Chapter 1
Ashley took them to the main entrance hall of the Sanctuary, waiting for them was Will, Henry, the Big Guy and another woman with dark hair and eyes that Jack assumed was the Kate Freelander he'd heard mentioned several times.
"Thank God you're here man." Henry said when they appeared, "The boss has gone crazy." He held up the remains of what looked like a portable radio.
"What happened?" Ashley asked.
"Magnus objected when the station she was listening to played 'My Heart Will Go On' and decided to turn it off by throwing it into a wall."
Jack winced, "Where is she now?"
"The Library." The Big Guy told him in a tone that indicated he was greatly concerned for the books.
"What's she doing in there?" Jack asked as he started heading that way with the rest trailing after him.
"Looked like research." Will said.
"And after the radio none of you wanted to interrupt." Jack surmised as they hurried through the hallways.
"Damned right we didn't." Kate told him, "We thought we'd wait for the immortal."
"Just please tell me she isn't armed?" Jack pleaded as they reached the library, the last thing he needed was to be shot. Again. It was rather painful, and repetitive.
"We all are." Will told him, "Magnus's orders." Jack took a slow look around and noticed that the Big Guy was the only one without a side arm and he hardly needed one. "Even with our EM shield up she doesn't want to take any chances."
Jack nodded, took a deep breath and pushed open the door, "Thank you but whatever it is I'm afraid I don't have the time at the moment." Helen was sitting with her back to him, the desk she was at was covered in books of various thicknesses and ages. As she spoke she slammed the book she had been looking through closed and shoved it to one side before picking up the next one.
"Not even for me?"
Helen straightened and turned, "Jack." She said softly, "What are you doing here?"
"Ashley came to me, she told me what happened." Jack explained as he walked towards her.
"She shouldn't have done." Helen said turning back to her work, "I ordered them all to remain inside the EM shield, it's safe here."
"She was very careful, phoning ahead so that the shield was only down for a few moments when she brought me back." Jack assured her, "Our shield is up as well now and my team is on alert. Now how are you Helen?"
"I'm alright Jack really, just very busy."
Jack shook his head as she walked over to one of the shelves and started search for another book. "Of course you are Helen, that's why all your staff are out in the hall worried about you, why your daughter risked leaving the EM shield even knowing what her father has become. And why you haven slept, eaten or even stopped since he left."
"How did you know?" Helen asked turning again to look at Jack.
"You just told me." Jack said with a grin and Helen groaned at falling for one of the oldest tricked. "And Will told me what you were like after Ashley. James also told me how you threw yourself into your work after John left for the first time."
She looked up at him and he could clearly see the tears in her eyes. "He was John again, for a few minutes he was the man I fell in love with, there was no trace of the monster he became. It was like the last century never happened, he loved me."
Jack saw that she was struggling to maintain her composure and pulled Helen into his arms, stroking her hair as she lay her head against his chest, "You haven't cried for him yet have you?"He asked but he didn't bother waiting for an answer, "There is nothing wrong with crying Helen, you've had so many shocks today and you've lost the man you love, again. There's no shame in crying for this."
Helen let go of the control she had been holding onto by a fragile thread, her pride wouldn't allow her to cry in front of her team and her daughter needed her to be strong. But with Jack, one of her oldest friends, she could allow the mask to fall away and be the woman who had just lost the man she loved.
Jack held her as she cried, eventually sinking down to the floor and pulling her so that she was sitting side ways across his knee with her head against his shoulder and both his arms around her. He didn't say anything while he held her, knowing that wasn't what she needed. When her sobs had finally stopped Jack offered his his handkerchief to dry her eyes.
"Thank you Jack." She said, then noticed that the corner of the handkerchief was embroidered with the letters CJH and a pair of Airforce wings, even though it was white thread on white cotton it was still easy to see.
"If it ever gets out." Jack said warningly.
"You're secret is safe with me Jack." Helen assured him, "If you never tell that I cried."
"I won't." Jack promised in return. "A lady friend of mine embroidered it for me during the Second World War." Easing Helen off his lap Jack climbed to his feet and then helped her up, "So what were you researching?"
"A way to save John." She said turning back to the shelves she had been looking through, "There has to be a way to get that thing out of him and contain it."
Jack wasn't quite sure how to broach the subject so he just went for the blunt approach, "Ashley thinks he might be dead, she said he jumped without a destination in mind." What little Jack knew about teleporting tended to relate to the technological version but even he knew how dangerous it was to jump without accurate and absolutely certain coordinates.
"That's what he said before he left." Helen admitted, "But I know John better than anyone, in an emergency he can jump with no fixed destination in mind and still land safe. He's done it twice that I know of, both times I was trying to stop him, kill him." She had to take a deep breath again, "I think his subconscious guides him even when he doesn't know where he's going. Like when Ashley teleported through the EM shield."
"She had no plan to go anywhere." Jack said, following where Helen was going., "She didn't think she'd survive so she didn't bother with a destination, but her subconscious brought her to me. You think the same happened to John?"
Helen nodded, "Yes. Besides I don't think that thing," And the way she said it made it sound like an obscenity, "Would allow him to die, not as long as it had no other host."
"You may be right there Helen." Jack concluded, "So what have you come up with so far?"
"Not much because as far as I can tell no one has ever come across one of these parasites before. My theory is that it latched onto John mid-teleport and became a part of him as he reformed at his destination."
"A good theory." Jack agreed, "So what is needed is some way to remove the creature from John and contain it."
"Or kill it without killing John." Jack was shocked to hear the venom Helen put into her words, but he supposed that the creature had taken her fiancé from her and more, if it was truly the reason that John Druitt became Jack the Ripper then it was responsible for hundreds of deaths over the intervening decades. Though Jack wasn't about to blame it for the Cabal death, they needed killing, he suspected that those might have been what allowed the creature to begin re-establishing it's hold over the man.
"We'll also need to find a way to detect it while it's in a host body," Jack continued having decided that ignoring Helen's blood thirsty comment was the best option, "Otherwise this could all happen to John again, or worse one of these things could attach itself to Ashley."
"Yes." Helen agreed, "It is unlikely that we are lucky enough for this creature to be one of a kind, but the scans I did of John never indicated the presence of a parasite. Of course I now see that the problem there is that I never had an uninfected measurement to use as a base line so it would be impossible to know what deviations from the norm are due to his Abnormality and what are due to the parasite, even using Ashley's readings as a baseline wouldn't work because we don't know what effect any abnormalities she inherited from me. Though I suppose that if I used a combination of my scans and hers, using mine to eliminate."
Jack knew that Helen had stopped talking to him some time ago and was now just thinking aloud,but he still decided to interrupt her. "Err Helen darling? I can't understand more than one word in three. So why don't you stop, take a deep breath and relax for a moment."
"No Jack I think I might be on to something."
"Yes you might be however if you pass out from exhaustion or a lack of food you won't be any use to anyone." Jack told her firmly deciding to take control of the situation. Their old friend James Watson had once warned him about Helen's obsessive nature, especially when it came to matters close to her heart. Whether saving some one she loved or avoiding a painful subject. Sometimes she needed someone to ground her and take control. "So what you are going to do is go out there and reassure your staff that you are fine. You are going to sit and eat something, comfort your daughter, let her know that you still think there is hope for him. She came to me in tears.
"And while you do all of that, I am going to call my team and have them prepare and pack everything that they need to help us in this. Then I will ask Ashley to bring them here and together we will find a way to capture John, take that thing out of him and bring him home to you."
"For all eternity." Helen said with a soft smile.
Ashley kept her mother company in her office while the Big Guy reheated the left over take away dinner that the team had had delivered the previous night, Ashley was feeling somewhat hobbit-ish and decided to have a second breakfast. Mother and daughter then engaged in a familiar argument about whether or not a large triple chocolate chip muffin would really be considered a breakfast item.
"Mom, do you really think he survived?" Ashley asked at last. "He always told me to make sure I had a destination in mind."
"I am certain he did." Helen told her, "When you teleported within the EM shield did you have a destination in mind?"
Ashley shook her head, "I knew it would kill me so I didn't bother thinking of where I was going, I just jumped." Her eyes widened in sudden understanding.
"Exactly." Helen said with a smile, "Your instincts guided you to safety, just as I'm sure John's did for him. And that creature wouldn't allow him to die, it's given him great resistance to weapons and drugs."
Ashley nodded remembering her own fight with her father when they had first met nearly two years ago now, it seemed to recent and yet a life time ago.
Meanwhile Jack commandeered the rest of the staff, sending Will and Kate to set up guest rooms for the team and to see that the main lab was usable while he discussed with Henry exactly what the creature had done while it was in control of the building.
Next Jack called Ianto, it turned out the team had not gone home but instead waited around the Hub. They had all grown fond of the Sanctuary team and especially Jack's god-daughter, they were worried about what had happened and wanted to wait for news, hoping there was something they could do to help.
Tosh put the call on the Hub speakers and Jack quickly brought his team up to speed on the facts, as best he could given the general lack of understanding about the creature that had possessed John Druitt. What could be easily understood was the effect of the creature, Henry had shown him footage from the security cameras. Before John Druitt was a man telling Helen that he loved her, kissing his daughter goodbye. Afterwards he was a raging snarling animal, though he had managed to fight it back long enough to tell Helen and Ashley that he had no idea where he was going. He'd fought against the creature, just has he had for years, from what Jack had been able to determine the parasite would have killed far more than Druitt had and the only reason for that would have to be that John had been holding the creature back.
When everything was set up and his team ended the call so they could collect whatever they thought they might need, Jack went to Helen's office where she and Ashley were just finishing their meal. "My team are preparing, they'll call once they are ready. If we can impose on you?"
Ashley nodded, "At least one good thing has come out of all of this, we know that it's not the teleportation that causes insanity."
"That must be reassuring." Jack told her, she nodded. "You might as well have this." He continued throwing his phone to Ashley, "They'll be calling once they're ready and that saves me having to find you. A word of warning though, they made have quite a lot with them since I told them to bring whatever tech they think might help."
"That's alright." Ashley told him. "I've been working on my abilities, you know practising taking the reference from pictures or maps. Dad was helping me."
Jack could once again hear the tears in her voice, over the months since she had been freed from Cabal control she had become close to her father as he taught her how to use her new abilities. They had forged a true father-daughter relationship. The fact that he had been able to hide his escalating madness and killing from her as well as Helen was a testament to his intelligence and cunning.
"We'll get him back for you Ashley." Jack promised, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Thanks uncle Jack."
"I wish James was still here." Helen said suddenly, "And Nigel too, but most of all James. It would be such a joy to him to know that he hadn't misjudged John so badly."
"Yes it would." Jack agreed. He wanted to make this right for them, Helen was closer to him than any family he had ever had. Helen was like the sister he'd always wanted while he was growing up, though obviously far too intelligent to actually be a blood relative. Though he supposed she could easily be an ancestor. That was something he tried not to think about when living in the past, relative to the time of his birth, any one could be an ancestor. Even Ianto and that was something he definitely didn't want to think about.
Three hours later and Helen, Henry, Tosh and Owen were gathered around the table in the centre of the main lab trying to concoct some sort of plan to save Druitt, Ianto found himself drafted in because of his knowledge of the technology in all the Torchwood Archives, not just the Cardiff branch. Gwen was working with Will, combining Torchwood's international contacts, which tended to be within law enforcement and governments, with the Sanctuary's contacts, which were mainly within the global Abnormal community. Together they were attempting to find Druitt, to find out if he was even still alive.
Meanwhile Jack was recruited by the Big Guy, along with Ashley and Kate, to help keep the Sanctuary working while most of the staff were busy working on the Druitt problem. Actually Jack's job was more to keep Ashley occupied while the Big Guy and Kate ran the Sanctuary.
Ashley was as upset about what had happened to John as her mother was but unlike Helen she couldn't do anything to help at this point. Of course later she would be very important for tracking and capturing her father, but that was scant comfort to her now when she needed to do something, when she had so much excess energy and nothing to channel it into.
Eventually he followed the advice of the Big Guy and his own experience by hauling Ashley down to the firing range and letting her take out some of her frustration on the targets.
They had been working in the main lab for hours and still weren't any closer to a solution. "This might be hopeless." Tosh said in a low voice when Magnus stepped out for a few minuets to retrieve a report.
"There's always a few that you just can't save." Owen agreed, "No matter how good a doctor you are that are always still some." He added thinking of his late fiancée and the alien in her brain that had killed her.
"She'll never accept that." Ianto said, "No matter what he becomes or what he does she will never give up on finding a way to save him. Because she loves him and now she knows that the man she fell in love with still exists in side of him she won't stop until one or both of them are dead."
"Sounds like you speak from experience man." Henry said.
"I do." The name 'Lisa' hung unsaid in the air between the Torchwood team while Henry just looks slightly confused, "But lets hope this has a happier ending. We've already proved that the parasite can be pulled out."
"Maybe it wasn't taken out." Owen suggested.
"Excuse me?" Helen had just walked back into the room, the report still in her hand.
"Well think about." Owen explained, "You said that the parasite was sentient and even showed intelligence."
"That nerve gas was more than intelligent." Henry commented.
"Right." Owen agreed, "So we have to assume that it has all the basic drives that a corporal creature has."
"Survival." Helen said suddenly, "Of course, every creature is concerned first and foremost with it's own survival, that's the whole point of the fight or flight response, the animal chooses the course that is most likely to result in its survival. Even when parents sacrifice themselves for their children its still about the survival of their shared genetics, that's the basis of Dawkin's Selfish Gene theory." She saw that she had lost the four people sitting around the table, "It doesn't matter, the point is that Owen is right. If a parasite's host is dead it will seek out another."
"The sanctuary building was a second rate host." Owen agreed, "Not as good as Druitt, since his body would be adapted to support it after so many years, but better than having no host at all."
"And that's why it returned to Druitt when it had the chance." Ianto said, proving that he at least was following, the two computer techs were looking slightly confused, both were used to dealing with computer viruses and parasitic programs, not biology. "Its optimum host became available again and when it sensed that it returned to him."
"So what we need to do is get it to leave him again but this time into something we can hold it in, and it can't use to kill us." Henry said.
"And we need some way to contain it within whatever we trap it." Tosh said, "We can't risk it escaping again."
"We need some way to detect it while its still in its host." Helen also said, "Otherwise John or Ashley could easily become infected again and we wouldn't know it until it was too late and someone was dead. It's too risky to wait until the psychological symptoms begin to manifest and there's no guarantee that the host would tell us if they knew something was wrong."
"That should be easy." Tosh said, "Run a complete scan of Druitt before and after the parasite is removed and then compare them, any difference will be due to the parasite."
"Excellent Toshiko." Helen said, "I wonder that I didn't think of that sooner. Alright so the first thing to do is devise a way to contain the parasite."
"It seemed to be perfectly at home in the computer systems." Henry pointed out, "Perhaps we can build it one of its own."
Owen scanned over the tablet in front of him, "It does seem to be an energy based lifeform which would explain how it was able to latch on to Druitt in the middle of a teleport, when he is pure energy."
"It could be electrical based," Tosh suggested, "Nature is full of electricity, look at lighting. And I detected a slight electrical signature at the site of one of Druitt's teleport. The human body produces a small amount of electricity right?" She looked to the two doctors.
"She's right." Helen said, "And when it jumped out of John it went though the defibrillator I was using to restart his heart."
"So it needed a bridge or conduit of some sort." Ianto said, "Did it to get back into him?"
Helen shook her head, she'd reviewed the security footage from the main lab. "No, possibly because he is such an ideal host or simply because it was stronger then, we don't know what effect John's death had on it. So we will need something to contain it."
"An EM shield." Henry said suddenly, "I know that we mostly use them to contain teleporters but the other use is to protect systems from outside influence, at least that's what you once told me ours was far." Helen had the grace to look slightly embarrassed.
"That shield would have to be outside the system." Tosh said, "Or it would be able to gain control of it. Something like the Endor shield?" She suggested.
"Oh you are good." Henry said, then saw the look of confusion on Helen's face, "Star Wars? Return of the Jedi? The shield generator for the Death Star was outside the shield itself, that how the Alliance won." Seeing that Helen still wasn't completely sure what he was going on about. "Anyway." He pulled up a drawing program on his tablet and sketched. "If we build an EM generator and a way to project it so that it encompass the cage." He showed the drawing to Helen.
"Ah that would work, but you would need a guaranteed power source." A thought came to her. "Geothermal energy, that should provided enough power and last near indefinitely."
"As for the cage itself." Tosh said, "If we build a stand alone computer system then fill it full of programs that look like security programs then the parasite will spend years breaking through them all. In fact, if we build three interlinked units then once it breaks through the programs on one it can move on to the next. By putting a hidden repair and rewrite program into each unit we can have it repair itself as soon as the parasite moves on. So it'll spend forever going in a circle but if it is intelligent then at least it'll never get bored."
"That's brilliant Tosh." Henry agreed, "And if we need to be can disconnect a unit for repairs, modifications or upgrades."
"I could even write a program that would let it think it was really killing people but in reality it was playing Call of Duty or something like that." Tosh said, the excitement and anticipation of a challenge flashing in her dark eyes.
"She can really do all that?" Helen asked Ianto and Owen as Tosh and Henry put their heads together and started sketching out designs for their containment system.
"Without even thinking about it, Tosh can take blueprints that don't work and make a device that does." Ianto told Helen, he'd read her file when he'd first joined Torchwood and that little trick had landed Tosh in a UNIT prison with no hope of release until Jack had found her.
"She could take over the world and none of use would be the wiser until it was done and we were proclaiming her Queen of the World." Owen said with great pride in his college. "Now we need to find a way to remove the parasite in the first place."
AN: It's so nice to see some familar names in the reviews, since I was near internet today I decided to be nice and give you a chapter!
As some people guessed the title is a reflection of my time in Peru, it's the closest my Spanish (the language of Peru) comes to translating 'for all eternity'
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