6
Let the game begin
"How do you know this is the right thing to do?"
Jack shrugged. "It's the only thing to do. Unless you prefer to wait around for something dangerous to show up?"
Gwen shook her head and stuck her hands back in her pockets.
Jack had, for the most part, been walking under his own power for the last fifteen minutes. Not his usual, confident no-matter-what-the-hell-happens-I'll-still-win stride, but much slower; his bare feet hardly parted contact with the ground, and he still had an arm across his middle, pressing against his right side. Ianto was walking close enough to the captain to offer aid should the need arise. Gwen lagged a few metres behind, immersed in thought she was not consciously aware of. The track of her brain that worked constantly was silent, while the deeper, more cavernous half slogged its way through everything her brown eyes had recently captured. It sorted the images of the body, of stabbing it open to find the key, of losing all that was in her stomach followed by a dozen dry heaves. Gwen's mind had receded into its own shock; the horrors she had witnessed were simply too much for the organ to handle.
Why were they here? Where was here? Where were Tosh and Owen, assuming they had befallen similar situations? These were the more obvious questions that flitted through Gwen's forethought; once they had passed she was left with a blankness intended to allow her damaged psyche time to repair. The only other thing Gwen controlled was the roving of her eyes along the corridor, and over Jack and Ianto. There was absolutely nothing of interest, no single thing to give away their location or purpose. They had been walking down the other corridor of the fork Ianto showed them for at least a kilometre, possibly more. Although with the speed Jack set, in all likelihood it was under that distance.
In front of her, Jack faltered with a small croak of surprise and threw a hand out at the wall to catch himself. Ianto was immediately at his side, and Gwen double-stepped to reach them.
"Do you want to stop for a bit? Rest at all?" Gwen began before Ianto could get a word in whatsoever. The tea boy sent her an exasperated glare and then returned his attention to his captain.
Jack shook his head, lifting his foot and brushing at the bottom of it. "Damn rock," he offered as way of explanation, sighing and passing a hand over his face.
"All right, sir?"
He nodded, placing a hand on Ianto's shoulder. "Fine. Just a sharp bit of stone," he jerked his head forward, "Shall we continue?"
Gwen opened her mouth to respond when a howl cut in. The three of them stood there, looking from one to another. Then Jack abruptly jogged forward, in the direction of the noise.
She hit the weevil so hard a painful vibration travelled up her arm. Her laptop and the weevil's skull were both stronger than she would have expected. But the blow did not stop the weevil; it hardly even slowed it. The thing only shook its head and snarled louder than before. If slight annoyance had been what it felt earlier, it was now enraged. And a hell of a lot better armed than the poor computer genius before it.
Tosh was not, however, afraid. Fuelled by pure adrenaline, she held aloft the piece of twenty-first century technology once more and ran at the weevil, screaming an indescribably chilling war cry. The weevil met her halfway, but Toshiko's determination to live surpassed the weevil's want for a kill. She swung again, this time hitting with the corner of her laptop: it struck the weevil right on the side of its mouth, and it backed off with a growl, blood oozing from the split skin. But Tosh continued to advance upon the confused and angered creature. At the next blow, the weevil's front teeth crumpled, and blood ran down its chin and to the floor as it back away, hissing; bloody spittle caught on the front of Tosh's purple shirt. And still she attacked, shouting all the while.
Eventually, she backed the weevil into a corner. Bleeding from the mouth and one eye, it huddled there, moaning as Toshiko continued to pound it with her laptop.
"Bloody," crack, "Filthy," snap, "Good for nothing," wap, "Alien scum!"
So intent was she on pulverizing that weevil Toshiko failed to notice the surprised gasp behind her, and when something touched her shoulder she screamed. Gluing the laptop to her chest, she scuttled away from whatever had touched her.
"Tosh, it's just us!"
"Stay back!" She brandished the bloodied —and slightly dented— laptop at him. Jack smiled, trying to encourage some form of sanity to return.
"Tosh, you're fine, it's dead now." Jack spoke as if Tosh were a scared child. "It's me, Jack." He crouched in front of her, shifting himself on his knees to be certain his coat didn't open in the back too much.
Toshiko's eyes locked on his face and a smile crept to her lips. "Jack? Really?"
He put his arms out to the sides in a welcoming gesture. "Yup."
The corner of Tosh's mouth twitched and her grip on the computer tightened. She finally seemed to see Gwen and Ianto as her eyes left Jack, lingering on her other team-mates for only a moment before passing on to the rest of the corridor.
"Where's Owen?"
When he heard the yell, he was certain it came from the hall to his left. Owen stood and half-walked, half-jogged in the direction of the sound. After one turn he heard another shriek, so eerie a sound Owen felt an almost violent shiver claw along his spine, and he quickened his pace. There came a series of dull thumps, solid sounds that generally indicated that flesh of some sort was suffering blows. Interspersed with these noises were what sounded like words, but Owen's heart pounded too quickly in his ears to distinguish anything clearly.
He met another corner and slowed, uncertain of what he would find.
"Oh my god."
All eyes turned to him, even the disgruntled-looking Tosh. Owen glanced at Gwen and Ianto, but his attention drew back to the bloody mess in the corner, and the blood-and-brain spattered Toshiko in front of Jack. Then he looked between Tosh and whatever it was she had bludgeoned, to her, and back at the bashed . . . weevil, judging by the hands. Toshiko had just murdered a bleeding weevil. With her laptop! A laptop of all things!
Owen's mouth lost its hinges.
It wasn't so much that there was a dead weevil or that a human had caused its death. The fact that Toshiko of all people was the one to kill it, with three thousand dollars worth of computer nonetheless, that left Owen speechless. His eyes kept darting between Tosh's faint smile and the bashed underground-dwelling alien not two yards from her. And she looked as if none of it had happened, like she simply ignored the blood on her shirt, the piece of skin clinging to the top of her head, and the tidbit of grey matter just to the left of her nose. The only explanation for her behaviour was shock. Or a temporary and total lapse of sanity. Owen hoped, for the sake of survival, that she didn't turn on one of them. He was also immensely surprised he had stumbled upon the rest of team all in one spot.
Now they were just standing there, all quiet and looking from one to the other. Apparently, no one knew what to say, or do. Finding Owen and the victim of Toshiko's absent sanity completed and convoluted things all at once. And the silence. It forced all sound out; Owen couldn't even hear his heart, even though a minute ago it had been pounding so forcefully it seemed it would burst his ribcage.
"Well," Jack shattered the silence with a clap of his hands and stood, "Looks like the whole gang is here."
Owen scoffed, but with the absence of sound broken everyone seemed to relax: Gwen laughed, albeit nervously, Ianto smiled and Toshiko remained . . .Toshiko. Jack offered a hand to her, but she pushed herself off the floor with one hand while the other kept the laptop tightly to her chest.
"So what was it for you all?" Owen started what he hoped to be an informative conversation.
Gwen glanced at Jack momentarily. "I, well . . . I had to . . . get the key off a body."
Owen nodded at then jerked his head at Jack. "And you?"
The captain sighed. "Pulled blades out from between my ribs then fell fifteen feet into frigid water."
Owen gaped at him. "What?"
"Naked, no less."
"What?!"
Jack shrugged. "I'd show you, but it's cold in here. And, I don't know about the rest of you, but I wouldn't mind getting out of here. This corridor," he pointed at the floor with both index fingers as he spoke, "Is the second half of the fork where we found Ianto. Me and Gwen came out of the other one, so . . . Owen, were there any other corridors where you were?"
"Yeah, two more aside from this one."
Jack grinned at each of them before sticking his hands in the pockets of his coat. "Then that's where we go."
Without waiting to see if anyone followed, he strode past Owen. Owen raised an eyebrow at Gwen, but she only shook her head and walked after Jack. Ianto shrugged and went in the same direction; Owen quickly followed suit and sped past Ianto, not wanting to be left alone with Toshiko's unnerving, gory presence.
The distance to Owen's original problem was short. Jack stood at a point where he could see the other two tunnel-like hallways. He frequently looked between to two, gauging which risk held more appeal.
"Gwen, what do you think?"
"Of what?"
"Which one should we take."
"I . . ." Gwen stood level with him, looking between the two poorly lit corridors. "I don't know. The middle?"
Jack smiled. "The middle it is."