Title: This is the world we live in

Rating: PG

Summary: Written for the prompt 'Ianto, He caught a glimpse of a man in a greatcoat' on comment-fic and also for the song 'Land of Confusion', the Disturbed version.

AN: Yet another attempt at a songfic drabble. I didn't even get past the first four stanzas this time. 500 words. Also, sorry to anyone who's reading this a second time (unless you meant to, in which case, sweet). I decided it deserved to be its own story rather than a chapter of Serendipity.

[*]

Ianto watched the higher-ups as they argued, whispering and shouting, passing the buck, delegating blame, refusing to take responsibility for their own inactions. They were gathered under a single tent while everyone else worked feverishly, organizing search and rescue efforts for the few found alive, treating the wounded and hiding away the partially-converted. It was easy to sneak around, stealing medical supplies and looks at documents, listening in on conversations.

A small square of mangled grass and mud remained from the smoker's garden across the street from the Tower. In two perfectly symmetrical tracks through it were deep footprints that could come from no others but the Cybermen. A hysterical hiccup escaped his throat, but he covered it up with a cough before any of the workers pressed in tight around him could notice.

"So much for 'a singular moment of oversight'," Marley had commented with a sort of morbid humor as the pair of them looked out one of the Tower windows at the world below. The line of silver that stretched through every street of the city looked like poison seeping through its veins. Ianto gave a hopeless sort of laugh at the reference to Yvonne Hartman's oft-quoted excuse for the Sycorax disaster less than a year before.

He passed by one of the communications tents and overheard a UNIT man with lots of stripes giving commands to various subordinates. "Get it out to the news networks, the radios, the papers, everyone," the man ordered. "Let the people know that the danger has passed, the world is secure. Everyone is safe."

Ianto looked up at the remaining skeleton of the Tower, smoke still spilling from its innards despite all efforts to put out the fires and snorted.

He reached his final target. His ravaged suit- dirty with blood and soot and tears and bloody motor oil- didn't actually look that different from the outfits of the first responders, and he wasn't stopped. Ianto waited until attentions were focused toward the other end of the tent and raided the medical supplies, muttering under his breath the list Lisa had given him and adding additional painkillers.

"There is nothing we can do for them. The subjects are to be disposed of."

Jaw clenched, he forced himself to walk through the crowd toward the entrance of the tent, ignoring the cries of the partially-converted in response to their sentence and the complaints of the scientists who wished to continue 'rescue efforts'- otherwise known as studying the tortured people.

"No, this decision is final!" the first voice reached above the clamor. "They are to be eliminated."

"Is that anything like exterminated, or deleted?"

The tent was silenced. Ianto caught a glimpse of the person who had made the comment- a man in a dark blue coat, standing with arms crossed over his chest and staring in defiance at the first speaker- and nearly smiled. Then he walked away from the sudden uproar in the direction of an abandoned warehouse three blocks away.