The Brigadier stormed out of the now-empty lab bellowing for Benton, who appeared a moment later, as though nothing was wrong. "You called, sir?"

"Of course I did," he snipped. "Where the devil is Mister Doe?"

Benton looked concerned. "Sargent Jennings never arrived with him at the Downing Street meeting?"

The Brigadier could feel the steam rising from his collar. "Benton..."

Now Benton cringed with understanding. "You never requested him to be brought," he said matter-of-factly. "I'll start things moving to find them. I'm afraid they've got a bit of a head start, sir."

"Casualties?"

"None, sir, he had what looked like a valid order from you for the guards to stand down, and Doctor Sullivan took the opportunity to get some rest."

"Well, that's something to be thankful for, at least. Get on it."

Horace Dewhurst slammed his briefcase down just a little bit harder than he'd intended to, and poured himself a glass of scotch, staring out the window of his Canary Wharf office while his secretary brought him a stack of messages that had arrived while he'd been at Downing Street masquerading as the head of a lesser ministry rather than the Executive Director of Torchwood.

He wasn't quite sure what had just happened, but he knew he didn't like it. Lethbridge-Stewart was hiding something, he was sure of it. Something he didn't want Torchwood to know about.

Oh, there were plenty of stirrings; his people were certain that there had been extra-terrestrial activity growing in the last six months, but no-one had been able to pinpoint it, and he was growing increasingly frustrated by the day. The fact that their lack of progress had been largely due to the need to avoid detection by UNIT just made him even more angry.

He wished, now, that he'd followed his first instincts and simply eliminated Lethbridge-Stewart when he'd first proposed UNIT to the Crown. Now that he had UN backing, he was too high profile to simply disappear.

No, Lethbridge-Stewart was getting too big for his military britches, and he was definitely hiding something. And Dewhurst was going to do something about both.

Sarah had been moving through the ducts as quietly as she could, hoping to find at least one floor of the building that wasn't occupied by aliens and their "hosts". But every time she peeked through a grate, she saw either aliens or humans - and what bothered her is that there didn't seem to be any distinction between them. They both moved crates and equipment, looking like zombies, no expression on their faces, no emotion in their eyes. She wondered if the humans - thin and not very well dressed - were the men missing from the homeless shelter.

Even that, however, didn't chill her bones as much as what she was looking at now. Like almost every other room she'd seen it was a converted office, but it was what it had been converted into that made her shiver. A single chair sat bolted to the center of the floor, straps and chains giving testimony to its purpose as an interrogation tool as much as the blood and alien goo that stained it and the floor around it. Suddenly, she was glad that the massive alien that had shattered her cell had been too impatient to think clearly, or she might have found herself here, and not as an observer.

Just as she started to crawl past the grate, a door slammed open and a flurry of activity exploded just in front of it. As she ducked back out of sight she thought she saw a handcuffed man shoved into the room, stumbling to the floor with a thud. As she waited, holding her breath, to see whether she'd been spotted, she tried to figure out what, exactly, she had seen. With no sign of her presence being uncovered, she slowly maneuvered herself so she could get a better look.

A soldier with his back to her knelt down with his knee in the man's back and grabbed him by the hair, pulling his head back. "I asked you a question, Johnny boy," he growled.

Sarah almost cried out as she saw John's face, twisted with fear, blood beginning to drip from his nose and cheek. What was he doing here?

"I swear to you, I don't know!" John cried out.

Sarah's mind started to race a mile a minute. If she escaped, she could always lead UNIT back here to rescue John and the others. On the other hand, if she left and he was hurt or moved anything could happen to him and she'd never forgive herself for leaving him. However, if she stayed and tried to rescue him, she ran the risk of getting captured again and she couldn't help anyone that way.

For the thousandth time she wished that they hadn't teleported her out of the range for the wire the Brigadier had insisted she wear. She decided to tarry a bit before she did anything. Her eyes stayed glued on John and the soldier as she waited to see what would happen next.

"Tell you what then, let's see how talkative you feel after being chained up for a while," Jennings dragged John to the chair and strapped him in, his arms, still handcuffed, drawn painfully up behind him over the back of the chair. When Jennings snapped the last lock shut at John's ankle he stood up and looked down at John with a smirk as he squeezed his chin between his thumb and forefinger, twisting his head backward. "Have fun until the boss gets here. After he gets through with you, even your good friend the Queen won't recognize you," he said as he walked away, laughing to himself.