Chapter 10
Ryan followed the three men into the pub… the bloody pub! He gazed around at what should've been a warm, welcoming atmosphere filled with music, voices and laughter. His mouth twitched a little as he saw the bar mostly taken over by what looked like half the SAS's small arms project. The beer barrels in the back were the home of various car parts and ammunition. The vinyl-seated booths in the back had been turned into… Ryan stared… was that a make-shift infirmary?
"Christ on his cross!" a woman's yell sailed across the pub, along with the unmistakable sound of guns being removed from their holsters, "Who the fuckin' hell is this?!"
Ryan spun, own gun coming up. "What the fuck? Who the fuck am I? Who the fuck are you?!"
Ryan found himself facing off with what looked like Pippi Longstockings' evil twin. The slender woman had a pretty, freckled face and green eyes. And, most bizarrely to Ryan at least, curly red hair pulled into low pigtails. He blinked twice, before the twin Berettas in evil Pippi's hands registered and he focused himself once more.
A manic smile curled evil Pippi's lips, "Me, sweetheart? I'm your worst nightmare."
"Oh for the love of…" and in a move that surprised Ryan enough to make him lower his gun a fraction, Nick stepped into the Berettas line of fire.
"Pack it in, Spanner," Connor called from behind the bar, sliding his rifle into the rack that had once been used for wine glasses.
"Still don't know who he is," she sing-songed at them.
"Captain Tom Ryan," Stephen said in a longsuffering voice, "He comes from the same place we do."
"Oh…" evil Pippi holstered her guns, "Right-o then."
Ryan reluctantly lowered his, "Tom Ryan…" he hesitantly held out a hand for her to shake.
"Spanner!" she returned cheerfully, shaking his hand.
Ryan opened his mouth, blinked, then closed it again, before murmuring to Stephen quietly, "Her name is Spanner?"
"Yep."
"Ah…"
"I know."
"What the hell is going on? I heard Spanner yelling…" all heads turned to look at the newcomers.
A slight, Asian woman stood in the doorway, a tall, fair-skinned man standing behind her. Both were armed. Heavily. Ryan could see at least three guns on the woman, as well as the assault rifle she cradled almost lovingly in her arms. It was like Mulan ditched her swords for bigger and better things. He didn't even want to guess at how many he couldn't see. The man was just as heavily armed, an almost bland, butler-ish expression on his face making him look like a cross between Rambo and Jeeves. He had two guns that Ryan could see, not including the sniper rifle in his arms, and a hunting knife in a sheath on his left thigh.
"And Spanner yelling is new… how?" Connor laughed and ducked a swipe from the aforementioned Spanner.
The Asian woman rolled her eyes, "I meant not in the normal way."
"Spanner has a normal way?" it was Stephen's turn to duck a slap now.
Ryan just shook his head, sitting down in the nearest chair. He blinked in shock for what seemed like the millionth time. What in the bloody hell was going on? Connor and Nick… with guns? Stephen… as a soldier? The three of them running what had all the hallmarks of a guerrilla seek-and-retreat mission? The three of them hanging around with people that were obviously bloody psychotic? Abruptly, Ryan remembered Nick's and Stephen's words to him in the SUV.
'Took you long enough.'
'We… we've been here for four months.'
"Will someone please explain to me what the fuck is goin' on here?" he asked, hating the plaintive note in his voice.
Nick blanched, "Christ Ryan, I'm sorry."
Stephen sat in the chair next to Ryan, "Um… where to begin?"
Ryan raised an eyebrow and nodded in the general direction of evil Pippi, Mulan and Rambo-Jeeves, making Stephen nod and start speaking again, "Right, right. Well, you've already met Spanner."
Stephen carried on as Ryan nodded, eyes straying to evil Pippi… Spanner, "Alright then. The other woman is Mariko Katsukaro," he pointed to Mulan, "And the man with her is Ianto Jones."
"Captain Tom Ryan," the introduction was made curtly.
"Pleasure," Mulan… Mariko replied dryly.
The silence that stretched after that soon turned uncomfortable, making Connor fidget and blurt out, "The gold anomaly!"
When everyone turned to look at him, he flushed a little and clarified, "We came through a gold anomaly… the gold shiny thing…" he sighed as Mariko, Ianto and Spanner looked clueless, "Anyway… that gold anomaly brought us here, it must've brought Ryan here too."
He looked at Ryan for confirmation, smiling as the other man nodded, "Right. So if the anomaly brought Ryan here too…" Connor blinked suddenly, obviously remembering the conversation in the SUV, "Wait…"
"What?" Mariko eyed him suspiciously.
"How long did you say the anomaly had been gone for on your end, Ryan?" Connor looked increasingly troubled.
"Seven seconds," Ryan sighed, "I just missed you going through. Landed flat on my face. Had enough time to pick myself up and look around like a knobhead… Then the bloody thing appeared three feet away from where it had been before."
Ianto stared, "But…"
Mariko looked up at him, then down at Ryan, "But they've been here for four months," she said, confused.
"So Nick said," Ryan looked as confused as she did.
"Everybody, everybody! Put your hands in the air if y'all don't get it! Woo!" Spanner threw up her arms gleefully.
Connor snorted at her, biting back a laugh, "I don't get it either," he said, "Something must've… shifted… Normally the anomalies only go back to the prehistoric past."
A small smile curled Ryan's lips, "Did I or did I not say the gold anomaly was a bad idea?"
"Yeah, yeah…" all three men rolled their eyes.
"Okay, okay…" Spanner held up her hands again, "Shut up for a second. Except you," she pointed to Ryan, "You keep talking. So… according to you… you saw these men," she pointed to Connor, Nick and Stephen, "Seven seconds ago?"
"Well… a bit more than that…" Ryan said, deliberately being pedantic, "Because I had at least two minutes to wonder what the fuck was going on before I was tackled by Connor, here."
"Taught him everything he knows…" Spanner grinned, then let it fade, "But really… seven seconds between them leaving… wherever you lot come from… and you leaving?"
Ryan nodded, "Seven seconds exactly. It's protocol to time an anomaly if it disappears with someone on the wrong end of it."
Spanner nodded as well, albeit a lot slower than Ryan, before turning to Connor, "So… you've got a lot to explain to him then, dontcha?"
Connor gave her a flat look, "Thanks, Spanner."
Ryan blinked at Spanner, shaking his head as she flitted Connor a cheerful wave over her shoulder. She all but skipped out the door, grabbing one each of Mariko and Ianto's hands on her way through and dragging them out with her. Connor, Nick and Stephen watched her leave, all wearing identical long-suffering looks.
Ryan looked at them, waiting for them to turn back and meet his eyes, "Well… evil Pippi says you've got some explaining to do."
"Evil Pippi?" Connor's face lit up in a diabolical grin that even Ryan could tell had come from Spanner, "I am so using that."
"Connor…" Stephen nodded at Ryan, then continued, "Yeah, Spanner was right. There is… a lot of things that need to be explained here."
"Yeah…" Ryan rolled his hands.
Nick sighed and took over when it looked like no-one was going to start, "As you obviously saw, this isn't our world. It's still the same year, still the same country. But…" he shook his head, "It's not where we came from."
"This world is at war," Stephen said bluntly, "With aliens."
"With… I'm sorry, what?" Ryan looked at him like he was a complete nutter.
"Aliens," Stephen repeated, "Supposedly pacifist beings called the Toclafane that were meant to come to Earth and establish peaceful relations with the Prime Minister, who isn't Gordon Brown, just by the way, but an utter loony-wank by the name of Harold Saxon."
"Right…"
"And," Connor cut in, "Harold Saxon used the Toclafane to assassinate the US president. He now rules most of the world. What bits of the world he hasn't enslaved, he's having killed. Using the Toclafane," the young man's face turned sorrowful, "It's… not a nice place here, Ryan."
Ryan stared, "So… you've been living here," he gestured around him, "In a pub… in wartime conditions… for four months?"
All three nodded.
"Well, shit."
Silence reigned for a long while as each of the four men let their thoughts turn inwards. Ryan was the first to break himself free, taking the time to look at each of the others in turn. What he saw surprised him more than he cared to admit.
Connor, who was once an enthusiastic, bumbling ball of twitchy energy. Now, he sat with a sniper's stillness, eyes staring off into the distance, looking disturbingly at ease in his shoulder holster and makeshift tac vest.
Nick, almost as bad as Connor in his enthusiasm, although normally able to keep his feet and his head. He now sat, one hand stroking absently across a hip, as though missing the weight of a weapon against his side, one leg turned away from his body to compensate for the hunting knife strapped to his calf.
And Stephen, a tracker with experience in weapons. Of all of them, Ryan would've thought he would've changed the least. But… Stephen had an AK-47 assault rifle laid across his lap, something Ryan would never have seen him with before. Stephen was almost as anal as Nick about not killing what came out of the anomalies. He also scanned every exit of the pub routinely. And, like Nick, he had one leg held away from his body, but his was stretched out to compensate for the K-Bar knife strapped to the inside of his thigh.
"And obviously you've been trained," he said, breaking the silence, "By those guys, I'm guessing. So… are they… what? Militia?"
All three nodded again, Nick speaking up, "Yeah, they're militia. Of a sort. They're… we're… fighting back as best we can, and surviving when we can't."
"And you were right about the training too, mate," Connor nodded to him, "Nick got hand to hand lessons with Ianto and hand gun and assault rifle training with Mariko. Stephen got more advanced gun work with Mariko and hand to hand with Ianto," Ryan didn't miss the way he left out his own training.
Neither did Nick and Stephen, who exchanged a look, before Nick spoke up again, "And Connor was tutored by Spanner. Mechanical repair and sabotage. Sniper assault."
Ryan didn't miss the look either, "And… there's something else I'm missing too, isn't there?"
This was a situation that the Connor Temple Ryan knew would've reacted to by blushing furiously, mumbling half sentences and blurting random references to obscure B movies. The Connor Temple that reacted was obviously not the Connor Temple that Ryan knew. Ryan almost recoiled from the icy expression in Connor's eyes and the head tilt that reminded Nick and Stephen almost painfully of Spanner.
"Back down, Connor," Stephen said in a voice that Ryan had only ever heard him use on wild animals, "It's Ryan, remember?"
Connor narrowed his eyes a little, then sighed and nodded, dropping his head, "Yeah… Sorry, Ryan," he mumbled through a curtain of hair.
"It'll be fine once someone tells me what the bloody hell is goin' on," Ryan said, still looking incredulously at Connor.
Nick took over, "Well… erm…"
Stephen sighed and said bluntly, "We're in a relationship."
"What? You and Connor?" Ryan looked between them both.
"Me, Nick and Connor."
"All three?"
"Mmhmm."
A blink, "Okay then."
"That's it?" Connor let go of the knife hilt Ryan belatedly realised he'd been holding, "Just 'okay then'?"
"Temple… you've just told me that I stepped through an anomaly to a parallel universe in which I'm now at war with assassin aliens that have enslaved the world at the behest of the PM. Right now… I don't think anything could shock me."