Chapter 3
"KING'S CROSS CHANGE HERE FOR THE PICCADILLY LINE" the intercom bellowed through the underground train.
"Come on that's our stop." Jack said getting up from his seat (which he had been lucky to have considering how pack the train was) he slid Gwen's suitcase to her as she was sat the furthest away and happened to have her suitcase the nearest to the door.
All six of them filed out the stuffy train and onto the cool platform, following the exit signs they made their way through the maze of platforms and stations and out into the fresh air.
Jack paused by a wall so he could find the location of the hotel and navigate them all to it.
10 minutes later they found themselves in the lobby of the hotel Callisto. The receptionist looked suspiciously at the group as they arrived through the small doorway, she had spotted Tegana and thought it strange that there where so many adults with one child. Jack signed in and got the room keys (he had booked two rooms as it was only three to a room).
"I'll take the suitcase dad." Tegana said taking her own suitcase of Jack so he had a free hand to sign the various papers. The receptionist seemed to relax when she heard Tegana refer to Jack as dad, now she realised that one of the adults was her father she didn't seem so worried.
On the landing, Jack handed Gwen a key.
"You girls take that room." He indicated to the door reading 19. Gwen had already put the key in the door and opened in while Jack was still speaking.
Tosh, Tegana and Gwen put their cases against the wall and looked about the room.
"I'm having that bed!" Tegana said jumping on the bed in the corner. No sooner had they all sat down on their chosen beds did there come a knock on the door.
Gwen answered it.
"Gee Jack can't you leave us alone for one minute!"
"When you're finished settling in come next door, staff meeting." Jack told her and then promptly left.
"You all heard right?" Gwen asked Tosh and Tegana, they nodded.
"Good, don't have to repeat it then." She said to herself.
There was a small wardrobe on the left side of the room, Tegana and Tosh had already begun put their clothes into it, organising them in neat piles. Gwen added her not so neat piles of clothes to the wardrobe. When they had all finished and their suitcases emptied and placed under their beds, they found their way over to the 'staff meeting'.
"Right I have a list of things we need to do: Gwen tomorrow I want you to go over to Mrs Hannigan's see what you can find out…"
"Can I go with her?" Tegana piped up knowing that if she said nothing she would either be staying at the hotel with Ianto or tagging along with Jack who would be constantly annoying her with his checking up on her safety.
Jack looked at her, he knew he couldn't keep her under constant surveillance and would one day have to let go. He sighed.
"Ok, Gwen, keep an eye out for her." Jack gave Gwen a hard stare to show that he really meant it.
"Owen, Tosh I want you to take a good look around the riot wrecks, see if you can spot anything to link it up, meanwhile I'll be using the computer to see if picks up anything, probably be wandering around the wrecks too." Jack concluded. The meeting ended and they separated for the night.
"Are you sure this is the right door?" Tegana asked Gwen as she opened the gate.
"Yeah number 8 says so in the paper!" Gwen showed Tegana the newspaper clipping that she had ripped out of the paper before she had left the hotel. Folding it back up and stuffing it back in her bag, Gwen knocked on the door.
A middle aged woman opened the door.
"Mrs Hannigan?" Gwen asked politely.
"Yes what can I do for you?" the lady answered.
"I am from the FBI, I've been sent to try and concluded this investigation, if you please Mrs Hannigan." Gwen gestured past Mrs Hannigan and she moved out of the doorway and let Gwen and Tegana in. She guided them into the kitchen and went to the kettle.
"Can I get you a cup of tea, miss…"
"Cooper, Gwen cooper and this is Tegana Harkness, she's on work experience." Gwen informed Mrs Hannigan, feeling she had better explain why a 14 year old was part of a FBI investigation before it got too suspicious.
"You look a bit young dear." Mrs Hannigan observed.
"I do look quite young for my age; apparently I don't like to grow!" Tegana saved the situation with a little humour, something that she had gotten from watching her father in difficult situations like this.
"Now Mrs Hannigan, if you please we would just like you to account the incident in your own words for us, try to remember every detail even if it sounds a little silly now." Gwen edged the conversation back to the reason they were here.
"How many more accounts must I give? Please Miss Cooper call me Anna."
"Well if we're going to be on first name bases, call me Gwen." Anna smiled, she liked Gwen, she had decided.
"Very well, Gwen, it happened a few days ago, it was my son, Roberto's, 20th birthday and he had gone out to the pub with some of his mates to celebrate, you know what young boys are like, so I wasn't expecting to be home early, although he had promised to be home at half past 10. He usually tries to keep his promises, so at 11 I decided to take a look outside see if he was insight, check that he wasn't rolling drunk on a pavement somewhere. Well I found him, he was lying in the middle of the road, I somehow managed to pick him up and drag him home, only then did I realise he was dead." Anna Hannigan was close to tears at this point. Tegana put her arm around Mrs Hannigan's shoulders, guiding her to a chair and imposing that she sit.
"It's alright Mrs Hannigan, we understand." Tegana said softly.
"Anna, do you remember anything else, anything unusual?" Gwen asked gently so as not to sound too police-like.
"No, I don't think so; wait yes there was something…" Mrs Hannigan said through her sobs. She took a tissue from the box conveniently placed on the table and dried her eyes as she began to remember what she had seen.
"I think, I remember seeing two men walking away from me, they were all dressed in black, from head to foot, I thought it strange but at the time I was more worried at getting Roberto home, so I must have wiped it out of my mind." Mrs Hannigan remembered vividly the two men now and could not understand how it was that she had come to have forgotten them.
"Anna was there anything else unusual, I mean did these men carry something, was there something on the ground nearby or…"
"Yes come to think of it they both carried guns and they didn't seem like any ordinary guns, great big whoppers they were." Mrs Hannigan recalled. Gwen stood up.
"Thank-you Mrs Hannigan, we can now conduct a full report and possibly get a led on these strange men." Gwen said suggesting that they were leaving. Tegana arose from her seat, looking with pity at Anna. She was trying to imagine how she felt but decided it was impossible to know without experience it yourself.
Tosh and Owen where wandering around the empty carcass of once nice buildings, they were searching for anything unusual or alien.
"We haven't found anything, can't we just go back? This pointless!" Owen whined, he kicked a tin can away from him.
"Owen! This may look pointless but we are not going anywhere until we either find something or get a call from Jack, ok?" Tosh was quite anger at Owen for saying such a thing.
Owen mumbled something which sounded like a sarcastic ok.
They turned into a derelict news shop. Owen kicked the rubble out the way then paused. Something was on the ground, something that looked very out of place in amiss of the stones and glass. Owen picked it up cautiously and looked around it before alerting Tosh on the find.
"What do you reckon it is?" Owen asked knowing that she would be more likely to be able to give an almost correct assumption.
"It looks suspiciously like a part of a gun, although I don't know it looks very alien to me." This was as far as Tosh could take her analysis without the use of her equipment.
Gwen and Tegana stood in the porch of Mrs Hannigan's house; they had shown themselves out and left Anna to compose herself in the kitchen.
"You were really good; I would've believed you actually were a policewoman." Tegana complemented Gwen.
"I was a policewoman before I met Jack and joined Torchwood." Gwen said casually getting out her mobile phone.
"What? You actually were a policewoman?" Tegana asked even though Gwen had basically already explained it.
"Uh huh." Gwen replied typing in a number on her phone.
"Just gonna call your dad, let him know we're coming back and possibly mention those all-in-black bodyguard guys, so he can start looking into it." Gwen gave Tegana the rundown of the conversation before even hitting the call button.
Jack was glad for one thing: that he had chosen a hotel that didn't require you to be out the room at a certain time. It meant that he and Ianto had been in the room most of the day, using the computer to determine where the rest of the team were and to look into the riot news.
Jack leaned over Ianto's computer to reach his coffee, they were extremely close, so close that when Jack looked up their noses where almost touching. Ianto felt a shift of uncomfortable-ness he liked it yet he didn't. Jack titled his head ever so slightly it meant that their noses no longer got in the way, he pursed his lips.
RING RING, RING RING!
Breaking out of the awkward moment Jack reached for his phone.
"Hello? Gwen, oh Hi, how'd go?" there was a pause while Jack listened to Gwen's voice.
"Right yeah I'll look into it, does sound a bit dodgy, how's Tegana?" a shorter pause this time.
"Good, well see you back here then, say half an hour?" There was a laugh from the other end of the phone.
"Alright, alright, I'll give you two hours but if I ring you come straight back here you understand... good, bye." Jack put down the phone.
Ianto looked at Jack expectantly.
"Yeah, it was Gwen, she wants to take Tegana out shopping." Jack explained.
"Doesn't she know that we're at work?" Ianto exclaimed laughing.
"Apparently not, oh well it'll be good for Tegana, I don't do shops!" Jack said shifting over Ianto to retrieve his coffee that he failed to retrieve the first time.
"We all know that one!" Ianto said indicating to Jack's attire. Jack playfully hit Ianto on the arm.
"I'm gonna call Tosh and Owen tell them to come back." Jack informed Ianto as he picked up his phone and dialled the number.
Tosh and Owen where sat on the remainders of a once six foot tall wall, Tosh was trying to unscrew the impossibly small screws that held the black objet together. If she could get into it she could make a better judgement for whether or not it was alien technology. She didn't want to take it back to Jack and find it was just a bit of rubbish.
Owen sighed. Tosh looked expectantly at him. Owen realised she was waiting for some sort of explanation for why he was sighing.
"Well, it's boring. Where's all the exciting but dangerous stuff?"
"Owen! You can't go round saying that besides if we do our job right there may be no need for the exciting but dangerous stuff to turn up!" Tosh reprimanded him.
"Yeah, but come on it's bound to turn up!" Tosh just gave him a long hard stare which told him to shut up. Tosh's phone began ringing; its tone was a popular song by the killers - 'human'.
"Hello?" Tosh said into the device.
"Right, yeah ok we'll come, found something you might want to take a look at." Tosh replied after the pause in which she had listened to the speaker on the other end. Another pause. Tosh laughed.
"Yeah don't think we're going to do that, you know Owen hates shopping!" Owen's ears pricked up at the sound of his name. Owen mouthed 'what?' to Tosh and Tosh shushed him.
"See ya!" Tosh finished the phone call and put her mobile back into her pocket. Owen's wide-eyed look told Tosh he wanted to know why his name had cropped up in the conversation.
"It was Jack, he said that Gwen is taking Tegana shopping, I said that we probably wouldn't be doing that 'cause you hate shopping." Owen nodded his head, now he understood.
"Come on, back to the hotel." Tosh said picking up the black object and standing up moving away from Owen. Owen quickly jumped and followed Tosh.
There was a knock on the hotel door. The secretary let Owen and Tosh in. she didn't take much notice of what Tosh was holding, or the fact that they were missing the two people that had left with them.
Going up to the room, Jack let them in. Tosh handed him the object. Jack took it carefully from her and placed it on the table. He indicated towards the none existence chairs, meaning for them to sit down. Tosh took the hint and perched on the end of Owen's bed. Owen did likewise.
"Definitely alien." Jack concluded after examining the object.
"Looks like part of a gun to me." He added placing it back on the table.
There was a knock on the door. Jack arose and answered it. Gwen and Tegana filed into the room. Jack noticed they carried no bags and wondered what sort shopping they had done without buying anything.
"We came back 'cause Tegana had a headache." Gwen told them dumping her bag on the bed.
"How was it?" Jack asked Tegana. She looked at Gwen and then at Jack.
'It was boring' she mouthed. Jack and Ianto laughed. Tegana moved around behind Ianto as her dad sat back down in his seat.
"So how's your investigation going?" Tegana asked Ianto.
"Not so good, nothing absolutely nothing." Ianto told her.
"Maybe we'll get something tomorrow, how about dinner?" Owen suggested feeling his stomach rumbling screaming for food.
"Sure, pizza anybody?" Jack asked finding his wallet for his coat pocket. Everyone agreed and gave Jack a list of different pizza toppings, which he took with he when went to order them.
Pretty please review I've only had 3 I want to know if you all like it or not.