Before Everything Changed
Featuring Captain Jack Harkness
Cardiff, 26th March 2005.
The glass behind Mark Jefferson smashed and a shop window dummy emerged from it, wielding a powerful gun that was concealed within its hand. It began to fire at passers by, advancing towards Mark. He dropped his shopping and turned in horror to face the Auton, which had a face devoid of any proper facial features. It was just blank plastic.
"What the hell?" he exclaimed, before the Auton shot him with a bolt of white light. Mark fell down to the floor, dead.
Captain Jack Harkness sped through Cardiff in the Torchwood SUV, desperate to get his hands on something that had fallen to Earth only a few hours ago. He had had a very long and hard day: he had heard that Yvonne Hartman, the CEO of Torchwood One, had visited Cardiff a few hours ago and he had sent Ianto to clear all of her mess up. Because Yvonne, he knew from many clashes he had had with her, always left a mess.
An Auton invasion didn't help either. Autons were roaming the streets of Cardiff, murdering innocent people. But it wasn't his problem. UNIT could sort all of that out. What he needed to do was to pick up a piece of the fallout from the invasion. Something that nobody had noticed. Hopefully.
Police Constable Gwen Cooper was having a rough night. Apparently shop window dummies were coming alive and, for the sake of her own safety, she had decided to watch it all on tv with her boyfriend, Rhys. And so, as the madness unfolded, the happy couple had eaten a lovely spag bol that Gwen had rustled up and watched the news reports about the attacks.
"This is just mad, isn't it?" Gwen commented, "It must be students. Some sort of horrid joke or protest."
"But we're safe here, eh? Things are gonna be alright." Rhys reassured her, with a smile.
"Yeah. "
And then the attack stopped. Autons fell to the ground, twitching slowly as the Nestene signal vanished. Innocent survivors of the attack got up and sighed with relief, before making their way to the authorities through the smoke and debris.
Jack, meanwhile, had now arrived at the crash site. It was a large scrapyard a few miles outside of the city and he saw what he was looking for: a translucent sphere that flashed bright pink. It was a Nestene sphere, an advance scout sent to the Earth. Dozens of these had fallen to Earth during the 1970 invasion of Earth, but he always had known that there would be more.
He casually strolled towards the sphere and studied it closely.
"Tosh," Jack said, with a charming American voice, into his comms unit, "I've found something you might wanna take a look at."
No reply came. Shame, he thought, I find something interesting and she's taken the night off. Oh well.
He headed back to the jeep and sped off, back to the hub.
When he returned, he found that Suzie had stayed behind and was analysing a strange knife that had been unearthed in an archaeological dig.
"Is that a Nestene sphere?" she asked him, putting down the knife and examining the sphere as it flashed.
"Yep. It fell to Cardiff a few hours before the invasion began. I'll keep it for Tosh in the morning." he replied, walking off to the safe where he kept all of the equipment too dangerous for human use. He then returned to her, because he wanted to ask a question.
"Found out anything about that knife?" he wondered.
"No." she lied, "I think I'll be off now though. It's getting late."
"Alright then. See you in the morning."
She subtly slipped the knife into her bag and headed off, without Jack realising a thing.
Suzie knew what she had to do. Because there was one thing she hadn't told Jack and the others: the knife was found at the same time and place as the glove. It was as if they belonged together. Therefore logic dictated that, if she was to be better at using the glove, she would have to use the knife first.
She grinned, ready to begin her work.
THE END
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