Doomsday
a Torchwood story
by RoadrunnerGER
Dislaimer: Oh, really! They're the BBC's.
Suspense/hurt/comfort – T – Ianto Jones & Jack Harkness
A/N: Thank you all for your comments. I really appreciate all feedback. All right… I was so anxious for reaching this chapter and now's the moment of truth. I'm looking forward to learning what you think. Special thanks to mandassina for beta-reading. Enjoy!
Chapter 29 – In the centre of the storm
Cardiff
"Is something wrong, Jack?" Gwen asked, eyeing him worriedly as they loaded the last bags with dead dinosaurs into the boot of their car.
"Just a little cold," he shrugged, pulling the greatcoat tighter around his slightly shivering form.
"You sure?" she prodded, rubbing her palm over his back to warm him.
"Yeah, Gwen. I'm all right," Jack assured her, shrugging her off as he slammed the boot. He could only hope that they would have a calm ride back to the Hub. The truth was that he was not quite all right. He still had not regained clear vision in his left eye and when he turned too fast he felt queasy. In addition to the pain came the cold each time he revived… and since the Cybermen attack he had done that six times now. He needed a break.
"Andy could drive back," Gwen suggested, trying to manoeuvre him to sit in the back seat.
"That won't be necessary," Jack told her, stepping aside. "I'm all right."
"It's no big deal, really," she prodded.
His death glare hit her full force.
"I'm all right."
"Okay, okay," she rushed to say and got in herself while Andy took the passenger seat.
Jack exchanged a last few words with the police officer in charge before he returned to the car. The sky was almost black, loud rumbling announcing a thunderstorm. Quickly Jack got behind the steering wheel.
He had just shut the door when it started to pour.
"Whoa," Gwen gasped. "Just in time."
Without commenting Jack started the car and carefully drove down the pedestrian area before he filed into traffic. When they had left the market hall he had contemplated hiding in his cubby hole or finding a high building to enjoy the view from the roof. Now Jack was pretty sure that he wanted to crash on his bunk only to come out if the world was ending.
Sudden lightning blinded him accompanied with a deafening crack.
The bright light and loud boom sent daggers lancing through Jack's skull, and as he closed his eyes reflexively against the assault he could no longer deny that he had not yet completely recovered from his last death.
Beside him Andy hissed through gritted teeth when Jack barely avoided crashing into the opening door of another car. A second later Gwen cursed from behind when Jack jammed on the brakes and the car skidded to a halt.
"What the…?" Jack gasped and jumped out of the driver's seat, getting soaked instantly by the heavy rain. His gaze was drawn up at the black sky that lit up with lightning in short intervals. At least everyone else would take all the flashes for lightning.
Jack knew better.
"Jack? What's wrong?" Andy's voice drifted out of the car.
"No. No, no, no," Jack muttered under his breath as he bustled back into the car.
"What? Jack, what is it?" Gwen prodded.
Instead of answering Jack floored the accelerator and turned the steering wheel, forcing the car around a bend and into a side road.
"Jack?"
Gnashing his teeth and gripping the steering wheel tight Jack chased the car down the street, determined to get to an open place where he could assess the situation better.
"Jack, tell us!" Gwen pushed.
"It's the Rift," he pressed through gritted teeth.
"What is?" Andy asked.
"The lightning in the sky… it's the Rift. It's a Rift storm." He had to suppress a shudder. "I've never seen such a big one."
"You mean those flashes… they are…"
"Cracks in space," Jack replied curtly. "This isn't rain. It's coming through from wherever the other end of the tear is." Tapping at his ear comm. he said, "Tosh? Where are you?"
"Still on my way back. Why?"
"What can you tell me about current Rift activity?"
"Give me a moment," she told him. "I should stop before I check on the PDA."
"Okay," Jack agreed, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel impatiently as he waited.
"Jack? The readings are going off the scale!" Jack heard Toshiko's frightened voice in his ear plug. "What's wrong?"
Jack let out a shuddering breath. "Fuck."
Heavy rain still drummed on the car, the windscreen wipers almost useless in their constant fight against the falling water. Even though his vision was pretty much impaired Jack did not slow down, his gaze flicking from the sky to the street ahead and back. Once more he looked at the Rift storm when suddenly Andy yelled and Gwen cursed.
Before Jack could react to the huge shadow they had noticed the car crashed into something solid with a resounding thump. Fortunately they were all wearing their safety restraints, even him, for a change, simply because he had taken too much of a beating lately to want to risk further injury as long as it was preventable.
So instead of shooting through the windshield Jack was thrown forcefully into the belt and the airbag that popped up instantly. He cried out at the pain coursing through his body and gasped for breath in agony when his ribs protested against breathing.
"You okay?" he groaned at the constables.
"Still alive," Gwen moaned from behind.
"Andy?" Jack prodded because the young constable did not reply at once.
"What the bloody hell is that?" Andy gasped instead of answering.
Following Andy's gaze Jack finally looked ahead to see a massive tree trunk covered with three-foot suckers collapsing onto the bonnet, making the whole car shudder under the impact.
"Fuck!" Jack cursed.
xXx
Torchwood Tower
conversion unit
In the darkness Ianto saw colourful sparks dance before his eyes, but even when he closed them he could not get rid of the spots. His mind tried to work a way around the blackness that enclosed him. That, his hunger, and, worst of all, his thirst were more torturing than being rendered immobile, even though his limbs and shoulders hurt from the enforced stillness.
As long as it hurts I'm still alive.
Ianto sighed.
There was nothing he could do. Thinking about it that really was what ate away at him.
He was useless.
His mind was trapped inside his body with nothing to occupy itself with. Desperately Ianto tried to concentrate on anything but his current position. The more he tried, though, the more forceful the remembered or imagined pictures of the saws above and himself held by the mechanism pushed back in his consciousness.
Stop it! Ianto ordered himself. Stop it, or you'll really go crazy.
A stifled sob escaped him.
What difference does it make? I'll die anyway. And it'll be a long death.
Grief corded up his throat. Swallowing on that lump hurt. His chest tightened and made breathing hard for a moment.
Try to think of something nice. Like vacation in Brittany. Lisa and I sharing a sleeping bag because it was so cold in the tent.
Lisa.
At once his breath caught in his chest again.
Another subject. Mam. Mam comforting me when I was a kid. Her soft voice murmuring reassurances. Her hand brushing over my hair. Her lips kissing my cheek. She's always there when I need her, always supportive with calm strength.
I'm all alone.
I don't even know if Mam's still alive. Maybe she was killed by the Cybermen. They all could be dead. They could have been upgraded like Lisa. He felt his stomach churning at the thought of his gentle mother being converted into a cold, metal machine. Rhi like Lisa? Part of her human and another part cybernetic? The kids! David and Mica! What would they have done to them? Would they upgrade them? Or would they kill them like they executed Dr. Markham?
Markham.
I never knew that he actually searched for information about the ghost shifts. I sent him the messages, but nothing indicated that he reacted to them. Sure, he might have gotten into trouble if someone noticed him collecting information that he had no clearance for. On the other hand there were enough rumours coursing through the tower. Just nothing substantial.
Chills crawled down Ianto's spine.
How many people fell victim to Torchwood's arrogance? Cybermen now occupy every land mass on this planet. That's what it said.
They were everywhere. In every house. On every street. Killing or upgrading. How could anyone possibly escape them?
I'm more than just alone. I probably am the only survivor. And that only because the ruddy conversion unit jammed.
Right now Ianto could curse the unreliable tech for prolonging his suffering.
"Why don't you finish what you started?" he yelled. "C'mon! Start running! Get it over with!"
Unheard his screaming echoed through the storey.
Ianto thought he heard his echo. It was so terribly silent that his mind yearned to produce sounds.
"Shit! I wanted to work in a skyscraper, not to die in one! Help!"
His ears strained to listen for any response.
"Help!"
It was senseless. Nobody would come. They were all dead. Still Ianto could not quit. If he was not found then it would not be due to him staying silent.
"Help!"
"Anybody there?"
"Help me!"
"Heeeeeelp!"
Surprisingly tears stung his eyes. Unable to rein his emotions in anymore he sobbed heartrendingly. Salty tears rolled down his face and his already sore throat suffered more and more with every sound he made.
Suddenly he stopped.
What was that?
Intently Ianto listened. Actually he was not sure about what he heard, but he knew that he did hear something.
There. What's that sound? A door? Can't be. There's no one left.
His heart ached with the truth.
Steps.
No. No, my mind's just playing tricks on me again.
Ianto quit listening.
Again he wanted to scream, with fear, with grief, with desperation. His sore throat did not comply anymore. Silently he cried, slowly drifting off to an exhausted sleep.
xXx
Cardiff
"Get out!" Jack commanded, unfastening his seatbelt and pushing the door open. "C'mon! Get out!"
The metal of the car's body creaked as the trunk-like tentacle pressed against the vehicle, making it vibrate and finally sliding backwards.
Jack jumped out on the street and grabbed for the handle of the rear door to keep it open while Gwen struggled out.
"Andy?" he yelled.
"I'm fine!" the constable answered, pushing his door open. Another bump made the car bounce and the door fall shut.
"Andy!" Gwen shouted.
"Look out!"
Grabbing her arm Jack swung the young woman around and in the gap between parked cars. Just in time to prevent her from being hit by the still open door as the car moved backwards. The tentacle shoved the car aside like a toy.
Once more the passenger's door opened and Andy fell out, rolling over his shoulder on the wet asphalt.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah!" Andy grunted.
In the constant pour all three of them were quickly soaked to the skin.
"Jack! What can we do?" Gwen demanded to know.
The captain shook his head. "I don't know. Either of you know a good recipe for calamari?"
In front of them squirmed the biggest octopus they had ever seen. Parked cars folded under its weight as if they were in a junk press. Streetlights bent like toothpicks. Glass shattered when the octopus pressed against the building.
"But we need to do… something," Andy pointed out.
"I'm open for suggestions," Jack quipped.
"Don't you have bigger guns than the ones you gave us?"
"At the Hub."
"Well," Andy shrugged, "they're better off there."
Jack could not help but snort a laugh. Gwen, though, did not look impressed by Andy's joke.
"Why do we get oversized animals through that tear in space?" she demanded to know. "Aren't alien fishes and dinosaurs enough?"
"It could be worse," Jack said.
"In which way?"
"It could be more Cybermen."
Gwen uttered a pained sound. They all stared with trepidation and fascination at the giant cephalopod that squirmed in the narrow space between the houses. One arm lifted and swung high through the air before it crashed down on the pavement, making the ground vibrate under the impact.
"It's impressive," Andy stated. "Part of me wishes it wouldn't die."
"What do you mean?" Gwen asked.
"It's an aquatic animal. It needs water to breathe. Certainly it won't survive for long on dry land."
"Not that dry right now," Gwen sighed.
Steeling himself Jack made a decision.
"You two, take care of the car and the rest of this trash," he indicated the smashed cars the octopus left behind. "We'll meet back at the Hub. You'll get in through the tourist information office."
"And what will you do?" Gwen wanted to know.
"I'll… try to distract it."
"How?"
He shrugged. "No idea."
"But, Jack! That's too dangerous!" Gwen objected. "You could…" She could not make the word pass her lips.
"Die?" he continued her sentence and she nodded. Once more he shrugged. "Better me than anyone else, right?"
"I'm still scared for you," she whined.
"Don't be, Gwen," Jack smiled and kissed her on the forehead. "I'll be all right."
Andy nudged Jack's shoulder.
"I hate to interrupt your sweet moment, but our friend doesn't want to wait for you."
And really the octopus slithered away down the street. In its wake it left more damaged cars behind.
"I lost track," Jack said. "Where does this street lead to?"
"Toward the river."
"Crap."
xXx
Torchwood Tower
Searching Torchwood Tower was turning out to be far more horrifying than exciting. Climbing stairs and stalking hallways was not the bad part, Lloyd realized. It was not finding one vacated room after the other and it was not the constant threat of possible alien aggressors.
It was finding the bodies.
There were not many bodies. Lloyd thanked God that there were not as many as he had assumed they would find. Still the discovery of every single victim was horrible.
This was Lloyd's first real encounter with death. His basic training had been all that could have prepared him for this mission. Lloyd did not feel prepared, though.
Soon it will be over, he thought as he stepped through the door and into a hall of the forty-ninth floor. Let's see what we'll find here.
Judging by the awful smell of death and destruction that greeted them it could not be anything good. Slowly Lloyd's team walked down the hall. They could hear the repetitive ping of an elevator door. At a junction sergeant Beatty signalled the team to split up. So Lloyd reluctantly turned to the right to explore his part of the storey.
Turning around a corner Lloyd stood at the mouth of a long corridor separated by plastic curtains. Here the horrible smell was even worse than before. He would have liked nothing more than turning around and legging it, but refusing to obey orders was no option. Carefully, his weapon raised, Lloyd stepped into one of the curtained cubicles.
Just inside he stopped dead in his tracks. His stomach rolled and threatened to empty itself at the sight of the remains in the conversion unit that were hardly recognizable as human.
Coughing and choking Lloyd stumbled backwards through the passage. Desperately he tried to regain his composure. His heart beat wildly in his throat.
Pull yourself together, he ordered himself. You've got a job to do.
Taking a few deep breaths he steeled himself and continued to search the cubicles. Every single one was as terrible as the other, like a scene from a horror movie. Lloyd's mind skittered over the details, but he knew that they'd return to haunt him in his nightmares.
How many more?
Another curtain, another conversion unit, another victim. Lloyd was horrified by what he had seen so far, but when he stepped into the next chamber his blood ran cold.
The mutilated bodies have been bad enough but this, this is so much worse.
Unable to stand the sight of the seemingly untouched corpse of a young man Lloyd fled the cubicle. He only made a cursory check of the next chambers before he returned to the entrance to the staircase to meet his team mates, eager to get out of this storey and ultimately out of the tower.
The team gathered at the door and started to climb up to the final storey.
xXx
London
"It's about bloody time that they let us back in," Owen spat as he and Suzie entered Torchwood tower.
Suzie chuckled. "You could've caught up to the recon team, Owen, but you chose to doze off on the bench."
"Wasn't much of a choice," Owen grumbled. "I'm bloody exhausted, and you could've woken me up instead of letting me waste the coffee I had." He pushed the door to the staircase open and stepped inside.
"You're just angry that you lost precious time spent with Lieutenant Spader," Suzie teased as she followed him. She was glad that Owen did not know that she fell asleep right beside him.
"I bet UNIT was glad we didn't pester them," Owen growled. "They'd love to get rid of us."
Deciding to avoid a discussion about the latter Suzie asked, "Up or down?"
"What's downstairs except the garages and the dead… what did Jack call it?"
"A Dalek," Suzie said. "Really, Owen, you should pay better attention."
"I was paying attention," he huffed.
"Yeah, to Lieutenant Spader."
Owen scowled. "So what is downstairs?"
"According to Jack the secure archives."
"That sounds interesting," Owen grinned.
"You know we're here to work, right?" Suzie said as she pulled out her torch and turned to the stairs that led down.
"Sure," he drawled and quirked his eyebrows. "I enjoy my work."
Rolling her eyes Suzie kept walking, assured by the sound of his steps behind her. Sometimes the young doctor enjoyed his work too much to watch out properly. Suzie was concerned that that might get him or the team in trouble somewhere along the way.
"When will they turn the power back on?" Owen asked.
"When they have reached the top storey and have determined that it's safe," she told him.
"Good," he grunted. "I wonder if UNIT already nicked something."
"Not from the secure archives," Suzie replied. "I doubt that they're able to get in. At least it would be disturbing if they could."
"True," Owen remarked dryly. "Just how do we get in? Do you have the code?"
"I shouldn't need one."
"Excuse me?"
"I have the same clearance level as Jack. I should be able to access secure archives with a retina scan."
"Here in London?" Owen wondered. "Are you sure you're in their system?"
"All personnel with level A5 to A1 are," Suzie told him.
"Well, let's hope that you're right."
In the beam of Suzie's torchlight they could see that they had reached the eighth sublevel. This was the first one that belonged to Torchwood and the last that could be accessed with the regular elevator.
"All right," Suzie said, turning to the door. "Let's see what we have here."
Carefully they entered the next hallway. From there they reached a big entrance hall with a counter right across the huge elevator. To its left was another door.
"Armoury," Owen read on a sign. "Response team alpha and beta. Their field agents?"
"Probably," Suzie murmured, heading for the other door. "Come."
"Shouldn't we check on the offices?"
"UNIT did that already," Suzie shrugged. "We have other things to do."
Rolling his eyes Owen followed her into another staircase and another floor down.
"I'm curious what they have down here," Owen said as they entered sublevel nine. "That ship wreck would never have fit in, so what else could be important enough to be hidden?"
"I don't know, Owen. That's what we're supposed to find out. We can't risk that alien tech ends up in the wrong hands."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're repeating yourself."
"Huh?"
"That's what you told me at least four times on our drive to London," Owen huffed. "I'm dead tired. I don't want to deal with alien tech. I could do with some action."
"Didn't you have enough action last night?" Suzie grumbled. "Really, Owen. Some more seriousness couldn't be wrong."
"I am serious," he snorted. "If I'm going to have to look at files all night, I'm gonna fall asleep on the job."
"Why don't you go and see what a sphere chamber is?" Suzie suggested, indicating the door beside the sign she had read. "I'll check the next rooms. Seem to be labs."
"Okay," he conceded and pressed the button below the sign. "Suzie?"
"Yeah?"
"When will the recon teams finish searching the tower anyway?"
"They were about to enter the top level when I talked to Colonel Mace. Why?"
Owen shrugged. "Well, this won't open without power."
Suzie tried the doors in front of her.
"Neither will these," she sighed and shone her torch through a window into one of the labs. Everything appeared to be all right. As far as she could see nobody was inside. She activated her radio.
"This is agent Costello. When can we expect power to be switched back on?"
"Our teams reported that they have reached the top of the tower. Power should be back on any minute, Agent Costello."
"Thank you, sir."
As if on cue the lights on the ceiling flickered on.
"Now that's much better," Owen huffed and put his torch away. "Let's see what's inside." He slapped on the button and the doors swished open to reveal a huge lab with a high ceiling. Confused Owen looked up in the hall and into the lab again. "Now that's weird. This lab must be two storeys high."
"What's this?" Suzie asked and walked over to a distorted figure on the floor. "Owen?"
Looking around the lab the medic had not paid attention to his partner. At her questioning tone he walked over to her. The figure on the ground wore a lab coat, but it did not just look crooked, it also looked dried out.
"I didn't know aliens practiced mummifying, too," Owen said laconically.
"Owen!"
"Well, Suzie. Whoever this was is most obviously dead. I can't help him so I'm much more interested in what this is."
Following his gesture with her gaze Suzie discovered a giant globe that hung in the air at the rear of the lab. The upper quarter of the front was open.
"Looks like Pacman," Owen smirked.
Suzie just rolled her eyes.
"Well, it looks like something was inside," Owen said, bouncing up the metal stairs in front of the sphere. "I'd like to know what it was."
"If the body's poor condition is any indication of whatever may have been inside can do, I don't want to meet it," Suzie remarked.
"You may be right," he said absently, standing in front of the sphere and staring at it.
"The labs aren't our priority now. Let's go further down," Suzie told him, but he did not react. "Owen? Are you coming?"
Finally he tore his eyes off the sphere and jumped down the steps to follow his partner out.
tbc…
