m_findlow: The great race (Thirteen/Jack) [PG] - SUMMER HOLIDAYS PROMPT 2

[trobadora]

Title: The great race
Author: m_findlow
Prompt: 2 - Lucy, races, flag, on a holodeck
Rating: Thirteenth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Pairing: PG
Content notes: Spoilers for all seasons of both series, and the Torchwood Big Finish audioplays.
Length: 33,192 words
Author notes: Beta'ed by beesandbrews. I don't own them, they belong to their respective creators.

Summary: A new adventure awaits two old friends as they compete in the greatest race of a generation.

**

'We had a deal,' Jack said, growing frustrated at the exchange. He was used to getting what he wanted, but he could feel this one slipping through his fingers like fine grains of sand.

'I found someone who wants a lot less than what you're asking' replied the gnarled old Kondori as he spat into a rag and shoved it deep inside the ship's exposed panel, cleaning the inner workings.

'I thought you guys were meant to be honorable,' Jack said, folding his arms, not quite ready to give in just yet. In truth, he'd picked Markle because he looked like a soft target. The old guy was kidding himself if he thought he could win the race without someone younger and more spry to do all the heavy lifting for him. It was a race after all, not a game of chess.

'Yeah,' Markle said, 'this is me honorably telling you that you're sitting this one out, kid. Come back in another forty cycles. By then you might be as old as me!' He laughed at that, carrying on as if Jack weren't there.

Jack sighed and shoved his hands into his coat pockets, wondering if he'd been greedy in his asking price, or perhaps just too naive. Where were those old conman skills? He used to be so sharp, and now here he was, begging for scraps. He caught his reflection in the gleaming hull of a vessel he passed, its own crew busily preparing. Same old face, Jack. It's just the man underneath who isn't the same anymore.



The whole place was buzzing with frenetic energy. Ship after ship lay parked haphazardly, cramped together despite the size of the deck. Dirty mechanics in faded green coveralls darted around, offering their services to anyone and everyone. It reminded him of his Time Agency days. The embarkation deck never slept. There had always been agents preparing to leave, or having just returned from a mission, waiting for the mechs to come over and sort out whatever issues they had. However good you were at taking care of your own ship, the mechs were better. Jack had watched them for hours, and sometimes even days, until he'd learnt every kind of problem a ship could face and how to fix it. He didn't want to have to rely on a mech to bail him out. Fat lot of good it would do him to be fleeing on a hope and a prayer and have his ship conk out halfway home without a mech in sight. Over the years, he'd learned their trade almost as well as his own.

Looking around at them now, he wondered if he should have ditched the idea of racing and just signed on as a mech. Considering the number of ships clustered here, and how high the stakes were, a decent mech could probably name his own price.

He'd come here on a whim. That was how he did most things these days. He'd been hunched over at the bar, trying to remember if he was on hypervodka number five or six, and then debating with himself whether it really mattered. Two fellow drunkards had been going on and on all night about the race, a once in a generation event, sponsored by some obscenely wealthy company with a prize to match. Fifteen million credits to the winner.

That got his attention. Even a small share of the prize pool was more than most could hope to earn in a lifetime. He'd been bored and disillusioned for months, unable to find pleasure in anything. A race sounded just like something he could get his teeth into. He didn't have a ship, but he knew he'd be able to work his way onto a crew. The beginnings of that familiar rush of excitement began to return, tugging him out of his doldrums.

Now old cunning Markle had shafted him. He was wilier than he looked. Jack kicked himself for blowing the deal, his short temper and impetuous nature getting the better of him. He should have done a bit more sniffing around, asked what the going rate was and matched it, or even undercut it to guarantee himself a spot. He considered going back to try and renegotiate, but the risk of coming across as desperate was more than his pride could suffer.

Overhead, he could hear the growing roar of spectators, waiting for the race to get under way. Even though the race itself wouldn't commence for a few hours yet, they'd all be jostling for good seats. It was worth the wait to ensure full frontal views of the telescreens that would transmit every heart-stopping moment. Vendors would be busy selling food and merchandise, programs detailing the contestant's profiles, and holo-banners that could be set to cheer for whichever team you wanted.

He didn't feel like joining the masses. He'd never been a good spectator. His place was right there in the thick of the action. Perhaps he'd just return to the bar and drink himself into an oblivious stupor, forgetting all about it. There was always another bar in another part of the universe ready and willing to welcome him inside.

A cry came out of nowhere. 'Stupid thing! Curse all the goddesses and their daughters!'

Jack placed a hand on the side of the small vessel to balance himself and leaned over, trying to find the source of the colourful swearing. Wedged underneath, he caught a glimpse of gold, and the tiny frame of an Artesian working away inside an open panel.

'Swearing at it won't help,' he said, unable to resist.

The diminutive figure rolled out from underneath and Jack got his first proper look at her. She'd be lucky if she was four foot six, even in those chunky work boots. Her skin was shimmering gold, and not actually skin at all, but rather thousands upon thousands of tiny scales, each one that picked up the light when they moved. Her ears, triangular like a cats, poked up through a shock of short black hair. Her hands, which were of the same shape, three triangular nubs, rather than fully formed fingers, were covered in black grease, as was her jumpsuit, a deep purple now marked with black. She was young, Jack thought; younger than even the most junior apprentice mech running after his master.

She scowled at Jack towering over her. 'It's my ship. I can curse at it if I like.'

'Your ship?' She hardly looked old enough to fly one, let alone own one.

'Okay, fine, it's my brother's, but he doesn't need it, and I'm the one that always has to fix it anyway.'

'How's that working out for you?' Jack asked.

'Look, I didn't pick it out. It's not my fault if I can't get my hands wrapped around the smaller parts. Some idiot stole my toolkit so I've gotta do it manually.'

Jack sympathised. A good toolkit was worth a lot of credits to the right person, and her hands, small as they were, were going to have a hell of a time trying to sort out the more intricate inner workings.

'What's your name?' he asked.

She swept part of her shaggy black fringe back behind her ear, leaving a little grease mark on her forehead. 'Lucy.'

'I'm Jack. Nice to meet you, Lucy.'

'I doubt it,' she replied.

Jack looked around. 'Rest of your crew around here somewhere?'

'You're looking at them,' she replied. 'Besides, I don't need anyone else.'

'Not too many other racers going it solo.'

'I'll be just fine. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get this fixed,' she said, businesslike and abrupt. 'If I don't, this ship won't be going anywhere.'

'Don't waste your time!' came a yell from behind Jack. He turned to see a rather more surly looking Artesian in heavy black leathers. He had piercings and chains running from ear to nose and back again, and a thick black tattoo that snaked across the back of his hand, disappearing up the sleeve of his jacket. 'He ain't worth it! Go back home to your worthless little job!' He didn't hang around, laughing and walking off, leaving Lucy bristling with anger.

Jack frowned. 'Who's he?' he asked, thumbing over his shoulder.

'Emin Drax.'

'Who?'

Lucy rolled her eyes at him. 'Only the most famous space racer this side of Delta Six. How have you not heard of him?'

He shrugged off the insult. 'Been out of the game for a while. Not my usual neighbourhood, either.' Jack watched Drax saunter off, a swagger in his step as he stopped to sign autographs for some attractive young fans. He then saw the expression on Lucy's face, not one of admiration or even awe. It was plainly hatred. 'Not a fan, I'm guessing?'

'He's an arse. Who cares how good a flyer he is? Just because we're the same species doesn't mean I have to like him.'

'So, let me see if I've got all of this right,' Jack said. 'You've got a ship that won't make it past the first checkpoint without mechanical repairs, no fellow crew members to help you out, a bitter rivalry with an opponent that will come to nought if you don't get your ship in working order, and you haven't got two credits to rub together, which is why you haven't just paid one of the pit mechs to sort you out. Did I miss anything?' he asked, folding his arms and leaning casually against the craft.

She scowled at him. 'You missed the part where I don't waste any more time talking to you.'

Jack gave her a sly smile, a plan already formulating in his mind. 'What's say I help you out? Believe it or not, there's not much I can't fix.'

'You?'

'Ex Time Agent,' he replied, puffing out his chest a little further.

'Never heard of them.'

'Doesn't matter,' he said, quickly cutting off further disappointment at the lack of recognition. Once upon a time, being a Time Agent was like being a rock star. So much for reliving his glory days. 'I help you and you help me. I want in on the race and you need someone with opposable thumbs.' He twiddled his long fingers in her face. Being human wasn't always a disadvantage. 'Equal split of the winnings,' he offered.

'Equal? No way. Thirty percent.'

'Fifty-fifty or I walk away right now.'

'Sixty-forty.'

'Fifty,' Jack insisted

'Forty percent. Take it or leave it.'

Jack clenched his jaw. 'Fine. Deal.' He knew his own abilities and he knew winning the race was still a long shot, but not outside of the realms of possibility. If they did win, he could always resume haggling over the profit split.

Lucy grinned, throwing out a hand to shake. 'Deal,' she said, obviously feeling she had the upper hand. 'Welcome aboard, partner. Now, first thing's first. Get your hand in there and fix the sensor for the accelerometer or we'll go crashing into something at near warp speed.'

'Whatever you say, boss,' Jack said, grinning. He shrugged off his coat, hanging it over the aileron, before sliding himself under the belly of the ship. He compared its size to some of the behemoths he'd passed on his wanderings. It had capacity for four at most, but a small craft had the advantage of speed and agility. With a bit of fine tuning along the way, they could have it running circles around the bigger vessels.

He reached in, fingers wrapping around the tight bolt to try to lever it. Even with his more dexterous hands it was tricky work. What he really needed was to unscrew the whole sensor panel to get a proper look inside.

For just a second a memory of fingers more slender than his own entered his mind. Long supple fingers that always looked like they'd never done a day's work in their life. They'd done more than their share, but they'd always been better at lovemaking. He shook the thought away. All in the past now, Jack.

'It's no use,' Jack said. 'I'm gonna need something to loosen it. Wait here. I'm sure there's a mech around here willing to sell off a few old tools. Got any credits I can use?'

'What do you think?' she replied.

'Fine,' he said, narrowing his eyes at his new partner, 'but it's coming out of your share.'

'Whatever. You go get what we need and I'll make sure you're registered.'

---

Jack wended his way through the crowds of people, fellow racers doing final checks on their ships, harried mechs running from one place to another, sleazy product reps looking to slap their stickers on the side of racer's ships, and even a smattering of journalists, looking for a story before the race had even got underway. After all, who didn't love a good underdog tale? He spotted a gaggle of tired looking mechs huddled by a small refreshment car. Tired and overworked, Jack knew they made easy targets for getting a good deal. He was so focused on picking the right one, he didn't even spot the woman who'd been watching him for the past five minutes. As soon as he was within earshot though, she called out to him.

'Hello there, stranger,' she said, leaning casually against the wall, arms folded. 'Long time no see.'

Jack did a double take, soaking in the elegant blonde with hazel eyes. She was dressed in a deep blue overcoat. Underneath, lighter blue short-cropped pants poked out, revealing slender legs that disappeared into brown boots and blue socks.

'Captain Jack Harkness at your service,' he said, giving her a trademark grin. He paused. 'Wait, have we met before?'

She smirked. 'Only once or twice.'

'Sorry,' he apologised. 'I meet a lot of pretty ladies. I wish I could say I remember them all.'

She gave him a knowing smile. 'The way I remember it, you never had a problem remembering the boys, either. Though I s'pose it's hard when they change the rules on you.'

Jack chuckled nervously. 'Okay, you're gonna have to help me out here.'

'Really? You'd think a former Time Agent would be better at this.'

'You're gonna have to give me more than that. My Time Agency days were a very long time ago. But perhaps we could get reacquainted somewhere else?'

She shook her head. 'You never change, do you?'

'Most people would say that's one of my best features. Come on, then. Give me a name.'

She leaned back, grinning. 'Doctor,' she said. 'Amazing how people forget you as soon as you're not standing right next to a blue police box.' She smirked as the charming smile dropped from Jack's face.

'No. But... just... no.' His face scrunched up in disbelief. 'You're a woman!'

She rolled her eyes. 'Well spotted, Jack.'

'Seriously? It's really you?'

'Really me. TARDIS and all. What's a little facelift between friends?'

Jack's grin returned, stretching from ear to ear before he threw himself forward and wrapped the Doctor in a Jack-sized hug.

'Yeah, still not big on the hugging part,' she warned him.

'Still not big on the caring part,' he replied, squeezing harder, before finally pulling away, out of breath. 'Oh, you have no idea the things going on inside my head right now.'

'Unfortunately, I really do,' she replied.

'I, uh, like the coat,' Jack said, admiring the long dark blue wool with its double-breasted buttons and belt. 'Copying someone else's style?' he asked.

'Oh, this?' she said, giving him a twirl. 'Came with the face. Besides, what would I be without a coat?'

Jack could hardly contain his excitement at a familiar face after being so long on his own. 'So, what are you doing here?'

She shrugged. 'Always liked watching fast cars go around. Supposed to be a once in a generation event, so they say. Big old bucket list just never gets any shorter. What about you?'

'Right in on the action, Doc.'

'As if there were any doubt,' she replied.

He pointed off into the distance. 'See that one over there? Little bronze beauty. She could do with a bit of TLC from yours truly, but apart from that.'

'Not your usual style,' she quipped. Jack was always all things big, bold and brash.

'Hey, it's not about the size, it's how you use it. Besides, she's not actually mine. Got myself a partner. Gotta get her shipshape, first. Think you could give us a hand with that sonic screwdriver of yours? Turn our duo into a trio?'

She furrowed her brow at him. 'Isn't that cheating?'

He grinned back. 'It's only cheating if you get caught. Come on.'

Unable to resist, her curiosity intensely piqued, she followed after him, just as Jack knew she would.

---

Lucy frowned when she saw Jack returning, an attractive blonde woman in tow. Trust her to partner up with some ladies' man. She also noticed than he'd returned empty-handed.

'You were supposed to be getting us tools,' she said, furious that she'd been foolish enough to agree to taking him on as a partner.

'I did one better,' Jack replied. 'I brought a friend.'

'I can see that,' she seethed.

'Lucy, this is the Doctor. And our ticket to first place across the finishing line.'

Lucy felt less than impressed. 'Unless she knows her way around a Flux drive, the pair of you can just go. I don't need to be mucked around.'

The Doctor slipped a slim looking device from the inner pocket of her coat. 'Do you mind if I?'

Lucy stepped across her path. 'You wanna mess with my ship?'

'No, I want to fix it.'

'Trust her,' Jack implored. 'She's an old friend of mine. Wow.' He chuckled. 'That still feels weird saying that.'

The Doctor slipped under the craft, and with a few bursts of violet blue light emanating from the top of the device in her hand, she was done. 'Tuned like a fine piano, now,' she reported. 'Can't have you randomly crashing into stuff. So, are we ready to go?'

'We?' Lucy said, eyebrows raised high.

'Oh,' Jack said. 'I might have convinced the Doctor to come along with us. You could always use a spare pair of hands, couldn't you?'

Lucy set her hands on her hips. 'Rules strictly forbid more than three crewmembers aboard any vessel.'

'Well, then it's lucky there's only three of us,' Jack replied.

'If you exclude Jack's ego,' the Doctor quipped.

'Hey!'

'You're a doctor?' Lucy asked. 'Doctor who?'

The Doctor gave her an amused smile. What was so funny? Lucy wondered. Why was that such a strange question to ask?

'Just the Doctor,' she replied.

She scrutinised the pair of them, both standing there looking rather eager. 'About the prize money,' Lucy began.

'Don't worry. I'm not interested,' the Doctor replied.

'Speak for yourself,' Jack muttered. 'I've had to bargain down from a fifty-fifty split to a sixty-forty.'

'It's my ship,' Lucy countered. 'It should be seventy-thirty, so be grateful.'

'It's a cute little ship,' the Doctor said, running a hand over the dappled bronze and gunmetal surface.

'It's bigger on the inside,' Lucy replied, not wanting her vessel insulted for its overall stature. People had been picking on her for years about her own, but she'd show them.

The Doctor smiled at her again. 'Aren't the small ones always?'

'Can we go now?' Jack asked. Lucy could see him eyeing off the ship, as if he were itching to get inside to see what else he could tinker with. There was something contagious about his enthusiasm that gave Lucy a new found confidence about their chances of winning.

Lucy sighed. 'We probably do need to start making our way to the starting grid. There's a bunch of preflight checks still to be done. And I'm going to have to show you how to fly her, assuming I let you at all. '

'Trust me, I know my way around a ship,' Jack said.

Lucy slammed a palm against the release button, letting the back cargo door drop with a gentle hiss. She paused and turned to face her now two racing companions. 'You two aren't some kind of couple, are you?' Lucy asked. 'Only the last thing I want on board is a pair of bickering exes.'

The Doctor pointed innocently between the pair of them. 'Who, us?'

'We never bicker,' Jack replied.

'And we're definitely, definitely, not a couple.' The Doctor glared across at Jack who merely gave her a flirtatious twitch of his eyebrows.

'Uh huh,' Lucy said slowly. 'I think I'll reserve my right to throw either of you out of the airlock.' She gave them one last uncertain glance before stepping inside.

Jack grinned, grabbing his coat. 'Age before beauty, Doc,' he said, gesturing her inside. 'Bet you've missed this.'

'I think I'll reserve my judgement as well.'

---

Lucy led them from the small cargo hold through to the main flight deck. As promised, the inside was spacious enough that they wouldn't need to sit in each other's laps. There were the two seats positioned in front of the main console and a third that sat just behind the co-pilot's seat. A fourth more rudimentary bucket seat could be pulled down from the wall on the right-hand side if needed. She'd always considered the ship more than ample for their needs.

'Nice digs,' Jack said. 'She's bigger on the inside,' he added, looking at the Doctor and laughing.

Lucy frowned. Why was everything so amusing? It was as if there was some kind of joke she wasn't privy to.

'Now can you show me which systems haven't been fully optimised, yet?' Jack asked. 'I can't guarantee I can have them up and running before we go, but give me twenty-four hours and I can have this baby humming.'

Lucy looked towards the woman who called herself the Doctor, wondering if she might not be the better ally of the two, both of them being female. 'Is he always like this? Kinda bossy and full of himself?'

'Only most of the time,' the Doctor replied.

Lucy wiped her blackened hands down the thighs of her coveralls before realising the Doctor was watching her, feeling embarrassed by the rather crude motion.

'You're very young to be attempting something like this,' the Doctor mused. 'I've heard it's quite demanding.'

'Nothing I can't handle, I'm sure,' Lucy replied, confident and assured. She didn't necessarily need the Doctor's approval, but with the slightest inclination of her head she seemed to have given it.

'Still,' the Doctor said, folding her arms. 'How did you come by a ship like this?'

Lucy strolled over to the main console, flicking switches and lighting up the heads-up display. 'Like I told, Jack. It was my brother's, but I took it. He wasn't using it.'

'Determined to go off and have a few adventures of your own?'

'Something like that. Not that you'd probably understand.'

The Doctor came across and stood in front of the flight console. Through the curved windscreen she watched the hive of activity going on outside. 'Actually, I do. When I was younger I stole a ship and took off for the stars. I wasn't really keen on taking on the responsibility that was expected of me, either.'

Lucy huffed. 'I have responsibilities. That's why I'm here. Did they ever catch up with you, the people you stole the ship from?'

'Nope.' The Doctor grinned. 'I took off and never looked back.' She frowned. 'Speaking of,' she said, leaning back to glimpse Jack. He was already pulling a panel out from under the console, engrossed in the control boards, sandwiched together like a dozen layers of pastry. 'Jack, where's your ship?'

He craned his head to look up at them. 'Don't have one.'

The Doctor raised her eyebrows. 'Really? I didn't realise you were that hard up for money.'

'It's not the money. I just don't like being tethered down. This way I can hitch a ride whenever I want. I'm a free agent.'

'You have changed. Last time we traveled together you couldn't wait to get back to Earth.'

'Times change,' he replied. 'So do planets.' He leant back and began pulling out the power boards one by one, examining them in detail.

Lucy watched the curious exchange. There was an awkwardness to it, like they were two friends who'd last parted on bad terms or left something unresolved. Should that worry her?

The Doctor turned to Lucy. 'So, what do we need to do before we get underway?'

She dismissed the mystery of her two new companions for the time being. There were other more pressing issues. 'I've got a sticky bucket reverser if you think your magic torch can do anything to sort that out.'

'So long as it's not made of wood, then lead the way.'

---

Lucy hated to admit it, but by the time they were idling towards the starting grid, she felt a lot better about the state the ship was in. She realised she hadn't known quite so much about its finer workings as she'd thought, not that it mattered once the Doctor took control of matters. There wasn't much she couldn't fix and Lucy quickly warmed to her easy-going nature. Even Jack wasn't so bad; a bit of a flirt and an ego to match, but he seemed well-meaning. She'd still keep an eye on them, though. If they meant to double-cross her, she'd have something to say about it. She'd be damned if she brought more shame to her family.

She twiddled the small chip in her hands containing the mapping data that would help them navigate their way to the first checkpoint, before puffing out a breath and inserting it. She cast a glance across the field of spacecraft, all waiting in their allotted grids. Off to the starboard side, she caught the silver glint of Drax's much larger cruiser. She might have had a better handicap than he did at the start of the race, but there was no doubt in her mind that he'd quickly be at the front of the pack. He was flying solo, just as she'd been intended on doing, only he was probably doing it alone because everyone else was too scared to fly with him.

'Forget that jerk,' Jack said, following her line of sight. 'What's he got that we don't?'

'Uh, maybe a ship that's better, and about a million hours of flight experience?'

'Well, you know what they say,' the Doctor said. 'The bigger they are...'

'The more fun it is to kick their arses,' Jack finished.



A roar went up amongst the crowd and Lucy felt a nervous tugging in the pit of her stomach. The race was about to begin and a deafening tannoy began making announcements.

"A reminder of the rules for contestants. You will be required to navigate the course that has been established. A copy of this should have been downloaded to your respective vessel's computer systems for the journey to checkpoint one. There will be seven checkpoints along the course, at which you will be required to dock or land as is appropriate, retrieve a flag which has been left there for your team, and return to the holodeck to be registered as having successfully retrieved it. Points will be deducted for any team that scans an incorrect flag or that has the flag scanned by any person other than one designated as part of your team."

'Oh, no,' Lucy said. 'I didn't get a chance to log you, Doctor. That means only Jack or I can register our flags.'

'It's fine.' Jack reached across and put a reassuring hand on Lucy's shoulder. 'We can manage it between us.'

'No offence, Jack, but you're even older than her.'

'Me?' Jack sputtered. 'But-'

'He's more spritely than he looks,' the Doctor said, putting a hand on Jack's arm before he could get a proper head full of steam. He grunted his disapproval at the inference.

The announcements continued. "The course has been specifically designed to test all of your abilities, however we remind contestants that whilst your success is desired, it is not guaranteed. Failure to capture and log any flag will result in automatic disqualification. Collusion between any two contestants will result in disqualification. Failure to navigate accurately to any checkpoint will result in disqualification. Death of all of a contestant's crew will result in disqualification."

'Sheesh,' Jack muttered. 'Is there anything that won't get you disqualified?'

"Contestants are asked to please prepare their vessels. The race will commence in sixty seconds."

Overhead, an enormous timer lit up for racers and crowd alike to see. Lucy flipped switches for the three thruster engines and gripped the steering column hard, her eyes flicking constantly between the clock and the field of racers in front of her on the grid.

'Here we go,' Jack said, as the clock dropped to single digits. He cast a glance back at the Doctor, her eyes glinting with excitement.

As soon as the clock hit zero, Lucy pushed the column forward, jolting the ship forward as fast as it would go. It was a bold move, with every other ship clamoring for pole position, or just to escape the crush from the starting grid. The Doctor hooted with delight and Jack laughed out loud as several slower, heavier craft drifted behind them, the sky growing darker as they exited the atmosphere and headed out into the depths of space. There were still a good many ships that zipped past their own, the most noticeable being the enormous silver spear of Emin Drax, but they held firm. At least they weren't trailing the entire pack.

'It's only a short distance to the first checkpoint,' Lucy said, studying the star map. 'They're all going to get there before we do.' She watched the flock of ships out in front speed further and further ahead.

'It's only the beginning of the race,' Jack reminded her. 'We'll make up that small amount of time. I'm still optimising a couple of the power units. Once those are back online, we'll cruise past some of those old clunkers.'

'What do you suppose they meant when they said they'll be testing all of our abilities?' the Doctor asked, slipping into Jack's seat next to Lucy as he vacated to finish working on a panel at the back of the main flight deck.

Lucy shrugged. 'It's a race, so I imagine they'll just make the course difficult to fly.'

The Doctor leaned forward, studying the map for herself. 'Looks like a small uninhabited planet. Barely more than a bit of space debris. Not even an asteroid field in its wake to navigate. That's disappointing. What's a great race without a little heart-pumping action along the way?'

'Yo, Lucy Goosey,' Jack called out, 'you wanna try opening up that fifth gear now?'

'Don't call me that!' she growled. 'And this thing doesn't have a fifth gear.'

Jack came over to stand behind her seat, chuckling. 'Oh, she does now. Go ahead and try it out.'

She flipped two more switches and eased the column further forward. The ship surged with newfound energy, quickly overtaking a handful of other contestants. 'Awesome!'

He gave a wink and a smile. 'That's me.' They passed Markle's hulking green Mach Two Star Jumper with ease. 'Ha!' Jack waved as they flew by, leaning on the comms button to hail the vessel. 'Be waiting for you at the finishing line, old man!' Markle replied with a rude Kondori hand gesture.

The Doctor jostled Jack out of the way and poked her tongue out at the passing ship in the most childish manner before it was out of sight. She caught the odd expression on Jack's face. 'What?'

Jack poked out his tongue in a poor imitation of her own efforts. 'That's the best you could do?'

'He was being rude. On Gallifrey, that would have been really offensive.'

Jack rolled his eyes. 'You Time Lords need to get out more.'

'We're less than two minutes from the first checkpoint,' Lucy reported. 'We should be ready to leave straight away, grab the flag, get it scanned and go,' she added, trying to keep them focused on what was important.

The Doctor threw off her blue coat, revealing an equally long sleeveless grey one hidden underneath, along with a striped top. Masculine braces held everything else in place. 'I am so ready!' she declared.

Lucy gave Jack a quizzical look. 'Is she always this excited?'

He grinned back. 'Different face, same Doctor.'

---

As Lucy navigated the ship through the thin atmosphere, it was quickly apparent where they needed to head once they'd landed. The only landmark in sight was a large protrusion of dusty red rock surrounded by barren wasteland. At its very base was a narrow opening.

As they stepped off the ship, Lucy pulled a face. 'There's a dozen ships still here,' she said, noting several from the front of the pack, now clustered together like the place had become a car park. 'Why haven't they already grabbed their flags and moved on?'

'Maybe it's a little trickier to find than we thought,' the Doctor said. 'That would lend itself to making this race a proper challenge.'

'Well, let's stop standing around here talking and go. We could make up some time.' Lucy rushed toward the cave entrance, leaving Jack and the Doctor to follow in her wake.



The cavern was dark compared to the exterior of the planet, but it didn't take long for her eyes to adjust to the lower levels of light. She paced about fifty metres down the narrow passage before the cavern suddenly opened up into a much larger space. Seeing the flag perched on a pedestal in the middle of the cavern, Lucy despaired.

The sound of footsteps from her two teammates came to a halt as they took in the sight for themselves.

'Who said they wanted this race to be a proper challenge?' Jack asked.

'Well,' the Doctor began, taking in the view, 'it does make more sense.'

The pedestal itself was only about ten metres away, but between it and them lay nothing but an inky blackness and a single thick rope strung from one side the other.

Lucy swallowed hard. 'I think we know where the pilots of those other vessels ended up.' She could picture them trying to climb across, hand over hand, or perhaps with legs crossed over the rope as well. One slip though and they'd fall straight to their deaths.

'Some of those ships would have had a full complement of three crew,' the Doctor said. 'Would they really be so mad as to all try, having watched one of their own die in the attempt?'

Jack leaned tentatively over the edge, taking a closer look. 'Fifteen million credits. You'd be amazed what some people will do.'

She raised an eyebrow at him. 'And us?'

'You're not usually one to be squeamish,' Jack said. 'Or afraid.'

'There's adventurous, and then there's just plain mad,' the Doctor replied.

'It's only the first flag,' Lucy said, remembering there would be six more after this one. 'It could just be a way to weed out weak contestants from genuine contenders.' She couldn't imagine anything could be harder than this.

'I once dated a tightrope dancer,' Jack said. 'Now she was talented. Little did everyone know she actually had six toes on each foot. Believe it or not, that extra toe made all the difference. Oh, and the other things those toes could do...' He looked faraway and dreamy for a moment before the Doctor clipped him around the ears.

'Ow!' Jack cried, flinching. 'What are you, my mum?'

'The things I'll refrain from saying about your mother.' The Doctor left the rest of the sentence hang, unfinished. 'Now, the question is, which of us is actually going to go out there and get it? That's got to be a three hundred foot drop at least.'

Jack picked up loose stone and tossed it over the edge, counting off the seconds until he heard it hit the bottom. When there was no sound, the three of them exchanged grim looks.

'Okay, so maybe it's a little bit deeper than that,' the Doctor said.

'Not that it really makes a difference,' Jack replied. 'Three hundred, five hundred, infinity… Any which way you look at it, a drop that far is gonna kill you.'

'We could draw straws,' Lucy offered. As much as she'd been willing to race on her own, having two other teammates who might be less terrified of heights than her was definitely a bonus. After all, they'd chosen to come along. Wasn't it only fair?

'We don't need to draw straws,' Jack said. 'I'll go. Our short courtship wasn't a complete waste. I did pick up a few pointers.' Jack shucked off his coat and tossed it at Lucy. 'Hold this,' he said. 'Don't lose it. Only one planet in the universe where you can get a coat like that, and I don't plan on going back there for a long time.'

A sudden wave of guilt gripped Lucy. Where it had come from she couldn't say. 'No, I should go. It is my ship after all.'

The Doctor rested a hand on her shoulder. 'Let him go.'

Jack tugged off one boot, and then the other. 'Don't worry about me, kiddo. I always land on my feet.' Looking into the endless black again, Lucy didn't feel anywhere near as confident.

Jack placed a foot on the thick rope, testing the feel of it.

'Are you sure that's wise, Jack?' the Doctor asked.

'Why not?'

'You seriously intend on just walking across? Most people would crawl along underneath it, hand over hand, not pretend to be some clown in a circus.'

'Yeah, and most of them are now pushing up daisies,' Jack replied. 'Relax, I've got this.'

He placed his other foot out in front of him, taking his first step out over the pit. The second and third careful steps put him out of reach of the ledge and his companions, and now that he was further out, his weight began to cause the rope to sway.

Jack wobbled for a moment, throwing his arms out wide to counterbalance, somehow remaining upright. Lucy let out a small involuntary squeal, partly in fright, and partly from the sudden pain of the Doctor's hand gripping her arm as they both watched on in horror. He looked back at them and gave them a winning smile. 'Had you worried there for a second, didn't I?'

The Doctor let out a vexed breath. 'Might I remind you that the saying goes "pride comes before a fall"?'

Jack didn't reply to the quip, focusing all his attention on the feel of the rope under his feet.

Lucy could see the intense concentration in Jack's body language as he moved down the rope. It was obvious from the tensing of his back and the angle of his foot, balancing his weight in all the right places, trying to reduce the natural movement of the rope underneath. With each measured step, he moved closer to the pedestal and further from the unstable centre of the rope, before finally placing his foot once again on solid ground. He let out a little breath of relief, before turning back and waving at his team.

From the pedestal, he selected their flag, a bright scarlet colour. Dozens more in every hue remained unclaimed. He tucked the silver spoke into the back of his braces, and prepared for the return trip. Emboldened by his success, he stepped back out into the void.

'Be careful, Jack,' Lucy warned.

'I'm always careful. Used to have a boyfriend that nagged me like that. "Don't rush. You always rush and make a mess of things," he'd say.'

He was just feet away from the edge. It was the moment's distraction he didn't need as his foot slipped too far, sending him sideways.

'Jack!' The Doctor screamed, as she watched him topple.

Somehow he managed to grab the rope one-handed as he fell, hanging and swinging wildly over the void. He tried to reach up with his other arm to grab it, but his fingers slipped with each attempt, the rope too thick for his desperate fingertips.

Lucy couldn't explain what made her do it, but she was clambering out onto the edge of the rope, legs crossed tightly. She pulled herself along until she was just a foot from Jack, finally letting go, hanging only by her legs.

'Grab my hand,' she said, reaching out, upside down.

Jack stretched, his hand finding her golden one, gripping it tightly around the wrist. With her spare hand, she grabbed hold of the rope. Heaving with a strength she didn't know she had, Lucy pulled upwards and Jack chose his moment to let go of her wrist, regaining a hold on the rope with both hands, before pulling himself up and criss-crossing his legs over it, the same way Lucy had.

With a speed that surprised her, she was quickly crawling back to the ledge, the Doctor waiting there to help her up. Jack followed shortly after, gratefully accepting the offered hand.

Jack smiled at her. 'Thanks for saving my bacon.'

'Please just tell me you didn't lose the flag,' Lucy replied, getting her breath back. She couldn't bear their entire ordeal to have been a waste.

'There we go.' Jack slipped it out from behind his back, handing Lucy the plain red flag. 'Nothing to it,' he said, brushing off the near death experience as he pulled his boots back on. 'A few more pickups like this one and we'll be home free.'

The Doctor whacked him hard.

'Ow! Would you stop hitting me like that?'

'Would you stop being such an idiot, then?' There was an annoyed expression on her face. 'Tightrope walking, honestly!'

'Hey, it wasn't my fault I nearly fell.'

The Doctor set her hands on her slim hips. 'Oh, then whose was it, then? Honestly, I don't remember you being this cavalier with your life.'

'And I don't remember you caring about it all that much,' he retorted, sweeping past her, grabbing his coat from Lucy and slipping it back on as he continued to walk away.

Lucy watched as first Jack, then the Doctor, both disappeared back down the passageway, leaving her behind.



'Woah, woah, woah.' The Doctor jogged to catch up with Jack's long strides. 'Where did that come from?'

Jack turned to face her, sudden anger ebbing away just as quickly as it had appeared. He'd resolved long ago that he didn't want the answer to the one question that mattered more than any. Knowing wouldn't change anything. It couldn't bring back what he'd lost. 'Sorry,' he said. 'Just forget it. Adrenaline kicking in, that's all.' He added a chuckle. 'Come on, I'll let you tackle the next death defying challenge.'

'Can't wait,' she replied, rolling her eyes and following him out of the cave.



Jack paused at the entrance to the ship, turning and looking at the Doctor. 'Where's our trusty pilot?'

'She's here,' Lucy grumbled, stalking behind them. 'We still have to log this, in case you'd forgotten.' She jogged across to a set of short steps and stood on top of the white platform, letting the holodeck scan her and her flag. A brief moment later the flag faded from her hands and left her gripping a small chip – coordinates for their next leg.

'Okay, now we can go,' she said, but as she stepped up the ramp into the ship, she twirled to face her two teammates. 'I'm not saying I'm not grateful for you retrieving that flag, Jack, but if you two can't get it together, I'm leaving you both here. I'm not stupid. I can tell this isn't just two old friends catching up. This is a race and I intend to win it. If you're going to get in the way, I don't want either of you here.'

'You're absolutely right,' the Doctor said, sounding genuinely contrite. 'If this was stage one, then it's fair to say that the rest won't be easy either. If we're going to win this, we have to work together.'

'Agreed,' Jack said. 'Perhaps that was a little egotistical and cocky, even for me.'

Lucy gave him the eye. 'You think?'

He sighed. 'Look, I can't in good conscience leave you to tackle this on your own. This clearly isn't just some ordinary space race. I talked you into partnering with me, so we're in this together. All three of us. But if things get too dangerous, don't think I won't hesitate to take you straight back home.'

Lucy narrowed her eyes at both of them. They'd have to tie her up before she gave in that easily. 'Well, come on then. We'll still be in last place at this rate.'

---

They boarded quickly and Lucy handed Jack the chip to plug into their ship's computer, loading up the next set of coordinates. 'Huh,' he said, 'not even so much as a "congratulations for not dying".'

The Doctor leaned over his shoulder. 'So, where are we headed?'

Jack zoomed in on the map and peered closely. 'Looks like a way-station or a space port of some kind. It's not coming up on the normal star maps. Must have been decommissioned.'

'And repurposed for today's events,' the Doctor added.

'What do you suppose we'll find when we get there?' Lucy asked, setting course before pressing the ship forward.

'I don't know,' the Doctor replied, 'but I'll bet anything it won't be friendly.'

'Look!' Lucy pointed as they cruised as fast as their little ship could manage. 'There's one of the other racers.' She wondered how many more of them had managed to snare the first flag.

'I remember that ship,' Jack said. 'Duo of Argantuas.' He laughed to himself. 'With six arms each they'd have made short work of the first checkpoint. They were probably the first ones out.'

She watched as it sailed past them. 'They're going the wrong way.'

'Either that, or they've got coordinates for the next checkpoint,' Jack replied. 'That makes them way ahead of us.'

'Or,' the Doctor suggested, her face a mask of concern, 'whatever is out there is so bad that they've turned tail.'

Jack leant back in his seat to look at her. 'Aren't you just a bundle of cheer?'

She shrugged unapologetically. 'It came with the face.'



They settled into their seats, Jack keeping an eye on their navigation maps whilst Lucy took control of flying.

'So, Doc,' Jack began, filling the silence. 'I can't help but notice you're on your own. That's not like you.'

She frowned, staring off into the starry blackness in front of them. 'I just felt like doing things on my own for a while.'

In truth, she was tired of losing companions. Each time she vowed she'd never do it again, and then she'd get sucked straight back into the same trap, taking them out, showing them the wonders of the universe, and then taking the adventure too far. Rose, Donna, Amy and Rory, Clara, Bill... Wasn't that why she'd come here? Just to be a spectator to someone else's adventure and nothing more? Then five minutes later, she'd fallen back into old habits, tagging along with Jack for yet another roller-coaster ride. She couldn't stop herself. By rights she shouldn't even exist. Fourteenth regeneration and still more left in the tank if her estimations were right.

'Yeah,' Jack agreed. 'It's fun for a while, but then you get lonely. Gotta find someone else because it's no longer fun anymore.'

She grinned morbidly at the thought. Well, Jack would know. He was probably the only one who could know. Both of them, stuck here, living far longer than anyone else they knew. Perhaps they should hang out more, drive each other mad like an old married couple. At least she'd never have to say goodbye to Jack.

'What about you, Lucy?' the Doctor said, trying to change the subject. 'Do you have friends back home cheering you on? You're a long way from any Artesian colony I know.'

'Just me and my brother,' she replied.

'He let you race?'

'He doesn't know.'

'Won't he be pissed when he finds out?' Jack asked. 'I mean, if you were my little sister...'

'He'll forgive me.' She was interrupted from saying more as a proximity alarm began to sound.

'There,' the Doctor pointed through the right hand windscreen, indicating the rusted out way-station.

'I hope the docking seals still work,' Jack muttered, setting the docking controls as Lucy maneuvered the ship sideways against one of dozens of ports. There was a clunk and a hiss, confirming a firm seal between the ship and the station.

'We're good to go.' Lucy depressurised the airlock, watching the indicator lights turn green.

There was another click as both she and the Doctor turned to find Jack holding a gun, arming it by sliding back the safety.

The Doctor cringed. 'Still with the guns?'

'You said it yourself. Who knows what's in there? After the last stop, I'm not taking any chances. This thing must've been abandoned for a reason. What's to say that reason isn't still here?'

---

The interior of the station was little better than the exterior. What had once been gleaming steel was now decayed and rusted. A bare handful of solar-powered lights cast dark shadows across the bending corridor. Lucy imagined that in its heyday, it must have been able to service at least forty ships all at once, providing fuel and supplies, and a place for its crew to rest up and grab a decent meal.

There was a strange feeling about the place as they slowly navigated the labyrinth of passages. The Doctor pulled out her sonic screwdriver, holding it out in front of her like a weapon. Its gentle violet glow lit the way, but did nothing to shed any light on what made the place feel so unsettling.

'You too, huh?' Jack asked. 'This place has creepy written all over it.'

The sound of hurried footsteps raced towards them and Jack raised his gun, readying to fire. Two panicked looking Felthosians came streaming towards them, out of breath and looking like they'd seen a ghost.

'Don't go down there, whatever you do,' one warned them, barely stopping before the pair hurried away.

Lucy caught sight of the pale blue flag clutched in one of the Felthosian's hand as the pair ran back towards the airlock and their ship. 'They were just trying to put us off,' she said. 'They made it out okay.' She kept going, the Doctor following behind and Jack bringing up the rear, gun still raised.



Off to the side of the corridor was a room, its door open and inviting, unlike all the others they'd passed. Inside was a flat square panel on the left-hand wall and a small table with a series of blocks beneath it. Once Jack stepped over the threshold, there was a hiss as the door slid shut behind him, sealing them inside.

Lucy picked up one of the tiles and studied the strange markings on it, before looking up at the wall panel. 'I think we have to put these on the panel in the correct order to unseal the door.'

She spread the tiles across the table, sixteen in all, each the size of her hand. 'I don't recognise these symbols.' She tried twirling them to different angles, but each pattern was symmetrical no matter which way the tile turned.

'Sixteen tiles. Only twenty one trillion combinations possible,' the Doctor commented.

Jack picked up a tile, scrutinising it. 'There must be some kind of correct pattern. I'll bet once you crack it, it releases the flag.'

Lucy looked around the room. For the first time she noticed that there wasn't just one door, but ten of them, each like hours on a clock, encircling the whole room. 'What if different combinations open different doors? This could be just one of many rooms leading to the right one.'

'Ah, the old "room full of doors" trick,' the Doctor said. 'Well, only one thing for it, really.' She picked up a tile and stuck it on the wall panel, followed by another. She picked up a third and hummed. 'You know, I never was any good at sudoku puzzles.'

'Well, let's keep going and see if anything happens,' Lucy suggested. The two of them continued slotting tiles up on the panel until all sixteen were in place.

'There we are,' the Doctor said, standing back and looking pleased. 'It's very... er... patterny.'

From behind them came a gentle hiss as one of the doors very slowly began to slide upward, just a few inches.

'What do you know?' she said. 'Beginner's luck. I had a feeling about this place as soon as I stepped inside, like I'd been here before. Must be that tricksy muscle memory kicking in.'

Jack frowned. As the door began its inexorable ascent, all he could see were two silver objects peering out from under the gap. He reached for the panel and pulled one of the tiles away, watching as the door came to a halt, letting out a breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding.

The Doctor looked disappointed. 'What did you do that for?'

'We're looking for a flag. Whatever that is behind there doesn't look like one.' He remembered the terrified look in the eyes of the racers who'd ran into them in the corridor. If that was theatrics meant to put them off, they were damn good actors. 'I think we need to figure out this puzzle to reveal the correct door. The others might be something unpleasant.'

The Doctor sighed. 'Well, aren't you just a killjoy?'

'You're the one who wanted me to take less risks.' The old Torchwood leader instincts inside him were kicking in. He needed to put the safety of the team ahead of everything else.

She sighed. 'Fine. Let's do it your way.'

They pulled the tiles off the panel and began rearranging them on the table.

'This one is more squiggly, and this one is straighter,' the Doctor said. 'Let's try alternating squiggly and straight.'

They slotted them back into the panel and another door began to slowly slide open, revealing more silver objects. The first door also began to continue lifting, the silver objects looking more and more to Jack's mind like feet and legs.

'Okay, not that, then,' she said. They pulled off the tiles and both doors ceased moving again. 'Most squiggly to least squiggly? Or the other way around?'

They tried both. Two more doors lifted open and the previous two shifted ever upward.

'There's something standing behind those doors,' Lucy said, watching knees come into view.

The Doctor turned and looked at them for a full minute before it dawned on her. 'Oh, Doctor!' she cried, slapping her forehead. 'So many memories, where do you keep them all?'

'What? What is it?' Jack said, a rising panic in his voice.

'Cybermen. Behind those doors. Sarah Jane and I trapped them here years ago. That's why this place felt familiar.'

'Ten doors,' Lucy said, counting them off.

'One flag, one way out and eight Cybermen,' Jack surmised.

'And twenty-one trillion combinations,' Lucy reminded him.

They tried more combinations but each set another door sliding open. 'That's door number eight,' Jack said, pulling the tiles off the panel to stop its ascent, only this time all eight doors continued to slowly rise. 'They're not stopping.'

'But we removed the tiles!' Lucy protested.

'I know!' Jack tried to calm himself. 'They must be in some kind of language, but I've never seen it before.'

The Doctor barked out a laugh, full of mirth. 'And you call yourself a Time Agent.'

'I know plenty of languages,' Jack shot back. 'Not all of us have the luxury of having the TARDIS translate everything for us.'

'It's convenient!'

'Well, it's not very convenient right now!'

'Somebody think of something!' Lucy demanded. She shifted from foot to foot, trying to come up with ideas. 'Maybe we should just keep flipping tiles until we get it right.' She started gathering them all up and setting them down in one pattern after another. As she did, the doors began to speed up their movements. More than half a Cyberman could now be seen standing behind the first door, its metal fists bunched up.

'Stop, stop, stop!' the Doctor cried. 'It's making it go faster!'

'Okay, so random attempts won't work.' Jack brushed a nervous hand through his hair, trying to fathom the solution. 'We have to show we know what we're doing.'

'Which would be great if we did!' Lucy said, exasperated.

Frantically, the Doctor pulled out her sonic screwdriver and scanned the tiles for any kind of clue. 'Argh, why do things always have to be made of wood?'

Jack drew his gun and pointed it around the room whilst Lucy and the Doctor continued to try and figure out the puzzle. His gun would be almost useless against a Cyberman but he had to try and give them more time. It was only as he looked over his shoulder, that he saw Lucy holding the tile in her hand.

'Wait!' Jack spun and grabbed Lucy's wrist.

'What?'

He saw the tile in her hand. Really saw it for the first time. Her finger covered the top half, whilst her thumb covered over the bottom corner leaving just a quarter of the pattern visible. 'I know that,' he said, barely able to contain his surprise. 'That's Galactic Standard for the number eight. It's backwards and upside down, but that's definitely an eight.' He grabbed another tile, using his hand to isolate one corner. 'That's a two.'

'Oh, my goddess, you're right!' Lucy said.

'They're numbers. Inverted and multiplied to look like a pattern.'

They scrambled to switch tiles around, desperately slapping them into place on the four by four panel. Simultaneously all the doors ceased, the highest one revealing all but the head of the Cyberman lurking behind. Jack and the Doctor both pointed their respective weapons at it, waiting for it to duck under the door and come after them. Instead it remained exactly where it was.

'Can it see us?' Jack whispered.

'It may have been set only to activate once the doors are fully opened, but I can't be sure,' the Doctor whispered back.

Both of them spun as another door slid upward. There was no Cyberman hidden behind this door, only their flag, propped on a silver pedestal.

'Wait here.' Jack crept slowly towards it, gun and eyes firmly fixed on the Cyberman just feet away. He leaned forward and reached in, fingers curling around the thin metal rod. Once he did, all nine doors slid back shut, and the door through which they'd entered re-opened.

Lucy heaved out a breath. 'Let's get the hell out of here.'

'No argument from me, but we can't just leave them here.' Jack turned towards the Doctor, his expression serious. 'We both know how dangerous they are.'

'And yet a real Cyberman wouldn't have just stood idly by when there were beings it could kill or convert.' Her brow furrowed, deep in thought. 'Who could have known they were here in the first place?'

Jack pulled a face. Did it matter? 'You're saying we just leave them here? What about the next people who come along? They might not be so lucky.'

The Doctor pulled out her sonic screwdriver and ran it along all four edges of the panel. 'It's connected to the doors somehow. A little tweak here, a bit of sonic disruption there, and voilà. All the doors are now disconnected from the panel.'

Jack looked at her askance. 'Seriously? You couldn't have done that earlier?'

'All the doors,' she clarified. 'Including the one that led us to that flag, and our way out. You didn't really want me locking us in here forever with them, did you?'

'So, none of the racers who come after us are going to be able to win their flag, even if they figure out the puzzle?' Lucy asked. 'Assuming they can get inside at all.'

'Exactly. It's the only way to be sure.'

'So, that means we're officially in last place again,' she said, looking annoyed.

'But, competing in a considerably smaller field,' the Doctor replied, trying to find the silver lining.

'So, let's get this thing scanned and get going,' Jack said. He didn't want to be within a hundred light-years of a Cyberman. 'I'm not hanging around here in case there's more of them just waiting to delete or upgrade someone.' He paced back out the way they came, having spotted the holodeck near the entrance when they'd first entered the way-station. He stepped up onto the platform, setting down the flag in the central console and grabbing the chip as soon as it appeared. Once he stepped down, he held it up between his fingertips.

'You're sure you wanna keep going?' he asked. 'They've tried to kill us twice already.'

'And a dozen more racers have been through exactly the same as us and survived,' Lucy replied. 'We're better than them. They'll slip up eventually. We won't.'

'Doc?' Jack asked, looking across for a third opinion.

'What the lady says,' she replied. 'Who's better than us?'

'Okay.' Jack reluctantly handed over the chip. Being in the middle of a death defying adventure was suddenly a whole lot less appealing than it had been when he'd first arrived at the aeroport, looking for a cheap thrill to quell his lackadaisical mood. Still, they had the Doctor on their side.

The Doctor snatched the chip from his fingers, grinning. 'Oh, cheer up. Now who's the wet blanket?'

---

Lucy took the chip from the Doctor and hurried back to the ship. She slipped the chip into the slot and they watched as the next set of coordinates came up on screen.

'It's a hyperjump to the next checkpoint.' Lucy noted the unusual data. Without hesitation, she activated the drive and the ship leapt through a streak of white in the middle of the blackness of space.

No sooner had they dropped back out of hyperspace than the ship was jolted hard, sending both Jack and the Doctor tumbling to the floor. 'What the hell?' Jack tried to pull himself to his feet, but was knocked to the ground a second time as the ship juddered and shook.

'Something hit us,' Lucy reported, working her way through a series of red warnings flashing across her heads-up display. 'We're okay, I think. Whatever it was just clipped the left tailfin. No other significant damage to report.'

Jack finally got back to his feet, pulling up the Doctor with him. They both came over to the main windows, to try to spot what had hit them.

'Oh, my,' the Doctor said.

'That's a lot of asteroids,' Jack added.

They floated by in their dozens, like lazy cattle meandering across a country lane.

Lucy pulled up a wider navigation map. 'That's our checkpoint there.' She pointed to the tiny spec, an asteroid, surrounded by thousands and thousands more, that swirled around their target like a minefield.

'Exploded planet,' the Doctor said softly, staring out in awe at the debris field. 'It must have been a huge planet to create that much debris.'

'How the hell do we get to that one asteroid without being belted into a thousand pieces ourselves?' Jack asked. 'It's gonna be hard keeping a navigational fix on the thing. Looks just like every other damn asteroid out there.'

'You just need someone who can fly this ship,' Lucy replied. 'The nav comm just says we need to get close to it. It doesn't say anything about landing.' She felt a flutter of nerves. This was no simulator exercise. This was the real deal. 'Strap yourselves in,' she warned them. 'I think it's going to get really bumpy.'

Everyone took their seats, pulling both the lap and shoulder straps tight.

'You sure you're up for this?' Jack asked.

'I've been training for a challenge like this my whole life,' Lucy replied, projecting confidence she wasn't entirely sure she felt. 'You just keep an eye on the right asteroid.'

The Doctor leaned over the console, sonic screwdriver buzzing as she pointed it at the controls. Jack frowned. 'What are you doing?'

'A little navigational help,' she replied. 'Just follow the blue one.' She pointed to the navigation display. A single blue dot now shone brightly amidst a sea of red. 'Easy for you to say,' Jack grumbled. 'It's needle in a haystack stuff, and that's before Goose, here, tries to fly us in between every other piece of rock that wants to wipe us from existence.'

'Hang on, then.' Lucy gunned the engines, swinging wide left then sharp right to avoid the closest of the dangerous obstacles. She ducked and dodged, rocking the ship violently to avoid collision.

Jack gritted his teeth to stop them from slamming together, all the while trying to keep an eye on their target. 'You're going too far left,' he warned, the tiny blue dot drifting to the edge of his display, almost out of sight completely.

'Not much choice,' Lucy replied, banking again at the last second to prevent them from hitting a rock that was hiding behind a much larger one she'd just barely avoided.

The Doctor pointed out to their starboard side. 'There's one of the other racers!' A second later, it was careening straight toward them. 'Oh, hell.'

Lucy pulled back hard on the column, sending them up at almost a ninety degree angle to avoid being hit. An explosion rocked them, but just as amazingly, no serious alarms were wailing at her, proclaiming that they had about three seconds to live. As she recorrected their flight path, putting them back horizontal, all that remained below them was a field of floating bits of crushed metal and rock.

'Correction, that was one of the other racers,' the Doctor said, frowning deeply.

'They practically went sideways into that thing,' Jack replied, surveying the carnage. 'I have no idea how they managed that. That shouldn't have happened even if they'd lost steering controls.'

Lucy scowled at the view in front of her. 'I do.' A long silver cruiser was just a few hundred feet in front of them. Drax.

'I thought he must've been way out in front,' Jack said.

'Yeah, but he's such a blockhead he probably spent ages at that last checkpoint trying to figure it out. That ship collision was no accident.' As if she needed more reasons to hate him.

'A big ship like that is going to have a hard time negotiating a way through an asteroid field like this,' the Doctor said. 'He's at a natural disadvantage.'

Lucy seethed. 'All the more reason to start using his bulk to knock a few competitors off course.' She watched the silver dart clumsily skirt around several asteroids. It irked her that Drax made it look so easy. It was high time for them to level the playing field. She pressed them forward with more speed, determined to reach their flag before Drax did, taking advantage of their ship's more compact frame to weave in and out of the debris field.

The Doctor gripped her seat for dear life. 'You want to slow down a bit?'

'No, I don't,' Lucy replied, her eyes fixed on one thing and one thing only. 'You just tell me if we're too far off course,' she instructed Jack. She'd beat Emin Drax if it was the last thing she did.

'I wouldn't even fly my TARDIS like this,' the Doctor complained, gripping the back of Jack's seat hard as they were jolted relentlessly.

'You gotta admit, though, not too many people I've met can fly like you, Doc. And I've met plenty.'

'Was that a compliment?'

Jack kept his eyes on the map in front of him. 'It might be. But right now, if this blue dot doesn't stay still I'm liable to get a little car sick.'

'I'm trying,' Lucy apologised, struggling to keep up herself with the view speeding past them as the ship banked violently in every which direction.

'You're doing great, kiddo.'

Lucy managed to slip under an enormous chunk of rock and would have hooted with delight at having seen the much larger silver ship disappear from the corner of her eye, having finally passed it, but there wasn't time to celebrate. Concentration was everything. She had the asteroid in her sights when everything flipped upside down, a bone shattering crash nearly throwing her from her seat. 'Did we get hit?' Another brutal jolt sent them rocking.

'That wasn't a wayward asteroid,' the Doctor said. 'That was Drax's ship that hit us.'

'I really don't like this guy anymore,' Jack said. 'Where was the rule that said contestants trying to wipe other contestants off the map get disqualified, huh?' He flinched as the console in front of him sparked, the navigation map fading from view as systems went haywire. 'Uh, oh.'

'I've got systems crashing all over the place!' Lucy held fast to the yoke even though it ignored half her instructions.

Jack was out of his seat in a heartbeat, and the Doctor was similarly scrambling out of her own seat harness.

'You do the engines,' Jack said.

'And you take the navigation systems,' the Doctor replied.

'What about me?' Lucy asked.

'Just keep us from being smashed to atoms!' Jack yelled, grabbing the edge of the console to stop himself falling, before reaching for the panel beside it to try to fix the damage.

Jack cursed as sparks stung his hand that was lodged deep inside the panel. 'Oh, come on baby,' he pleaded. 'You don't wanna be crushed by an asteroid, do you?' The ship rolled seventy degrees and only a last minute grab stopped him from flying head first into the back of the bridge. 'Really need some power here, Doc!'

She was battling to stay upright herself, one fist clutching tightly to a sparking panel, the other clamped around her sonic screwdriver. 'I've already cannibalised about fourteen different systems just to stop the ship from imploding on itself. What more do you want me to do?'

'If we don't get stabilisers working, we won't have a ship to worry about!' Jack retorted.

'Shut up, both of you!' Lucy yelled. It was taking every ounce of her concentration, but she had the asteroid in her sights. Since the navigation had gone down, she'd been focused on nothing else. They just needed enough power to get there safely.

'Can't you divert some juice to the shields?' Jack yelled out.

'What shields?' Lucy yelled back.

'You don't have shields? Why are you only telling me this now?'

'Oh, sod it!' the Doctor cried out, pointing her screwdriver at the entire back panel, buzzing and glowing more than it ever had. On Lucy's console, displays and lights began to reappear, lighting up the bridge like a Mexican wave. 'How's that for power?' she cried, an exhilarated smile breaking across her face even though she was still clinging to the panel for dear life.

Jack whooped out a cry of delight. 'And we have navigation back online. Now get us the hell out of here!'

Lucy didn't wait for an engraved invitation. She pushed the engines to maximum as her two compatriots shuffled back to their seats, strapping themselves in. If they survived this, there'd be time enough to tinker with the ship afterwards. For now, just having it back under control was all she needed. She swept around several more wayward fragments of rock, before Jack's display glowed blue and strong.

'We're right in front of it,' he reported. He turned to face her. 'How the hell did you do that? That we're even still alive and in one piece is remarkable enough. But to keep track of that little chunk of rock without so much as a map…' he shook his head in disbelief, 'well, that's nothing short of incredible.'

Lucy tried hard not to blush at the effusive praise.

She flew closer, just a few hundred feet from the asteroid's surface, letting the weak gravitational field keep them centered. She peered out through the windscreen in front of them, then ran a scan of the surface. 'There's nowhere for us to dock the ship. I've scanned the entire thing and there's nothing.'

Jack scrutinised the rough terrain. 'Could we have locked on to the wrong target?' He typed commands into the display.

'What are you doing?'

'Checking the location of other ships in the area, and, yep, right there,' he said pointing. 'Other side of the asteroid, there's a ship in a low, stable orbit, just like us. Right place, but we need a way down there. Whatever it is, it must be under the surface.'

'There must be a transmat beam or something,' Lucy replied.

Jack glanced at the various control panels dotted around the ship's interior. 'Does this ship even have a transmat?'

Lucy rolled her eyes at him. 'Of course. I just don't like using it. Transmats can be hacked, and I don't want anyone trying to sneak aboard.'

Jack looked around. 'I don't think you have to worry about that. There's only us, after all. Who else is gonna want to hitch a ride with us?'

'Okay, hang on a sec while I disable the security.' She stood up and walked over to a small panel at the back of the bridge. Keeping her body between the panel and her teammates, blocking their view, she keyed in the master override code. It wasn't that she didn't trust them, but it didn't hurt to be a little cautious, either. 'There we go,' she half muttered to herself. 'Okay, won't be long,' she said, standing on the spot where the transmat could activate.

'Wait a minute,' Jack said, stepping forward. 'You're not going down there on your own.'

'Why not?'

'Because I'm losing faith in anything around here being safe. I'm coming with you.'

'Fine, but let's hurry. Drax has probably already scanned his flag.'

'Hey! What about me?' the Doctor cried.

'Stay here with the ship,' Jack said. The instruction was calm yet assertive. Lucy could tell Jack was one of those natural born leaders, accustomed to taking command and having his orders followed to the letter.

'Oh, no way,' she said, pushing up out of her seat. 'Wherever you're going, I'm coming too. I'm not just some ship babysitter. I'm the Doctor.'

The response amused Lucy. Okay, well maybe not everyone followed his orders. Certainly not the Doctor.

Jack sighed. 'Fine, then move that very sexy butt of yours.'

She skipped across the room, squeezing into the narrow space already only big enough for one or two at best. 'My butt is not sexy, by the way,' she argued. 'And don't even think about touching it, Jack.'

Jack rolled his eyes. 'Spoilsport.'

---

In a flash of bright white, they were transported from the ship to a craggy, rocky space. It was clear they were now inside the asteroid, its rich red sediments contorted in strange shapes but more or less forming a habitable space. There was a small pedestal containing the flags, but nothing else.

Lucy frowned, the red flag now clutched in her hand. 'Where's the holodeck? There's nothing down here, just a stone walled room.'

'And we're breathing,' Jack added. 'Asteroids don't usually have pockets of air.'

The Doctor scanned the room, drawing a slow circle before huffing out a sigh and pocketing her screwdriver in her long grey overcoat. 'Whatever it is, it's too dense to tell anything. I hate it when people mess with my ability to figure out stuff. Some sort of artificial atmospheric shell in any case.'

'But this has to be the place,' Lucy insisted. Her transmat had chosen this particular spot. Unless of course, it too, had been damaged by Drax's attempt to wipe them out.

'Another test, perhaps,' Jack mused. He ran his hands carefully along the dark sides of the rock until he found what he was looking for. 'There's a break here,' he said, tracing the rectangular shape. It was barely four foot by three and low to the ground, but a definitely doorway of some kind.

Lucy traced the outline with her own hand. 'How do we activate it?'

They searched the narrow room, tapping the walls and feeling for other hidden panels but there were none to be found.

'I'm guessing "Open sesame" won't work,' the Doctor joked, her sonic screwdriver having once again proven ineffective in opening the door.

Jack ran his fingers around the edge again, pressing. He added a second hand, trying to prise it open with brute force. At first nothing happened, but then it began to move. 'I think... I've got it...' he said, using every bit of strength he had to pull at it. 'A little help?'

The Doctor joined him, as did Lucy. Their collective effort managed to force the door ajar, creating a gap three inches wide, which then became six. Jack shifted from pulling to pushing, putting himself between the edge of the door and the opening, forcing it wider still.

'Yes, there on the other side, I can see the holodeck,' Lucy said, kneeling and peering through the gap between their bodies.

Jack spread his arms and legs, still crouched, holding the door as wide as he could. 'See if you can squeeze through.' Lucy easily slipped past him, her small frame brushing him on the way through. 'You too, Doc,' he said. 'Once you're through I can let go.'

'It's too heavy for you to hold on your own,' she argued.

He gave her a laugh, strained as it was from the effort. 'Stronger than you give me credit for. I'll be fine.'

From the other side, Lucy leaned her own small weight against the inner edge, and the Doctor climbed between arms and legs through the opening. Once through, Jack quickly side-stepped, letting the heavy stone spring back into place, his own body weight the only thing keeping it open. 'Phew! Glad there were three of us,' he said.

'I thought you said you could handle it?' the Doctor teased.

'That thing must have weighed half a tonne. Haven't shifted anything that heavy since the night we picked up Myfanwy.'

'Who's she? Some ex-girlfriend of yours? Had you down as the skinny blonde type.'

Lucy nearly giggled as she saw the Doctor cringe, realising she'd just described herself.

The Doctor groaned. 'This regeneration is really going to take some getting used to.'

'Pet pterodactyl,' Jack replied, sparing her further awkwardness. 'Didn't really think it through once she was sedated. Trying to haul a dinosaur onto the roof of an SUV isn't as easy as it sounds.'

The Doctor rolled her eyes. 'Nothing is easy with you, is it?'

'It would have been a lot harder without help, believe me.' He chuckled. 'Ianto took one look at me trying to haul her up there and-' He fell silent.

Lucy caught the sad, wistful look on his face. 'You miss her?'

Jack avoided meeting her gaze. 'Miss a lot of things, but yeah, I miss her. She was pretty special. I never did find out what happened to her. Always just hoped she flew away and found some nice valley to live in, where the fishing is good and no one would bother her.' He sniffed, his expression clearing and shrugging the heaviness from his shoulders, like removing a cloak. 'Enough of memory lane, huh? This is supposed to be a race, isn't it?'

Lucy stepped up onto the holodeck, letting it scan her. It seemed an impossibly long time time before it finally deactivated, lights dimming and the flag dematerialising in her hand. When she looked down at her palm there was no chip. 'Something's gone wrong,' she said, searching around her feet in case the chip had decided to materialise in the wrong spot.

'No chip,' the Doctor said, feeling a strange sense of foreboding.

'And no map to the next checkpoint,' Jack added. 'That can't be right. You were standing there for ages. Surely it must have registered our flag.'

The Doctor knelt to scan the holodeck. 'Hmm… basic fifty-third century technology. Organic matter identifier, check. Data storage components, check. Fabricator/defabricator rays, check. Ooh, DNA verifier, very nice. Must be a more modern version. Apart from that, nothing to suggest it isn't in working order.' She stood back up, brushing the dirt from the knees of her loose blue trousers. 'A checkpoint with no map,' she mused out loud. She turned to face her two teammates, eyes sparkling with realisation. 'Because you don't need a map when you know where you're going!'

'But we don't know where we're going,' Lucy countered, resting her hands on her hips. 'We're stuck on this stupid asteroid.'

'When do you stop needing a map?' the Doctor asked, staring at Jack.

His brow furrowed, trying to unravel the Doctor's riddle. It was clear she thought he should know the answer. 'Come on, Jack. Think!'

'Don't pressure me, okay? Uh… You don't need a map anymore when… when…' He huffed out a breath. 'You know, truth is I never really bothered with maps. I just go wherever the stars take me, these days. I've got a keen sense of direction. I lived in Cardiff so long I knew the place like the back of my hand. Never got lost. I always knew right where I was and right where I needed to be.' His gaze drifted as the answer dawned on him. 'You don't need a map when you're already right where you need to be!'

'And the Captain has earned his boy scout badge,' the Doctor replied, smiling. 'Somewhere around here is another flag.'

As Lucy looked at the space they were standing in, she could see it branching off in any number of directions. Some passages were wide and looked easy to navigate. Others appeared to be no more than a crack in the rock, barely big enough for anyone to fit through. Yet she knew that somewhere, down in that labyrinth, was their flag.

'We should split up, cover more ground,' she suggested.

Jack raised a cautious eyebrow. 'Is that wise? I imagine it wouldn't take much to get lost. And that's assuming there's nothing else lurking down there waiting for us.'

'Ten minutes,' Lucy said. 'We'll each go a different way and come back after ten minutes. Anyone who doesn't come back, well, at least the other two will know to come looking for them.'

'Alright. Ten minutes,' the Doctor said. 'And do I have to tell you to be careful? Both of you,' she added, giving Jack the eye.

'Ten minutes,' Jack agreed, already having chosen a path, difficult to access at first, but which appeared wider on the other side. If he'd been the one setting up this task, that's what he would have picked. The other two quickly set off down their own respective tunnels, leaving him to navigate the tight entrance.

Reluctantly he removed his coat. He didn't dare risk tearing it on the jagged rocks. Finding someone to repair it was difficult. The universe needed more master tailors - or at least the sons of master tailors. No one could ever match Ianto Jones for the quality of the needlework and the care and attention he gave Jack's coat. It was as if they were one entity - Jack and his coat. A damaged coat was a sign that Jack himself had probably met a similar fate. The dressing down Jack received for the state of his coat was really a silent plea to be more careful.

'I'm much more careful these days,' Jack said to no one in particular.



The Doctor let the glow of her screwdriver lead the way through the darkened passage. 'Just another adventure,' she muttered, 'albeit one where everything seems to want to kill you. But what's life without a bit of peril, eh? A chance to break in this new regeneration.' She pulled up a sleeve and checked her watch. Eight minutes. The time for doubling back was well past. Oh, sod it. She'd find out what was at the end of this tunnel if it killed her.



Lucy had her ears attuned to even the slightest sound as she stepped lightly across the jagged rocks, and slipped in-between them. Anything could be hiding down here, just waiting to attack. We don't have the luxury of time, she reminded herself. She needed to get as far down this tunnel as possible and back again. 'Don't lose your head, Luce,' she muttered. 'Just think about what you'll be able to buy with fifteen million credits.' Ten minutes was the agreed time, but what if they all came back empty-handed because none of them had searched far enough? It wasn't worth the risk. Instead of turning back, she kept going.



Jack froze at the sound of something further ahead. He hadn't made nearly as much headway as he'd hoped, the passage proving difficult to climb through. He checked his wrist strap chronometer and watched his ten minutes tick down. He should have headed back five minutes ago, but something kept drawing him on. Nothing so far had been easy, and this tunnel was more than challenging.

The sounds of something else ahead of him only confirmed his suspicions that he was on the right track. He crouched in a narrow gap and waited as the sound grew closer. A small light bounced around the rocky walls, and a grunt of exertion finally revealed that it wasn't a monster lying in wait, but rather another competitor trying to crawl their way back out. The glint of gold and the clank of chains left him in no doubt who.

Emin Drax.



Jack had every intention of staying hidden until he passed. The guy had already proven how he felt about his opponents. Seeing him up close, even in the limited light, he could tell Drax was ninety percent muscle. The other ten percent was the leather and metal holding it all together. Jack had some decent hand to hand combat skills under his belt, but up against a beast like Drax, he was always going to come off second best. He stayed silent, watching the lumbering bulk force his way back through the tunnel.

He was almost out of sight when Jack caught the tiniest glimpse of the flag clutched in Drax's meaty hand. His own dark green one, and a second, bright scarlet - their flag. The realisation hit Jack hard. He was taking their flag so that they wouldn't be able to continue the race.

'Hey!' Jack yelled. Drax turned at the unexpected voice. 'I don't mind people being competitive,' Jack drawled, 'but outright cheating to win? That I have a problem with.'

Drax sneered at him. 'I was hoping my little love tap had sent your tin can careening into the nearest asteroid. This was just my insurance,' he said, waggling the flag in his fist.

'Hand it over and I'll let you go,' Jack said.

'And why would I do that?'

'Because if you scan our flag, you'll be disqualified.'

'Who said anything about scanning it? I'm planning on sending it out of the waste chute from my ship and into deep space.'

Jack reached down and drew his Webley, a replica of one he'd owned on Earth for decades, holding it firm. 'I'll ask one last time. Leave the flag here.'

Drax lunged with a speed that caught Jack off guard, knocking him to the ground. The Webley skittered off into the darkness as Jack dodged a three-fingered fist coming at his face. He tried jutting a knee up into Drax's solar plexus, but all it found was hard, rippled muscle. He waited for a second fist to come at him, but instead the weight lifted and Drax made off in the opposite direction, heading back the way they'd come. Jack forced himself to his feet, grabbing his gun and scrabbling after Drax. He should have been able to catch him easily, but Drax was surprisingly agile, considering his size. As they neared the holodeck chamber, Jack knew he had to do something. He couldn't let Drax escape. The Doctor and Lucy should both be there, waiting for him. He yelled out, 'Stop him!' in the hopes it would be sufficient warning.

Jack squeezed frantically through the final gap. He could already see the light fading from the holodeck. Drax was holding his map chip and making for the exit on the other side. He gripped the edge of the door and began sliding it open. Jack dashed at him, grabbing whatever he could. He had to slow Drax down, or at the very least recover their flag.

It was an awkward tussle. Drax tried to haul open the door and climb through. Jack was all over him, making a nuisance, but Drax's hand was like a vice around the flag. Jack shoved a hand in Drax's face, obstructing his vision. It was enough to momentarily distract him. His hand flew up to fend off Jack, dropping the flag. Jack grabbed their flag and threw it across the room, well out of harm's way. Nothing else mattered.

Jack was rewarded for his efforts with a bone-crunching elbow to his face, followed by a fist. The force of it threw his head back against the rock. His vision swam as he fought to stay conscious.

Drax forced the door open and clambered over Jack's body lying crumpled in the space between.

'Goodbye, little man,' Drax said. He let go of the door as it sprung back into place, crushing Jack's torso.

---

Lucy was frustrated on her return, having finally reached a dead end that forced her to turn back empty-handed. She jogged, knowing she was well over their allotted time, and prayed she hadn't held up the others. Hopefully one of them had better luck.

The light from the main cavern emanated down the tunnel as she got closer, and she'd hoped to hear voices calling for her. Instead, as she came out into the light, right there at her feet was the flag she'd been searching for.

How had it got there? Was this some other trick whereby it would only be there once they'd survived searching the tunnels? She picked it up, turning it over in her hand. Where were the others? They should have been back by now. 'Jack? Doctor?' she called out down their respective routes. Could something have happened to them? Was she suddenly on her own? She clutched the thin metal rod in her hands, unsure whether to scan it and go or wait for the others. And how would she get back out? That door had weighed more than she could heft on her own. She spotted the grey woollen coat hanging from a jagged rock before casting a look towards the other end of the ovoid room. The glimpse of pale blue shirt wedged in between the rocks was instantly recognisable. She gasped in horror and rushed towards it.

Lucy fell to her knees, unable to take it all in. Jack's body was crushed in the door, his head hanging at an impossible angle. An arm dangled uselessly, the rest of his body trapped unseen in the space beyond. His face was pale and a small dribble of blood leaked from the edge of his mouth. The gap between the door and the rock wall was impossibly narrow. Jack's body had been squeezed well beyond what it could physically withstand.

The confusion of how he'd got there was overridden by a sudden sadness, Lucy feeling the tears well up in her eyes. Jack was dead. Something had gone terribly wrong and now he was gone.

'Jack? Lucy?' The Doctor's voice signalled her return. 'Any luck?'

'Doctor, over here!' Lucy called out. She was already pushing her weight against the opening, trying to free Jack's body.

The Doctor rushed over, seeing the pair of them. 'Oh, Jack,' she said, unable to find more words.

'Help me get him out,' Lucy said, still straining against the door. It was selfish to think that Jack's body was the only thing holding the door open, and that without it there, they'd have no chance of getting out. None of that mattered now. They owed it to Jack to get him out, even if it was too late to do anything more.

The Doctor knelt next to Lucy and pushed. It was much harder without Jack there to help them. They just needed a few inches, she thought. 'The door is going to turn his insides to soup if we don't get him out. Put your back into it!' The Doctor dug her heels into the dirt, pressing hard until it finally relented a few inches.

Jack returned with a flail and a start, heaving in a lung full of air like a drowning man. The sudden gasp nearly caused Lucy to lose her grip on the door's edge.

The Doctor didn't waste any time. 'Move, Jack!' she commanded.

It took Jack a moment to register the instruction. Awareness of his surroundings and his last memory came rushing back at him. He quickly crawled out of the narrow gap. Once he was out of danger, the Doctor and Lucy let go, the heavy stone grinding shut, sealing them inside.

'Sweet goddesses, what the the hell?' Lucy cried, unable to believe what she was seeing.

Jack was hunched over on hands and knees, sucking in a deep lung full of air. Bones slowly snapped back into place, healing one by one.

Lucy went pale. 'You were dead.'

'And now I'm not,' Jack replied, looking up and stretching his neck from left to right. Lucy could hear the satisfying popping sounds. 'Thanks for getting me out.'

Still out of breath herself, the Doctor rested a hand on Jack's shoulder as he came back to himself. It never got any less unnerving watching him resurrect. It sent every fibre of her being tingling in an unnatural way. 'What happened?'

Jack gave a little groan as he got to his feet. 'Drax. He was trying to steal out flag. I tried to stop him.'

'You did,' Lucy said, smiling warmly and holding up the flag for him to see. 'Looks like he got away, though.'

'What's important is that we're all okay,' the Doctor said, focusing on the positives. She wasn't ready to lose anyone again so soon. Not even someone who couldn't die.

'You still haven't explained how you're not dead,' Lucy said.

'I can't die,' Jack replied. 'Well, I can, actually,' he clarified. 'I just can't stay that way. I'm a fixed point in time and space. One of a kind.' The Doctor couldn't tell if he was boasting, or merely putting on a brave face for Lucy's sake. How he felt about his status as a temporal singularity was still unclear.

'I still don't get it.'

'Long story,' the Doctor said. 'He's fine, though.'

'Better than,' Jack added, giving her a winning smile. 'So, let's not waste any more time, huh?'

Lucy looked from Jack to the Doctor and back again. The Doctor could almost hear the cogs turning in Lucy's head. She held out the flag towards him. 'You wanna do the honors? I think you've earned it, don't you?'

Jack grabbed the flag, grinning. 'Be back in a sec,' he said, loping across the room to stand on the platform. The light glowed all around him, before finally leaving him with the chip in hand. 'Let's mosey,' he said, walking back towards the stone door.

With more hefting and a carefully coordinated effort, they pulled it back, slipping through one by one until Jack could finally let go, leaving the room behind them.

'Oh, is that the way in?' came a question from one of two very tall green creatures, who looked very much like grasshoppers.

'Oh! Marvons. Lovely,' the Doctor said, beaming. 'Haven't seen a Marvon in years. How is your Queen?'

'She is well. Thank you for asking. We had thought we'd taken a wrong turn somewhere. Very cleverly hidden, indeed.'

'Yeah,' Jack replied. 'You wanna watch that door, though. It's a killer.'

'When you get inside, take the far right-hand tunnel,' Lucy added. 'The flags are down there.'

'Many thanks and blessings to you,' the Marvon replied, bowing low and reverently. They proceeded over to the doorway.

The three of them watched in awe as the two beings made light work of opening the heavy stone block. Their difficulty would surely be in trying to squeeze their tall, awkward forms through the narrow space.

Leaving them to the task, Jack flipped open his wrist strap and keyed the signal for their transmat beam back up to the ship. 'Going up?' he asked, hitting the button, letting the beam of light envelop them.

---

Back aboard, Jack stepped over to the console and slipped the chip into the computer, bringing up their next location.

The Doctor stood and watched Lucy tugging off her leather jacket, draping it over the back of the seat. 'You told those Marvons to go right.'

'I know,' Lucy replied.

'But that's the wrong tunnel.'

'I know that, too. I figured they'd either believe us and go down there on a wild goose chase, or they'd use reverse psychology and go for the far left tunnel, and thinking we lied to them.'

'But that's not correct either. It was the middle one Jack chose. It barely looked like a pathway at all.'

'Exactly. Either way, we just slowed them down. When the first one turns out to be a bust, they'll go for the exact opposite one. The middle one will be the last place they look.'

Jack laughed. 'I like your style, kiddo.' He saw the displeased look on the Doctor's face. 'Don't be so high and mighty, Doc. It's a race, not the last chopper out of Saigon. They're in it to win as much as we are.'

The Doctor looked pensive, and then, like a burst of sunshine coming out from behind a cloud, her expression changed completely. 'Well, what the heck are we waiting for, then?'

Jack grinned, the old, devil may care Doctor was still there under that cute blonde bob and those crazy, too short, trousers. He hadn't even had a chance to comment on the braces. Between them, they could start a fashion comeback.

He punched a button on the center console, bringing up the details for their next checkpoint. 'It's a circuit,' he said, studying the map. 'See here, there's a route that passes from Star System Nine, all the way through the Vextrus Cluster, around to Mesphina and back again. It looks like once we pass the final lap, there's a small stop off point, the location for which won't be unlocked from this chip until we've completed the circuit.' He focused on the finer details beginning to scroll up across the display. 'Two hundred laps of the cluster?' he exclaimed.

'That's nearly a whole day's flight,' Lucy responded. 'Twenty-two hours even with the ship's engines at maximum.'

'It's clearly the endurance part of the race,' the Doctor replied. 'Endless laps of the same route to test each racer's ability to stay focused.'

'No problem,' Jack said. 'We'll just use the ship's systems. Isn't that why they invented anti air-collision systems? Pre-program a little flight path and away we go.'

Lucy groaned. 'Don't you know anything? All the racers had to have their ANTAC systems shut off. It's all manual flying. No anti-collision programs, no proximity alarms.'

Jack's face fell. 'Oh.'

'You really did just come here for the money, didn't you?' Lucy asked.

Jack squirmed under the scrutiny. 'I might not have read all the rules.' Rules were for boring people and those that had to be responsible for others. Up until a few hours ago, he'd been free as a bird. Who cared about rules, then? He'd been after a cheap thrill and he'd got more than he bargained for.

'Oh, well there's a surprise,' the Doctor said. 'Jack doing something other than by the seat of his pants?' she asked, arms folded, quirking an eyebrow at him.

He narrowed his eyes at the Doctor. 'Says the biggest pantser I've ever met.'

The Doctor shrugged off the insult. Clearly she preferred to think of it as being agile.

'You couldn't just, you know, use a little sonic screwdriver magic to turn the ANTAC back on?' Jack asked.

Lucy gave a look of utter horror. 'And risk us getting disqualified?'

Jack gave a little shrug. 'Just a suggestion.' Being disqualified might not be the worst idea. It would get them out of this mess.

The Doctor considered her two teammates. 'Well, we'd better take turns at the helm. Everyone should take a break in between and get some rest. Lucy, why don't you take first rest break? Jack and I can handle things.'

'If it's all the same to you, Doctor, I'd much rather fly myself. It's my ship, after all. If I get tired, you can take over.'

The Doctor raised her hands in mock surrender. 'Okay. Jack? You want to kip first, then?'

'No arguments from me,' he replied. 'But before I do, is there anything to eat on this tin can? I'm famished.'

'I didn't exactly pack a bunch of provisions,' Lucy replied. 'The ship doesn't even have separate sleeping quarters.'

Jack gave a nonchalant shrug. 'I wasn't expecting a five star hotel. I've slept worst places.' His last sojourn before arriving for the race had been six weeks aboard a cargo transport. He could have travelled in style but it would have meant hopping from one ship to another every time they hit a major planet or way-station. That meant having to renegotiate his passage. Cargo transports, on the other hand, could fly for months at a time without stopping. It was the express route, but the lodgings were bargain basement. Despite that, it was still a popular means of getting around. Jack liked them for the interesting people you met on board.

Lucy rummaged through a small metal transport container tucked under the main flight console, hidden behind a thin, metal panel. 'Here. There's a few energy bars and some water.'

'Perfect,' He grabbed at them eagerly, tearing off the wrapper and taking a huge bite. It was amazing how good something could taste when you were starving. Then he realised he probably wasn't that only one who was hungry.

'You wan un, Noc?' Jack asked, unsuccessfully trying to form words around the huge mouthful, holding one out in her direction. She pulled a face at him, clearly appalled. Unperturbed, he waved it in Lucy's direction instead.

'Urgh,' she uttered, 'didn't your manners get resurrected with the rest of you?'

He swallowed, the lump visibly straining to pass his Adam's apple. 'What's wrong with my manners?'

The Doctor leant against the wall and folded her arms. 'I think she's implying that once up a time you had some.'

'It takes a lot of energy to be me,' he argued, demolishing the remaining bar and washing it down with half a bottle of water. He shrugged off his coat and folded into a small bundle, setting it on the floor at the back of the bridge, before lying down and resting it under his head. 'Wake me when you get bored,' he said, shutting his eyes.

Normally Jack would have insisted everybody else rest up first, but resurrecting had tired him out. It had been a long while since the last time, a feat that would have made his old friends proud. He'd forgotten how resurrection took its toll on his body. The hunger he experienced was a by-product of his body protesting against his unnatural regeneration. Having time reorient itself inside him seemed a simple concept in theory, but like a scab forming over a wound whilst a cut healed, so too his body hid the healing going on inside him. No sooner than he'd laid his head down did sleep come to claim him.

---

The Doctor slipped from her seat behind Jack's and settled next to Lucy in the co-pilot's chair. She paused, seeing the intense look of concentration on Lucy's face. They had to set a careful hyperjump back out of the asteroid belt before setting course for their designated circuit route. She waited until they were clear of the debris field, making a mental note to travel back here at a time before the planet had been obliterated, just to see what it had been like. She chose her next words carefully.

'That was some very impressive flying earlier.' She couldn't have done a better job in the TARDIS, given the circumstances.

'Thanks,' Lucy said, not taking her eyes off the view in front of her. They were now shooting off into a quadrant of space that was vast and empty, looping around to start their first circuit.

'You're very young to be able to fly like that,' the Doctor pressed for more details.

'I played a lot of simulator games,' Lucy replied.

The Doctor chuckled at that. 'We both know that's a lie.' No simulator in the universe could teach the intuitive skills she'd demonstrated. 'You said this was your brother's ship. Did he teach you?'

'I'm a better flyer than he ever was.' Lucy paused, realising how arrogant that sounded. 'But, yes, he taught me. He did everything for me.'

'Your parents?'

'Killed when I was little. My brother took care of us both.'

'How did he do that? He must have still been quite young himself.'

'He quit school. Got a job so we could keep paying for the debt against our lodging. We could have moved somewhere smaller, but he wouldn't let all the credits Mum and Dad had paid against the debt go to waste. If we'd moved, we'd never have gotten a half of that back.'

A light snore from the back of the bridge interrupted their conversation.

'So, you entered the race to help pay back some of that debt?'

'Not exactly.'

The Doctor could sense another lie coming her way. If Lucy didn't tell her the truth, how could she help? 'Lucy, why are you really here? You talk about your brother in past tense. If you're in trouble or in debt, we can help you.'

Lucy's hand shook on the control column ever so slightly. 'No one wants to help me. Everyone's only in it to help themselves. You try to get ahead, but every time you do, someone comes along and takes it all away from you.' She sighed loudly. 'It's my fault.'

'What is?'

'When we were hard up for credits, my brother got involved in a racketeering operation. Emin Drax isn't just famous and rich because he competes in races across the galaxy. Most of his wealth comes from his illegal activities, and no one will do anything to stop them. Everyone is expendable to him.'

The Doctor read between the lines. 'Your brother got caught doing something illegal?'

'No,' she replied. 'I did.'

That was unexpected. 'You?'

'It was mainly courier jobs my brother was taking on, but a lot of the routes were through tricky parts of space. They were routes other people wouldn't ever use because they were too dangerous or difficult to fly. I was a better flyer than him. I agreed to take on the shipment. We both knew the cargo was probably contraband, but the commission was too good to pass up.' She flipped a switch with far more force than was necessary, her frustration spilling over. 'I don't know what happened, but someone snitched on us. Maybe it was one of Drax's goons, jealous that we were finally making some money, or maybe law enforcement had been watching, just waiting for someone to slip up. Either way, they traced the registration of the ship back to my brother and arrested him on the spot.'

The Doctor hummed at this information. Law enforcement was something of a grey area. Intergalactic law was well defined and meted out by the Shadow Proclamation, but that was just the big ticket stuff - unlawful invasions, genocide and planetary theft. Everything else was left to whatever the local police felt like taking an interest in. How they dealt with crime could depend on the flipping of a coin.

'What happened after they arrested him?'

Lucy toyed with the controls, banking wide around a gaseous planet. 'He should have told them it was me flying that shipment. The penalty for Artesians less than twenty cycles old is far less. But no, that great idiot had to go and confess. Forty cycles imprisonment with no visitation rights or parole.'

'Sounds like he was just trying to protect you.'

'I didn't need protecting! I might have gone in for three cycles. Two with good behaviour.'

'So, this is you trying to earn an honest credit? Racing for prize money?'

Lucy looked away from the view in front of her, facing the Doctor. 'Do you know how Artesian prisons work?'

'No.'

'You either serve the sentence or you can pay back an amount they deem to be equal to the cost of the criminal act. It's a corrupt system where the rich crooks always get away, and the little guys get locked up.'

Ah, it was all starting to fall into place now. 'How much did they set your brother's bail at?'

'Fifteen million credits. They calculated that as the total cost of illegal goods he might have shipped in a lifetime, had he not been caught.'

The Doctor winced. She was all for enforcing the law and doing the right thing, but sentencing someone for crimes they hadn't yet committed, but might do so in the future, was a harsh system. 'That's why you want to win so badly.'

'That's why I didn't want anyone else on board. I can't split the winnings. This is the biggest race anywhere. I'd have to win years worth of other races to bank up enough credits to free him.' She paused. 'I didn't tell Jack any of this,' she said, casting a furtive glance in his direction. 'I figure if we won I'd just, you know...'

'Take the money and run,' the Doctor finished for her.

'Yeah. I really need this money, Doctor. It's all my fault he's in there. I should have talked him out of working for Drax ages ago, but we were just keeping ourselves out of debt. I even went to him, Drax, I mean. When they sentenced my brother, I asked if he'd paid the bail, since we'd been doing his dirty work for him. And do you know what he did? He laughed. Just laughed in my face and told me if I knew what was good for me, I'd keep taking on jobs because otherwise someone might snitch on me as well.'

'Did you?'

'No way. I got a lousy job working for a legitimate courier service for a few months, but the guilt was killing me. Every night I'd come home to the house we'd grown up in, the one my brother had kept over our heads despite everything. Without him there, it just felt wrong. I knew I had to find a way to make some serious money and to get us both far away from Drax, where he couldn't cause us any more trouble. Drax was lording it all around the galaxy, how he was going to compete in the biggest race ever and win it. So, I followed him here. Beating him will be nice, but it's the prize I need.' She looked down at her lap. 'You won't tell Jack, will you? He seems like a nice guy but I imagine he'd be pretty scary if you upset him. I'd prefer not to find out first hand, if it's all the same to you.'

The Doctor rested a hand on Lucy's arm, giving it the gentlest squeeze. 'I think Jack will be okay. He knows how to take care of himself.' She laughed. 'He's done a few less than honourable things himself for the sake of money. All in the past now, of course. But it's only fair he should know, don't you think?' If anything, it would be amusing to see how he would react when he learnt he'd been duped by this fledgling. He'd understand though. Some things were worth risking everything for.

'I'm not sure I can tell him.'

'You told me, didn't you?' the Doctor replied. 'But what's say I help you out and tell him for you? Break it to him nice and gently.'

'Would you?'

'Don't you worry,' she said, easing back in the chair and crossing one leg over the other. 'I can handle Jack.'

---

They spent a long time in companionable silence after that, watching the scenery go by, lap after lap, after lap. It had been fun for a while, but the Doctor could see how the repetitiveness of it would addle the brain and cause one's concentration to drift sideways. It certainly wasn't as demanding as navigating a minefield of asteroids, but there was enough of a challenge to undo even the best flyer if they didn't staying focused.

Lucy was a case in point. The race had been going for more than twenty hours, and she must have put in many more hours on top of that, preparing her ship. The Doctor kept a keen eye on their flight path as Lucy's hands grew more relaxed around the controls. She'd offered to take the helm two hours ago, but Lucy had steadfastly refused.

'Lucy,' the Doctor gently shook the pilot's shoulder. 'Time to let me fly for a while. You're exhausted.'

Her eyelids heavy, Lucy grudgingly nodded, and allowed the Doctor to take her place. A few moments later she curled into the co-pilot's seat, grateful for the reprieve.

Passing through a long stretch of empty space, the Doctor got up to stretch her legs, and to wrangle herself a new co-pilot.

'Up and at 'em, Jack,' the Doctor said, nudging his shoulder with her foot. He didn't wake, instead curling over on his side, wrapping an arm around her leg, hugging it. 'Marry me?' he mumbled.

She rolled her eyes, stepping out of his grip before he nuzzled her boot. She shook his shoulder. 'Jaaaack?' His eyes opened this time. 'Already?'

'You've been asleep for seven hours. I think that's enough beauty sleep, even for you.'

'Seven? I could have sworn I'd only just closed my eyes.' He pushed himself up off the floor. 'Aw, man, but that feels better,' he said, stretching out his cramped muscles. 'How are we doing?' he asked.

'We've only seen two other racers in the last few hours, and I think we managed to lap at least one of them.'

'Well, that's good news.' He slid into the seat next to Lucy, strapping himself in. 'How are you doing? Need a break?'

She hated to admit that her eyes were dry and tired. She'd done long haul trips before, but she'd always made a point to stop and rest. She nodded.

'Go get some sleep, then. I'll take over.'

She knew she was tired because she couldn't be bothered arguing. 'Just watch that pass by Ellus,' Lucy warned. 'If you can fly through the planet's rings instead of around them, we can cut a good ten minutes off each lap.'

'Roger that,' he said, giving her a mock salute.

Lucy got up out of the co-pilot's seat, swapping with the Doctor, and took up position in the seat behind. She nestled into it, shutting her eyes.

Jack studied the flight path ahead of them, all smooth sailing for several light years. Right at this moment, it hardly felt like a race. Before taking his seat, he glanced down at the tiny ball of purple and gold, and smiled. She'd probably hate him for thinking it, but she was so adorable, curled up there fast asleep. He grabbed her jacket off the top of his seat, tucking it in around her for warmth.

He settled in front of the main flight controls and began going through the motions, checking the status of their systems, consulting the map, and generally making himself at home. It felt good to be at the helm of a ship again. Perhaps when this was over, he might consider buying one of his own. As much as he had enjoyed being a free agent, it had its limitations. He could still only go wherever and whenever a ship might be willing to take him. Sometimes that cost credits, other times that meant hard labour, or at least being able to make himself useful. There was no such thing as a free ride. Having a ship would make him the commander of his own destiny again.

The Doctor watched him quietly as he went about the task, before finally speaking. 'How long has it been since we last saw each other?'

Jack drew in a breath and exhaled slowly, mulling the question over.

'Ten years? Fifteen?' It felt like an eternity and no time at all. 'I don't really keep track,' he confessed. 'When you've got forever and you don't get any older, time kinda loses any meaning.'

All he knew it was that it was still possible to lose track of it. Drinking was the best strategy for eliminating big chunks of time. That was the one upside of being immortal – he could drink himself away and not wake up the next morning with a shocking hangover. He could put away more booze than even the most seasoned alcoholic. Most of the time he remembered nothing. Not how he'd got home, wherever that was, or how he landed in someone else's bed, nor what he'd done with the remainder of the evening, though he could take an educated guess. Sometimes he got rowdy drunk, and they kicked him out, or he chatted up whatever exotic creature came his way until they got bored and decided to leave. Occasionally, he just went and stood right on the edge of the tallest building he could find, swaying drunkenly, not caring if he went over. Alcohol exacerbated his maudlin moods, but still he drank just to fill in the hours. He didn't have anyone to be accountable to anymore.

'I thought you'd still be on Earth.'

'There's nothing keeping me there anymore,' he replied. Just a bunch of ghosts, not all of whom he'd managed to leave behind.

'Nobody caught your eye?' The Doctor mused, trying to eke out more. 'You were always so eager to go home all those times before, like there was someone waiting for you to come back.'

He clenched his jaw, the Doctor having struck a nerve. 'You know me, Doc. I'm not good at commitment. I never could settle down.'

'No, of course not,' she said, keeping up the pretence.

'So, what about you?' Jack asked.

'Oh,' a warm smile crept across her face. 'I've been there and done that.'

Jack nearly choked. 'You got married? When? More to the point, to who?'

'No one you know,' she replied, before frowning. 'At least I hope not. River Song is probably the one person in the universe who could give you a run for your money. Just picturing the pair of you in the same room makes my head hurt. The whole universe would probably tear itself apart.'

Jack laughed at the quasi-insult. 'Must've been quite a man, this River."

'Woman,' she replied. 'I was still, er...'

'A guy?' Jack laughed. 'Hey, I'm not judging. You love who you love. The rest doesn't matter. So, where is she now?'

The Doctor appeared wistful. 'Somewhere off in time and space, having adventures, getting into trouble. A lot like you, really.'

'You're not together anymore?'

'Diverging timelines,' she replied. 'Her end is my beginning. Makes first dates very confusing. She used to keep a diary of all the times we'd catch up along the way, but she'd never tell me when or where. Spoilers, apparently.' She sighed, and Jack saw the brief look of sadness in her eyes. 'According to the little blue book though, there are no more dates left now. We've reached the end of our temporal intersection. All of time and space but never enough time for love,' she said.

'I know,' he agreed. Falling in love had always ended badly.

Jack cast a look back at Lucy, watching her sleep. She was so young and feisty, yet adorable once you stripped away the attitude and just saw her for what she was. So much like his own daughter. He wished he'd spent more time loving her, even if her mother didn't want him there. 'She's a good kid,' he muttered.

'She is.' The Doctor paused for a moment. 'Jack?'

'Yeah?'

'There's something I need to tell you.'

'Fire away,' he said, his eyes never leaving the view in front of him.

'It's important.'

'That's fine.'

The Doctor turned in her seat and gripped the armrest with both hands. 'Promise you won't fly off the handle and get mad?'

Jack turned at the comment, finally meeting her gaze. 'What? What's so important that you can't just spit it out?' He let out a sigh. 'Look, if it's about the 456 thing, I-'

'It's not about that. But I am sorry.'

'So, what, then?' He didn't think anything was more important than that. That was the day the world ended for him.

'It's about Lucy.'

He cast a worried look behind him. 'What about her?'

'She and her brother got caught up in a racketeering operation Drax was running. Her brother was convicted and imprisoned. The only reason she's here risking her life is to win the prize money which will just barely cover the bail to free him. She didn't have the heart to tell you. All she wants is to save her brother.'

The admission rendered Jack speechless. It all made sense now. That desperate need to win, her hatred for Drax, and why she resisted any offers for help. Everyone else in the race was in it for the money and the glory, or just the sheer thrill of it; all completely selfish motives. All she wanted was to get back the one person she loved more than anything.

'I wish she'd told me.'

'She was too scared tell you. You said it yourself, money does strange things to people.'

'Not you though, huh? Having to make ends meet is a foreign concept for you. You've got your TARDIS. You can go anywhere and do anything. All you have to do is wave your psychic paper around.'

'You make it all sound so easy.'

'Don't get me wrong, I'm not jealous. Well, maybe sometimes. But it was never about the money,' Jack explained. 'I've got more than enough to keep me flush in hypervodkas and nice hotels. Living the life of the beau-monde is fun for a while, but I prefer the fast lane. Always have. It's been too long since I've done anything that really got my heart racing. That's why I came here - because living forever isn't the same as feeling alive.'

The Doctor took a good long look at the man she thought she knew, trying to reconcile those thoughts with the person sitting next to her.

She knew Jack wasn't so callous as to put his own needs ahead of others. The last time they'd seen each other he'd been prepared to detonate a warp star rather than let the Daleks kill his friends. He'd even let himself be killed by a Dalek in order to get away and bring help. And then there was Torchwood. Gods, but she'd despised Torchwood. One day, totally out of the blue, the TARDIS had uploaded all of Torchwood's databases. More of Jack's handiwork, she assumed, from the last time he'd been aboard. He always was a little too good at knowing what the TARDIS liked, tuning her systems and making her purr at his attentions. Who knew even a TARDIS could be swayed by a pretty face?

When she'd gone back to Earth years later, she'd discovered that Torchwood was gone, all traces of records on Earth erased, buried and hidden. The TARDIS had the only set now. She perused some of them in her spare time. Jack really had turned the place around if those reports were anything to go by. Aliens had been cared for, rehabilitated, rehoused or sent home, if that were possible. Research was observational and interactive, and there were strict controls for anything that could be used as a weapon, or might inadvertently change the developmental pace of technology on Earth. Considering their limited resources and capabilities, a few fancy computers and a rift machine that Jack banned them from using, they'd done remarkably well. Under Jack's guidance, Torchwood had become a force for good, and a fine representative for planet Earth. She was proud of him having come so far since that first encounter in wartime London.

'I know,' she said. 'For the first time I feel like I finally understand you, Jack.'

He gave her a winsome smile. 'Gone a lot of places and seen a lot of things. That changes you. I've met some people along the way who might have done the same,' he added.

The Doctor stared out into the stars. 'And they say a leopard never changes its spots.'

---

They took turns piloting the ship around the course whilst Lucy slept. In between bouts of flying, Jack continued to toy with the ship's systems, assessing what damage the asteroid field had done to their less critical functions, and repairing what he could. It took his mind off his conversation with the Doctor and it helped him relax. There was a saying back on Earth, something to do with idle hands, but Jack couldn't remember it anymore. How much more of what he'd heard on Earth had he since forgotten? How much would remain in another hundred years, a thousand, a million? Suddenly the ghosts seemed less of a nuisance. Rather than wishing they'd go away and leave him alone, Jack prayed they'd stay with him so he wouldn't forget them.



A hundred laps ticked by, then a hundred and forty, and then a hundred and sixty. Jack and the Doctor quietly shared stories of places they'd been and things they'd done. The Doctor told Jack about her trip aboard the New Titanic and how she had met Alonso. Jack regaled the Doctor with his own tales of their adventures together, finally confessing that they'd been separated at the end and had never reunited.

'He was an outrageous flirt,' Jack said, chuckling.

'As soon as I saw you two in that bar, I knew I had to play matchmaker,' she replied. 'A shame you didn't have longer together.'

'Blips in time,' Jack said, remembering where he'd picked up the phrase.

'What's blips?' came a muffled voice from behind him.

'Ah, she wakes,' Jack joked. 'You missed all the fun and dirty stories.'

'You really didn't,' the Doctor assured her.

'We're into the last twenty laps,' Jack reported, 'and you'll be pleased to know we passed another three racers thanks to your little tip.'

'Drax?' Lucy asked. 'Please let him be one of the three.'

Jack grimaced. 'No sight of him,' he replied. That bothered him. How much lead time had he given Drax by failing to stop him at the last checkpoint?

'Do you want me to take over?' Lucy asked. It wasn't the bossy demand to return to the pilot's seat, but a gesture to give him a break.

Jack slid out of the chair. 'Be my guest. Doc, why don't you grab some zees before the next checkpoint? You've been going longer than any of us.'

They switched seats, Jack resuming his place as co-pilot, whilst the Doctor took the back seat. It would be nice just to have a few moments to close her eyes and let her mind drift. Something had been niggling at the back of her brain for ages now, but she couldn't put her finger on what exactly. That was the problem with having such a huge mind. Maybe if she just let it wander, the thought would come back to her, like a stray puppy sulking at the door to come in.

'So peaceful out here,' Jack commented. 'It's funny how huge orbs of planets can just drift by, like they're nothing more than leaves floating on the wind. It makes you feel very small indeed.'

'Mmm,' Lucy hummed in agreement.

'That's it!' The Doctor cried, bolting upright.

'Geez, Doc!' Jack complained, clutching at his chest. 'You wanna warn someone next time you do that.'

'What's wrong?' Lucy asked, tearing her eyes away for just a split second before remembering to keep them on where they were flying.

'I remembered what I wanted to ask!' the Doctor exclaimed.

Jack gave a look of askance. 'That's it? You scared the hell out of us for a question?'

Her eyes were bright. 'It's about this race. Fifteen million credits, I mean, phew, but that's a lot. More than ten times the prize money for the second biggest race.'

'We know, Doc. What's your point?'

'Doesn't that make you wonder? Why such a big prize?'

'Reward for not being killed?' he replied sarcastically, having had his fill of life threatening situations for the time being.

'Well, sure,' she said, 'but why not just double the second biggest prize? It'd still be the biggest by a mile.'

Jack thought about it for a moment. 'I suppose the hype makes it more profitable. Anyone who's a half decent flyer would probably want a slice of the action. People come from all over to watch it and spend up big while they're here. A boon for the advertisers as well.'

'And have you seen any advertising since we've been here?'

'Huh. I haven't, come to think of it. Usually these kinds of things have billboards all over the place. The sponsors end up getting more of the limelight than the competitors. When I was wandering around before the race, I don't remember seeing a single logo slapped on any of the ships I walked past.'

The Doctor saw the perplexed look on Jack's face. 'Why would they do that?' Companies pay big money to have their name splashed all over a ship.'

Jack paused, mulling it over. 'So, if they're not making millions from advertisers, how are they funding such a huge prize?'

'Exactly. Oh! Why didn't I realise this earlier?' she cried.

'Probably because we were too busy trying not to die,' Lucy replied.

'Who did you say was sponsoring this race?' the Doctor asked.

Lucy gave a dismissive wave. 'Erebus Corporation, who else?'

The Doctor frowned. 'Huh. Never heard of them.'

'Me either,' Jack said.

Lucy turned to both of them, a look of incredulity on her face. 'Seriously? They're everywhere around here, throwing money into medical and technological research, scholarships, donations to research organisations and universities. They must be the richest company this side of the known universe. Everybody knows them. I don't know what rock you two have been living under.'

'They sound very benevolent,' the Doctor replied. 'So, why put good money into something as egotistical as a race? Surely there's better uses for that money.'

'And where does all their money come from?' Jack asked. 'What exactly is it that they do?'

Lucy pulled a face. 'I just told you.'

'No, I mean, what do they do to earn that money? Do they sell anything? Provide a service?'

'I dunno. They just... own stuff, like other companies. There's always some news item about them having bought another medi-tech.'

'So, they're a really big hedge fund,' the Doctor said.

'But who are its investors?' Jack asked.

The Doctor grabbed Jack's wrist and shoved her sonic screwdriver against it before flipping it open and letting a holographic display beam upwards, showing a brief summary on the history of the Erebus Corporation. 'Hey,' Jack complained, pulling his wrist back. 'If you wanted something Googled, you only had to say so.'

The logo came up, three crescent moons, each intersecting in a triangular fashion, with its points facing outward, slowly spinning.

'It looks familiar for some reason,' Jack said. 'Nuclear waste symbol gone wrong?'

'There nothing useful here,' the Doctor said, scanning through the data on file. 'It's all polished PR rhetoric. Just a pretty information memorandum and nothing else. Not even so much as a spiel on who's behind the corporate shell. "A collaboration of like-minded contributors dedicated to the furtherment of sentient species",' she read from their mission statement.

'Doesn't exactly scream petrol heads, does it?' Jack said. 'Erebus, Erebus, why does that seem so familiar?' he wondered. 'Hey Doc, how good is your connection to the TARDIS?'

She narrowed her eyes at him. 'What do you mean?'

'How close do you need to be?'

'She always knows where I am.' In fact, she was mightily put out that she wasn't asked to race with them, being left behind for a more inferior ship. No doubt she'd cause trouble when they returned, giving the Doctor what for as punishment.

'So,' Jack said, continuing his train of thought, 'at any point in time we could potentially connect to her?'

'You'd still need something that can transmit across time and space, but yes.'

'So, a vortex manipulator might do the trick? With a few modifications?' he asked hopefully.

'What is it that you're asking me, Jack?'

'Before Torchwood was destroyed back on Earth, I made sure that a copy of our database was uploaded to the TARDIS.'

'Ah, so that was you.' She knew they'd been in cahoots, Jack and her beloved TARDIS. Even after she'd gained access to the database, the TARDIS would only let her look at certain things, like some kind of absurd parental lock. There were clearly things there that Jack hadn't wanted the Doctor to have access to. Like his collection of CCTV footage from the hub. That was purely for the TARDIS's enjoyment, if she was so inclined to watch his greatest hits compilation.

Jack looked momentarily sad. 'A lot of people died gathering that information. I didn't want it falling into the wrong hands, or being wiped completely. That database is their legacy. Mine too.'

'What makes you think Torchwood knows anything about them?'

He shook his head, as if he was unable to dislodge a niggling feeling at the back of his mind. 'Just a hunch. It can't hurt to look, can it?'

'If this is just an excuse for me to fix your vortex manipulator...'

'It's not. Come on, you know me. Aren't you curious?'

Of course she was. It should have been her middle name if she'd had one. 'Give it here, then.'

He reverently loosened the strap, taking it off. How few times had he done that, the Doctor wondered, and still the skin underneath was the same colouration the rest of his arm. There wasn't a tan line to be seen.

The Doctor took the vortex manipulator and began working on it with her screwdriver, using the device like a precision welding tool to reconnect just the right circuits to allow for a small time stream to be able to reach out across space and link up with her TARDIS. It was delicate work.

Confounded manipulators, she mentally cursed. Who in their right minds had devised them, and then handed them out to anyone with a taste for peril and a gun strapped to their belt?

If there was one thing the Shadow Proclamation had gotten very wrong, it was setting up the Time Agency. In her opinion, no one should be allowed to meddle with time. Unless you were a Time Lord, of course - which she was. Time Lord? Or was it Time Lady, now? That didn't sound right. Whatever. She dismissed the question of semantics, focusing on the task at hand. The point was that it was okay for her to interfere with time because she knew what she was doing. Well, most of the time, anyway.

'There,' she said, handing it back. 'You're officially connected to TARDIS Wi-Fi. Go forth and satisfy your curiosity.'

'Thanks.' Jack flipped open the small panel on the top and keyed in his search criteria, including a copy of the Erebus Corporation logo. Tosh's brilliant algorithms, along with Ianto's superior filing system, would be able to hunt down anything even remotely connected to the search terms. Having unfettered access to all of the old Torchwood files made his heart ache. He wanted just to open up a mission report and start reading it, reliving some of their adventures. Even one of Owen's autopsy reports, which would have normally made for tiresome reading, would have been a welcome breath of air. And as for those after-hours CCTV collections…

It didn't take long at all before results started coming up. The resulting search wasn't just ringing a bell for Jack, it was the entire St Paul's Cathedral going off in his head. Now he remembered why the word Erebus made him feel uneasy, and what made the logo of three crescents cause his skin to crawl. Three moons, three families. Jack's expression turned dark.

The Doctor began to frown in anticipation of the answer. 'You know who they are, don't you?'

'Yes. And they're not the benevolent do-gooders they lay claim to be. Erebus is the name of the planet they came from originally. Their real name is The Committee.'

'Who are The Committee?'

Jack turned his chair around to face the Doctor and knelt forward, resting his elbows on his knees. 'I don't know much about them, but what I can tell you is this. Back at the end of the nineteenth century, there were two organisations monitoring alien activity on Earth. The first was Torchwood, set up by Queen Victoria,'

'Yes, yes, I know all about that,' the Doctor said, trying to rush him. 'Ungrateful woman. She'd have been inside the belly of a werewolf if it hadn't been for Rose and me. She hated me. That's why she set it up. Torchwood. Public enemy Number One, I think they called me.'

'Trust me,' Jack said, 'she mellowed in her old age, and she became a staunch supporter for Torchwood doing the right thing before she died.' He still laughed at memories of chasing aliens with her on horseback through the streets of London.

'Anyway, there was Torchwood, and across the pond in Russia, there was the KVI, set up by the Tsars. One day, Vicki and Alexi got together and decided they wanted to test their muscle. They managed to enlist a group of aliens from Erebus to come down and put on a show, pretending to be the big, bad aliens. They wanted to know how Torchwood and the KVI would fare against a serious threat.'

The Doctor folded her arms. 'I'm guessing that this little exercise had a price tag attached to it?'

Jack nodded. 'In exchange they traded them some technology that Torchwood had acquired through the rift. Big mistake. The aliens used that technology to fashion themselves into what they call The Committee, and started taking over other planets in Signus A, Omega Centauri, and Andromeda star systems. They stripped those planets of everything valuable and decimated their populations.'

The Doctor frowned in confusion. 'But how could Torchwood have come to know all this?'

Jack grimaced as memories from his Time Agency days came back to haunt him once more. 'I ran into them once on Kepri 5. I was still with the Agency back then. At the time we weren't exactly there to stop them. Our mission was merely to prevent civil unrest, whilst they basically raped and pillaged.' The guilt-ridden look on his face spoke volumes, as he tried to push past the admission. 'They were looking to begin a fresh invasion, and mentioned planet Earth as their next target. So, I told them there was no intelligent life on Earth and I sent them on their merry way to a little mining outpost far, far away.' He cast his eyes down at the floor before continuing. 'I figured two thousand lives lost was better than six billion.'

'No lives lost would have been best,' the Doctor replied, her distaste for the Time Agency clearly reignited.

Jack wrung his hands. 'I know. I'm not proud of it.' He squirmed uncomfortably in his seat before carrying on with his story. 'Anyway, somewhere along the way, The Committee found out I'd lied to them about Earth. They found me - found out that I was working for Torchwood - and have been trying to take me out of the game ever since. They're powerful and almost impossible to infiltrate. I spent six months crossing the continents, trying to figure out just how far their connections reached. After I left Earth for the last time, I figured I must have finally given them the slip.'

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. 'Every level of government has been manipulated by them, and they remove anyone who gets in their way, even replacing them with AIs so no one will be any the wiser.' He fixed his gaze on the Doctor, his blue eyes fierce. 'Torchwood couldn't stop them. Our founders created a monster race and gave them the technology to make them unstoppable.' He blew out a long breath. 'I just had no idea they'd spread so far and become so powerful.'

'But what do they really want?'

Jack chuckled, a mirth-filled sound. 'What do they want? To be the most superior race of beings in the universe.'

'So, they buy up other companies for their technology?' Lucy asked.

'And hand out money for research and development, but I'll bet you anything, the scientists that end up creating those new technologies never see them again.'

Lucy paused, her expression thoughtful. 'Come to think of it, I have heard rumours. Prestigious leaders in their respect fields on the cusp of a breakthrough disappearing, or committing suicide. The press reported them as being under immense pressure to produce results, or so obsessed with their work that it had driven them to self destructive behaviour.'

'And how many more less well-known researchers have been dealt with in the same way?' Jack added.

Lucy shook her head. 'That still, doesn't explain why they'd want to spend so much money on a race.'

'Gathering the best of the best to compete in the most brutal race ever devised, once every generation,' the Doctor said, thinking out loud. 'Oh! That's it! Stupid Doctor!' she cried again, making her teammates jump. 'Genetic superiority.'

Jack felt his hand tense involuntarily around the arm of his seat. 'Doctor?'

'Research is one thing, but what you really want is a few live samples. Find out what makes them tick. Yes! But how? How do they get access? Oh!' she said, slapping her forehead again. 'DNA scanners! The holodecks are fitted with full DNA scanners. Oh, that's clever. Compare DNA from each racer and find out what markers make one racer better than the next. Every time we passed a checkpoint, they were checking us out.'

'They're looking for species to wipe out? Species that might threaten them?' Jack asked.

'No, better than that. They're looking for species to breed with. Well, not breed, perhaps, but to replicate the DNA strands that give them an advantage, quick reflexes, increased intellectual capacity, even the ability to go without sleep. We're just experiments, rats running around a maze looking for cheese, bacteria festering in a petri dish…'

Jack was appalled, if not for the fact that Earth had been responsible for giving The Committee their power in the first place, then for being unable to stop them years ago before their power had stretched to this far corner of the universe. 'What do we do, Doctor?'

'Well, that's obvious, isn't it? We win the race so we can get an appointment with The Committee. Who was the winner of the last race?'

Jack ran a fresh search, logging out of the Torchwood mainframe and checking the TARDIS's data core. 'A Gravelliean trio won the race,' he said. He read on, looking at news feeds from the time. 'Last seen celebrating their win a few hours after the race at "The Lotus" in the Vegas Galaxy before taking off with their winnings.' There were no further reports after that. 'You don't just become a recluse after winning fifteen million credits.'

'Exactly. Kidnapped in all likelihood. I'm sure there were some very well paid researchers more than happy to run further experiments on them.'

'I don't want to be experimented on,' Lucy said, sounding scared.

'You won't be,' Jack assured her. 'I won't let that happen.'

There was a series of three staccato bleeps from the onboard computer. 'We've completed the final lap,' Lucy said, feeling less relieved than she ought. There was a flash of light, and there, in the middle of their transmat field, was their flag. On the navigation display was a set of coordinates just a few minutes away.

The Doctor stood up and walked over, picking up the flag. 'One step closer,' she said.



Once they docked at the small space station, Lucy paused in front of the holodeck, reluctant to step inside.

'It'll be fine,' Jack said, coaxing her forward. He watched as the Doctor paced around it, looking at it from all angles with an inquisitive eye. She crouched and poked her screwdriver next to it just moments before Lucy stepped on. 'It's fine,' she said, looking up at Lucy. 'I just want to see what's really happening when it activates.'

Bolstered by the advice of her two friends, Lucy stepped up, letting the holodeck scan her. She kept her eyes locked on Jack's for reassurance. The Doctor's sonic screwdriver hummed and whirred as the scanning slowly checked her from the tips of her golden toes to the last strand of black hair on her head, finally relinquishing another chip into her waiting hand.

'Anything?' Jack asked.

The Doctor dusted off her hands. 'All in working order.'

'I'm not, like, infected with anything, am I?' Lucy asked.

'No worse than getting an x-ray,' the Doctor promised.

Lucy's face scrunched up. 'What's an x-ray?'

Jack chuckled and wrapped an arm around Lucy's shoulder as they walked back to the ship. 'Just ignore her,' he said. 'And keep your references chronologically up to date, Doc.'

The Doctor jogged after them. 'Are you calling me old?'

Jack laughed out loud. 'But still looking fine. I'd sleep with you.'

'Don't even joke about things like that!'

---

Lucy took her seat, twirling the chip between her thick finger and thumb. 'So, we're seeing this through, even though we know that they're a bunch of crooks and that this whole thing is a sham?'

'Oh, I don't doubt they'd pay over the prize money,' the Doctor said. 'I just don't think anyone would be free long enough to enjoy it. That sucks, doesn't it? They should at least let you burn a few thousand credits before locking you up for life and poking you full of holes.'

'Trust me,' Jack began, 'I've had dealings with them. They'd kill us in a heartbeat if we weren't of any use to them.' They'd already killed him more times than he could count. He wasn't looking forward facing them. Few things scared him in this universe, but he'd always come off second best against The Committee. They were the faceless men with immeasurable power. Then again, he hadn't had the Doctor with him before, either. That gave him a different kind of hope. They should go now before he lost his nerve.

'Doctor?' Lucy asked, still unsure.

'Come on, you two!' she said, trying to rally their spirits. 'At least now we know what we're up against.' She took the chip from Lucy's hand and slotted it in, letting the display show them the way. She scowled at the map. 'That can't be right. I've been out to that quadrant of space before. There's nothing out there except that miniscule little planet,' she said, pointing to the blue dot. 'That's just a ball of ice out in no man's land.'

'Well, we didn't expect they'd have engineered the inside of an asteroid either,' Jack replied. 'Everything so far has been a carefully orchestrated test. Why should this outpost be any different?'

As they were debating, a thin yellow ship, shaped like an arrowhead streamed past them. 'Looks like they're not worried,' Jack added, watching them disappear from view.

'And we still haven't seen Drax,' Lucy replied. 'He must be light-years in front.'

'Might not be such a bad thing to let The Committee have him,' Jack said. 'If he's the genetic future for them, they're sunk.'

'And we lose whatever chance we have of getting to them,' the Doctor replied. She leaned across and powered up the ship, setting their vector and flight path. 'Hope you both packed your thermals,' she added cheerily. 'It's gonna be mighty cold.'

---

'Phew!' Jack cried, pulling his coat around him tighter and tucking his hands under his armpits. 'I know you said it'd be cold,' he said, stepping down from the transmat platform installed inside a large ice cavern, 'but I'm liable to lose valuable body parts down here!'

The Doctor gripped her own coat tight, the collar pulled up high. 'Be glad we're not on the surface. The winds alone up there are cold enough to strip your skin from your bones.'

'It's not that cold,' Lucy said, staring around. She'd already clocked the holodeck, just off to the right, waiting for them to return with their flag.

'Fine for you. Your skin holds in the warmth,' Jack complained, watching Lucy moving around unaffected in only her coveralls and leather jacket, hanging open at the front.

The Doctor watched her breath frost into clouds under her nose. 'Shall we?' she asked, pointing the way.



A thin passage through the ice directed them forward. From somewhere within the ice itself, faint blue-green lights kept the passage gently illuminated, showing that it had been carved specifically, rather than a natural formation. The sheer walls caused the cracking and crunching of their feet on the ice to echo all around them, turning their trio into an army of footsteps. When the passage finally opened up into a wider cul-de-sac, the sight took their breath away.

'Wow!' Jack turned a slow circle, taking in the sight.

Huge icicles hung from the roof, appearing to defy gravity. More shot up from the floor all around them, smaller than their overhead counterparts. What they lacked in size they made up for in sheer numbers. They were jagged and twisted, but each had its own beauty, glittering brightly in every hue imaginable. It was like they were standing in a great cathedral of light.

'It doesn't look dangerous at all,' Jack said, wishing he could take a picture. As he uttered the words, there was a sharp crack and an icicle, bigger than a man, came crashing from the ceiling just feet away from him, skewering the ground before smashing apart in all directions and hitting their legs with icy debris. 'Okay, I take it back,' he quickly replied, watching for more deadly daggers.

Lucy stepped gingerly between the pillars of ice, searching for their flag. It was hard when the view of all the glittering icicles was so beautiful and distracting. It was only as she peered into one of the large upward pointing icicles, surrounded by a crown of smaller ones, she saw what was hidden beneath the sparkling ice. Brushing a hand over it, she dislodged a light layer of accumulated snow, revealing the flag. 'It's inside,' she called out quietly, so as not to disturb the delicate frozen stalactites hanging above them.

'How are we supposed to get that out of there?' Jack asked. 'I didn't bring my ice axe.' He kicked one of the smaller icicles with his heavy boot. It glowed momentarily and let out a gentle hum. He kicked it again, letting a proper note ring out. He kicked the one next to it, and a different note sounded.

The Doctor looked annoyed at him. 'Do you have to do that? Honestly, it's like travelling with a five year old sometimes!'

'How many icicles do you know that make music?' Jack retorted. 'It must have something to do with how we get that out.'

The icicles flashed in a sequence, two at a time and rang out a gentle tune.

The Doctor looked confused as she listened. 'Is that?'

'Yellow Submarine?' Jack responded. He'd thought he must be imagining things. The tune couldn't have been more out of place.

'It's definitely Yellow Submarine,' Lucy said.

The Doctor's eyebrows disappeared into her hairline. 'You know that song?'

'Of course I know it,' Lucy said. 'I have no idea what a submarine is, or why it's yellow, though. Even less why anyone would be living in one, come to think of it. My brother used to sing it all the time. It drove me crazy because it sounds so silly.'

There was a thunderous rumble as ice began to rain down on them from above. The whole roof was shaking violently. Jack tugged his coat off and held it over their heads as they all hunched under it, trying to get whatever protection they could.

'What do we do?' Lucy asked over the rumbling from above.

'I think we're supposed to replicate the tune,' Jack replied.

'I can't believe that song is actually popular somewhere other than Earth,' The Doctor said. 'It's not even a good song.'

'It's the Beatles!' Jack said, defending them with his last breath. 'What else were they gonna send out on those first intergalactic probes in the sixties? Who knew it would catch on?'

'Who cares?' Lucy yelled. 'Let's just do it.' She picked up one of the broken icicles and whacked it against one of the other larger ones, generating a note, then testing them each of them in turn. They appeared to be arranged in an ascending scale.

As the roof began tumbling down around them, they discovered that by standing right next to the central icicle, they could avoid the worst of the falling debris A few steps further back however and they were liable to be skewered. That was assuming the whole place didn't cave in first, burying them beneath the ice to slowly freeze to death.

'Okay, you take those four,' Jack said, pointing at Lucy. 'And Doc, you take the middle four. I'll take the last four,' he said, picking up a lump of ice and handing it to the Doctor to use. She gasped at the burning cold of it in her hand.

Jack drew in a breath and got the ball rolling, remembering the lyrics like it was yesterday.

"In the town where I was born, lived a man who sailed to sea…" It was remarkably hard to hold the tune over the rumbling and shaking. It hardly felt like the time or place to impress an audience with his repertoire. Instead he let the words carry on without him, keeping his gaze fixed on his two companions.

"And we lived beneath the waves, in our yellow submarine."

He gave a flourish of his icicle, using it like a baton to ready his two friends as the chorus was about to begin. He caught the briefest embarrassed eye roll from the Doctor.

"We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine..." They tried to stay on key, but it was difficult with the ice tumbling down around them. Each of them floundered from one icicle to the next, watching them light up and ring out.

"We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine." The were all singing along now, trying to find the right sequence.

Jack frowned up at the roof as ice continued to fall, persevering as best he could. "And our friends are all aboard, many more of them live next door, and the band begins to play… Please, he begged, I don't wanna be trapped forever in the freezing cold. If I'd wanted that, I'd have stayed in Cardiff. Determined, he sang even louder, trying to bring encouragement to his friends.

"We all live in a yellow submarine, yellow submarine, yellow submarine..."

They must have managed enough notes in the correct order because the rumbling suddenly stopped, a few final icicles plunging down around them before it all fell eerily silent again. There was one final crack, a long jagged splinter forming in the huge central icicle, breaking apart and releasing the flag.

Jack gave a nervous laugh. 'Who thought Brit Pop might save your life one day?'

'Mortified,' the Doctor said. 'Absolutely mortified,' she repeated, clearly praying she would never have to lower herself to that ever again. 'We're never going to a karaoke bar, do you hear me?'

'You don't know what you're missing,' Jack replied. Getting Owen so hideously drunk one night that it was all too easy to convince him to get up and sing "Like a Virgin" all on his own, was a memory that wouldn't fade easily. It was unlikely to fade from the memories of anyone else there that night either.

They rushed and stumbled back through the mass of treacherous ice, reaching the passageway and running the rest of the way. Jack's hands were so cold he could barely feel the flag, its metal rod just as frozen as the ice he'd been holding. He passed it to Lucy to scan.

'Wait,' the Doctor called out, stopping her just inches from the holodeck.

'What?'

'Jack should do it.'

Lucy frowned. 'Why?'

The Doctor knelt close to the base of the holodeck, drawing her screwdriver from her coat pocket. 'I want to see what happens when he gets scanned.'

'Well, thanks for making me sound like a guinea pig.'

'Just shut up and get on there,' she said, losing her patience, and pointing her screwdriver at him like an animal trainer.

Jack took back the flag and stepped on the platform, his coat still draped over his arm, trying to keep at least one hand warm. If he'd been hoping the scanner might warm him up, he was sadly disappointed. 'Come on,' he muttered to himself, literally hopping up and down on the spot, trying to keep from freezing, 'hurry up.' The flag finally dematerialised, replaced by a chip. He quickly pocketed the data chip and yanked on his coat, shivering beneath the thick wool.

The Doctor frowned, a clear look of disappointment on her face. 'That wasn't what I expected.'

'Okay, but can we discuss what you expected back on the ship?' Jack said. 'I'm freezing my arse off here!' He was already standing in the transmat circle, waiting impatiently for the other two to join him. He half contemplated leaving them there if they didn't get a move on.

---

Back on board, Jack let out a shuddering breath and cupped his nose. It hardly helped since his hands were just as cold. 'Dow, wad was id you were so addoyed dabout?'

The Doctor rolled her eyes at Jack's childishness. 'Why didn't they pick up anything when they scanned you?' she asked, slipping out of her own coat and folding it.

'Whaddyou bean?' he said, before finally letting go of his nose, rubbing his arms up and down the rest of him to warm back up.

'If they're looking for genetic markers or distinctive traits, you should have lit up their sensors like a Christmas tree,' she said.

'There's nothing special about me,' Jack replied. 'And you don't know how much it pains me to say that. Genetically speaking, I'm no different to anyone else. I just can't stay dead.'

How many people had tried over the years to understand what made Jack tick? Some had merely been interested at a personal level, others had poked and prodded him, cutting him up for scientific satisfaction. He shuddered to think of those times. He was who he was. With a few evolutionary adjustments, he was still basically just human. What did it matter if he couldn't die? The Doctor had said it himself. Or was it herself, now? He was an impossible thing that shouldn't exist. If the Doctor couldn't make heads or tails of it, what chance did The Committee have?

The Doctor seemed to accept this as an explanation, already moving on to the next thought. 'Right, so final checkpoint, Lucy?'

Lucy walked across and rifled her hand into Jack's enormous coat pocket, fishing out the chip and inserting it into their ship's computer. 'It's the finish line, back where we started the race.'

'So, first to cross and the line, grab their flag and log it wins?' The Doctor surmised.

Jack slid into his seat, pulling the straps over his shoulders and powering up systems in anticipation of their immediate departure. 'Sounds right to me. How fast can this ship really go?'

'Strap in and you'll find out,' Lucy replied already clipping her own straps.

Jack gave an excited laugh. 'I love this bit. Fire her up, baby!'

Lucy flipped switches and set the controls, the ship lurching forward with an unexpected burst of speed. 'She's small, but she's fast,' she said, stars zipping by in tiny streaks of white, loving the feeling of being pressed back in her seat. She never got to really open up the engines like this when she was on transport duty. That had been reserved for those times when she and her brother had been mucking around, trying to outdo one another by sending the ship around in loops and long corkscrew movements. First to throw up always had to clean the house and cook for a week.

'Look over there,' Jack pointed. He had spotted a hulking red and white striped ship. It was puttering along rather than speeding, as if damaged or running on one engine only. They passed it easily and caught up with a second, just hovering without moving. Lucy caught a glimpse of the ship's emergency beacon on their radar before an ambulance ship was seen heading towards it. There wasn't time to stop and help anyone else. Besides, it looked like they were already getting assistance.

'Is there any way of telling how many are in front of us?' she asked.

Jack fiddled with the radar, extending its reach, searching out moving objects. 'It looks like just the two signatures up ahead.' He leant back in his seat, staring aimlessly out at the view. 'I wonder what happened to Markle?' he mused. 'Surely he couldn't have made it past that first checkpoint. I kinda hope he didn't even try to attempt crossing. He might have been a stingy old bugger, but he was a good egg.'

Lucy ignored any thoughts of Jack's former partner. Two ships! she thought. They were still in contention if that was the case. She pressed the engines harder before a bolt of bright green shot past their windshield, followed by another from an opposite angle. 'They're shooting at us!'

'Lasers,' the Doctor replied.

Jack leant forward, spotting the barely concealed little satellites. 'Not just lasers. Death rays. Dozens of them, too small to show up on radar, but powerful enough to slice through a ship like a hot knife through butter.'

The Doctor gripped the back of Jack's seat, pulling herself forward for a closer look. 'They should have all been decommissioned and banned,' she said, sounding displeased. 'It was your Agency's task to make sure of it,' she lectured.

'We did decommission them! Contrary to what you think, the Time Agency did a lot of good work,' Jack argued. 'Obviously The Committee somehow got a hold of the blueprints.'

More streaks of green criss-crossed their path. Though none had found their mark yet, Jack knew it was only a matter of time. He watched as they gained on the blue ship in front of them. It took a direct hit, straight through the hull and out the other side, then several more finished off the job, imploding it from the outside in, before the remnants of the ship blasted outwards. Bits of it showered them as they were forced to fly through it.

'I can try to fly scatterplot,' Lucy suggested. 'Try to confuse their targeting systems.'

Jack shook his head. 'That'll just slow us down,' he replied. 'We need to go faster. That's the only thing that will work.' It was clear he didn't like their chances.

'I can't go any faster!'

The Doctor reached over and jammed her screwdriver into the console. 'Remember that fifth gear Jack was fiddling with earlier? Well, now it goes to six. Second star to the right and straight on til morning.'

'Huh?'

'Just fly, Lucy!' Jack yelled, gripping the edge of his seat hard as a laser clipped the very tip of their nose.

She forced the yoke forward, the inertia catching her off guard as she twisted it sideways every so slightly, driving them into a stomach-lurching spin. She held the column hard, bolstered by a second pair of hands, helping her to keep it in control. She didn't know whose hands they were, but it hardly mattered.

The ship spun and rolled, over and over again, but continued surging forward simultaneously. Lucy's world tipped upside down and right way up so many times it became impossible to tell one from the other, flashes of green all around, but none hitting them in their crazed flight path. She could hear the ship's outer hull straining from the motion, trying to tear itself apart. Then the green flashes stopped.

Lucy gripped the yoke hard, knowing she had to get the ship out of its chaotic roll. If she didn't, the inertia was likely to cause the ship to tear itself apart. She forced it back in the other direction. At first the ship resisted her commands, but its helter-skelter movement eventually slowed. It gave one last sideways roll before righting itself and finally coming to a halt.

'Urgh,' the Doctor groaned, resting a hand on the seat in front. 'I think I'm going to throw up.'

'Me too,' Jack said. 'How the hell are we not dead yet?'

Lucy didn't answer. All she could see in front of her was one familiar silver cruiser. Drax. She leaned forward. 'He's stopped. Why has he stopped?' The finish line was just a few more parsecs away. He should be streaming ahead and towards victory.

The Doctor spied the tiny plume of white issuing from the side of the ship. 'He's been hit. He's leaking atmosphere. We have to help.'

Lucy looked at the Doctor like she was mad. 'Help? He doesn't need help.'

'He hasn't issued a mayday,' Jack said, checking for outbound signals. 'No one knows he's in trouble. He could be passed out already. He'll be dead before anyone thinks to come looking for him. Assuming they bother about casualties.'

'We're not helping him,' Lucy said, putting her foot down.

'We have to,' Jack said, not liking the idea any more than she did.

'You don't know what he's done,' Lucy cried. 'He left me and my brother for dead. He's killed other racers. He's tried to kill us as well. We should do the same. He doesn't deserve to be rescued.'

'The Committee set up this whole race with the express purpose of weeding out everyone except the best,' the Doctor replied. 'They don't care if we all die trying to win it, just so long as they collect as much data as possible. He's as much a victim as we are.'

'Please, Lucy,' Jack begged. 'The right thing isn't always the easy thing, or the pleasant thing, but it's still the right thing.'

Lucy was astonished by Jack's insistence, and she was literally shaking with indignation. Despite that, she relented, knowing Jack could easily overpower her and wrest away control of the ship if she disagreed. 'Fine. But we'd better hurry. I hear oxygen deprivation kills brain cells and he doesn't have that many to begin with.'

They quickly swung their ship around to hover above the stricken vessel, locking onto its transmat beam.

'The remaining atmosphere down there will probably be pretty thin,' the Doctor said.

'I'll go,' Jack volunteered. 'Did I ever mention I once dated a deep sea diver? You wouldn't believe how long he could hold his breath. Comes in very handy when you-'

'Yes, Jack, enough,' the Doctor said, shoving him in the path of the transmat.

'Be back soon,' he promised.

---

It didn't take Jack long to find the great lump of leather-clad opponent, passed out in his seat. The short journey from the transmat, located inconveniently in the loading dock, had Jack puffing and out of breath from the thin atmosphere left inside the vessel. By the time he'd unstrapped Drax from his seat and dragged the dead weight to the other end of the ship, he was beginning to feel light-headed and see stars swimming in his vision. He quickly keyed the signal on his wrist strap, activating the responding transmat beam, and let it carry them back to safety.

His head cleared quickly once he was back on board, sucking in deep lungfuls of air. Reaching into his pocket, he extracted a plastic cable tie, and cuffed Drax's meaty hands behind his back. Jack stood there for a moment, admiring his handiwork and mentally calculating Drax's strength. For good measure, he added a second pair of cables around Drax's thick ankles, before leaving him to wake up on his own at the back of the bridge.

'Do you always keep handcuffs on you?' the Doctor queried, as she watched him work.

'You never know when you might wanna tie someone up,' he explained.

'And we'll conclude that line of questioning right there,' she replied.

'He won't be grateful,' Lucy warned them.

The Doctor gave a noncommittal shrug. 'He doesn't have to be. You can please some of the people all of the time-'

Jack jumped in before the Doctor could finish. 'And there's just no pleasing others.'

The Doctor shrugged. 'Close enough. So, are we finishing this thing or what? I'd hate for that rust bucket we passed twenty miles back to come clunking past and pip us at the post. We've got a meeting with The Committee to attend.'

Lucy slid back into her seat, her companions following suit as she powered up and set course for the final leg. She could almost spot the glowing stadium in the distance and hear the roar of the crowd, though perhaps that much was imagined. She set the ship at a cruise - fast, but not breakneck. She was fairly certain there was no one left who could catch them now, but she didn't want to put any further strain on their already battered ship.

There was a garbled cry from behind them as Drax regained consciousness.

'What am I doing on this ship with you scumbags?'

Jack crossed to stand over their unwanted passenger. 'These scumbags just saved your miserable life, so shut the hell up before I repay you that knuckle sandwich you gave me earlier.'

Drax struggled against his bonds. 'I'd rather be dead.'

Jack knelt low and close, lowering his voice to a growl so the others wouldn't hear. 'It can be arranged.'

'We're almost there,' Lucy called back. Her display was highlighting a red circle for them to land in, setting the ship down exactly at its centre. As they disembarked, they could see a single white console, packed with flags for each of the competitors. Lucy reached in, selected the correct colour and pulled it out.

'The holodeck is just over there,' Jack indicated. 'What do you suppose happens when we log the flag?'

'Only one way to find out,' the Doctor replied, snatching the flag from Lucy and marching towards their final goal. All around them, the bleachers full of spectators reached up high into the sky, cheering them on. They paused momentarily before the holodeck, before the Doctor stepped up onto it. In a blaze of white light, the crowd gasped in awe as all three of them vanished from view.

---

When they were ejected from the beam of light, Jack knew they were somewhere completely different, another planet, even another time. It was the sensation of having travelled through the vortex, which he knew well; a kind of tingling, like having soda running through your veins. 'We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto,' he muttered.

'I know,' the Doctor grinned. 'Don't you just love that fizzy feeling all over?' She gave a little shake, expelling the remnants of chrono-spatial energy from her fingertips, before casting her eyes around their new location.

Grey. Everything was grey, muted and monotone. Their respective outfits clashed horribly, so much colour against their drab surroundings. The room couldn't have been more sparsely fitted, a few circular windows, frosted to block out the view, and one long bench with five plain grey chairs lined up behind it in a neat row. A hidden doorway slid open with an almost imperceptible hiss, and from without came five equally grey-suited individuals.

Jack watched them with nervous anticipation as they moved behind the bench and took their seats. It was hard to say what species they were, humanoid in general shape, but lacking any defining features, like an artist had begun molding them from clay, but never finished. They stepped into the room and wordlessly sat down in the five chairs.

The Doctor stepped forward. 'Hello,' she said, giving a friendly wave and a smile.

'You are not registered,' came a voice. It was impossible to tell which of them had spoken. None had any mouths to speak of, and the sound seemed to come from all directions at once. Jack tensed beside Lucy, unnerved by it.

'Oh, I know,' the Doctor replied. 'I figured the two hearts might get your attention,' she said. 'You have been scanning us, after all. I figured it was time to come and meet you all personally. It's a bit rude to map someone's genome without asking them first, you know.'

'Your concerns are not relevant to us.'

'My team's done quite well, I think.' She turned to Jack and Lucy. 'You don't mind if I call you my team, do you? Team Doctor? Ooh, I like that. Team Doctor. We should get t-shirts printed.'

Jack stepped up. 'You're The Committee, right? Or at least people claiming to represent them?'

'The human has spoken,' one voice said. 'Records of previous humans show low intellect.'

'Artesian dermal layer demonstrates superior resistance to extreme temperatures,' another intoned with the same monotonous voice.

Lucy bristled. 'They have names, you know,' she piped up, clearly offended at being talked about like she was nothing.

'So, what if they're a little rough around the edges?' the Doctor said, intervening. 'Their hearts are in the right place.'

'Species Three is unknown to us. Species Three shows potential. Name your species,' came the request.

'Time Lord.'

There was an awkward silence, as if the panel were conversing between one another without speaking. 'Records indicate that species Time Lord is extinct.'

The Doctor tutted, as if disappointed in the Committee. 'Well, you had better update your records then, because I'm very much alive.'

'It is done. Further research to be conducted.'

'Oh, no,' the Doctor replied. 'I've already done quite a bit of research about you and I've decided that you're not very nice people.' She tossed her screwdriver in the air, making it do a little three-sixty spin before catching it again and pointing it at the holodeck. 'Did you enjoy the race from your cosy little boardroom here?' she asked, switching her screwdriver to the opposite hand and giving the holodeck another little zap.

Jack leaned closer. 'What are you doing?' he whispered.

The Doctor ignored Jack's question. 'You were testing us, weren't you? Throwing obstacles in our path to see how we'd tackle them.'

'Balance, intelligence, agility, strength, endurance, coordination and speed. These are things we seek to bring to the next generation.'

The Doctor stepped forward again, throwing her hand over her shoulder and giving the screwdriver another little flourish behind her. 'You know what the problem is these days? Nobody knows how to make things anymore.' She turned to her companions. 'Isn't that such a shame?' she said, before returning her attention to the panel of five. 'I mean, look at us. Once upon a time we crawled out of the oceans and wandered about on the beach, wondering what to do. Then we had to forage for food, make tools to catch and kill things. Then we discovered fire, learned how to turn rocks into metals, forged better tools, weaponry, Made houses, traded goods, developed currency, created stock markets. Look at us now,' she said, throwing her arms wide and turning to take in the whole room around her. 'All technologically savvy, but who's making everything for us now? Computers, that's who. We took everything we knew from our brains and dumped it into robots so they could go around making things whilst we sipped our pineapple cocktails by the pool and thought about how very clever we were.'

She tapped the end of her sonic screwdriver thoughtfully against her lips. 'See, that's the problem now. Without the computers and all that magnificent data from our brains, we lose the ability to create. That's not to say we won't be able to create things again. There's always smart people out there with a mind for such things, but it's going to take a very, very long time, don't you think?'

'Time Lord's opinions are not important to the ultimate design.'

The Doctor carried on, ignoring the comment. 'You see, what I realised as we were playing your little game was that you wanted to know what makes us tick. Every time we scanned our flags, you were scanning us. You wanted to know what it was that made us capable of figuring out the solutions to your little puzzles. What evolutionary traits did we possess that made us physically and mentally superior?'

The Doctor wandered behind Lucy, resting her hands on her shoulders. 'Was it the cat-like reflexes?' she said, continuing past. 'Or was it the strength in those muscles?' The Doctor raised Jack's arm and gave it a squeeze. 'Or maybe it wasn't any one of those things.'

'All scans will be compared to historical data.'

'Yes, yes, you'll scour your fancy computers looking for anomalies and explanations. Which bit of which chromosome does what? But you won't find what you're looking for. Because what really makes someone special isn't down to whether they can piece together a puzzle or fly halfway across the universe. It's what's in here,' she said, laying a hand over her two hearts. 'Honesty, integrity, loyalty, friendship, teamwork, empathy. Your computers don't know what those things are. They're just machines. They can't feel. Even your best AIs are only replicating learned behaviours. They can produce emotions on demand only when a set of preprogrammed conditions is met.'

'Artificial intelligence is only a means to an end. We have the universe's most cutting edge medical and genetic specialists working on customised foetal DNA engineering. If not our generation, then the one that comes after us.'

The Doctor sighed. 'It's always about the DNA, isn't it? Only, while you were scanning me, I had this thought. The holodeck can do a DNA scan, sure, but a full map of a person's genome? That's a lot of data, and I mean, a lot. Trillions of terabytes, and that's just for one competitor. But where could a holodeck store so much data? It'd have to be connected to something else, a server somewhere, big, with lots of processing power. And you thought you'd be clever. Oh, so clever. Why wait until the race was run? Why not get those boffin computers of yours working on the problem straight away? So, you uploaded everything to your master server. And boy oh boy, do you have a lot of data on there! Why, I daresay that's where you keep everything, from how to make a microwave oven right down to the financial records for every company you've ever owned. Why, with all that knowledge, you could probably, oh, I don't know, control a good chunk of the universe?' She frowned. 'What do they call that back on Earth, Jack?'

'A dictatorship,' he replied, scowling.

'Yes, that's right. A dictatorship. People don't tend to like dictatorships because the people in charge of them don't much care for the people they control. They tend to rise up against them.'

'We have control of every government and organisation. Rebellion is futile.'

'You might want to check your balance sheet, then,' she said. 'I think you'll find that Erebus Corporation's share price has just taken a dive, since it no longer has any assets.'

There was an unsteady pause. 'What have you done?'

She gave another little nonchalant flip of her sonic screwdriver. 'See, what happened was when you scanned me, and in all the time you've been letting me stand here waffling on about evolution and the wonder of variety in the universe, I programmed a little virus into your systems, wiping all of the data you collected.'

The Doctor sensed their growing unease, the silence hanging in the air as they formulated a response to the news. 'That is not possible. Master servers are not connected to any other systems.'

'Except for this cute little holodeck here,' she replied, pointing down at it with her screwdriver. 'Oh, don't worry, the data isn't lost. Of course I backed it up. It just so happens that my friend here has a very nifty little device on his wrist that allows me to transfer your data across time and space, right into the data banks of my TARDIS.' She leaned over the bench, setting her elbows on it. 'That's time and relative dimensions in space, in case you were wondering. And she now has everything The Committee ever stored, including the identities of every insider and AI you've planted in every government across all the galaxies. I think the governments of those respective planets will be very interested to know about that, don't you?'

Featureless heads turned to one another, before all five reverted their blind gaze back towards the Doctor in unison. 'We started with nothing. We will rebuild again.'

'Yes, and it might take another two hundred years, or two thousand years, but we'll be watching for you this time, because the one thing your Committee didn't count on was me. Because I'm the Doctor.'

One of the Committee members lunged forward, showing a speed and agility it didn't seem capable of possessing. Jack quickly drew his Webley and pointed it right at his head. 'Hold it right there,' he warned. 'No one touches the Doctor.'

'Put the gun down, Jack. It's not necessary.'

'You wanna bet? I've dealt with these guys before. They don't mind guns.'

The Doctor reached out and gently pushed Jack's arm down, keeping her gaze fixed on The Committee. 'You want to rule the universe? Go open up a chain of stalls that sell candy floss. Everyone loves candy floss,' she said. 'Except the dentists, maybe.' She shrugged. 'Oh, well, you can't win them all. Be remembered for being good. That's all that really counts for anything.'

The five of them sat there transfixed and unbelieving. Jack could barely believe it himself. He wished they had proper faces so he could see the looks on them. 'We'll be watching,' he said, repeating the Doctor's warning. 'So, don't try anything.'

The Doctor turned to her two companions, coaxing them back to the holodeck. 'Come on, you two. Let's go out there and take our spot on the winner's podium. Because who doesn't love a bit of public adoration?'

---

It was strange, standing there, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of spectators, cheering and letting off fireworks and flares, celebrating their victory. In a way, they were celebrating the wrong thing, the winners of a race, rather than the downfall of the most powerful organisation in the universe, yet it felt good all the same. Jack even laughed when they brought out the trophy, so heavy that it took all three of them to loft it skyward in triumph.

Jack couldn't help but be amused by all the people he passed, wearing their security tags which marked them as event staff. They were so friendly and helpful, just innocent bystanders, unaware that the empire keeping them employed had crumbled underneath them.

Somewhere out there, Jack knew there was a second set of people, tasked with watching their every move. At some point in the next forty-eight hours it would have been their job to make Jack and his friends disappear. Jack wondered what story they would have fed the press to cover it up. Victims of overindulgence at their victory party, or a tragic crash on their flight home, perhaps?

None of that mattered now. They had their own victory to celebrate. Tonight was theirs to paint the town red. For the crowd though, the partying would continue long into the night and the days that followed. And a handful of souls would go home doubly happy, having put money on the underdogs to win.



The three of them eventually slipped away, having had their fill of photographs, autographs and interviews about the thrilling and often dangerous race, which had been carefully watched by all from hundreds of hidden cameras. Many still couldn't get over Jack's tightrope walk, or Lucy's amazing dodgem-style flying through the asteroid belt. Or that completely insane corkscrew maneuver through a field of deadly laser beams. Maybe it was even that heroic finish line rescue that won them over. No one however mentioned Jack's miraculous recovery from being crushed in the stone doorway. Whether the cameras had been at the wrong angle or the footage mysteriously doctored, none could say. Either way, Jack and Lucy were the stars of the show and crowd favourites, which was just how the Doctor liked it.

---

They collapsed onto the plush red vinyl of the lounge in a secluded VIP section of the bar, the bartender bringing over their drinks, which were of course on the house for as long as they wanted. Jack raised his glass, the first hypervodka he could recall in ages being one to celebrate rather than commiserate, and made a toast.

'To the best team in the universe.'

They clinked glasses and took a long slow draught, letting the alcohol ease the remaining weariness from their minds and bodies. It felt good to not be in immediate peril for once. The only danger now was from overindulgence, as a second tray arrived, a veritable tower of food arranged on it. A shame that when the bar received payment, Erebus Corporation's cheque would inevitably bounce.

Lucy watched her two new friends, Jack trying to inhale fist-sized balls of deep-fried something, and the Doctor, sipping her lurid green cocktail. 'Is this what it's always like when you two travel together?'

'Pretty much,' the Doctor replied.

'Excepting the mountain of free food and booze,' Jack added. 'Doc, you've really got to try these,' he said, stuffing another melted cheese ball into his mouth, rendering him unable to say more whilst it gummed up everything.

Lucy twirled the straw around the glass in her hand. 'So, have we stopped The Committee?'

'It looks like it,' the Doctor said.

'Only for now,' Jack added, his face still a mask of concern. 'Mind you, the Shadow Proclamation is going to have a field day going around arresting AIs posing as government officials.' He took another sip, letting the liquid burn all the way down.

The Doctor crossed her legs, resting her glass on her knee. 'Well, the Torchwood Institute just inherited about five thousand companies and a majority ownership in about ten thousand more, plus everything from The Committee's databases,' she replied. 'It's now been merged into your Torchwood files. I hope you don't mind, Jack. It didn't seem fair that all those perfectly legitimate organisations, doing good research, get brought down along with The Committee. I think that ought to keep you busy enough, since you're the only director at present.'

'I think I'm going to need a really good accountant,' Jack joked. 'I've never been a CEO before. I've slept with a few, but I've never been one.'

The Doctor cringed. 'Perhaps it's best if you remain a silent director, then. Let them do what they do best.'

'And leave me to do what I do best?' he asked, waggling an eyebrow at her over his drink.

'Whatever that is,' Lucy teased, getting in on the conversation. 'Still, that doesn't help me, I'm right back at square one. With no Erebus Corporation, there's no prize money, so my brother is going to be trapped in that prison for the rest of his life.'

The Doctor leaned forward, looking thoughtful. 'If only there were someone we knew with a working vortex manipulator... He could probably bounce in there, grab your brother, and bounce right back out before anyone was any the wiser.'

Jack tried not to get too excited at the prospect of having his vortex manipulator fixed, even temporarily. 'A TARDIS would work just as well,' he said, though not wanting to dismiss the Doctor's plan out of hand.

'A little ostentatious for a prison break,' she replied.

'Wouldn't it just be easier to pay?' Jack asked. 'We do seem to have quite a bit of equity all of a sudden, and it's not like you to go for the dishonest route.'

'Plus, wouldn't they know he escaped?' Lucy asked. 'I don't want to be on the run for the rest of my life.'

'I think I've had enough of corrupt policies for now.' The Doctor waggled her sonic screwdriver. 'A little tweaking, and a few inmate records might go missing. The only person who'd know would be Drax, and I think it's safe to say he owes you one, now.'

Drax had been unceremoniously removed from their ship by stadium security guards, uncuffed, and left to make his own way home with his tail between his legs. No one from the media cared about the guy who ran second, famous or not.

'Don't count on him remembering that for long,' Lucy replied.

Jack leaned back, resting his arm across the back of the lounge. The VIP bar was empty except for them. Music played softly in the background. 'So, when would this prison break take place?'

'Why not tonight?' the Doctor suggested. 'Then we'd really have something to celebrate.'

---

'It's just temporary,' the Doctor warned him, her sonic screwdriver glowing brightly against Jack's wrist strap.

'I kinda figured that might be the case.' Jack felt less disappointed than he expected. There was plenty of universe for him to explore, and all of the future to see it. It was far too tempting to want to travel back in time to see old friends again, even if he could only do so from a distance. This was a far better solution.

'You've got the coordinates?' she asked.

'Right down to the cell number and the bunk bed,' he replied. 'See you soon,' he said, keying his wrist strap and letting it consume him in a haze of orange light.



No sooner had he left, then there was another glow of light, signaling his return.

'I picked up this scruffy looking character,' Jack said, hand on the shoulder of an Artesian in light blue prison coveralls. He had the same shaggy black hair, and was only a few inches taller than Lucy. 'I hope he's the right one, otherwise he has a hell of a story to share with the prison guards in the morning.'

Lucy leapt forward, seeing her brother for the first time in months. She wrapped him in the biggest hug she could manage.

'Hey you,' he said, hugging back. 'Did you miss me?'

'You're still an annoying wart face,' she replied, as close as she could manage to saying "I love you" in the presence of company.

'I'll take that as a yes.'

Jack hugged the Doctor in turn. 'Aw! Don't you just love happy endings, Doc?'

'Yep, still not big on the hugs,' she replied, trying to snake out of his grip, although a bit less reluctantly than before.

Lucy's brother finally let go and turned to his rescuers. 'I don't know how to thank you, or even how any of this is possible.'

The Doctor smiled. 'No thanks is necessary.'

'Yeah,' Jack added. 'We wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for Lucy. She's got quite a tale to tell you. She ought to think about becoming a professional racer.'

'I think I'm happy to put my racing days behind me,' she replied.

'Only so I can't make you vomit and do the dishes again,' her brother teased.

Lucy gave him a playful shove. 'As if! You're the one who vomited last time.'

'Am not.'

'Are too.'

'Am not.'

'Are too.'

'Stupid face.'

'Stinky pants.'

'Okay, guys, break it up,' Jack said, laughing at their juvenile argument. 'No one's vomiting and you can share washing up duties.'

Lucy blushed. 'Guess we'll have to. It looks like we're right back where we started. Flat broke.'

The Doctor had a glint in her eye as she watched the happy siblings. 'Oh, I'm sure Jack could lend you some credits, interest free, of course.'

He pulled a face. 'Hey, I'm running an empire now, not a charity.'

'Jack,' the Doctor said, drawing his name out like that of a naughty child.

Jack rolled his eyes. 'Fine. How's fifteen million credits sound?'

Lucy's eyes went wide as saucers. 'Really?'

He made a play of reaching into his pocket, drawing out his wallet and checking it. He sighed. 'Make it twenty. No repayment required. Looks like I can afford it.'

Lucy leapt up and hugged him as hard as she could. 'Oh, goddesses! Thank you!'

He grinned. 'Just don't go telling everybody. I can't have the universe thinking I'm a softie. I've got a bad boy reputation to maintain.'

---

They spent the remainder of the evening recounting events to Lucy's brother. Jack attempted to re-enact as much of their adventure as possible. Not wanting to be left out, Lucy stole Jack's coat, slipping it on and doing her worst impressions of his involvement. Jack wasn't sure what was more hilarious - Lucy's attempts at his accent, or the fact that his coat was five sizes too big for her, leaving her flapping her arms and tripping over it when she moved.

As the night wore on, their recollections grew more and more embellished, leaving Lucy's brother to question whether they'd done half of the things they claimed they had. The Doctor assured him that despite the gregarious nature of her two friends, aided by a considerable amount of alcohol, most of what they said was true. Despite the amount she herself had drunk, the Doctor steadfastly refused to join them on a second rendition of Yellow Submarine.

Eventually, they managed to exhaust the bar's supply of alcohol and fatty foods. By that time, none of them could walk more than three paces without falling over, giggling stupidly at themselves and at one another. Taking pity on them, and uncertain they could have found a hotel even if they'd tried, the owner of the bar let them sleep off their celebrations right there on the lounges in the VIP room.

---

Morning came all too soon, leaving them with a few sore heads and nothing more to do other than say goodbye and go their separate ways.

Jack waved as Lucy and her brother boarded their ship, headed home with renewed hope and a sizeable bank account.

'I'm gonna miss that kid,' he said, watching the ship become nothing more than a speck in the sky. He looked away and settled his hands inside his coat pockets. 'I guess I'd better see about sorting out a ride off this rock,' he said. 'Or maybe I could find myself a nice little ship. Room enough for two, say? I've gotta have room for company.' He thought about it for a moment. 'Or maybe it should be big enough for three. You always need to be flexible about these things,' he added, smiling.

'This doesn't have to be goodbye for us, not yet,' the Doctor said.

'I know, but we'll see each other again.' There was a strange look in his eyes, like he wasn't looking for an invitation, but rather had found some kind of inner peace and a solace in being on his own.

'Of that I've no doubt,' the Doctor replied, leaning back against the familiar blue police box door. The TARDIS seemed to be in agreement that Jack would be just fine on his own.

'Be safe, Doc. And get yourself some damn friends to go cause trouble with. With a pretty face like that you should have no trouble-'

''It's not...' she was about to say pretty before the rest of the sentence dawned on her. 'I'm not using this face to hook up!'

Jack shrugged back at her. 'Hey, if you've got it, flaunt it. Be seeing you,' he said, giving her a quick salute and turning, walking away, long greatcoat flowing behind him in his wake.

The Doctor shook her head. God help the universe with Captain Jack Harkness kicking around it.

Comments

[amythest_n_ice]

Totally awesome!!!!!

[m_findlow]

I'm really glad you enjoyed it. :)

[(Anonymous)]

Fantastic, thank you!

[(Anonymous)]

Awesome adventure, loved it

[beccaelizabeth]

this was a nice adventure