Captain Jack Harkness woke up in a strange place. To Jack this was, of course, nothing new, but he distinctly remembered falling asleep in his tiny little room in the hub.
'Wow that must've been some party' he said muzzily trying to stand up and only succeeding in pulling his covering off. He noticed a few more things, he was in a forest, it was cold and he was naked. Luckily the covering he had been wrapped in was his coat. This should have seemed odd but somehow it was a distant kind of odd, not important in the big scheme of things. He belted it on and looked around. It was late at night and the forest was black as pitch. Jack looked up and could just barely see the trees as a place where the stars did not shine. The stars were brilliant, gloriously lovely spangles on a deep black canvas, and totally unfamiliar. "Not on earth then "Jack sighed. He had a feeling he should be more upset than he was, but somehow it just didn't seem important. It was a beautiful place. There were rustling sounds in the undergrowth from the small creatures that made the night their own. Jack philosophically sat down to wait for dawn. Trying to move blind through a grove of trees was asking for a headache. The pine scented trees whispered as a soft breeze stirred through their boughs, a soothing hypnotic sound. Jack spent some time trying to remember how he had been transported here but the memory was not forthcoming, and the night was so tranquil… his head nodded and he fell asleep again.
Dawn broke, and moved almost immediately into day. Jack was still asleep and stayed asleep until someone shook his shoulder. He opened his eyes. The face currently filling his vision was grizzled, wrinkled and way to close. Jack jerked back, startled, and damn near knocked himself out on the tree trunk he had been leaning on. The old man laughed and stepped back, pulling a revolver from his belt and cocking it. Jack froze, raising his hands above his head.
"I'm guessin you ain't from around these parts sonny." The old man said after taking in Jacks coat and bare feet with a quick glance. "I reckon the sheriff will want to talk to ya." Jack recognized the accent as Midwestern, and the clothes certainly were, but the revolver was an odd greenish tint that looked like more like plastic than metal. The cylinder was to large and the barrel was not a uniform length. It tapered from the back to the front ending in a small mushroom shaped bulge.
Jack did a double take and grinned "Hey "he said "that gun looks like a p…" and the old man shot him. A bolt of green lightning burst from the tip of the dildo shaped weapon and struck Jack in the chest .He convulsed and screamed, limbs jerking uncontrollably and dropped to the ground, twitching. The last thing Jack saw was the old man holstering his weapon and moving toward Jack, pulling a odd looking circle of metal from his belt.
That is how Captain Jack Harkness ended up unconscious, covered with a tarp, and slung over the back of a mule as he entered the small town of Crooked Shaft. The next time he woke up, he was in the town jail.
The cell he was in was small, dirty, lacking in sanitary facilities and crowded. Jack came to huddled into a corner with a many legged cross between a centipede and a cockroach crawling past his nose. It had a large pincer on its front parts and what looked like a stinger on its rear. He sat up rather quickly; the reaction actually bounced him up a few inches off the ground. The smell hit him next; a very familiar smell, one part predator, one part sewer, one part barn and his eyes snapped wide open. It was dark but there was enough light to see that he was in a small cage with weevils all huddled where ever they could, all still asleep, but stirring. Jack froze in place, very carefully straightened to his full height and very, very carefully disengaged his bare foot from the claws of a particularly large weevil, who grunted and curled up a bit more, snoring slightly. A tiny squeal and a crunching sound drew his eyes to the right, in time to see the final fate of the centiroach. A small version of the adult weevils had grabbed a quick snack. It looked at Jack, lifted its lip in a snarl and huddled back down on the floor, cuddling up next to a larger weevil, and went back to sleep. Jack stayed where he was, pressed against the bars of the cage, and wanting OUT more than he could ever remember wanting out of anything, ever.
Ten minutes later the situation had not changed appreciably, and Jack had started to relax a bit, enough to start noticing a few more details. There was a pile of clothes and a pair of boots right outside the bars near him and Jack quickly got dressed. They were his clothes but the filthy state they were in did not look like anything near a fashion statement." Huh! Even the coat can't save this ensemble,' Jack thought as he got dressed. He took some time to look around. The small cell he was in was one of four cells, two on a side with a six foot wide corridor between. The floor was grey where it wasn't covered with dirt and other substances. At the end of the corridor on the south side was a heavily barred door, the other ended in a blank wall. The other cells held more huddled masses of what looked like sleeping weevils all dressed in the usual boiler suit. They all had a metal collar around their neck and Jack noted that he did too, large enough to be comfortable, to small to slip out of and to sturdy to break. This day was getting worse by the second, and day was getting ready to arrive. The light was just showing when all the weevils started to stir. Jack stood very still in his corner and tried to not look like breakfast. The weevils paid him no attention at all. The same grizzled old man that had shot him walked into the room and started throwing chunks of raw meat into the cages, and Jack tried to press himself into the bars at the back of the cage again, waiting for the chaos to start, and wanting to stay out of it. He was Immortal yes, but did not want to be the main course in a breakfast feeding frenzy, not again thank you very much. It did not happen. Each weevil took a piece of meat and sat down to eat, no fighting, no snarling, no snapping. "This is a very odd lot of weevils" Jack said mostly to himself. One of the closest weevils looked up at the sound of his voice, and then stood up walked over to the last piece of meat and brought it over to Jack and handed it to him. Jack stared at it and the weevil said "you need to eat and this is all there is" the voice was feminine, mature sounding, like a middle aged librarian. Jack froze with surprise and a sudden suspicion all the odd things starting to make an odd kind of sense. "Who are you" he said perhaps a bit to loud, other weevils twitched and a few of the smaller ones snarled and shrank back. The librarian looked at Jack and quietly but very urgently said "shush! Don't attract attention to yourself!" To late as it turned out, the old man, jailer, whatever, had turned to look at Jack, the librarian had shrunk down to the floor, covering her head and whimpering, sounding again like a weevil. Jack started to grab her shoulder and noticed that his hand...did not look like his hand. It looked in fact just like a weevils paw and Jack started to feel very ill.
The jailer snarled "Ahh the new one eh? Time for a lesson is it?" Damage already done, Jack stood up and said loudly "who are you and where am I?" All the weevils moaned and shrank away as far as they could from Jack, clearing the space between him and Jailer. Jack charged the man hitting the cell bars and tried to grab him through the bars "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?" he roared. A bolt of green lightning shot from the jailers hand and knocked Jack to the cell floor "learn your place " the jailer said as Jack once again lost consciousness and slumped to the floor . One of the smaller weevils quickly snapped up the last piece of meat as it fell to the floor from Jacks hand.
"He is much more resistant to the dreamers than you said he would be "The tk'Gorlad scientist stated. "He was able from the start to change the dreamers program and include much of his own personality. He is starting to throw off our influence; we will not have all the time we need to affect a permanent change. His body fights the Nano genes and his mind fights us. We are running out of time." Dressed in the uniform of a galactic enforcer, John Hart was enjoying his latest role play, being as stiff and officious as he thought one of the GE prats would be and paying the exorbitant rates the tk'Gorlad charged for their expertise. He went for unconcerned and bored "use the time you have and get it started. He always was a difficult person to interrogate." He watched the tk'Gorlad doctor slide away, idly speculating about the sexual practices and possible creativity of the species. 'Could be slimy but satisfying' he thought. Or maybe he would just shoot them all when he was done with them.
Jack woke up again flat on his back still in the cell. It was cold, much colder than it had been. There was a warm weight on his chest.
Jack sat up and dislodged two very small weevils, both about the size of a human toddler. They had thinner skin and less hair than their parents did and looked well.. almost cute. They cried and snuffled and tried to get back to their warm resting place, already shivering with cold. Jack sighed. Nothing to do but think, and they were babies, and it was cold, so Jack found a relatively comfortable place propped up in the cleanest corner he could find and settled down with a wevette? Kid? Hatchling? On each side and tucked into his coat for warmth. They settled in, almost purring and Jack made a slight crooning noise to comfort them.
He had a great deal to think about. He started by trying to remember how he had gotten here in the first place. He remembered going to sleep in his room… wait had he? he ran back through the memory and there were some things that didn't fit . Ianto had not been there, it was Tuesday and Ianto always stayed over on Tuesday the walls had been curved. The walls …had been …blue? Jack groaned aloud as he tried to remember and his head exploded into a mass of pain. Jack recognized the memory block from his Time Agent training. Someone had placed a block on his memories and dumped him here.
"Ha!" Jack thought "I have you now" he settled himself into a more comfortable position and began to chase memories. The baby weevils cuddled in closer and purred.
It had been a normal day to start with. Jack had climbed out of his quarters and gone out for a pre-dawn walk, eventually ending up standing on a ledge overlooking Cardiff Bay, watching the sun rise.
He headed back to the Hub; humming "Look for the Silver Lining" it was going to be a beautiful day in Cardiff. His good mood lasted all the way back to the hub, where Ianto handed him his morning coffee before saying "there has been a massive spike in Rift activities in Splot, and a huge sighting of weevils, same place, good morning sir
"Ianto I have asked you to call me Jack ." "Yes Sir "Ianto said with the slightest hint of a cheeky grin. Jack grinned back "weevil hunting in the morning with Ianto! Great way to start the day!" Jack bounded up the stairs "Call Gwen and invite her to the party!" Ianto was already on the phone as he ran after Jack.
He was still talking as they got into the SUV "..And bring the gas grenades, we can try them out, the readings indicated at least 20 weevils, maybe more" he listened "Right you have the coordinates, see you there in ...he checked his stop watch his thumb moving towards the stem ... 15 mi…" he stopped "why no, Gwen I am not using my stop watch… he paled a bit as he listened to Gwen, then hastily pocketed the stop watch"Ah yes ,I meant to say see you there as soon as possible" Jack remembered he had chuckled as he listened . The SUV roared out of the garage and sped on its way.
The weevil gas grenades had worked perfectly, taking out most of the weevils easily. Perhaps A bit to easily as Jack now remembered. While Ianto and Gwen had busied themselves rounding up and restraining the weevils Jack had tracked the remnants to a small outbuilding and stalked through the front door. The headache flared again, almost knocking Jack out with the sudden intense pain.
Back in the jail cell Jack had shifted, his back arching as he tried to power through the memory block. It had been a trap.
He remembered he had stepped on the floor heard a click, realized the danger, and had tried to shift back out the door but to late. The port beam had grabbed him and ...ahh! There was the blue curved roof. It was a cylinder, he was trapped in a blue cylinder.
He hit the top of his prison and felt something move, there was excruciating pain as his fist shattered a panel and stabbed large shards in to his arm. Then there was the shrill sound of a containment alarm,then a hissing sound as some kind of gas bathed the interior of the containment pod
Back in the tk'Gorlad laboratory the blue cylinder that held Jack barely withstood his struggling form, and reported damage to the watching scientists. They released a paralyzing gas but the cylinder had already been damaged.
Jacks arms dropped to his sides as the gas took effect. At the same time John Hart was moving towards the interrogation chamber tapping a few instructions onto his vortex manipulator. "always have to be difficult don't you?' he said" but It's part of your charm".
He was back in the jail with the two weevilettes? One had placed its head on his chest and was crooning at him, the other was still cuddled in his arms but was purring and they didn't really look like weevils now that he took the time to really look. He grabbed the neck ring, pulling, twisting, and trying to remove it. The collar was programmed to prevent such attempts and Jack was slammed back down to the floor, electricity sparking from the collar. Well at least it didn't knock him out this time, the two little creatures he had mistaken for baby weevils cuddled back up to him, broad casting a soothing hum. Jack moved back to his corner." I know that shock..!" and his memory took him back to a roof top in Cardiff and the bloody kreplik grvn ak wanker that called himself John Hart! Jack snarled and slammed his hand into the stone of the floor. That solved the mystery of how he got here and what he was wearing when he did. The two little creatures were still purring, all resemblances to baby weevils were gone. Then he felt the tickle in his mind that told him that they were broadcasting telepathically!
Jack was getting dizzy trying to sort through the waves of emotion, his own anger and the creatures' attempts to calm and soothe him. Jack did not want to be soothed. He slammed his mental shields up, finally able to concentrate enough to do it right.
Now they didn't look like children or weevils anymore as a matter of fact they were looking like… Tk'Gorlad?
Jack threw the slug like beings away from him. In the real world, the blue cylinder he had been imprisoned in opened as the interrogation program, over loaded by Jacks resistance, shorted out and shut down. Still partially immobilized by the gas, Jack crawled out of his temporary prison and fell to the floor.
John Hart walked into the room as Jack managed to pull himself up to his feet using the side of the table to balance. John grinned at Jack; Jack snarled at John, wavered a bit on his feet and waited. John needed to be just a bit closer.
John did not move any closer, just shot a tranquilizer dart at Jack. Jack looked at the dart and back up at the most annoying man in the universe, who yelled "Happy Birthday 'Jack'!
"By the way you look fabulous! Ta!" John aimed his vortex manipulator at Jack. laughing at the confused face Jack made as he vanished in a sparkle of silver light.
That was how Jack ended up sleeping (again!) in a dark booth in the back of a seedy bar in Splot. The bar owner took one look and called for help.
When Jack woke up (again!) confused and disoriented by the dart John had used , he was staring at the other two members of Torchwood just as a bag covered his head and another load of tranquilizers hit his system. "This has been a very confusing day," Jack thought and as the drugs took effect. His last thought before the blackness rolled over him was that he was going to fucking KILL John.
Because the Hub was currently over loaded with weevils that was how Jack ended up in a cell with two weevils as company. Ianto and Gwen took time to remove the bag and untie the hands of the weevil that had been found at the pub.
"That's all of them then?" Gwen said. "Yes" said Ianto "now we need to find Jack."
And this was not the worst thing that happened to Jack that day.