Torchwood: LA

Chapter 1

The following takes place eighteen months after the events of 24: Day Eight and twelve months after day five of Torchwood: Children of Earth.

All characters are the property of their respective authors. All original characters and events which occur in this story are mine.

Jack Bauer awakened to the sound of his cell door being opened. That it was a full hour until morning reveille at the federal Supermax prison in which he had spent the last ten months was enough to pique his curiosity, but not enough to alarm him. Jack knew he was in no danger from the other prisoners at the facility, having been placed in solitary almost from the first day of his incarceration. Nor was he in danger from any of the guards, most of whom showed a kind of guilty respect when they interacted with him.

He was, however, annoyed by the sound of a metal chair scraping across the floor that came a few minutes after the cell door was opened. He turned over in his bed to look at whoever was disturbing his sleep. He was surprised to see a dark haired woman in her early to mid thirties, wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, dragging a chair in with her. Just as Bauer looked at her, she turned her head up and met his eyes – but not before scraping the chair one more time.

The woman froze for a moment, looking up at him like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Then she glanced down at the chair and spoke, pointing at it: "I…I was going for that thing…where you wake up…and I'm already there," she said, pantomiming what she meant by moving a chair and sitting in it and the like and nodding at Bauer as if the problem was simply that he could not follow.

Jack gave her a quick, short nod as she sat down and positioned the chair to face him.

"That would have been cool, right? If I had carried that off?" she asked, forcing a weak smile.

Jack just continued to stare at her, unable to believe what he was witnessing.

"Anyhoo…" said the brunette as she looked down and picked up the attaché case which had been laying at her feet. She opened up the case and began to leaf through a manila folder. "Jack Bauer. Formerly commander of CTU Los Angeles. Formerly attached to Secretary of Defense James Heller's private staff. Decorated for numerous actions taken in defense of United States interests. Arrested for murder of Russian ambassador at New York peace conference. Also questioned for role in disrupting government operations at Camp Bravo National Guard Base during the 456 Crisis; all counts pertaining to that case dropped." She closed the folder and put it back in the case.

"Yes, you'll do," she said.

Jack was not sure how to respond. "Who are you?" he finally asked.

"Gwen Cooper," said the woman, offering her hand. "I'm with Torchwood."

Jack remained wary of her outstretched hand. "Torchwood? What's that?"

"Funny you should ask," said Gwen, reaching into the case again, "as that has a lot to do with why I am here today." She pulled out another folder, and handed it to Jack.

Bauer opened the folder and saw photographs of bodies. With his vast experience in those types of matters, he quickly determined from their layout and the pattern of debris that the photos were of the aftermath of a bombing. On a clinical level, he ran through calculations in his head and was able to guess at the type of target struck. He could see that some of the cars in the background were American, and others were not. He could see signs in English with French subtitles. From there, it was a short trip to…

"This is the Ottawa bombing, isn't it?"

"Aye, that it is" said Gwen, "and I'm impressed with your ability to keep up with events which have occurred since you've been locked down here."

"The prisoner across from me is a jihadist," said Bauer, pointing past Gwen's shoulder. "They sent down a team to 'interrogate' him after the bombing happened. The doors aren't fully soundproof." The pejorative tone Jack laid on interrogate left little doubt as to what he had thought, not so much of the moral ascendancy of the interrogators' actions, but rather their skill. "Why are you showing me this?" asked Jack, continuing with his own interrogation.

"Because it sets the context for these," said Gwen, and she handed Jack more photos.

Jack looked at them. They seemed to be more of the same. There were three bodies in particular laid out in a line with military precision. Being more than a casual observer, Jack could tell that those three bodies had been set aside in that way because they belonged to the alleged perpetrators of the bombing. He saw blood stains consistent with multiple gunshots, alluding to a firefight. This was new information. The target in Ottawa had reportedly been a provincial game and fishery office, so there would have been rangers there, but as far as he knew, Canadian park rangers did not carry sidearms for desk jobs. Certainly not the automatic weapons which had obviously left their mark on these terrorists' bodies.

"What the hell?" Jack was focusing on the arm of one of the dead hostiles. At least, it was in the place where his arm was supposed to be. Jack had first thought it was a severed limb from another body, mangled in the blast and coincidentally laying on the ground where they had chosen to stage the bodies. But it was definitely attached to the twenty-something white male whose body occupied the center position of the three. It looked burned and flattened. But then he realized that these pictures were in color, and the arm was actually green.It was not burned; it had scales like a reptile, or even like a starfish. It was too long to be an arm, for the size of the rest of the body he saw. And there was a circular red light in the middle of the forearm.

"Ah?" said Gwen, knowing full well she'd caught Jack's interest. "Tell me, Mr. Bauer, what do you see?" she asked.

Jack thought for a moment, and then shook his head. "I've been down here too long. These bodies are really badly damaged. They must have been close to the epicenter of the blast."

"No, not your interpretation," insisted Gwen, leaning closer to Jack. "What do you see?"

Jack could not answer her. He just looked at the photos, trying and discarding theories for why the man's arm looked like it did. The best one he could come up with was that the man's arm had been run over by a heavy truck, like in a cartoon. But there were no tire tracks (dear God! he was actually extrapolating the Wil E. Coyote model to its logical conclusion!), and the arm ended in too sharp of a point to be explained by compression. "I don't know," he admitted quietly but clearly.

That response seemed to satisfy Gwen, because her expression immediately softened into a pleasant smile. "Good," the mysterious woman said. "I respect a man who can admit when he doesn't know something. Takes all the ridiculous, time-consuming posturing out of the equation, and lets everyone get down to business." Gwen took out more photos and laid them on the bed next to Bauer. "They're called Cell 114."

"Who? Who is called Cell 114?" asked Jack.

"The terrorists," said Gwen, giving the room's newly-formed elephant a short reprieve. "Sleeper cells, specializing in infiltration, disruption, and sabotage. They embed themselves in our society. Then they wait, and begin attacking installations when activated."

"Muslim extremists?" asked Jack, not wanting to go elephant hunting just yet.

"No. Not Muslims," said Gwen, shaking her head. This time it was her turn to speak quietly.

"I'm not sure I see where this is going," said Jack, though even he knew he was just stalling.

"Yes you do," said Gwen. She pointed to the pictures laid out on the bed. They showed more images of impossible biology.

"Why would these…sleeper cells…want to blow up an unimportant municipal building?" asked Bauer, changing the subject. "It doesn't fit the M.O. of any terrorist group I know of, Middle Eastern or Canadian militia. And the choice of target doesn't make sense."

"Because it was no mere local government office," said Gwen. "Come on; it didn't strike you as a little off that Al-Quaeda would want to cripple the West's capacity to obtain fishing licenses? And on a street which sees very little traffic, when there was a busy thoroughfare just two blocks away? No. The provincial office was just a front. What they really blew up was Torchwood Five."

"Torchwood Five?" asked Jack.

"Yes," replied Gwen. "The Canadian branch. There's one in Sydney, too. That's Torchwood Six."

"It's a British unit, then. MI-6?"

"Well, not exactly," said Gwen. "We operate outside the Home Office."

"NATO?"

"Beyond NATO," said Gwen, and then she sat back and explained. "Torchwood was commissioned by Queen Victoria in the 19th Century to defend the Empire from certain…extraordinary threats. The first command was based at the Torchwood Estate, but was later moved to the capital in London. Three other branches were set up in the Isles. Of those, only Torchwood Two in Glasgow was still in operation as of six months ago. I myself was the junior member of Torchwood Three, working out of Cardiff, until our Hub was destroyed in a 'terrorist bombing' of our own last year."

"The Millennium Center bombing," intuited Jack after a moment. "Was that the 114, too?"

"No, that was a different enemy," said Gwen, and the look in her eyes that told Jack that the story behind that was one secret his visitor was not yet ready to share.

"Mr. Bauer," continued Gwen. "I didn't come down here to rehash old history. Elements of Cell 114 have been becoming more and more active over the past few months since Ottawa. They remain a principal threat to the safety of this planet. I am in Los Angeles, having been invited by your government to set up a Torchwood office -"

"I don't care," said Jack quietly.

"I'm sorry?"

"It's not my problem anymore."

This time, it was Gwen's turn to be dumbfounded. "But…but Mr. Bauer…" was all she could get out.

"Let me just stop you right there," said Bauer, pushing away the pictures. "I know a recruiting pitch when I hear it. This is me you're talking to. I was head of a counter terrorist agency; I've 'been there, done that' on this whole 'your country needs you' spiel. Hell, I've done the spiel enough times to know what you're going to say.

"Let me fill in the blanks for you," said Jack, ticking off items on his fingers. "You're going to tell me that no less than the President himself has authorized a conditional parole if I join your 'team.' Said team will have the responsibility of assessing and countering an imminent threat to national security. Said team will also have on paper full legal authority and resources to deal with that threat. And, once the threat has been dealt with, said team will be hung out to dry. Seriously, it's like Mad-Libs. Only we never remember to tell them that last part, do we, Ms. Cooper? They get to play the hero, but look where they end up," said Jack, gesturing up at the ceiling.

Gwen looked at Jack, and then started with what she instantly realized was the wrong thing. "The offer of parole is legitimate, Mr. Bauer."

"No, I'm done," said Jack. "I did my part for President and Republic. Why are you even talking to me, anyway? Isn't there some young turk you can be out recruiting for this windmill tilt?"

The Torchwood operative responded with confidence, and even a hint of righteous indignation. It was obvious that she had thought very highly of her reasoning for seeking Bauer out.

"My boss in Cardiff was a superior leader," she said. "Everything I know about Torchwood I learned from him. However, his strategy for personnel recruitment left a lot to be desired. 'Right place, right time' does not a good system make. I intend to change that. I want the best. That's why I came to you, Mr. Bauer. You are the best."

"It's not my job anymore," said Jack, again referencing his surroundings. "Find someone else to help you go hunt aliens. In fact, this is probably the safest place for me to be right now. Half the world thinks I'm dead, and the other half wishes I was. And I'll tell you something else: after everything I've gone through, every choice I've made, I don't have that many regrets. I sleep well."

"I see," said Gwen. She began picking up her photographs. She stopped, though, catching something Jack had said. "You buy the part about aliens? I mean, I had to be shown alien tech in use before I believed."

"They wouldn't have let you down here if you were just some civilian conspiracy nut," answered Bauer. "Plus, there was the 456 Crisis. I'll bet it made believers out of a lot of people."

"Ah, yes, there was that," said Gwen. She put her photographs and folders into her attaché and stood up to leave. She turned back to Bauer. "It must have been hell for you, when you realized Ortiz' intel was wrong."

"What do you mean?" asked Jack, his eyes instantly narrowing.

"I mean, when you got to Camp Bravo and realized that your granddaughter was not there. It's not surprising, really. It's not like they had a lot of time to plan what they were doing, and any kind of recordkeeping was certainly a non-starter. Of course, the irony is, if your daughter and her family had not been in hiding and using hastily constructed aliases, and living in that slum in Houston, Teri would never have been in that school to be picked up in the first place…"

"Shut up!" Jack said hoarsely.

"It would have been quite natural for you to try to leave, to try to find the camp where your granddaughter actually was, once you noticed she was not there," continued Gwen. "Even though there would have been no time to get to Camp Alpha, no one would have blamed you for getting back in your vehicle and trying to find the other base. I mean, one has to take care of one's own family first, right?" she asked.

"Damn you!" said Jack, nearly shouting.

"But you didn't, did you? You knew you didn't have time to find your granddaughter, and you saw those kids at Camp Bravo, scared, alone. So you stayed." Gwen moved quickly to sit down next to Jack and get into his personal space before continuing. "You took over the base, using only non-lethal force and causing zero fatalities – quite an impressive feat, I might add. You took over the base, and held it for seven hours, even after the crisis had ended, defending five hundred kids against a government which had turned from its covenant with its people. Goddammit, there should be a big fat medal on your chest, not prison stripes!" Gwen poked him to punctuate her anger, as this time, she was the one shouting.

"You asked why I chose you," said Gwen, pausing briefly to compose herself. "I chose you, Mr. Bauer, because I looked at your record and saw that, with a couple of exceptions, you have always done, or at least tried to do, the right thing. You put right and wrong above all other considerations, even your personal ones. You are exactly the kind of person I want at my right hand, helping me defend this world from evils like the 456. Join me, Mr. Bauer, and we can keep our families safe."

Doot...deet…doot…deet…

John Powers was bored. He was so staggeringly bored with life in the small town in whose outskirts the surface facility of the Supermax facility sat that he had gotten a job as an associate at a local home improvement store. The fact that his name was really not John Powers but rather Yuri Malinin, and that he was not an unemployed IT consultant but instead an active agent in the Russian FSB, only served to accentuate just how bored he was. The job he had gotten was not necessary to maintain his cover, nor was it intended to make up for any deficiency in his spy's salary (he was being paid rather well for this assignment, at least there was that), but it did give him something to do with his time.

Yuri mused on the boring turn his career seemed to have taken as he searched around his apartment for the work uniform he had ironed the night before. He had once been one of the FSB's best assassins, having been sent regularly on missions to Iraq, Georgia, Lithuania, and a host of other places most Russian citizens would never hear about. Now, however, the forty-something man with a nascent paunch and salt-and-pepper hair was stuck in a one-McDonald's town in southern California, keeping watch over a prison just in case one of its most dangerous prisoners were to attempt escape. Or if the Americans were, as the Director had put it, to attempt to "pull a fast one" and let the man out intentionally. Either outcome was so unlikely that the FSB felt it had no need to send one of its younger agents, but rather the aging Malinin. Yes, send Yuri, he is a good one to waste on a babysitting mission, they had probably said.

Yuri found the uniform and put it on. It had been laying on the chair in his "action room," where he had his surveillance equipment. The telescope and camera which were trained on the prison's entrance were invisible from street level, as he had applied a special coating to his second floor apartment's window which had polarized the glass. The computer showed a real-time view of the prison entrance and parking lot. It recorded up to six hours of video on a loop, which he could watch at his convenience (he almost never did).

A flashing icon at the bottom of the screen alerted Yuri to the fact that a new visitor had come to the prison while he had been sleeping that morning. Yuri checked the video file which had been copied out. It showed an attractive thirty-something woman with dark hair getting out of a black SUV. Nothing unusual about her in and of itself, as US intelligence agents had been rotating in and out of the prison with semi-regularity since the Ottawa bombing. He flagged the file for transmission back to Moscow, where the Directorate's facial recognition software would figure out who she was and assign her to a database. His money was on her being Homeland Security. Two of the last three had been.

As the satellite which would accept the file's encrypted transmission would not be overhead for another hour, and as his shift at the new job was supposed to begin in about that same timeframe, Yuri powered down his monitor and went to find his keys. He hoped that something interesting would happen at his new job today.

Doot…deet…doot…deet…

Jack was slightly annoyed that the prison had not kept his clothes. While he realized that Supermax prisoners were not customarily released, it would have been nice if he had had something to change into while being processed out. As it was, Gwen had had to pay one of the nicer guards fifty dollars for the jeans and Hawaiian shirt he had worn in to work that day, because she had not anticipated the problem, either.

"We'll stop and buy you some shoes on the way back," Gwen promised him.

"We're going to LA?" asked Bauer, as he got the last button.

"Yes. That's where we've set up. I'll have someone get you up to speed, get you a place to stay, and then you go live tomorrow."

"And the government is okay with me being your second in command?"

"They wanted an American," shrugged Gwen. The guard behind the desk was still putting Jack's release order through the computer, so they had plenty of time to talk. "The plan is for me to run things at the beginning, and then gradually turn over command to an entirely American team; at my discretion, of course. So I know they wanted me to pick someone I could groom into the role for them. But I told them that I do things my way, or not at all. And my way is to pick the best people, and to hell with the politics."

Jack nodded approvingly. He was starting to really like this Gwen Cooper. She had managed to almost completely allay any second thoughts he might have had about accepting her offer in just the half-hour that had passed.

Just as the one guard was finishing Jack's paperwork, a second walked in. Jack immediately recognized him as Teague, the one guard on the prison staff who had given him trouble. Teague was a shift supervisor, a blond Gen-Y puke who thought that the world was black and white, and therefore anyone who was a prisoner at the facility needed to be treated with pure contempt and nothing more. He had ridden Jack's case so much that Jack had had no choice but to break the man's nose within weeks of arriving at the prison. The punishment Jack had received for that act had been unsurprisingly lenient.

"What is Bauer doing here?" Teague roared. "Why is he out of his cell?"

"They have orders for his release," said the other guard, "signed by the President." He handed the sealed letter Gwen had given him to Teague.

"This is not protocol!" said Teague, then to his subordinate, "Call someone. Find out how this is possible!"

Gwen calmly walked over to Teague, until her head was about twelve inches from his sternum. "Here, use my cell," said the Torchwood operative, offering the tall guard her phone. "The White House is number four on speed dial. Though you might want to think up how you're going to explain to POTUS why you pulled him out of his luxury box five minutes before tipoff at the Virginia-Virginia Tech game" – she made a show of looking at her watch, even though the cellphone displayed perfect time – "just to verify an order that he's already signed."

Teague said nothing, and actually backed slightly away from Gwen. After a few more seconds, Gwen put her cellphone away and turned back to Bauer. "Come on, Jack," she said, "We have a long drive ahead of us."

Jack followed her out the doors of the prison. The morning sun was just coming up, and it was bright. Jack had to put a hand up to his eyes, having gotten used to fluorescent lighting for almost the past year.

"Are you okay?" asked Gwen, as they reached her truck.

"This is real, isn't it?" said Jack.

"Yes, it is. Jack –"

Jack was just about to climb into the passenger side of the SUV. "Yeah?"

"There's something I forgot to discuss," said Gwen. She had not gone around to unlock her door. She was still standing next to Bauer. "As I said when we were below, I did a lot of research on you. And one thing the research said was that when Jack Bauer gives his word, he keeps it." Gwen looked around at the wooded property which surrounded the prison. "Not that I am impugning your nature, Mr. Bauer, but I'm sure the thought of running away and disappearing again has crossed your mind now that you are outside of your cell. You wouldn't be human if it didn't."

Jack paused. The thought had randomly occurred to him within the last couple of minutes. He had tried forced it away, but it was still there.

"If you run away now, two things will happen, both of which will be beyond my ability to control. The first is that you and your family will lose the legal protection which the President has been willing to extend to you."

"What's the other thing?" asked Bauer.

"You will make me look really foolish," said Gwen, and she smiled.

Jack looked at her, and made up his mind. He knew what the woman was asking of him. He offered her his hand.

"Ms. Cooper, you have my word that I will not violate the terms of my parole. I will not try to flee, and I will join your team."

"Thank you," said Gwen, and she seemed genuinely relieved as she shook his hand. "So, we've got about four hours to go to get to LA. Know any good driving games? Like 'the alphabet game?' Do you have that one here in the States?"

As he watched his new boss climb into the driver's seat, Jack wondered for not the first time today just what he was getting himself into.

Doot…deet…doot…deet…

Yuri finished showing the ditzy housewife where to find the plumbing section, and was just about to go back to his assigned station in Electrical when his cell rang. He instantly found a deserted aisle and put the phone up to his ear, as he knew that only certain people had access to that number. He was not surprised, then, to recognize the voice that came from the other end.

"Bauer's out," said the voice, which Yuri knew had to belong to Lieutenant Mark Teague of the Supermax' guard detail. The words so caught Yuri off guard, however, that he broke communications protocol and asked the young lieutenant how that had happened.

"Some woman was there. She had written orders, from the President! I read them myself," said Teague.

"How long ago?" asked the Russian.

"Just now," said his informant. Then the man added, "One of my people heard them say they were going to LA."

Yuri hung up the phone, before the call had a chance of being detected and traced. So that's what the mysterious woman was doing there, Yuri thought. The unthinkable was happening: the Americans were setting Bauer free. He could not believe that the Americans, blind followers of international law, to a fault, were violating the agreement they had made with his government that would keep the rogue agent under lock and key. He also could not believe that the single event he had been sent here months ago to prevent was actually happening.

Stronger thoughts up to and including curses ran through Yuri's head as he took off the apron and walked out of the store, oblivious to the confused shouts of his supervisor. He had to get back to his apartment and upload the video which undoubtedly showed Bauer and his mysterious rescuer driving away to freedom. If he sent a high-priority message, his government could task a spy satellite to track the black truck, but only if he sent pictures of it to his associates in the Strategic Space Forces. Then he would have to get on the highway and make haste to wherever Bauer was headed.

Yuri was running when he reached the parking lot. It took him only a moment to pop open his car door and slide in, the push start technology of the Japanese car allowing him to be on the move before he had even slammed the door shut.

Doot…deet…doot…deet…