The Unexpected Rise of Director Jones
by Soledad
Summary: Jack is gone, and the rest of the Torchwood Three team must see how they manage without him.
Author's note: The aliens featuring in this chapter are canon ones – in the wider interpretation of canon, that is. I used them because they fit the timeline and were interesting.
This story is not beta read. All mistakes belong exclusively to me. *g*
Chapter 14 – Debriefing
When the four men came back from the Vaults, they all seemed a bit sweaty and dishevelled, even the prince who'd considered it as a matter of honour to help the other three deal with the Bruydac… that apparently weighed half a ton or so. In the meantime it was almost 9 am, and Ianto went up to the tourist office to meet Detective Swanson, Dr Connelly and their last new candidate, Dr Sara Lloyd.
"We'll need someone to run the tourist office eventually," Tosh commented, making the prince and herself a cup of tea; everyone else opted to wait for Ianto's magic cup of coffee. "He can't very well play receptionist and coffee boy, now that he's our boss."
"Don't look at me," Gwen scoffed. "I was shop girl once, right after school – never again!"
"Yeah; you'd scare away all the tourists, and we wouldn't have a cover shop anymore," Owen said nastily. Despite his magic hangover pills, he still felt like shit, which didn't improve his generally sour disposition. "Besides, your coffee sucks."
"Everybody's coffee sucks compared with Jonesy's," Trevor grinned. "Even Yvonne was addicted to it. Jonesy had to come up to the Archives at least three times a day, much to Mr Howarth's displeasure, to keep her properly caffeinated."
"Are you speaking of Director Hartman?" Prince William asked. Trevor nodded.
"Yeah. Jonesy was actually Mr Howarth's apprentice; had nothing to do with the management. But Yvonne kept thinking up administrative jobs for him, just so that she could call him up to her office and make him fix her coffee. As a result, Jonesy knew more of the inner workings of One than everybody else, save perhaps Yvonne herself – not that he'd need it, of course. But you know what a freakishly good memory he has. He never forgets a thing.
"He might not have needed the knowledge back then," Prince William said. "It might prove useful in his current situation, though."
"There's hat," Trevor agreed; then he looked up to Ianto who was entering the conference room with a pot of freshly brewed coffee in that very moment. "So, Jonesy, are you still making us coffee, even though you're practically Yvonne now?"
Ianto raised a superior eyebrow while pouring coffee for everyone.
"As if I'd allow any of you bunglers to even come near to my coffee machine!"
Trevor laughed. "Point taken. But Toshiko's right, man. You're the boss now. You can't keep playing the butler. Or the janitor. Or the glorified zookeeper. Whatever."
"I don't intend to," Ianto took the chair at the head of the table – Jack's chair, Gwen thought angrily – and allowed himself the second cup of coffee of the day.
"Frankly, I've just about had enough of mucking out the cells of the Weevils on my own during the recent year," he continued. "Or feeding them. Or cleaning up Owen's mess in the autopsy bay."
"Hey!" Owen protested. "I'm a doctor; cleaning up isn't my job!"
"You're Torchwood," Ianto corrected coldly. "Which, by its very definition, is a smelly, dangerous, dirty job, but somebody has to do it – all of it. If you can't, I'll find somebody who can."
Owen became stark white upon hearing this. "Are you firing me? Like Jack did?"
"No," Ianto sighed. "I'd like to keep you if I can. We need you. But you're a grown adult, so I expect you to clean up your own mess and do your own paperwork from now on. And you'll take your turn at cleaning the cells and feeding the Weevils, like everyone else – except Tosh, of course."
"Why is she an exception?" demanded Gwen angrily.
"Because she's our head scientist and she's needed in a dozen other places," Ianto replied. "I won't waste her precious time with such menial tasks."
"Oh, but you'd waste mine, wouldn't you?" Gwen fumed.
"Yes," Ianto said with such glacial finality that it shut her up for once. "No more special treatment for you, Gwen. In fact, I'll put you through three months of probation, as Jack should have done from the beginning. Then you'll receive another three months of special training before I'd allow you to go on field missions; or even to carry a weapon again."
"That's not fair!" Gwen protested. "Jack's trained me on weapons!"
"Feeling you up on the shooting range while showing you how to hold a weapon doesn't count as proper training," Ianto replied coldly. "Torchwood has protocols for training a field agent and those are he rightlines we'll be following from now on."
"You mean the rules of One?" Tosh asked quietly. "Jack wouldn't like that, Ianto. He severed all ties with Headquarters years ago."
"Nonsense," Ianto said. "You can't severe ties with Headquarters… well, you couldn't. Jack might have refused to cooperate with Yvonne on a regular basis, but he still had to send monthly reports to Headquarters. Otherwise Three would have lost its funds, and he couldn't afford that."
"Yeah, sure," Gwen muttered.
"I saw those reports with my own eyes, so you can stop with this theatre now," Ianto snapped. "Besides, the rules were not just for One. They were for all branches; and most of them were good, solid rules, made to ensure that we'd survive as long as it's possible in this area of work. The rightlines for recruiting and training new members are definitely reasonable, and we'll stick to them."
"Does this mean that we're on a three-month trial period as well?" Sally Jacobs asked. Ianto nodded.
"Sure. Even though in your and Trevor's case it's a mere formality and Mickey probably has more experience with aliens than the rest of us together, the same rules are valid for everyone. Dr Lloyd," he turned to the SOCO lady, "I understand that SOCO members don't receive weapons training as a rule, right?"
The tall blonde with the ponytail grinned.
"Most of us don't. But I did quite a bit of shooting at university; was a member of both the pistol and the rifle team, in fact. We won a few competitions against other universities, and I had fairly good scores. I still put in a few hours on the shooting range from time to time, to be able to keep my licence."
"That's a relief," Ianto said. "We're still few in the numbers, which means you might have to go out with the field team from time to time. I'm glad to know that we'll be able to arm you legally."
"My licence is still valid, Jonesy," Trevor said without being asked. "All I need is some regular time at the shooting range to keep me in form."
"You'll get it; like everyone else, including me. Mickey has the most experience with weapons, so I'll lay the training of the team into his capable hands," Ianto looked at the enthusiastically grinning ex-freedom fighter. "Mickey, I'll also need your knowledge when it comes to alien weapons: what they're capable of, which ones can be safely used by humans and so on. Now that we've lost both Jack and Suzie, you're the closest thing we have to a weapons expert."
"Right, boss. Do you want a spreadsheet about it, too?"
"Yes, if it doesn't eat up much of your time."
"Nah; I like to do things on the computer. Do you guys have an actual armoury here?"
"We do, but the last inventory was before my time; most likely before Jack took over in 2000," Ianto sighed. "I've always planned to do a new one, but with the Archives still being a horrible chaos and all the other shit I was expected to do, I simply didn't get around to take a look at the armoury. You can use the last inventory list for a stepping stone and go on from there."
Mickey nodded. "Will do. And I don't mind help with the Weevils, either. It would be like having pets; I always wanted some, but they weren't allowed on the estate where we lived."
"Yeah, but these pets can kill you without breaking a sweat," Owen warned him; if anyone, he knew exactly what Weevils were capable of.
Mickey shrugged. "So can a poisonous snake, and a lot of people still keep them. What about the pterodactyl, though?"
"Pteranodon, actually," Ianto corrected. "Don't worry about her. Myfanwy is my concern. She wouldn't let anyone else into her nest anyway. Not before she gets used to you; and that can take a long time."
"All right, I'll stick to the Weevils," Mickey said. "But I do get to play with the Torchwood mobile, right?"
"Sure," Ianto replied. "You're a car mechanic, aren't you? At least I can rest assured that the SUV will be in good hands," he turned to Sara Lloyd. "As for you, Dr Lloyd, I'd like you to study our alien database until we find the right place for your new DNA lab. You may also find it useful to assist during the autopsies from time to time, so that you can see the real thing behind the data."
"You have an actual alien database?" Prince William had the feeling as if he'd fallen through the Rift, right into Star Trek or some other science fiction show. Sally Jacob seemed equally surprised.
"And a rather extensive one at that," Ianto answered. "We've everything Headquarters ever had, plus what Three had collected on its own since Jack took over. He never sent that kind of stuff to One."
"But – but it was said that the digital databases of One were destroyed in the Battle of Canary Wharf!" Sally insisted.
"They were," Ianto agreed. "Mr Howarth had managed to send the Worst Case Scenario virus through the entire system before the Cybermen killed him."
"What kind of virus?" Prince William asked.
"One that physically melted down the crystals of the Torchwood One mainframe through a series of strategically initiated overloads and reformatted every single hard drive in the Tower, save for the ones of Human Resources," Ianto explained. "The basic idea was to physically destroy all data, so that they couldn't be reconstructed afterwards."
"How comes then that you'd have One's alien database nonetheless?" Sally asked.
"There are safety copies of all Torchwood One databases," Ianto replied. "As an archivist, I know where to find them. When Jack hired me, I saw that Three had practically no digital records. So I accessed one of those sources and uploaded the copy of the alien database to our Mainframe. Granted, so far Jack's known most alien species we've run into, but sooner or later we ought to find one he hadn't met yet, either. So I thought having some empiric – not to mention well-ordered – data won't harm."
"You said you know all the other databases, right?" Trevor said eagerly.
Ianto shook his head. "No; I said I can access the safety copies if I have to."
"That's the same," Trevor waved dismissively. "What about the technical database? Can you get it for us? For Toshiko and me?"
"Sure," Ianto answered with a shrug. "That and more. In fact, I'm planning to furnish a couple of proper labs for the two of you on Sublevels One and Two. We just need to clean out the unsorted rubbish that's stored there, give the rooms proper isolation and heating; perhaps even a paint job. And then we can fetch the right equipment from the respective warehouses One had them in storage. You give me a list of what you need; if One had it, I'll get it for you."
"I thought UNIT had laid hand on most of the stuff that survived Canary Wharf," Tosh said. "We scavenged what we could, but that wasn't much."
"Yeah, cause only the currently used stuff was kept in the Tower itself," Trevor explained. "The rest was stored in warehouses, scattered all across London… and no-one knows where, cause all info has been destroyed."
"Everything but what I've got in my head," Ianto agreed. "We might not get the latest alien tech discovered by One, but we can get everything from the earlier years, which is still magnitudes better than what we've got now… except Mainframe, of course, but she's a category of her own."
"And you never thought to tell Jack about this?" Gwen asked accusingly. "We could have all that wonderful tech and you kept it to yourself?"
"Jack wasn't interested in anything that came from One," Ianto replied dryly. "An we were in no condition to do any serious research anyway, busy as we were to put out all the immediate fires."
"We still aren't," Owen pointed out. "One had hundreds of scientists. We have three; four if you count me. It isn't very much."
"It's a beginning," Ianto corrected. "We'll keep things small, cos that's what's always worked best for Three, but I will hire more people eventually. As soon as we had time to grow together as a team."
"How many more do you intend to hire?" Prince William asked.
Since the funds of Torchwood came directly from the Crown, this was a justified question.
"My final goal is to have three full teams on an eight-hour rotation; and perhaps a couple of ersatz people, in case of illness, injury or other emergencies," Ianto replied. "We cannot keep improvising as we go, and we need time to rest properly between shifts, at least every other day. Or else we won't last long. Getting killed cos we were too tired to react was we're supposed to isn't an option," he glanced at Dr Connelly. "Which is why I'd need you to do at least some of the autopsies on a freelance basis. Mostly the human ones. But you're welcome to try your hand on aliens, too, if that's what you want."
Dr Connelly nodded. "Freelancing only," she clarified. "I want to keep my job at St. Helen's. Unlike Owen here, I actually like to treat patients while they're still alive."
"I'll work out an agreement with the hospital management," Ianto promised; then he rose and shook her hand. "Welcome to Torchwood."
"What about me?" Sally asked. "You don't really need a communications technician here, and I'm not a scientist. Not yet anyway."
"On the contrary," Ianto said. "A communications technician is exactly what we need for the CCTV tracking."
Sally gave him a blank look. "The what?"
"Whenever a retrieval team is out in the field, we need someone who sits here and follows them through the CCTV network," Ianto explained. "Somebody to keep contact with them through the comm link, to guide them and to warn them if their target moves. It's not that different from what you did at UNIT, actually."
Sally nodded in understanding. "All right, I can do that. What else? What when the Rift is quiet?"
"Then you'll help me in the Archives. I've already begun to digitalize the oldest documents, and then seal them to preserve them, but in the year I've spent here I've barely scratched the surface. There was simply too much else to do. But it needs to be done. Some of the oldest stuff has already begun to disintegrate; if we don't save it now, the data will be lost for good."
"Who's going to run the cover shop, though?" Tosh asked.
"Sooner or later, I'll have to hire somebody as half shop runner, half archivist," Ianto shrugged. "Until then, we'll just have to take turns like with everything else."
"No way," Gwen and Owen said in unison and the doctor added. "It's such a bloody waste of time!"
"It is," Ianto agreed. "Which is why I don't see while it should be my time that gets wasted. I've done it for the last year all on my own and that was all right, since I accepted it as part of my job. But I've got more important thins to do now, so you'll just have to do your part. All of you."
"We could set up a live feed between the shop and the main Hub, so that whoever is on duty up there can keep up with what's going on down here," Sally said thoughtfully. "And some of the non-confidential filing can e done from there, can't it?"
"Yes, it can; that's how I used to do things," Ianto replied. "Except that there's no such thing at Torchwood as non-confidential cases. But yes, it can easily be done. We have the know-how and we have the necessary technology. All we have to do is to get it from one of Headquarters' storage halls."
"If you can get me the equipment, I can do the rest," Sally offered.
"You'll get whatever you need," Ianto promised. "But you won't be running the shop exclusively. I was serious about everyone doing their part. The times when the team had a full-time butler and janitor are over. Anyone having a problem with that can take their dosage of Retcon and leave for a new, Torchwood-free life. Is that understood?"
Wordless nods were the only answer. The old team members were actually more shocked than the newcomers. This new, self-confident, even aggressive Ianto was a surprise for them… and not necessarily a pleasant one. Even Prince William wondered if Ianto Jones was about to break under the weight of responsibility that had been so unceremoniously dumped onto his young shoulders. After all he'd seen and lived through, it wouldn't have been a surprise.
Only Trevor kept his cool… but again, he'd known Ianto – the real Ianto, not the quiet, reserved, almost invisible teaboy of Torchwood Three – longer than anyone else. He reached across the table and patted Ianto's hand encouragingly.
"Don't lose it now, Jonesy," he said in a tone that was almost absurdly normal amidst the tension in the room. "We're here to work for you, not to conspire against you or to undermine your position. Well, most of us anyway," he added with an unfriendly glare in Gwen's direction and gave Ianto's hand a squeeze. "Mates, remember?"
"Sorry," Ianto rubbed his face tiredly. "Being the boss isn't something I've ever wanted to; or something I'd be really comfortable with. I'll try to do a good job, but I'm woefully out of my depths here."
"No, you're not," Owen said, to everyone's surprise. "Only if you try to do thing Jack's way. No-one can pull the shit he pulled. Just stick to your own methods, Teaboy, and you'll be right as rain."
Ianto blinked a few times at this unexpected support and almost smiled. Almost.
"Well, thank you, Owen, I'll try my best," he then said in his familiar, dry manner. "Now, since we've discussed the most important things, I suggest that we just go over to the daily routine. There's work to do…"
"… and there's no time like the present to deal with it," Owen finished for him; this was an old insider joke with Torchwood Three. "All right, Dr Lloyd, Dr Connelly, let me introduce you to our medical facilities – such as they are."
"Just Lloyd will do," the ex-SOCO lady said. "We never stood for ceremony at SOCO, and I won't start it now."
Owen shrugged. "Fine. Come with me. You too, Angie."
"You said something about an alien ship we'll have to collect," Mickey said to Ianto after the doctors had left. "I'll need my truck for that – and a route."
Ianto fished a GPS out of his pocket. "This will help you to navigate; the coordinates are already in it. When you've picked up the lifepod, bring it back to the hangar where your truck was parked. Tosh and Trevor will go with you and see to it that all systems are deactivated."
"Should we start taking it apart right away?" Trevor asked eagerly.
Ianto shook his head. "Not yet; I want to make sure there aren't any nasty surprises first The only thing that needs to be removed is that implantation machine. Who knows what it would do if left to its own devices."
"Oh God, no!" Gwen shuddered. "We all could be coughing up those starfish things and chewing out people's necks in no time!
"Exactly," Ianto said. "But should we ever figure out how the organic technology of the Bruydac works, we might be able to reverse-engineer it; well, not us, obviously, but the government has research labs for such purposes."
"How patriotic of you," Trevor grinned. "You'd make Yvonne so proud!"
"There's nothing wrong with a little patriotism," Ianto said calmly. "One just shouldn't overdo it. Off you go now. I assume the police would like to do something more useful than guarding the area for us."
"I'll call them to expect you," Swanson already had her phone in hand. "They might get a bit nervous otherwise if you just show up with a monster truck."
Ianto nodded. "Thank you. Well, Lieutenant," he turned to the prince," do you want to go with them or with Sally and me to the Archives?"
"What kind of question is that?" Prince William grinned. "I'm a pilot. It's a vessel that can fly. Is there really a choice?"
"Yeah, but such a nasty piece of alien tech can do a lot more things than just fly; most of them unpleasant. Some of then potentially deadly," Ianto warned him.
"I know," the prince lowered his voice. "You can't wrap me in cotton wool, Mr Jones. I am who I am; but I'm also a career military. I'll be careful, I promise."
"I hope you will," Ianto replied in an equally low voice. "I'd hate to have to tell Her Majesty that her grandson got eaten or blown up by some alien ship. I don't think it would be good for my continued existence."
"Well, can can't have that, can we?" Prince William squeezed his elbow. "I'll hold back, honestly. I just want to see that ship from the inside. Even if I have to stand twenty yards away and use a spyglass."
Ianto still wasn't happy about the whole idea but he couldn't really forbid the prince to go. So he agreed, albeit reluctantly, and asked Mickey to keep their royal guest safe.
"If you have to choose between him and the ship, blow up the ship," he said seriously. No matter what he says, his safety is absolutely paramount."
Mickey nodded in understanding. "Don't worry, boss. Not a single hair wanna fall off his head in my care. I wouldn't give his Gran any sorrow."
With that, the Geek Team, consisting of two scientists, a self-made weapons expert and ex-freedom fighter and one royal prince, left to collect the Bruydac lifepod. Ianto sent a very unhappy Gwen to man the tourist office with huge pile of unfinished paperwork to deal with, and then he turned to Sally.
"Ready to face the Archives?" Sally nodded eagerly. "Good. There are some warm sweaters in that locker; pull one over. It's cold where we are going."
o
Sally didn't have any previous expectation what the Archives of Torchwood Three would be. Based on the age of the base she assumed that they would be fairly large, but that was basically it. And Ianto had warned her that they would be cold, but that could be expected, as they were located in underground caverns.
The true dimensions began to dawn on her as they kept walking down a seemingly endless trail of tunnels, their heels rapping sharply against the concrete floor. The only other sound that could be heard was their harsh breathing in the chilly air that made her lungs burn.
"Now I understand why are you wearing these three-piece woollen suits all the time," she commented.
"Actually, it has more to do with a proper fashion sense than with the temperature," Ianto smiled and stopped in front of a large wooden door that looked really old yet was apparently sturdy and well-built.
The damp of the underground tunnels did not reach this area – Sally made a mental note to ask about the technology that kept all sensitive equipment safe – the wood was well-maintained and the thick bolts and hinges gleamed in the hash light of the halogen lamps like pure brass. The door looked like it belonged to a medieval dungeon and was in weird contrast to the high-tech control panel for entering the password and what Sally recognised from her UNIT days as a retinal and fingerprint scanner as well as a voice activated locking device.
The long line of archivists working for Torchwood Three, of which Ianto was only the last and current one, had clearly taken their job very seriously.
To Sally's mild surprise he didn't try to hide the data pad from her with his body while typing in the access code. Of course, as she was supposed to work here at least half the time it would have been a moot point anyway. The panel made no sound as Ianto punched in a series of numbers that seemed too bloody complicated for any normal person to remember. Which was perhaps the reason why he didn't even try to conceal what he was doing, Sally decided, in serious concern how she'd ever manage to get into the Archives on her own.
Ianto then took a step back and turned his eye to the retinal scanner that swept his stormy blue-grey iris with a red light and finally pressed three of his fingers – the thumb, the index finger and the little finger – to the print scanner. Each fingerprint was clearly recognised, and a beep was emitted to signify the start of the voice recognition sequence. Ianto said something that Sally didn't understand; but it sounded Welsh. There was another accepting beep, and the door swung open noiselessly.
"Are these security measures truly necessary?" Sally asked. "This place is sealed more tightly than Fort Knox."
"What e keep here is potentially a lot more dangerous than Fort Knox," Ianto replied. "We'll add your pattern to the security system soon, so that you can come down and work without me present, if necessary. I just waned to give you the tour of a small section of A-Ad, just so that you get an idea what to expect."
He made an inviting gesture and Sally entered the room carefully.
She as at once it by the stale, musty air that felt dry and brittle against her tongue; not surprisingly, as the Archives were clearly air locked. That was to be expected, considering that some of the files kept here were almost two hundred years old. For a small section of A-Ad the room was of phenomenal length. It contained row after row of old wooden shelves that remembered her of that Oxford library she had visited a couple of years previously – or of the Hogwarts library as shown in the Harry Potter films. Each shelf was laden with files or metal boxes, stretching up to the vaulted ceiling.
Sally whistled. "Wow! Impressive! I thought you said the Archives were in a hopeless disarray."
"Only the newer stuff; what came in after 2000," Ianto explained. "All previous archivists took great pride in their work; just as I do."
"And the ones after 2000?" Sally asked.
"There weren't any archivists after 2000," Ianto replied grimly. "Not until I came aboard. Jack never bothered with the Archives. He knew most of the relevant stuff from experience anyway, and he had no interest for the rest. Suzie and Tosh did some filing from time to time, but they rarely managed to do it properly. With such a small team, there was always something more important to do. And Owen's always been a lazy git when it came to paperwork. I've been working on cleaning up their mess for the last year and a half, while dealing with all the new cases and playing butler and janitor for them. More often than not, I ran on three or four hours of sleep on a good day. And good day are something of a rarity at Torchwood Three."
"You know. that doesn't sound very encouraging," Sally joked.
"I'm working on a more reasonable schedule," Ianto replied. "You won't have to do this alone, nor exclusively. We're still understaffed like hell, but we'd work in shifts; in two shifts, for starters, with somebody spending the night and alert the others, should there be a Weevil sighting or a Rift alarm. It still won't be easy. We have three more people than we used to, but replacing Jack will be a gargantuan task, even for three or four people. Both in knowledge and in the won't die, doesn't need sleep department," he noticed Sally shivering with cold and smiled. "Come, let's go back to the main Hub. I think you've seen enough for you first visit."
Sally nodded. She was glad to return to the relative warmth of the main Hub, to the company of living, breathing people. She seriously doubted that she'd ever end up as Ianto's worthy successor, but working in the Archives would be a real challenge.
She liked challenges. They kept her on her toes and her mind sharp. She decided that accepting the job offer from Torchwood Three had been a good idea, after all. Even if it meant leaving London.
~TBC~