2

Let the game begin.

Gwen must have left without waking him, and not bothered replacing the blanket, because Owen felt very cold. Maybe she had even left the window open; the only other time he had awoken to his flat being this cold was when the heater had broken that one week a year and a half ago. . .

Rolling over, Owen's hand landed in something wet and frigid. He jerked it away and sat upright, ridding himself of the liquid on the side of his pants. He had no idea what it was, since an absolute darkness surrounded him and he couldn't even see his hand when he waved it in front of his face. Luckily, the consistency told him it was only water. All things considered, it could be worse. It could have been cold blood.

Not knowing what else to do, Owen began patting the ground around him to gain some idea of his surroundings. When he twisted onto his back to move further, he felt a weight about his right ankle. He reached down to feel whatever it was and discovered his ankle shackled to something unseen. His shoes and socks were missing, which could account for the slight numbness in his feet.

Sighing and shaking his head, Owen inched forward a bit and started feeling around again. After three pats of the hard floor his hand landed on something solid and metal sounding: a small Maglite, no doubt. He easily found the switched.

"Oh bugger."

Those were not a good sign.

The room was completely bare. The walls grungy with years of neglect and so forgotten there weren't even cobwebs. There were no fixtures to speak of: no sink, no toilet, no shelves. Nothing. Except the door. A door as blank as the walls. The door he had been staring at for the past fifteen minutes. A dull brass-colored knob at waist height, gleaming slightly. Then Jack's coat. Ianto had awoken on the hard floor with the old garment folded neatly on his chest. And seamlessly falling into his roll as Torchwood three's butler/tea-boy, keeping Jack's coat clean was an automatic action.

Ianto did not, however, only think of the coat. He had tried the door, it disappointed him when it failed to open. And since he was left with nothing more to do, he sat a few feet from the door, far enough away that, were it to open, he'd be spared a whack in the face.

The more he pondered the puzzling situation, the more confused he was by the whole thing. A significant lack of painful lumps on his head told him he hadn't been knocked out and dragged here. He had no injuries anywhere on him indicating some organ or internal tissue had been removed. No snips of hints. No paper, no writing. There wasn't even a light switch. But upon saying and doing a few things that made him look rather idiotic, he was able to rule out the possibility the lights were controlled by any sort of sound. He could tell, however, that a light switch had been in the room at some point: a whitish square on the wall near the door indicated where one must have been removed, and then gone over with putty or plaster.

He hadn't the faintest notion of who could have brought him here, or why. Where was he? Where was everyone else, for that matter? Was he the only one missing? Did the others know? He'd forgotten something back at the Hub, hadn't he? Something important . . . damn it, he hadn't finished brewing the coffee. Did Jack need his coat? Why did he have Jack's coat and nothing else?

Perhaps he was still at the Hub and had gotten himself, somehow, locked in one of the rooms deep within Torchwood's shady bowels. Owen must be watching him on the CCTV, all cozy at one of the computers. Ianto made a mental note to berate the man at the next opportune moment. Slimy bugger always did seem to have a nasty sense of humor. Ianto wouldn't put it past the medic to go so far as drugging him.

The tea boy's musing was interrupted by flickering lights. They flashed twice, leaving him in darkness momentarily, then coming back on. A small click came from the door and it swung open, revealing a patch of drab grey wall.

In his perfectly rational, cautious way, Ianto approached this newest mystery and stuck his head around the side of the door, surveying the corridor. The light coming from his room was somewhat softer in color. The lights of the passageway were dirty, tinted a sick, dead green-black by an accumulation of filth over the plastic case of the fluorescent tubes.

He jumped as more lights sprang to life along the ceiling of the corridor. The hall extended to his left for a hundred yard before it bent in a way that made it impossible to see around. It dead-ended on the right. Ianto's first thought was that he should stay put, but a second, more rational thought to explore overrode instinct.

That coffee would burn.

It was such an agonizing, slow process. Only two of the prongs of harness were free from his ribcage, which left four more on the left side and six on the right. Yet even with that small triumph, another problem presented itself. As the blood dripped from his torso, it landed in water of all things. It had been so still before he had not noticed. But as soon as the first drop hit and the ground rippled, Jack growled in irritation when he realized not only would he drop fifteen feet once this was over, but it was a drop into three feet of water. Which, from the way the blood did not quickly dilute, had a temperature standing only just above freezing.

Jack wanted to die. He didn't understand why he hadn't died yet, and that was more frustrating than actually being stuck in the damned contraption. None of the metal pieces had been placed near or in any of his vital organs. Most likely, his captor knew his capabilities and wanted him to suffer as much as possible before he could free himself. His fingers were so slick by the second blade that they slipped when he tried to pull it free. It did not help, either, that the pain alone was enough to make him see black every time he took a deep breath.

He let his hands fall away from the torturous device, head hanging, breath shallow. Eyes scrunched shut against the acid fire that encased his upper body, Jack tried to calm himself enough to work on the third section of the harness, only halfway done with one side. Who had they screwed over badly enough to have something this extreme happen? Jack tried to recall a time were he had been tortured worse than this.

He couldn't think of any.

With a howl, he yanked the stubborn blade out in one swift motion, letting the hidden spring whisk it aloft with the previous two. A fresh stream of blood emitted from the gash, reddening the water beneath him. Jack sighed and let his eyes drift shut and the darkness drag him down.

He gasped awake what felt like seconds later. The gashes had healed some, but were still sensitive, the scabs moist enough to be brushed open into bleeding.

Since yanking seemed the fastest way to get it done, and it wouldn't matter how often he lost the majority of his blood, Jack shook off his hands and went to the next segment. This time, he managed to remove the final two before he had to stop to regain some form of strength.

Something gnawed at his stomach, some feeling that his escape wasn't the only reason he needed to get out of here. Coldness, unsettling and consuming, seeped into his being, and with renewed vigor, Jack went to work on the second half of the harness. Biting his tongue and focusing on something besides the all-consuming agony, he slid one blade after another from between his ribs. However, in this blank room, nothing striking drew his attention away from his exertions, and Jack was left a blank mind devoid of everything except pain.

He had forgotten what would happen once he managed to remove all the metal pieces. He felt hollow when the movement released him from the ceiling.

When the icy water hit the gouges covering his torso, Jack gasped, sucking in a lungful of biting, cold liquid. His momentum carried him straight to the ground, three feet under the surface. He moved so quickly he was unable to spit out the water. His elbow hit one of the keys, all of which were slightly obscured by his blood clouding the water.

Instinct made him kick off the bottom, and as soon as his head cleared the surface he began hacking the water from his lungs. The glacial liquid had done him some good by numbing the submerged parts of his body. He crouched lower into and smiled as his wounds seemed to disappear. If only they would just heal.

His fall into the water had further disturbed it, making the blood diffuse over a greater distance. A diluted red tinged the liquid, making it an almost pink colour. Jack could now see the keys, and he scooped them up and dropped them all into his palm, wading his way to the door. He had no way to tell how many minutes had passed since he had freed himself from the harness, so he moved as quickly as his numb legs would allow. What would he do if the door were to lock permanently? Freeze to death, come back. Starve? If this . . . whoever this was, knew that Jack couldn't die, wouldn't they know it pointless to lock him in here?

But the marionette had said—

Jack scowled when he realized it was likely his whole team was in danger. He returned his attention to the keys.

All of them were silvery, brand-new looking, and almost identical. Jack tried the first one his fingers came into contact with. He put it into the lock, hands shaking slightly. He hadn't realized it was that cold in the room. His breath came out in vague puffs.

Jack almost laughed when the first key didn't work. It would have been too lucky to unlock the door with the first try.

The third to last key finally turned in the lock. Jack made a little inarticulate noise of triumph, which turned into a noise of surprise as he was spilled beyond the door by the sudden rush of water.

Wherever it was he landed, a wall made full acquaintance with his backside not ten feet from the door. It was enough to make him aware of the continual mass of ache and pain that engulfed his body, and reminded him of his complete lack of clothing. The water flowed around him and dispersed throughout the dark corridor. Jack lay on his back, panting. His eyes sagged, and darkness claimed him again.

Keys would never look the same. Especially this particular small, toothed key. Blood and other unknown bodily fluids covered it and it stank of putrid flesh and bile and it would forever hold a little piece of Gwen's sanity. As the tape had promised, it unlocked the shackle and the padlock holding the chain to the pipe. The unlocking was the easy part. Obtaining the key had not been.

Gwen's first thought was to go for the stomach, which was hard enough to find on a regular body for a person lacking proper anatomical knowledge. After the distended flesh was punctured, such a rank smell assaulted her that Gwen whipped her head away and retched what little remained in her stomach. She had seen bodies, sure. Freshly dead, freshly reanimated, striped of everything to leave a carcass. But seeing and handling a body in such a state of decay was one of things on her list of "Stuff I Would Rather Not Do."

Once she finished, she shrieked and threw the knife across the room, fumbled to undo her restraint, and backed away from the mutilated body so quickly she nicked her palms on the jagged edges of a few broken tiles. She sat in the corner, hugging her knees to her chest. She could only stare wide-eyed at the mess for a moment that may as well have been forever. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew she was being timed, and it was that small, subconscious conductor that put her in motion.

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She opened the door, her eyes lingering on the body.

A dim hall met her. It had a greenish cast to it due to the grime coating the strips of fluorescents. Gwen slipped out, slammed the door behind her, and ran in the first direction her feet took her.

In her haste, one of her toes skidded over something and she pitched forward, yelping and grabbing at the wall for support. The pipe she reached for, however, was not secured, and fell next to her with a loud clang. Driven by adrenaline, Gwen picked up the four foot pipe, found it heavy enough to make a suitable weapon, used it to stand, and kept going, but at a walk. Her grip stayed tight on the pipe, shoulders tense and ready at any moment to strike unseen foes that were certainly waiting for her.

An elbow bend lay ahead of her. She crept along the near side, pipe raised above her head in a defensive stance. She stopped at the corner and took a deep breath, then leapt around it, swinging the pipe.

Nothing jumped at her, no one grabbed her. Only more corridor, stretching so far ahead of her that the filthy lights could not reveal end nor curve of the dingy cement stretch. Gwen breathed deeply a few more times and lowered the pipe, walked forward. Alert to anything and everything,

A few times, Gwen had to go for stretches of twenty or more meters in complete darkness when a light either fizzled out or was non existent, having broken long before her arrival. During these stretches of darkness she tensed hard enough that her shoulders began to cramp. A certainty that someone lurked behind her knuckled along her spine and made her cringe. But, she reasoned, she would have known if anyone did: aside from the faint sounds her bare feet made on the cold floor, and the slight buzz of the overhead lights, silence settled throughout the hall.

Gwen tried not to think that yesterday may have been the last time she would see Rhys.

He hadn't died, because when his eyes trudged open, it was not with the feeling that he had just been slammed into a solid wall of flesh. No, he had only been granted the small reprieve of unconsciousness. He wished he had died; that way, he'd be healed by now and not need to worry about the slashes between his ribs. Or feel them, for that matter.

He wanted some clothes. Not because he cared about anyone seeing him — hell, it'd be a treat for anyone to see him naked — but because he very nearly literally freezing his ass off. He also wanted something to cover the still-healing lacerations. If he could get them bandaged, or at least tie something over them, they'd be able to seal themselves much faster. But as he was, things didn't look so great.

Sighing, Jack pushed himself to his feet. It took much more effort than he first imagined, and he ended up leaning most of his weight against the grimy wall. As he collected his breath, he saw that the corridor in front of him was a dead end. Looking behind him affirmed that the passage continued in the opposite direction. Well, at least one thing was going to be easy. No need to decide which way to go when there was only one option.

With one hand on the wall and the other around his ribs, Jack shuffled down towards unknown dank and darkness.

Ianto had a problem. The corridor split, and both splits curved out of site, so it was impossible to gauge which one would be the better choice. He did not want to go down one and find something murderous there, but he also did not want to miss the chance to find anyone else, if anyone else from Torchwood was to be found. So Ianto, being relatively logical, sat with a vantage point of both forks, Jack's coat in his lap and free from the dirty ground.

The coffee was on its own now.

Her shoulders ached with the intensity of her tension. Gwen had passed through yet another dark patch, but this one had been so long she thought it would go on forever. When she finally came out of it, her fingers were numb from holding the lead pipe in a white-knuckled grip. And only one mangy light lay between her and the next all-encompassing blackness.

Steeling herself against the unknown, she inched forward.

This black went on for even longer

And something was moving in it.

Gwen froze. Her first thought was that it was some deranged lunatic who could see her and lusted for a kill, then sensibility kicked her and reasoned that it could simply be some animal. But Gwen did not want to believe it was something as simple as some animal. What the hell would an animal be doing down here anyways? She raised the pipe, heart thudding in her ears as she listened to the thing come closer. That feeling of a foreign object nearing her crept up her heels and along her spine. Whatever shuffled toward her was close now, and she swung.

It startled her when the pipe connected with something hard, and surprised her even more when a loud oomph! of pain issued from the stricken object. A second later there came a solid thump was a body hit the floor, and another grunt. Then a crack, and,

"That. Hurt. Nearly broke my jaw. . . ."

"Jack?" Gwen dropped to the ground, feeling around for the captain.

"Gwen?" The single word was quiet, near her foot.

"Yes, Jack. I am so sorry!" She found what felt like his head, and yelped when he hissed and jerked away. She mumbled sorry again and waited for Jack to speak.

"I think you fractured my skull." His tone was lighthearted, but weariness underlay it. He sounded a bit closer than before.

"I can't see you, Jack."

"That's probably for the better."

"What?"

"Nothing. Just . . . put your hand out."

Gwen did as he said, but she still jumped when his hand found hers. She stood and hauled him to his feet, staggering as he fell against her. She hadn't been prepared for the sudden extra weight. Gwen's brows furrowed as she felt what seemed to be the absence of his clothes. . . .

"Jack, why are you naked?"

He chuckled. Gwen felt him shrug. ". . . That's not the reaction I usually get."

"Now is not the time to be joking!"

Jack didn't respond. When he did speak, the subject had changed.

"The other way for me was a dead end."

"Then we'll have to turn around."

Jack sighed shakily. "Alright. Don't forget your saber, Joan of Arc."

Gwen gave a short laugh and stooped to retrieve the pipe. She began to walk forward but Jack grabbed her shoulder.

"You destroyed my equilibrium, you help me walk."

Gwen began to protest, but Jack had already slipped one of her arms around his waist, his own over her shoulder.

"You going to be alright?"

"Yeah." He said it a little too breathlessly for Gwen's comfort.

She took a step forward, and nearly dropped Jack when she became responsible for most of his weight.

"Sorry," he said, and adjusted himself so that he more leant on Gwen then sagging against her.

"Ready now?"

"Yes."

His answer came out as a whisper, and Gwen's concern for him deepened.