Saxon and Schoenick are bending over the warhead. They have a small port removed and are attaching waterproof leads from an ELECTRONIC DETONATOR. The black box Ianto glimpsed earlier. As the two SEALs work like surgeons, we see past Saxon's shoulder to a hemispherical window behind him, which looks out into the perpetual blackness. Something appears... a goofy shark face.
Big Geek rises silently in front of the port. It moves a little, trying to get a peek over Saxon's shoulder.
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Owen is twiddling his joysticks, watching the screen like a ferret. "Come on... move to the left... just a little more... come on, A.J. Squared Away... that's it…"
Saxon is blocking Owen's view of whatever it is they're working on. Abruptly, be moves. The warhead is lying there in plain sight, detonator wires hooked up. Owen's eyes bug out. He knows exactly what it is.
"Pretty radical, guys. Pretty radical."
He hurries to the VCR and puts it into RECORD.
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..
Video image of the SEALs working. It FREEZES on a clear view of the warhead.
"Say hello to MIRV." Owen crows.
Jack has his face right up to screen. He frowns, skeptical.
"Come on, man. What else could it be?" Owen asks.
"Why bring it here?" Jack wonders.
Owen is excitedly spouting "It's gotta be, like, an emergency plan to keep it away from the Russians... Hotwire one of the nukes with some kinda detonator, put it back in the sub, and fry the whole thing, slicker'n snot. Oh, uh... hi, Yan."
Jack whips around. Ianto, standing quietly in the doorway. It's apparent from expression he's been watching them for some time. He looks ready to kill somebody.
Then he's gone.
Jack catches up to him in the corridor, trying to put the brakes on him.
"Look, goddamnit, if you won't do something about it, I will." Ianto snarls with anger.
"Ianto! Wait a second…"
Ianto reaches the watertight door to Maintenance Room B. It's locked. Before Jack can stop him he grabs a fire-extinguisher off the wall and pounds on the steel door like a big gong.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Needless to say, it opens. He pushes past Schoenick, see the bomb lying there naked.
"You've got some balls bringing this... thing... into my rig! With everything that's been going on up in the world, you bring a nuclear weapon in here? Does this strike anyone as particularly psychotic, or is it just me?"
Saxon steps in front of the weapon "You don't need to know the details of this mission... you're better off if you don't."
Ianto fires back "You're right... I don't. I just need to know that this thing is out of here! You hear me, Roger Ramjet?"
"Dr. Harkness, you're becoming a serious impediment to this mission. I believe the stress is affecting you." Saxon drawls, then turns to Schoenick "Escort him to quarters and have Monk prepare a tranquilizer."
Schoenick takes his arm in a tight grip.
IANTO
"Bullshit, you can't do that. Oww... goddamnit!"
Ianto goes bananas, trying to get Schoenick's big hands off his arms.
Jack slams his hand down on the intercom button. "Emergency! Maintenance room B. Emergency!"
He pulls the fire alarm for good measure and spins on Saxon... warning him with a look that is not to be messed with. Saxon is braced back against the worktable... an odd stance, with one arm behind his back. Suddenly there's a crowd outside the door as John, Owen, Toshiko, and Sonny come running up. Confrontation time.
Sirens going. About a million volts of electricity in the air.
Jack braces himself in front of Schoenick. "Let him go. Do it... right now."
He does. Ianto jerks away. Rubs his arms. "You dumb jarhead mother…"-
"Chill out, Ianto!" Jack barks.
"What's the problem?" John asks.
Everyone is frozen in place. Jack a Saxon... snake and mongoose, glaring.
Jack pulls Ianto back into the corridor. " "Nothing. We were just leaving. Weren't we?"
Jack's group moves out of sight up the corridor.
Saxon has his hands behind his back. In his hand, cocked, finger on the trigger, is the .45. He turns and sets it on the table, steadying himself as if in the wind.
He seems to sag. When he looks at Schoenick, his eyes are wounds. A hunted animal. Voice shaky. "They can't be trusted. They're turning against us. We may have to take... steps."
Ianto, Jack, Owen. Jack slows, letting them trail behind the others.
"Yan, stay away from that guy. I mean it." Jack orders.
"Yeah." Owen agrees "The dude's in bad shape... you see his hands?"
"He's got the shakes?" Ianto asks.
Jack stops walking and faces them all, his look on Ianto "Look, the guy's operating on his own, cut off from chain of command. He's exhibiting symptoms of pressure-induced psychosis. And he's got a nuclear weapon. So, as a personal favour to me... will you put your tongue in neutral for a while?"
"Man, I give this a sphincter-factor of about nine point five." Owen tells everyone.
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..
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Saxon goes to the dome port. Looks past his shrunken and twisted reflection into the void. Eternal night. Stuck to the acrylic bubble beside him is one of those Garfields, suction cups on its paws. Saxon stares out. Behind his eyes, his brain is like that cat, just hanging on, spread-eagle and screaming.
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..
Under a single worklight, a couple of conspirators. Ianto and Owen hunch over Big Geek. The ROV grins maniacally with goofy shark teeth.
Ianto is talking "Look, you can just punch into his little chip where you want him to go, and he goes, right?"
"Well, yeah, but the tether off it ain't gonna be fancy. When he gets down there he'll just sit, like a dumb-shit. Unless something wanders through view of the camera, you'll get nada." Owen shrugs.
"Let's go for it. We could get lucky."
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..
ON A SURVEILLANCE MONITOR.
Ianto and Owen next to Big Geek. Their voices are tinny but intelligible.
"I don't know. I really oughta talk to Jack about this." Owen's voice comes across.
SAXON. Watching them in the dark. Alone.
"No. Just you and me. We get some proof, then tell them. Owen, look... if was can prove to Saxon it's not Russians, maybe he'll ease off the button a little."
"I gotta tell you, that guy scares me a lot more than whatever's down there. A.J. Squared Away goddamn jarhead robot. Okay, gimme a couple hours on this." Owen replies.
Saxon watches, his jaw clenched.
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The lights are down. Those who can are grabbing some sleep. Snoring comes from one of the bunkrooms as Ianto passes. In the mess hall, John and Jack are crashed out on the tables, wrapped in blankets. The cold has gotten intense. Water drips. The walls sweat with condensation. Ianto can see his breath as he makes coffee. He carries a cup over to Monk, who is a face in a pile of blankets. A hand comes out, takes the coffee. "Thanks."
Ianto sips his, staring. His thoughts are far away... in the bottomless pit. He is leaning up against the table where Jack is sleeping. His soft snoring downshifts into a loud rasp. Ianto touches him gently on the shoulder. "Jax, turn on your side."
Jack grunts and turns without waking, an automatic response. The snoring stops. It is a quiet, intimate moment, a reminder of the mileage these two have logged together.
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..
SONAR SHACK
Sonny has made himself comfortable in front of the screens. Too comfortable. He's asleep, chin on his chest. On the main passive-sonar screen, an almost imperceptibly faint trace appears. A HUM, which is by now familiar, becomes audible. Sonny shifts in his seat. Doesn't wake.
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SUB BAY
Owen puts his tools away, finished with the modifications to Big Geek. "All set, big guy. Hey, I told you to wipe that grin off your face."
He yawns as he shambles across the chamber to the corridor door. Switches off the lights.
Goes out.
Quiet lapping of water in the moonpool. A beat. Then... A cold luminosity suffuses the water beneath the moonpool opening, sending shadows shifting across the top of the chamber. The surface begins to pulsate.
Suddenly, the water itself rises, forming itself into a shifting, shimmering pseudopod as big around as a man's body. The transparent form pulses... an amoebic mass shivering in the air.
It stretches, becoming a more refined form. Like a blindly probing glass python, it elongates and weaves across the room. It extends and extends, stretching out from the moonpool, a shimmering tentacle. The 'head' or tip, a featureless liquid bulb, seems somehow to be scanning as it moves forward, as if it can see where it's going.
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Owen trudges along the dark corridor. He reaches the men's head and goes in. As the door closes, the tip of the liquid pseudopod extends into the corridor. It 'looks' left and right. Then extends the length of the corridor, holding itself a couple feet off the floor like a weightless snake.
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three levels down through the central ladder well between the cylinders. The pseudopod enters and undulates upward.
Sonny and Toshiko are snoring, oblivious. Jammer is still unconscious. The pseudopod, taking its time, checks them out and then moves on.
In the Mess Hall, it's dark and quiet. Ianto has even fallen asleep in his chair, his head buried in her arms on the table. The shimmering tentacle enters the room in total silence. It sways gracefully in to air, searching.
It undulates across the room, hanging about five feet in the air, surveying everything. It moves past Ianto. Sensing something, he lifts his head, turning... sees the apparition next to him.
His eyes go wide.
Amazement, but not fear. The tentacle is moving on, still searching. Ianto shakes Jack awake, clapping his hand over his mouth.
Jack blinks twice, and then freezes. When he lowers his hand Jack's mouth is hanging open like a total goon.
Jack chucks his pillow are John, on the next table.
John cracks one eye open. Turns away. Turns right back... both eyes open now. Sensing movement, the thing turn back toward them. It seems to recognize Ianto. It doubles back on itself in a loop and comes right up to him.
He holds his ground, fascinated.
The bulbous tip forms suddenly into a human face... his face. It is water, still clear and undulating... but definitely Ianto. He gasps in surprise. The liquid-Ianto gasps soundlessly... a perfect mimic of her expression.
Ianto laughs involuntarily. It laughs... without sound. Ianto makes a face, sticking out his tongue... testing it.
The liquid-Ianto does the same. Jack has just had the rug jerked out from under his sense of what is possible and what isn't, but he's taking it pretty will, considering.
"I think it likes you" Jack whispers.
"It's trying to communicate." Ianto whispers back.
His liquid face suddenly transforms into a likeness of Jack's.
Ianto reaches out his hand slowly. Gingerly, his fingers touch the surface. Ripples extend outward from the contact, across Jack's features.
His fingertips break effortlessly through the surface, just like he's dipping his hand into a bowl of water, except sideways. He draws his wet fingers out and studies them, amazed. Touches one fingertip to his tongue.
O
"Seawater."
The pseudopod pulls back from him. It loops in the air dramatically, full circle... and ties itself into a knot. As the knot tightens down, it melts back into the body. The 'disappearing knot' trick.
Ianto laughs, grinning with the open wonder and delight of a child at a magic show. He is transported.
"Show off." Ianto laughs, then he looks at Jack. He grins broadly. He's with him now.
The stunned group watches as the thing moves on across the room. Out to the corridor.
Saxon and Schoenick enter the back way, through the dive-prep area. They see the pseudopod arching from the moonpool big as a tree trunk. Saxon's mind is blown. We can smell the insulation burning. He just stares.
The water tentacle enters and moves toward the hot-wired warhead. It studies the device for a few seconds. Jack and Ianto enter through a side door, in time to see the tentacle divide into four tendrils which wrap around the warhead. They begin to lift it off its cart.
Saxon finally jump-starts his brain. In a flash of insight, he runs to the big sliding door through which the pseudopod stretches into the corridor. He and Schoenick heave on the door. Like a guillotine blade it slices effortlessly through it.
The body of the pseudopod collapses, splashing on the floor. It reverts to nothing more than a long puddle of simple seawater. As the tendrils dissolve, the warhead slams back down onto the cart, unharmed. On Saxon's side of the door however, the "stump" rears back like a cobra. It withdraws rapidly into the moonpool. The glow fades away.
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Sonny wakes up with a start as the HUM revs up into a LOUD WHINE and then fades away. He scrambles to track it.
Too late.