Zone 10 (audio story)

 was the eighth story in the Torchwood - Monthly Range by Big Finish Productions. It was written by David Llewellyn and featured Naoko Mori as Toshiko Sato.

Publisher's summary
They call it "Pulse" — a radio signal which has puzzled the world for 40 years. But now Toshiko Sato has solved it.

She's uncovered a message which leads her to Russia, and into an uneasy alliance with the KVI — the Russian equivalent of Torchwood. Toshiko needs to get into Zone 10 - a frozen wasteland which officially doesn't exist.

An intergalactic war was once fought in Zone 10. And it turns out there's a survivor.

Plot
Tosh finally manages to decode the radio signal sixty-two miles above Siberia known as Pulse and discovers that it is a message for her, telling her that "the truth is in Zone 10". She offers Maxim, director of the KVI, information on the recently deceased Neil Redmond in exchange for his help and together they go to the KVI's base where Maxim explains that Zone 10 is a remote exclusion zone and the site of unusual phenomena including unexplained disappearances. On the journey, Tosh and Maxim discuss how the KVI had a working arrangement with the Committee in the past and she admits that she came without Torchwood's knowledge to ensure that the mission was not taken from her.

Upon entering Zone 10, Tosh uses a temporal fluctuation dampener to escape fragmented spacetime and allow the two of them to escape a loop. They are followed by somebody that Maxim claims is likely FSB but manage to reach the centre of the zone, where they find that cosmonaut Anna Volokova has been consciously living in a time loop since 1965. An FSB agent arrives, having made a deal with Ivanov, to kill Anna and prevent her from revealing the truth; she was taken by the Committee as she was on her way to the Moon following a thirty-two-minute war between them and the KVI which ended with the detonation of a time bomb that created Zone 10. By doing so, the Committee proved that they were able to take anybody they chose.

Maxim finds himself unable to kill Anna and helps Tosh keep her from being killed by the FSB at the cost of his own life. Tosh repairs Anna's lunar landing module, which still has a considerable amount of fuel, to get her to safety and learns from her that Torchwood invited the Committee to Earth and that they are now calling in their debt. Rather than safely land in Kazakhstan, Anna decides that she will burn up all of her fuel and die in space, giving Tosh Object 1 and sending out the Pulse message as the dampener fails and time fragments once again. Tosh drives away on a snowmobile and the FSB agents are stuck in a time loop. Later, she sends out a message in the hope that Anna will receive it.

Cast

 * Toshiko Sato - Naoko Mori
 * Maxim Ivanov - Krystian Godlewski
 * Anna Volokova - Ella Garland
 * FSB Agent - Geoffrey Breton

Worldbuilding

 * Maxim's ex-wife always carried too much luggage.
 * Sergei Manin died the morning that Neil Redmond arrived in St Petersburg.
 * Maxim hums "Korobeiniki"; Tosh recognises it as the theme to Tetris, which she was obsessed with playing when she was young.
 * Maxim's son lives in Brighton.
 * Anna Volokova was born in 1930. Toshiko notes that she would be 78 years old despite appearing just short of her own age.
 * The secret war between KVI and the Committee began at dawn on 5 April, 1965 and ended 32 minutes later. Maxim calls it the shortest conflict in human history.
 * Tereshkova is known as the first woman in space.

Continuity

 * Tosh works with KVI. (PROSE: Trace Memory)
 * KVI was investigating Neil Redmond. (AUDIO: Uncanny Valley)
 * Tosh mentioned a time lock she was working on. (TV: Journey's End)