"Hey," Owen calls as he comes back from the postbox with our newspaper one day, "look at the front cover. Brand-new nuclear power plant by the mayor."
I set my spoon down and peer over as he sits down next to me. Slap bang in the middle of the cover is a photo of the new mayor, trying to cover the camera with one hand. I frown - if she doesn't like being photographed, why did she become the Mayor?
Also, when did she become the Mayor?
I say as much to Owen: "When did she become Mayor again? I can't even remember."
"A few months ago; she started building the plant right away, smart woman," he replies, and leans over to steal my bowl of cereal and pour some leftover Chardonnay from last night into the remaining cornflakes. Absent-mindedly I slap him on the shoulder and he grunts in retort, but I let him carry on and instead peer closer at the woman.
The Mayor Margaret Blaine: out of the blue, big nuclear power plant, extremely private. I don't know, but something doesn't exactly seem right. Maybe I should ask Jack about it.
~∆~
On our way to the Hub, I feel the wind blowing through my brown hair and when I look to the bay, I punch Owen lightly on the shoulder and ask, "Can we get ice cream?"
He moans. "Come on, Evy - my head hurts, I just wanna sit down."
"You can sit down in the cafe, you hungover whinger," I persist with a dazzling smile on my face, which he gives into begrudgingly and lets me drag him into the cafe.
He grabs a table outside while I go to the counter, and when I return with a wooden spoon bearing our order number, he's grumbling with his eyelids low and his body slumped into his chair.
I put my hands on my hips, the spoon set down on the table. "What?"
"They're being loud," he complains like a child. I roll my eyes and look in the direction he's pointing to a table of four a bit away from us.
They look happy enough, only loud to a hungover Owen, really: a woman with blonde hair laughing, a man in a leather jacket across from her; a black guy laughing along with them, and...
No.
Fuck right off.
"Owen," I alert him, and he moans before I grab him by the jacket and pull him up to look at the group.
Why the fuck is Captain Jack Harkness there?!
"Oh my God," Owen exclaims beside me, and I turn to leave for the Hub and run into the waiter with our ice creams. I smile politely, take them and thank him, then start rushing to the Hub with Owen close behind me.
As soon as we reach inside we're off to find Tosh and Suzie to tell about Jack. He never told us he has friends outside of here, and he's never worn anything besides his World War Two outfit. We've all been wondering, who is Captain Jack Harkness, and here we have another piece of the puzzle!
I turn round the corner and bump into Jack, in his army uniform. I say nothing, just gawp at him, and he asks, "What?"
"Wha-uh," I say, at a loss for words, and he leans on one leg and crosses his arms.
"Some coherent words would be great, Evelina."
"But you were just," I point behind me, "you were just out there... in the... the cafe, you were... with these people, this... man, in a big leather jacket... you... you what?"
Jack furrows his brows. "A leather jacket?"
"But... you were there, in the cafe, like a minute ago, and..."
"A leather jacket?" Jack repeats, and I nod, still dumbfounded at how he could be in two places at once, and he doesn't say anything else, just pushes past me to get into the Hub and runs to the CCTV screens.
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?