4

Let the game begin.

A dozen incredibly loud snaps and Owen still jump every time he set off a trap. The current pipe, by this point, was useless. Owen had gone through nearly six when an idea struck him: take the closed traps and use them to set off the rest. Sixteen total closed and he still had not found the key. His growing suspicion was that it lay under on of the traps closest the door, but he still had some ten meters of traps to go through.

Owen hoped he wasn't being timed.

"Load of bollocks . . ." he murmured as he tossed a piece of pipe at a pair of gaping jaws three feet from him. They closed greedily around the lead meal, slamming together with a solid thump. Owen cringed at the noise. A thick, fuzzy headache began throbbing behind his eyes.

Owen's eyes snapped back to the clamped steel. A dully shinning shape, a metal tidbit in comparison to the mindlessly carnal beast that harbored it, snagged his attention. The key. . . . It looked pathetic and forlorn as it lay next to the closed bear trap. He plucked it away, holding it up to the light and inspecting it. Owen swung his eyes away from the key and over the remaining metal jaws. If he could just set off a few in a row, he'd have a relatively clear path to the door.

A clearish path.

With a grumble, he lifted the most recently satiated trap and tossed it onto the thick of the pack. There were several consecutive snaps that chipped a little more away from Owen's nerves. This resulted in some seven of the traps closing, and he had a bare enough path to the door. All he would have to do was jump over one and he could leave this irksome room behind.

When he came to the single set of jaws slumbering between him and his freedom, Owen's lips curled into a kind of feral grimace. He then edged around it and padded to the door, taking the handle in one hand and jamming the key into the lock. A twist to the left and a satisfying click was uttered from the dirt-spotted door; he turned the knob and let the rectangle swing open, into the room.

The corridor that greeted him did nothing to lighten his mood.

"The rules of the game are simple. You cooperate and your team lives. If you contact any authorities, I will ensure they suffer to the death. Live or die, Toshiko. Make their choice."

Even after replaying the horrifying monologue four times, Toshiko's mind refused to comprehend it. All her attention focused on the player, her eyes drawn to the black holes that comprised the speaker. Her horrified gaze, wide-eyes. The tape had explained things perfectly logically; the situation it explained seemed unreal. And this was Torchwood. What they did could hardly be classified as "real."

Something clamped around her mouth and she gasped by instinct, but with each breath she became more and more light headed. Her mind frenzied: who the hell was this? Why was this happening? The team . . .something about the team . . . She tried to turn around and see who held a chloroformed rag to her mouth, but blackness overtook her and the room disappeared.

Owen, yet again, did not like his options. Well, option singular: the corridor dead-ended to his right and made an almost immediate bend to his left, so for all he knew, death could be awaiting him. But, he reasoned, whoever had put him here wanted him somewhat functional. Maybe even alive. The bear traps would have been enough to kill him; why kill him as soon as he escaped the room? The only good thing was that the hall's buzzing fluorescents made use of the Maglite superfluous. He dropped it into his left hip pocket.

He walked for what felt like a short minute when a tri-fork presented itself. Owen really did not want to risk choosing a wrong one; the possibility of dead ends or passageways that led him further and further from escape was not one he favored. Then he thought back to the tape...it had said not only his life depended on his escape. But who else could possibly . . .

As if a switch had turned in his head, everything clicked into place.

The psycho responsible for this had the entire Torchwood team.

He seemed to be fine, which was all Gwen needed to see. In all honesty Jack was hard pressed to recall a time he had ever experienced this much pain for such a prolonged period of time. What he could not, however, hide, was his inability to walk completely on his own. He had tried twice more, taking a few steps while Gwen watched with weary eyes, but both times resulted in him collapsing against her. And those small steps had drained him more than he cared to admit. His position stayed one he did not appreciate at all. He hated having to depend on another person just to keep upright, even if that person had the best intentions.

"You alright?" Gwen asked quietly.

Jack smiled. "I'll be fine."

"That's in the future, how about now? You can't be okay, Jack."

Jack couldn't summon the energy to completely lie, so he diluted his answer. "I feel like shit, frankly. Worse than shit. I don't think shit is capable of feeling."

The poor attempt at humor garnered a small chuckled from Gwen.

"So definitely not fine."

Jack held a little tighter to her, his voice hardly above a whisper. "Yeah, well, that's to be expected after pulling blades out of my ribcage."

"What?!" Gwen nearly shouted, and Jack winced away from the sound.

She stopped walking, sliding Jack's arm off her shoulder. Pulling blades from his ribcage? Meaning, inside his ribcage? How was he still alive? She unhooked her arm from his waist and took a better look at her battered boss. Maybe it was only a change in the lighting, but the wounds appeared even more garish than before. Their red, inflamed presence contrasted starkly with Jack's pale skin.

Wait, why was his skin so pale?

"Jack . . ." Gwen began without really knowing where she wanted to direct the conversation.

"Yes?" His tone was one of expectancy.

Gwen's mouth moved, but it issued no sound.

"We should keep going." Jack turned as he said it, but even that was too fast a movement. His feet entangled each other and his knees failed. Gwen only just caught him.

"Jack—"

"Don't say you're sorry," he ground out, teeth clenched against the pain Gwen's shirt caused the gauges.

"I wasn't going to."

Jack lapsed into silence, breathing shallowly with his forehead pressed against Gwen's collarbone. Gwen sighed and arranged Jack once more at her side.

"This is getting ridiculous."

"And you're not the naked one."

Gwen smiled minutely. "Now is not the time for joking." But she could not earnestly reprimanding him.

"Hmm," was Jack's response.

Gwen's worry had grown so acute it pained her. A deep seated feeling of dread and apprehension dwelt just above her waist, ripping at her insides like a nest of thorns. Jack had said he pulled blades out of his ribcage, and that was the reason for the gouges. That, she could see for herself, but what didn't make sense was why they weren't more healed, or why Jack hardly seemed to have gotten any better. He should be walking on his own by this point; he had recovered from being shocked twice faster than this. However, Gwen supposed, that wasn't nearly as bad as this.

She hoped they could find a way out soon.

With Jack's wellbeing as her fore thoughts, only a small piece of Gwen's mind registered the slight change of lighting, and the gentle curve of the corridor.

He had been thinking about what to say the next he saw Jack, when Ianto heard footsteps. Light, but scuffling, the sound of a barefooted person limping. Immediately, Ianto knew it had to be someone from Torchwood, and frankly, he didn't care who it was, even if it turned out to be Owen. Heh, Ianto smiled to himself, if it was Owen, he could yell at the medic. Ianto stood, draping Jack's coat over one arm, and stood a little ways back from the fork, wondering from which side his teammate would come from. It wasn't long before a shadow stretched across the wall, and Ianto's brows furrowed as he looked at it; it appeared to be two people, judging by the size. And the way one of the shadows looked to mold onto the other one . . .

Ianto held his breath.

-

"Okay, now I'm hallucinating."

"What?"

Jack raised a hand and pointed at the man standing at the end of the corridor with a coat over one arm.

Gwen smiled.

"Then that makes two of us," she muttered, walking a little faster towards Ianto, who stood there with his mouth open slightly. No doubt it had to do with their appearances: Jack in all his naked, wounded glory, and Gwen with blood and questionable other stains on the front of her shirt.

Ianto just stood there, gawping.

Jack whispered to Gwen for her to stop, and he untangled himself from her side and stood, swaying slightly.

"Ianto." Jack nodded to his coat.

Ianto's eyes snapped to his captain and he walked forward, holding out Jack's coat as if it were some ceremonial offering. Jack smiled and extended an arm for it. Gwen put a hand on his shoulder as a precaution, which was fortunate for Jack: when he lifted one arm to slip on the coat, he winced and bent double, arms curled around his sides. Both Gwen and Ianto immediately went for him, but he waved them off and motioned for his coat. Ianto looked at Gwen, but she only shook her head and stepped back.

Ianto helped Jack into his coat, undoing the tie from the back and securing it so that the coat was held loosely closed. Gwen internally remarked that this was the first time she had seen the old garment tied shut. Once that was done, they lowered Jack to the floor, where he sat hunch, panting slightly. God, this hurt.

"Would it be a repetitive question if I ask what happened?"