Chapter 8! Wewt!
Ok, so first chapter, the left side of Jack's head was hurtin' because he got whacked there, not by Gwen. When he encountered Gwen, she got his right side. And compared to the right, that left bit that was a minor hurting is NOTHING. I do know who has sustained what injuries. Some of them are digressing from my original plan, but…. Oh hey!
—skips off to write next three chapters—
Sorry I didn't update on the weekend. There was a lot of this chapter to write, and I even changed a whole section. Here's the finished product. Enjoy.
Let the game begin
All doubts had been chased from his mind, even those that infected the dusty crevasses. The doubt that the pain would never lessen crumpled under the encouraging warmth of Gwen and Ianto, and even Owen's words of poison possessed a tantalizing hope of falsity. But Jack knew, in the lucid exterior of thought, that poison loped rampant through his body. His stomach felt heavy, while his upper torso seemed to be hollowed; his hands and feet tingled with static pinpricks, and his head, for all he knew, could be made of cotton, except for the lead side that howled with every pulsation of blood.
Jack really, really wanted a gun right now.
He had no idea how long they had been walking, and he didn't particularly care. His awareness of everything had severely declined since being lifted from the ground. He wasn't even completely certain he moved his feet whatsoever, something he was sorry for. Poor Ianto and Gwen having to drag him along... There was something he knew: the poison was slow-acting, which was why he had seemed to recover however long ago it was, and then keel over so recently. Probably something non-lethal, because —he knew from experience— one never went to this much trouble with a person to simply off them. They would have to do something to get out, or find the counter to the enemy slogging Jack's system.
Something changed around him. They were stopped. Jack worked to open his eyes, and saw that Owen was holding a silver tape player...
"That's just like the one I had!" Gwen exclaimed and pointed an accusing finger at the device. Jack winced at the volume of her voice.
"Play it."
They all looked at Jack, who sagged heavily between Gwen and Ianto. If not for his occasional harsh breath, he could be taken for a corpse.
Owen nodded and pressed play.
"Hello, Torchwood Three. I trust you have all found each other by this point. If you have not, then one of your teammates is surely dead. But you all seem smarter than that."
"It's the same man—"
"Shh!" Owen hissed, raising the volume of the tiny speaker and coming a few steps closer to Jack and his human crutches.
"You will by now have come to realize that not all his right with Captain Harkness. Owen, I'm sure, has concluded it is a poison. Correct. It is slow-acting, and so you, Jack, thought everything was getting better. But things have only just begun."
The rasping man paused.
"You have completed the task of finding one another. Now it is time for the first real test. Listen closely, Ianto. Your captain won't be able to help you."
Ianto left Jack hanging on Gwen and closed the space between himself and Owen. The toadman and the tea boy exchanged quick glances before focusing once more on the tape.
"At the end of this hall stands a door, behind which your first test is to be found. It requires only one person to complete, so choose your participant carefully. If you succeed, you will receive that which can help your captain, and be one step closer to freedom. Further instructions are on the other side of this tape. Play it once you are within the room."
It clicked off.
No one spoke.
"Jack? What should we do?" Hesitation clung to Gwen's voice like creepers to a wall.
He looked up and gave a wry, rueful smile. "We go in the room."
Another bout of silence claimed them.
Gwen felt Jack's grip on her tighten, and she pulled him a little farther off the ground.
"C'mon, Ianto, help me with him."
When Ianto failed to respond beyond a few fish-flaps of his mouth, Owen stepped forward and took Jack's other arm around his shoulder. They started forward to an unknown beginning, apprehension and fear snaking behind their navels. Gwen's legs felt thinned, as if water instead of blood raced through the appendages. She tried to focus on supporting Jack. On Jack's other side, Owen thought he would, for once, be chivalrous and do whatever...test awaited them: Ianto just did not seem a great candidate for dealing with anything horrifying; Gwen, he wanted to spare from damage of all sorts as much as possible; Jack was useless and Tosh... Tosh frightened him. He glanced back at her. Her lips moved silently and her eyes focused on the floor. Ianto was looking at her with a mixture of concern and fearful confusion. He seemed unsettled by her presence, because his pace quickened so that he walked abreast Jack and his supports.
They didn't have to walk far to reach the door.
Ianto placed a hand flat on its cold surface, waiting for either Owen or Jack to give him the memory of exposing their first horror.
"Open it, Ianto," Jack said without moving his head from where it rested on Owen's shoulder. The heat radiating from his forehead made Owen uncomfortable.
Ianto hesitated another dozen seconds before pushing on the door. It opened with an ease and absence of sound that suggested it had been opened before now. The tea boy was about to ask Jack if he really wanted to proceed when the captain spoke.
"I'm sure that if he wanted us dead, he would have done so already. We're right behind you, Ianto."
The tea boy nodded and stepped forward, followed closely by everyone else.
"Oh fuck me," Owen mumbled.
Gwen's eyes widened even further, and Jack lifted his head to see what made Owen sound so disbelieving.
"You have got to be joking." Anger seethed from Jack's quiet voice.
They were standing on a three-foot wide platform, looking down into a steel drum approximately twelve feet tall. Stretching above it, a precariously narrow catwalk made a path across its diameter. A rope ladder hung from the grid-work underbelly of the catwalk, descending straight into a squealing, reeking mass of rats. They stank of urine and feces, blood and rotten flesh. An effluvium of malice hovered above the quarreling rodents. Ceaselessly moving and constantly noisy, their sheer number intimidated the humans' confidence.
"Play the tape."
"What?" Owen shook himself, turning away from the disgusting sight to face his captain.
"Play the tape so you can find out why the hell every rat in the sewer system is down there."
Owen nodded solemnly and opened the tape player, extracting the cassette and reversing its playing side.
"Welcome to your first test. Your day to day jobs require that you deal with unordinary and alien things. You see the wonders of other worlds, but are nearly blind to the horrors
of the land your very feet walk upon. That incident in the country is the only human thing your organization has dealt with."
"But now you are going to partake in the grunge that permeates the human existence. Somewhere underneath those rats is a small container, inside which is a code. This code unlocks the box on the other side of the catwalk, and inside that box is the antidote for your beloved captain. Should you fail to retrieve the code, Mr. Harkness will not be the only one to suffer."
"Be careful of the rats. They haven't eaten anyone for a few days." There was a smile behind the words.
"Let the game begin."
Owen glared at the player as the tape clicked off. He was about to speak when the door slammed shut, making all present but Toshiko startle.
"Great. Just great. What are we going to do now?" Gwen directed her question to Jack.
"We do what he says. One of you's gotta go down there."
No one volunteered. The noise the rats reminded Torchwood that, eventually, something would have to be done.
"I'll do it," Ianto said after the prolonged silence. He stepped up to the catwalk, but Owen grabbed his shoulder and spun him around.
"Ianto, I don't think your backside is rough enough to withstand a thousand carnivorous rats. Step back and make sure no one does anything rash."
A chuckle came from Gwen's side.
"Taking charge of the situation, Owen?"
Owen shrugged. "Someone's got to. And seeing as you're incapacitated, yeah, I'm bossing the situation."
Jack nodded his head at the steel drum. "Then proceed."
Owen gulped and started forward. The catwalk swayed under his feet, but he kept forward with grim determination. Once he reached the area where the ladder dangled, he closed his eyes and thought how much Jack had better appreciate this. Go into a mess of rats, unarmed and in bare feet. If that didn't show commitment to the team, Owen couldn't name what did.
As he placed a foot on the ladder, the smell from below sent a powerful waft upwards; Owen gagged and put one hand over his mouth. He thought he'd be able to handle it. After all, how hard could it be to find a box of unknown size in a pit of starving rats? Without any shoes or weapons to speak of whatsoever...
Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Owen dropped the last foot.
It was entirely different from what he anticipated. The rats, instead of running away, launched at his exposed feet, teeth bared. One latched on to his foot and he shook it off, swearing loudly. But it wasn't the only one to try it. Before Owen could work out a methodical way to search for the code's container, a dozen of the fetid rodents were attacking him. He kicked them away when possible, and when they became too many to do that, he began crunching their skulls. This seemed to help a bit; the dead bodies were easier to shift and step over than the live ones. And as they became aware that the flesh they sought fought back, the rats went at him with less vigor. However, despite this, Owen had a fair amount of bites on his feet and ankles by the time he decided upon the best way to search out the box. He tried to ignore the gore/waste paste coating his feet.
"You okay, Owen?" Gwen called from the edge of the steel drum.
"Just peachy, thanks!" Without waiting for her to offer response, he returned to his business of kicking rats into the walls.
He first trudged straight for the side of the rat pit. Once there, we worked his way along the perimeter, nudging rats out of his path until he was able to see the filth covered floor. He figured that any container would be relatively obvious. He also had the suspicion that the box would be in some random position closer to the interior. So he waded his way in a slowly descending spiral, with the rope ladder as its focal point.
Not only was the waste disgusting, its presence in Owen's cuts irked him. An infection would all too likely form. Infected wounds were bad enough, but on the feet...
Owen stumbled over something that felt neither like dead nor live rat. With only a half glance, he stooped to grab it. The small, rectangular box came free easily, but a rat jumped at Owen and bit onto his finger; he yelled incoherently at it and then whacked it against the ground. Its skull and half its body caved in and splattered a line of blood across Owen's nose.
"Owen! Come on!" Gwen crouched at the top of the ladder, one hand extended down to Owen. He took it, handing her the box. Once he was on the platform, he sat there, trying to calm his nerves. The smell and sound, however, coming from below him did nothing to help.
"Owen?"
"Just get that box open and give Jack what he needs."
Gwen gave Owen a nod he would never see and strode to the opposite end of the catwalk.
She slid the smaller box open: a ten digit number was sharpied across the bottom.
" 179," Gwen muttered as she slowly tapped the number on the keypad, "894... 63...8...0!"
A click sounded from within the six inch deep box and the front pane swung open. Inside there was a syringe filled with a pale red liquid, and a first aid kit. Gwen grabbed both and hurried back to Owen.
"There was a first aid kit in there, Owen."
"Great," he opened his eyes and pushed himself to his feet, wincing at his first step on the grid-worked platform. "Let's sit down for a moment."
Owen thumped down next to Jack. Gwen handed him the syringe; Owen pushed back the sleeve of Jack's coat to expose the blue vein.
"Hold still, Jack."
"Of course." His smile had a little more strength than his previous one.
Owen slid the needle into the vein and slowly pushed the fluid into Jack's bloodstream.
A relaxed expression passed over the captain's face, his eyes slid shut, and his smile broadened.
"That is the way to kill a headache." Jack opened his eyes again, sighing somewhat contentedly. He looked his team over: Ianto, standing as far away from Toshiko and as close to him as possible, Gwen crouched next to him and Owen with his bleeding feet stretched in front of him...
"Owen, the...?"
"Rats."
Jack mouthed an "oh" and shook his head, scowling.
Owen, meanwhile, had the first aid kit opened and was already cleaning his feet with alcohol wipes. Every time the disinfectant passed over a bite, he winced. By the time he finished with one foot, he had used half the individual-wipe packets in the small kit.
"Fucking rats. Never liked 'em..."
Jack glanced at their resident medic with concerned eyes, and then let his head tilt against the wall, a light sleep grasping him.
"One by one we bite the dust."
"What?" Gwen looked up to Toshiko: she had her computer hugged tightly to her chest, and she continued speaking as if no one else were there.
"We kick the bucket and begin to rust."
"Tosh, you're not making sense."
"Give up the ghost when your number's up."
She smiled crookedly, catching everyone in her gaze.
"We all fall down."
Ok, so... how do people think that went?
:::All of Tosh's last lines are from the Creature Feater song "A Gorey Demise"::: awesome song, and I have the link to it if anyone wants to listen. Just email me with the song as the subject.
A zillion thanks to reviewers. If you can prove to me that you were responsible for someone reading and reviewing this, I may have a prize for you ;)
-Willow