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The Age of Paradox 2.5: Miracle Day
Natalie appreciated that they were in a difficult situation right now, but she still wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea that they had only managed to find the man they were about to meet by threatening a relatively innocent woman. Janet might have been having an affair with her married supervisor, but in Natalie's opinion that just meant that the other woman had bad judgement rather than being a bad person in her own right, and Jack had been so comfortable scaring her like that…
Still, it wasn't as though they were currently blessed with an abundance of options right now. They had to find some kind of lead to what had caused this if they were going to have any real shot at putting the world back to normal, and so far PhiCorp was the only entity with the kind of corporate power necessary to do something like this who might have actually had anything to do with the strange transition the world had experienced. In the grand scheme of things, convincing a couple of known liars that their uncertain relationship didn't have a future wasn't exactly a crime, and if it led her and Jack to a clearer clue to what was going on, she could deal with the minor guilt.
As they entered the Los Angeles restaurant where their target was currently dining, Natalie concluded that at least they were only pretending to be threatening Janet in order to have this particular talk. If they had gone so far as to legitimately threaten an innocent person to get what they were after, Natalie wasn't sure she'd ever be able to look her father and Amy in the eye again.
"Love the vintage coat," one of the restaurant staff said as he took Jack's coat, only taking Natalie's offered leather jacket on automatic.
"Thanks," Jack replied as he looked the young man over. "Maybe the three of us should have a drink sometime."
"Three?" the young man repeated, looking at Natalie in a manner that she wasn't sure how to respond to.
"You, me and the coat," Jack said, slapping the young man's rear end before he walked briskly into the restaurant, looking around for a moment before he led the way to the upper level. Once Natalie had joined him, the ex-Time Agent walked resolutely over to a table near the edge of the upper balcony where a slightly overweight dark-skinned man in a dark suit sat opposite a more slender woman in a white dress.
"Well," the man who Natalie guessed was Stuart Owens said as she and Jack approached the table, "I suppose I should have the salad…"
"I'd go for the steak if I were you, with a very large bourbon and a pack of cigarettes," Jack cut in
"After all," Natalie put in, guessing Jack's current approach, "PhiCorp is the reason we're all going to live forever, right?"
"Excuse me," Stuart said as he put down the menu. "I think you're at the wrong table."
"You're Stuart Owens, aren't you?" Jack replied. "You're the Chief Operating Officer for PhiCorp Industries."
"You obviously know who I am or you wouldn't be here," Stuart replied curiously. "The question is, who are you?"
"We're associates of Janet," Natalie replied with a polite smile. "We met her at the bar you were planning to meet her at once you'd finished here… I take it your wife didn't know about that?"
As Natalie indicated the other woman, Stuart's wife glared between the three before she got up and left the table.
"Elizabeth-" Stuart called after her as he stood up himself.
"Don't go or we'll hurt her," Jack stepped in front of the other man. "My associates are holding Janet hostage. You need proof?"
When Jack handed Stuart his phone, Natalie drew on her entire military training to stare silently and resolutely at the man as he listened to Janet on the other end of the line. She knew that Janet would play along with their current request after everything they'd uncovered about Stuart's plans for her, and she had no problem with bending the truth like this in the name of getting answers, but this situation still put her in a grey area.
She knew that saving the world sometimes required moral compromises, but there were still so many situations she wasn't sure she'd ever be comfortable with…
"What exactly do you want?" Stuart asked Jack as he returned the phone to Natalie's new friend.
"I'll let you know when it's safe to release her," Jack said, before he hung up the phone and looked solemnly at Stuart. "The truth."
"About what?" Stuart asked, the two men sitting down at the table.
"The Miracle," Jack said, as Natalie took up a position behind him, eyes scanning for any sign of an attack; this was the most exposed Jack had been for a while, and as the only mortal man left it could make him a tempting target. "How was it done? Why was it done? How can it be undone?"
"Why would I have the answer?" Stuart shrugged.
"Because PhiCorp warehouses were stocked with standard painkillers long before the Miracle occurred?" Natalie pointed out; his uncertainty seemed genuine, but she wanted to be sure. "You can't expect us to believe that's a complete coincidence."
"That's your smoking gun?"
"You're a man in charge," Jack countered. "You knew it was coming."
"Mister…" Stuart began.
"Captain," Jack and Natalie corrected him simultaneously.
"Captain Jack Harkness," Jack clarified.
"Natalie Kriener," Natalie said, before she realised how that might have come across. "Just Natalie Kriener; no title."
"With the military?"
"Freelance," Jack replied. "We represent the people who are trying to stop PhiCorp."
"So that security breach on the thirty-third floor-?"
"That was us."
"It's not me you're after," Stuart sighed. "In fact, I've been trying to find out the truth just as much as you. I'm not a bad man, Mr Harkness-"
"Captain," Jack corrected (Natalie chose to assume he'd just recognised that Jack was the leader here rather than take that attitude as a dismissal of her own interest).
"I'm not a bad man, Captain," Stuart conceded before he continued. "I'm not a good one, either. I'm a middleman in every sense of the word. And faced with the thought of being who I am for God knows how long, I'm just as keen as you to find out exactly what's going on. Especially with the stock market threatening to collapse; a man like me… needs insurance. You don't believe me. You think I'm the epitome of evil, the devil in a three piece suit."
"In my experience, that's how it works," Jack acknowledged.
"Your experience must be rather simple," Stuart looked thoughtfully at him. "You have a rather archaic view of good versus evil, don't you?"
"We just like to tackle the simplest likely explanation first," Natalie observed. "So if you're not the one behind the Miracle, can you tell us who is?"
"I've been trying to find out," Stuart replied, leaning over to address Jack directly. "I've sent agents all over the world following the paper trail, the backroom deals, the holding companies within holding companies. That's when I came face to face with the true face of evil."
"The system itself," Jack said, Natalie only able to watch in silence as Jack demonstrated his greater experience of this particular type of 'evil'.
"Precisely," Stuart replied. "If the schemes and conspiracies are being plotted, then they must be seen only as patterns, waves, shifts that are either too small or too vast to be perceived. Someone is playing the system right across planet Earth with infinite grace, beyond any one person's sight. No, I'm sorry, Captain, but PhiCorp isn't controlling this. Profiting, yes, but this is part of a much larger design way beyond any of us."
"But how can you be part of it and not know what's going on?" Natalie asked.
"Let me give you an example," Stuart continued. "These warehouses full of drugs? No doubt you'd love to uncover an incriminating memo dated the day before Miracle Day signed by me authorising the stockpiling of painkillers. The truth is, a pattern like that began, say, maybe five years ago with the systematic increase in production in random factories around the world, based on market share projections. What was the warehouse?"
"Washington DC, Third and Boston," Jack answered.
"I'd imagine transportation of the drugs to the Third and Boston was then carried out over a twelve month period by, say, maybe five different haulage companies outsourced to seven or eight different independent suppliers."
"In other words, there's no way to specifically trace who gave the initial order for those drugs to be put into storage in the first place?" Natalie observed.
"Exactly," Stuart nodded at her. "Whoever is behind this, they don't show themselves. Not to me, not to you. But to play the system like this, the markets, the politics, industry, they had to be planning this for a very long time. I wish I knew who they were."
"So you've never heard any names?" Natalie asked, mind flashing back to that brief clue from the assassin during that close call. "Like… Costerdane?"
"No," Stuart replied.
"We were told… that the Miracle involves geography," Jack asked, taking up his own approach. "Does that mean anything?"
"No," Stuart conceded, looking at Jack with a more thoughtful expression. "But there is one word that my operatives picked up, dating back to the mid-nineties and then erased."
"What is it?"
"The Blessing."
"What does it mean?"
"There was a document from Italy from a source inside the Council of Ministers, a contact then deceased. It simply referred to The Blessing. It said, they have found The Blessing."
Natalie nodded in thought at that disclosure, before the sound of conversation from the other end of the balcony revealed a couple of men in security uniforms walking out. By the time Stuart Owens had turned back to face them, Jack and Natalie were already heading down the stairs at the other end of the balcony, Jack leading the way to the cloakroom where they could retrieve their coats before leaving the restaurant again.
As Natalie hurried to keep pace with Jack's footsteps, she could only hope that this small bit of information they'd retrieved would be worth the effort it had cost them to get this far. There was no way of knowing if 'the Blessing' would be of any use to their future efforts, but at least they'd gained some kind of new information from this effort…
The thing that horrified Gwen the most was that everyone in the camp was basically just going about their business. The idea that anyone could go to this much trouble to basically burn people to death would have been sickening on its own, but the thought that governments had given mass approval for these things…
As soon as she had confirmed the implications of the black smoke she'd seen coming from the modules, Amy had run for the nearest bin to be sick in it, and Gwen didn't blame her for that moment of weakness in the slightest. Once Amy had regained her focus, the two young women had turned their attention back to the matter of finding and relocating Gwen's father; they couldn't stop the camps, but if there was at least one person they knew in this camp they were going to get him out of here as soon as possible.
"Doctor Patel?" Gwen walked urgently up to the Indian woman she'd been directed to. "Are you Doctor Alicia Patel?"
"I'm sorry, can it wait?" Patel asked.
"No, listen, you've got to change this paperwork," Gwen passed her the clipboard. "There's been a mistake. It's about my father. Geraint Wyn Cooper, he's been placed in Category One, but he's not that bad, I swear. I've seen him, he's just unconscious."
"Well, it's debatable," the other woman said as she looked over the paperwork. "There's a fine line between Category One and Two-"
"And that's your official policy?" Amy glared at the woman. "The man just had a bad moment, but he's not that- Gwen's here to take him off your hands-!"
"I'm just following the guidelines given by the government-"
"So you're 'just following orders'?"
"We're under enough pressure here just trying to make a first check-over of each patient; if we make an exception for your father, we have to do it for everyone, and we just don't have the time-"
"Like I said," Amy said, giving the other woman a glare of contempt, "what it comes down to is that you're falling back on 'I'm just following orders', even when you know what's happening in there."
"There?" Patel asked, her apparent ignorance further costing her any respect Amy might have given her title.
"The modules," the young redhead clarified, as Gwen joined her in glaring at the woman. "Do you even know what happens in there? Do you have any idea what you're doing to people?"
"Under current emergency rulings, for the sake of public health, all individuals currently registered as Category Ones can be considered deceased and treated accordingly to prevent potential danger to public health-"
"Oh, don't try and act as though having the law on your side means you're in the right here!" Amy yelled indignantly. "You're just hiding here behind your precious paperwork to avoid facing the fact that you're part of a system of institutionalised murder in a modern concentration camp."
"This is an unprecedented state of emergency-"
"And you are not a doctor," Amy cut the woman off, keeping her tone cool as she walked up to stand eye-to-eye with Doctor Patel. "You've betrayed every oath you made when you earned that title; right now you're just condoning institutional murder in a modern concentration camp and telling yourself you're just doing the job."
"The entire healthcare system is about to collapse-!" Patel began to whisper at the other women.
"And sometimes all it takes is one person to say 'no' to stop something that you know is wrong," Amy countered, making her contempt clear as she glared at the woman. "You're a qualified medical professional and you're hiding behind rules and regulations in the face of a situation that you know is wrong; if you don't have the nerve to speak up, you should understand that you've lost every right you ever had to call yourself a doctor."
When Patel just stared at them in silence, Gwen and Amy turned and walked away, neither able to stomach talking to the woman any longer now that she'd made her position clear. Weaving their way around the other people in the warehouse, it didn't take long to reach an unguarded back door, quickly finding Rhys walking urgently past the building.
"Rhys!" Gwen called out to him.
"Oh my God," Rhys said, grabbing her by the shoulders. "I was driving them to the module… I was driving living people into the ovens-!"
"You didn't know what you were doing," Amy said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
"Amy's right," Gwen stepped forward to give her husband a reassuring hug as the younger woman stepped back. "You were just doing your job…"
Amy didn't bother to point out that this was the same excuse that Doctor Patel had given; unlike with the doctor, she knew that Rhys hadn't had any idea what he was doing in this camp until earlier.
"Well, I'm not doing it any more," Rhys said urgently. "I quit the blasted thing-!"
"Not until we can get Gwen's father out," Amy cut him off.
"But the compound's closed down now; they're not expecting any more movement orders until six-"
"Which is when they're taking my dad to his death, all right?" Gwen glared at her husband. "I need you to steal some keys, I need you to get hold of a lorry; I don't- I just need you to do something."
"…Of course," Rhys nodded.
"Nurses change over at five, so we can probably take advantage of the switch-over," Amy put in. "Gwen can get her dad, you get the truck, and I'll… make sure everyone's looking somewhere else, all right?"
In the end, it was almost easy to get everything in order for their impulsive break-out. Rhys found a truck with the keys still in it and put Jack down on the paperwork as the supervisor who'd authorised the transfer, and a quick call from Amy to a number the Doctor had provided put them in touch with a woman who introduced herself to Amy as 'Sarah'. Once Amy explained that she was a companion of the Doctor's and what she needed, Sarah had assured her that her associate 'Mr Smith' would be able to give them what they were looking for. Amy could only guess that Smith was the one who had answered the phone call Rhys mentioned the camp supervisor making to confirm his identity, but the important thing was that she and Gwen managed to get Geriant Cooper out of the building before anything else came up that might have delayed their departure.
"What do we do now?" Rhys asked, as Gwen and Amy loaded Geriant into the back of the truck.
"Get Dad home," Gwen looked firmly at her husband. "There's something Amy and I have to do here before we go back to the States."
"You're going back to America?"
"We need to be with the Doctor and Jack if we're going to stop this," Amy said firmly.
"I just have a thing or two to do at this end first," Gwen affirmed, leaning over to give Rhys a parting kiss before shoving him back towards the truck. "Get going."
As Rhys drove off, Amy and Gwen ducked back into the main warehouse as they noticed a group of soldiers firing after Rhys's truck. To Rhys's credit, he didn't let the sound of gunfire phase him as he continued on his current path, the truck literally crashing through the locked gate before it vanished into the darkness beyond the camp.
"Think he'll be OK?" Amy asked, as a couple of the soldiers ran for a nearby jeep.
"Rhys got officially involved with Torchwood when we found people harvesting meat from an alien whale; he's got a head start and he's a lot stronger than some people might think," Gwen smiled at her before adopting a more curious expression. "Think that contact of the Doctor's would be able to help us set up a video broadcast if I gave her the footage?"