Disclaimer: CoE isn't mine, thank heavens for that. Torchwood isn't, either, more's the pity.
Author's note: This is Ianto's chapter. I'm afraid I don't directly address some of the questions a lot of you were asking. Please don't throw rotten fruit at me.

Chapter Ten

The Set Up

Ianto looked at Jack and knew what he had to do. His questions would only cause his lover grief, but if he didn't speak now, the consequences of his silence would be so much worse. Trying to convey a world of compassion and forgiveness with just a look, he finally asked the questions that had been lingering between him and Jack since the Doctor had reunited them.

"So, Jack and I went to face the alien," he began tentatively. "Knowing its species had a history of using biological warfare, we just stormed into Thames House, no plan, no protective gear, just a couple of handguns between us, didn't even bother to evacuate the building."

"Maybe you expected the people who were in there to have sense enough to get themselves out," Rupesh suggested.

Ianto gave a trademark eye roll. "Bureaucrats and politicians. Best and brightest among us. Of course that's it, because along with their powerful instinct for self-preservation, they're just oozing with practicality and common sense. No offense, Lois."

"None taken," she replied with a smile. "I'm just a secretary."

Where others might have been wounded by Ianto's sarcasm, Rupesh only smirked and said, "You know, half of that statement is true. PM Green was more than happy to let the Americans take charge. Kept his hands clean, he did."

"Right up until he got caught gloating about it on camera," Lois pointed out.

"So, we charged up to the thirteenth floor, Jack and I, to confront the 456, and what do we do? Bloody shout at it! That was the whole plan! To shout at it! It's ludicrous!"

"Isn't it! Isn't it!" Clem agreed

"Maybe you weren't expecting it to call your bluff," Rhys suggested.

"We were told it was responsible for the 1918 influenza pandemic," Ianto reminded him. "Why on earth would we try bluffing? In fact, why did we confront it at all unless we had some plan to get rid of it? Of course, I know we improvise a lot but that's the nature of the job. Dealing with the flotsam and jetsam of the universe is like a box of bloody chocolates you never know what you're going to get but whenever possible, we do have a plan."

"Were you pressed for time?" Andy asked.

"We're always pressed for time," Ianto told him. "But at that point, we still had some twenty-four hours until the deadline. In Torchwood, that's practically forever. Besides, that's all the more reason to be looking for a real solution rather than trying to pull some clever trick out of our arses!"

Gwen gave a rude snort and muttered an inappropriate comment about their arses that was supposed to be funny. When nobody else laughed, she regrouped and said, "But at that point, we had what? A couple of laptops, Lois wearing the contacts, and some video of politicians behaving like the snakes everybody knows they are," Gwen said. "Even if we had known what to do, we lacked the technology to make it happen."

"Then we should have used the leverage that video gave us to get access to a UNIT facility where they would have had the technology to develop a solution in time to implement it without anyone getting hurt," Ianto insisted. "But we didn't do that, we just charged in and tried shouting at them. Now, knowing they used biological weapons, why didn't I stop to take a gas mask off one of the UNIT soldiers before going into the audience chamber and pissing it off?"

"Perhaps they didn't have gas masks?" suggested Alice.

"They should have become standard equipment after that Sontaran business with the ATMOS awhile back." Ianto insisted. "The cameraman who went into the chamber had a bloody hazmat suit. Surely if the UNIT soldiers didn't have gas masks, they must have had a spare hazmat suit in one of their vans outside. Where was that gear when Torchwood decided to intervene, and why did I make no effort to acquire any of it?"

"Maybe your worry for your sister and her kids drove you to do something rash," Andy mused.

Ianto crossed his arms over his chest and gave the PC a haughty look. "I. Don't. Do. Rash."

"That's true," Gwen agreed helpfully, for a change. "In the Beacons, when we were all cursing Owen for losing the SUV, he had his PDA out tracking it, and when Owen and Tosh were freaking out after Jack came back to life the day we opened the Rift, he helped me get Jack out of the Hub, and remembered to get that bloody greatcoat on the way. When Jack came back from gallivanting about with the Doctor only to disappear five minutes later, the rest of us stood around complaining while Ianto hailed a taxi."

"Remember the meat-packing plant?" Rhys said. "Hands bound behind his back, gun to his neck and he just stands there quietly working away at the ropes, until he can get free and disarm the guy."

"That's my brother," Rhiannon said proudly. "Always calm, always thinking."

"Well, maybe not always," Ianto admitted, sounding a bit embarrassed by the glowing tone the others were using in reference to him, "but knowing what we did about the 456, there is no way in hell I would have forgotten a bloody gas mask!"

"You know, that raises another question," Lois said, thoughtfully. "Just how did Mr. Dekker survive?"

"Maybe he's just very fit," Rupesh suggested.

Lois gave an inelegant snort. "He's an electronics geek who works in the basement of Thames House. For the past forty-four years he has been studying the frequency the 456 used to broadcast. A cockroach gets more exercise, sunlight, and fresh air."

"Has a better personality, too," Johnson quipped. "UNIT found him in his office wearing a hazmat suit," she continued as if it should be all the answer Lois needed.

"But how did he get there from the thirteenth floor?" Lois asked. "He must be nearing seventy, and fit or not, I doubt even you could make that trek, fighting a frightened mob and without taking a breath, Agent Johnson."

"Perhaps he managed to outrun the virus?" Gwen suggested. Getting nothing but eye rolls and scowls, she said, "It's just a thought."

"Well, you can do better than that!" the TRD shouted, mocking, challenging, and threatening them all at the same time. By now the creature was flushed and panting, his shirt was drenched with perspiration and sticking to his body and droplets of sweat dripped from his hair and chin; but like all megalomaniacs, he was unable to recognize that he was failing. He was teetering at the brink of destruction and just the tiniest nudge would send him over the precipice to oblivion.

"I need more!" he demanded. "More! Now! I want to rule the world! Dominate the galaxy! Subjugate the universe!"

"Give him what he wants!" the Doctor encouraged them over the now howling wind. "Stephen is filtering the energy, regulating the flow just as I said he would so the TRD can't absorb it as quickly as you generate it. If you stop now, this thing will only grow more powerful. You have to give it just a little bit more, enough to overload the buffer so it all hits him at once. That's the only way to short circuit this monster. You must give him more!"

The team just looked at each other. Then a few of them pulled lists out of the pockets of their Mackintoshes. One after another they paled until all of them wore the same horrified expression.

They were fresh out of ideas.

TBC

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