Chapter Two
The three of them swept past the panicked woman at the bottom of the stairs, followed by the kid, who she stopped with one hand on his chest at last step. "What's happened to your telly?"
"They broke it," he said, trying to dodge around her.
"They what?"
He broke her hold of him and ran into the sitting room, where Gwen, Jack and Ianto stood staring at the small television. His mother followed him in and shouted at their backs, "You're paying for that!"
They ignored her; Jack ducked forward and turned up the volume.
"Bloody coppers show up at my door and break my son's telly! That's harassment, that is! I could press char-"
"Mum!" David turned to her. "Shut up, would you?"
She closed her mouth, glaring at him, then stalked off. From the tinny television speakers, the news anchor's slightly panicked voice popped and cracked in poor quality:
"We're being told that people are disappearing from the streets of Cardiff. Police are cautioning residents to stay indoors. We've been given very little information on what exactly these creatures are, but they are highly dangerous, as you can see from this clip caught by an unnamed source-"
The anchor disappeared and was replaced with mobile phone-quality footage of a large, flying creature descending on an elderly man in his front garden. It was reptilian and dark, with tough-looking skin, and as it landed on top of the man and started to tear at him, it seemed to glow around its head and mouth as if it were on fire inside. The screaming sound it made, coupled with the screams from its victim, made Gwen turn her eyes away.
To Jack. Whose face was openly shocked.
"What are they?" she asked, stepping toward him, trying to keep herself from looking at the screen, even as Ianto continued to stare, mesmerized by the footage.
"Reapers," Jack breathed. He looked at David. "What did you do?"
David's eyes grew huge. "What? Nothing!"
Jack stepped up to him, jabbing a finger at his chest as he spoke. "Reapers are attracted to disturbances in time. They feed on temporal paradoxes. This is somehow related to whatever just happened to you, so unless you'd like the world to end, maybe you should tell us about it!"
David stepped back, looking terrified. "I didn't do anything! I was just standing there, right, and there was this great flash of light and – I fell into this white thing, and a few seconds later I was back in the same place I'd been, but-" He hesitated, his eyes flickering over their faces. "You'll think I'm mad."
Ianto pointed at the television, looking at David. "Monsters. In Cardiff."
David swallowed a nodded. "Point. Well-" Jack made a hurry-up gesture with his hand. "I saw myself. Myself, like, a few seconds before the flash of light, standing there. And he – I – saw me. And ran off. Then the flash came again, and after it was gone I saw the other me sort of – disappear in this weird gold light."
Jack stared. "You are either the most lucky or unlucky kid on the planet."
Gwen grabbed Jack's arm. "What's he talking about?"
"The rift," Jack said, looking at her. "It took him. But the place it took him to was only a few seconds before and a few feet away. So he saw himself – the Him that was supposed to be taken by the rift saw the Him that was taken by the rift, and he ran off. So he was never taken in the first place." He looked at David. "A paradox. A total fluke of the rift."
"So – it's not my fault, right?" He looked desperately between Jack and Gwen.
Ianto looked to Jack. "What exactly are these things? What are they doing?"
Jack turned to look at the television, where the footage was being played over and over again. "The Reapers. Time's Swiffer Dusters." He looked between them. "They live in the time vortex and wait for a temporal anomaly, like a paradox, to open up a new dimension. An alternate one from the way that things are supposed to be. Then they enter that dimension and destroy it. The older something is, the tastier it is, and they start with the sentient beings first, then work down to physical things. Then nonphysical things. Then Time itself. Until there's nothing left. No trace of the alternate dimension." He locked eyes with David. "That's what's happening out there right now."
"Rhys," Gwen said suddenly, and dug in her pocket for her mobile, then tapped his speed dial and pressed it to her ear. The others watched as she waited. It didn't ring. Instead, a man's voice, sounding distant, like poor reception, came on the line. She held the phone away from her ear, looking at it. "What's that?"
Jack took the phone from her and listened.
"Watson – come here – I need you."
His eyes went wide and he slapped his forehead. "Of course! Anachronisms." He gave the phone back to Gwen. "I should have recognized it from the call Ianto got in the Tourist Office. That's the first phone call ever made by Alexander Graham Bell. The disturbance in time caused by the Reapers being in this dimension throws the phones out, then-" The television went to static. Jack glanced at it. "Then TV and radio."
Ianto flipped the television off. "Well, that won't start a panic."
"There won't be anyone left to panic if we don't – Hey! Where do you think you're going?"
Gwen was running for the front door. She called back over her shoulder, "We have to get Rhys. Now. Hurry up!" She left the door open behind her and ran down the front garden toward the SUV.
Jack started after her, then paused and grabbed David's arm. "You're coming with us."
"Why?" That terrified look had not lifted from his face for even a second.
"We'll need your help to stop this." Jack looked him in the eye. "It's all right. We won't hurt you."
David swallowed, then called back over his shoulder toward what was probably the kitchen, "Mum, I'm – I'm going out!"
The answer came, "And stay there!" Followed by low mumbling.
"Charming woman," Jack said gruffly, and pulled David out of the house, followed closely by Ianto.
- - -
They pulled up outside of Gwen's flat about ten minutes later. Gwen and Ianto leapt out and hurried up to it, leaving Jack and David in the car.
Rhys was in the kitchen, mobile in his hand, pacing. When Gwen burst through the door, he looked up with equal relief and irritation. "What the bloody hell, Gwen? I've been trying to get ahold of you – news is on about monsters and people disappearing and of course I know it's you lot working on it-"
"Rhys!" Gwen grabbed his arm to stop the rant. "We've got to go. Come on!" She pulled him out of the door. Ianto gave an awkward little nod as they went past and shut the door behind them.
Outside, the rant continued. "I've had it just about up to here with these 'emergencies' – why can't the bloody aliens just stay on their own damn planets and stop coming to bother us? Aren't there other planets out there for them to be going to? And what is it about Cardiff, anyway? London, you'd think, more sci-fi and everythin-" He stopped dead, staring up into the air. "The hell is that?"
Gwen and Ianto followed his gaze. Twenty feet in the air above them, a Reaper looked back at them with eyes on fire. They froze, mouths open, and stared. Then it screamed and opened its wings and dove, and they were moving, running for the SUV. Rhys tripped and Gwen turned back to help him – and the Reaper landed on top of him and battered him with its wings, mixing its screams with his.
"Rhys!" Gwen went to run at the creature, but the blue-clad arms suddenly around her middle prevented her from going anywhere. Jack yelled back over his shoulder for Ianto to get the SUV started and began to drag Gwen, kicking and struggling, away from the Reaper and Rhys and toward the car. As she watched, Rhys disappeared, and the Reaper turned its eyes on them again.
Jack threw her into the back of the SUV next to a horrified David, leapt in after her, slammed the door closed and told Ianto to drive.
- - -
"Jack, we have to go back, we have to find-"
"Gwen!" Jack grabbed her by the shoulders. They were in the hub, just past the rolldoor, and Gwen's mascara was tracked down both of her cheeks from her crying. "You have to pull yourself together. We'll save him." He ducked his head to look at her face. "We will. But first we have to stop what's happening out there." He waited for her to nod, and when she did he released her and walked to the workstations.
"How are we going to do that?" Ianto asked, following him, taking his coat as he shrugged out of it.
"Remember Archangel?" Jack started typing at the computer terminal.
Ianto folded the coat over his arm. "The mobile network? Didn't they go out of business after Harold Saxon died?"
"Yeah," Jack said, smirking very slightly. "Something like that. Well, the satellites are still there." He stepped away so that Ianto could see the image on the screen – fifteen satellites orbiting the Earth. "Still working. And I've got them patched into the Torchwood server."
Ianto looked at him, confused. "What for?"
"This," Jack said, and hit the Enter key.
There was a strange jerk, as if the entire Earth had jumped a few meters. Then everything settled, and Jack pulled up the CCTV feeds.
"What did you just do?" Gwen came up the stairs and over to them, peering at the screen. There was nothing moving outside, as Jack cycled through the feeds. No people, no Reapers.
"The time lock," Jack said, grinning. "I applied Tosh's time lock to the Archangel satellites. It's transmitting to the entire planet. Anything trying to work against it is caught in it, so the Reapers are – paused, I guess. It isn't permanent, and when it fails it's probably going to break the whole time lock mechanism, but I think it's worth it, don't you?" He looked between them. They nodded.
"What are we going to do when it fails, though?" Gwen looked at Jack. "How are we going to stop them?"
Jack took a breath. He let it out. He looked to the cog door.
To David, standing awed, staring up and around at the hub.
"We use him."
David looked quickly to Jack. "What?"
Gwen echoed, "What?" She stepped toward him, between David and Jack. "What are you going to do?" She was peering hard at him.
He didn't look at her; he looked over her shoulder, to where David still stood, looking uncertain, frightened. "We use him. This is happening because he was supposed to go through the rift. The only way to fix it-"
"No." Gwen, wide-eyed, stepped away from Jack and closer to David. "You can't."
Jack's voice was stern. "It's the only way."
"You can't make a sixteen year old boy sacrifice himself, Jack!"
"What?" David backed against the bars of the exit cage, staring at them. "What do you mean, sacrifice myself?"
Gwen turned and moved toward him, down the stairs. "He wants you to throw yourself into the rift."
"What's the rift?"
Jack spoke over her. "There's a rift in time and space that runs through Cardiff. Sometimes people are lost in it. You were supposed to be-"
"He could end up at the center of the sun, Jack!"
David looked further horrified. Jack turned his eyes to Gwen, his face deadly serious, his hands gripping the railing of the hub's upper level as he peered down at her.
"This is the only way to bring Rhys back."
He watched as Gwen went completely still. Her eyes went wide and unfocused. Her mouth drew into a tight line across her face.
She looked as though her whole world was imploding inside of her head.
She looked back at David. She opened her mouth. She closed it. Opened it again.
She walked off, disappearing somewhere into the hub.
David stared after her, then looked at Jack. "What are you talking about?"
"Time has been damaged," Jack said, grave and calm. "When you came back through the rift and scared yourself off, you created a paradox. A second reality, where you never went through. That's why those creatures are attacking people. They want to destroy this second reality, because it isn't supposed to exist. The only way to heal Time now is either to let them do it – let them destroy everything – or to knit the two realities back together by sending you through the rift again. If we do that, everything will go back to the way it was. Only we have no idea where you might end up, and there's no way to get back here again."
David looked like he was going to cry. Ianto, silent, standing beyond Jack by the computer terminals, understood completely. Fifteen minutes before he was playing videogames in his bedroom. Now he was in a huge underground base being told that the only way to save the world was for him to essentially kill himself.
Ianto stepped forward and said quietly to Jack, "How long will the time lock hold?"
Jack looked to him. "A few hours. Four at most."
Ianto glanced to David. "Give him time to decide." He met Jack's eyes. "Please."
Jack held his gaze for a few moments, then nodded. To David, he called, "You have two hours to think about what you want to do." To Ianto he quietly said, "Keep an eye on him. Can you?"
Ianto nodded. Jack turned and walked into his office.
Ianto stood on the hub's second level with Jack's coat still draped over his arms, looking down at David, who stood with his hands shaking at his sides, staring at the floor between his shoes, his breath coming in little hitching gasps. And there was silence.