Trading Places

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Chapter 3- Connor and Becker

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Day 1

They arrived at the Torchwood building at around noon on Saturday, to be greeted by Jack in the car park. He was still wearing the suit and long army coat over the top and looking as good as Connor remembered. When he saw them get out of the car, he grinned and sauntered over to them.

"Good to see you again," he said. He looked around thoughtfully. "Where's the cute little blonde?"

Connor laughed. The last time they had been here, Jack had flirted with Abby, even after she had pointed out that he had no chance. Then again, Jack had flirted with all of them. He felt his face heat up a little as the memory of the result of that flirting came back to him; him, Becker, Jack and Ianto, a hotel room and a rather sleepless night.

Jack caught his eye and his grin widened, and for a moment, Connor imagined Jack could read those thoughts as they flitted through his mind.

"Abby stayed at the ARC," he told Jack, eager to get his thoughts to change channels. "Lester would only let us two go; he said Abby could show Gwen around."

"Which means that you two get the pleasure of my company," Jack said. "And Ianto's, of course. Speaking of Ianto, you'll be staying with him. Or I can book you into the Queen's Hotel- it's just a few minutes away –if you want."

Both of them opted for staying with Ianto straight away.

"Well, let's get you settled and I can show you around all of the cool stuff I didn't get to show you the last time."

Jack took them into the Hub via the personnel entrance this time, as opposed to the tourist entrance, as he liked to call it. The tourist entrance was a section of the pavement in the street above the hub that, when stood on and activated, it acted like a lift, taking them down into the Hub. Jack had explained all about the alien technology that had been used to create it, as well as the security field that prevented anyone other than Torchwood staff from walking on it, but it had gone over Connor's head. It was fun, though, to be able to stand on that particular paving block in the middle of the street and have people simply walk past without seeing you. It was the nearest thing to invisibility he was going to get. Apparently, the security field made people think that there was nothing there, whether it be a person or a gaping hole in the street, and put the thought in their minds that they wanted to walk around that section.

The side entrance led them through a slightly dingy looking office, where Ianto stood behind a counter looking bored yet incredibly dapper in his suit. Once they were all inside, he flipped the notice on the door to 'closed' and tapped a code into a pad behind the counter. A door in the wall clicked open. This entrance might not disappear into the ground like the other but it was just as cool, Connor thought, as they stepped out of the security coded lift. A huge circular metal door rolled aside to reveal a long corridor, at the end of which was another rolling door.

"It's like one of those secret underground lairs that the villain in the James Bond movies have," he said, looking around. "Maybe we could persuade Lester to let us have something like this at the ARC. That'd be cool."

Hearing a laugh behind him, Connor glanced back to see the three of them smiling.

"Cute, ain't he?" Jack commented.

Becker nodded; Connor's enthusiasm was endearing. He and Connor followed as Jack took them around the Hub. Some of this they had seen last time, but only the main offices. This time, Jack took them down toward the basement. Before he unlocked the metal security door, he warned them,

"Try not to make any sudden moves. Also, if they sense fear, they tend to act up."

Connor wasn't sure what was behind the door but he made sure that he was behind Becker when they walked through. Seeing what he was doing, Becker rolled his eyes and reached back to take his hand.

Jack led them into a corridor with Perspex-fronted cells along each side.

"Sometimes we have to confine the more troublesome beings who come through the rift," he explained. "We can't have them running loose so we have no choice but to keep them here until a proper solution can be found."

"We have something similar back at the ARC," Connor said. "They have to stay in the holding pens where the keepers can look after them until another anomaly opens to the right time period."

"Except those that you and Abby seemed to 'accidentally' take home with you," Becker interjected, before explaining to Jack and Ianto. "Abby has a flying lizard that she calls Rex, and then Connor took home two Diictadons a few months ago. Called them Sid and Nancy."

Ianto looked thoughtful for a moment. "Sid as in Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols?"

Connor smiled, then smacked Becker on the arm lightly. "You see? Ianto gets it. They aren't stupid names."

Ianto indicated to the cell that Jack had stopped in front of and murmured, "And speaking of stupid names…"

Jack either didn't hear him or ignored the comment, instead indicating to the cell's occupant.

"This is Janet."

The creature in the cell was humanoid in shape and build and wearing a blue jumpsuit. Where it differed from human, however, was its head and facial features. It was more animalistic, with dark skin and jet black eyes that were fixed on Jack. Its lips curled back and it uttered a low growl.

"We call them Weevils," Jack told them. "There's actually quite a large population of them living down in the sewer systems. Most of the time the public never see them and they keep themselves to themselves. From time to time, someone like Janet here oversteps the line and we have to capture them. She lives here now."

"She?" Connor asked. "What do the males look like?"

Jack shook his head. "We don't actually know that she's female. It just seemed to fit."

"So for all you know, that could be a male Weevil that you've called Janet," Connor said. "No wonder it looks pissed off."

Jack laughed as he continued down the row of cells to the next occupied one. "I never really thought about it like that."

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"So what do you do all day?" Becker asked at around 5pm.

Ianto smiled. "Bored already?"

"Not bored, exactly; I'm just not used to all of this waiting around. Back at the ARC, if we're not dealing with anomalies I'm running drills with my men or we're performing security checks on the base."

"You might as well go," Jack told them a couple of hours later, once Ianto had finished showing Connor the computer system. "Ianto can take you and get you settled. If anything comes up, I'll call you."

Ianto nodded, opening the door to the conference room and letting Connor and Becker out. He turned back to Jack.

"Come with us," he said, picking up Jack's coat and holding it out to him. "There's no point in you staying here on your own."

He thought that Jack was going to object, but then he took the coat from Ianto, following them to the car. Rather than having to tail Ianto home, they had decided to leave Becker's here, since they didn't know where Ianto lived. They could ride back to work with him and collect it the next day. As it happened, they didn't get further than the end of the street before Jack's phone rang.

"Ianto, turn the car around. It appears that a night guard found something in the mall that the police think belongs to us," he said. He shook his head. "Honestly, every odd thing that happens, they blame us."

Ianto agreed, pointing out, "You do have to admit that it usually is related to Torchwood somehow."

They pulled the car into the car park of the shopping centre, stopping in the 'no parking' zone right outside the front doors, next to the police squad car. A PC in a fluorescent jacket nodded at Jack in recognition, not even bothering to check his ID before opening the doors to let him through.

"It's a sign of how many times we get called out to these things that they all know us by sight now," Ianto lamented as they all headed to the group of people on the second floor balcony.

There was a section of the balcony, in front of the bakery and sports store, that had been cordoned off with yellow plastic tape. There were a couple of uniformed PC's just inside the tape, looking to Connor as though they were trying to stand as far away from whatever was on the ground as possible without actually leaving. In the centre of the cordoned area, two paramedics and a white-jump-suited man crouched near to something, medics cases open beside them.

As they approached the cordon, another policeman approached them, lifting the tape for them to go underneath.

"Captain, glad you're here."

Jack nodded to him. "So, Andy, what have you got for us?"

Andy glanced back to Ianto, acknowledging him, before frowning at the two he didn't recognise.

"Connor Temple and Captain Becker," Jack said, indicating to each man in turn. "Temporarily assigned to Torchwood."

Andy nodded, shaking their hands, before turning back to Jack. "The victim is over there. Security guard heard a noise and came to investigate." He paused, glancing over at the grey and blue uniformed guard, sitting a distance away and taking to a police officer. "He was pretty shook up; we got a statement but there's not much he can tell us."

Jack was the first to reach the victim and from the look on his face, Connor wasn't sure he really wanted to see. As soon as he did look, he wished he'd listened to his first instinct and not looked.

"Oh, I really wish I hadn't seen that," he said to Becker. The soldier didn't say anything but the grimace on his face conveyed his agreement.

Lying on the ground, still in her sales assistant uniform, was a blonde woman. Her bag was beside her, her purse still inside, which had allowed the police to rule out a mugging. Well, that and the fact that despite her driving license saying that she was twenty-three, she more resembled an old woman.

"What happened to her?" Ianto asked the paramedics.

"We have no idea. She was dead when we got here."

She looked like one of the mummies in the old Hammer Horror movies that Connor watched; her skin like wrinkled parchment, yellowed and old as though she were a hundred years old. Even her arms and hands were aged. Her eyes were wide with fear, her mouth still open in an eternal scream.

"Her name is Jessica Atkins," Andy told them. "We figure she must have been working until closing time- the staff usually leave at around 6:15 after they've locked up and the shopping centre is closed –and the guard found her at just after 7:00."

Jack frowned. "So it took something just forty-five minutes to do this. Can we get the CCTV footage for this area for that time?"

Andy nodded. "I've already got someone on it. It might take a while to extract it from the hard drive, though. There are twenty-two cameras recording around this place."

"You want some help?" Jack glanced at Connor, taking in his pale complexion and wide eyes. "Connor, you're the tech guy, right? You think you can go help and speed up the process?"

The young man looked relieved to have something to do other than having to look at the body. Ianto, knowing where the security office was, accompanied him down there. As soon as Connor got in front of the computer, he seemed to snap out of it, his focus fixed on the screen. He tapped away on the keyboard, finding his way around, getting used to the system before he found what he was looking for.

"That's her," Ianto said, pointing to the screen.

Connor followed her path on the cameras from leaving the shop to the place where she was found, purposely not looking at that section of the footage. He copied the whole thing onto a disc, ejecting it and slipping it into a case.

"Are you alright?" Ianto asked as they left the office again. They reached the stairs and Ianto saw the reluctance to go back up to the others. "Sit down for a minute."

Connor gratefully perched on one of the lower steps, next to Ianto.

"Do you ever get used to things like that?" he asked.

Ianto shook his head. "No, and I hope I never do. You shouldn't."

"I feel so stupid for freezing like that but that wasn't like anything I've ever seen." Connor tugged his jacket closer around himself, more for comfort than a response to the temperature in the shopping centre. "It's not like we don't see death at the ARC, but that…" He looked up at Ianto. "It's not usually people, you know?"

By the time the scene had been cleared and the body taken back to Torchwood and put into the morgue there, it was after midnight. Jack had instructed Ianto to take Connor and Becker home, that there was nothing more they could do tonight anyway. He took the footage that Connor had retrieved to study and, if he found anything, run it through the computers in the hopes of a match.

"Get some sleep," he told them both. "It's going to take a while to run this through the system; by the time Ianto brings you in tomorrow morning, we should know more."

Ianto drove them home, occasionally casting concerned looks to Connor. The young man had been silent ever since they had left the shopping centre. From their conversation earlier he knew that Connor was more affected by the scene than he was saying. He showed them to the spare room in his flat, making sure they knew where everything was, where the kitchen was, just in case, before going to bed himself.

"Every time I close my eyes I can still see her," Connor said eventually.

Becker wasn't sure what to do. He could see that his boyfriend was really freaked by this, more so than he was. As cold as it sounded, he was more disturbed by the condition of the dead girl than by the fact she was dead; he had seen his fair share of death during his time in the military but he knew that Connor hadn't.

Stripping off his own clothes and dumping them over the back of a chair, he helped Connor out of his and urged him into bed. There was more than enough room in the queen sized bed but they ended up curled up together in a small part of it. Connor pressed himself against Becker, as though the closeness was comforting. Becker didn't object. Not that he ever would have objected to Connor's warm body being wrapped around his, he thought, but especially now. Connor seemed to be calming down a little, relaxing.

Connor tilted his face up to meet Becker's gaze. "I'm glad you're here."

"Me too. Now come on, you need to try and get some sleep," Becker said, pressing a kiss to Connor's forehead. "It'll seem better in the morning. Trust me."

"I hope so," Connor murmured, really hoping that it would. He thought he'd been prepared for this, from having worked at the ARC for so long, but seeing that body had made him think that maybe he was in way over his head. Well, he thought, he'd find out tomorrow.

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To Be Continued…