It's all AU.

It had been a horrifically busy day for Kathy, and she was getting fairly worn out. Completely worn out, in fact, but there was still work to do and she couldn't leave yet. A horrible murder case had taken up her time for a while, now, and it was clear Torchwood had been involved somehow which just annoyed her all the more and made her all the more determined to get to the bottom of it.

She called one of the junior officers to follow her out into the main office, grabbing some files as she went. She was talking as she walked, looking back over her shoulder as she opened the door with her spare hand.

"There are some neighbours who could have seen something," she was saying, clicking the door open and stepping through. She was halfway through speaking again when there was a subtle switch in the atmosphere and none of the stark, clean smell of her office so she snapped her head around as she shut the door behind her. "What..."

In the moment of shock and disorientation from seeing a completely different scene from that which she expected, she couldn't bring herself to move. It looked like a hotel corridor, not her own office.

She blinked rapidly but it didn't go away. "...Oh," she said. "Clearly I need to get some sleep..."

He appeared in the middle of nowhere quite suddenly and as a result, seemed to have fallen into some grass. This in itself was unusual because there was no grass on the Valiant and he was not often permitted to go down to the surface, both for security reasons and for the fact that no one wanted to take him. So as Samuel stood up and dusted off his trousers, he looked around and tried to get an idea of where exactly he was. It seemed to be a pub of some sort, though obviously he hadn't a clue what it was called or where it was. In fact he'd only heard of pubs from workers on the station. But there he was, all the same, and he became curious as to the nature of his arrival.

"Hello?" he called timidly. He seriously hoped that someone had either brought him here as a joke, though since he couldn't remember getting here it wouldn't be funny. Even if it were a more nefarious reason he was here he decided that they wouldn't just leave him here alone. He was never alone if his mother could help it and the very idea terrified and excited him.

The Professor had been wandering and thinking, both mostly in circles. He'd eventually gotten tired of getting nowhere and wandered back into the hotel. He almost walked past the little tea shop where he and Estelle'd had tea before, but decided that a cup of tea would not go amiss, and if he could find somebody to talk to who would distract him, that was even better.

He accepted a cup from the robot behind the counter, and turned to see a familiar face. "Hello!" he said, smiling at Estelle. "How are you?"

He hadn't been here long. Just long enough to lose his watch, really.

He assumed at first that he was having another fantastic dream, filled with impossible things, and wandered aimlessly about the town for a bit, and the more he walked and more he saw the more he was sure that it was a dream. It was certainly impossible.

Eventually he made his way into the dining room. He stopped in the doorway and looked around with a faint frown before making his way over to a table. When he spotted someone looking at him he smiled and waved vaguely.

"Impossible," he muttered. "Fantastic but impossible."

Jack was in the dining room, pouring himself a cup of coffee. When someone else came over he moved so they could reach the mugs. "Fancy running into you here," he said, conversationally. Who it was, and if he'd ever spoken to them before or not, didn't make one bit of difference. When you were in the drain trap of time and universes, it never hurt to be friendly - or careful.

Brant had shown Jack to the bar, and he was sat at a table, drinking...something. It was bright green, and tasted vaguely like whisky.

And then someone he hadn't seen for five hundred years took the seat next to him.

Emma had hit the reverse sequence on the Manipulator, left the Jack who wasn't hers and sent herself into the Vortex, planning to go home.

And well, this quite clearly was neither home nor the 51st century, she realised, looking at the street the Vortex had chosen to deposit her in.

She pressed a few buttons, but the Manipulator insisted on making the noise that meant, "I've no idea where or when we are."

"Some help you are," she said, closing the flap. Looking up, she saw someone approaching her. "Hi, Emma Harkness," she greeted, using Jack's standard line, and offering her hand. "I don't suppose you could tell me what's going on here, could you?"