Lapse in updates, sorry guys, RL and exams are back with a vengence, so regular posting is now out the window :(

Please note: I did research cryonics (or cryogenics as you probably know it), so this is all based on facts, but I've twisted most of them, made details up and kept the rest very vague. So just know there's a lot of problems with it, and don't take anything I say as fact.

Quick recap: Previously in the flashback - as the Doctor explains why Ianto is alive - he's found out about Agent Jones, and so has gone back to 21st century earth to investigate what the hell happened.

Chapter 21

The Tardis landed with a groan and a shudder.

The man inside the Tardis landed with a thump and an "Owww..."

The Doctor made a note to take his own advice and actually hang onto something in the future. It might save him some broken bones. With one final groan he picked himself up and stood facing the door. Out there he knew could be the answer to all his questions; or it might be the beginning of even more. He knew about the 456, about what Jack had to do to save the planet this time, and he was sorry he hadn't been there to help. He'd known about it of course, but he'd been smarting from Donna's loss acutely and...

He hadn't wanted to see Jack again, quite frankly. Being near him was hard, and it had been made even worse by the fact that the Captain had left him; he had people to go home to. Someone in particular to stick around for.

Not anymore though. His selfishness had cost Jack the one thing the Doctor envied him.

That had been just one more reason to stay away from Earth; he hadn't wanted to bump into Jack; to be forced to face the reality of what he'd done to the man. In the end he hurt all of his companions; some more than others. Even those he didn't travel with ended up losing. Maybe he made them better, but he also made them worse. Davros had rammed that point home pretty hard, even before he'd lost Donna.

He really was running because he couldn't bear to look back.

But there was no chance of bumping into the Captain this time. If the Doctor had got the timings right – which he was fairly sure he had for once – Jack had left months ago, looking for the solution to an answerless problem. Or grieving, as it was often referred to.

The Doctor sighed, pocketed his screwdriver and a bag of jelly babies, and walked out the door.

He paused, one foot in, one foot out of the Tardis, staring in shock. He'd expected a cemetery; a nice open space with trees and graves covered in flowers. He'd locked the Tardis onto the final resting place of Mr. Jones, and so had certainly not been expecting a UNIT storage facility.

Four stark white walls framed a warehouse of boxes, crates and all manner of papers and trinkets, many with the Torchwood logo on the side. In fact, so many of the items showed that particular sign that he would have mistaken it for one of Jack's (or Archie's or god forbid Yvonne's) holding areas, if not for the giant 'UNIT' mounted onto one of the walls. He briefly wondered about what it was that made Special Ops groups so partial to advertising their presence wherever they went: case in point, bright red berets. That, he would never understand.

He didn't remember seeing this storage area before – and he'd come across rather a number of the places over the years – so the Doctor figured it was a new one, or maybe a secret one.

He wandered over to one of the boxes, tapping the emblazoned T on the side.

"What are you doing here then?" He murmured to the box, pressing his ear against it as if expecting a reply.

None was forthcoming.

He pushed off and started weaving between the haphazard isles, making a mental list of things he needed to confiscate at some point. Rather a large number of the items were scorch marked, as if they'd been on the edge of a burning building. Previously he'd have taken that as a sign that they'd come from Canary Wharf, now however there was the possibility of Cardiff too. A frown dented the Doctor's face as he took in the facts. Someone (apparently UNIT), had been collecting alien items from various sources, including the destroyed Torchwood bases.

"Even better question..." he continued on from his previous train of thought: "What am I doing here?"

Unfortunately he was fairly sure he knew exactly why he was there. He just hoped he was wrong. The Doctor passed another row of crates, his face falling as he came into view of the far wall. As the Time Lord stared into the face of one perfectly preserved Mr. Ianto Jones, he wondered why he was always so concerned for the human race, saving their skins, as they always seemed to make his life so much more difficult.

TWTWTWTW

It was a freezer.

That was the easiest and most accurate way of describing the thing, and after half an hour of poking and prodding, it was the only name the Doctor could come up with. He would have expected it to be a cryonics device, but it wasn't quite what he'd have expected from one of those at this particular date.

He paused in his inspection for a minute and stood back, getting another visual of the thing.

It was big, very big, covering almost the entire lower half of one wall – the same wall that was home to the UNIT sign. It was also bulky, coming out at least a metre into the room. The front was made out of glass so you could see right into it. The Doctor really wished he couldn't. The sight before him would be disturbing on a good day, and this was certainly not a good day.

The freezer was split into sections big enough to easily accommodate a standing human being: which was exactly what was in there. He'd counted thirteen bodies in total, with spaces for at least twice that amount spare.

It was labelled as a stasis chamber, but it wasn't designed for keeping a human being alive indefinitely, and everyone inside looked distinctly dead.

It was a freezer. Keeping the bodies from rotting. The Doctor forced back a shudder at that particular thought.

He moved closer to the glass again, staring into blue eyes. He wondered if Jack knew his man was here. He thought not. He hoped not, because if he did...Jack Harkness really was a heartless bastard.

A door opened nearby, but the ancient man was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to notice. He was sure there'd been a funeral for the man before him, so it was likely that the body simply hadn't been put in the coffin. It was sad: Ianto Jones' relatives had been deprived of that final closure, even if they were unaware of the fact. Instead, he was being kept in a cool box in a warehouse on the outskirts of London.

The Doctor frowned, and pulled out his sonic screwdriver again. He'd come here to find out how this man had survived, but instead he'd only found out that he hadn't.

"But that doesn't make sense!" The Time Lord paced around in a circle, his hands running back and forth through his hair, leaving it even messier than before. "Unless..." he turned back towards the freezer, pointing the screwdriver at the section in front of him. The glass panel for that sectios slid upwards, water vapour immediately pouring out and escaping the icy prison. The Doctor quickly stepped into the box, putting a hand up to check the man's pulse.

Nothing.

He waited a few minutes, feeling as gradually the skin beneath his fingers warmed up from its previously frozen state.

Still nothing.

The Doctor looked at the glazed blue eyes accusingly, as if it was their fault they were no longer functioning.

Something creaked a few metres away. The Doctor's head snapped around, pointing his screwdriver at a UNIT guard – he could tell by the beret – who was in turn pointing a gun at him. Having been spotted, the guard immediately took up a defensive stance and steadied his aim.

"Put the rod down and step away from the body!"

The Doctor frowned at his screwdriver, slipping back into his cheerful persona. "Did you hear that? He just called you a rod! The audacity!" The guard, unused to such behaviour, readied his gun. "Now there's no need for tha-"

"PUT IT DOWN!"

"Alright, alright." He slowly lowered the screwdriver to the ground, stepping out of the freezer in the process. "Now what?"

The guard was obviously new; he stood there, baffled and staring at the Time Lord. But his aim never wavered. The Doctor took the opportunity to size up his opponent. He was young, younger than Mr Jones by a few years, with slicked back dark hair peeking out from under his cap. Deep brown eyes, an olive complexion and high cheekbones made him rather handsome. Greek, if he had to guess. He was probably about 5" 5' in height, and slim in a way that screamed 'I'm strong, but not overly'. All in all, the perfect UNIT guard: naive but deadly. Although the rough Scottish accent had been a bit of a surprise.

Finally the boy seemed to come to his senses. "Stay there, I'm calling the doctor."

"Doctor Who?"

"Stop talking!"

The Time Lord bit back a grin at that; he hadn't been able to resist the joke, and had almost hoped the guard would reply with: 'Just the doctor' for the sake of completion – or maybe nostalgia. Instead the man was now glaring at him and reaching for his radio.

"Doctor Wiffle? Please report to main storage area, section F immediately."

There was a quiet voice speaking in reply, but the Doctor had lost interest, instead focusing on a much more important matter.

"Wiffle? Wiffle...that's...blimey that's brilliant!" An ear-splitting grin covered his face for the first time in ages.

"For the love of- keep your voice down! If the doctor hears you say that he'll have a fit!"

"Why? Wiffle's a wonderful word – ooh, alliteration as well!"

"Shut it!" The guard finally seemed to remember he was supposed to be guarding, and lifted his gun back up from where it had started to droop.

"Sorry, sorry." The Doctor apologised, obviously not feeling very sorry at all. They waited in almost silence for a few minutes. Every so often the Doctor attempted conversation again, but was always stopped with a gun wave, a glare, or even a 'do you know what belt up means?'

He was about to risk it all and try one more time when something in a lab coat came barrelling around the corner, stopping about a centimetre before careening into the guard.

"You shouldn't stand in the way like that Brawn." It said, its voice dry and impatient.

The guard sighed. "Brian, Doctor Wiffle. My name's Brian."

"But I'm the brains and you're the brawn, eh?" Doctor Wiffle nudged Brian in the ribs, but didn't get a response having obviously told that joke far too many times for it to even be bad anymore. Wiffle expelled a puff of air instead, and finally seemed to notice The Doctor's existence. "Young people these days eh? No sense of humour!"

The Time Lord forced a smile for the over-exuberant man, and took a moment to catalogue his appearance. Basically, he looked like your typical mad scientist – unruly grey hair, bottle stopper spectacles, short, pudgy and with a rather crazed look in his eye.

"What am I doing here then Brawn?"

Brian looked like he really wanted to roll his eyes, but instead pointed at the Doctor who was rather oblivious to the gun still aimed in his direction. "We've got an intruder sir."

"Yes, that would be me! Hello, I'm the Doctor." He grinned as he introduced himself, wondering what reply he'd get this time.

"An intruder you say?"

"Yes sir."

"So why haven't you called security?"

The Doctor's face fell as he realised he was being ignored.

"Well you said if anything ever happened in section F I should call you first-OUCH!"

He stared as Wiffle suddenly cuffed the guard over the head. "I meant something happening in section F you fool!"

"B-but, ah, he's opened the preservation chamber."

An unholy shriek filled the air. "He did WHAT?"

The Doctor winced. "I was just checking-"

"YOU IDIOT!"

Suddenly Wiffle was standing right in front of him, gesticulating madly and talking so fast he couldn't understand a thing or get a word in edgeways.

"Should I call security now sir?" Brian's voice cut across the rant.

"Oh what's the point? My finest work, ruined! They wanted this one back as well in a decade or two!" Wiffle cast a despairing glance at the body to his right.

"Now now, there's no need to panic-"

"No need to...there's every reason to panic! He's dead!"

"Just, just calm down and talk me through what's going on." The Doctor put on his best 'trust me, I'm a doctor' voice, and placed his hands on Wiffle's shoulders to stop him running away. "Now tell me what Mr. Jones was doing there in the first place."

Wiffle looked at him, baffled. "Mr. Jones?"

"Yes, him." The Doctor motioned his head into the still open freezer.

"Oh, patient seven. He was brought here about eight months ago to be put into the scheme."

"The scheme?"

"The Preservation scheme. The...the Freezer; section F as we call it. It preserves the bodies of important or rich people until they can be re-animated at some point in the future. It's not quite cryogenics but it's close."

"That's not possible." Well it was, but not yet.

"That's what you think."

The Doctor made a mental note to check that out at some point. "Why Mr. Jones?"

Wiffle looked slightly guilty about that. "Ah, well, we've had some problems with the scheme..."

"What kind of problems?" Wiffle stayed silent.

"It doesn't work." Brian's small voice floated over from where he had taken a seat on a random box, apparently having decided the strange man in the suit didn't pose a threat.

"It will work! I just need more time!"

"What's wrong with it?" The Doctor interrupted before this obviously old argument started up again.

Once more it was Brian who answered. "When the corpses are re-animated they aren't themselves; they're just that...corpses. The mind has gone – we can't retrieve it anyway – it's only the body that lives on, and without a mind to sustain them...they're dead. Either the mind can't be recovered, or we don't yet have the technology right to recover it. We thought we'd cracked it; that's the whole point of the project, but it doesn't work."

The Doctor frowned. "That doesn't answer my question: why him?"

"Patient seven is Torchwood, which makes the body ours. No one knows or cares that he's here, so it doesn't matter if it doesn't work."

The Doctor bit back his disgust: if he wasn't so worried about the Timelines he would have been ranting at how unethical it all was. "So who are the others?" he asked instead.

"Ours mostly – UNIT personnel. There's a couple from other organisations too."

He took a deep breath, mulling the whole thing over, and turned back to the scientist again. "What gives you the right?"

"The right?" Wiffle laughed. "They do, moment they join up, signing everything away they have, including their own rights, to be part of this!" Wiffle's hands waved wildly with the statement, before he dropped them to mutter: "Idiots."

"So Mr. Jones is just a...convenient choice?" The anger had started to bubble into his words, but he no longer cared.

"Oh no, he's so much more than that!" Wiffle didn't seem to be able to sense the disgust in the air, or if he did he was ignoring it. He had that gleam in his eye people get when they talk about something they're really interested in, or mad about. "Patient seven is quite unique! He's the only one so far we've been able to successfully keep the mind from dying, as it were. Of course I say we, but really I have no idea how it's working – it's certainly nothing I've done. But something seems to be holding him here; whenever we've done a partial revival his brain activity seems to restart briefly, even though his body's still dead. I think it might be something to do with the Rift – he has lived on top of it for quite some time. Or it may have been something he's come across during his life; certain radiation, some device... It's incredible!" The scientist seemed to suddenly come back to the present. "And now you've ruined it!"

The Doctor stared, shocked. He'd thought he'd had his answer: Mr. Jones would be revived by UNIT, and somehow from there get to the 51st century – probably running after Jack with some appropriated technology. But apparently he'd ruined all that.

"What? Why?"

"You've unfrozen him!" The Doctor raised an eyebrow in question. "The technology hasn't yet been invented for us revive him properly! Your 'Mr. Jones' here is once again, dead!"

The Time Lord furrowed his brow. "So refreeze him."

"No, no, no!" Wiffle looked at him like he was an idiot (something the Doctor didn't get very much of, but he wasn't going to mention he actually knew all this stuff already, as he was a little rusty). "It's not actual freezing, but that's beside the point. This is just storage and testing facility; this isn't where we 'freeze' the bodies: you can't just shove him box in the box – it doesn't work like that!" The mad scientist looked at him accusingly. "He's dead, and he always will be." And with that he sighed, and turned away. "Brian, call security – get him out of here and make sure they wipe his memory."

Brian nodded, thumbing his radio.

"No."

Wiffle turned back round at the small outburst. "You haven't got much choice in the matter."

"I meant about the dead thing..." The Doctor paused, staring into Wiffle's curious eyes with an intensity that had the other man step backwards. Suddenly the pieces of the puzzle had started falling into place. "I can bring him back."

TBC

And that seemed like a nice dramatic place to end :P

I'd love to hear your thoughts and any concrit you have.