CHAPTER ONE
Artie gets an alarm that is far from routine. A mysterious cloud is destroying people. What artifact caused it? And who is the strange man who claims to know Artie, and why doesn't anyone remember him? And worse yet, why is there time missing from all of their lives.
#
This is a TW/Warehouse 13 crossover. Hereafter W13 and TW. DW may be mentioned, but he may not show up.
This is the second in the 'artifact" series. The first one in the series was the "Angels among the Artifacts." You don't have to have read it, it (mostly) stands by itself but there is some cool backstory in it. But in it, It is mentioned that there are worse things than the Angels. Here are those things.
TW: Probably Pre season 1, this Jack has been hiding because he knows at the moment he is supposed to be somewhere else. He had left a cryptic warning about there being worse things.
W13" I am writing this as if Jinxie didn't exist. Only because we are between seasons and until I know how they are going to resolve that whole thing I can't plan anything. (I don't trust dead bodies.)
#
No money is made, nothing you recognize is mine.
CHAPTER TWO
"Let's go back to the B and B. This place is giving me a headache." Jack said. He could feel the painite in his blood fighting with the biology that adapted too well to everything, and the universal constant that made him live. It was as if he could feel the vortex twisting in his gut trying to dispel the mineral that didn't belong.
It was a quiet ride back to Leena's. Jack didn't say anything to Claudia as they drove, which, she figured meant she was in some pretty deep shit. Jack, as cute as he was, scared her. There was that very dangerous vibe, as Pete would say, coming off of him like smoke on dry ice.
"I should have known." Jack said, speaking aloud for the first time since they had gotten into the car. Claudia was driving him, and Artie had taken his own car. Jack looked at the wrist strap a couple of times to make sure his old friend was still following. The last thing he needed was for Artie to suffer a memory cascade while driving and kill himself.
"What?" Claudia's voice betrayed her fear.
"Those bastards couldn't leave anything alone."
"Who?"
"The Regents that had captured me." Jack said. "There was a split among the regents, some of them got replaced because they felt that toying with artifacts trying to figure out what made them tick was fine as long as they had a subject who couldn't die."
"You?"
Jack nodded. "I always knew that one of the artifacts had killed them. But I hadn't bothered to check. I didn't want to know what else they had found. And if this is what I think it is, there isn't much we can do."
"What do you mean?"
"Even the Doctor doesn't really have anything he can do about these except to run. Run fast and stay in the light."
They pulled up to the B and B to find Leena waiting with a mug of coffee for Jack and milk and cookies for Artie.
"Myka and Pete are inside."
Jack nodded.
"What's wrong? Your aura is clouded. Such sadness, such fear."
"The news that brought me here isn't good." He smiled. "But I'll live. No matter the cost, I'll live. I always do."
Leena put a hand on Jack's shoulder. "Stop doubting yourself. You can do this."
He suddenly seemed to close off. His emotions hidden behind a solid wall, his Aura went back to the normal nearly blinding white. Without another word he turned and walked inside. Leena knew not to take it personally, it was a function of him being much older than any other living man.
Jack stood in front of the french doors, basking in the light, hating the cold chill that these creatures brought to him. There were few things he feared. No, lots of things he feared, few things that terrified him. As far as he knew he could think of four, Angels, Daleks, Cybermen and these. The Vashta Nerada.
When he started his voice was low. And he kept his back to the table, even as he felt the shift of time and space that accompanied the appearance of the Regents. He knew that the artifact they used was the precursor to the wrist strap he had. The vortex shifted and resonated a wave that made him uneasy. It was a sort of power that most humans were not fit to employ. At the same time, he could read the figure standing almost directly behind him. She was afraid of this man, of him, she was afraid he meant her people harm. She had been groomed to make the hard choices, and he could respect that. She, he knew without looking was a Regent. He had been assured that these regents were different, and for now, he would give them the benefit of the doubt.
"The alarm is because it isn't an artifact." He took a sip of his coffee, savoring it for a moment, and trying to force down the memories of a certain Welshman who used to make him coffee. "And it is squarely the fault of the Warehouse. Though, to be fair, not THIS warehouse."
"Explain." The voice was that of Mrs Fredrick.
"The group that captured me and experimented on me, they came into possession of some very dangerous things."
He sighed and shook his head. "They were part of Warehouse 12. I was there because I was tracking something for Her Majesty."
"Artifacts."
"No. Not by your definition." He took a step forward. "Alien Artifacts, and in a couple of cases, aliens themselves."
He smiled at the memory of HG. "I knew HG, and I tried to get her to come with me, but she was so single-minded that nothing but the Warehouse mattered. Even when I offered her all of the Universe, she wanted to chase artifacts."
He smiled sheepishly, "In fact, she was the one who had turned me in. She said she wanted to know what I had. What I was using, and what I could share with her."
"And so I told her a story, and put Retcon in her drink. Tried to wipe myself out of her memories." He smiled grimly.
"It worked until she met the Statues."
"Yes, these, Angels."
"So the Agents got the Angels?"
"Among others." Jack shivered at the memory of what those madmen had done to him. He locked in a box the memory of being trapped in a room with one of those things. "But what we have on the loose is something that makes the Angels look benign." He rubbed at his arms, the very memory of the vashta Nerada making his skin itch.
Myka and Pete looked at him quizzically, it was obvious that neither of them remembered, and Artie had the look that Jack knew meant he was on the verge of a memory cascade. The Retcon hadn't broken, but he was teetering on the edge. And as much as he wanted to push him over and get his friend back, he didn't dare. Breaking Retcon too many times could be dangerous.
"Pete," He looked over at him. "I know you don't remember me. I know that, but I also know that you get vibes, and that twisted feeling in your gut right now tells you that something is very wrong, and that every word I say is the truth. I need you to trust me."
Pete nodded.
"Myka, I need you to trust Pete."
"Mr Harkness."
"Captain." He cut Mrs Fredrick Off before she could continue. "It is Captain Jack Harkness, and in case you haven't figured it out, I was the one in the Zero Vault." He sighed.
"Now, let me finish what I have to say. It's hard enough talking about these things once."
Jack leaned his hands on the table. "I have only seen one video, but that isn't something you forget. I tried to tell them, I tried to warn them of what they had done. But it was too late, the seal broke, the protocalls went into effect to protect me, and they died."
"So Captain Harkness, what do we have?" Mrs Fredrick asked.
"They are called the Vashta nerada. And they are hungry."
"How dangerous are they?"
"I'll show you."
He pulled the Ipad from Claudia's hand. "Thank you for carrying that for me." With a few flicks of his wrist he was logged on to the Warehouse network and burrowing through security codes to find what he was after.
"I don't know if they ever showed you what happened to them." Jack looked up at Mrs Fredrick. "The men who tortured me." For a moment there was that 'smoke on ice' vibe again. A man whose very being shouted death and destruction. "But I was there when they died." For a moment Jack seemed to revel in their deaths before a pained look crossed his face and he frowned. He reminded himself that he wasn't that man, that he couldn't be that man anymore.
"The report was that they had died from one of their experiments."
"But they never showed you the video did they?"
"No, they said I didn't have the clearance."
"Good. I had hoped that they would go dormant again because there wasn't anything I could do."
The video came on. First from the doorway. And then a camera that showed the view from the door. Jack split the screen so that both were up at the same time. One camera was focused on him, the other on the doctors. He took a deep breath, synched the video, and then hit play.
"This, as you know, is the Zero vault, my prison for the last hundred years or so. They were convinced, despite my protests that they could make the 'cloud' dormant, and study it. At this point in time I had already been subjected to them twice. There was an air evac system on the chamber, it would pull out the air, filter it, and put anything caught in the filter in a containment cannister like that." He tapped the cannister that looked a little like a pneumatic cannister from a bank.
"Thank god there is no audio." Jack said. "Hearing it once was bad enough."
They had come across them in a ship crash in the desert a few years before. Six neatly labeled cannisters, three were mostly benign two were instantly fatal but unrecoverable, and then there was this." He pointed to the screen.
They had created the air evac system after watching me eaten alive on two separate occasions by these nasty buggers. I begged them finally that they could do whatever they wanted to me, but they had to make a failsafe in case something like that happened. Since I was useless to them as I healed, they agreed."
"That black cloud." He pointed to the cloud outside the glass where he gasped for air. "Is a swarm of Vashta Nerada. I don't know how to kill them. The best way to deal with them is to find a way to trap them."
In a matter of moments each of the doctors had been reduced to a skeleton.
"They are known as the pirahnas of the air. They latch onto a food source and they do that." He gestured at the skeletons. "And believe me, it isn't fun."
"You've seen them before?"
"No, but the Doctor has. And he said that there were some native to earth. They don't generally swarm like this. These must have been kept for a very long time. We need to get them back into a tube. I don't care if we have to push them into a supernova, we are going to stop them from swarming."
Mrs Fredrick for the first time since Pete had seen her, looked terrified.
"How did you survive?"
"I didn't. The legend of the Zero Vault is true. I cannot stay dead. The Universe will not let me die." He looked at Mrs Fredrick. "I allowed myself to be taken prisoner because this was the second time I was living through this century. I couldn't be allowed to be seen. What I didn't sign up for was being used to test just how deadly these artifacts were at the hands of MacPherson and his cronies."
"So the report of Angels?"
"Claudia is the only one that remembers it right now." Jack said. "Because of some of the things that happened I didn't want them to have to remember that."
"How did you do it? An artifact?"
Jack shook his head and held up a small white pill.
"We call it RetCon." It wipes your memory and gives you just enough of a feeling like a hangover, that it seems plausible, and most of what you do remember is just easily dismissed as a dream." He smiled, putting the pill back in his pocket. "I dosed everyone, including Claudia, but she managed to break it, and I can't re-dose her without issues. It only works on short term though. It also makes it harder to remember things that have already been wiped. Say for instance, I put this in your drink and told you there was no such thing as Aliens, You would default to that whenever something obviously alien came around unless you broke the RetCon. But the formula only works on short-term memory."
"What do you mean?"
"If I had given them a big enough dose to, say, wipe the Warehouse from their memories, they, Myka especially, would be needing a drool cup. Eidetics are harder to wipe. And it is a 60/40 chance that they break through it at a later date." Jack shrugged. "I didn't need any of you looking me up and running into my other self. That would be bad. At this point in my history, I don't know I exist."
"I would ask you to refrain from taking the memories of my people again." Mrs Fredrick leaned menacingly.
Jack leaned forward, his whole demeanor changed instantly. Gone was the devil-may-care attitude and the 1000 watt smile, and in its place was sheer ice. He was far more dangerous than Mrs Fredrick gave him credit for.
"I will do whatever I have to do to save planet earth from things that they do not understand. If that means that I have to blitz a few memories along the way, I felt it was a better alternative than killing your staff and stuffing this entire place into a pocket dimension with a Timelock on it."
"The failsafes."
Jack laughed outright."I know the warehouse is sentient, and I know how to deal with it. In fact, I was one of the people that helped uncover the sentient mainframe." He smiled. "Check your records."
#
"Why didn't you leave?" Claudia asked. She was trying to change the subject, diffuse the tension she saw in the room.
The tension broke and Jack shrugged.
"I couldn't I was the guinea pig for the Painite too. Fortunately my fifty-first century biology has reduced it to a burning sensation, by now, but back then, if I left the area, I was dead, and rather spectacularly so. I may be immortal, but it still hurts like hell." He frowned. "And coming back hurt twice as much."
He held up his hand to stop any more questions. "Besides, I stayed dead until you woke me for the Angels. Until the glass went up there was no air. Nothing but a neural relay scavenged from one of the ships to keep my brain engrams stable. I could sort of play act while my body stayed in stasis."
"And you can't go anywhere because you already exist at this time." It was a statement by Claudia not a question.
Jack nodded.
Claudia had qued up the videos. "We don't have video from the California one, because the only camera in the area was a nanny cam and it was in the next room." She explained.
The videos they did have were almost identical, the cloud moved in and left a skeleton behind. Mrs Fredrick looked ill.
"We have got to find these things."
"As long as you do what I say. I am the one who knows the best about them. The doctor told me a couple of things, and the first is, Run."
And the second? Pete asked.
"Count the shadows. If you have more than one, you are dead meat."
"What do you mean?"
"It's how they hunt. They latch on to a food source, and the swarm looks like a second shadow." He frowns before continuing. "When it changes back to one shadow, they are dead."
"So how do we find them?" Pete asked.
"Unfortunately, we just wait for another ping."
His wrist strap chirped.
Everyone turned to him.
"That would be my team."
He pulled a battered looking earpiece out of his pocket. "Go." He said touching the connect button for the Earpiece.
"Jack, we weren't sure you were really here. We just got a letter from you, it told us to contact you."
"Anything we can help with, sir?"
"Ianto, on time as usual." He smiled, instantly forgetting the future that he knew. "I need you to interface with the Warehouse mainframe. Have Tosh contact Claudia."
"She broke through?"
"Yeah."
"I dare say, I told you so."
Another voice took over, this one was female. "What have we got?"
"Pirahnas of the Air."
There were three confused voices. "Oi, not the bloody Vashta Nerada."
"And the prize goes to Owen." Jack said, pride obvious in his voice. "Tosh, scan everything you can get ahold of, see if you can figure out where else they hit. Owen, work up a list of chemicals we can blame it on, we are looking for chemicals that can strip flesh and leave bone. Nothing too exotic. Gwen, get on the phone with the locals here, see what the cops know, what they are saying, throw our name around if we have to. Ianto, get everyone ready, you may be coming to America."
"You are out of line Captain Harkness."
"And you are out of your league Mrs Fredrick. This is what my team does for a living. Now, we can stay behind them, or you can let us help and stay one step ahead of them them and hope to cut them off before too many more people die."
"You are sure this isn't an artifact?" She looked at Artie."
"It doesn't match anything we have record of."
"Then I will allow your team access Mr Harkness."
#
Ianto stood at his normal place at the desk. A Courier walked in and smiled sheepishly. "I am looking for Ianto Jones, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato and Gwen Williams."
"I am Ianto Jones."
"I'm sorry sir, but there is a verification question."
"What was Jack looking for when he left?"
"The right sort of doctor." Ianto said.
The man handed over an envelope. "Then I think this is yours."
The paper was brittle and bore the Torchwood logo.
"It's been in our vaults since the eighteen hundreds."
Ianto nodded, signed the slip that he had recieved it, and pocketed the letter. He waited until the man was out of the office before locking the door, flipping the sign to closed, and buzzing himself through the inner door.
Jack had hared out of the hub this morning like his pants were on fire and told them that he would be 'away' Ianto had been the only one to have seen the small box on his desk. A time-locked box of orders similar to the one they had had for Tommy.
"Jack sent us a letter." He said heading for the conference room.
"He hasn't been gone that long."
"For us." Ianto said.
"What?"
"The letter is dated 1890 and it came from America."
Ianto held up the yellowed, brittle letter. There, on the front, in the recognizable strong script were their names.
Ianto slit the top of the envelope and pulled out the letter. "Torchwood."
I have to assume that Ianto is the one reading this, as it is usually his place, so, I will try, for his benefit to be concise. I know you probably saw me tear out of here a few minutes or a few hours ago, and then got this letter. Please, DON'T go looking for me right now. What I do need you to do is call me. We have an incursion, and I don't know if we are in time to stop it. Contact Claudia Donnavan at Warehouse 13.
Yes, you heard me, Warehouse 13. They have had an alarm they can't deal with. Aliens. My memory is kinda hazy right now, long story and far away, but other than my notes to myself I don't remember what they met with. Problem with being uprooted without warning.
Under no circumstances are you to answer any of my questions about this mission at a later date. You too Owen. In case some of the others have not figured it out yet, I am living a paradox right now, I cannot be allowed under any circumstances, to meet myself, and there may be things that I cannot talk to you about.
If you are reading this, then hopefully the world survived the Angels, yes that was me. And Tosh, those odd readings you have been getting, they are me. Owen, I need you to bring retcon, the industrial strength stuff, and the anti-retcon we have been working on.
Gwen, I am going to need you to talk to the US police, try not to steam roll them, but at the same time get us access.
Ianto, nice suit by the way, I need you to get onto it and get us unilateral access outside our home base. Keep our 'friends' out of it. Any of the alphabet soups we know need to stay far, far away. And I need you to go into the vault, there is an artifact. Ner-231497-A please bring it with you when you come.
The world is depending on us Torchwood.