Chapter 6
Jack Harkness had heard far too many screams in his lifetime. Whether they were from enemies in battle crying out their final insult, or from friends who begged for mercy against a rival. He had heard mothers shouting out for their children in the face of death, and grown men break down and shriek in surrender. He had witnessed little girls let out earsplitting hollers because they were scared of what was to come, and he had heard more than one of them cut off in the middle. The Captain had seen and heard every kind of scream there was, and he knew exactly what kind he was hearing now, and exactly who it came from.
"Ianto!" Jack's strangled cry came echoing through the tunnel, making Ianto unsure of where the captain was coming from and how far away he was. Really, he wasn't paying much attention to it anyway; he was just trying not scream again. Afraid to look down at his leg, he kept his eyes squeezed shut, breathing heavily through his teeth. He wasn't ignorant, though. He had heard the snap as plain as day. He had felt the crushing bone beneath Scott's foot, and the warmth of fresh blood seeping through his pant leg. Basically… fuck.
"They always come willingly in the end," Scott nearly trilled, chuckling at his own private joke, "like sheep to the slaughter." He let out a bark of a laugh, backing away from Ianto to lean on the wall opposite him. It seemed that Scott, like Ianto's leg, had snapped. "The ones who are so willing to give up their lives are always the ones who end up doing so, you know? It's the fighters who survive. The ones who stare death in the face and refuse to give in. Those are the people who deserve to live." He pointed a long arm towards the open end of the tunnel. "Your friend Jack," he spat the name like it was an obscenity, "lays his life out like it's a toy. He doesn't deserve what he has. He doesn't understand life. Its meaning, its worth… He throws it away like an idiot. He doesn't deserve…" Scott turned away in frustration, disappearing in the darkness. When he came back out, Ianto opened his eyes long enough to see a black, metal item in his hand. A gun.
"Are… you going to… shoot me?" Ianto gasped out between painfully clenched teeth. He held back a moan, clamping and relaxing his hands over and over. He really didn't care anymore. Actually, he kind of hoped Scott would shoot him.
"Of course not." He replied, looking at Ianto like he had asked something insane. "I have no intention of killing you. Ianto," he said, almost kindly, kneeling down beside him, "you've been very helpful throughout this entire thing. Really, I couldn't have done it without you." He smiled, placing a hand on the injured man's cheek. "Thank you." He stood, and stepped in front of Ianto, cocking the gun. Scott looked down one more time before sliding a foot over to Ianto's. He flicked his shoe slightly, making Ianto's entire leg jostle. He screamed unintentionally.
Beyond the pounding in his ears, Ianto could make out the sound of running feet coming closer. He wanted to call out, to warn Jack, but when he opened his mouth, all that came out was another strangled cry. A white-hot jolt ran up his leg from his splintered bone, making the muscles in his back clench painfully. He rolled his head back and forth on the concrete wall, knowing he wasn't breathing, and knowing he should be trying to, but unable to pull any air into his lungs. He dragged the air into his throat with a loud, gurgling noise, but that's as far as it would go. After a minute, he could feel the burn beneath his chest as well as in his leg. His eyes were open, but he wasn't looking at anything. The only thing on his mind was the pain that kept getting worse. The bone fragments cut into the muscle in his leg, tearing away at the flesh. His heart kept getting louder, shuddering and beating to an erratic song. The burn grew in his lungs, and the more he tried to bring in air, the more it hurt. His lungs seemed to cave in on themselves, shrinking and contracting without anything to nourish them.
An echoing bang barely drew away Ianto's attention. The thump of a dead body crumpling down right beside him did the trick a little more. He tilted his head enough to take in Jack's body. The captain's face rested in a dark red pool that grew larger with the gushing stream of blood and brain fragments that came from the bullet hole in his right eye. His other eye was wide open, staring off into nothing. Ianto gasped, finally getting air into his aching lungs. It burned on the way in, expanding his tightened chest. He looked away from Jack, trying to ease his suddenly quick breath.
"Bull's-eye," Scott muttered proudly, smiling down at Jack. For good measure, Ianto supposed, he pointed the gun again, aiming for the back of the captain's head, and pulled the trigger.
"Where the fuck did he go?" Owen asked, breathing heavily. He set his medical equipment on a dry patch of concrete, bending over to catch his breath. The three of them, Owen, Tosh, and Gwen, had tried to catch up with their boss when he took off sprinting away, but they had lost him after just a few seconds. They had all heard Ianto's painful scream echoing through the tunnels, but only Jack had responded without a second's hesitation, running off into a tunnel without waiting to see if the team was following.
"Who knows?" Gwen replied, hands on hips. Only seconds after the words left her lips, a sharp crack split the air, and the three of them glanced at each other, exchanging nods. Wherever Jack was, he just got shot, per usual. Wherever Jack was, he was in trouble. And wherever Jack was, they were going to find him. Gwen raised her gun and her flashlight, pointing it down a dark tunnel. Behind her, Owen and Tosh raised their guns in response and followed in silence.
Not five minutes had passed before the three of them stopped dead in their tracks, flashlights pointed in the same direction.
"Oh, God," Gwen whispered, while the other two gaped silently.
Owen was the only one out of the three of them that didn't visibly cringe at the dead body. Admittedly, he gagged a bit at the horrid smell of decay, but he didn't let anyone else know it. Tosh covered her mouth with a shaky hand and stepped back, moving the beam of light from her flashlight away, as if that would make it disappear. Gwen muttered something under her breath and closed her eyes tightly, gaining the courage to look again.
Shoved into a corner, out of the way, a dead Weevil stared up at them with empty eyes. Its mouth was half open in a snarl, and various insects were buzzing and crawling in and out of the open maw. Its arms were pulled up close to the body for protection, and the fingers curled toward the ground in a defensive way, the tips of which were completely gone, scraped away on the abrasive ground. The smell, they assumed, was mostly coming from what was spilling out of the hole in its head. Presumably made by several gunshots to the head, the hole was large enough that the majority of the Weevil's brain had fallen out onto the concrete ground and been eaten away at by God-knows what. A dried, red stain was nearly three feet around the body, spotlighting it on the otherwise pale floor. The blood had spilled from the head wound, along with from the mouth and eye sockets, creating a monstrous sight for the three of them to take in. It looked like it had been screaming, crying blood, and digging desperately at the ground for salvation. It was a pitiful, horrifying sight.
"Let's keep going," Owen suggested after a while, and forced himself to turn away. They didn't talk about it for the rest of the time, but each of them was thinking about it the entire way. No wonder the Weevils were coming out of the sewers. They weren't just being chased away from their home; they were being slaughtered.
Beside Ianto, Jack breathed back to life, gasping in desperately and jerking his limbs violently. He looked around with wide eyes, remembering where he was and what happened. When his eyes fell on Ianto to his right, he looked panicked momentarily, then regained his composure, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly and surely. He wriggled his arms, looking up when he realized he couldn't pull his arms down. Like Ianto's, his hands were cuffed to the pipe above him, and his legs were arranged out in front of him uncomfortably. His legs, however, weren't in as bad a shape as the other's were. He almost gasped audibly when he looked over at Ianto's leg, bloody and broken, snapped in half at the calf and unmoving.
"Ianto…" The Welshman shook his head, cutting Jack off.
"Don't start. Scott left a few minutes ago, and there's no telling when he'll be back. We probably don't have much time, Jack; talk fast." Jack could hear the pain in his voice; the slight whimper when he took in a breath, the cracks and drops in his tone when he spoke, and the strangled and clipped way he talked gave it away. He wanted so badly to point it out, but it wouldn't have helped anything. Ianto was right, and he had to get them out before he could do anything to help his leg.
"Fine," he said through his teeth. "What's going on?" It seemed like a fairly basic question that summed up everything he needed to know. What he had really wanted to ask was What did he do to you? so he'd know exactly just how much he needed to make this Scott Walker hurt before he killed the man.
Ianto inhaled deeply before he spoke, seeming to steel himself, which only made Jack angrier. "Scott Walker knows about you. He knows you can't die, and for some reason, he wants you. I don't know why or for what, but he does." He paused, regaining his breath discreetly. Or, rather, he assumed he was doing it discreetly. Jack watched as Ianto breathed heavily from his nose, looking down to hide the crease in his brow. He let out a small stream of air from his mouth, then looked back up, his face completely blank.
"Ianto," he started, trying to control his own voice, "what did he do to you?" Ianto opened his mouth to answer, most likely something passive and unhelpful, but both were diverted by the entrance of a large being. Jack immediately recognized the wide shoulders of the man from the CCTV footage, and he instinctively pulled at the cuffs around his wrists.
"Jack Harkness," Scott said, and his voice was anything but what Ianto had expected. From how he had talked about the captain earlier, he expected an awed voice, or at least some sort of excitement. Instead, there was almost a pure hatred there. As he said the name, the repulsion was obvious, and the glare he sent toward Jack was one of abhorrence. "Do you remember me? Probably not; I've grown a bit since then. You, on the other hand," he tilted his head and squinted his eyes, his glare hot enough to burn the captain to ash. "You haven't changed at all. You don't look a day older than when we first met."
"Who are you?" Jack interjected what he assumed would be a long speech from the other man, just wanting to get himself and Ianto out as safely and as quickly as possible.
"Scott Walker," he said, as if that should clear up everything.
"I am sorry," Jack said slowly, and it was obvious he meant it, "but I have no idea who you are. You've got the wrong guy, Scott. Please," he paused, leaning forward as best as he could, "just let us go."
"I don't have the wrong guy," he closed his eyes and slowly shook his head.
"Yes, you do. I— "
"Jack Harkness, if you say another word I will break your coffee boy's one good leg." Scott clenched his fists, and the Welshman instinctively braced himself for more pain. "Do you understand?" The captain opened his mouth to defend Ianto, but quickly thought better of it. His mouth hardened into a thin line and he nodded carefully. "Good," Scott exhaled, calming down a bit. "Now," he said, "there's someone I want you to meet." He backtracked a few paces into the lit tunnel around the corner, out of sight, and as he came back in a few moments later, the squeak of old metal moving gently was accented by the tunnel walls.