Coffee Boy meets the Cybermen
Chapter 2
That day, the 8th of July, 2006 started like so many of the ones preceding it with Ianto waking Lisa with a fresh mug of coffee. Her naked form sprawled on his bed. A light sheet did little to disguise the sensuous curves of her body. "Delicious", she said. He had to agree.
At work he trudged through paperwork made more pleasant by recollections of the previous night. The twelve o'clock ghost shift did little to disrupt his day. Everyone was now used to the ghostly forms gliding around at regular intervals. Ianto wondered, as he always did, if one of the ghosts was his mum. Sometimes he thought he could smell her perfume.
Although it was top secret he knew that it was Torchwood that was causing the ghosts by trying to harness power from the void. It nagged at him slightly, he didn't really trust his employers to show restraint when using the technology at their disposal. Before the ghosts there had always been whispers in the corridors that spoke of "incidents". People had changed, or in some cases had disappeared, often connected with some new alien discovery. Plugging the electricity grid into the space between universes did seem like a rather large risk to take.
During the 3 o'clock ghost shift everyone in the Torchwood facility at Canary Warf saw the ghosts turn into Cybermen. A twist from paranormal fantasy into science fiction horror. And all around the world they were changing.
Ianto had been looking directly at a ghost when it happened. His co-worker Frank was up to his usual games. Frank Lyon loved taunting the ghosts. Or, to be more accurate, messing with the ghosts to get the attention of the girls in the office. Most of the girls thought of the ghosts as a tribe of long lost relatives and anything other than abject respect left them shrieking and begging Frank to stop.
Frank was doing his normal trick of "inserting" objects in to the ghosts. The ghosts were completely insubstantial so things went right through them. Frank had moved on from his usual "back passage insertion" joke and was sliding a ruler into one ear and out the other. "See" he said to Cassie "Your, very much respected Great Uncle Jake has no brains." Cassie Preece glared at Frank like he was a forgotten sandwich found a week later in the bottom of a lunch box.
Ianto involuntarily smiled. Cassie was only a lab technician, a heartbeat above his own position, but she would hardly acknowledge his existence. She acted like she ran the lab and spent her time sucking up to the head scientist and their boss, Simon Denbone. Ianto's smile was quickly replaced by a look of puzzlement when the ghosts resolved themselves into strange metal monsters.
Ianto's first reaction was fascination, a sentiment shared by his co-workers. They were used to working with alien robotics and here standing in their lab were five fully functional, human shaped robots.
Frank jumped back from his plaything with a yell.
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