Ianto was searching through the armory. Searching, frantically, digging through weapons.
"What are you…?" Gwen asked.
Ianto pulled something out, showed it to her. "Small magnetic field disruptor," he said. His eyes glanced up at the door, at the blinking gadget securing them inside. One that had to be disabled, on both sides of the door.
"Not powered up," Ianto noted, fiddling around with the field disruptor. "Safety precaution. Wouldn't work if the Hub was on actual lockdown. But there's more than enough power flowing through the walls, at the moment…"
Gwen offered him a leg up, and he attached the generator to the blinking gadget securing the doors.
Then stood back, with Gwen.
As the device charged up.
Tosh knew it was morbid. But she remembered the big-fanged beast that had been killed, last week. Then frozen and left down here.
The big-fanged beast with teeth that could rip even through metal.
She grabbed it up, lugged it across the freezers, gritting her teeth and pulling with all of her might. Then thrust the fang through the hinge of the door.
It gave.
Again, she thrust. And again! And again!
Until the door clanged down to the ground, and Tosh could get free.
It had been a chemistry lesson that had saved Owen's life.
He scrambled through the lab, grabbing up the ingredients he needed. Mixing them all together, in a glass beaker, heating it up to exactly the right temperature to make sure the chemical reactions happened the way they should.
Reinforced super-plastic it might be.
But plastic was still plastic. And this plastic — Owen happened to know how to dissolve.
"Here goes nothing," said Owen, as he threw the beaker against the plastic window of the door.
Seo was seated in the Hub. Typing at the computers. The rift manipulator rippling energy across the Hub. The floor humming with power. Her eyes just fixed, intently, on the computer screen in front of her.
She didn't pause in her work. Not for a second.
Not even when the sounds of four guns cocking echoed around her.
"Seo," said Gwen, "step away from the computers."
Seo didn't answer. Didn't acknowledge her, at all. Just continued.
"We don't want to hurt you," Gwen tried. "Just stop. Talk this through. We can—"
"Yes, you do," said Seo, in a small voice. "You want to kill me. And you don't know why."
"I've got a pretty good idea of why," Owen growled.
Gwen glanced at Tosh, whose eyes were fixed on the computer monitors, in growing horror.
"Tosh," said Gwen. "What's she doing?"
"She's taking down everything!" Tosh said. "A virus, disabling every defense system this planet has! UNIT! Home Office! Ministry of Defense! We're going to be a sitting target for anyone that comes by!"
Ianto lunged for Seo, trying to wrestle her away from the computers, but Seo shrugged him off, easily, slamming him back against the ground with enough force to make him wince.
Gwen took the shot.
Seo jerked. Spasmed. Her shoulder seeping the wrong color blood. But her eyes remained fixed. Her jaw clenched, as if fighting off the pain, as she forced herself to continue typing. Forced herself to finish the program.
"She's possessed," Tosh whispered.
"Nothing else left to do, then," said Owen. Aiming his own gun right at her head. "Sorry about this, kid."
The shot went wide, as he was tackled to the ground by a blond blur, charging through the air from behind them. A blond blur who leapt up, and stood in front of Seo, her eyes blazing.
Buffy.
"Put the guns down," she demanded. "Now."
Everyone at Torchwood was shocked to see her, again. But didn't lower the guns.
"She's taking down all of Earth's defenses!" Tosh shouted at Buffy. "Whatever's just landed in the Himalayas — she's letting it take over! She's letting it invade!"
Buffy hesitated. Looking back at Seo.
"Mom," said Seo, in a very small voice, as she finished typing. "I'm sorry."
Then tapped the enter key. And sent the program out.
Buffy, her eyes narrow, clonked Seo across the head. The girl wavered, then slumped over, and crumpled to the ground, unconscious, at Buffy's feet.
Tosh immediately pushed past and launched herself at the computer. Typing, wildly, trying to figure out how to undo the damage.
Ianto and Owen raced towards the rift manipulator, trying to figure out how to reverse whatever she'd done, there.
Gwen just lowered the gun. Looking at Buffy and the unconscious Seo. Trying to come to terms with the fact that… she'd shot someone. Someone who'd been part of the team. Someone she'd trusted.
She'd shot Seo. Who'd saved her life time and time again.
How could she have done that?!
"Got rid of the virus," Tosh told the others. "All of Earth's defenses are fully back online. But... I think this goes a lot deeper than that. A lot deeper than all of it." She continued typing, continued looking through code. "She's been planning this for months. Been tapping into and fiddling about with everything. Trying to hide some other program, hooked into the rest of the Hub's systems."
Gwen shook her head. Guilt-trip later. Save the world, now. "Owen, what's she done to—?"
"Well, it's not a rift manipulator, anymore," said Owen. "It's channeling rift energy. Channeling it across every metallic surface in the Hub."
"Must be to power up this," said Tosh, as she found the embedded, hidden file, in the Torchwood systems. "Some sort of… brainwashing device. Using and reflecting the energy from the rift in order to beam a message up to..."
Tosh stopped. Her jaw dropping open.
"The Archangel Network," she breathed.
"Wait, what?" said Buffy, suddenly standing up straight.
"She's brainwashing us," said Tosh. "Using our phones. Using the satellites."
"But… Archangel extends across the entire world," said Gwen. "And Seo was trying to take down all the defenses."
"To facilitate an alien invasion," proposed Owen.
"Or cause one," Tosh added. "If it were a mind parasite, trying to use Seo's skill-set to spread its influence."
"No, wait, but… this is impossible!" shouted Buffy. "Seo's terrible at brainwashing-type things! If she was going to end the world, she'd never do it like this! She'd—"
"I don't care if it's possible or not!" Gwen shouted back. "We have to stop it!"
"Parabolic," Ianto muttered.
Gwen spun around. "What?"
"The Hub. It's parabolic," Ianto explained. "Power gathering across all the metallic surfaces would be used as an amplifier, pointing right to the focus." He grabbed up one of the mega-alien guns that he and Gwen had been preparing to pack for the Himalayas. "Which would be… right about…"
He fired.
Something hanging in the center of the Hub, that none of them had seen or even noticed before, sparked.
Then collapsed to the ground.
Destroyed.
All power to the Hub cut out. And everything fell silent.
As Seo's plan ended.
"No," Buffy said, as they were putting everything back. "I don't believe it. I won't. I can't."
"Which is why you knocked her out?" said Owen.
Buffy hesitated. She… didn't know exactly why she'd done that. But there'd just been this horrible fear that had sprouted up inside of her, in that one second. A certainty that all this had to be stopped.
"Face it, Buffy," Owen said, as he removed the bullet from Seo's back. "Your daughter flipped out and tried to destroy the world. We all saw it. So did you."
"But she'd never destroy the world!" Buffy insisted. "I know her!"
"Actually, she's nearly destroyed the world countless times," Ianto pointed out, repairing the rift manipulator. "Always by accident. Maybe this was a mistake. Maybe she honestly didn't know what she was doing."
Owen sighed. Then wiped the blood off his hands, and went over to the luggage. "Allow me to demonstrate," he said.
In a single movement, he unzipped Seo's suitcase, and shoved it open.
To reveal… nothing.
An empty suitcase.
"She didn't even pack," Owen pointed out to them. "Whatever happened here, today, it wasn't an accident. She knew this was going to happen. And she knew we'd kill her for it."
Buffy said nothing. Her eyes still fixed on Seo.
"Buffy's right, though," said Gwen, dismantling the brainwashing device and destroying the components. "I can't believe she'd do something like this. It's just… not… her."
"She would if something got to her, first," Tosh pointed out, trying to delete Seo's many programs from the Torchwood mainframe. "She's impervious to scans, impervious to machines, impervious to anything that could detect if there was something wrong with her. But she's not impervious to drugs, organic forms of mind-control, and that sort of thing. If an alien race out there wanted to infiltrate Torchwood — she'd be the best way to do it."
"An alien race like… the one that's in the Himalayas?" Ianto guessed.
"That's my thought," said Tosh.
"So… why didn't she kill us?" Gwen asked. She pointed at Seo. "You've seen her, out in the field! You've seen what she can do! If she were brainwashed, she wouldn't have locked us up. She'd have just killed us, to make sure she could succeed in her work!"
Buffy looked down at the unconscious Seo. A sad expression on her face. "No," she said, very quietly. "She wouldn't. If there was something in her head — she'd have done everything in her power to make sure it didn't hurt any of you."
"If she's dangerous, even just temporarily, we should lock her up," Ianto decided. "Make sure—"
"She can get out of any prison cell we put her in," said Tosh. "We learned that before."
"Looks like it's the freezers for Little Miss Alien," said Owen.
Buffy interposed herself in between Owen and Seo, in an instant. "No. Never."
"The freezing process still isn't quite working right, anyways, at the moment," Tosh admitted. "Seo took the freezers down just before she started her plan. We won't be able to freeze her before we have to leave."
Gwen nodded, officiously. "Good." She crossed her arms. "Because I want some answers."
