Chapter 1

Jack sat staring into his morning coffee and thinking. Ianto's coffee tasted fantastic as always, but there was something strange about it that he couldn't quite place. It smelled foreboding, like a warning. Well. It was just like Ianto to put a warning in his coffee, but it wasn't much help if he didn't know what the warning was for.

He was just about to ask if Ianto had any ideas when the answer came to him, clear as a fresh spring morning. "AMES." The letters swirled in the cream, the lines twisted, but it was unmistakable.

"Ianto, you're seeing that, right?"

"Ames," Ianto said aloud. "Isn't that the surname of our new friend, the Deputy?"

"What does it mean, though? Be wary of Ames? Ames knows something?" Jack shrugged and took a sip. "Maybe we're reading this wrong, and this is actually gaydar coffee. The coffee says 'get his number.'"

"I'm sure that's it," Ianto said, and Jack could almost hear his eyes roll.

Jack smiled. "You know, this is a damn fine cup of coffee."

"I do my best, sir."

Jack arrived at the scene of the crime just as the sun was peaking over the tallest of the trees. The place had been wiped almost clean despite the murder taking place only days ago, with only remnants of yellow police tape tangled in the fences. The poles that the body had been hung on stood ominously over the open area, rusted red. Jack wondered why they had been so eager to clean a place as remote as this so quickly, if not to hide evidence.

"Small town police play it strictly by the book, eh?" Jack said, pacing leisurely around the clearing. "Any info on the girl?"

"Looks like her name was Nim Sudo, 18 years old. She'd just finished highschool, and was working at the local diner." Ianto hummed. "That's it. That's all I can find."

"What, no medical records? Legal records? Nothing?"

"Not a single speeding ticket or case of the sniffles listed here. Either Redwoods isn't keen on writing things down, or something's being hidden."

Jack hummed and crouched down next to the post. There was no blood to be found as far as he could see. The body had probably been moved here after the murder had already taken place.

"Looking for something?"

The voice came from behind him, but Jack didn't bother getting up to look around. He recognized it as Sheriff Stiff, from the day before.

"I would be, but your men seemed to have cleared the area," Jack said, rising to his feet and gesturing broadly.

"We've already been over the place a dozen times, Agent Harkness. Any evidence here has already been found."

"You'd think that," Jack said with a grin, "But you'd be wrong."

He reached into a pocket of his overcoat and brandished a tiny metal device with a clear lens.

Jack pressed his hand up to his ear. "It's a residual heat tracking device. We can set back the timer and be able to find anything that had an abnormally high heat signature around the time of the incident. It'll tell us, for instance, if anything that had been touched at the time has been left behind."

Jack thumbed back a time setting on the device's handle, and then held it up over his eye. Immediately his vision swam with color, and he had to fight down nausea. It hadn't been built for humans, and the information he was seeing was a little much to process all at once. He closed his eyes, opened them again, and slowly everything came into focus.

There was very little heat registered on the post, which confirmed his suspicions that the girl had already been dead when she'd been strung up. Footprints invisible to the naked eye wound around the area, those more recent glowing brighter than the others. Whoever had brought her here hadn't stuck around long afterword, or had left and come back later. There was a second set of footsteps fresher than the other, lingering and winding around the clearing.

Jack squinted and forced himself to look at something other than the ground. The color of the trees seemed to scream in his head, so many different shapes shifting in the breeze. A few of the leaves seemed brighter though, neon white. Moving toward them jack realized they weren't leaves at all, but bits of torn cloth that had been caught in the branches. There was a mark on the same tree as well, a dimly outlined handprint. They'd been in a hurry to get here, then, and were careless enough to get caught up in the trees.

Jack carefully scanned around the perimeter again, but couldn't find anything else that seemed relevant. He could see the heat signatures of where birds had rested, and the tracks of animals, but he doubted a gaggle of forest friends had assisted in the crime, other than to maybe take a nibble of the corpse.

It was disappointing, but coming up here hadn't been entirely pointless-

Jack reached up and grabbed his head. He'd put the scanner away, but pangs of pain hadn't faded, and had instead gotten worse. He gasped as he lost control of his footing and fell to his knees. His vision was blinking out, flickering into a glare of white.

And then suddenly it was gone, but the world around him had changed. All the color had faded to black and white, and though he could move, the Sheriff appeared to be frozen. He couldn't hear anything, but he could see the breeze still moving in the branches. Then he saw something else, someone else, a cloaked figure moving out through the trees.

He was wearing a red rain coat, and in his arms was a tarp wrapped around what could have been a body.

This was him. This was the killer he was looking for.

"Jack. Jack, are you-"

"-Okay?"

Ianto's voice faded into someone else's half way through. Jack opened his eyes and found himself lying in the dirt, leaves in his hair, staring up into the face of the Sheriff.

"Yeah, I'm fine, I just-" Jack groaned as he tried to sit up.

"You just collapsed out of nowhere," Stiff said. He didn't offer a hand to help him up.

"Yeah, well, it happens to the best of us," Jack said, dusting off his coat. What had that been? Some sort of hallucination? It felt like a memory now, like he'd actually been there, but foggy like he'd had a night of heavy drinking just before. Right now it felt like he had the hangover to go with it.

Jack groaned again and rubbed his forehead. "Ianto, check the records for last time it rained here."

"Just the other night," Ianto said. Jack felt the tension ease slightly just by hearing his voice. "The other night, right before the..."

"Right before the body was found," Jack finished.

"I don't see why that matters," Stiff said impatiently.

Jack didn't offer him an explanation. As far as he was concerned, Stiff had no part in the investigation.

"Where do I go to see the body?" Jack asked instead.

"Redwoods Hospital," Stiff said, narrowing his eyes. "But you'd have to be quick. They're cremating the body later this evening."

"Thanks for your help, Sheriff," Jack said, flashing a brief grin before he turned to walk back down the path to his car. He had places to be, things to see, and no time to play with a stiffy.

Deputy Ames was there to intercept him as he arrived at the hospital, leaning casually against a decorative fence leading up to the front doors. He rocked away from the fence and hurried toward him like he was greeting a friend, all smiles and handshakes, but Jack knew that he was only here to babysit him.

"It's a good thing you got here when you did," Victor said, patting him on the back. "You were almost too late."

"Yeah, would have been great if someone had warned me about this last night," Jack said, smiling back. He stepped past him and pushed through the doors. Follow away, Jack thought, but don't think for a minute that you're the one leading this case.

"I sincerely hope we haven't started off on the wrong foot," Victor said, striding determinedly after him through the entryway and down into the labyrinth of hallways. "I know the Sheriff can be a hard-ass, but I assure you that- Captain. Sir, do you even know where you're going?"

Jack stopped in his tracks at a set of intersecting halls, all of which looked identical.

"What do they need such a large hospital for?" Jack asked, tapping his ear.

"Farming accidents?" Ianto offered. "It must be easy to get hooved while bonding with the animals."

"Maybe you should lead the way," Jack said to Victor with a challenging smile.

Redwood Hospital's autopsy room was tucked away in a far corner of the basement, unmarked on any of the maps as far as Jack could tell. Their only medical professional was a woman in her late twenties, with pixie cut blond hair and a pair of thin rimmed glasses. She averted her gaze as Jack entered the room, busying herself with a clipboard and a pen that she tapped idly against her lips.

"Afternoon, I'm Captain Jack Harkness," Jack said with a grin that made her curl further over her clipboard, like a turtle retreating into its shell.

"Good afternoon, I'm, um, I'm…" she blushed. "Doctor Fred Martens. It's um, nice to meet you."

Jack stepped forward and reached for her hand, and when she sheepishly offered it in return, he brought it to his lips and kissed it gently.

"Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Martens," Jack said. Fred hid her face behind her clipboard.

Victor cleared his throat, but didn't say anything.

"Ianto, I think he might be jealous," Jack said, his eyes lighting up.

Victor held his authoritative stare, and cleared his throat again.

"This is a morgue, not a pub," Victor said flatly, his eyes floating down to the covered table before them. Jack wondered if the man had ever seen a dead body before. Redwoods didn't seem like a place with a lot of violent crime. "Let's focus on the investigation, and leave the fraternizing for another time."

"Of course," said Fred, her heels tapping on the linoleum as she moved to the side of the table and drew back the cloth.

Nim Sudo was a quirky looking young woman, with wide-set eyes and pouty lips. Jack looked at her fondly, thinking that she reminded him of someone he once knew; someone singled out for her beauty in a secluded area.

"She was such a nice girl," Fred said, gazing at her in distant melancholy. "Everyone loved her."

"Time of death?" Jack nudged, now wondering if she'd ever seen a dead body. This side of the petri dish was so fresh and innocent.

"Right," said Fred. "J-judging from the state of rigor mortis, the murder is estimated to have taken place between the hours of 20:00 and 22:00. There are cut marks on her back and shoulders, and several wounds on her neck that appear to be inflicted by…" she paused for a moment, biting her lip. "Teeth. Some sort of animal, probably. Sir, is it possible that this might not be a murder after all? Could it have been just an animal?"

"Keep going with your report," Jack said with a reassuring smile. "I'll find whoever did this, man or beast."

"A-alright," she swallowed thickly. "The cause of death was blood loss from the throat wound. No signs of a struggle. Also, her tongue appears to have been cut out with some sort of blunt weapon. And there are signs of… something in her blood. An unidentifiable substance. Drugs, maybe. That would explain why she didn't fight back."

Jack tapped his collarbone pensively, comparing the information with what he already knew or assumed.

"What time did it stop raining on the night she was murdered?" Jack asked turning his gaze on Victor.

"Was it raining?" Victor said, shifting. "I don't really notice things like that."

"Just past one in the morning," Ianto answered, in his stead.

"Thank you," Jack said, leaning down over the body. "I'm going to examine the body myself now, if that's alright with you, Ms. Fred."

The doctor nodded, flushing pink again.

Jack smiled and then looked away, scanning carefully over the cadaver before him. She had long, well maintained fingernails, painted black. Her hair was wavy and silken, the light of the autopsy room bleaching it almost white. Under her eyes, mascara had run to coat her cheeks as she cried in thick black smudges.

Jack leaned closer, and then unceremoniously stuck his finger into the girl's mouth, drawing back her lips.

"I once dated a guy who kissed like that," Jack said, "Never let him go down on me, he probably would have-"

"Bit it off," Victor said, staring at the body and not at Jack. "Whoever did this, they bit off her tongue, didn't they?"

The light in the room flickered brightly, and for a moment Jack was blinded. Then he saw the body change, and she was suddenly wearing a torn red dress, blood oozing sluggishly from her throat and congealing into a thick red puddle on the table. She sat up from the table and draped her arms around him, leaning in to kiss him, her eyes open and brilliant silver blue.

Jack covered his mouth with a tiny gasp. Fred and Victor were staring at him. Nim's body was back on the table, still as it had been when he got here. Silver eyes. He steadied himself on the table as he looked first into Fred's eyes, and then into Victor's. All of them, silver eyes. Them, and the creature that had attacked him, as well as-

He saw just a flicker of her face as he was looking into Victor's. Long dark eyelashes and startling silver eyes.

"That's what it looks like," Jack said, reorienting himself. He stared at Victor for another long moment, and then turned away, pressing his fingers up to his ear. "Ianto?"

"Present," Ianto chimed, chipper as ever.

"Sounds like the murder took place somewhere indoors," Jack whispered to him. "Judging by the state of her clothing and her oral situation, I'm assuming she went there willingly and probably had some fun before she died. Then after the rain had stopped, the killer took her out and strung her up, and left her there for someone else to find. Victor, who was it that found the body?"

"A young man named Blaire Falls, he used to go to school with Nim before he dropped out."

"Is there any way I can get an address?"

Victor frowned at him. "…Of course."

"Now then, if you'll excuse me, I think I need another coffee."

Chapter 1: CLEARED

TOTAL Number of Days: 1

TOTAL Enemies Defeated: 1

TOTAL Number of Continues: 0