ID Chapter 3
Janice Finch was not human. Well, there had been a Janice Finch who was human at one time, but the one who was currently working as Rose's secretary at Torchwood was not. She was a Krillitane. She and her brood had been taking refuge on Pete's World from the leader of the Krillitane Home World, and had taken advantage of the confusion during the battle between the Cybermen and the Daleks and had settled in, killing off members of the government and Torchwood and using their talent for morphic illusion to take their shapes and blend in. Their plans were to use the network technology that John Lumic had created, along with human brains enhanced with their own oil, to crack the Skasas Paradigm and conquer time and space. In short, they planned to make themselves into gods.
Originally they planned on taking over the Torchwood Institute, but just as they were ready to implement their plan, Jon and Rose appeared on the scene. As Janice researched these two new members, she was astounded at the possibilities they opened up. There were no Time Lords that the Krillitanes were aware of in this universe, but here was a half-Time Lord, someone who already had at least some ability to see timelines, and his mate, who might have extraordinary talents of her own. This was too good an opportunity to pass up, so the brood decided to reformulate their plan. Once Janice secured her position as Rose's secretary, she began surreptitiously adding Krillitane oil to the cream for her coffee. Jon did not get the same treatment, as she had discovered in her research of him that he could perform chemical analysis with his tongue. Krillitane oil is what enabled her race to take characteristics from other races and evolve in any direction that pleased them, and they had found that it worked on humans as well, enhancing their intelligence and other abilities. She had had to be careful, it seemed it also acted as a contraceptive in humans, and when Rose had mentioned that she and Jon were going to have tests done to try to determine why they had not conceived, she had ceased administering it until Rose was confirmed pregnant. Then, when Rose gave up caffeine for the duration of her pregnancy, she had found other ways to administer it. It apparently paid off, as Rose's child Arianna possessed abilities beyond what what even a normal Time Lord child would have, according to Jon. Fortunately, these abilities were attributed to the Bad Wolf in Rose, and Janice's activities went unnoticed, except for the occasional comminications to her contact in the Gliese 581 system. Janice smirked to herself, having the ability to morph back into her true form and fly through the sewers without leaving a trace certainly was confounding these humans to no end. But now Jon and Rose were arranging to leave the planet, and they had to make their move. That child would be indispensible to their plan. Fortunately, Janice had a daughter in the Tyler household, the nanny, in fact. The former Torchwood employee who had been "caught" administering tests to Arianna in the nursery had been that same daughter, albeit in a different human form. Once the nanny had been selected, it was a simple matter to kill her and have Janice's daughter take her form and her place so that Arianna continued to receive her dose of oil. Handling the oil was a nasty business, external contact was deadly to their race, it had to be drained from their glands very, very carefully, and mixed discretely with the food or beverage that the humans were to consume. That food or beverage then had to be handled equally carefully. Janice would be relieved once the Time Lord family was safely in their custody and the surrepitious acts could be dropped and the humans dosed more directly - and safely.
Ironically, Jon's plan to leave the planet worked perfectly into the scheme of things. Once off-world, it would be easy to make it appear that there had been an accident with the new ship, and once thought dead, no one would ever look for them. Yes, things were definitely coming together.
Jon, Pete, Rose, Jake, and the FIT members sat in the conference room just down the hall from Janice Finch's desk outside Rose's office. They were all busy brain-storming about possible explanations for the elusiveness of the recipient of the off-world communications. Whoever or whatever it was, it was always located in an area where there were no security or traffic cameras, so obviously the person(s) behind it had intimate knowledge of London and the surrounding communities. Yet nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. They had yet to break the encryption of the message.
"The fact that they make no effort to hide the signal, but simply encrypt it, suggests arrogance," Jon was saying.
"So what does that tell us?" Pete asked.
"Very little, unfortunately," Jon responded. "So we have arrogance, plus the ability to hide, perhaps even in plain site, which suggests either the ability to shape-shift or the use of stealth technology. Unless, as Rose suspects, they really are escaping through the sewers, in which case they'd have to again be using stealth technology, which would still leave some kind of signature behind, or be expert swimmers with no aversion to waste (and a way to prevent leaving any DNA behind), or they'd have to be able to fly, but small enough so that their wingspan would fit inside the sewers. That narrows it down to about a couple of dozen potential species. So far, we have no idea if the message is benign or not. It could be nothing more than curious extra-terrestrial visitors checking you lot out. In that case, we don't want to do anything to frighten or threaten them, we just need to find out who they are and what they want for our own peace of mind."
There was a murmur of agreement among everyone. Torchwood had been preparing for first contact for some time now, they felt the Cybermen/Dalek incident had to have been noticed by other worlds, it was just a matter of time before someone, friend or foe, would make an attempt at either contact or conquest. One thing no one wanted to do was to provoke an unnecessary conflict when it did happen. Jon had taught them well.
"So what do we do next?" Pete asked.
Angus "Mac" MacDonald, the FIT Commander, spoke up. "We've documented all the areas where we've traced them to on previous occasions. We've documented everything we possibly could about them, analyzed the characteristics, and have projected locations where they may occur next."
"How many potential locations do you have?" Pete asked.
Mac ruefully replied, "About a thousand, give or take. We've already started installing cameras and microphones, hopefully something will turn up."
"I guess we have to start somewhere."Pete acknowledged. "Good work. Anything else we haven't covered?"
Jon spoke up, "I'd like to have Rose take a look at the encryption. She might spot something no one else has. She's good that way."
Rose shot him a bemused look and then turned to Pete and said, "Sure, I'll take a look at it, can't hurt."
"Alright then, I'll tell them to expect you down in the lab. Let's get back to work."
"What makes you think I can help? I've never had a head for that sort of thing." Rose asked Jon on the way down the hall.
"You've never had a head for a lot of things, but you seem to be picking stuff up lately. Like you said, it can't hurt." Jon offered. "I'd like you to look at it before we meet with Spacey 'Stacey. Who knows, you might find something new and actually impress him with something besides your considerable charm and beauty."
Rose stuck her tongue out at him. "Jealous?" she teased. Spacey 'Stacey seemed to have a 'thing' for her, something which Jon and Pete used to their advantage.
"Nope - p." Jon assured her. "He's quite probably the very last person I would ever be jealous of." He grinned, waggled his eyebrows, and kissed her before turning on his heel and heading down the hall to his own office to prepare for their meeting with the Space Marshal.
Rose smiled as she watched him stride down the hall, admiring his backside for a moment before turning to drop her notes off on her desk before heading down to the lab.