The ROV is whining mindlessly, trying to please. Trying to GO.
Jack's knot begins to slip. The nylon line starts to play through the knot slowly.
Jack has got himself into a bad position. Along the bare rock face of the cliff wall he is naked, nailed in the spotlights like a rabbit in front of a truck. Saxon puts the hammer down, thrust levers all the way forward.
Flatbed surges forward, multi-limbed and demonic. There's no cover, side to side, up or down.
Saxon has him dead in his sights. Suddenly a bright glare blasts in, blinding Saxon. He looks up to see Cab One rushing down upon him, full throttle.
At the last moment Ianto slams the thrusters full-lock and the submersible slews sideways, slamming its heavy skidplate into Flatbed's cab. Saxon is smashed sideways by the shock. He fights to control his vehicle.
Ianto looks up to see Saxon's sub gun it up over the wall, out of sight. He cruises up over Jack. "Get in!"
Jack gets the lockout hatch open and clambers up into Cab One's belly.
Jack flops over the lip of the hatch and slams it shut. He ditches his helmet. Ianto raises his vehicle warily above the wall. Through the front port there is not sign of Saxon.
"You owe me one, Jax."
"Can we negotiate later? There's Big Geek." He points. Through the front port, they can see the ROV still straining at its leash. Ianto dives toward it, simultaneously working the controls to open his own small manipulator claws.
The last few feet of the rope slip through the knot.
Big Geek happily surges forward. It dives gracefully down into the void, trailing the yellow rope like a kite tail.
"Go after it! We gotta catch it!" Jack yells with alarm.
Flatbed drops behind them, dwarfing little Cab One. They are slammed viciously as Saxon's submersible hammers into them. Ianto hits full throttle. Saxon floors it after Ianto, ramming him from behind with his more powerful vehicle. With difficulty Ianto maintains trim.
He arcs back toward the rig. Flatbed slams him again, from the side. He fights for control.
Jack is tossed around, ricocheting off the walls. Ianto flies with his jaw set. Fighting hard for control. The A-frame of the rig looms before him.
He shoots through at full throttle.
Now the fight is really on. The two subs are dodging between the cylindrical modules at full throttle, slamming into each other and the steel pressure hulls.
Saxon sideswipes the smaller sub, jamming it sideways. It screeches along the flank of one of the trimodules.
They head out over empty terrain in a flat-out speed run.
Ianto is jinking and dodging as Flatbed, roars along behind him, tearing up the bottom with its powerful backwash. Ianto carves hard around a rock pinnacle, finding himself running parallel to the edge of the abyssal canyon.
Saxon is ramming, hammering from behind, then from side to side.
Ianto snarls. He's pissing him off. He shouldn't do that.
Ahead, out of the blackness, another outcropping.
Ianto rises, cuts right.
Smashes down into Saxon's craft. Timing it just right. He skids and catches in the rocks. Flatbed slews violently, nosing down. Crushing into the rocky bottom.
Pressing the advantage, Ianto hammers into Flatbed from behind.
It smashes full force into a second spire, spinning out of control.
Tangles together, the subs slide down an embankment toward the edge of the wall. With his one remaining thruster Ianto jerks clear of Flatbed and grounds his crippled sub. Flatbed tumbles over the edge.
The wall falls, trailing a cloud of sediment like a comet's tail, down into the unfathomable blackness below.
Inside the machine, Saxon is fighting for control. He has no buoyancy or motors and the craft continues its mad plunge. As the pressure intensifies the hull begins to groan, and steel fitting scream with the enormous load.
A tiny silver fracture shoots partway across the front bubble. Grows. Saxon gives up fighting. Just stares, wide eyed, at his death. A damned soul dropping into the bottomless pit.
The fracture line arcs rapidly across the dome port.
Suddenly, a scythe-like curtain of seawater, under tons of pressure, slashes into him. A moment later the bubble implodes, and Saxon disappears in a bloody froth of churning water, air and glass shards.
Flatbed looks like a toy, tumbling away down the wall.
Soon its lights vanish.
.
.
.
They're both going to have a lot of bruises...Ianto is surveying the damage. Water is spraying down on them like a shower, and lights are flickering.
"You did okay, back there." Ianto says "I was fairly impressed."
"Not good enough." Jack replies "We still gotta catch Big Geek."
"Not in this thing." Ianto is flipping switches. Nothing works.
"You totaled it, huh?"
"Yeah. So sue me" Ianto snorts.
Jack looks down. There's already about a foot of water sloshing around the floor at their feet. "It's flooding like a son of the bitch."
"You noticed." Ianto picks up and hand-mike of the underwater telephone. "Torchwood, Torchwood, this is Cab One, over."
He waits. No response.
"Try again." Jack prompts.
"Torchwood, this is Cab One. We need assistance, over. Torchwood, this…" With a SEARING CRACKLE or arc-light, a power panel shorts out and everything goes black. "Well, that's that."
"Wonderful."Jack sighs looking around "There's some light from somewhere..."
A faint illumination, dimmer than moonlight, washes in through the front port. Ianto scrunches up against the acrylic and scans the darkness.
"Over there. It's the rig." Ianto points.
A glow, beyond a rock promontory... like the lights of a town just over the hill in the desert.
"Good hundred yards, I'd say."Jack agrees.
"They'll come out after us." Ianto says confidently.
"Yeah, but it's gonna take them a while to find us. We better get this flooding stopped." Jack agrees. He picks up his helmet and clicks on the light. Using the thing like a bulky flashlight. The water is really pouring in, spraying them like a shower...almost two feet deep already.
"You see where it's coming in?" Ianto asks.
"Somewhere behind this panel." Jack mutters "Hold this."
Ianto takes the light and Jack tries to reach the burst weld, which is blocked by a steel switch panel and a bunch of conduit.
"Can't get to it. Have to pull this panel off." Jack pants "You go any tools?"
"I don't know, look around."
Jack scans the cramped interior, feels around under the water. It's past his knees.
"Nothing. Son of a bitch. All I need's a goddamn crescent wrench." Jack grumbles. He grabs the panel in both hands and starts torquing on it, trying to wrench it off the wall. Heaves on it repeatedly. Finally stops, panting. He's breathing hard now, and it's not just effort.
"Son of a bitch!"
"Calm down, Jack." Ianto begs, A nervous edge in his voice now. Jack's turning all around, looking around for anything, trying to think fast. Water up to their waists. The sea closing in.
"Okay... okay. We gotta get you out of here." Jack looks around frantically.
"How?"
"I don't know how!" Jack yells.
"We've only got one suit." Ianto points out.
"I know! I know! But we better come up with something." Jack says, his teeth chattering.
"Aaargh! I'm freezing!" Ianto climbs up on the pilots seat, scrunching right up against the ceiling, keeping as much of himself as possible out of the frigid water. He's shaking all over with the cold, and getting drenched from above by water pouring in. "Okay, look, you swim to the rig and come back with another suit."
"Seven, eight minute swim each way... not enough time. Look at this..." jack motions at the rate of flooding "Time I get back you'll be…"
That stops the conversation for a second. About two feet of airspace left. Jack can't believe what this is coming down to. They both stare at each other for a long moment.
Jack makes a decision. Starts pulling off his backpack. "Alright, put this on."
"What, you growing gills all of a sudden?" Ianto scoffs "You got it on, keep it on."
"Don't argue, goddamnit, just…"
"No way! Forget it. Not an option." Ianto slides from the seat to wrestle with him.
Jack has his pack off uncoupling it. Ianto keeps fighting his hands, stopping him, hooking it back up. The desperation of the situation fuels the struggle.
"Ianto, just put the thing on and shut up…"
"NO! Now be logical, Jack, you're…"
"FUCK LOGIC!"
They're both right up against the ceiling, water up to their chests.
Ianto's lips are blue and trembling from the cold. "Listen... will you listen to me for a second!? You're for the suit on and you're a better swimmer than me. Right? So I got a plan..."
"What's the plan?"
"I drown, you tow me back to the rig…"
"WHAT KIND OF PLAN IS THAT!?" Jack screams.
Ianto's gut-scared... shaking violently, his eyes wide. But he's keeping it together. Thinking it out. Jack see the bottomless pit opening to take him and he can barely think.
"Look, this water is only a couple degrees above freezing. I drown." Ianto says like it does not even matter "I go into deep hypothermia...my blood like ice water. I can maybe be revived after ten, fifteen minutes. You got all the stuff to do it on the rig."
Jack stops moving and looks into his face, inches from him. The water is up to their necks. He knows that, as always, infuriatingly, Ianto is right.
"It is insane."
"It's the only way, Jack. Now trust me."
Ianto takes a deep breath. Before his nerve fails he busies his hands on Jack's suit, rehooking everything.
"Jesus, I don't believe this is happening." Jack is trying not to sob as he looks at the only man he has ever loved like this.
Ianto raise his helmet. Water up to their chins. They lock eyes, inches apart. He can feel Ianto's breath on his face... maybe for the last time.
K
"Oh God, Yan... I…"
"Tell me later."
Jack grabs Ianto's head in both hands and pulls his mouth to his. They lock together in a fierce kiss, fueled by passion and terror... the naked realization of love hanging over the abyss of death.
Ianto breaks away at the last possible second and quickly pulls his helmet over his head. Seats is down over the neck ring. Lock the bail-out handle, sealing it. Even with his head pressing up into the highest point of the ceiling, Ianto's mouth is barely above water.
He gives a scared little laugh. "This is maybe not such a great plan, is it?"
He is half-paralyzed with the cold, shaking pathetically. Puts his face to the glass of his helmet. Seconds to go.
"Hold me. Hold me, Jack... I'm so scared..."
Jack can't hear him, but he read his lips. They clutch each other desperately. The embrace last while the water rises over her mouth and nose. Ianto starts to choke. His hands grip Jack's shoulders like claws. He bucks and thrashes.
The freezing seawater races into his lungs. His finger go slack, and his hands float lifelessly.
Jack holds him, and a scream tears loose from him, a pure agony of the soul.
"NOOOOO!"
Jack stares, transfixed, as the last tiny bubble trickles out of Ianto's open mouth. He kicks himself into gear, fingers frenzied as he spins the wheel of the lockout hatch.
.
.
.
TIGHT ON VIDEO SCREEN, one of the outside cameras. A ghostly figure swims out of the darkness, towing something. Toshiko notices "It's Jack. Oh my God... that's Ianto!"
"Torchwood, Torchwood, do you read?" Jack's voice is starting to faintly come over the speakers.
"Read you, Jack. We're here" Owen shouts as he leaps from his chair.
Jack swims with long, powerful kicks, towing Ianto. Ianto's arms and legs float as gracefully as seaweed waving in a gentle current. Jack's voice comes in short rasps, breathing hard, but icy with control. "Go to the infirmary... get the cart .. oxygen...de-fib kit... adrenaline in a... ten cc syringe... and some... heating blankets. You got all that?"
"Got it. Over." Owen barks.
"Meet me in the moonpool. Move fast"
.
.
.
The door crashes open and Jammer thunders in. He picks up the CPR cart, meant to roll on wheels, and carries it out past Owen, John, and Toshiko, who are crowding in to get the rest of the equipment. They ransack the place in about ten seconds, grabbing everything they might need and half of everythingelse.
Jack moves up toward the rectangle of light, towing Ianto to the diving platform. Through the surface we can see the others arrive at the edge, looking down.
Owen and John are setting up the cart and the oxygen kit, dropping things, making mistakes. Toshiko is teaching herself how to fill a syringe from a bottle of adrenaline.
"Here he comes!" Sonny shouts a warning.
Jammer and Sonny leap into the freezing water, waist deep on the submerged diving platform. Jack bursts to the surface. Together they haul Ianto across the platform, out of the water, and onto the deck. His skin is blue-white, his chest still.
Jack rips his helmet off in a near-frenzy, like a man possessed, a man with a mission. The others are galvanized by his energy even though they all see Ianto as dead, a corpse... cold and inert. Water flows from his mouth and nose and his lips are blue, his limbs completely limp. Owen peels back one eyelid, to find the pupil fixed and dilated.
But when Jack shouts for them to move, they move.
"Turn him over!"
They flip his husband's body over. He straddles him, pushing down with both hands in the middle of his back. Seawater gushes from his slack lips. He does it again until the flow stops, then flips him onto his back.
"Come on, hurry! Gimme the de-fib..."
Toshiko and John are fumbling with the emergency cart equipment. They've all been trained in CPR and use of the gear but that was years ago, and is a friend they're working on. They're all thumbs.
John drops the electrodes, picks them up quickly, hands them to Jack... "Here, here, here... no, you got to have bare skin, or it won't..."
Jack rips into his clothing, opening his jumpsuit, literally tearing away his T-shirt, revealing his bare chest... bony and still. "Jesus. Gimme those, come on. John, move it, man! Come on... come on!"
He slaps the things into Ianto's bare skin, one on the sternum and one on the side of the rib cage.
"Is that it? Is this right?"
"Yeah! I mean, I don't know... it looks right." Owen nods.
"All right. Do it!"
Toshiko hits the switch and Ianto's body convulses. It is a pure muscle reflex, and when it is over, there is not a hint of life. Owen pushes Jack back and puts a black rubber oxygen mask over Ianto's mouth. He opens the valve on the cylinder and starts pumping the squeeze bag. They start packing electronic blankets around him to fight the intense hypothermia
"Do it again, Toshiko. Zap him again!"
The current hits Ianto again and his back arches. Jack doesn't wait for a result... he's in his own reality now, driven. He's doing it all at once, somehow, in a senseless frenzy... pumping on his chest with his hands, squeezing the oxygen bag, placing the electrodes.
"Aw. Christ... come on, baby. Again! Do it again!"
Ianto's back arches. His body relaxes, inert.
"Come on, Toshiko... what are you waiting for?"
A hush seems to have fallen over the group. They know instinctively that it's over. But Jack can't accept it. He looks at them, beseechingly, like they are somehow intentionally holding out on him. Toshiko starts to cry, quietly.
"Jack, it's over, man. It's over." John says gently.