Worth The Risk
Chapter 2.
WARNING: Contains spoilers for Countrycide and slightly Cyberwoman
Disclaimer: I, unfortunately, do not own Torchwood. If I did, there'd be more Jack/Ianto quicksmart!
Every-one was tired. Exhausted. For the past 48 hours, the team had been compiling all the information they have on the trinket box; which wasn't much. Due to the extremely odd characteristic of the box being cold enough to burn your hand, it limited down how specific the tests could be, therefore giving little information in the results.
"Ah, shit!" came a cry from the autopsy room.
Gwen sighed. He never learned. "How many is that now?"
"Nine times."
Gwen scoffed a laugh, and continued researching. Again.
"Far out," Owen said as he came from the autopsy room, cradling his hand. "As soon as we find them, I'm gonna kill the bastards who made that thing."
"Owen, you've burned your hand nine times, now."
"Yeah, and each time it hurts more and more."
"Aw, diddims. Would you like me to kiss it better?" Gwen laughed. She snapped her head back at the sound of the Hub door opening and Ianto carrying a cardboard tray with three coffees and one herbal tea with a plastic bag around his wrist.
"You are a saint," cried Gwen as she took her cup and almost skulled the lot. "Mmm, that's good stuff."
Ianto gave Tosh her tea and Owen his latte, with something else as well.
"I bought you a present," as Ianto chucked the plastic bag on Owen's desk and continued to deliver Jack's coffee. Owen picked up the plastic bag from his desk and retrieved a pair of grey woollen gloves with pink and yellow flowers on the cuff.
"I'd thought you might like them," Ianto smirked, and entered Jack's office.
Owen had nothing to reply with, so he stomped back to the autopsy room, gloves still in his hand. If you listened carefully, you could hear the crackle of the plastic being opened.
"Make sure you put them on the right hand," Gwen called.
"Ah, shut up!"
"We don't want you burning yourself again!"
"Oh dear," Tosh muttered staring at one of her four computer screens.
"What's up?"
"We have more Weevils on a rampage in Splott. Except, it's not just one this time. It's a pack of four."
Gwen read the information on Tosh's screen. "I'll tell Jack."
Gwen marched upstairs and knocked on Jack's door, interrupting him and Ianto's heated moment in the corner of his office.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," she said, blushing. "But there's a pack of four Weevils that have attacked in Splott and killed four people."
Jack cleared his throat and sat back down at his desk. He looked at the paperwork on his desk, then at Ianto still standing in the corner and then finally at Gwen.
"I'm sorry, did you say something?"
Gwen came inside the door. "I said, that four people have been killed by a pack of Weevils in Splott."
"Sploe—" Ianto cut in.
Gwen continued. "Tosh is following the four of them on the CCTV network. But we have to do something quick."
Jack stood up and grabbed his jacket held out by Ianto and stalked out of his office, his colleagues in close pursuit.
"Ianto, I want you to follow the Weevils on CCTV and tell us where they're heading. Gwen, Tosh, Owen, with me," Jack instructed without ever stopping. "We're going on a Weevil hunt."
"Jack, I hate to point out, but there are four Weevils and three of us. It usually takes all of us to capture one. So…what's the plan?" Tosh said from the back of the SUV.
"If they're hunting in a pack, then they'll be relying on each other. If we take out one Weevil, then the pack will scatter because they've seen that we're a threat," Jack replied.
"Wouldn't that give them more incentive to attack us?"
"You'd think that, yeah. But they don't. They flee."
Back in the Hub, Ianto did like his Captain has instructed. "They've turned onto Havock street and heading down onto Old Forest Road," he said into his earpiece.
"Still all four of them?" came the reply.
"Yes."
"Tell us if any of them gets separate from the rest of the pack."
"Yes, sir."
Ianto called out directions into his earpiece and Jack followed, and sure enough within half an hour, had caught up with one that had left the rest of the group.
"We got him, Ianto."
"What about the other three Weevils?"
"Where are they now?"
"They are…" Ianto began and looked at the CCTV footage. "They're gone. They've separated. The last of the Weevils just entered a sewer not two minutes ago."
"Alright. If they're lurking in the sewers, then there's no need for us to go after them. We'll come back with this one, though. We'll be an hour, tops," said Jack through his earpiece.
"Copy that, sir."
Ianto was about to go clean the coffee machine but was distracted by Tosh's findings on the trinket box.
Not much, he thought.
He left her work station and entered the autopsy room where the trinket box lay on the examination table. He made sure as to not touch it; his eyes scanned the surface. His eyes were diverted by at least five coffee mugs left abandoned on the desk in the corner. Ianto rolled his eyes and cursed Owen's inability to be tidy. He gathered the mugs in his hands—
Sssssccccreeeeeecccchhhhh!
The Pterodactyl swooped down from his hangar high above in the Hub unexpectedly causing Ianto to jump in surprise and knock over the trinket box and all five mugs.
He cursed in Welsh and made to pick of the larger shattered pieces of glass when a bluish gas was emitted from the trinket box, laying on the floor. Ianto remained still as the gas hovered in the air. He slowly stood, trying not to make any sudden movements. He had to get one of those gas masks from the kit, less than ten feet away.
In a blink of an eye, the gas dived at Ianto, making him trip backwards and fall over clumsily. Everything went black.
Everything was hazy and out of focus. Ianto gradually opened his eyes, half expecting to find the rest of the team back in the Hub. But the Hub remained silent. Puzzled by how he came to be lying on the concrete floor in the autopsy room, he shook off the haziness and progressively stood up.
He became aware of the mess that surrounded him; a heap of shattered glass and the trinket box on the ground. He picked it up to put it back on the examination table and went to find a broom. It only occurred to him that the trinket box had not burnt him as he was returning from reception.
He frowned, confused but pushed it from his mind. There were many things he didn't understand.
After he emptied the trash, he went down to the vault to check a rather disruptive Weevil the team had caught earlier. This particular Weevil had not stopped wailing and attacking the door of its cell since it was caught three days ago. To be honest, Ianto was more worried about how long the door could handle such a beating.
Meanwhile, the SUV was caught behind, at least, thirty minutes of traffic.
"C'mon! All this due to a broken water pipe?!"
"Tosh, any way we can get back to the Hub just that tad bit faster?" Jack asked, pressing the car horn impatiently.
"There was a turn-off back thirty meters, but the quickest route that we can actually achieve is waiting until we meet another turn-off approximately one hundred meters ahead."
Jack slammed his hands on the wheel and sighed. "Still hate the countrycide?" he asked Owen.
"More than ever."
"But this," Jack said, indicating to the countless cars ahead of them not moving, "is what you get in the city. Some-one screws up and then other people who are in a hurry to get back to their secret underground with a ferocious alien in the back pay the price."
"You don't get cannibals in the city. It's too sophisticated for them," Owen replied, recalling the memories of when the team dared to venture out into remote land to investigate so-called "alien activity".
"But you said so yourself. Aliens wouldn't want to hang around out there."
"And neither would I. I'll take my chances in an alien-inhabited, non-cannibalistic city, thankyou very much" Owen called as Jack moved the SUV forward.
"Ah HA! We moved! We moved! How much did we move?" Owen said excitedly.
"About an inch," Gwen droned.
"That's one inch less to travel!"
Jack sat quietly in the driver's seat and decided to call the Hub. The sound of Ianto's voice might just make the wait bearable. He tried ringing Ianto's earpiece, but discovered that it had been disconnected. So, he tried the reception phone.
However, Ianto couldn't hear the phone all the way down in the vault. No-one could. He stared at the finally sleeping Weevil lying sprawled on the floor.
Such mysterious creatures, he thought.
Without warning, the Weevil was on its feet, hitting and kicking the cell door.
And completely unpredictable.
He looked deeply into the angry Weevil's eyes and wondered what he was thinking, if he was thinking at all. This trance was broken when the fluorescent lights above began to flicker and then went completely out and the Vault was plunged into darkness and silence. There were no roars or screeches from any of the creatures in the cells.
Ianto turned slowly and made his way to where he believed the door to be.
Unexpectedly, the lights turned back on and Ianto found himself staring face-to-face with some-one whom he believed was long gone. Ancient history. But her beautiful dark face still managed to make his heart skip a beat.
"Hello, Ianto" she said sweetly.
"Lisa?"
A/N: Yo there, readers. Another chapter completed. 'twas fun to write—seriously. I'm having fun writing this story and I'd appreciate if you could R&R and tell me what you think.