10
O MY GOD SHE'S ALIVE.
Please don't kill me for my absence. This is going to be finished soon. One or two chapters more. You might get a third if you slap me with the inspiration stick. . . .
Don't forget to vote on the poll. I might be closing it soon.
Sorry for the ghetto section breaks, the site won't do those lines that go all the way across.
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Owen's head jerked forward, then back again to look at Gwen.
"I definitely heard that."
Gwen jogged past him. "Jack! Jack, can you hear me?"
A door met them at the end of a long straight section.
"Ianto, how far are we from Jack?"
"About a hundred metres," Ianto answered in both their earpieces.
Gwen's jog turned into a full sprint. She stopped abruptly at the door, yanked it open, and dashed forward. Owen barely made it through as the door bounced back. The steel ghosted across his shoulder, threatened to break the skin. Owen wondered at the silent malice of the object.
The doorway led them into another straight hallway. Gwen picked up her sprint again. Owen shook his head and followed at a jog, gun pointed downwards.
He passed a door and noticed it wasn't entirely shut. Holding his gun in front of him, he nudged the door open. An empty bathroom. He turned back to the hall.
As Gwen ran by a second door, something slammed into it with a chest-rattling growl. Gwen yelled in surprise, halting immediately and sliding on the floor; her foot slipped and she almost lost her balance. Owen nearly let off a shot.
Gwen looked at him, chest rising and falling, nostrils flared.
"Let's not open that door," Owen said.
"Yeah." Gwen nodded fervently. "There's a door at the end here."
Gwen reached it first and waited with an impatient, tapping foot until Owen caught up. One hand slowly descended from her gun to the handle. She paused, looked to Owen with wide eyes. He nodded, his own pistol ready.
Another three seconds. Gwen cranked the handle and kicked the door open.
There were two bodies on the floor. One was naked from the waist up and shoe-less, back red with three long gashes from shoulder to hip; the other was fully clothed and lying in a pool of what had to be all the blood in the body. A large exit wound in the back revealed a shattered spinal column and a flash of white scapula.
In the middle stood Toshiko.
Gwen's mouth hung open. "T . . . Tosh? You're alive!" She started to walk forward, but Tosh raised the black, blood-spotted pistol in her right hand. Her lips were somewhere between an angry grimace and a maniac smile.
"Tosh?"
Tosh didn't respond. Her lips decided to curve into an unsettling smile.
"Tosh, just put down the gun," Owen said in an attempt to placate her.
"Owen, Owen, Owen," Tosh clucked. "Why should I listen to you?" The pistol gravitated towards the shirtless body.
Gwen's eyes widened; the beginning sounds of protest left her lips too late. Tosh fired another round into the already bloody back of their captain. But another sound mingled with that of the shot: a sniffle. Without moving her head, Gwen scanned the room and saw the kid — wide-eyed and trembling — pressing himself against the corner of the far wall. Gwen prayed to whatever would listen that Tosh paid him no attention.
Tosh stepped over Jack. Owen and Gwen shrank back simultaneously; Toshiko chuckled.
"You fear me." She brought the gun to eye level, turning it over as if to inspect it for flaws. "As you should." Toshiko nodded at their own weapons. "Put them on the floor."
They complied. Gwen held her hands in a gesture of surrender. "Tosh, we can talk about this."
"Talk about what, Gwen?"
Gwen's mouth opened and closed silently for a few seconds before she found a strong enough argument. "This. Everything. What happened to you, where you've been all this time—"
"And why none of you came looking for me?"
"We did!"
Tosh scoffed. From behind her, Jack gasped back to life. Without looking, she shot him again in the back. Gwen jumped; Owen cringed; the kid whimpered and covered his head with both arms, sinking to the floor.
"No you didn't! I would have known! I could see you! See all of you! What you were doing those two months — Owen, drinking yourself stupid and sleeping with whoever would take you. Gwen . . . you were lying around your flat, pathetically hoping Rhys would come back. He's been dead since we were caught! Weevils killed him. And Ianto, at the hospital. Leg still bad enough he couldn't come help you kill me?"
"Tosh, we didn't come to kill you," Owen said, stepping forward.
Tosh raised the gun at him. Then, she swung it behind her to point at the kid. "Come any closer and I'll shoot him."
Owen backed up with his hands in front of him.
"I set this up. I set everything up. David and Jonas in the church, that child being drawn to the spot. None of you even guessed!"
Gwen saw movement behind Tosh, but kept her eyes away from it.
"Tosh, what do you want? What is killing us going to do?"
Tosh's grin widened. "Oh, I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to put you through all the pain I suffered."
Owen followed Gwen's lead. "You don't have to do this, Tosh."
"But I do!"
"Why?" Gwen asked.
That stopped Tosh. The locked arms pointing the gun at chest-height slackened a bit.
Jack took that moment of hesitation to grab her.
x X x
"Put. Me. Down!" Tosh screamed as Jack carried her, wrists held in handcuffs. He had her over one shoulder; she kept kicking his back. He ignored it.
Owen walked in front, leading the way out. Gwen followed a safe distance behind with the kid in her arms. He hadn't lifted his head from her shoulder since she had picked him up. Gwen could still feel tears dampening the fabric of her shirt.
Ianto saw them approaching and stepped out of the car. Jack nodded at the back and Owen went to open it.
"Tosh . . . you're alive!" Ianto said, but kept his distance.
Jack deposited her in the trunk and slammed the door shut. He motioned for the other three to come away from the vehicle so they could talk.
Jack sighed before he began. "I have a theory, and if it's right, she'll be fine in a few days."
"And what would that be?" Owen asked.
"Mind-control. She wouldn't willingly do this."
"No," Gwen said, shaking her head, "she wouldn't."
When they reached the Hub, Jack gave Gwen, Owen, and Ianto time to get down and set things up before he brought Toshiko. She had shouted the entire way; he had watched, concerned this time, as the kid dug further and further into Gwen's chest.
"You should take him somewhere where he won't hear her," Jack had told Gwen when as she climbed out of the SUV. She nodded and said she would take him to the kitchen.
After ten minutes, Jack retrieved Toshiko. She lashed out at him, kicking and biting. His nose narrowly avoided being broken. Putting her over one shoulder with her feet forward prevented her from actually being able to bite him. However, his left hip received quite a few hard blows before he held her feet together with one hand.
"What did he do to you, Tosh," Owen muttered to himself after Jack stepped back from strapping Tosh to the autopsy table. She thrashed against the straps, growling.
Owen looked to Jack. "Should I give her a sedative?"
Jack nodded wordlessly. "Run the usual tox screens and get some fluid in her."
Owen returned the nod and went to work. Jack walked slowly up the stairs to stand between Gwen and Ianto. He put an arm around each of their shoulders.
"Jack?"
"Yes?"
"Will she be all right." Gwen said it in a flat tone.
Jack paused and pulled in a long breath. "I don't know."
Gwen leaned her head against his shoulder. Jack rubbed her arm consolingly. After a few minutes, Gwen pulled away.
"Try to get some sleep, Gwen."
She waved a hand over her shoulder and picked up the kid, walking for the kitchen. When she reached the cog door, he let out a howl and started sobbing. Jack sighed, leaned on the railing with his hands in front of him. Ianto pulled his eyes away from the scene and went to hunt down a clean shirt for Jack.
"Thank you," Jack said when Ianto handed him the shirt. He slid it on but left it unbuttoned. He was intently watching Tosh. Owen had given her a sedative, relieving the air of the tension brought on by her angry noises.
"Any theories?" Owen called upwards after drawing another phial of blood for testing.
Jack turned his back on the sleeping Tosh and walked to his office. Owen raised an eyebrow, now very confused, at Ianto. Ianto shrugged.
"I don't know everything that goes on in that head of his." He followed Jack's regression.
Owen sighed. "Looks like it's just you an me again."
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So many tiny paragraphs XP