Chapter Thirteen
Jack was dumbfounded. He didn't know what to say. He had feelings for the Doctor too, although he suspected the Doctor's feelings weren't quite as deep as his. Still, the fact that he admitted his fear about losing him made his mind reel.
"I…What do you mean, lose me, Doctor? I'm immortal. I can't die, remember?" He said.
"We don't know that for sure, Jack. There may be something out there that can kill you or your body may eventually age to the point where it will wear out and cease to function. In any case, there are other ways to lose someone besides death, you know."
"Yeah, but Doctor, I'm not that reckless. Even though I am immortal, I'm still careful about what I do because dying over and over is not fun for me."
The Doctor snorted.
"Tell me about it." He said.
Jack sighed.
"Look, I understand your hesitancy in wanting me to come along, especially since God forbid you very easily could have lost Rose that day at Canary Wharf, but can't you reconsider? I'm not gonna cause you and Rose needless stress and worry and besides you need me. We're a team! You and me and Rose work so well together. Please, Doctor? Just think it over a little bit more."
The Doctor sighed.
"Alright, I will, but right now we have more important things to think about. I may have found a clue about the Widow and I need both you and Rose to see it. Now are you with me or not?"
Jack nodded.
"Fine, then come with me, we have work to do."
"You got it, Doc." Jack said softly as he followed the Doctor out of the bedroom.
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Rose looked up as the Doctor and Jack entered the console room.
"Is everything okay?" she asked worriedly. "You were gone a long time."
"Everything's fine, Rose, Jack and I just had to talk some things over." He said.
He motioned to her to follow him as he walked over to his computer monitor.
"I played on a hunch and accessed Torchwood's files." He said.
He looked at Jack when he saw he was giving him a hurt look.
"It's nothing to do with you and your team, Jack. Torchwood has an extensive database on aliens and alien sightings. I was merely accessing their information to see if they had anything on this Widow." He said as Jack relaxed. "And not only did I find information on the Widow, I found that…"
He paused and his eyes flashed anger.
"What, Doctor?" Rose prompted.
He took a deep breath.
"I found that Torchwood is responsible for the Widow in the first place." He said with barely controlled anger.
"What?" Jack said taken aback.
He raised his hands.
"Whoa, I had nothing to do with this." He said quickly. "My team had nothing to do with it."
"I know you had nothing to do with it, Jack. The information was encrypted, I'm pretty sure you or your team wouldn't have the security clearance to access it."
"Then, how did you get to it?"
The Doctor snorted.
"Earth computers are primitive to me. I can break through even the most advanced encryptions without breaking a sweat." He said giving them a haughty look.
He gestured for them to come in closer.
"Having said that, I have to ask you Jack, have you ever heard of H.C. Clements?"
"No." Jack shaking his head. "Who is he?"
"It's not a person, it's a company. H.C. Clements is a front for Torchwood." The Doctor replied.
"No, I've never heard of H.C. Clements." Jack confirmed.
The Doctor nodded.
"I expected as much, especially since some of their activities were not, shall we say, on the level."
Jack glanced down at the Doctor's left hand and saw him ball it up into a fist. He sighed. The Doctor would never completely accept him working at Torchwood no matter how much good they did in the world. It seemed like the other Torchwoods would always overshadow him and his team.
"This branch of Torchwood has a secret laboratory directly under the Thames Barrier." He said. "I've been reading through some of the records of their experiments and…"
Jack swallowed hard as the fist grew tighter. Rose put a hand on his shoulder and he relaxed the fist slightly.
"One of the things they were doing besides the experiments was digging a huge hole into the center of the Earth, Rassilon only knows why." The Doctor continued. "And according to the information, they finally reached the center of the Earth and to their amazement they found a nest there."
"A nest?" Rose said. "A nest of what?"
The Doctor's jaw tightened.
"Racnoss." He said.
"They found a whole bunch of those Widow things?" Jack asked.
"Yes, except when they found them, they were true Racnoss' as I know them, not altered like the Widow. However, the Widow was among them along with nineteen others. Torchwood took the nest back to the lab, opened it up and began to experiment on the babies trying to combine their DNA with human DNA."
Rose and Jack looked at each other.
"Why?" Rose asked.
The Doctor sighed angrily.
"After you and I put Torchwood One out of commission, the survivors attempted to rebuild their headquarters. They found the spot under the Thames Barrier and built a laboratory figuring no one would ever find them."
He looked at Rose.
"In case we came back and decided to end their fun again." He said.
He looked back at the monitor.
"But, according to their files, they were strapped for cash after doing the drilling and rebuilding the laboratory. In order to expand their facility further, they had to find a covert way to raise funds and when they found the Racnoss nest, they finally found a way to do it."
"And that way is…" Jack said.
The Doctor's face hardened.
"Super soldiers."
Jack and Rose looked at each other.
"You mean they wanted to turn these Racnoss things into the ultimate weapon?" Rose said.
"Yes, Rose, once again Torchwood put their own interests above the safety of the planet and genetically manipulated these Racnoss babies in an attempt to turn them into mindless soldiers and assassins and then sell them to the highest bidder. They didn't care who got a hold of them or what they would use them for as long as they got paid."
Rose put his hand on his shoulder while Jack shifted uneasily. The more he heard about Torchwood and their activities, the more he regretted his decision to become involved with them.
"But," the Doctor continued. "They kept getting it wrong, the Racnoss babies would come out deformed or dead or they would die shortly after their conversion. They tried nineteen times before they finally got it right."
"And number twenty is the Widow." Jack said.
"Yup."
Rose ran her hand up and down the Doctor's back as he sighed angrily.
"One of the most deadliest creatures that ever lived and Torchwood only saw it as a way to make a quick profit." He shook his head. "Dammit, we never should have run into Queen Victoria. If it wasn't for her…"
He sighed.
"Anyway, too late now." He said. "As I was saying, they finally got it right on the last attempt and the Human/Racnoss hybrid was transferred to a cage until it could be brainwashed into submission. Torchwood, in their stupidity, didn't think a baby Racnoss would be a threat and so they had minimal security around it. Nor did they realize just how fast Racnoss' mature and grow. In about a week, the baby was nearly full grown and completely deadly. The scientists tried to tame it, calm it, reason with it like it was a human, but the Racnoss was enraged at what they had done to its brothers and sisters and what had been done to itself and then one day it saw its chance and broke free from its cage when they were trying to transfer it and…"
The Doctor stopped talking.
"What, Doctor?" Rose asked. "What happened next?"
"Dunno. The log ends there. But my guess is the Widow took its revenge on the scientists and killed them all before escaping from the facility."
"And now it's loose in London." Jack replied.
"Yup."
"And it wants you." Rose added.
"Yup, yup."
"And it'll do anything in its power to kill all of us." Jack said.
"Yup, yup, yup."
Jack sighed.
"Great." He said. "So, what do we do?"
"I think we should go to this underground facility and take a look around. See if we can learn anything." The Doctor replied. "There may be other records we can find about the Widow that may help us to defeat her."
"You think so?" Rose asked.
The Doctor shrugged.
"It's better than sitting here waiting for the Widow to locate us and pick us off one by one." He said. "Racnoss' are clever and deadly enough without throwing human intelligence into the equation. A Racnoss' mind is also imprinted with all the knowledge of centuries past. It's passed down through the DNA. So, she knows exactly what my people did to her race and she'll stop at nothing to exact her revenge and put the last Time Lord out of commission. If we have any hope of surviving, we have to come up with a way to defend ourselves and the starting place for that is this secret underground lab."
He looked at Jack and Rose.
"Agreed?"
Jack and Rose nodded.
"Okay, then, I got the location of the lab from their database, so let's go and see if we can find some more info on the widow before we end up webbed to a wall somewhere."