17
The crew make their way toward the bridge.
Those close enough to get a view out the window are looking freaked - those already on the bridge are stock still. Pressed up against the glass of the window is Ianto, just staring.
An armada.
The black sky is filled with what must be ninety ships in a vague cluster, as Torchwood breaks frame headed toward them. Most of them hang still in the air. Some move swimmingly about. Some turn in gentle drifts, as though looking around.
They all wait, tensed up, as they approach the armada...And arrive, moving slowly through the ranks of ships.
Torchwood passes a large, bizarrely shaped ship. It turns, as though watching her.
But lets her pass.
Another minute, and Torchwood is through the Armada, headed for the small planet just beyond.
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The Agent stares blankly at the Ensign. "Define "disappeared"."
The Ensign just looks uncomfortable.
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Toshiko, Owen and Ianto have left the bridge. The clouds fog the windows, so nothing below is visible.
Martha is confused as she calls to Jax "Every reading I'm getting says normal. Oceans, land masses... no tectonic instability or radiation."
"Yeah, but no power, either." Mickey adds.
"Nothing at all?" Jax asks.
"Wait." Mickey suddenly cuts in "Something. Might be a beacon, but it's awful weak."
"Find it." Jax demands.
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Torchwood touches down. After a moment Jax, Martha and Rhys emerge from the airlock in full suits, armed.
Martha reads a handheld scanner.
"Gravity's Earthnorm." Jax speaks before she can, guessing the reading she is unable to understand.
"02 levels check, pressure... if there's anything wrong the scanner isn't reading it." Martha agrees and Jax pulls off his helmet. Breathes, looking around him.
"Well something sure as hell ain't right" he mutters.
They're in a citadel.
Gleaming metal, spread out for miles in every direction. Portions decimated by fires long since cold, others overgrown with weeds, but mostly intact. But silent, as if trapped in amber.
"We flew over at least a dozen cities just as big. Why didn't we hear about this?" Rhys wonders.
"Beacon's up ahead." Jax indicates and strides forward, man on a mission.
Out of their suits now, Jax, Martha and Rhys take point as the entire crew walks along the street, looking about them.
Martha calls out and she moves rapidly, gun out, to a skeleton Face-down on the ground, clothes tattered. She examines it as Jax approaches, waving the others back. "No entry wound, fractures..."
"Poison?" Jax wonders.
"Got another one!" Rhys yells by a downed hovercraft. Inside are three skeletons: two grown-ups and a small child. Clothes in better condition, and again no sign of violence. "They's all just sittin'. Didn't crash..."
Ianto is quietly becoming more and more upset.
Toshiko walks in front of an office building, staying away from the cars as she hears Rhys bellow "Couple more here..."
The corpse of a woman is pressed up against the glass wall right behind her. Mouth open, skin dead blue, terribly skinny... a thing to haunt.
Owen sees and starts, "Toshiko... Come this way. Come here. Don't –"
But she looks and screams "GAAAAaaoh Gods!"
She steps back, horrified, as the others approach. It's an office. About half the employees are there, in chairs or on the ground, all in the same state as the first fellow.
"How come they're preserved?" Rhys turns to his Captain.
"Place must've gone hermetic when the power blew. Sealed 'em." Jax surmises.
"What're they doing?" Toshiko sobs softly "What's everybody doing?"
Owen is against the glass looking at them with a clinical eye, "There's no discoloration, nobody's doubled over or showing signs of pain..."
"There's gasses that kill painless, right?" Jax asks him.
"But they didn't fall down. None of them. They just lay down." Rose points out as she looks at one curled in the foetal position on the floor.
"More than anything, it looks like starvation." Owen is confused too.
"Anybody want to bet there's plenty of food around?" Jax calls out.
"They just lay down..." Rose whispers.
They notice Ianto now, in the middle of the street, keening.
He drops to his knees, clutching his head.
As he speaks we see, as he sees... bodies. In homes, in piles: an entire world, gently dead.
"Make them stop, they're everywhere, every city every house every room, they're all inside me, I can hear them all and they're saying nothing! GET UP! PLEASE, GET THEM UP! , please Gods make me a stone..."
"He's starting to damage my calm." Rhys growls.
"Rhys" Martha warns.
"He's right! Everybody's dead! This whole world is dead for no reason!" Rhys cries as he turns in a slow circle seeing what Ianto does for the first time. And he is ready to piss himself.
Mickey is unnerved as well and speaks up "Let's get to the beacon."
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It's small - landing is easier in cities with flying vehicles. At the end of a short runway, tipped and damaged, is an Agency Research Vessel. The gang makes its way towards it.
It's a mess, doors pried open, signs of violence but no bodies. The gang walks through it, looking around.
Ianto pulls away from Owen, suddenly determined. He approaches a console, and a small cylindrical object. He turns it slightly – a hologram squawks to life amidst them all. First we see images that resemble the flashes from Ianto's mind: Corpses, everywhere. We hear and then see Doctor Mary standing exactly where she was when she recorded this message...
(As she speaks, we see angles of everyone watching, taking it in.. Ianto silently mouths every word.)
"- just a few of the images we've recorded, and you can see it isn't.. it isn't what we thought. There's been no war here, and no terraforming event. The environment is stable. It's the Pax, the G-32 Paxilon Hydroclorate that we added to the air processors. It's..."
She stops talking as she starts to weep, then continues to speak.
"well it works... it was supposed to calm the population, weed out aggression. Make a peaceful... it worked. The people here stopped fighting. And then they stopped everything else. They stopped going to work, stopped breeding... talking... eating...There's thirty million people here and they all just let themselves die. They didn't even kill themselves. They just... most starved. When they stopped working the power grids, there were overloads, fires – people burned to death sitting in their chairs. Just sitting."
There is a loud bang somewhere behind her - she starts, gathers herself.
"I have to be quick. There was no one working the receptors when we landed, so we hit pretty hard. We can't leave. We can't take any of the local transports because..."
The bang again.
"There are people... they're not people... about a tenth of a percent of the population had the opposite reaction to the Pax. Their aggressor response increased... beyond madness. They've become …they've killed most of us... not just killed, they've done...things."
"Munchers..." Mickey says quietly with growing horror "they made them..."
"I won't live to report this, and we haven't got power to... people have to know... We meant it for the best... to make people safer... to... God!"
She whirls, grabs a gun and fires - then aims the gun at her own head - but a Muncher is on her, knocks the gun away and bites her face –
She screams continuously as the Muncher tops her, biting at her and tearing at her clothes, at her skin.
"Turn it off." Rhys chokes and Mickey does, nobody saying anything.
Jax walks outside.