Disclaimer: Torchwood are copyright © by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Permission to reproduce this specific material may be granted by the author so long as you email first. © 2008 .
THE SEARCH FOR AMThe pterodactyl soared high in the Hub, her eyes flicking from one target to another; weighing up sounds and measuring distance, sniffing for food and analyzing danger.
The Hub was, mostly, a safe place to be, but no creature survived on complacency. With her sharp eyes and alert ears, she would come to no harm. Of that she always made certain.
She fanned her wings forward and landed high on the wall, gripping the hard tubing with her worn claws, and strained her neck to look down to the ground. For now, only Mother was present; the others were away. Soon, almost invariably, they would return.
Although, there had been the recent chain of incidents that led to the death of one of their number. She could still remember the exciting scent of blood, the tangible taste of terror in the air. And another had failed to come back at all since that day.
Such was life.
TORCHWOOD
Ianto looked up absentmindedly as Myfanwy soared across the diameter of the Hub and landed. She held on tightly to the ventilation ducts and looked curiously down at him. She was probably hungry and would need another feed soon. He made a mental note to do so as his final task for the day.
The sound of the door opening pulled his attention away from the lizard and he turned to look, just in time to see Jack and Gwen enter. Between them they carried a sedated alien of a kind he hadn't seen before. He looked from Jack, who had his back to him, to Gwen, and raised his eyebrows in query. She just offered him a puzzled shrug in return. Casting another quick look at Jack, he asked, "What is it?"
"I don't know," Jack replied without looking around, shuffling toward the cells. "I haven't seen one of these before. Can you open that door?" Ianto got up out of his chair, nonchalantly aware that Myfanwy had just taken off again, and arrived by the door to the cells just before his colleagues. He pressed the cell room button and the door slid open. As Gwen and Jack inched out of view, he headed back to his desk.
TORCHWOOD
...it's like a passageway...
What? Again: Like a tunnel.
What can I feel? There they are: the edges.
Owen stretched out and felt them again. They were there alright. They were there. Of uncertain form, but present. A kind of passageway. That sped away a huge distance. It couldn't tell what direction it was headed, but it was there. It was a tunnel.
A tunnel to where? It didn't know.
Owen contracted; something was supposed to happen now. But it didn't; it was missing.
Should have felt something.
Felt? Felt! There should be more. What's going on?
Owen puzzled at its situation. Then, it stretched again, just so, and something jolted through it.
Tosh.
Tosh?
What was a Tosh? Tosh meant something; it was important to Owen. And with the position, the configuration that was Tosh came others, by association. Owen stretched into them, testing them and attentive to them.
Jack. Ianto. Gwen.
That was familiar. Owen did it again.
Tosh. Jack. Ianto. Gwen.
With those movements came an imperative. Owen tried to piece together the meaning of it all.
The tunnel. Tosh. Jack. Ianto. Gwen.
It all fit together somehow. Leaving the strange words alone for the moment, Owen tested the end of the tunnel again. It led to a different place from the space in which it found itself, and that distance beckoned seductively. Owen felt that it would fit, that it would be able to travel in that tunnel. It paused.
Is it a way out? Tosh. Jack. Ianto. Gwen.
Those words, they represented a place. A place Owen decided it should go to. Bunching close for a moment, Owen prepared itself to leach into the tunnel and go to ToshJackIantoGwen.
Forward.
And Owen was out.
It felt the space in which it now found itself. Long. Fascinating and new; it surged down to the opposite end.
ToshJackIantoGwen. I'm coming.
TORCHWOOD
Ke stirred her limbs as she came to. She felt groggy and slightly sick, and her left wing ached from the way she'd been laying on it. Slowly she opened her eyes and looked around blearily.
What she saw made her heart sink: she was in a confined space. She rolled onto her belly and stretched herself to greater wakefulness. There were solid walls behind and to both sides of her. A clear but smeary material in front, clearly also some kind of wall. How long have I been here? she wondered. Shakily, she stood up and walked up to the clear wall. She leaned her whole left side against it; she felt it with her muzzle. She looked at it head-on: a ghostly reflection of her own face blinked back at her. It turned misty where she snorted at it, and she watched as the mist disappeared.
She was trapped.
Am! Where was Am? Ke stood up on her hind legs and loped to the corner of the room. She pressed her head against the clear wall again in an effort to see, or to smell, something that might provide her a clue as to what to do.
A dangerous snort thundered past the wall to her right. She knew what that was: a Curcul. With a shudder she moved hastily backwards.
She looked at the clear wall again; there was a squarish section cut out of it, the resulting shape left in. She investigated it, leaning her weight on it and trying to dislodge it. It wouldn't move and she soon gave in.
There were holes near the centre. She walked over to inspect them and fitted her claws into them while she sniffed the air on the other side. I don't know how to get out of this. Will I never see my family again?
At a loss for what else to do, Ke wailed. As her voice died away, the chamber became silent. Deathly silent; eerily so.
Ke was used to hearing at least some background sound all the time. Back on her home planet there was always the sound of rustling foliage, or the creak of her kind's tree-suspended habitation. But here there was nothing except the Curcul's heavy breathing and a distant tapping sound from beyond the corridor. Frightened suddenly, she called again, and then again. Anything to keep the silence at bay.
The Curcul, out of sight, snorted its belligerent irritation in return.
TORCHWOOD
Gwen briefly flicked her gaze in the direction of the cells. The new inmate was calling morosely. To Gwen's ears it sounded like crying, but that was hard to tell: it was easy to misconstrue an alien's inflection and tone. Nevertheless, she felt the familiar desire to help it, perhaps try to calm it down, but there was little that could be done. It was likely the alien was highly stressed for the moment and as much as Gwen meant well, she suspected her presence would only serve to aggravate it more. In the relative darkness and quiet, most new inmates calmed down soon enough.
Its voice was high and rough, and she hoped it would fall quiet before the sound grated on her too much.
TORCHWOOD
A rogue crackle of electricity shot along the connection that the Bluetooth earpiece provided from its resting place at the bottom of the lead-filled room.
Owen was fascinated with the possibility of escape; the tunnel lured it, and it travelled obligingly, scarcely able to think, only to do.
With a metaphorical jolt, Owen came to a sudden stop. It was at the opposite end of the tunnel. In and around Owen was a complex network of connections and lines, which it traversed in the hope of finding another way forward. There was nothing. Not for now, at least. What do do now? Owen wondered. Wait...
It sensed a familiar presence not far away. Another tunnel, perhaps? No, it didn't feel right. Living? Maybe. Whatever it was, it appealed to Owen. It crackled and evaluated the situation.
Owen had taken the tunnel-like route that had presented itself to it; and finally it had ended up here. Where 'here' was, Owen still didn't know. ToshJackIantoGwen, maybe. It was impossible to tell; Owen still didn't know what that meant. But it did know that it sensed a familiarity in that pattern of that electrical activity nearby and focussed on it unflinchingly...
TORCHWOOD
Jack silently inspected the work Ianto was doing and stood next to the computer. Often he would lean or sit on the edge of the desk, but after the recent tragedy, which had still kept everybody in such a melancholic mood, he felt it more appropriate to stand instead. Now didn't seem the best time to flirt.
He took a quick glance at his watch: it was mid-afternoon. The alien had been calling for a while and he wondered how much longer it would continue.
Ah, it didn't matter.
"Excellent. Carry on, Ianto," he said finally and walked away from his colleague. He cast a vague glance over his shoulder at the Bluetooth receiver on the desk next to the computer, although he wasn't sure why, before moving on.
TORCHWOOD
Gwen stretched her lips in a private expression of sour tolerance; the new alien was still wailing and the sound was beginning to get on her nerves. Perhaps it was worth feeding it.
"Ianto?" she asked.
Ianto looked up from his work. "Yes?"
"What do you think that new alien's likely to eat?"
Ianto hummed in thought for a moment. "Well, according to yours and Jack's description, its dentition's neither that of a herbivore nor a carnivore, and it's not terribly well-armed as a hunter. I suppose it'll be alright with mealworms."
In the background, the alien bleated again. Gwen looked tiredly at the cell room door and then back at Ianto. "Can't hurt to try it with a small bowl, can it?" Ianto shrugged with mild agreement, and Gwen decided.
She got up and walked over to Ianto's desk, next to which stood a file drawer and opened the second-to-bottom section. She peered apprehensively inside at the contents, in particular at the tupperware box and its wriggling inhabitants.
Mealworms were not Gwen's favourite creatures to handle. Despite the shocking things she had seen during her time at Torchwood, still she wasn't comfortable with creepy-crawlies. She rummaged around the drawer, pulled out a stainless steel dinner bowl and put it down on Ianto's computer. It clanked quietly against the Bluetooth receiver...
TORCHWOOD
Owen surged restlessly around the system. It had hoped for the electrical presence to come into contact with the metal; then it might have been able to inspect it, or infiltrate it. But it was not to be; Owen sensed it move away.
Then, something it felt it could infiltrate came into contact; Owen crackled into it.
Metal again...
TORCHWOOD
Gwen tentatively opened the tupperware container of mealworms, grimacing slightly at the little creatures as they squirmed in response to the movement and light. She rummaged beside their container for a gardening glove and pulled it on before picking up two handfuls of the dark yellow creatures and dropping them into the steel bowl. With a shudder, the replaced the tupperware lid and shut the drawer.
With the glove still on, she picked up the bowl and walked over to the cell room door. She opened it and stepped inside...
TORCHWOOD
Owen found itself trapped in an irregular-shaped, and small, space. Without the capacity to wonder what it should do, it simply waited...
TORCHWOOD
Gwen entered the cell room and switched on the meagre lights. She waited for a moment for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark. The first thing she saw was the Weevil in his grimy blue boiler suit. He approached his Perspex wall and growled, sniffing curiously through the ventilation holes. Gwen regarded him solemnly for a moment and then looked away; he reminded her too much of Owen, who, after his death, had gained a mysterious authority over these dangerous creatures. Pushing down the inevitable tide of grief, Gwen quietly cleared her throat and took a few steps forward into the newly-visible corridor. The cold, grey walls had finally materialised out of the blackness and now she could see them clearly. As she walked on, the Weevil bellowed at her, which she ignored. She wasn't here for him.
A white-feathered head pressed against the Perspex of the second cell as the new alien struggled to see who had come. Since she had opened the door and come in it had ceased crying; it looked surprised to see her again and stared up at her like a worried toddler. Gwen looked at it for a moment. It looked quite harmless, really, and she wondered just how old it was, whether it was male or female, whether it had a family that missed it.
"Hello," she bantered at the feathered beast as she approached the door and placed her hand on the lock. "I've brought a little something for you to keep you quiet."
It regarded her silently for the moment. Holding the bowl in one gloved hand, she opened the prison door a little and slid the bowl inside. It took a tentative step toward the door as she held it ajar so she hurriedly closed it again, and locked it.
"I'm sorry, you have to stay here for a while," she said gently but assertively, seeing the creature's plaintive expression. She indicated the bowl. "Try some of that," she continued softly. "See if it makes you happier."
"Eeo naak Am." the alien replied simply. Gwen looked it in the eyes sadly, at a loss for what to say. "Am?" It repeated.
Gwen could say nothing of use. With a heavy sigh, she pulled an apologetic face at it and reluctantly turned slowly away to walk out through the door.
She hated leaving the poor creature in the dark, but that was all she could do.
TO BE CONTINUED...
