Flashback: 2 days ago
It was so dark, so dead. The air was ripe with pungent scent of rotting pig's entrails. Jack couldn't help but gag, but since he hadn't eaten any proper food in a month, he couldn't exactly vomit. Hunger burned his stomach like a red hot poker, and his throat burned from thirst. Couldn't he just die already? He was getting extremely bored, just sitting on a squalid bathroom floor. Blood stained the now brown bathroom tiles, the chain wrapped around his wrist drew blood, as it was wrapped so tightly, but he would never ever die. That's what made him the perfect test subject, the guinea pig. If he was able to die he would have died excess of 30 times in the last 6 months.
That was when he was taken, six infinitely long months ago. He had been sent on a private mission by torchwood, to investigate rumours of a tin robot being sighted in Ohio. There was a conversation between unit and the FBI, but they denied any knowledge of the tin robot. Naturally jack was chosen to inspect this case, being the most handsome, intelligent and brave of the candidates, if he dared say so himself. You get anywhere with a little charm, that was his motto, but for once, he wished he'd never applied for that task.
He said goodbye to Gwen, Ianto, owen and toshiko, assuming he's be back in about 2 weeks, a month tops. But nothing prepared him for what happened. He spent about a week following all possible leads he had been given by torchwood, but all leads were dead ends. This led him to inspect all prospective hideouts for the robot and maybe also its captors. He checked the homeless shelters, the drug trafficking hotspots of the state, and eventually even the brothels, which had gotten him into more than a few sticky situations, but in the end he had no such luck with finding the robot..
It was only when he was walking back to his hotel, at about 2 o'clock in the morning, about 2 weeks after he had arrived in the U.S. of A. he was more than a little tipsy, to say the least. On his merry way, while singing a grease anthem to himself, he managed to trip over a homeless guy's stash, breaking whatever was inside. He was not too pleased with jack, and consequently stabbed him with a pocket knife, right in the chest. Staggering home, jack ended up collapsing from blood loss in front of o local drugs clinic.
A weary old man was about to get into his truck and drive home, when he discovered jack, lying on the flood, face speared with his own blood. Being a 'nice old man' he turned jack onto his side. Feeling a very subtle pulse, that was so weak, if he had been an ordinary person, he most certainly would have died then and there.
The old man was just about to call for an ambulance, when jack regained consciousness, and with no trouble at all removed the blade from his chest, and proceeded to make his way home. The old man was so stunned jack thought he might have a heart attack. With a cheery wave, jack walked on the path of an oncoming car. The old man, surprisingly strong for his age pulled him out of the way.
"why don't you come and stay at my house for the night? It will be safer that way" he said, in a hollow rasp. Jack was cold, drunk and bathed in his own blood, how could he refuse? Without thinking he got into the strangers truck.
It was full of engineers tools, hack saws, buzz saws, welding tools, blow torches, you name it, it was somewhere in the pile of junk in the back. Not much conversation took place on the journey, which he could recall. It was quiet apart from the distant hum of the engine, the click of indicators and occasionally jack bursting out laughing, for no reason whatsoever. It was fair to say that the old man thought jack was wrong in the head, which would make him an easy target.
While jack was busy fiddling with a screwdriver, he found on the dashboard, the girl came out of her hiding place, at the back of the truck. Her greasy brown hair pulled back in a small ponytail. She had prominent cheekbones, which made her look frail, even skeletal and fat pink lips, curled into a grim fake smile.
Jack heard the sound of glugging water, but dismissed it, assuming it was just the old truck dying, but if he had been more aware of his surroundings, he would have noticed the girl, dousing a dirty, crinkled handkerchief with chloroform.
It was only half a second before she pounced that he noticed her reflection on the windscreen. But by then it was too late for him to struggle, the chemical shot up his nostrils, a dirty cloth and a hand firmly clamped over his mouth, she too, was abnormally strong for her stature. Quickly everything was reduced to unfocussed blurs and blobs, like he was looking through a kaleidoscope, his eyes stung and he had the overwhelming urge to sleep.
The screwdriver fell to the floor, his gut instinct told him to go for the door, bail out onto the road. But for one thing, a face-full or tarmac did not seem all that appealing, and secondly, the man was already one step ahead and had already locked the doors. He writhed in his seat, but gave in pretty quickly. The last thing he could remember of that night was hitting his head on the dashboard, and then waking up with a splitting headache afterwards, in the same bathroom he was in how.
His only company nowadays were cockroaches, which he regularly woke up covered in them, crawling alover his skin, which made it even more itchy. Now and again a spider would appear, in the corner of the room. The spindly spineless scrounger would skulk in the corner, and whenever a cockroach was stupid enough to wander into the shadows, it would snatch it and eat it whole, while 6 other eyes stared blankly at jack, eyes black and empty, staring right through him.
The only two people he had talked to in the past six months were the girl, who refused to expose her name, and jigsaw, the old man who took me in on that cold winters night.
He sees Amanda pretty much every other day, if he's lucky, she'll bring him a couple of slices of bread and butter, but it was a lot more likely that she came to drug him, and put him in his next 'game'. Jigsaw, he only see's when jack has to test a trap. He glides along, like he is not of this world, a crimson cape shields his face from view, and he only ever tells jack the rules of the game, before retreating into the safety of the camera room, where he can see what's going on, without having to get any blood on his hands.
Whenever he talks to jigsaw about why he is doing this, trying to get through to him, he just repeats the same 5 words, like a broken record. "it's for the greater good" every time he heard that phrase he got more and more furious. With every day, things got more and more hopeless.
That morning he tried that same old trick again. When Amanda came in, to give him some food, he grinned cheerily at her, and gave her a cheeky wink.
"you know, I wonder how with looks like that you could end up here?" the girl swaggered up to him. She had her hair up in the same ponytail she always had. She wore a tight green t-shirt, tight leather pants and long black boots to match
"you know you should try letting you're hair down more often" he said in a silky tone of voice " in more senses than one"
The girl sat down next to him, and offered him some chalk white bread.
"nah, I'll have some later," he purred and leaned in closer, now only about 5 inches from her face. She smiled, eyes sheepishly fixed on her feet.
"come on," he whispered in her ear "go with the flow" and without hesitation, he went in for the kill, he leaned forward, about to kiss her fat pink lips. Lips centimetres apart, just when he thought he'd gotten away with it, he received a huge slap around the face. She left the plate on the floor and went for the door.
"wait!" jack shouted, reaching out for her "how did you see through my cunning plan
"a man with a hair cut like that, who is glistening golden tanned, teeth, pearl whitened, and sings to himself" she explained "got to be gay"
He laughed, a hint of a blush showing up on his face
"well, I'm bi," he retorted "but close enough"
She smiled back at him, before going for the door.
"don't go" he pleaded "I'm so alone" on the verge of tears, but these ones weren't fake.
"well…" she said "there was one thing I would like to talk to you about"
"anything, what is it" he said, clearly desperate.
"what do you know about the doctor?"