Torchwood LA: Retcon

Chapter 10: Ride Along

Three months earlier…

"What I don't get," said Jack Carter, looking both ways before making the left turn, "is why they're called 'Priority Two' if we're going to be testing those people first."

"That's what I said!" exclaimed Bauer, a surprised smile on his face as he sat in the jeep's passenger seat. The Torchwood operative had been out driving around town with Eureka's sheriff for the past hour and a half since leaving the Infirmary. The afternoon had passed uneventfully for the two men, giving Jack Bauer the chance to get familiar with the layout of the town and its surrounding area.

"Shouldn't we call them 'Priority One,' then?" Carter asked again.

"Because it's a misnomer," said Bauer, resting his arm on the window gasket. "Look," he began, "I've only been with these guys for a couple of weeks, but the way it was explained to me, the profile works." He was referring to the profile Torchwood Seven had come up with for uncovering Cell 114 members. "People without children, no siblings or other connections to their own childhood, extensive gaps in their personal history…" he recited, "All the things you would expect from someone who's really an alien infiltrator in disguise."

"Like Paul Broxx," interjected Carter, nodding along. "Everyone I talked to said Broxx was always telling them he was the youngest of four children, bragging about a half dozen nieces and nephews…But when I searched his house: no pictures."

"You didn't know to be looking for anything," Bauer said before Carter could start blaming himself for having missed something. "Torchwood's examined all of the known attacks, and it seems that the 114 are getting smarter. In the Vegas attack, one of the cell members was a nineteen year old college student. Turns out this 'student' had been in place for six years. Had adoption records, report cards, even a juvie conviction for petty vandalism, all backed up with accounts from reliable witnesses. Gwen said he, or it, must have been inserted as a runaway teen into an orphanage, and just grew into position - they can fake aging, or they genuinely age; we aren't sure which." Bauer shifted a little in his seat. "Gwen figures it's only a matter of time until they crack the 'no-viable-offspring' problem, or start sending whole families as units: we're going on the assumption that one day the profile will be useless."

"My God!" said Carter, thinking through the implications.

"Yeah," said Bauer. "The last thing we want is to get into a situation where the balloon goes up and suddenly we have key people in our fight against the 114 turn out to be 114. So that's why we're testing people in sensitive positions: anyone cleared enough to know about the 114 or Torchwood is tested. That includes the President, the Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs, key members of Congress like Senator Wen, your General Mansfield…all the way down to the highest cleared people at certain vital facilities, such as Eureka." He turned completely to face Carter. "That's why it's called Priority. If we went somewhere, say a SAC base, to hunt a 114 cell, our first 'priority' would be to find the terrorists by testing everyone who fit the profile; that's Priority One. While we're there, we would also test the base commander, his XO, and at least the senior officers in charge of nuclear weapons. They would be Priority Two. Normally, we would test the Priority Twos after stopping the cell, but there's just so damn many of you here, it was easier to start with the Twos and work our way outward." It was true: with the additions of Sheriff Carter and Dr. Donovan – and Dr. Parrish – there were now eighty-three people in Eureka with sufficient clearance to fall into the Priority Two category. Even this Dr. Drummer fellow they were on their way to visit was Priority Two.

"And it goes up to Four?" Carter asked, looking to Bauer for confirmation.

"Priority Three is the general population," Bauer said, nodding. "We'll only test them if we run out of Priority Ones before finding the remaining cell members. Priority Four are those we rule out from testing due to them being excluded by the current profile." He reached over, tapping Carter's arm. "Like, we wouldn't have wasted time testing you and Dr. Blake earlier," Bauer said. "We know you're both parents. But Priority Two trumps all the other categories." He turned back to facing forward. "This case is our first chance to test the screening methodology on a large scale, so we're still working out the bugs," he admitted. "But you're right; it is counter-intuitive and could cause confusion in a stressful situation. I'm going to make sure to mention it in my after-action report," Bauer said, smiling again at Carter.

"Huh," said Carter.

"Yep," said Bauer.

A silent moment went by.

"…So Tess has a gun now," said Carter.

"She carries," confirmed Bauer. "We all do, even the support folks like her and House." It was true: Gwen insisted that all Torchwood operatives be qualified for potentially dangerous situations.

"She any…good with it?" Carter asked.

"…She carries," Bauer repeated.

Doot…deet…doot…deet…

The 114 leaned over the dashboard to get a better look at the guard post. The small outbuilding was big enough to have obviously housed two guards, but there was still only one guard on duty. The alien decided to wait a few minutes, just to make sure a second guard wasn't off doing his rounds or sitting on the toilet, but it knew that, due to the reduction of GD's operational budget, almost none of the other off-site labs rated even one security guard any more, let alone two. The 114 remembered its human alter ego being quite angry at the time over the cuts to her own department.

If it had been capable of doing so, the 114 would have smiled at the irony.

Doot…deet…doot…deet…

As Carter pulled his jeep into the parking lot outside of the superphoton generator's control facility, he immediately saw a crowd of techs standing around an olive drab flatbed utility truck. He also saw a scientist he recognized.

"Dr. Drummer," said Carter, as he and Bauer were getting out of the jeep, "are you alright?" Carter was looking at Drummer, who seemed to have a bandage wrapped around his right hand. He glanced at Bauer, whose expression indicated that he too had noticed Drummer's hand. "I thought you said there weren't any injuries," Carter said to the scientist.

"Oh, Sheriff, thank you for coming," said Drummer. He was holding his right hand in his left. Drummer jerked his head toward the truck. "No, somebody did that last night." The left rear bumper of the truck was smashed in and hanging off. "I called it in right after I arrived this morning; of course, I realize that you've had more important matters to attend to these past couple of days," Drummer said, with a knowing nod to Carter. He held up his injured hand. "This happened because I did something stupid. I thought I saw a fleck of paint inside the taillight, so I reached in to get it. I forgot that this vehicle is old enough to be exempt from the laws mandating safety glass for the lights." He smiled ruefully. He also turned his hand a bit, and Carter could see a red spot where blood had seeped through the bandage. "I believe I nicked an artery."

"Ouch!" said Carter.

"Let me take a look at that," said Bauer. "I have field medic training."

"Oh!" said Carter. "Dr. Noah Drummer, this is Jack Bauer," he said, indicating the Torchwood operative. "He's one of the liaisons from the DoD helping us with the Astreus investigation." Carter didn't say any more; while Dr. Drummer was cleared for the Torchwood secret, none of his assistants were.

"Charmed," said Drummer, this time directing his knowing expression toward Bauer, quickly shaking left hands with the agent before presenting his right.

Bauer was already unwrapping the gauze and looking at Drummer's cut. Carter saw him scrutinize the wound, his face wrapped up in a fretting gaze. Bauer shared a look with Carter. He's wondering if Drummer did this on purpose to cheat Tess' test, the sheriff realized. After a few more seconds, however, Bauer began rewrapping the gauze, albeit more competently than the scientist had done before.

"You should get that looked at in the Infirmary," Carter said as Bauer finished. "It could get infected."

"I don't want to waste any of Allison's valuable time," said Drummer. "She has enough to worry about."

"Go to our doctor, then," said Bauer. "Dr. House. Tell him I sent you."

"Yes," said one of Drummer's assistants, who turned and mouthed a big Thank you! to Bauer and Carter. "I'll drive you." The woman pulled out a set of keys and dragged Drummer halfway to a station wagon before the scientist could object.

"Well, alright," said Drummer, as he realized he wasn't going to win the argument. Then he stopped and turned back to Carter. "But Sheriff, that still leaves the matter of the accident report," he said, pointing back to his truck. "And the intruder."

"What?" Carter and Bauer said simultaneously.

"Well, the two matters are obviously connected," said Drummer, who turned to Bauer. "Global Dynamics' company insurance policies are exceedingly comprehensive. That truck is only used for maintenance runs up the hill to the superphoton generator, so it's 100% covered as a company vehicle. Whoever struck it wouldn't have to worry about paying for any of the repairs; in fact, it's likely that the repairs to their vehicle would be covered as well, provided they notified the owner, the authorities, or in some other way attested to their culpability. Therefore, whoever caused the accident must be an outside agent."

Bauer was skeptical. "So some idiot does a hit-and-run on your truck, and you think it's the Chinese just because they didn't leave a note?" he asked.

"Actually, it's more likely to be the North Koreans; they're our most active threat," said Drummer. "But the point is, as Sheriff Carter can tell you, filing a claim after an accident is exponentially more challenging if you don't have the name of the other party. Anyone who lived in Eureka would know this. So again, the only reasonable assumption is that my truck was damaged by someone who is not a Eureka resident, and is here without authorization for some nefarious purpose."

"Or it was kids," said Carter, who had so far stayed out of the discussion. He pointed to an access road which went past the parking lot and up a hill. "Tesla High's 'Makeout Point' is about a mile that way," he said. "I raised a teenage daughter here," he added, when Bauer turned to look at him.

"I hear you," said Bauer.

"Look, Noah," Carter continued, "Jack and I will file the police report on your truck, okay? That'll help with the insurance. Then you can take it to Henry, who will have it fixed up in no time. But for now, please," he implored, "go to the Infirmary."

"Fine," said Drummer, though he was less than enthused about the idea. He went back to his assistant's car and opened the passenger door. As she started the engine, he muttered, "I'll say this: someone is getting a lump of coal in their stocking this year."

Bauer watched the car drive off, and all of the other techs went back inside the control building. He turned to say something to Carter, and saw the sheriff was back at his jeep, getting something out of the back. He went over to help, and was surprised to see that it was a camera and some measuring equipment. He realized belatedly that the equipment Carter was getting was the kind used in documenting accident reports.

"We're really going to do this?" he asked as he opened up the camera case. "Document a fender-bender?"

"Welcome to small-town policing!" said Carter with a smile.

Doot…deet…doot…deet…

Dr. Wyman wasn't someone who'd be called a "people person." His first two weeks at Eureka, he'd had to resort to crib notes to keep track of coworkers' names. Even after he had been promoted to lead the Department of Planetary Defense, he would often confuse the names of the people who worked under him. So he was not overly concerned when he couldn't immediately place the woman he saw walking up the path to his building's front door. He also was more focused on how the thirtysomething blonde woman was walking, which somehow seemed off. He got up from his desk and walked over to the door to let her in.

"Dr. Leonardo!" he said, finally remembering who she was as he held the electronic door open for her. He was about to ask her if she was okay, or drunk, when he realized that Eureka's chief botanist wasn't cleared for the work his department did. "What are you doing here?" he asked, probably a little more confrontationally than he should have. After all, he thought, the guard let her through, didn't he?

That was the last fully coherent thought Dr. Wyman had time to make, as the next thing that crossed his mind was pain. He looked down, and saw that Leonardo's arm had turned into some kind of green, flat sword, and that that sword was embedded in the right side of his abdomen. He instinctively grabbed at it, but Leonardo was able to pull it out and stab him again, this time a little higher in his ribcage. She jammed the sword-arm in, until Wyman stopped struggling, then angled her arm down and let him slide off of it. That's when she heard the chirp of the door closing.

The 114, until today known to its friends as "Dr. Maria Leonardo," looked at the door, and then down at Wyman. It knew that it probably should have waited until it got inside the building before it transformed to combat mode, but the human scientist had blocked its forward progress. With no regret at all, the 114 turned toward the outside keypad, ripping the housing off and examining the wires within.

Doot…deet…doot…deet…

Carter stopped the jeep long enough for Bauer to hop out, and then rolled back into traffic so he could return to GD and check in. The two men had completed the investigation of Dr. Drummer's accident, and then driven back to town as no other calls had come in. Bauer had asked the sheriff to take him back to the town square, so he could pick up the second Torchwood truck and bring it back to the inn. As he was fishing the keys out of his pocket, he caught sight of someone he recognized sitting on a park bench in the median.

"Tess?" Bauer said, after he had walked over to her. "Heard you got into it with some of the locals today," he said, sitting down next to her after she acknowledged him with a nod.

"Eric Washington was my friend," said Tess, and Bauer could see that she had been crying, though she had wiped away her tears by this point. She continued staring straight ahead. "He was my deputy director when I was here with Section Five," she explained. "He was my Roy – my Adam - here," she corrected, for Bauer's sake. She stifled a sob. "He was so loyal! I recommended him to take my place, but he didn't know that. When I left for Australia, I did it so…abruptly," she admitted, holding back a smile, "…that a rumor got started that I'd been fired." She turned to Jack. "He refused to accept the promotion. I had to call him from the airport, and threaten to come back and kick his ass if he didn't take the job!" She was smiling now, but the smile quickly went away. "If I hadn't, he would be alive now."

"Tess, stop," Bauer said forcefully. "You can't go down that road."

Tess snorted. "What does it matter?" she asked. "He's gone, and now Roy's gone, and Ken's gone, and suddenly there's you, and Adam…" she stopped, putting her head in her hands.

Bauer sat back. He'd been wondering how Tess was taking the devastating events of the past few weeks. She'd been the only member of Torchwood Seven not there when the Russians attacked their headquarters and killed Caftan and Ryan. Gwen had warned him Tess was close to both men. So far, she'd been nothing but professional to him and Adam, but Bauer knew that the emotional trauma had to be severe, especially for someone not used to seeing death in combat. And coming to Eureka, where her old friends were being put in danger, was not helping matters any.

"I didn't want to bring you on this mission," Bauer told her.

"What?!" she said, sitting back up.

"You're too emotionally attached to the situation. I told Gwen it was a bad idea, but she insisted we needed an Indian guide to this place, and there were things here we could get and bring back to Torchwood that only you would know about."

"Wow," Tess said. "Your bedside manner is about on par with Greg's," she added.

"It's not about 'bedside manner,' or hurt feelings!" said Bauer, this time rounding on Tess and grabbing her by the arm. When she looked down at his hand and tried to pull away, he relaxed and released her, but he continued his lecture. "It's about focus," he said in a hoarse whisper. "Focus is what you need to have. Because we are in a combat theatre here." He swept his arm around at the town. "There has been one confirmed attack and there are three hostiles still active. They are carrying out operations against us right now. You need to focus on that, and nothing else. You cannot afford feelings or anything else that degrades your ability to attend to the situation at hand. Inattention gets you dead." He stood up and looked around in all directions. "There could be a sniper in one of those windows, drawing a bead on us right now…" he said, stopping his rant when the arm he was using to point nearly hit a woman walking by. Bauer muttered a quick apology to the woman, who began to walk a lot faster away from him.

"Okay, Jack, Jesus!" said Tess. "I get it!" She scoffed at him. "Honestly, do you have to be so melodramatic about –"

A loud explosion cut her off, as it made the ground shake and knocked many people in the square off their feet, including the unlucky pedestrian Bauer had nearly decked a few moments before. Several secondary explosions followed, but fortunately they were not as powerful, and anyone still standing was able maintain their footing, including Jack and Tess. Everyone looked up, and a plume of fire and smoke could be seen rising into the twilight sky from somewhere a few miles outside of town.

Bauer and Tess looked at each other, then both took off on a dead run to the Torchwood truck.

Doot…deet…doot…deet…