A/N: Final chapter for Into the Void. Thanks again to everyone who added this to their alerts, or simply kept up with it. And a really big thanks to those who took the time to review it, I do love getting reviews.
They let out a scream as Jack lost his grip on Faith's hand and they could hear a faint scream escape her lips. Jack leaned out into the void a bit more to try to catch sight of her, but it was too late.
"Where is she?" Ianto yelled as he tried to join Jack only to be stopped by Owen and Gwen pulling him back.
"You can't go out there." Gwen said as she fell back onto the floor, a struggling Ianto on top of her. "You heard what the Doctor said."
"That rope is still secure, right?" Jack asked as he got to his feet and quickly tightened his harness.
"It is." Owen nodded.
"I'm going to see if I can find her." Jack said as he stepped back and prepared to jump through the portal again.
As he stepped back, he took a deep breath, shot one more look at his sprawled team and made a jump for the hole, only to be thrown back towards the others. It had felt like he'd jumped into a concrete wall, yet the portal was still open, though it was slowly closing.
"Jack?" Gwen asked in shock.
He ran to the wall again and tried once more to jump through, only to be knocked back again as the portal sped up and was gone. The four numbly got to their feet and cautiously approached the wall. It was normal again. Just a slab of concrete.
"Doctor!?" Jack said as he grabbed Gwen's comm. "Open that thing back up." he ordered.
"I can't." he answered after a few minute's silence.
"What do you mean you can't?" Jack asked as he looked around at the others.
"I mean that I can't." he repeated. "You should get back here so we can look you over."
"We can't just leave Faith." Ianto argued.
"You can't do anything with the portal closed either." the Doctor countered. "Get back here, Jack can be gone over and we can try to figure out what's going on."
The three stared at the wall for a moment before deciding there was nothing more to be done at the moment, so reluctantly, they gathered their things and headed back to the hub.
"What have you come up with?" Owen asked as he took his seat at the long table.
"Nothing yet." the Doctor replied as he scratched his head for the hundredth time, trying to figure out why he could not manipulate the portal just once more. "How's Jack?" he asked as he punched the keys on the computer again.
"Nothing seems to be wrong." Owen answered. "Well, other than the obvious."
"I'm working on it." the Doctor growled as he slammed his hands on the table in frustration. "Why won't it let me open it again?" he hissed.
"We have no way of knowing if Faith is still alive, do we?" Gwen asked as she came in with the others. "What if...."
"That bracelet keeps track of her vitals." the Doctor explained. "So far, she's still alive, but she's weak."
"Can you get anything off her necklace?" Jack asked Tosh.
"I tried." she shook her head. "Nothing at all."
"We designed that to keep track of her in Cardiff." Owen pointed out. "Silly us, we didn't take into account her being sucked into some bloody void."
"Oh no." the Doctor groaned.
"What?" Ianto asked. "Oh no what?"
"They've sealed off that portal." he answered. "We can't access it from the sewers again, at least not in that spot."
"Then where?" Tosh asked.
"I don't know." he said. "I'm tracking any possible locations."
They sat in silence as the Doctor tried again and again to track down the right portal. It seemed like forever, and everyone was growing more and more restless as time wore on. The entire group jumped in surprise when Gwen's phone went off, and she apologized as she picked up when she saw Rhys' name on the display.
"I'll be right back." she said as she left the room.
"I don't know what species we're dealing with, but they're good." the Doctor said a couple of minutes later.
"Matter of opinion." Owen said.
"They're opening and closing portals all over the place, two, three at a time, but none are anywhere near eachother." he went on, ignoring Owen's input. "And none for more than a few seconds at a time."
"Can we find some sort of pattern?" Tosh asked as she came to stand behind the Doctor and looked at the screen. "If we can find some sort of pattern, maybe we could wait for them to open it again." she suggested.
"It's worth a try." he nodded. "It'll take a bit to find any sort of pattern."
"Just do it." Jack said as he placed an arm around Ianto's shoulders.
"We're not going to get to her in time." Ianto whispered, watching Tosh and the Doctor work at their computers.
"Yes, we will." Jack said firmly. In truth, he didn't believe those words anymore than Ianto did, but he felt as though one of them had be think positive.
"Find anything?" Gwen asked as she came back in holding three large plastic bags.
"They're trying to find some patterns with a whack-a-mole type thing in the portals." Owen answered as he stared at the bags. "What's that?"
"Dinner." she said as she set the bags down. "If anyone's hungry."
"You're fast." he said as he peaked in each bag.
"Rhys dropped it by." she said. "I called him a bit ago, he thought we might get hungry, so he stopped by a fish and chips place."
"I'm not hungry." Ianto said when Gwen offered him a piece of fish. "No thanks."
"It'll take a bit more to figure out any real pattern, so you should eat up now." the Doctor said as he sat back and watched his computer work.
"Doesn't seem quite right to sit around eating when we don't know where she is, or if she's okay, does it?" Tosh said as she stared at the food she held in her hand.
"None of you will do her any good if you're weak when we go to get her out of there." the Doctor said as he grabbed a few chips and began to munch on them. "Eat." he prompted.
Slowly, they did as he told. All except Ianto who just stared at the screens. He hated waiting. He hated not knowing where his friend was, if she was alright. First he'd had to go through the hell when Jack went missing, and now Faith. It was enough to drive a person mad.
"What's that?" he asked as one of the small dots on the screen started glowing red.
"We've got a pattern." Tosh said with a smile as she checked her screen and saw two more light up.
"Three places." the Doctor said. "And only two of us who can actually get through the portals without coming with an extra head or anything."
"Pick the best two, and we'll go there." Jack said as he wiped his hands.
"There isn't a 'best two', Jack." the Doctor explained. "There's a best three, but to narrow it down anymore...."
"Unfortunately, we're short a non-human." Owen said.
"Then we have to decide which two to head to." the Doctor said staring at the screen. "Okay, this one, and......this one." he added as he wrote down coordinates.
"What if we're wrong?" Tosh asked. "What if it's the third."
"We've got more than a fifty percent chance." he shrugged. "And we need to move fast, her vitals are getting weaker."
"And we don't know where that portal leads." Jack added.
Ianto dropped the Doctor, Tosh and Owen off at the first site and headed off with Jack and Gwen to the second. He gripped the wheel tightly as he drove along, his skin going white at the knuckles. They would find her, they would get her out. If neither of these locations worked out, there was still a chance they could get her at the third.
"It'll be okay." Jack said softly as they pulled up to the second location.
"Yeah, yeah." he nodded as he opened his door and headed for the old hospital.
"As if it weren't nerve-wracking enough." Gwen remarked. "It has to be an abandoned hospital?"
"Adds atmosphere." Jack said to her as Ianto walked ahead of them, looking down at the GPS screen he held in his hand.
"We're in place here." Owen's voice came over the comms.
"We're almost there." Jack replied as they made their way up to the top floor of the dark, old building.
"This should be it." Ianto said as he stared from the GPS to the blank wall in front of him.
"Harness." Jack said as he held out his hand and waited for Gwen to give it to him.
"Ready?" Owen asked again a few minutes later.
"Just securing the safety ropes." Gwen answered as she tightened the rope on last time. "Okay."
"Should only be a few minutes more." the Doctor's voice crackled.
Each group stood staring at the walls in front of them. This has to work, the Doctor thought. Looking at her vitals, if the portal didn't open and they weren't able to get to her, he knew she couldn't last until they got to the third.
"How is she?" Tosh asked nervously.
"Honestly?" he asked, receiving nods from both Tosh and Owen, he answered. "Not good."
"How much longer does she have?" Owen asked.
"Her heart rate is slowing quickly, blood pressure is dropping like a rock." he answered after taking his earpiece out, not wanting Ianto to hear what he was saying.
"She's going to die?" Tosh asked.
"If we don't get her out now," he nodded. "She doesn't have a chance. She took quite a beating on the way up last time."
"Anything on your end?" Jack called out.
"Not yet." Owen answered as he stared at the others.
They waited nervously for the portals to open. The Doctor was about to ask Jack again if anything was happening when he heard a loud beeping emitting from the small computer he held in his hand.
"What is that?" Owen asked as the beeping became rather frantic.
"It's her vitals." the Doctor answered. "She's crashing."
"What?" Jack asked.
"She's crash...." the Doctor tried to repeat before being cut off by one loud beep, and then silence.
"Doctor?" Jack called.
"She's gone." the Doctor said as the portal opened before him. "I'm sorry."
Tosh leaned back against the opposite wall and began to cry. Her good friend was gone. Owen moved over to her and placed an arm around her shaking shoulders as he stared at the Doctor in numb disbelief.
"What do you mean she's gone?" Ianto asked.
"She has no vital signs." the Doctor said softly. "She's dead."
Jack walked into his office, Ianto right behind him. The younger man had not said a word since they left the hospital. He just sat there in stony silence as Jack drove them back to the hub. Sitting down at his desk while Ianto sank into the couch, he ran his hands through his hair and layed his head down on the desk as Ianto began to cry. The others stood at the door to the office, each crying, but no one saying a word. He lifted his head and looked at the others, then to Ianto who now had Tosh sitting next to him, giving him a shoulder to cry on. Looking back down, feeling like a failure for not being able to stop this from happening, he saw an evelope on his deks with Faith's handwriting.
"What's this?" he asked as he held it up.
"I don't know." Gwen shook her head.
The Doctor took the envelope and opened it. A DVD was all that he found inside. "Put it in your computer."
Jack popped open the disk drive and set the disk in it, hesitating a moment before pushing the tray back in. A few clicks and Faith's face suddenly appeared.
"Well, if you're seeing this, I'm not around anymore. Either that or I was too slow or too forgetful to grab this off Jack's desk. If that's the case, stop watching now, give me back the DVD and pretend you never saw it. If it's not, which I really hope it is, even if I do look like an idiot, I'm gone. I just wanted to thank all of you for what you've done for me. Ianto, you made so many sacrifices, and I never found a way to truly pay you back. Jack, take care of him. Tosh, you were a great friend, and I wish you the best. Owen, we had our ups and downs, but you really are a teddy-bear deep down. Gwen, once again, ups and downs, but, you've grown a lot in my estimation. Take care of Rhys, he's a good guy and you're lucky to have him. I can't go on too much more, otherwise I'll be in tears, and you won't be able to understand anything I say, and this will have been a waste of time. I just wanted to say "Thank you" and lastly, "Good Bye". Okay then.....how do you turn this thing off? Damn humans and your technology....."
The last thing they saw was a close up of Faith's necklace and dark hair as she fought with the camera to get it to shut off. Jack shut the screen down and looked around at the others. They all stood around him staring at the screen.
"Can I have that?" Ianto asked as he held his hand out. Jack nodded and handed him the disk. With a sad smile, Ianto nodded and left the office.
