Advanced warning (Emily's Story)

A CofE fix it story. What if things had happened differently? What if they knew in advance?

Disclaimer: Not mine (mostly)

A/N: There are many reasons for the lateness of this update (although I did warn you about the sporadic updating) but the main reason (in my eyes) is very very exciting indeed. I met Mr Barrowman! *insert fangirl squeal* The funniest thing is that I managed to have a intelligent, coherent conversation with the man (and he used my phone and signed my DVD!) while my friend just stood and stared being completely star struck.
Unfortunatley I only got to see him for a few minutes but I can assure you all that he is a genuinley REALLY nice person. (especially considering he wasn't supposed to talk to my friend on my phone OR sign books but he did anyway!).

We need a doctor

Alarm bells started to ring as soon as Jack realised what they were looking at. Children, all over the world were stopping, for no apparent reason, causing accident after accident after accident. 'It doesn't mean its going to happen now.' he reminded himself, all the while remembering exactly who it was that told him about the children all those years ago.

"Jack?" Gwen asked cautiously, "Jack, what is it? Have you ever seen anything like this before?"

Jack shook his head. "No. Ianto, I need you to go down to the archives and find item 456-c-65, quick as you can."

Ianto nodded his agreement and quickly went to retrieve the required item. Gwen looked at Jack. "You know something." She stated simply.

"Maybe, I'm not sure. Just keep doing what we do for now and we'll see what happens."

A while later, after Ianto had retrieved the desired object from the old storage area of the archives he ran into Jacks office with an exuberant "He's back!"

"I knew it." Exclaimed Jack as he left his office and the small storage box from the archives to look over Ianto's shoulder at the CCTV of the Plass where sure enough, Dr Rupesh Patanjali, the doctor who happened to spot the hitch-hiker earlier, was wandering around, obviously looking for something to point him towards Torchwood.

"What's going on?" asked Gwen, joining the boys at the workstation.

"That," began Jack, "Is Doctor Rupesh Patanjali, spotted the hitch-hiker at the hospital." He looked up at Gwen, "We need a doctor." He said sadly.

"You bastards. You utter bastards. That's exactly what you done to me when I first met you!" exclaimed Gwen when she realised what they were doing. Jack had found a possible replacement doctor and was planning to leave him wandering around for a while before possibly going to talk to him. "Screw that, I'm promoting myself to recruitment officer." She declared as she grabbed her jacket and headed for the cog door.

Ianto looked at Jack, Jack looked at Ianto. "Looks like you just promoted Gwen." Ianto said simply before looking back at his computer screen.

"Yeah, it does, doesn't it." Jack said with a smile.

Gwen quickly found the bemused looking doctor and introduced herself, they sat, spoke for a while over a cup of coffee before Gwen suddenly stopped speaking, mid-sentence. "Shit."

Across the plass a mother was scalding her child who appeared to be completely ignoring her. "Suzette come on. You're going to make me late." The child stood, completely still, not fighting her mother, simply ignoring her, as if she was in her own little world, as if she were in a trance.

Gwen tapped her ear piece, "Jack, get up here now!" she screamed as she ran towards the mother and her child. "They're doing it again! The children!"

Back in the hub Jack ran for the door. "Ianto, come on!" he yelled as he ran for the cog door, heading for the surface.

Ianto booted up his handheld video-camera and began filming a mother and her two children while Rupesh tried to examine a third and Gwen and Jack stared at a fourth.

"We. We. We. We are. We are. We are coming. We are coming. We are coming."

"Who are you?" asked Gwen, "Who's coming?"

The children snapped out of the trance abruptly and began talking as if it had never happened.

A/N: Sorry its a little short but this chapter was amazingly hard to write, weird considering that most of it is pretty similar to what actually happened... must have Barrowman on the mind... mmm...