"No…," Jack whispered raggedly. Not again. Not this again. He'd known it was coming. It always did. Every day, three times. The chip they put in him triggered and left him reliving it… left him there again, holding Ianto, begging him not to go. Left him helplessly watching Ianto's gasping tears. "Please no…," Jack begged to no one. And then the pain, wracking his body. He never knew how long that went but it took hours for the lingering pain to subside… just in time for the next neural-ly administered dose.
Every day for the last 30 years. The 20 years before that it had just been solitary confinement and conventional, "hands-on" torture. For some reason, people who found out that he didn't die always wanted to keep trying. They tried for those 20 years. Oh, how they tried! After they put the chip in, they quit trying. They just left him locked up in a cell and forgot him. For the last 30 years, no one had even brought food or water. He died about once a week of dehydration. With the chip in his brain estimated to be operation for the next thousand years, no one saw the need to check on him. His sentence was able to be carried out without the expense of any resource but the sealed cell he was kept in.
Jack hadn't protested or struggled or fought in any way. When asked how he pled to the poisoning death of Ianto Jones, Jack had hollowly, vacantly responded: "guilty."
He was given a life sentence. Though at the time he was the only one who really understood what that meant.
Jack was still delirious from the last round, lying on the mat that he hadn't moved from in decades. He'd revived from his latest death the day before and so still had enough fluid in his body to cry. He didn't hear the engines. There weren't sounds anymore. Not real ones. The only things he heard now were manufactured in his mind. There was barely a splinter of a memory that came with that sound… of a time when he was really alive… had done good things – none of which he could remember. And Ianto… it was when he had Ianto. For nanosecond, Jack almost remembered what happiness was. But it vanished. It wasn't real. Nothing was. Maybe it never had been.
"What have they done…?" whispered a shocked voice that Jack didn't hear either. "Come on, my friend."
Jack felt someone moving him, but knew it wasn't real.
Jack woke up as the chip began firing off the midnight memory torture. He felt it all coming back at once and knew not to fight. Fighting only made it worse. Fighting only made Ianto's desperate "I love you" ring louder in his ears. Jack sobbed exhaustedly through the memory waiting for the pain to come. The worst part of that was that he never knew what level of pain was coming. As it had been explained 30 years ago, it was a 10-level system with three randomized stages in each delivery – some doses he got off with two low levels and mid-level… some days all three were at top levels. This time started off easy.
Then it stopped. Just… stopped.
"Torture chip," he heard someone growl heatedly. "Their planet has descended into chaos and this is what they do to the best man they've got! Jack… can you hear me?"
"No," Jack whispered hoarsely. "Nothing to hear. Not real."
"Oh, what have they done…."
"Sentence…," Jack murmured. "Guilty."
"Not you, Jack. Come on, I know you… perhaps too well."
Was this some new bit of the routine activating? Did it conjure someone to talk him into madness along with the memory and pain?
"I killed him," Jack mumbled, reminding whoever the figment was that he was a prisoner found guilty of murder. "Biological attack…."
Oh, White Hall had had all the proof in the world that Captain Jack Harkness was innocent, had in fact died alongside his partner in the same attack. But they needed Jack out of the way as it was… and what better way than to brand him a very dangerous murderer? It only helped keep Downing Street as spotless as possible, and made for an excellent diversion in the daily news.
"Who's attack? Not yours."
"I was there… only ones. I did it. My fault. He shouldn't… shouldn't have been…."
"Does this have something to do with the children, Jack? Is this why some alien race that's being painstakingly ignored by the Shadow Proclamation has been mining Earth's children once a decade for the last 50 years?"
"I don't know," Jack mumbled, beaten. During the first 20 years he sometimes heard news of the outside world. Only bits, and never good. It sounded like the whole world had fallen into bedlam and anarchy. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.
"Get some rest, Jack. I'll be back with some help."
A glass was set on the table beside him and it was only then that Jack realized he wasn't in a cell. He cautiously took a few sips of water… what could it do? Then he was asleep within minutes.