Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 2: Three Months Ago, on a Friday

Three months earlier…

Tess stood in the baggage claim area, resisting the urge to hop up onto the now dormant conveyer for a better vantage point. She settled instead for just standing on tiptoe periodically as she scanned the crowd for her ride. The man's picture, emailed by Gwen just a few minutes earlier, was still up on her phone.

She'd heard that the new second in command was another ex-military type: a real hardass, even worse than Ken could be at times. I'd better spot him before he sees me, Tess thought. If I let him see me first, he'll probably nag me about "situational awareness" for the rest of –

"Dr. Fontana?" she heard. Damn.

She turned around and found herself staring up, but not too far up, at the speaker. He was about five foot nine, with sandy blond hair and blue eyes. Gray tinges around his temples helped her place his age at somewhere in the forties, but he had that look of wiry strength and military bearing which marked him as someone still very, very dangerous. She glanced down at her phone for reference, but she already knew that she had made contact with the right person.

"Dr. Fontana, my name is Jack Bauer," he told her in a pleasant voice, extending his hand. "I'm the new XO."

"Pleased to meet you," Tess said by rote as she shook his hand.

"Same here," said Bauer. His handshake was firm, though not too firm, as if he had precisely calibrated his grip for a woman. "Although I'm sorry it had to be under these circumstances."

"Yeah," said Tess. "What…how…how did it happen?" she asked, feeling her eyes begin to water as she thought of her two coworkers again. She had been in the Outback with Bruce and his Torchwood Six team, playing rock-paper-scissors for various parts from a downed alien ship, when she had received Gwen's secure text: Russians attacked Hub. Roy, Ken dead. Get back. Now. She had been so shocked she had nearly fainted, and not from the heat.

"Not here," said Bauer, waving her inquiry off with a hand while looking furtively around. "Wait until we get into the truck."

"Right," Tess said, wiping her eye. There was not much to wipe. At least I cried myself out on the flight, she thought bitterly.

Bauer was getting back to business. "Do you have anything heavy?" he asked, using the agreed-upon code word for "alien." Tess noticed now that he had somehow acquired a baggage cart before approaching her, and was looking at the pair of bags lined up at her feet.

"Just in the blue suitcase," she said, pointing it out. "Our friends in Australia promised to ship the really heavy stuff by boat as soon as they can."

Bauer picked up the suitcase and had it on the cart before Tess had even finished speaking. He put it at the very far end of the cart, then put her other bag on the cart and began pushing it toward the parking garage. Tess noticed that Bauer was keeping his arms fully extended and locked as he pushed the cart as far out in front of himself as he could. Unfortunately that made the cart harder to steer, and he promptly crashed it into a drinking fountain, spilling the bags onto the floor.

Tess rolled her eyes. "I said heavy, not radioactive!" she said, as she ran up to help put all of her overturned luggage back onto the cart.

Doot…deet…doot…deet…