Ch. 12. Not much to say... Please, please review! I know the site is slow sometimes, but the reviews just make me smile. And I'd love critique on my writing in general, if people could take the time to do that. I'm not making any money from this; reviews serve that purpose. They make it worth all the effort.
Sorry to upload it twice, there was typo that comepletely killed it. I gues that's what I get for editing it at 2 am.
Thanks go out to DeMarcos for supplying info and putting up with my teasing ;)
Let the game begin.
"Maybe we should see if there's anything on the other side of the tape," Gwen said when they stopped to rest.
Owen lowered Ianto to the floor, situating him so that the tea boy could lean against the grime-crusted wall. Jack sat next to him, a hand on Ianto's shoulder. Ianto had his eyes closed, his mouth open slightly. He breathed deeply, shakily. Gwen frowned at his obvious show of pain; he was usually so reserved. Well, she pointed out to herself, he did have a metal rod through his leg.
She also wondered how much longer could this go on.
An unnamable suspicion budded in the center of her chest. Gwen only wished she could know exactly where it came from. Perhaps it was the tape player: the little silver rectangles had, thus far, been the heralds of abject tribulation. The tapes were plastic messengers of damage, of pain, continuously leading to the uncertainty of whether or not they would live to see tomorrow. These rasping recordings only further plunged them into dark crannies of their subconscious, tinkered with their thoughts, questioned their rationality. Jack was forced to examine just how self-sacrificing he could be; Owen pondered whether joining Torchwood had been such a grand idea after all; Gwen worried over their survival; Ianto was more unsettled by Toshiko now then he had been in all the time he knew her; Toshiko...just snapped, for the most part.
And they were all more frightened than they would ever admit to each other.
By logic, there could only be one end: death. Just dead. From Life to nothing in an unmemorable, agonized instant. Death by psychopath.
It seemed befitting of Torchwood.
There they were, sitting on a chink in time and space. They dealt with all manner of inhuman things, worked with the impossible, tangled with the unbelievable. Every time they went to a new investigation, or on a weevil hunt, they chanced their lives and waltzed lazily around grave injury and death, taunting. What better way for that incomprehensibly powerful force to finally snuff them with an insane human puppet? Ending it that way was so Homo sapiens, so earth, so twenty-first century.
Jack almost laughed, but for the situation. Toshiko, with the few words she had spoken in the past however long it was, seemed cross with the rest of them; she more than likely would be of little help. Ianto's incapacitation underlined the fact that Jack could not spare his entire team injury. He could only do so much, being a single person. His body alone was not enough to shield four others, and something else would happen that he could not to prevent. He would get there too late, or fail to see a trap, and someone would die. Jack didn't think he could rebuild a team again. Not after this lot... He almost regretted that he had grown attached to the silly humans. Hell, he'd even miss Owen.
"Jack?"
Gwen must have been speaking to him; she was holding the tape player in two hands, not entirely unlike the way she had held the knife that killed Ed Morgan.
"Did you hear any of that?"
"Sorry?"
"The tape. Did you hear it at all?"
"No. Play it over."
She rewound it and clicked play, quivering with apprehension.
"Let me congratulate you on making it this far. The end is near, the last step leading to your salvation. All I ask of you is this final, simple thing: go down the hall to your left and climb the ladder. Nothing more than it appears, just the ladder and your freedom. I hope you have all come to realize that things alien and impossible are not the only ones capable of atrocities against man."
The tape ran out, and Jack frowned.
"That can't be it. No way in hell he'd just let us off that easy."
"That's what I said," Gwen put in, looking at the player. Not really knowing what to do with it, she offered it to Jack. He took it, holding it lightly, as if it might change its form to that of a cobra, or something equally as dangerous. At this point, he would have preferred it turn vicious. He needed something ludicrous for this un-reality they had awoken in. Then at least it would make sense.
Toying with them, all of this was. An elaborate, agonizing, ridiculously convoluted game. Testing their wills, ha! Fat lot of good that did anyone. Sure, Torchwood stepped on a few fingers, made enemies, kept Cardiff free of the little bits of the Rift that happened into the area. Maybe they rushed into things, they sometimes didn't think about the repercussions, neglected others outside their little penta-member agency of alien catchers. Perhaps a degree of recognition for the rest of the undisturbed world would do them some good.
Jack shook his head as he realized he had just been coerced into this line of thought. It had to be exactly what this fiendish nutter wanted, for them to scrutinize themselves. Weevils would be attending university before that was going to happen, in all honesty. They may give it residence in a passing thought, but none of them would ever think about it in depth, not while life cowered under imminent death. Jack could tell fear dominated everyone to the point where a spare thought for anything besides escape just would not happen.
"So, Jack, what do you propose we do? Just walk out and leave? Why the fuck would he bother with all that—" Owen waved a hand in the direction of the wire trap, "just to let us go?" Even though he did not speak to anyone directly, Owen glared at Jack the entire time he shouted.
Jack scowled at Owen and rose, coming to stand uncomfortably close to the medic.
"If you haven't noticed, Owen, you're not the only one thinking that! We all want to get out of here. You're not an exception!"
"I never said I was!"
"Just stop, both of you!" Gwen attempted to push them apart; Owen flung her hand off and Jack shot her a warning look. Gwen stepped back without further protest.
"We've just done what the tape says. Every. Bloody. Time. And look where it's gotten us! The bear traps, the rats, the dead animals, the barbed wire! I'm bloody sick of it!"
"We all are—"
"And I'm not about to just blindly do whatever the fuck this psychopath says! We keep on like this and we'll all be dead, except for you." Owen pointed an accusing finger at Jack's chest.
Jack's glare went from smoldering to flaming. "What are you saying, Owen?"
"I'm saying you're in a pretty good position to have set this up yourself."
Jack uttered a disbelieving bark of laughter. "You saw the gashes. I'm in the exact same position as you. I'm just as trapped, just as—"
"No, you're not. It doesn't matter what happens to you, you'll survive. You always do, Jack! What about the rest of us? We're only human. One slip-up, one bad crack to the head, and," he clapped his hands once, the sound sharply reverberating off the grey walls, "gone. What then, Jack? Will you carry our bodies on your back, take us to the real world, stuff us in the morgue? How are you going to find yourself a new team? How will you replace us, after all we've gone through." Owen's voice slowly lowered back to a normal pitch, the intent of his look changed; he shifted from menacing to questioning, and fear. Completely unguarded fear.
Jack swallowed. He knew he couldn't answer these questions, and he never would. Owen also knew that, and he was taking every possible advantage of Jack's uncertainty.
"Look, Owen. You need to—"
A hollow bang echoed to them, accompanied by a pleading cry of "No!" and closely followed by a snarl. Pounding feet, bare, slapping on the concrete. Coming towards them. Harsh breathing, ragged with terror, entwined with the feral growls; whatever it was that burst from some room ahead of them rushed closer.
Gwen moved closer to Jack, and Owen worked Ianto off the floor. Toshiko stood a yard or so in front of them, round face set in solemn determination. She held the spike the way one would hold a knife at the ready to attack; her other hand clamped the laptop over her heart, a shield with a hole that flaunted the skin of her chest and the grim of her ripped shirt. Jack stepped level with Toshiko. No reason to give Owen more reason to doubt his dedication to the team.
There came the hard thump of a body hitting the floor, nearer than the first call, but still somewhere out of sight. More growls were heard, and Jack forced down his immediate reaction at the instant of recognition: they were hearing another human being chased by a weevil. And now that human was on the ground, about to be ripped in to. Jack wanted to pelt forward and stop it, but he knew it would be a wasted effort. He had no anti-weevil spray, no weapons...he was not about to beat off a weevil using some oversized metal dart, a broken laptop, and a lead pipe. He doubted he could bring himself to swing that hard and for that long. Not without his thoughts wandering in harmful directions.
Maybe Owen had a point. Maybe Jack wasn't human, despite everything he felt, everything he experienced. Jack's hopes, his worries...none of them made him human. What had he fooled himself when he came to the convincing conclusion immortality was the only thing that separated him from humanity? He really wasn't human. Could a human just stand here and listen to a man die? Was he truly human with his indifference and uncaring? Probably not, he reasoned. He wasn't natural, he didn't belong here.
Yet he could never leave.
Jack started forward, hell bent on the rash, humanistic thing to do. Just stepping into a situation where he had the slimmest odds of success, and hope that by sheer will power, he'd come out swinging.
"Jack? What are you doing?" Gwen watched him walking steadily away, eyes immense.
He didn't answer, he didn't turn around. He just kept walking, hands in pockets.
"Oh God please nooooooooo—" The "no" turned into an agonized howl, a high wail clinging to sounds of tearing flesh. Death strummed out a tune with that single pitch, creating a demented symphony of cracking bones and successful cries of a predator well fed. These sounds of the dying sidled between Jack and Gwen, caressed their frantic hearts and traipsed along the impassive walls.
This redefined insanity.
Jack saw a break in the wall, indicating a turn off into another passage. He slowed, and as he reached the space, he moved in a wide arc so that he could, hopefully, observe and have a few more calculated seconds of decision. Once he reached the opening, everything confirmed itself: there was, indeed, a weevil, and it was fiercely biting into the chest of the downed man. A muffled gag from behind Jack pricked his awareness of Gwen having followed. He almost sighed with frustration. Instead, he charged at the weevil.
Gwen watched, disbelieving, mouth hanging open, as Jack ran at the weevil. He shouted much the way he had shouted after he ploughed into the villager's home with a tractor, and the rage in the sound made Gwen shiver. She knew Jack was capable, but to actually see it...was something else entirely. Something she hoped she wouldn't have to experience again.
Jack further surprised her when he lunged at the weevil, grabbing for its head. It swatted at him and left claw marks running from one cheek, over his nose, and to the other; Jack only yelled louder and leapt forward again. This time, he managed to get both hands around the weevil's neck. The weevil was not about to give up its kill, and so it kicked at Jack. But the captain had expected it, and, smiling in an unsettling, mad way, he deftly twisted the creature's neck, snapping it. The weevil slumped sideways with a twitch of the hands, and then remained still. Jack stood, panting slightly, and looked back at Gwen. Gwen realized her whole body shook. Either witnessing that fury or such a brutal attack had her quaking. Gwen didn't dwell on the thoughts. Both where perturbing.
Gwen opened her mouth to speak, but Jack wagged a finger at her. She turned away from him for a moment, looking anywhere but at the mangled body and the murdered weevil.
"Gwen, come here."
Could she trust him?
Of course she could, she wasn't the one tearing into a person.
Gwen carefully avoided the corpses and stood next to Jack, facing down the opposite end of the hall. She tried not to be too conspicuous about ignoring the bodies.
"It was Burney Harris."
"What?"
"The weevil, it killed Burney Harris."
"Oh."
"And this was in his pocket."
"Burney's?"
"No, the weevil's," Jack remarked with...light...sarcasm.
Gwen glanced sideways at his eyes, trying to pick out any emotion in them. She found it too difficult to clearly identify a particular one. So she took the square of what appeared to be paper from Jack. When she grabbed it, her fingertips met something slightly sticky; a photograph. Gwen quickly turned it over, and nearly sank to the floor.
It was a Polaroid snapshot of Rhys, tied to something that appeared to be a table leg. Cloth sat in his mouth, and a bandana shrouded his eyes. The only relief was that there wasn't any blood on him.
None that was visible.
Gwen started to shake her head.
"No, that can't be Rhys."
But she knew it was, and she knew she would not be able to convince herself otherwise.
Instead of comprehending the truth, she ran.
Some form of awareness told her this was stupid, to just go dashing off. She had no way of telling what may wait around a corner, or in a swatch of darkness. A missing floor, deadly spikes, stairs, creatures of any sort. Running around blindly was as likely to kill her as any of the tasks.
That same part of her mind telling her she was being a complete fool cautioned her to slow, and she did. She had come to a dead end, a grey slab of wall as unfriendly as the others, unpromising, useless. Except this one had splashes of red, off setting the bland, dirty scene around it. Gwen vaguely registered Jack standing next to her.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me."
HA! What is on the wall?
Okay, faithful readers and reviewers. We're nearing the end, as I'm sure you can tell. This is part 1 of the finale chapter! Part 2 coming in a few days. Although, reviews will make me want to write it faster. "subtle hint"