4
SUBWAY STATION PLATFORM
Twenty passengers wait, wet, cold. Lud, the New American Ambassador's aide comes down stairs onto the platform. Toshiko follows a few seconds later, pretending to check her cell's display. But Lud does not look back. In fact, he doesn't even stop. He moves with steady purpose up another flight of stairs.
The passage way is narrow. Twisting. It's one of those long passages that leads to another station. A violin plays somewhere in the maze. Toshiko hurries along. Though she only gets fleeting glimpses of Lud's plastic coat, she keeps his footsteps in front of her. As she turns a corner, he's gone.
She jumps back. Listens.
She hears his footsteps receding. She peeks around the corner to see there is an adjoining passage just ahead. Toshiko peeks around the corner.
The adjoining passage quickly dead ends at an accordion gate. The gate open. She pulls her head back and waits. After a few seconds ... The adjoining passage is now empty.
Toshiko makes her way to the gate, unsnapping her holster. The gate's chain looks like it's been cut. Stairs on the other lead down to a brightly lit subway platform. "Shit."
Toshiko hurriedly squeezes through the gate.
.
.
John sits at the window of an apartment, the lights off yet he is reading a softly backlit comput-book. Something makes him smile as he closes the book for a moment and takes up the binoculars.
Ianto is in bed asleep.
He scopes the Living Room. The apartment door is closed.
The window onto the fire escape is closed.
Jack is invisible in the darkness of the shadows in the escape well. John sends a ping to tell Jack nothing is moving, then goes back to his book as Jack settles the coat around him.
They wait.
.
.
Toshiko comes down the stairs , surprised to find the platform is abandoned yet brightly lit. She takes out her weapon. Behind her, the last thirty feet of platform is stacked with old school desks the City stored and forgot. In front of her, the north end is sixty yards away. A row of thin iron pillars runs along the tracks. Toshiko advances north, using the pillars for cover.
Thirty yards ahead is a second stairwell leading up into darkness. Beyond the stairwell is a rusty metal door. Toshiko keeps the pillars between the tracks and her body. She passes the stairwell and looks up into darkness. It seems to be sealed off at the top. She moves in position toward the metal door. She reaches for the doorknob.
It's locked.
Toshiko turns to the tracks. As she approaches, she sees they are no longer visible in a quagmire of black ooze and gunk. She goes, stands at the edge of the platform and looks into the track tunnel. Left. Right. Nothing. She stays at the edge of the platform and listens. She hears an express train rumble past overhead, and then silence.
Toshiko listens at the tracks.
She comes back through the row of pillars and walks to the centre of the platform. Then - with an eerie metallic clang - the lights go out. Black. Pure Black.
"Shit." Toshiko mutters to herself again.
We hear her breathing. Then after a few seconds ... A footstep. Toshiko stops breathing. Was it a footstep? There's a rustling sound. Again.
"Hello?"
Silence. A crunch.
"Hello?" Nothing. She lifts her camera.
FLASH.
Toshiko fires toward the tracks.
She's using the powder flash to see the platform to the north. It's empty.
FLASH.
Toshiko fires to check the platform to the south. Empty.
FLASH.
Toshiko fires to look behind her. Nothing.
Black.
Silence. Toshiko's poncho rustles with the sound of aiming in the dark.
Silence.
"Shit."
Toshiko's face appears in the light of cell phone display.
Someone is taking a photograph of her.
.
.
John on his cell phone, irritated. "Alright, I'm on my way."
John disconnects and raises his binoculars. Ianto lies in bed. He picks up his cell phone and hits re-dial. "Sorry to startle you Jack. Is it possible to get Ianto on the other line?"
Ianto picks up the phone. "I wasn't asleep."
"I have to leave you two alone for a few minutes. Fifteen at the most." John lowers the binoculars as he checks the street "He may be up to something."
Ianto sits up. "I'll be okay."
"Go ahead. " Jack agrees.
Ianto hangs up. He considers his empty bed.
He rises to let the dog into the bedroom whether Jack likes it or not.
To hell with fur on the blankets.
.
.
Rain.
John exits the building that houses his surveillance apartment. He looks up and down the street. Quiet.
The car is still parked at the end. He runs to his car in the rain and retrieves a flashlight.
John runs east. Above him, the vessels fly on their agreed flight paths through the city, a bright blur in the mist.
Lud watches John run past, while humming to some weird music that our human ears do not understand.
Lud look up at Ianto's dark apartment. He holds a bag.
He grins.