Everyone remembered the day Canary Wharf fell.

The whole of London just stopped; people watching from their office windows, hands clasped over their mouths in fear, or pushing their way through the crowd at a closed Tube station to try to get home and get away, or trying and trying again to phone loved ones, tears streaming down their faces when no one answered the phone, when there was no one on the other end reassuring them that they were fine and would be home in time for tea; shaken, but otherwise unharmed.

Sam Hallett was one of those people.

When the ships had started coming in, filling the sky, his teachers had tried desperately to get everyone to remain calm, to stay where they were, but they all knew it was a hopeless cause. As soon as his form tutor had been distracted for long enough he was gone, running out the school gate as fast as he could until he was home, sweating and panting, just wanting to find his mum and know that it was all going to be okay.

He slammed the front door shut behind him; his dad was always telling him not to do that.

"Lisa? Lisa, is that you?"

For an awful second, his mum came running into the hallway, face lit up with hope, but it crumpled when she saw who it was.

"Oh, Sam," she breathed, pulling him into a tight hug. "You're safe, you're here."

Struggling to breathe, he pushed her away. "Where is she, where's Lisa?"

It wasn't like Lisa was usually there; she didn't even live with them anymore. But for her not to have called at a time like this, when she was at the centre of it all? She still texted when she got back to her and Ianto's flat safely each night, and she'd been living there six months, and she wasn't alone. She always rang, always told them.

Only she hadn't this time.

"I don't know where she is," Sam's mum said, the words catching in her throat. "She – I've tried ringing her mobile, I've tried her office number, I've tried Ianto's number, but I – I can't get through. But she – she'll be safe. She always is. You'll see."

And Sam tried as hard as he could to believe her.

Her funeral had been a quiet affair. After all, most of her friends had been her colleagues, and they – well, they'd also had their funerals that week.

Sam couldn't help but think that it wasn't really a funeral; for that you needed a body, and a coffin; not just a photograph and some flowers and a vicar who'd never met her. All of the family were there, though, and some of her school friends, and, of course, Ianto.

Sam wasn't sure how he felt about Ianto. Oh, he was nice enough, of course, but he didn't feel like he really knew him. Ianto had been round for dinner a couple of times, and had smiled and nodded at all the right times, said his pleases and thank yous, leaving no more impression than just 'he's a nice lad'. There must be a personality in there somewhere, but Sam had yet to see it.

After a few months, Lisa had announced that she and Ianto would be moving in together. She'd given Sam the promise of her old (bigger) bedroom, and then she was gone. Since then Ianto had come to the occasional family gathering with her, but no more than that. It had just never felt like he'd really made an effort to get to know the family, and by all accounts Lisa had never met any of his relatives.

It was odd. He wasn't behaving how you would expect someone to behave at their girlfriend's funeral. He'd refused to do a eulogy, but that didn't surprise anyone; he wasn't the sort for public speaking, and as he had (quite rightly, in Sam's opinion) pointed out, it really should be her father who did any of the talking.

But he just… he was just sat there. Face blank, sat apart from everyone else, going through the motions as he said the words to the prayers and stood up and sat down at the right time. Sam's mum was in pieces, tears constantly streaming down her face, and his dad wasn't much better, and he himself was already on his second pack of tissues.

Maybe this is just how he grieves, he thought, watching Ianto as they sang some hymn he'd never heard of.

Ianto didn't even stay afterwards. Apart from anything else, it was selfish of him, surely? Didn't Lisa's parents have the right to be comforted, to know that their daughter was loved until the very end?

But he was gone.

Sam's mum tried to hide how much it hurt her, but failed miserably; after a few drinks his dad was mouthing off about how his daughter should have done better than some good-for-nothing Welshman, who didn't even have the decency to stay through her funeral, and Sam couldn't help but agree with him. After all, why should this man, Ianto Jones, be allowed to live, when Sam's own sister had to die?

Before the funeral, Sam had felt nothing but sadness, emptiness. He had drifted through each day not really knowing what was going on, looking up every time the doorbell rang in case Lisa had just forgotten her keys and then remembering that it was just another well-wisher with a casserole.

Seeing Ianto at that funeral, though, healthy if not happy, walking away unharmed, had unleashed something inside Sam. He'd come home that night angry, filled with a burning fire, amplified by the two or three beers he'd swiped, his dad not noticing or not caring.

Still in his ill-fitting suit, he lay on his bed and opened up his laptop, trawling through news reports and online forums to try and find a reason, something that could possibly justify Lisa being gone. Everyone said it was aliens, but he could tell already that no one believed it, not really. Even her death certificate had been left blank, presumably so that somewhere down the line some higher-up somewhere could fabricate a story good enough to account for what happened. No expert worth their salt was going to confirm what happened; aliens, in London? That was a career-ender right there.

Some people, though, were speaking out about it. They were written off as conspiracy theorists, nutters who had jumped on the latest bandwagon, but their versions of what had happened were the only ones that made sense. Not all of them, of course – some were linking what they dubbed as 'The Battle of Canary Wharf' to JFK, to Hitler, to Neil Armstrong, some even back to Henry VIII or William the Conqueror, but some were connecting it to the ship that had crashed into Big Ben, or the star that had appeared over London that Christmas.

One word, however, kept being batted around, was common to every single theory that was out there.

Torchwood.

Sam had heard of Torchwood, of course; he knew that it was, in theory, a top secret organisation, but he also knew that it was the logo on the envelopes containing Lisa's payslips, and on the front doors to their own building, but he didn't really know what it was. He knew that Lisa had worked in some kind of scientific research, but he'd always assumed that it was pharmaceutical tests or chemical testing or something; the kind of thing that Chemistry graduates usually studied. All of the evidence now, though, was pointing towards something much bigger and much, much more sinister.

School had suddenly stopped being important. Evenings that had previously been dedicated to homework and study were now spent online, following countless blogs and forums centred around these odd events. More and more strange events kept happening – a hospital disappearing, reports of statues inexplicably moving, all the business with Harold Saxon – and none of it had an explanation, at least one that newsreaders were happy to give.

Until George Wilson.

Suddenly there was someone who had decided to speak out, to speak the truth, and Sam couldn't believe it. The things he said about The Committee; it all made sense! The destruction, the terror… Torchwood must have been the Enablers, and it was their fault, he knew it, it was their fault that Lisa was dead, that his sister was gone.

In London, Torchwood was long gone. Organisations like Torchwood, though, didn't just disappear, everyone knew that (or at least, everyone In The Know). There was more Torchwood, hiding underground; there must be, or what was even the point of it all?

The word on the net was that Torchwood dealt with extra-terrestrial activity, hushing up and hiding anything that humans weren't meant to know about. Torchwood London had, clearly, done a spectacularly brilliant job of failing in that respect, but that didn't mean that there weren't other groups, in other places, working more successfully.

For months, Sam obsessed over every potential alien sighting or possibility of strange activity that cropped up. The few friends he'd had soon drifted away, trying and failing to drag him away from his new friends online. Most of it was a load of rubbish, even he knew that; crop circles and UFO sightings and Martians. No, it was the odder things that caught Sam's attention; strange creatures living in the sewers, people with unusual growths or implants, even a poodle with glowing eyes. Somewhere along the way, the search had stopped being about Lisa, about finding out what had really happened, and started being about satisfying his own curiosity, his own thirst for adventure.

He'd ended up setting up his own channels, his own blogs, pooling together everything he knew about The Committee, about Torchwood, putting it out there for the world to see. Not many people followed it, of course, but those that did started to help, sending him pictures or updates or videos whenever they saw something that they thought might interest him.

And that's when he saw it.

It was a grainy video, clearly taken on someone's phone camera, but the creature it depicted was clearly not from this planet. Sam couldn't really see its face but even the way it moved was foreign, inhuman. It was being chased by two men, one in a big grey coat and one in a suit, clearly armed with the correct equipment for fighting whatever this thing was. It wasn't clear if they sprayed something or hit it but it was soon unconscious and they were taking it away, probably, he thought, to some kind of secret base. The person holding the camera was clearly trying to follow them now as the video shook, but clearly showing a large black car. The video ended abruptly as the man in the suit turned round, perhaps seeing the camera for the first time, and the picture froze right as he turned his head.

Sam gasped. It was Ianto.

He hadn't given much thought to Ianto since Lisa's funeral, which, he now realised, was stupid; if anyone was to know what had happened to Lisa, it would have been Ianto! But he'd left, vanished, and in Sam's opinion, it was good riddance. He didn't want to be constantly reminded of who had lived in his sister's place.

But of course Ianto would stay with Torchwood; it made perfect sense! Why hadn't he thought of it before? And the video was sent from Cardiff, near Ianto's hometown, it was obvious! This was where he had to go; this would give him the answers.

The only thing he wasn't sure about was which questions he wanted the answers to.

As soon as he left school, he packed up and moved to Cardiff. It had been all he could think about for months now; he knew that this was where he had to go, where he would find what he was looking for.

His blog and channel were starting to get more attention now, slowly gathering followers as he moved to what seemed to be the hub of extra-terrestrial activity in Britain. Almost every day there was a new story, a new adventure, and no one seemed to notice the incredible things happening right under their noses!

It was one of the most incredible things about people, Sam thought; the inability to see what was right in front of them.

He got a job at a supermarket to pay the bills (which were laughably cheap compared to London prices) but every free moment was spent down at the Bay, waiting for something to happen, for someone to appear. But it wasn't until he was in town one evening, on a night out, when anything did happen.

"Sam? Sam, is that you?"

He turned around, slightly buzzed from the pints he'd already had, to see Ianto.

"Oh, Ianto! Er, hi!"

"Hi." Ianto was, once again, in a suit, looking remarkably business-like for a Friday evening in the town centre. "How… how have you been?"

Sam shrugged. "Okay, I guess. And you?"

Ianto shrugged back. "Yeah… okay." He looked like he wanted to say more, but didn't.

A strange silence hung between them; after all, what did you say to your dead sister's old boyfriend who you'd been trying to find for months, but who you barely knew? Who you hadn't seen since her funeral?

Ianto cleared his throat again. "We should, er, meet up sometime. Catch up, you know."

Sam could see in his eyes that he wanted to talk about Lisa, and that was exactly what he had hoped for. Maybe Ianto would willing give him the answers he was looking for, no prompting provided?

"Sure. That would be, er, that would be great."

"Ianto?" The man in the grey coat from the video Sam had seen had appeared behind them. "Are you ready to go?" He had an American accent, which threw Sam slightly.

It was impossible to miss the way Ianto's face lit up when he saw the other man. "Yeah, of course. I'll, er, see you around then, yeah? Text me or something."

Sam only nodded as the two men walked away, the American's arm quickly finding its way around Ianto. He didn't really know enough about Ianto to care. Wondering vaguely what Lisa would have made of it, he carried on with his evening.

That was the last time Sam ever saw Ianto.

A few weeks later, he'd had a phone call from his mum.

"How're you doing over there in Cardiff? You getting on alright?"

"Yes, Mum, I'm fine!"

"Good." He could hear her take a deep breath. "Sam, do you… do you remember Ianto? L-Lisa's old boyfriend?"

She still couldn't say Lisa's name without choking up; sometimes Sam pitied her, sometimes he envied her.

"Yeah, I remember him. Why?"

"Well, I – oh, this is awful – I had a call from his brother-in-law, and he, um, he passed away. Last week. They – they thought we might like to know, obviously we, we knew him as Li-Lisa's boyfriend."

"Oh." Sam's brain froze.

"I – I know we didn't know him that well, not really, but I thought it might be nice if you went to the funeral? You know, show our support. And it's not that far from you, not really."

He agreed, of course; whether out of duty to Ianto, to Lisa, or to something else entirely, he wasn't sure, but the following Monday he was adjusting his tie as he got on a train to Newport. The conspiracy sites had been going wild that week, with the children talking and the lights coming down from the sky; it was surely no coincidence that this was when Ianto, a healthy young man in a dangerous line of work, had died.

There weren't many at the funeral. Family, of course, and a married couple that he didn't recognise, but that was it.

No sign of the man in the grey coat.

"How did you know Ianto?" the woman of the couple asked him afterwards as they drank tea that had been forced upon them by Ianto's teary-eyed sister.

"I, er, didn't really know him," Sam stammered out. "He was my sister's boyfriend. Before she, before she passed away."

"You're Lisa's brother?" To his surprise, the woman started to tear up.

"Yes, er, Sam Hallett." He stuck a hand out awkwardly.

"I'm Gwen Cooper, I work – I mean, er, worked with Ianto. And that over there is my husband, Rhys."

She smiled, but it didn't really work through the tears.

After a long silence, Sam eventually said, "Did he… did he talk about her, then?"

Gwen looked taken aback, clearly calculating an answer. "Oh, he… he mentioned her once or twice. He was very private, you see, and it was – it was clearly something he wasn't very comfortable talking about."

"Oh."

If Gwen had worked with Ianto, that surely meant that she also worked for Torchwood, which – judging by the way she was clearly hiding part of the story – meant that she knew exactly what was going on.

"There was a man," he blurted out before he could stop himself. "There was a man, in a grey coat. An American. He – he should be here."

"Yes," Gwen said, openly crying now. "Yes, he should. But he – well, Jack was there when it happened, you see. And he – he's struggling with that."

For the first time in years, Sam considered that maybe he'd been a bit harsh, judging Ianto so strongly for not staying at Lisa's funeral, for not grieving as he was perhaps expected to.

Ianto's untimely death confirmed for Sam that there was something big going on; that Torchwood was big and was dangerous and, perhaps, were the Enablers. It all made sense! They went round doing God knows what, hushing things up and patching up problems. It wasn't even a conspiracy anymore; more and more people in Cardiff knew about them.

Sam didn't know when it had stopped being about Lisa. When he had stopped caring about anything except answers, except solving the puzzle, finding the missing pieces. Months would pass between phone calls home, his time instead spent working on his YouTube channel and his blog, following any trail that turned up.

And then he was sat next to Jack Harkness.

He knew straight away that Jack recognised him, even if he pretended otherwise; whether from his YouTube channel or from that brief moment that he and Ianto had met in the streets of Cardiff, Sam couldn't say. It had been easier for him, too, to feign not knowing Jack, recognising the face but not placing it.

A few short days later, he was tied up on the top of a building, hoping, praying that someone would rescue him, that Jack would get there on time.

He still didn't know how Lisa had died. He still didn't know how Ianto had died. All he knew was that it was real, all of it, but that for the first time in years he desperately wished that it wasn't. That someone would tell him that it was all a big joke and he could go home, start again, move on.

He thought of his sister, as he stood up there. Wondered if she'd gone through the same thing, or what it had felt like when she died. Was she in pain? Was she suffering? All these questions that he'd never thought of and now they seemed like the most important thing in the world.

But Jack was coming. Jack would rescue him, he had to, because what else was Jack Harkness good for, and he'd be safe, and he could go home to his mum and it would all be fine and –

He fell.

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