Ending of the Hours (Book Four of the Bad Wolf Chronicles)

The Stolen Earth

Martha hurried to the window.

***

In Cardiff, Captain Jack Harkness and Jenny Nightshade, as she was calling herself now, were thrown to the floor. "Whoa!" he shouted. "What happened? Was it the Rift?" He looked up and around. "Jenny? You OK?"

"Yeah," Jenny mumbled, sitting up. "'M all right."

"Gwen? Ianto? Natasha? Clint?" Jack called as he helped her up. "You OK?"

"No broken bones," Ianto Jones reported as he stood, too, giving Natasha Romanoff a hand. "Slight loss of dignity."

"No change there, then," Clint Barton joked lightly as he and Gwen Cooper got up.

"The whole of the city must've felt that," Gwen remarked. "The whole of South Wales!"

"I'm going to take a look outside," Jack said, running out, Jenny going with him.

Natasha typed into a computer screen, and her eyes widened when she saw the readings. "I think it's a little bit bigger than South Wales," she told Gwen.

***

Sarah Jane Smith shook her head as she numbly straightened up, and she blinked. "Luke?" called, looking around. "FitzSimmons? Are you all right?"

"Felt like some sort of cross-dimensional spatial transference," her son, Luke Smith, mumbled as he sat up.

"But it's night outside!" Jemma Simmons gasped as she looked outside. "It wasn't night!"

"It was eight o'clock in the morning!" Leo Fitz agreed.

Sarah Jane turned to a brick wall. "Mr. Smith, I need you!" she called. The brick fireplace turned into a master computer with a cheery fanfare. "Can you just stop giving that fanfare?" she asked with a huff. "You just tell me what happened!"

"Sarah Jane, I think you should look outside," the computer replied. "I think you'll find the visual evidence most conclusive."

Sarah Jane ran to the window with FitzSimmons.

***

Wilf Mott shook his head as he adjusted himself. "It's gone dark," he realized. "It's them aliens, I'll bet my pension! What do you want this time, you green swine?" he bellowed, waving his cricket bat.

Sylvia Noble ran to his side. "Dad!"

"Look, you get back inside, Sylvia," he told her. "They always want the women."

"No, Dad, just look," she insisted, tugging his arm and looking up. "Oh, my God. Look at the sky!"

***

Jemma gasped in shock.

"That's impossible!" Sarah Jane denied.

***

"That's just impossible," Jack denied as he and Jenny stood outside of Torchwood, Jenny's eyes wide as she looked up.

***

Martha swallowed. "It can't be!"

***

The milkman turned around in the middle of the road, hearing an electric sizzle. There was a flash of light, and a brunette woman with bangs in black leather and Kevlar appeared, carrying a large gun. She stared straight at him for a moment before looking up. "Right," Skye Ward nodded, not looking surprised at all. "Now we're in trouble." She cocked the gun, powering it up. "And it's only just beginning."

Instead of the stars in the sky, 26 planets were in close proximity.

***

"But if the Earth's moved, they've lost the sun," Donna panicked as the two Time Lords ran around the console. "What about my Mum? And Granddad? They're dead, aren't they? Are they dead?"