Taken
a Torchwood & Stargate story
by RoadrunnerGER
Disclaimer: I neither own Torchwood nor Stargate. This is for fun, not for profit.
Summary: Abducted away from Earth and sold into slavery Team Torchwood has to fight for survival. Being left behind Tosh works with the Stargate team, going on a frantic odyssey across the universe in order to save her friends. Crossover, set s2
Chapter 9
Toshiko arrived in Washington after a long flight most of which she spent sleeping. She had locked the most sensitive parts of the Torchwood base, the computers, the Rift manipulator, the morgue… so the whole Hub, and left Rhys in charge of the tourist office until Archie arrived. Andy would come and help him if necessary. Still Toshiko hoped that their Scottish colleague would arrive sooner rather than later. He was a strange man, but he was Torchwood and knew at least something about what was required of the team observing the Rift.
At the airport she got her tickets and was guided to her seat by a friendly flight attendant. Once in the air she had something to eat and, admittedly, a couple of drinks to calm down her frayed nerves. The alcohol also helped her to sleep. Toshiko knew that she would not have been able to rest at all if she was completely sober. Or she would have needed tranquilizers.
Better go with a drink, she thought. Tastes better.
For the short part of the flight that she was awake she pushed all thoughts about Gwen, Owen, Jack, and Ianto aside. She did not want to think about all the people who had vanished. She would have to deal with it sooner than she liked.
Now she picked up her hastily packed suitcase from the baggage carousel. She did not know what Declan had done to allow her safe passage, but no one checked on her luggage which contained not only clothing but also technical equipment. Not to mention the guns.
Slowly she strolled down the terminal, watching the people around her.
There are so many of them. No one has any idea of what happened. They're all busy. They're all leading their usual lives. Oh, Jack. I hope I can get you back.
"Dr. Sato?" someone addressed her.
When she looked around she saw a tall man in a dark suit. In his early forties, she estimated. He looks nice. Trustworthy?
"And you are?" she replied.
"My name's Mulder," he said and flashed an ID card.
FBI!
"Our mutual friend Declan asked me to pick you up." He grinned when she eyed him suspiciously. "He said you are searching for a way off this planet."
"Did he say that?"
"Yes, he did," Mulder replied. "Come on. Let's go somewhere we can talk safely."
Toshiko still did not know what to make of this man, but she was here and it was not as if she had a plethora of possibilities to choose from. So she decided to trust him for now and let him take her suitcase. Then she followed him to his car. He put her baggage into the trunk and opened the passenger door for her. Then they were off down the road.
Torchwood's computer scientist did not know Washington D.C. Actually she had never been to America. She had always wanted to visit, but never made it. So she enjoyed him talking about whatever they were passing as he drove her to their destination. Of course he fell almost silent when they entered less famous areas of Washington. He stopped the car in front of a former warehouse, got out, and walked around the car to open the door for Toshiko. She stepped out of the car and followed him inside the building where Mulder pressed a hidden button.
Toshiko did not see the camera that was directed on them. Having put the same kind of hidden security devices on the tourist office and the Hub she suspected, though, that they were somehow watched or checked otherwise. A hidden door slid open and revealed an elevator.
Not unlike our base, Toshiko smirked inwardly. Mulder entered the lift and Toshiko joined him. She was not really surprised when the elevator went down instead of up.
"Hey, Mulder," a lanky man with blond hair that flooded onto his shoulders greeted when the doors opened again. "Who're you bringing with you?"
"This is Dr. Sato," Mulder told him.
The lanky man looked her up and down suspiciously. Then his blue eyes lit up with recognition and he grinned. "Dr. Sato! Right! I'm Langly. C'mon in!"
He turned on his heels and ambled down a dark corridor. Mulder let her go first as they followed him. He led them into a hall that was stuffed with technology. With the certainty of a sleepwalker he found his way through the maze of shelves and showed his guests to a clearing that was occupied by three workstations. Two other men looked around at them, their features lighting up when they spotted the FBI agent.
"Frohike, Byers," Langly said. "Meet Dr. Toshiko Sato."
"Sato? The Dr. Sato?" the older of the two men panted. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Sato. Melvin Frohike." He stretched his hand out towards her, it was warm and clammy and Toshiko had to resist the urge to wipe her palm on her clothes after shaking it. "Never… never ever would I have dreamt about meeting someone from Torchwood. Do you happen to know UNIT's commander, Colonel Mace?"
Toshiko had to fight not to let her jaw drop. So much about Torchwood being a secret organization, she thought.
"Have you ever been on the Valiant?" the younger man who was dressed immaculately into a suit asked anxiously. "Oh, sorry. I'm John Byers."
Mulder chuckled. "Surprised that they know about Torchwood?" he asked, amused. Toshiko nodded. "Don't worry about it. The Lone Gunmen know a lot they're not supposed to know."
"Same as you, Fox," Langly teased.
"It's my job to know more than the average human," Mulder pouted with a barely concealed smirk. "About the Cybermen for example."
"Who are you guys?" Toshiko finally gasped.
"He's with the Federal Bureau of Investigation," Byers said dryly. "We are freelancers."
"Don't tell me you've never heard of the Lone Gunman," Langly said anxiously. "You know about us, don't you?"
"Actually… no, I don't."
"You've never heard of the Lone Gunman?" Langly was shocked. He reached for something on the desk and pushed some kind of a newspaper in her hand. "Here. Have a look at it."
Toshiko did and when she now saw the logo she thought she actually did see it before… on Owen's desk.
"Conspiracy theories?"
"Yes," Frohike replied proudly.
"Not just conspiracy theories," Byers said. "The most important, secretive, and dangerous conspiracy theories."
"Yeah, we're risking our lives just to talk to you," Langly added.
"Don't go over the top," Mulder chuckled and the Lone Gunmen joined in.
"So who exactly are you, guys?" Toshiko asked, sitting reluctantly down on the office chair Frohike offered her. He seemed a nice enough man, and it was not his fault his palms were sweaty. They were all very pleasant, if a little overenthusiastic and a bit geeky. My God, is that how the others see me? She gave herself a mental shake. She would have time enough to worry about that once she got the others back. Besides, she was not about to risk offending these guys as it seemed that she needed their help.
"We're the voice of the truth," Byers said. "We investigate all the rumours coursing the news and the internet and do our best to uncover the truth. Then we publish it."
"The Lone Gunman is our brain child," Langly threw in.
"The truth is out there, you know," Byers concluded.
"Yeah, I know," Toshiko agreed, trying hard not to be annoyed. "Give me an example."
"Hmmm," Byers said. "You probably are not that familiar with what is going on here, but we had a closer look at the almost-mass-suicides in London on Christmas Day in 2005."
"I see," Toshiko smirked. "What about them?"
"Aliens," Langly cheered. "Pretty ugly aliens, if you ask me."
"What makes you think that?" Toshiko challenged. She was not about to tell them that one of her first assignments for Torchwood was to help the technicians at Canary Wharf fix their mistakes and make operational the weapon that was used to blow the alien ship out of the sky.
"Hey, maybe our Torchwood lady hasn't even seen them herself," Langly said. "Though they were on the BBC. Hmmm… do you want to?"
Before Toshiko could answer he nearly jumped into another chair and started to click through some files on his computer. Then a video appeared on the screen. It showed a, for the human sense of aesthetic, very ugly alien. Its skull consisted of an exoskeleton with many ridges that gave it a wild appearance.
"It took me a while to do the translation," Langly told her, "but I finally worked it out! Listen!"
The image was grainy and flickered. Toshiko could hear the original voice that muttered unknown words in an alien language. Over it Langly had put another audio track with his translation: "People... you are ours. You belong to the Sycorax. We own you. We now own your land, your minerals, your precious stones. You will surrender or all will die. Sycorax strong, Sycorax mighty, Sycorax rock."
"Why didn't you show that to me?" Mulder asked. "And the Sycorax rock?"
"That's probably meant in the modern sense, they rock," Langly explained.
"Okay, guys!" Toshiko interrupted them. At once the four men's expressions turned sour, but everyone paid attention to her. "Thanks, guys! Now… let's assume I'm impressed." And honestly, she was. She did not know much about Langly's academic background, but to have come up with such an accurate translation on his own, he had to be good. He had only made one critical error, and under other circumstances she would be happy to explain why all should be they, but right now, she had more important business to attend to. "Why am I here?"
"Well," Mulder started. "The people in the United Kingdom weren't the only ones who vanished. We have intelligence about more than sixty people missing… and it might be more. So we have a certain interest in finding out what happened."
"You're with the FBI, working the X-files," Toshiko replied, finally revealing that she knew what Mulder was doing for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, searching for aliens. "You should be as well informed as I am."
"Okay," Mulder conceded. "We had confirmed sightings of spaceships in the close vicinity of two reported disappearances. It stands to reason that both incidents are not coincidental."
"Why, and what did you do about it?" Toshiko challenged.
"There was nothing we could do. We're the FBI."
"Yeah, our unfortunate Mulder's hard fate," Byers said wryly. "Knowing but helpless."
"Shut it, Byers!"
Toshiko was beginning to worry that this entire trip had been a big waste of time. "If you can't be of any help… what am I doing here?"
"Well…"
"As he said…"
"Mulder knows stuff," the Lone Gunmen told her.
"As do we," Frohike grinned.
Frustrated Toshiko leaned back in the office chair and crossed her legs as well as her arms. "Then you'd better tell me something useful, and quickly," she told them threateningly. "Because if I find I have come all this way and wasted all this time for nothing, I'm going to make you forget everything you know, all the way back to toilet training. And if you know anything about Torchwood, you know I can do that."
For almost a minute the men stared at her with mixed expressions ranging from incredulity to shock.
"You mean to say Scooter is not just a myth then?" Langly finally gasped.
Toshiko gave him what she hoped was a creepy and enigmatic smile and patted the pocket of her jacket as if she had something concealed there while she secretly wondered what else those geeks knew about. Langly was misinformed about the actual name of the compound, but he still had heard about its existence. It was kind of creepy. "Do you really want to find out?"
"Um… no."
"Nope."
"Thanks, but no thanks."
Smiling softly Mulder shook his head.
"I thought so," Toshiko smirked. "Just tell me why Stoats arranged a meeting between us and not with some government official."
"Well, I think that's because we're in Washington," Mulder told her flatly. "It's not very helpful to go to President Hayes and ask if he can help you… as compared to confronting him with what you want."
Toshiko could not deny that he had a point.
tbc…