Chapter 1: Two months ago, two weeks ago, two days ago, today…
"Well?" If roguish smiles could provide electrical power, that one could light up the entirety of Cardiff, even if it was currently only dimly visible. There had only been four battery-operated lanterns in the trunk of the SUV, something Ianto intends to rectify the moment their larger problem is solved. He sighs and resists the urge to rub at the bridge of his nose. His hands are probably just as dirty as they feel.
"Still dead." Smiles, tragically, do not convert well to electricity today. "There isn't even anything in the generators." Jack's disappointment is a palpable thing – how anyone who shows his emotions so blatantly could ever be part of a team of time-traveling agents is beyond Ianto. Clearly they're all crazy in the future.
"S'not a mechanical fault." Mickey's London accent breaks into their conversation from overhead - the ex-mechanic ex-freedom fighter ex-time traveler ex-Cyberman killer and current gizmo guy at Torchwood Cardiff is back-lit as he leans over the railing, greasy hands and screwdriver ample evidence of his recent fiddling in the mostly dark. "And that flying relic is being well creepy, you know?"
"Awww, she just wants a peck." Jack drawls back at him, seemingly unable to resist the urge to dig in a little. Ianto rolls his eyes. He's not entirely sure what is the problem between the two men, but it's a little like hanging around a pair of toddlers when they really go at it.
"She? Know this personally, do you? So much for standards..." Mickey sniggers, and Ianto goes back to exploring the fuse box. There's no use getting anything useful out of either of them now, and it doesn't go any further in solving why Torchwood is suddenly without power. It's just as well that the levels they are currently keeping Weevils on are more conventionally locked and that there wasn't anything particularly dangerous in the closer lockup - they'd all had quite enough of escapees over the last year or so. Why they still relied on electrically-locked doors when they've had so many power failures he isn't sure, except all of their technological might certainly feels impressive when it's actually working.
When it's not, it just feels stupid.
At least this time, they didn't have to be freed from their own base by a laughing police force. Hand cranks worked just fine this time, thank you (thus ruling out any deceased and insane former team members). He's not sure how well he would have handled having to contain a once-again-not-quite-back-from-the-dead Owen. Or doing the same to Tosh, who would be a first-time offender. At this point he's annoyed enough at Suzie that putting her down would be easy. He's learned his lesson. Once the dead are really and truly dead, letting them stay there is the greatest kindness.
Still, it was weird. Weirder than a lot of the things that go on around here, anyway, which is definitely something to be noted. There weren't any alarms, any warnings, and the emergency lights never even bothered to flicker on. One moment they were discussing whether they should order in pizza, and the next they were dropped into inky blackness, the burbling of the fountain suddenly loud in the absence of background technological humming..
He vaguely remembers something like this happening before, though. Nothing he's experienced himself, of course, but… something. Was it Suzie who talked about something like this? Possibly. It's annoying, like the buzz of a fly in a dark room. He can't quite put his finger on that bit of memory. Jack certainly acted like he knew what was going on, bolting for the exit the second the lights went out, shouting for them to follow, but more carefully. They'd caught up with him at the doors, which needed some force to crank open, but he'd easily out-stripped them to the car park, and up to the Plass up above. He'd tried to hide it, but Ianto'd clearly seen the disappointment on his face when they'd burst into the empty plaza.
"Ianto! Jack! Mickey!" Gwen's voice echoes in the enormous building, the light from her torch flashing erratically as she jogs towards them, her feet clanking on the metal plating. She'd left a few hours before to make the circuit of her old contacts, see if there weren't any other disturbances in Cardiff tonight, since their own monitoring equipment was quite useless.
"How come I'm always called last?" Mickey muses from overhead. In the light of Ianto's battery-powered lantern, Jack's smile suddenly gets sharper, and Ianto can sense another battle coming on. He wonders if he shouldn't lock them both up inside of a cage, like one of those cages used in the Weevil cage fights, and not let them out until they'd beaten each other bloody.
"Over here, Gwen." He calls, hoping to forestall the inevitable. "What's wrong?"
"Not wrong, right." She replies, smugness thick in her voice. "Look, I pulled these off of a CCTV camera at the stadium." She hands the glossy photos to Jack, while Ianto peers over his shoulder. Overhead, Mickey heads for the stairs so he can get in on the joke.
"... This is impossible." Jack finally says, once they've all had time to stare at the photos for quite a while. "We would have walked right by it. Probably into it, the way it's..."
"I carry an alien baby at my wedding and these Dalek creatures can steal the Earth and haul it all the way across the galaxy and there's a dinosaur flying around the base and this is impossible?" Gwen points out, a touch sharply. More than a touch, actually - she doesn't much like having her investigative work doubted.
"Well..." And she also has a point. Jack can't exactly say it's impossible, no, not with the lives they lead. "But we still would have..."
She produces one more picture with a triumphant sort of flourish, dropping it into his hands.
In this one, all four of them feature, walking through Roald Dahl Plass – Ianto carrying pizza from the local shop, Mickey and Jack with their arms full of boxes of files taken from some too-enthusiastic alien watchers, and Gwen cradling the alien weapon one of those alien watchers nearly took Mickey's head off with.
And they're walking directly by the boarded-up information kiosk, which is sitting smack dab in front of fountain over the hub.
The one not a single one of them can remember ever seeing before.
Gwen reaches over the edge of the photos to point to the time stamp.
"1532. Six minutes before the power went out." Her smug tone is back, along with her triumphant gap-toothed smile, but no one protests it this time. She's earned it.
They all headed to the surface, the Plass lit by lamplight and casting odd shadows, and despite using the photo as reference, and knowing that something must be there… they cannot find the boarded-up kiosk. Jack, in a fit of temper, even prowls through the fountain, looking rather off his rocker as he waves his arms through empty space trying to hit their elusive target. Ianto counts four women who, after giving Jack that first admiring look, quickly take in what he's doing and head off in the other direction. Eventually they conclude, with much grumbling, that if there was a something there before, there's a nothing there now, and none of this is fixing their lack-of-electricity issues. Since they can't exactly call up the power company and have them send a technician, it's time to go back to work.
The power came back on two days later just as mysteriously as it had gone off, leaving a very wary and confused Torchwood crew to get about with the business of protecting the planet from the universe and from themselves. For the first few days or so (or longer, in Mickey's case), every alarm, every change in previous patterns, even a mistake in the pizza order is met with great suspicion and the certainty that the other shoe is finally dropping. Once, Mickey hit the lockdown button and trapped a pair of misguided tourists in the shop upstairs for three hours.
So far, it hadn't. Sure, there had been a few rogue Weevils, a painting on a nursery wall had come to life and killed the parents of the two children (both of whom had protested the obliteration of said painting with great vehemence, it has to be said), and the usual scattering of real abductions, fake abductions, people offering themselves to be abducted, and people trying to abduct Jack.
Many of those in the last category didn't give a fig about aliens.
Rhys stopped by the Hub now and then, under the guise of organizing to take Gwen on a cruise at some point or other, but mostly just to make sure his new wife was okay, despite said wife's vaguely mortified complaints. Mickey went through two 'girlfriends'. Ianto discovered a new use for a stopwatch. Gwen tried to crack down on discovering all of Tosh's secret files, but got distracted by Tosh's highly entertaining file of screenshots from CCTV reels from around the city. Jack died twice, but only told his teammates about the one involving the jello, and that's only because they saw him come out of the vat covered in violently colored goo and had demanded an explanation. The kiosk became the scapegoat of all of their problems, from Ianto nearly getting his face chewed off by a possessed pair of Doc Martens to there not being enough sugar for morning coffee.
Two weeks later, and the days of darkness was settling down in their memories as yet another 'isn't our life the weirdest' story, another one of the unexplained and inexplicable details of their deeply deranged existence. Rhys learned to never show up at the Hub with sausages, though some (Mickey) said he should have figured that one out a long time ago. Mickey discovered a new use for the sonic scalpel, one that Ianto secretly thought Owen would have admired, in a grudging and somewhat jealous sort of way. Ianto broke the record for single-handed Weevil catching, though no one was surprised. Gwen found she could never ever look at sausages the same way again, especially after they had crawled off of the meeting-room table. Jack visited the newly-mounded grave of a friend he'd been meaning to visit for three decades, and never quite got around to, what with one thing and another.
Two months later, they'd pretty much forgotten about the glitch in the system. Rhys discovered that a Weevil bite hurts like hell, and is somewhat difficult to explain to his GP. Mickey showed he learned more than a little hunting Cybermen in that alternate Earth and was a good deal more ruthless than Jack had given him credit for. Ianto found Owen and Tosh's coffee cups hidden, long forgotten in the arboretum, and nearly broke down because of it. Gwen saved the brochures of a couple cruises she had actually liked the idea of from the trash, and surprised Rhys in the hospital with them. Jack had entirely too much fun cheering up Ianto after the long-missed coffee cups had been returned to their cabinet, to forever wait for the users who would never come for them.
No one (except maybe the sausages, which had taken up residence under the dissection table) noticed that while the lights were on and power hummed through the Hub, it did so at a very slightly diminished rate.
Two months ago, two weeks ago, a few days ago, more or less or something in between, a young blond woman blindly set the brake of her battered and nearly broken ship, then slid to the floor with a barely audible sound of protest as unconsciousness rose up to claim her. Her ship, just as tired and abused as its owner, latched onto the nearest source of power and hurriedly began to refuel.