Hub. The box stood innocently, hidden in shadows, buzzing quietly, just above the auditory threshold.

"Maybe we are all overreacting."

Jack looked towards Gwen, standing further back, with a scanner pointed at the TARDIS.

"Maybe we're overreacting," Gwen repeated. "Maybe he's fine. Maybe he found that man's body and decided to play a detective. And now he's searching that little field, wondering what the hell happened to his ship."

"We are not overreacting." Jack pushed his fists into the trousers' pockets and marched towards the hall's exit so quickly that the others had to run to keep up. "Does Ianto have any leads?"

"Traces of alien DNA. We don't have it in our database," Gwen gasped. "Lacerated wounds, caused by fangs, maybe claws. Or an alien weapon, based not on metal but on biological compounds."

"As what; as a wooden knife?" asked Mickey uncertainly.

"Or bone," Gwen replied. "In any case, it was not made of any known material. But my bet is on claws. Nevertheless..."

"We are not overreacting," repeated Jack, entering the main Hub's hall, the one with a central pillar of the mirror sculpture supporting the high ceiling. "We have an abandoned ship and a corpse. We have traces of an alien DNA. And something else."

"What?"

"Would you care to follow me to my office, Miss Jones? And you, Mickey."

"What about us?" Ianto stuck his neck out of the line of his computer screens. "We would not follow you to the office?"

Jack looked at him pointedly.

"No," murmured Ianto. "I s'pose not. Torchwood is off the quest list."

Gwen raised her eyebrows.

"Bloody Time and Space Travellers' Circle," she hissed. "The elite."

"At least you know how your ex-workmates must feel," Ianto summarised calmly.