Torchwood: Divergence
Book One: Dychwelyd
Chapter 1
Everything was going to Hell...
"He's dead," Gwen stated quietly, still gazing at the limp form of Clement MacDonald beside her. "What about Thames House?"
"They can't get out," Commander Camille Johnson replied, looking somewhat dazed as she turned back to the nearby monitor showing the video feed from the MI5 building.
Cooper watched helplessly as Ianto died in Jack's arms, saw the Captain kiss the younger man one last time before succumbing as well. The two lay there together on the shiny tiled floor, the camera's unblinking eye staring at their cooling corpses for nearly a full hour before everything was blurred by a heavy mist, as crews pumped the building full of a mix of potent bio-decontamination chemicals from the roof. All active life not somehow protected by hazmat gear had been purged, so the bodies of the fallen could be removed.
She couldn't bear to watch anymore, went quietly with the Commander's men. But every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was the bodies of her two best friends in the world lying still and cold on the Thames House floor. That had been the beginning of the end, the telling blow that had eventually driven Captain Jack Harkness to leave the Earth with no sign he'd ever be back. And it was the image that rose before her whenever she let her mind wander to thoughts of Torchwood. Even now...
Gwen Cooper sat on the grass beneath a tree Cathays Park, blinking as she forced her attention back to watching her thirteen-month-old daughter learn the mysteries of a loose bird feather from her father. Rhys looked up from where his little girl sat examining the gull primary, met his wife's gaze and smiled. The past sixteen months had been hard for them, in some ways harder than the seven before that. Gwen's co-workers were all gone, either dead or so far out of touch it was practically the same thing. The Torchwood Three Hub had been excavated; the Roald Dahl Plass, Memorial Fountain, and Oval Basin replaced over top of it, the base reconstructed, Rift Manipulator Machine repaired and restarted in a desperate bid to minimize incursions. But the base wasn't active, merely kept in working order and monitored by a group of UNIT soldiers, only the first level of Vaults and above accessible without codes to the rest of the blast doors that had engaged during Lockdown. Andy kept in touch from the Central Cardiff Police Station, and had been designated as the liaison with UNIT when the Rift brought trouble to the city. A strange turn of events nearly a year ago, had seen Rhys take ownership of the Harwood's branch in Cardiff that he'd been managing before; and they shipped for supermarkets, restaurants, and department stores on a regular basis, as well as transporting much more exotic cargo when necessary to help UNIT clean up after Rift related incidents.
They had a beautiful little cottage in the older, quiet part of Penarth, with a real garden and friendly neighbours...the lovely home Rhys had looked at alone when the 456 problems had first started. And Gwen had decided to be a stay-at-home mam, occasionally offering over the exchange advice to Andy, but otherwise trying to distance herself as much as possible from all things Torchwood and the painful memories associated with it. So, when her mobile rang and the name displayed was 'Martha Jones', she was somewhat reluctant to answer the call. Just before it went to voice mail however, she hit the button to connect and put the phone to her ear.
"This is Gwen," she acknowledged, her voice sounding flat even to her own ears.
[It's Martha,] the young woman on the other end of the line began apologetically. [I know you've been trying to stay clear of all the Rift stuff and I'm sorry to ask, but Andy brought some information to us that I really need your help with. There've been strange lights seen in the Millbank roundabout near the MI5 building, and some other things I'd rather not go into on the phone. The problem is, there's no Rift spike to correspond with any of the incidents, and UNIT's specialists are stumped. Would you be willing to meet me for coffee and take a look at some video footage? Maybe it's something you've seen before.]
"I..." the former constable was about to refuse, but something about the other woman's tone made her change her mind. "I suppose I could take a quick look. When and where?"
[How about in thirty minutes at the diner across from Cathays Park?] Jones suggested tentatively. [Or if you'd rather, I could just bring some coffee and scones over for you and Rhys, and we could talk while he keeps your daughter busy. I'm at the diner now and just got the GPS location of your phone... I didn't realise you weren't at home.]
"Rhys drags me out once in a while," Gwen smiled, only half joking. "I'll let him know you have something for me to look at, and just sit tight till you get here. We're under the trees north of the Castle."
[Thanks,] Martha replied, her relief and gratitude obvious. [I really appreciate your help. I should be over in about ten minutes.]
"I'll be here," the green-eyed brunette promised, then ended the call and caught her husband's attention.
"UNIT?" Rhys queried solemnly as he carried little Ebrill over with him, well familiar with the look on his spouse's face.
"Martha," Cooper nodded, smiling for her daughter and tickling the tiny girl's rosy cheek to make her giggle as she was settled into her pram. "She has a video she'd like me to watch, see if I recognise the phenomenon from my time with Torchwood. It's apparently giving their crew trouble because there haven't been Rift surges when it's happened. She's on her way over from the diner with coffee so we can talk."
"Which means a quick hello, and then I find something else to go show Ebrill," Williams surmised, leaning over to kiss her on the forehead. "Just don't agree to anything you don't feel up to, yeah?"
"I told her I'd look, that's all," his wife insisted.
"You forget who you're talking to, love," Rhys snorted. "You've got that gleam in your eyes, which usually means you're about to be off and running. I know you and that business well enough now not to get in the way... I'm just saying, don't do it if you're not ready yet."
"Don't do what?" a familiar voice queried from nearby, the couple looking up to find Martha walking toward them with a four-slot drink holder and a paper bag in her hands. "Sorry, did I interrupt plans to give your Rhosyn a sibling?"
"Oh, no," Rhys laughed. "One is a full-time job, more than that is putting your sanity in pawn."
"This from the man who said he wanted no less than six children when we married," Gwen chuckled; nodding her thanks to the new comer for the hot coffee she was handed.
"I can be taught," her husband grinned, accepting his own cup and a paper napkin wrapped honey scone. "Eb and me are off to see the flower beds and let her try her new toddling trick. Enjoy your chat."
Martha settled onto the grass beside her one-time co-worker, offered the former constable a scone, then offloaded the laptop case she'd had over one shoulder.
"Let me get this booted up and access the video files," she murmured. "And before you see this, there are a couple of things I found out on this investigation that you need to know. When the first reports came in about a month ago, the automatic fear was that it was the 456 because of the location. That's why it came to UNIT to begin with, but there was never anything to link the two. So, the local constables were told to keep an eye on the area and set up surveillance cameras.
"Then a little over two weeks ago, the same activity was reported in the old rundown part of a graveyard not far from here in Cathays at the exact same time it occurred in London. It had apparently started a week or more before, but the PCs figured it was kids messing about and ignored it till it got the neighbours in a panic. Andy contacted UNIT and they asked him to set up cameras at the cemetery too, put out the story that it was special utility work in the area. What he sent us a couple of days ago was disturbing. However, that's not the most significant thing my investigation turned up."
She paused to enter a couple of passwords on the laptop, then continued.
"While looking into the events in London, I discovered that none of those killed at Thames House by the 456 were actually returned to their families," Jones frowned, seeing her outrage mirrored in Gwen's eyes. "All of them were sent for complete autopsy and pathogen study under full containment protocols, then closed container cremated and their ashes packed en masse into a lead lined silo with gallons of antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal liquids before being lowered into a small bunker fifty feet underground with three-foot-thick concrete walls, which was then filled with cement and buried. Total overkill, considering the bodies had been laid out in a make-shift morgue a nearby public school and personnel there handled them unprotected. There was a file on every single person who died that day, with complete lab results. But I noticed there was a name missing, and after a lot of digging, I found a purposefully hidden log entry from one of the soldiers guarding the bodies.
"He reported seeing a red glow in the morgue room, claimed that when he stepped in for a closer look that there was a column of light near one of the dead, and strange shadows moving in it. He went for back up, but when they returned there was no glow, just rows of corpses and a lump of buckled wood on the gymnasium floor under the canvases where the light had been. Sweeps detected no trace of radiation or other signs that anything had ever been there. But after that report, the official death toll suddenly went down by one, and one of the bodies was never sent for study because it was missing from the morgue. There is no record of an autopsy, tests, cremation, or even a certificate of death for Ianto Jones. His body disappeared within two hours of you and Jack leaving the building, and the Government covered the whole thing up to avoid being held responsible if something ever came of it."
"Oh, my God..." Gwen breathed, her eyes round with horror. "All those other families buried empty caskets thanks to the Government. And they told Ianto's sister they couldn't release his body for security reasons. But to have lost his body entirely or have it stolen? Who would do such a thing?"
"All I know is that it wasn't Jack or any future Torchwood operatives, it wasn't UNIT, and it wasn't the Doctor at Jack's behest," Martha shrugged sadly. "And what bothers me most, is that buried report about a red glow and moving shadows. Here... the first is the footage from London, then the more recent video that Andy sent from the Cathays graveyard."
She queued up the video on her laptop, held it close so they could both clearly see the colour images. The first clips were of an approximately one metre square area of manicured grass surrounded by yellow crime scene tape. In each, the streetlamps would suddenly flicker and fail, then a strange red glow would appear from the ground, growing brighter and brighter as cracks opened in the earth to spill more of the hellish light into the night. What started out as small fissures in the second clip, progressed to large gaping slashes of turned up soil in the last, the once flat swatch of grass now buckled as though something had been pushing up from underground, nearly uprooting the shrubbery at the centre of the roundabout. Now the videos ran of the old overgrown section of the graveyard in Cathays. The events were nearly identical, except in the last two clips. First, the breached ground between headstones expanded massively to a rough circle of spider web-like cracks nearly four metres in diameter, the growing fissures pouring forth intense red light and beginning to ooze a thick, dark liquid. The final clip showed an ugly stain within the entire circle of ruptured ground when the glow flared to life, more of the dark material bubbling up as the red light intensified, and then... strange shapes like animate clots of shadow began to move at the edges of the glow. Almost half again the size of a very tall man but too obscure to determine an exact form or limb count, the dark shapes didn't stir at random but flitted around the buckling ground with purpose. However, whether their intention was to halt the strange phenomenon or encourage it, there was no way to tell.
"Did you ever see or read a file about anything even vaguely like that when you were with Torchwood?" Martha queried at last.
"No," Gwen whispered, shaking her head. "Nothing. What... what's the nasty stuff seeping from the ground?"
"We had Andy send us samples for analysis," Jones stated evenly. "It's blood, and not just one kind to indicate a body was recently buried there. It's mostly human, but every type you can think of from dozens of people too old to be DNA identified, and there're also large quantifiable amounts from several animals. We've identified feral canine, both wolf and fox; avian in the form of crow, raven, red kite, owl, and swan; and at least two powerful breeds of domestic equine. A lot of the animal blood is from species that aren't indigenous to any part of the UK, and all of it including the human appears to be fresh when it comes out of the ground. Minimal cellular breakdown, no plasma separation, and still warm to the touch according to Andy, even though it's obviously quite old. There are cell markers in some of the human types that haven't existed since the beginning of the twentieth century."
"But why?" Cooper gaped. "And how could it be that light the guard saw at the morgue when Ianto's body disappeared?"
"We don't have any answers," the young black woman beside her pointed out apologetically. "And the only one who saw a possible connection between the red light and moving shadows Andy taped, and the buried report from the 456 morgue is me. I could be dead wrong, but what was in that soldier's log entry and what shows on that last video... it just seems too similar to ignore."
"God... I wish Jack was here," Gwen whispered, the wish for Harkness' presence still an ache that hadn't faded. "He might know what it is, and whether it means anything that Ianto's body went missing. At least he'd know that... sacrificing his own grandson was hard, but I think losing Ianto was what really drove him to leave Earth. God... he was willing to give the 456 the kids again if they'd save him and the pain in his eyes when he woke in the gymnasium after. The guilt."
"UNIT sent word out along every channel it can, hoping one of the friendly races or even the Doctor would receive it and look for Jack," Jones admitted sadly. "But there's been no sign of him in all this time. He could be anywhere or any when in the Universe. If he's ever going to set foot on this planet again, it will have to be his own choice. I've seen the footage from Thames House... and I hate to say it, but he may never come back."
"I want to help with this, Martha," Gwen stated suddenly, renewed surges of courage and determination flooding her entire body. "I want to ask the Queen to bypass Whitehall and let me re-open the Hub and go after the answers as a Torchwood officer, even if it's just me alone working alongside UNIT. I have to know what it is Andy caught on that video, and whether it has anything to do with Ianto's body disappearing. Because if it does... they damn well better give him back."
Rhys had been sneaking glances at the pair over under the tree, and now saw the look on his wife's face. He smiled and shook his head...off and running.
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AN: I started writing this in December of 2009, because I simply could not accept the horrific mistakes made in Children of Earth, especially the meaningless death of Ianto Jones. So, 'Torchwood: Divergence' was born. It is quite long, and what I am beginning to post at this time (in honour of Ianto's Birthday) is Book 1 of 5. Whether the rest of the Books get posted will depend on how this one is received.
There are Doctor Who characters in this story (even a few bits with Eleven himself) but it is not a Cross-Over.
I am an American and have yet to visit Wales or anywhere else in the UK. I compared 4 sites for the Welsh, so I hope it's okay. I did as in-depth research as possible to get the settings and terminology correct, but there are limits to that and this has neither been Brit-picked nor checked by a Beta. So, anything not quite right… let's just put it down to this having to be Alternate Universe and call it a day. I realise that how I perceive some characters may not please everyone, but anyone who dislikes it is advised to go read something else or write their own. NO FLAMERS.
I will likely only be able to post once a week, but will try for more frequent posts as I'm able. I've only posted two small one-shots in the past. This is the first time I'm taking a chance and sharing a multi-chapter story. Hope some out there find it enjoyable.
Disclaimer: I make no profit from this story and own only the plot, and the main Aliens involved within it… a certain little dog and a few other creations… but all else is still the property of the BBC and He Who Shall Not Be Named (yeah, that's how I see him), no copy-right infringement is intended.