Chapter 4

"Toshiko, anything?" Jack stood over the Japanese woman's shoulder anxiously, as he had been for the past three minutes while she tapped fervently away at the keyboard. Her dark eyes darted from her fingers to the screen and back again at a fast pace, and her mouth was parted slightly in her concentration.

"I'm trying," she said steadily, though her tone was laced with annoyance. She hated having people breathing down her back, though she understood his concern, so she let it slide just this once.

From across the Hub, Owen and Gwen were pretending they were busy, though neither of them had anything to do. They were worried now, and on the brink of panic. When they first came into the Hub, they jokingly complained about having to leave lunch early. But when they saw the look on Jack's face, they realized it wasn't a joke. At first the missing file seemed a little strange, but now it was starting to become terrifying. It was about fifteen minutes past the end of their lunch break, and Ianto still wasn't back. He was always on time.

"Try harder!" Everyone flinched at the captain's outburst. Toshiko took a deep breath, her fingers shaking. She turned in her seat and looked up at Jack sternly, on hand still on the keyboard.

"Jack, this was done with professional material that would typically be available to institutes like Torchwood," she paused, letting that sink in. "Whoever did this knew what they were doing. I don't know if I can resurface the file."

Jack stared at her, his face grim as he thought. After a moment, the corner of his mouth turned up slightly in a scowl and he shook his head. "Then what good are you?" he muttered, then turned and walked away to his office.

Toshiko turned back to the computer screen, her face expressionless as she typed on the keyboard, her fingers slower than before. Gwen walked up behind her carefully, and Owen watched from the medical area, still pretending he was busy. "He didn't mean it, Tosh," she started, placing a hand on her shoulder. "He's just upset."

Toshiko nodded, biting her upper lip. "I know," she said quietly, evenly, her voice as soft as ever. Gwen walked off, leaving the woman to continue her work on the missing file.

"Don't bother; phones won't work in here," Scott said confidently, though Ianto still dialed the number on his phone. When he held it up to his ear, all he received was a steady beep… beep… beep… He put the phone away and paused for a moment, trying to clear his mind. Here he was, in a car with a man who just bought him lunch, being taken who-knows where. Simple.

And terrifying. He could hear his erratic heartbeat in his ears, and it pounded away, driving him mad. With a deep breath, he grabbed his seat belt and tried to click it open. Nothing happened, of course.

"It's locked, so don't strain yourself," Scott's voice said, and his composure only made Ianto more scared. It was times like these where he wished he had brought along a gun. He just hadn't thought he'd needed one.

Jack was usually able to suppress any kind of remorse he felt; he had to, really, considering his condition. He didn't die, so he was bound to come across situations where he ended up being a member of the guilty party. But when it came to human beings, he had a harder time stifling it. Being in Torchwood didn't really help things, either. Everyone around him constantly got hurt while he just stood to the side, perfectly fine. And when he was fond of said hurt person, it made things that much harder.

He was sitting in his office chair, leaning back and staring at the cluttered desk in front of him. Papers lay on top of one another all over the place, pencils were scattered around underneath piles of files and documents, and he couldn't help but chuckle sadly at it. Ianto was always the one to clean up after his sorry ass, even when he treated him like shit.

Jack leaned forward, hiding his face in his hands and running them over his tense features. He really did treat him like shit, didn't he? Making him stay late to clean after they had sex? Sending him on errands because he was too lazy to do them himself? Treating him like a fucking slave?

He had to stop doing this to himself. Jack sat back and took a deep breath, trying to forget everything at least for the moment. He was stressed as it was, so there was no need to add guilt to it all.

He turned to his computer and brought up recent CCTV tapes, trying to find the last video of Ianto. He found the images of the Welshmen in the tourist center before lunch, before he went out with Scott Walker, whoever he was. Jack watched it for a few minutes, pretending it was live so he wouldn't feel the guilt again. A new figure came into the picture, engulfing everything, practically. The huge man had wide shoulders and a head of curly hair, and he leaned on the front desk casually as if he went there every day. Jack assumed he was Scott.

Ianto and Scott spoke for a couple minutes, then they left together. The captain switched to the parking lot tapes so he could see them go off. Maybe if he caught a glimpse of some sort of struggle between them it'd confirm his suspicions. But there was no struggle. In fact, if he looked hard enough, he thought he could see the pixelated image of Ianto laughing before he willingly got into the black car. He waited until the car drove out of the shot before pausing the video and shaking his head. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No fight, no speeding off, no violence.

Jack rewound the tape and paused it at the moment where Ianto had one hand on the door, ready to close it. He stared hard for a moment, then his eyes grazed over the vehicle and he froze.

"What the hell?" he whispered, pressing his tongue to his cheek. The more he stared, the more he knew that the car was the same one from the night he was mauled by Weevils. The sleek black car glared back at him, taunting him. Why was it outside the Hub that night? What were they looking for?

He pressed play again, this time looking at Scott. The man opened his door and squeezed himself inside, though he looked rather strange doing so. Not because he was so large, but because of his odd position. Jack rewound the tape and played it again slowly, watching carefully. He paused at the moment where Scott was just beginning to get in the car, and his breath caught. The man was staring straight into the camera, his face slightly blurred by the grainy screen. But sure as day, he was staring right into the lens, a large grin plastered on his face.

The longer he watched, the more unnerved he became. There was something going on with this 'Scott Walker' guy, he just needed to find out what it was.

Scott Walker was a goliath. His jean-clad legs were crammed up against the steering wheel because they ran out of room by the pedals, and half the time he just drove with his knees. His wide shoulders threatened to invade Ianto's space, and his elbow bumped against his arm painfully every time the guy had to turn his gargantuan body to look out the back window. Stray curls on his head brushed up against the top of the car, and the Welshmen wondered whether or not the man felt like a whale in a fish bowl.

How he didn't feel extremely unsettled by this guy in the first place, Ianto had no idea. It was strange how quickly his image of the man had changed, though. Now his dark eyes were intimidating and harsh, and Ianto was more than acutely aware of the fact that the man would easily be able to take him out. He could probably just lean on him and the Welshman would collapse.

"Alright, we can do this the easy way or the hard way," Scott spoke up sternly, putting the car into park. Ianto tried to figure out where they were, but it looked like any other alley. He sighed and focused on not letting this man crush his face with two fingers.

"What exactly does each decision imply?" He spoke slowly, trying to bide himself some time. Perhaps if he could distract him long enough, he'd be able to somehow propel himself up and out of the car window, then miraculously turn and escape the larger man's onslaught and run all the way back to the Hub to get help.

Yeah… Maybe.

"Well," Scott started, shifting in his seat and making Ianto's heartbeat spike drastically. Every little move made him nervous. "You can either get out of the car and come along with me like a good boy," he said, speaking in a tone that was not rude, but still firm, "or I can knock you out and drag you." He didn't make any threatening move, but his stare was enough to scare Ianto into nodding robotically.

What the hell had he gotten himself into? Not this situation in particular, but Torchwood in general. Why had he done this anyway? Certainly not the thrill, because he was terrified, and he hated it. Definitely not the challenge, because he was perfectly content running the little tourist help center; he didn't need the dangerous half of his job. So why was he here? What the hell kept him putting himself in these kinds of situations?

"Get out of the car and come with me," he ordered, unlocking the doors with a click. Ianto watched as the man maneuvered himself out of his own door, and couldn't help but be reminded of clown cars. "I said get out," he directed again, and the Welshmen exited the car as quickly as possible, shutting the door quietly behind him.

"Where are we going?" he asked, his voice a little shakier than he would have hoped.

"You don't need to know," Scott replied coolly, starting to walk deeper into the alley. Ianto took small footsteps in his direction, but he turned his head to look back at the car. It took up most of the width of the passageway, but there was about half a meter of leeway on one side. He could easily fit through.

"Why do you need me?" he asked, hoping to distract the man with questions.

"You also don't need to know that," he called over his shoulder, disappearing further into the shadows. Ianto's heart thumped painfully in his chest, and he was absolutely positive he was going to die at that moment, but he took advantage of Scott's distance and pivoted his body toward the car. When he took off, his arms swung at his sides and his feet pounded loudly on the pavement, but he felt like he was going way too slow. He turned his body to sidestep the car, and as his back scraped lightly against the brick wall and his knees knocked up against the car, he became extremely aware of the fact that there were no footsteps following him. Goddamn, he thought proudly. I'm going to get away with this.

Bang. Ianto heard the noise and registered what it was before he felt it. He even got to the other side of the car before he could actually feel anything. The sound was obviously a gunshot, and gunshots were always followed by excruciating pain. He could barely turn away towards the alley opening to make another futile attempt at escaping before he felt the pain. He put pressure on his leg to take off running, and he felt it; a hair-raising, sharp twinge at first, but it quickly changed for the worse. He felt like his entire leg was snapping in half, and the spasm travelled up his thigh, through his chest, and ended at his jaw, where he ground his teeth together in an attempt to stifle a cry out. Now he could feel everything; the muscles giving way in his calf, the bone splintering a fraction, the bullet resting calmly in his leg. He tried to run, despite the wound, but didn't get one step further before he collapsed. When his leg hit the ground, he couldn't hide the scream that bubbled up behind his lips, so he just shouted as loudly as he could, hoping to get some attention from anyone who wasn't his captor.

The world around him spun for a moment, whirling and blurring everything together into one big, dark mass. When it calmed again, he was upright, staring at a face, and his back was grinding up against the brick wall. Scott's hand was pressing against his chest tightly, holding him up to the wall with ease. The man said something, but the only thing Ianto could hear was his heartbeat, which felt like it was coming from his leg. The area where the bullet had entered his calf was pulsing agonizingly slowly, and it was the only thing he could possibly focus on.

He could vaguely feel something slam against his head, and he assumed he had fallen to the concrete ground by the way his head had just bounced slightly. When he tried to open his eyes, he found that he couldn't, and it was too much work anyway so he gave up and just kept them closed. After a short moment, everything went dark as he lost consciousness.

Gwen was torn between loving her job and absolutely hating it. On one hand, the opportunities that arose for her to partake in were once in a lifetime, not to mention so unbelievably fanciful it was almost funny. Then again, there were always moments when she wished she had never been so persistent in finding Jack after she saw the Torchwood team for the very first time. If she had only been a little less curious, she might not be fending off a brutal alien with the contents of her pockets at the moment.

Yeah, she currently hated her job.

"Tosh, look out," Owen called from beside Gwen, and both of them glanced over at the Japanese woman. She looked up just in time to see a Weevil running towards her. With a surprised grunt, she slammed her laptop shut and swung it viciously, barely missing the face of the alien. It reeled backwards with a growl, then seemed to decide Toshiko wasn't worth it and turned to attack Jack.

He was the whole reason they were in this situation anyway, Gwen thought, swinging her empty gun at a nearby Weevil, hoping it'd be intimidated. Jack had run into the middle of the Hub, talking nonsense about some random black car and insisting they all go looking for said car. Not twenty minutes later, they were faced with three Weevils, and not three more minutes later, they were all out of bullets and still trying to fight off the trio. And they hadn't found the car.

No one on the team said anything about the car, but each of them assumed it had something to do with Ianto. There was an unspoken worry for the missing team member, probably unspoken because none of them wanted to bring it up. At least, not around Jack; they knew how the captain felt about the Welshman, and they knew he'd be sensitive about the subject. He was probably taking the loss the hardest.

As if to back up her notion, Jack shouted something inarticulate and tried to run past a Weevil. In response, the creature lashed out its hand, leaving two long, bloody marks on the man's face. Any other day and Jack would have been able to dodge it or avoid being lashed out at altogether. He was distracted.

"Get to the Hub," he said breathlessly, pulling Toshiko along beside him.

"There has to be some sort of reason so many Weevils are showing up," Gwen said for the umpteenth time, earning a snort from Owen. She sent him a glare and turned back to Jack. "They're coming into open areas."

"I know," the captain replied, running two fingers over his cheek. There was nothing there, but he still half-expected the scratches to be there. He'd never get used to healing so quickly; it was too unusual. "But there's no increase in rift activity," he flicked his head to Toshiko, "is there?" She shook her head with a sad smile, looking as perplexed as everyone else. "The Weevils we're seeing are already here."

The three other members of Torchwood started off on a conversation about Weevils, bouncing silly ideas off of each other to try to figure out what was going on. Jack nodded and shook his head along with them when it was necessary, but wasn't actually listening to them. He was too busy trying not to think about Ianto.

And failing.

Ianto had had combat training, just like the rest of them had, so he could surely hold his own in a fight. He didn't have training against somebody that was six-foot-six, however, and if even a small fraction of Scott Walker's body mass was muscle…

"…coming from the sewers?" Jack blinked and looked up, realizing everyone was staring at him expectantly. He opened and closed his mouth, trying to think up anything that sounded more intellectual than "Huh?"

"What?" Jack tried to ignore the chuckles that Owen wasn't even bothering to stifle; he'd get him back later by forcing him to stay late to clean or something.

Gwen gave Jack a strangled look, her eyes giving away her irritation. When she spoke, her voice was slow and emphasized, like she was speaking to a child. The captain let it slide and just focused on what she was saying. "There's no increase in rift activity, which means the Weevils were already here. When I first met you, you told me that they lived in the sewers. That means—"

"That means," the captain took over, his lips pursing as he thought, "the Weevils are coming out of their home." He stood up from his seat, unable to contain himself. A faint smile made its way over his features as he grew more excited, and everyone else in the room vanished from his thoughts. At the moment, he was strictly speaking to himself. "But why would they come out now? They never come out, especially not all at once."

"Unless," Gwen interrupted, leaning forward in her chair. But Jack didn't need her help making the conclusion. With an enthusiastic grin and gesture, he cut the woman off.

"Unless something, or somebody, is driving them out. That's it," he exclaimed. "The sewers are our answer."

Notes: Because when aren't sewers the answer?