After a restless night, Jack walked the outer corridors of Floor 000 to pick up some of the bodies that had made it rather far away from the main hall. The Daleks must have followed them individually and cut them down one by one. He was turning around a corner when he heard a suspicious noise. The corridors were narrow and only barely lit. Jack's steps came to a halt, and he listened into the darkness.
Something was moving in the shadows in front of him.
Maybe he would finally meet the source of the strange encounters he had over the last few days.
The groan he had heard several times by now was back, letting the floor vibrate slightly. The deep hum almost felt like a melody.
"Hello? Who are you? Come on, gorgeous, don't be shy," Jack tried to keep it light to calm his nerves.
No response.
The silhouette was approximately the same height as he was. The face still hidden in the shadows.
"I thought there were no survivors, are you hurt? "
There were no survivors. Jack was sure of it.
His mouth went dry, and his pulse was racing. This was all wrong. He wished he was armed.
"Come on, don't hide there in the dark. Step closer. Show me your face," he asked with a far bolder voice than he actually felt.
The groan began to escalate and ripple through the walls, which seemed to vibrate from the noise. Not again! He had the urge to press his hands against his ears, but he didn't dare to move. Panic started to wash over him. Every fibre in his body screamed at him to run, but he stood still and watched.
When the shape finally floated out of the shadows, he recognized one of the deceased. He'd brought the dark-skinned man only recently up to the freezers. He'd been one of the contestants as far as Jack remembered. The corpse's head in front of him suddenly bent unnaturally backwards by almost 90 degrees. Eyes and mouths wide open, distorted into a silent scream.
The scream that Jack heard didn't come from its mouth but seemed to originate everywhere around him.
It got louder and louder, and when it hit the highest note, the corpse started moving towards him with escalating speed.
Jack raised his arms before his face and adopted a defensive position in anticipation of the impact, but the body went straight through him.
Not a corpse, but a ghost.
He felt the mass, neither solid nor gaseous go through him with every cell in his body. Jack gasped and whirled around. All he saw when he turned around was a dissolving mist.
The ghost had disappeared.
Jack didn't wait any longer to see what happened next. He ran. The screaming stopped when he'd left the corridor behind, but he kept running until he reached the lift that brought him up to Floor 500.
Frantically he pulled up the surveillance protocols and CCTV cameras and checked the last hour. There was absolutely nothing. He slammed his fist into the console and howled with frustration. Leaning on the console, he tried calming his nerves with deep breaths.
The station's sensors were state of the art... what kind of entity was able to hide from their scans? Jack shook his head.
He hated feeling so out of his depth. What was he even doing here? This was none of his business. No one would care if he ran and started fresh somewhere else. He needed to leave. Right now.
Jack flipped open his vortex manipulator to see which options he had.
"You've got to be kidding me!" he shouted and punched the buttons when it became clear the device wasn't working correctly. Low-level functions were operating flawlessly, but the transport function had been deactivated, much like the transmat beam and the com unit of the control room.
He kicked one of the swivel chairs and let it crash into the next computer station. Jack racked his hands through his hair and tried to calm down. Panic attacks didn't solve problems.
"Get a grip, Jack. Nothing has changed. Breath. Evac will arrive. It is just a matter of days. You don't get scared by ghosts," he pleaded with himself. "Come on Jack. You can do it." After a while, he started to calm down.
"You can do it," he repeated these words in his mind like a mantra.
Still anxious but with renewed determination, he finally went back to the ground level to face whatever ghost awaited him.
When he stepped out of the lift, he realized it wasn't just one ghost waiting for him. They were many. There seemed to be a ghost for each body on the station, standing vigil over their decaying corpses. Jack sat on the ground next to the lift doors and observed the scene for a while. They kept their position stoically, like a memorial of the dead.
His heart was still full of thread, but watching them like this, helped him relax a bit.
When nothing else happened, he gathered his courage and stepped towards the one closest to him, trying to touch it. He watched his hand disappear into its chest. It was neither solid nor gaseous. The sensation was like moving through a liquid, but his hand was still dry when he pulled it back out.
Despite the strangeness, there seemed to be no immediate danger coming from the manifestations.
"Okay, ghosts, listen up! Maybe we can try to co-exist on this station," Jack said, his voice sounding overly loud in the otherwise silent room. "I keep moving corpses, you keep standing there. Deal?"
Silence.
He decided to take that as a confirmation.
After half an hour of dragging corpses from the corridors, he froze in the middle of hauling one of the corpses on the trolley.
The noise from earlier was vibrating through the room again. He let go of the body and turned around to see what the ghosts would do.
Over fifty of them were in the main hall, and they all moved as one as the sound escalated. Jack took a step back and bumped into the trolley. He knew what was coming. He'd seen it with the first ghost.
Their mouths twisted and widened until they were unnaturally wide open. Then their necks snapped back simultaneously, and their faces turned upwards. With eyes rolled around, they seemed to be screaming their lungs out, but no sound emanated from them.
Like last time the deafening scream emerged straight out of the inner core of the Game Station.
Jack felt frozen to the spot. He just stood there and watched the strange phenomenon, shaking with fear. After a couple of minutes, the screaming ebbed away, and the ghosts retained their original positions. The spook was over.
His heart kept racing, and he felt all jittery. With deep breaths, he tried to pull himself together to haul the abandoned corpse onto the trolly. Then he signalled the lift to open its doors with trembling fingers. He needed to get out of the room for a while.
When he transported the dead bodies to the freezers, the ghosts didn't follow. He laughed nervously. He'd already pictured the lift becoming very crowded.
Jack's nerves were frayed, but he stubbornly clung to his routine. He tried to ignore the ghosts while moving the bodies from the ground level up to the freezers.
He barely slept, and it started taking its toll on him. It felt like each body was heavier than the last, and the runs took longer and longer. He was exhausted.
When he lay awake at night, he missed the Doctor the most. Together they faced every challenging situation with ease. Laughing into the face of danger had been their speciality. And he missed Rose. He missed her smile and looking into her sparkling eyes. He missed the three of them hanging around in the Tardis, having a good time and laughing about some silly jokes.
While Jack missed Rose like crazy, he was relieved that the Doctor had sent Rose back to her own time. Back to earth. If the Delta Wave had worked, everybody would have been killed, including her. She was safe, and he didn't have to worry about her. And who knows, maybe the Doctor went back to pick her up, and they were now back together travelling with the Tardis.
Jack felt a wave of sadness wash over him. He missed them both terribly. During the days after the attack, he had imagined hearing the familiar song of the Tardis arriving a couple of times, but his mind had only played tricks on him.
The Doctor was gone. It was silly to hope for his return. Jack had to deal with his current situation on his own.
One afternoon a couple of days later, Jack sat on the trolley, taking one of his many breaks to regain some strength. He cradled his tired head in his hands with his eyes closed.
When the groans started again, and the vibrations rattled his bones, it took him a while to realize something was different this time. The low humming sound hadn't turned into the usual high-pitched scream. It had turned into a steady pounding that grew louder and louder.
And it wasn't coming from within the station anymore.
Slowly, Jack lifted his head and stared at the station's outer wall. Someone was pounding on the wall.
From the outside.
Jack moved closer to the wall and raised his hand to touch the cold metal structure. He felt the material vibrate under his fingertips.
"Hello?" he tentatively asked.
Okay, that might have been stupid. Even if someone was outside, they wouldn't hear him, not through the wall or in space. The pounding was slowly moving away from him. His gaze followed the sound. It definitely was some kind of signal. Should he follow?
Finally, curiosity took over, and he started moving.
Jack had followed the pounding half around the station when he approached one of the airlocks of this level. Maybe he could see where the strange noise was coming from if he looked through the window. He pressed the unlock button, and the massive inner doors to the airlock opened with a whoosh.
He stepped close to the glass windows of the large exterior doors to peek outside. At first, he saw only the blackness of space and the stunning view of earth looming in front of him. Then a body bumped into the hull, and for a moment, the only thing he saw was white until it rotated around.
Lynda. The dead body of the Doctor's quirky friend in her white jacket was floating through space.
Jack swallowed uncomfortably while he watched her move by. Her skin was frozen, and white ice crystals covered her bloated limbs and face. Her eyes were wide open, expanded in size, and he could see tiny blisters all over the eyeballs.
It was horrific, but Jack couldn't take his eyes off her as she was floating close to the window. He took a step back. Had he just seen her blink? That was absurd. Jack let out a tentative laugh. How could she? She was dead. Jack leaned forward again and pressed his nose against the glass. Did Lynda have something to do with the strange events within the station? It made no sense.
Blink.
Jack gasped.
Suddenly Lynda's body started to move, her face distorted into a grimace, her mouth wide open as if in a silent scream. Jack jumped back from the window and stared at her while she looked straight at him. She looked like one of the ghosts.
Loud sirens started to wail, and with a dull thud, the large doors behind him closed while the doors in front of him unsealed and began to open.
Heavy winds were picking up as the air was sucked out of the airlock and into space. Jack tried to get a hold of the console in front of him but could barely hold on. He tried to reach the emergency button close to him while the air grew thin, and he had trouble breathing. When the door had fully opened, the pressure equalization to the outer space would be complete, and he would suffocate. It got harder and harder to inhale any air, and Jack had trouble staying conscious. Desperately he tried hitting the button. His field of vision shrunk, and darkness began to claim him. Within seconds he lost consciousness, and his fingers slipped from the console.
Jack felt being hurled towards space, and then there was nothing.
Jack's eyes sprang open with a jolt, and he took a deep breath. Disorientation hung over him for a few seconds until he remembered where he was. Open Airlock! Why was he not dead? He looked around and found himself lying pressed against the now-closed and sealed doors that protected the inside of the station from the harsh environment of space.
Looks like he had managed to hit the emergency button just in time before suffocating or being sucked outside.
Jack tentatively started laughing with a hand over his mouth. He really had a run of good luck lately. Eventually, his laugh turned into a sob when he realized how close his brush with death had been. Again. He had to stop being so careless!
He peeked outside the window one more time but couldn't see anyone.
Lynda was gone.
When he returned to his salvage work, the ghosts all looked at him and started to open their mouths.
Jack huffed, defeated. "Here we go again."
He clasped his hands over his ears when another scream pierced the air.
Two days later, practically all corpses were taken care of. With the finishing line so close in sight, Jack finally lost it. He stood in the hangar of Floor 000 and screamed at the motionless ghosts, his voice desperate:
"Why are you doing this? What do you want? You are all dead! There is nothing I can do! "
The ghosts merely stared at him, oblivious to his anguish.
"Of course you can, Jack," a deep voice suddenly boomed around him.
Jack whirled around. He couldn't see anyone.
"What? Who are you?" he asked, confused. "Show your face!"
"Who I am is of no concern to you," the voice admonished him. "These haunted souls need your help! After all, you have done, isn't that the least you can do? Drop your resistance!"
"After all I have done? Oh, come on, don't put this on me. The Dalek Invasion wasn't my fault. And what do you mean by dropping my resistance? Resistance of what?" Jack tried to scan the room with his vortex manipulator, but like in recent days, the scanners picked up nothing.
"Through you, these unfortunate souls will have a chance for peace, and the agonizing screams will stop. With you as my conduit, I can give them a new existence! Take the place of the Controller, so I have full access to Satellite 5."
Jack tried to process all the information but had a hard time following.
"Woah. Wait a second. No, no, no way. New existence?" Jack declined. "Stopping the screaming would be nice, but even if you could do that - you need me as the Controller? I've seen the woman who took the job last time and what it means. Forget about it. Not gonna do that."
"I can wait until you change your mind. We have all the time in the universe," the voice sounded amused.
"See? That's where you are mistaken. The rescue shuttle will be here soon, and then, whatever you are doing here, will be over. The station will be shut down."
The voice started to laugh heartily.
Jack huffed in frustration. He wondered what was so funny about him stating the facts.
"Oh, my dear Jack. Don't you get it? There will be no rescue. Earth forgot about you. They have better things to do than coming up here and saving you. You are stuck here. With me."
Jack shook his head. "No way! They said they were coming and I'm sure they will!"
"How long did they say they would need to send a shuttle?" the voice asked knowingly.
"Five days."
"And how many days have passed since then?"
"... " Jack pressed his lips together.
"How many, Jack?"
"Ten," Jack admitted grudgingly. He rubbed his eyes. He needed to focus and not play mind games with a disembodied voice.
The voice laughed out loud.
"Oh, piss off!" Jack was done talking. He needed time to think.
The mocking voice echoed in his ears when he stood in the lift to get up to his quarters.
Storming through his apartment door, he grabbed a bottle of beer from the fridge and started pacing the room up and down. He was so frustrated. Eventually, his emotions boiled over, and with an anguished scream, he threw the bottle against the wall.
For a moment, he watched the liquid dribble down the wallpaper.
Then he reached for a flower vase that stood close to him. He felt so angry and frustrated everything in his reach fell victim to his rage and got thrown against the walls. Shards of glass and porcelain flying everywhere.
A bit later, big chunks of the room were in tatters, but he felt much better. The anger and helplessness started dissipating, and he could focus again.
"Think Jack, think!" Jack had never been the type who waited to get rescued. Screw the rescue team... he could do this on his own. He had to.
The Control Room seemed important since the voice wanted him as the Controller. Obviously, he had only limited access to the ghosts, almost like the Daleks needed the original Controller to run the TV shows. If he could destroy the Control Room on Floor 500, he might be able to disable the voice, and perhaps the ghosts would disappear too. Jack had to admit it was mostly guesswork, but which other options did he have?
He couldn't figure out what the voice wanted the ghosts for. He just knew it was nothing good.
With this new resolve, he grabbed the bag he'd carried his clothes when moving in and headed out for the lift. He knew exactly where he had to go to get what he needed.
On Level 359, he stood in front of the doors to the large storage depot of "Countdown", the game show about disarming bombs. There should be plenty of explosives inside to fulfil his needs. Quickly he picked the lock and let himself in.
"What are you doing, Jack?" the amused voice boomed through the room.
"Where are your manners? How about some privacy?" Jack retorted while he walked along the shelves and shoved explosives into his bag.
"I am the station, and the station is me. Nothing escapes my watch."
Just great, Jack thought. Aloud he spoke, "Since you seem to know everything, why do you even ask? I'm sure you know what I'm up to."
"You won't succeed."
"We will see," Jack said with a steady voice. He felt far less sure than he sounded. His bag was almost full.
"Your situation is hopeless, Jack. Your cooperation is inevitable. Your destiny is already written, "the mocking voice was dripping with glee.
"Whatever. I'm going up there. Try stopping me! "
The voice kept laughing.
He's toying with me, Jack shivered.
Finally, he found a detonator and was all set. Time to blow up some shit.
"You know," Jack said when he entered the heart of the station with all its computers and monitors, "you keep saying I won't succeed. How do I know you aren't just trying to dissuade me from my plan because I will succeed if I continue? All you do is play mind games."
"Let's find out."
Yes, let's find out. Before Jack started to place the explosives, he tried the comm station to establish contact with earth one more time, just like he had done on the first day. The comms were still down, and no signals went in or out.
Jack's spirits sank further. Please let help be on its way, he thought while he went to work, placing the explosives all over Level 500 and arming them. Chances were high life support would be destroyed through the detonation. In that case, it would be only a matter of days until he ran out of air.
Desperately he tried to swallow the fear that started to rise. Giving into the demands of the voice was not an option. He had to go through with this.
Fifteen minutes later, he was all set, and he took the lift down as far away from the top as possible.
Jack sat on the ground close to the docking gates on Floor 000 and pulled out the detonation device he had brought down with him.
A humourless laugh escaped Jack's lips. "You got your second chance to live, and that's what you do with it." He couldn't wait to get off this station.
Jack closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
"All right, here goes nothing," he murmured and pressed the trigger.
At first, there was total silence, like the station was holding its breath. Then a loud boom could be heard high above, and the structure of the station groaned as shockwaves rippled through the construction.
The ghost creatures turned towards him, and their screams erupted louder than before from every corner of the station. Jack pressed his hands on his ears and grunted in pain from the strain on his eardrums.
Then everything went silent.
When he looked up, he was alone.
All the ghosts had vanished.
A small smile of victory appeared on his face. Looks like his plan had worked.
Jack waited. He wanted to be sure. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Nothing happened.
Finally, he dared to relax. He looked like he was in the clear. The threat was gone, and the station wasn't breaking apart.
He slowly stood up to find a console to check the damage status of the station. He had taken only a few steps when he stopped and froze.
He felt tremors beneath his feet. Tremors that grew into jolts that let the floor shake. "No," was all Jack could get out. He tried to keep his balance on the shaking floor.
Then he heard the familiar groan coming back up. The room was only dimly lit by the emergency lights, but he could see the outlines of the ghosts reappear.
One by one.
And they were moving towards him with outstretched arms.
When the first ghosts tried to grab him, he screamed.
Jack's body was shaking. Every fibre of his body felt like shards of electric shocks were rippling through him. Desperately he tried to free himself.
Suddenly he felt hands on his shoulders pulling him back, and he was free.
"What... ?" with a shout on his lips, Jack jolted up and found himself sitting ramrod straight... on Ianto's bed.
Jack blinked a few times. How did he get here?
Ianto Jones sat next to him, one hand on his back, the other on his arm. In support, but mainly to calm him down. They were both wearing their pyjama trousers, and it seemed to be the middle of the night.
"Shh, Jack. You had a nightmare. You were screaming and thrashing around. I had to wake you up," Ianto explained calmly.
With a wild look in his eyes, Jack stared at Ianto. His heart was racing.
"Jack, it's alright. Please calm down," Ianto kissed him gently. "What happened?"
Jack squeezed his eyes together and shook his head, driving the dizziness away.
"Memories. From a really long time ago. I dreamt about the first time I died. The weeks after had been difficult, but not like... such a weird dream."
"It's over. Let's go back to sleep," Ianto suggested. It was past 3 o'clock in the morning.
Jack let himself sink back into the pillows. He tried to relax and closed his eyes. When Ianto tried to shuffle closer to lie close to him, Jack's body suddenly started to spasm and his back arched up from the pillows. An unearthly growl escaped his mouth that turned into a nerve-shattering scream.
"Jack? Jack!" Ianto shouted while he tried to grab his partner to push him back down on the bed. But Jack's body was rigid, lifting himself up into a sitting position. His head arched back, his scream ripping through the room.
"Jack! Snap out of it!" Ianto begged in panic. He didn't know what to do.
Suddenly the screaming stopped, and Jack fell limply back onto the bed. There he lay, motionless. His eyes rolled back so far that his irises could no longer be seen, staring up into nothing.
"Jack," Ianto asked with a small and terrified voice. He checked his pulse and could feel a steady heartbeat. "Jack!" he hollered more loudly while he shook his lover's lifeless body.
No reaction.
Jack's body was here, but his mind was gone.
Jack felt strangely boneless. The feeling of exhaustion was complete. He managed to open his eyes a bit but didn't see much, only a dark-lit room with pulsing blue lights. A dull feeling of pain emanated from several points all over his body.
His dazed mind didn't understand why.
With considerable difficulty, he managed to turn his head.
There was a creaking sound coming from his restraints when he moved. Strange sounds for metal restraints. Then his vision cleared, and he saw dozens of plastic cables coming out of his body, which connected him directly to the mainframe. Dread started filling Jack's heart, which quickly turned into panic, but he could not move.
"New Controller is activated, "a metallic voice sounded through the Control Room of Satellite 5.
"Welcome to my dream world, Jack," the disembodied voice sounded content. "I'm now in full control of your nightmares. Your memories will be my new home. Forever."
~~ fin ~~