Bigger on the inside: Space, Time Travel, Alien Criminals (A Space Time Travel Mystery Book 1)

by Alianna Smith

  The men skidded to a halt next to him, but only one, a black man, dropped to his knees. “How is she?” Dave recognised Mickey’s voice as he spoke.

  “She’s just lost consciousness,” he said.

  “Okay, we’ll take it from here,” Mickey said. “Thank you.” Turning towards Rose, he reached out to try to rouse her.

  Dave climbed to his feet and staggered away, brushing back his damp hair. He suddenly felt cold as the drizzle seeped through his shirt and he shuddered, though it was more from the scene before him than the cold. The paramedics rushed towards Rose with their cases, a bright light was turned on that flooded the scene in harsh light. For a moment Dave thought he could see Rita lying there , and again, he found it difficult to breathe. He stumbled backwards, crashing into the bonnet of the massive black SUV in which Mickey and the other man had arrived.

  This was what must have happened after Rita’s accident, this sudden flurry of activity after the initial quiet, when reality had reclaimed dominance over the scene unfolding. Dave felt his knees buckle and he crouched between the headlights of the SUV, his back against the warm radiator. He began to shiver as it registered with him how cold the night was without his jacket on, but all he really could concentrate on was his breathing.

  “Sir? Are you all right, Sir?” a female voice asked him.

  He looked up, startled, into the professionally friendly face of one of the paramedics. Her two colleagues were kneeling on the ground, obscuring his view of Rose with their broad backs. “Yeah, yeah,” he managed to say.

  She wrapped a blanket around his shoulder and gave him a small cup of something hot. “Have some tea, Sir. We’re taking care of her now, don’t worry,” she said.

  Dave obediently sipped the hot, sweet tea.

  “Is there anything we can do for you? Anyone we can call?”

  Sarah, he thought. Maybe not. Numb, he shook his head. “I... I’ll be fine,” he said, taking another sip of the tea. “Can I... can I go home?” he asked.

  “We can take you home if you want,” she offered. “You’ll catch your death, driving in this weather without a jacket.”

  He just stared at her. If it weren’t for the children, he’d shrug and say it was just as well. But he had them to look after. All five of them. Eventually, he nodded.

  -:-

  In the morning following the accident, he found it hard to focus on breakfast and was glad that the kids were out of the house. His attention wandered back to the events of the previous night and he couldn’t help wondering if it hadn’t all been a dream. He expected the police to call and ask him to give a statement of the events, but nothing happened. The only proof that this had really happened was the lack of his beloved leather jacket and the delivery of his bike. He’d had to leave it behind on the scene when Mickey had bundled him into the SUV. He had no memory of the ride, nor of falling into bed. So for all intents and purposes, it might as well have been a dream.

  Several times, he was tempted to call Sarah to tell her about what had happened, but he couldn’t bring himself to connect the call. Would she believe him? Was she the right person to tell after all that had happened? Despite her reassurances that the kiss they had shared in the bathroom had meant nothing, he still felt awkward about it. In the end, he decided against telling her. He found his old, battered leather jacket in a closet and put it on for the ride to the studio. Maybe work would help to clear his mind. Those people, whoever they might be, had his card. If they needed something, they knew where to find him.

  He needed to salvage what he could of the brochure about the Glasgow Street Museum. The morning light was gorgeous, and he might go to the School of Art for another shot of the library windows. He’d call Tanya to meet him there so he could show her what it was he was looking for in the photo.

  Still, he couldn’t help wondering who those people had been. All he knew was their first names, Mickey and Rose. How was Rose? Would she recover from her injuries? What had happened to her in the first place?

  Chapter 2

  Two

  Her body had gotten tangled in the layers of unconsciousness. During a restless night she’d fight the bedcovers just as her mind hovered on the edge of wakefulness. Only now the layers pinned her down far more relentlessly. A dull burning sensation refused to lift, just like an equally dull throb reverberated throughout her whole body. She knew the sensation. She had been hurt and given powerful painkillers to sedate her so her body could heal. Which meant her latest, her last, attempt at finding the Doctor had failed. It was just as well that the meds refused to let her return to the world of the waking. It was safer where she was, in the heavy warmth of her mind. Rose kept her eyes closed and drifted off to the place where she felt weightless and free of any pain.

  A constant beeping started to drip-drop through the layers and into her consciousness. It was persistent, like a leaky tap, but it failed to annoy her enough to want to bat it away. She was too tired to do that, and even if she were more alert, she knew that her body wouldn’t quite cooperate. Rose sighed and drifted off again, successfully ignoring the beeping.

  The beeping, however, fought back, became louder, and the burning sensation more acute. The meds were wearing off, and they weren’t going to give her any more, at least not until she’d peeled away enough layers to let them know she was still there. Part of her thought why bother, now that she had failed to find a way back home. The other part sighed heavily and reminded her of her family. The family she’d been ready to leave behind for a life with the man she still loved. At least she wouldn’t have to carry around that guilty burden.

  Her eyes fluttered open, adjusting to the dim light of a hospital room at night. The beeping sound came from a heart monitor beside her bed, and for a while she watched the green line zigzagging across the dark monitor. Her heart might be broken, but it still did its duty. A tear rolled down her cheek. She was lying on her side, one arm flung out, connected to an IV drip, and the opposite leg was drawn up to keep her from rolling onto her stomach.

  She wondered how long she had been unconscious. Not that it mattered, not to her. All was lost now. She wanted to go back to the time before they had administered the meds. The Doctor’s face and voice had been clearer then as he reassured her, his hand strangely warm as he’d taken hers, holding it until Mickey and the team rushed in.

  She wondered where she had ended up. The surface beneath her had been hard and black, like in a street, and it had been cold. It definitely hadn’t been the lab. Something had gone utterly wrong, so wrong that there was no going back, no way of finding the right universe now. It was over.

  But the Doctor had been with her.

  It couldn’t have been him. He wouldn’t have left her there. He’d have taken her with him, on the TARDIS, she and him together, as it should be.

  Another tear trickled down her cheek and seeped into the pillow beneath her cheek. How could her mind have played such a cruel trick on her? The Doctor had seemed so real. He had taken off his heavy leather jacket and draped it over her, had spoken to her in a mellow Scottish brogue she’d found very soothing.

  “Rose?”

  A shadow detached itself from the darkness of a corner of the room.

  “Rose!” It was Mickey. Relief lit up his face. “Rose.”

  “Hey,” she rasped. Her throat was dry, and swallowing hurt. She heard ice cubes rattle in a plastic cup, and she opened her mouth eagerly when Mickey took one of the cubes and gave it to her to suck on. It was cold against her lips, but it felt heavenly.

  “It’s been almost twenty-four hours,” he said, knowing exactly what she needed to hear. She sucked the ice cube into her mouth and moved it around with her tongue. It wasn’t a very big one.

  “The cannon... ’s gone, right?” she managed to say. Her throat didn’t feel as sore any more, but her voice was hoarse.

  “I’m afraid it is. We can’t fix it,” he said. He’d never been one to foster false hopes.

  “I know.”<
br />
  “I’m sorry.”

  “’s okay. I’m... tired,” she said, the ice now gone.

  “Get some sleep, love,” Mickey said, smiling. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  -:-

  In the two weeks that followed, Rose underwent treatment for the injuries she had suffered during her last jump across the Void. It hadn’t been the Doctor’s universe; it should have been clear to her the minute she set foot on that world, with death and mayhem raining down on her, burning her right side severely. She nearly wouldn’t have gotten back if it hadn’t been for the shock that made her act instinctively. Mickey told her she was hurled through the rift and into a Glasgow street where a man had found her, late at night, riding his motorcycle. That man had called him and sat with her until Jake, he and the ambulance arrived.

  “For a moment I thought it was the Doctor,” Rose mused one day on her way back from physio to her room. It was her last day at Torchwood infirmary. Mickey was walking with her. “He looked like him, and he sounded... like him. Accent was wrong, though.”

  “It wasn’t him, Rose,” Mickey said gently, laying a hand on her shoulder.

  Rose sniffed and looked up, smiling bravely. “I know that. But... thinking it was him helped.”

  “Yeah.”

  Of course it hadn’t been the Doctor. It couldn’t have been. Still, the similarity between her guardian angel and the Doctor was either very striking, or her mind had played a trick on her to protect her. The thing was she couldn’t put his face or his voice out of her mind, and she could still feel his touch and the weight of his jacket on her. It must have been a trick of her mind. Why would her second Doctor wear a leather jacket?

  The next day, when she was released from the infirmary, she was given a bag with her belongings. Mickey had brought fresh clothes from the house. The ones she’d worn on her mission were ruined. Rose wondered why they returned them to her anyway, but she knew that was standard procedure because they didn’t go through their people’s belongings. Clutching the plastic bag and a small hold-all, she climbed into the dark SUV in which Mickey was taking her to her rented house.

  It had turned out quite early in their work on the dimension cannon that Glasgow and the surrounding area were their best shot at making the jumps work because there was something about the walls between the universes there that made jumping easier. It was a bit like Dålig Ulv Stranden, but the beach had lost its special qualities after the Doctor had ended the projection and sealed the wall off. So Glasgow it was.

  Torchwood had always had a small branch there, more out of courtesy to the original Torchwood House further up in the Highlands than out of any real necessity. They had hired an empty warehouse in the harbour for their experiments, and houses for themselves in town. They lived close enough together to be there for each other when necessary, but there was enough distance to be by themselves. Jake and Mickey shared a house, of course, while Rose had chosen her own place.

  Over time, Glasgow had become more of a home to her than she’d cared to admit, and she’d spent more time there than down in London with her family. It looked like those days were coming to an end. There wasn’t anything left for her there, although she thought that the Glasgow branch would remain important. As a side product of their research, the city had turned out to be her original universe’s counterpart to Cardiff, sitting on a rift that attracted all kinds of alien bits.

  Mickey was reluctant to leave her alone when he dropped her off at her house. He had filled her fridge, but urged her to call Jake and him if she needed anything or fancied a night out in their favourite pub.

  The house felt empty to her. It was too big for her, but she needed the space. She’d rented a two-bedroom flat when they’d first arrived here, but she’d soon felt caged in, used as she’d been to the vastness of the TARDIS. After a couple of weeks of house-hunting she’d found a nice Victorian semi in a quiet neighbourhood, not far from Mickey and Jake’s. The space had given her room to breathe, even though she didn’t need all the rooms. Most of them were sparsely furnished, partly because she wasn’t intending to stay very long and partly because she didn’t want to get too attached to her new place. She’d refused to call it home.

  When she dropped her keys into the bowl on the table in the hall she realised that this was home now. She slid down the door and sat on the hardwood floor. She had another fortnight’s leave to fully recover, and she’d spend part of it making this house her home. The other week she wanted to spend in London with her family.

  Rose smiled. She had already made an important decision – staying in Glasgow – without having to think much about it. Although London was her home, Glasgow offered her the anonymity she needed to do her work. She’d ask Pete for a permanent position with Torchwood up here. Also, despite the failure of the dimension cannon, the city wouldn’t remind her as much of the Doctor as London.

  Rose climbed to her feet, grabbed the two bags and went upstairs to her bedroom, a cool, white room. She’d start redecorating here; when she’d moved in she’d left the walls white to remind her of the Lever Room. Knowing that it was only a white wall separating her from the Doctor had kept her spirits up. But she didn’t want white any more. A mellow grey with lots of lighting to make the room homey would do perfectly from now on.

  As she unpacked the plastic bag, she found the leather jacket with which the stranger had covered her up. It was brown and not at all like her first Doctor’s. She needed, wanted, to return the jacket to its owner and thank him for helping her. Thankfully, the staff at Torchwood had had the lining of the jacket cleaned – there must have been blood stains from her injuries on it.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened the small plastic bag pinned to the label of the jacket with the contents of the pockets. She’d spotted a business card and she gingerly fished it out. It was a long shot – maybe it was someone else’s business card. The other items didn’t interest her; they were none of her business.

  The card read David Tiler, Photographer, and carried a local address.

  Tiler.

  Rose chuckled. Maybe that was her guy.

  She fished her phone out of her bag and dialled the number, taking a deep breath as the call connected.

  “Hello?”

  Rose’s heart skipped a beat. It was him. She’d recognise his voice anywhere, instantly. It had that soft, Scottish brogue she’d noticed through her pain-induced daze, but it was him. Was it just his voice, she wondered, or did he actually look like the Doctor? Was that why she had thought the Doctor had been with her?

  “Um, hi, this is Rose Tyler,” she said, her voice a bit shaky.

  There was a brief pause. “Yeah?” His voice didn’t sound very steady either. Was she interrupting something?

  “I’m not... my name really is Tyler,” she said. “I... I was in an accident a couple of weeks ago, and... I believe you are the man who helped me.”

  “Oh. Rose?” he said, taking a deep breath. “How... how are you?”

  “I’m okay, thanks,” Rose said. “I wanted to thank you for staying with me. And I’ve still got your jacket. That’s why I have your number. I found your business card. I hope you aren’t mad with me, but I had to find you.” She was rambling, and held her breath.

  “No, no, that’s all right,” David Tiler said.

  “Am I interrupting something?” she asked.

  “Um... not really, no,” he replied.

  “I was wondering if you’d like to meet for lunch,” Rose said. “So I can return your jacket.”

  “Today?” There was a hopeful quality to his voice.

  “If you’re not busy, yes, why not?”

  “Um, yeah. Yeah, I’d... I’d like that.”

  They arranged for a time and place to meet, then Rose disconnected the call, gazing at her phone in a daze. That had been easy.

  -:-

  Rose arrived early at the small restaurant. She was at a disadvantage since she had no idea what he looked like. Although,
if she went by his voice... Rose shook her head and told herself not to expect the spitting image of the Doctor to turn up. Her mind may well have been playing tricks on her, suggesting a similarity just because of the timbre of his voice in order to make her stay calm. When David Tiler had found her she’d been in excruciating pain; but now she’d heard him on the phone and he did sound like the Doctor. She took a deep breath to steady herself.

  She dropped her hand onto the brown leather jacket draped over the bench beside her and let her thumb glide over the soft leather. It was a well-loved jacket, and she’d have been distraught if she hadn’t found its owner.

  When Rose looked up again she saw a man standing just inside the door, waiting to be seated. He was wearing a dark leather jacket and held a grey helmet by the chin strap. He wasn’t looking her way, but when he raised his hand to run his hand through his dishevelled hair she froze. The gesture was so very familiar. It couldn’t be.