Disoriented Cosmos {A Torchwood Story} [COMPLETED]

20. Boom Town

I'm left even more confused, so follow him to the screens where he's tapping furiously.
"Jack? How can you be in two places at once?"
"How can the Doctor be here?" he asks, ignoring my question, and a small part of my brain registers the strong familiarity.
"The Doctor? You mean the guy from the 10 Downing Street thing?"
"Yes! How is he here?" he asks urgently, still looking at the CCTV, and I sigh.

"Jack, I would really like an answer as to why you were sitting at the cafe on the quay with three strangers laughing literally two minutes ago."

He pauses and stands to stare at me. "Just now? In the cafe?" he asks, and I nod. What else am I supposed to say? He's making even less sense than he normally does.

He starts thinking, talking to himself and me.
"I see, it must be that day today - of course. Okay, so, we need to secure everything, we need to put everything away by, God, what time was it? When does the sun go down today?"
I realise with a start he's asking me, and when I tell him he smacks his face.
"Okay, okay, everyone come here please - group meeting! Okay," he begins as everyone walks into the Hub from Owen telling them about what we just saw in the cafe, "we're finishing early today, and this is important, okay - when you get back to your homes, secure everything, okay? Absolutely everything - you won't regret it, I promise."

I scoff at the prince of mystery asking us to trust him once again, but annoyingly he is almost always right, so we resume our jobs for the day until it's time for us to go home.

I walk to the CCTV desk Jack's just left to scan around, and in one screen that hangs down from the top of the Tower, I see in front of it a little blue police box.

I furrow my brows. Now where have I seen that before...

~∆~

Just as it turns dusky, Jack calls us back into the middle of the Hub. I shut off my computer from my work on the Hubble spacecraft, and collecting my papers for the day I traipse to him.
"Right," Jack says, rubbing his hands together, "before we all go, I'd like you all to secure everything in the Hub down with me."

We all groan.
"Jack, why the hell are we doing this?" Owen asks in annoyance, and he replies that we shouldn't ask buta just do.
I roll my eyes but set to it anyway, taping my stuff to my desk and making sure all the papers are tucked inside a folder. I look across the room and see Tosh and Suzie doing the same to their desks and the stuff around it, and from the noises in the autopsy room I'm assuming Owen is locking away all his equipment.

Jack himself seems to have already taken the liberty of securing everything in his office as I swing round his door frame and tell him we're all off.
"See you tomorrow," he says in his strong American tone, but from the way his gaze darts between both my eyes, I can tell he's still looking at me and wondering what I am from the other day when we found out I'm connected to the Rift. It kinda feels nice, being a mystery to a man whose whole life is a mystery.

~∆~

"Man, was Jack weirder than usual today," Owen remarks as we get in the door and he sheds his jacket.
I'm still trying to shake off this weird feeling I have. It started when we passed that blue box - it gave me a pit feeling in my stomach, something I can't quite shake, and then... I feel that ache in my head again. The Rift? Is something happening with the Rift?

"Right, I'm thinking fish and chips?" he begins to ask, but I hush him, because I can hear something. Something small, tinny, but definitely thunderous. Where is it coming from?

Owen's beside me: "Evelina, I'm hungry-"
"Can you hear that?" I interrupt, and he pauses and says he can't, but I hear and feel something happening, throughout Cardiff, rushing from the centre of the bay through the quay and coming toward us-

Suddenly, my head starts to throb wildly; the glass of our windows smash, and our mugs on the side next to the kettle wobble and fall onto the floor.
Owen swears at the breaking glass around us, and we exchange looks. This must be what Jack warned us about.

We hear screams, and as we near the broken window of our flat we look out to see dozens of people running around panicking.
I look out to the Tower, and see a cylinder of light blasting out of the blue box, rays circling it in the sky through these huge black clouds that weren't there a second ago.

There's a pain in my head that begins to grow worse and then radiate throughout my body, and I stumble backwards and fall over. I wince at the glass in my leg that got caught as I fell, and I hear Owen somewhere above me.
"Evy, shit! Hang on!"

I screw my eyes shut as waves of pain keep tormenting me whilst voices flit in and out of my head, new voices, repeating words and phrases and names that I've never heard before but somehow know. Is this what the Rift does to me? Is this a side effect of whatever has happened to me?

The pain keeps going, long after Owen brings his medic kit over and tries to patch me up, until finally the voices and the thunder and the chaos stops. I slump into Owen as he instinctively holds me in his arms.
"Hey, hey, it's all right now, it's all stopped," he murmurs in a soothing voice I've never heard from him before, but I feel inside of me that it's not all right.

What just happened? And why did it happen to me?