Trading Places

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Chapter 2- Gwen Cooper

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Day 1.

Gwen was met at the ARC by Abby, who she remembered meeting in Cardiff, an asian woman and a tall ginger-haired man in a leather motorcycle jacket.

"Danny, Sarah, this is Gwen Cooper from Torchwood," Abby said, welcoming her with a hug as though they were long lost friends. "Gwen, meet Danny Quinn and Dr Sarah Page."

Gwen shook hands with them both before Abby hustled her inside, talking nineteen to the dozen about what they had planned.

"I have a spare room at my flat," she told Gwen. "I thought it would be fun if you stayed with me. You don't have to, if you don't want. I won't be offended."

Gwen smiled. She liked Abby; whilst in Cardiff, Abby had stayed with her and they'd spent most of the night watching old movies and drinking wine. It had felt as though she'd been friends with the excitable blonde woman forever instead of just a few hours.

"Sounds great."

Abby smiled. "Cool. Come on, I'll introduce you to Lester and the others and then I can give you the grand tour."

A siren sounded and Abby stopped.

"It looks as through the tour is going to have to wait," Danny said as they all turned to hurry to the detector room.

Gwen didn't have time to do more than pass her bags off to one of the military personnel who Abby signalled over to them, and follow the others. This was oddly familiar, the alert going out, followed by the hustle to the cars and out to face whatever alien had come through the rift. This time, she reminded herself, they weren't going to be aliens. From what Abby had told her the last time they'd met, the anomalies opened in time, not space.

Sarah went to the desk in the centre of the room and tapped a few keys on the computer. The screen above it flared to life, showing what looked to her like a radar map with a single red dot pulsing over the map.

"Three miles outside of Kensington," Sarah told them, tapping a few more keys to get a closer fix. "I've transferred everything to the handheld detectors."

Danny led the way to the garage and they piled into the black four-by-fours, the team in one and the military personnel in the other. The two soldiers who were riding with them were checking their guns and ammunition in the back seat whilst Abby showed Gwen the device she held.

"Handheld locator," she said. "We all carry one with us, just in case we get a call whilst we're at home or something. When we're at the ARC, there's no point using these when we've got the actual detector. It's got better range that the handhelds, so Sarah transferred the data we needed to these once we had an alert."

"Actually, it was Connor who built the detector, and the handhelds," Sarah said, turning in the front seat. "When I joined the ARC, I kind of got railroaded into being his backup."

Danny, in the driving seat and doing a pretty good impression of Lewis Hamilton as they took another corner on two wheels, grinned. "You love it really."

Sarah smiled. "Yeah, I do. I mean, I went from seeing history around me, preserved in texts and artefacts, to working with the real thing on a daily basis."

"I can kind of understand," Gwen told them. "Before Torchwood, I was in the police. Then, one day, I stumble into the middle of this whole new world of aliens and rifts."

"Time to go, boys and girls," Danny quipped, slamming on the brakes and skidding to a stop by the side of the street.

Everyone piled out as the second car pulled up behind them, the soldiers jumping out, guns at the ready. They slowly took positions around the team, ready and waiting for whatever might have come through the anomaly.

Gwen couldn't help it; she couldn't stop staring at the anomaly that hung in the air over the childrens' playpark at the end of the street. It looked as though the air had shattered into thousands of tiny shards, each one glittering and shifting ever so slightly. The nearby swings were straining on their chains, reaching toward the anomaly.

"It's the magnetic field," Abby told her, seeing her staring. "The anomalies project a strong magnetic pull that's sometimes enough to actually drag lighter metal objects through."

She had stowed the detector in her pocket and now she and the team spread out to search for clues of what, if anything, had come through the anomaly yet. The playpark was just a small part of the larger playing fields and public park that lay beyond the houses. Since the anomaly faced the park, they headed that way, guessing that whatever had come through would head for open space rather than buildings.

"I can close this," Sarah told them, taking the case that one of the soldiers passed to her from the car. He took another one and they went toward the anomaly, where Sarah crouched down and began taking equipment out.

Gwen would have liked to stay and see how she intended to close the anomaly but Abby was signalling for her to follow. She caught up with her, Danny just to their left. Both of them carried guns.

"They're tranquilisers," Abby whispered, in case anything was close by. "There's enough juice in each of these darts to take down an elephant. The guys have got live ammo as well, just in case."

Glancing across, Gwen saw that the soldiers had a tranquiliser gun similar to Abby and Danny's, but also a rather large assault rifle slung over their shoulders on canvas straps. It hadn't really hit her before, the thought of what they might come across. Judging by the firepower that everyone had, it was reasonable to assume that they expected rather large trouble.

Suddenly, Abby held out a hand, signalling for her to be still, and pointed into the undergrowth at the far side of the park. The bushes were moving, just beyond the goal at the end of the football field, as though something big was in them. They all crept forward, dart guns raised, waiting on baited breath and hoping that whatever it was didn't get to them first.

The bushes shifted and something came out, and every gun was trained on that exact spot in an instant.

"Shit! Oh my God! Don't shoot!"

The two boys, probably in their mid teens, looked petrified, their hands raised in surrender.

"We just took a short cut, honest!"

The second boy glanced at his friend. "There was someone following us so we just wanted to get back here quickly. If we were trespassing, we're sorry, OK?"

Danny sighed and lowered his gun, the soldiers following suit. Abby told the two boys to lower their hands.

"You're not in any trouble," she told them. "This may sound weird, but it's important: Did you see what was following you? A person? An animal?"

The boys looked thoughtful now, although their glances still kept cutting to the soldiers and the guns.

"I don't know, I mean, we just kept hearing the leaves move behind us and every time we changed direction, so did the noise."

"Yeah," his friend added. "We didn't see anyone but it just gave us the creeps, you know? Like someone watching you."

Telling the boys to go back to the park and keep away from this area, they continued the search. The bushes blended into trees, a wooded area at the park boundary where it joined to the neighbouring land.

"Over there," Danny said, indicating with the barrel of his gun.

Abby could see the movement in the trees. "This better not be another false alarm," she muttered.

At that moment, the creature Danny had spotted noticed them. It let out a screeching cry, showing a mouthful of unpleasant-looking teeth, and rushed them.

Danny and two of the soldiers hit it with pink-tipped tranquiliser darts and the creature dropped after about ten seconds.

"Oh wow." Gwen stepped forward cautiously, waiting until she was sure that it wasn't going to have one last burst of energy and surprise her before crouching down next to it. "Is this a dinosaur? I can't believe I'm actually asking that."

Abby took her arm and moved her aside as a few of the soldiers loaded the creature onto a makeshift stretcher in order to get it back to the anomaly. It was only about six feet from nose to tail but it still took three of them to lift it safely.

"I looks like a raptor," Danny said, "or at least the ones I saw on Jurassic Park."

Gwen had to agree; she had been thinking the same thing.

"Actually, I think you're right," Abby told him. "It looks a bit scrawny though. Maybe it's just a baby one."

"You don't actually know what it is?" Gwen asked, surprised.

Danny laughed. "We don't usually need to. Usually, we have Connor, the human dinosaur encyclopaedia."

They did a quick sweep of the woods to check for other creatures but it appeared that their raptor had come through alone. Wrapped in a tarpaulin, on the stretcher, it was carried back to the anomaly, where Sarah was waiting. When she saw them coming, she tapped a few keys on the laptop that was balanced on a crate and the anomaly reopened. Once they had put the raptor back through, she closed it again.

"What did you do?" Gwen asked. The anomaly was now a swirling sphere, hanging in the air.

"Connor invented a way to lock them, to prevent anything else coming through," Sarah explained. "You see the metal posts that are set around the anomaly? Well they emit an electromagnetic field that can neutralise the field that the anomaly projects. I don't know exactly how it does it- I can work the equipment but that's about all."

"So what happens to the anomaly now? Does it just stay there forever?"

Sarah shrugged her shoulders. "Some vanish minutes after they appear where as others never close. We've never found a way to close them completely, just seal them shut."

By the time they reached the ARC once more, it was nearly 5:00pm. There was a debriefing with Lester and then he told them to go home. Gwen reclaimed her luggage and followed Abby out to her car.

"Hell of a first day, huh?" Gwen nodded. "Hey, I almost forgot; how are you with pets?"

"Fine. Why?"

Abby smiled at the suspicion in Gwen's voice. "It's OK, Rex is really friendly. And Sid and Nancy are too, just don't leave your shoes lying about because they'll eat them. I'm looking after them whilst Connor is away."

"So what are they, then?" Gwen asked, looking interested. "Dogs? Cats?"

"Not exactly…"

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Rex swooped down from his perch atop the kitchen cupboard when Abby came in, making excited chattering noises as he landed on the counter next to her. He tilted his head and eyed Gwen for a moment.

"It's Ok, Rex, this is Gwen. She's a friend."

Gwen watched as Abby picked up the –what? Lizard?- and petted him. He was still watching their visitor with unwavering curiosity. Eventually, he seemed to come to a decision and flapped his wings to be put down again and walked along the counter to where Gwen stood.

"He won't bite," Abby told her. "He came through an anomaly years ago, the day we discovered them, in fact. When it closed, he was left behind."

Gwen put a hand out to Rex, letting him get her scent before she tried to pet him, and he nudged her hand with his head.

"I think he likes me," she said. A tug at her jeans' leg made her look down and she found what she assumed to be one of Abby's other pets looking up at her expectantly.

"That's Sid," Abby told her. "Nancy is over there. They're Connor's. They're Diictadons; they got left behind as well."

"Odd names," Gwen commented, bending down to the little creatures. Seeing her do so, Nancy came scampering over, jostling with her playmate for Gwen's attention.

"He named them after Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. You know, from the Sex Pistols? He called them that because they're always getting into trouble."

Watching Abby a little later on as she confiscated a newspaper that Nancy was chewing on, she thought that the names fit them quite well.

Looking back on her first day at the ARC, Gwen smiled. She was going to enjoy the next week.

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To Be Continued…