~*~

Part Six

~*~

Military troop transports had virtually no concession towards comfort, or working suspension, apparently. Ianto was packed into the back of a UNIT transport with nine soldiers, who were all grim-faced and silent. Ianto was starting to get to recognise the look of people fiercely fighting back nausea and the weird double-vision of reality. There were three other vehicles in their little convoy, but Ianto couldn't hear their engines over the rush of air from the open rear of the truck.

It was, he dimly thought, not how he'd expected to return to London. In fact he would have been quite happy if he'd never had to go to the city again. He remembered going there for the first time, and then the satisfaction of getting a job in Torchwood and not only being at what felt like the centre of the Universe, but being able to see all the things and people that worked behind the scenes. It was like being privy to all the greatest and naughtiest secrets. It had been a world away from home, and that was exactly what he'd wanted, at the time.

And then that day happened, and Ianto had never planned to return. Torchwood should have taught him, by now, that it was unwise to assume anything about the future.

The truck suddenly slammed its brakes on, throwing everyone inside forwards, and Ianto had the unpleasant experience of being nearly crushed between two very heavy-set soldiers. There was more than a few highly creative curses being flung around as everyone righted themselves, and Ianto awkwardly pulled himself free, moving pas the soldiers to get off the back of the truck and come around to the driver's side doorway.

"What's going on?" he asked.

The driver was gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles were turning white. There was the squeal of brakes as the other vehicles came to a more sedate halt.

"Don't you see it?" he asked, sounding panicked. "The road's gone…"

Ianto turned to look down the motorway ahead of them. There was no other cars on the road. A few looked to have been abandoned, and the convoy had been weaving their way in and out of the empty cars for several miles now. No one, it seemed, was willing to brave the nightmare of the outdoors. Ahead of them was a bridge, that spanned over a river, a wide six-lane affair.

Ianto looked hard and could see a bridge, perfectly intact, lit by the dim sodium lighting of the lamps that rendered the scene visible in the dark of the night, or, rather, the extremely early morning. But, if he let his mind drift, he could see a bridge with its supports destroyed, which dropped away into nothing after a few meters, with crumbling masonry and broken tarmac littering the road. He shuddered, and tried to focus his brain on the 'safe' version of reality.

"Why don't you let me drive?" he suggested, opening the door.

The driver looked grateful, prising his hands off the steering wheel, and making his way down. Ianto moved out of his way, taking his eyes off the man for just a second, and when he turned around to suggest that the man go take his seat in the back of the vehicle, the road was empty. He looked up and down the road, seeing no one, and unable to hear any footsteps that might have indicated he had moved out of sight.

He swore, and climbed up into the driver's seat.

Louise Monroe was sitting in the passenger seat, a PDA clutched in her hands. "What happened to the driver?" she asked, as he settled himself and put the truck into gear.

"Gone," he said, brusquely, moving off and watching the other vehicles doing the same in his mirrors.

"Fuck," Monroe swore, looking out of the passenger window. "That's the third one."

"I know," he said, tightly, and focused on the bridge.

There was silence for a moment, broken only by the rumbling of the engine, and the sounds of wind rushing past the windows. Finally, Louise spoke up, and even though he didn't take his eyes off the road to look at her, he could feel the weight of her regard. He was glad he had an excuse not to look.

"About… what happened…" Monroe started, awkwardly.

He took a deep breath. "Captain Monroe…"

"Oh god," she said, "You had your hand down my knickers. You can call me Louise."

He broke off his intense study of the road to look at her, startled, and seeing that she was probably as surprised as him at having said it, started laughing. After a moment, she joined in.

After a moment, though, her laughter faded. "I'm sorry for jumping you like that," she said, and gave an embarrassed cough. "You must think I'm a complete slut."

"I don't know," Ianto commented, "You work with Jack Harkness for long enough and your idea of what constitutes 'inappropriate behaviour' shifts dramatically."

"I just mean," she pressed, "It was an adrenaline thing. A 'shit, we're all going to die and I haven't been laid in the better part of a year."

"A year?" Ianto exclaimed in surprise.

Monroe didn't seem to have heard him. "I don't even know if you've got a girlfriend or anything."

"No," Ianto said. "She died."

Monroe swore, and put her head in her hands. "Now I just feel like an insensitive bitch. I'm sorry."

Ianto shrugged slightly. "Not your fault," he said.

Monroe was silent for a while. "How did she...?"

Ianto shifted uncomfortably in the driver's seat. "Murdered," he said, shortly, "She lingered, kind of painfully, for a while."

He felt the warm weight of Monroe's hand on his arm. He flashed her a strained smile.

"It was Canary Wharf, wasn't it?" she asked.

Ianto tensed, and Monroe withdrew her hand.

"I ask," she said, "because you clearly counted yourself amongst the survivors of the battle, even though you quite happy to let me think otherwise."

"It's not exactly a happy recollection."

"You said you were all abandoned by Torchwood. How'd you wind up at Cardiff?"

He shot her a look out of the corner of his eyes. She had her arms forded and was watching him with an unnerving regard.

"You're not Admin," he told her.

She frowned, then slowly shook her head. "No."

"If I were to hazard a guess: you're Intelligence?"

"Have you been reading my file?" she asked, with forced jocularity.

In point of fact, he had, but he'd already worked out her role without needing to resort to abusing his backdoor access to the network. Admin staff didn't have closed-door meetings with Generals or lead assault teams.

"My point," he said, "Was that you represented yourself one way to me because it suited your purpose. I did the same to Captain Harkness, because I needed Torchwood's resources. I didn't care if I destroyed it, because I honestly thought everything to do with Torchwood deserved to die." He stared contemplatively in to the black, unreal night, lit either by fires or streetlamps. "It's why I can see where Bertram's coming from."

"But you don't still think that."

"No."

"So what changed your mind?"

"I..." His thoughts seized up, unwilling to admit to anything, even to a stranger when they might both die soon. "It's complicated."

"Something?" Monroe tilted her head. "Ah. Someone?"

Ianto wasn't entirely sure how to answer. "Not quite," he sad, in a very small voice, "But for some reason, and I don't quite know how it happened, but Torchwood's more important to me than it ever was."

"Sure, sure," Monroe said, wriggling deeper into the uncomfortable military transport seat. "I'm just saying: office romances always end in tears. Try not to get your heart broken, sweetheart. I'm actually starting to like you."

Ianto tried to ignore the ominous ring of her words and focused on the road.

~*~

It was harder to navigate around cars abandoned in the narrow London streets, but Ianto manage to impress himself by remembering a few alternate routes to the Docklands. They were well within sight of what had formerly been known as Torchwood Tower, looking for somewhere convenient and out of sight to park and unload the trucks when they hit the barrier.

It felt like struggling to move through clingfilm stretched taut. It left Ianto feeling breahless, but when he looked around, the world seemed blessedly normal, with none of the underlay of devastation he'd grown accustomed to.

Beside him, Monroe was clenching her fists and her eyes were wide. "I'm hungry," she said, "Why am I hungry?"

Ianto turned the truck's engine off and put on the handbrake. "The bomb generate a pocket of normal space in its immediate vicinity. Protects it from being damaged by its own explosion." He squinted through the windscreen at the dark outline of the Tower. "I'm surprised it's got such a wide radius, though."

"You know a lot," Monroe said, breathlessly, pulling a handheld scanner out of her pocket and turning it on. It had no difficulty staying on, unlike the way it had been flickering the whole way to London.

"Not everything," Ianto returned, "Do we have anything to eat?"

They did: tasteless but nutritious ration bars that were stowed under the benches in the trucks. Everyone grabbed one, and they tucked in as Monroe went over the plan of attack.

"According to our liaison," she said, talking around a mouthful of food and glancing at Ianto, "The building won't have any CCTV or internal tracking and intrusion detection systems, though door locks will still be active."

"Security was an independent system," Ianto supplied, "Anything controlled by the computer died when the Daleks and Cybermen shot up the nodes, but the guard-systems were earth-built and electronic."

"Like last time," Monroe said, "We've no idea of force capabilities or numbers, so we'll play this safe. Clear it – quietly – one floor at a time."

"If we find the bomb and those responsible?" a soldier asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Give them a chance to surrender," Monroe sad, "But don't give them a chance to set off the bomb. You're authorised to use lethal force if necessary."

"So how do we get inside?" one of the other soldiers asked.

Monroe held out her datapad. It displayed a schematic of the Tower. "The least visible entrance is through an underground accessway." She tapped a portion of the screen and it highlighted in blue.

Ianto folded his arms. "The only problem is that the doors have a Deadlock Seal fixed on them."

Monroe frowned. "There was no Deadlock Seal in placed when UNIT cleared this place."

"No," Ianto agreed, "Torchwood 3 put it in place after they'd finished clearing out the secure archives."

The frown deepened into a scowl. "What secure archives? We found no such thing."

"Which is why they're called 'secure'. What you need to get through the door is a ranked Torchwood access key." Ianto held up his hand, displaying the black swipe card held in his fingers. There was the Torchwood logo printed on it in red, but it was otherwise unadorned. "Now, aren't you glad you brought me along?"

~*~

Ianto's memories of Torchwood Tower, apart, obviously, from its last day, were that it had always been busy. Even on the sub levels, there was the constant moving of researchers and staff as they moved around, discussing latest finds or theories. There was always a low level hum of conversation and the sound of footsteps. That was what stood out the most to Ianto as he unsealed the underground access doors and followed behind Monroe and the UNIT soldiers: the silence.

That, and the bloodied bootprints that had dried to brown smudges on the floor.

He didn't even realise he was staring at them until Monroe none-too-subtly elbowed him and held up her datapad-cum-scanner. "No jamming," she said, "But I'm not picking up any heat signatures on this level. We'll sweep on the off-chance though."

Grateful for the distraction, he drew his own sidearm and followed along behind the team as they moved with a slick efficiency and stealth that Ianto could only ever dream of mimicking. The sub-ground levels were clear, mostly empty security offices. As they progressed upwards they passed the hangar levels, then the standard offices that were the ground-level corporate front, then started to progress upwards, reaching the laboratory levels, the bright clinical white that the walls had been dulled from time and a lack of upkeep, and periodically decorated with scorchmarks.

When they reached level nine, Ianto hesitated at the threshold of the door off the emergency stairway. The team had been using the wide evacuation stairs to ascend, knowing that the lifts didn't work and even if they did, they left the team too vulnerable.

Monroe was already through the door when she realised he wasn't following, and she hung back, frowning. "Ianto?"

Ianto didn't gesture towards the door with his drawn weapon, Tumenggung had trained him too well for that, so he just jerked his head in the direction of the door. "I… ah… don't think I can… um…"

Monroe's face cleared with understanding. "Wait here," she said, and stabbed a finger in the direction of one of the soldiers. "You, wait with him." And then she disappeared out of sight.

Ianto was grateful that she hadn't said anything, and grateful that she'd been here before and knew exactly what this level was. Intellectually he knew that there was nothing left of the conversion machines that had filled this level from wall to wall, not even a stray scrap of wire left behind, but he didn't think his ability to shove memories to the back of his mind would hold out if he was forced to go inside. He found himself praying to a God that he didn't believe in that Bartram hadn't chosen this level to hide in.

After several minutes, Monroe emerged with the team, and shook her head. Ianto made his sigh of relief as unobtrusive as possible.

They continued upwards, past several more levels of labs ("How many labs does a place need?" he heard one disgruntled soldier mutter), until finally they reached one level where they discovered on trying to open the emergency door that it was locked. None of the other doors had been locked.

Monroe made a silencing gesture at the team. "There's a heat signature on this floor," she said, looking at her scanner.

Ianto looked at the label next to the door. "I was afraid of that." He pointed to the number '14' depicted in hexagons. "He picked the best place in the building to hide."

At her questioning look, he elaborated. "Space doesn't seem to work… quite right in there. You can get turned around really easily. Even if you've got the place memorised, walls seem to be where you don't expect them. It was weird, because if you compared the layout at any time to the building plans they'd always match up…"

Monroe stared at him. "I'm starting to think you Torchwood people are just goddamn insane," she said.

He smiled brightly at her. "Now you're getting it." He looked at the door. "There were rumours about an experiment going wrong, or the building's designers having gone temporarily insane and deciding to construct a whole floor around non-Euclidean geometry. I think the Accounting Department was based on this floor for a while."

"Maybe I was being generous with insane," Monroe muttered, and gestured to the panel next to the door. "Can you open it?"

"One way to find out."

It was a nondescript panel at shoulder height, and when Ianto pressed a hand to it, it lit up a sickly green and hummed. When he took his hand away, there was an after-image of his palm print on the panel, and, after a second, the words 'authorisation granted' flashed up, and the locked clicked open.

Monroe peered through the door, down the hallway that was as unlit as all the others they'd passed through, and as normal looking. "Doesn't look like it's breaking the laws of physics," she said.

"Looks are deceiving," Ianto said.

Monroe frowned, and with several short words and gestures, the assault team silently crept through the doorway, and started to move through the hallways.

There was as much damage to the walls here as anywhere in the building, with chunks taken out of the plastering, and insulation hanging down from holes in the ceiling. But it only extended to the first few hallways they passed through. After that, the damage stopped, as if the invading aliens had only gone so far into the rooms before they'd turned around and gone back. Apparently the weird geometry had been too much for them. Offices and labs were overturned from the scramble to try to escape the building, but they weren't shot up.

Apparently the geometry was getting to be a bit much for more Human invaders too. Monroe abruptly stopped and looked around her, then back at her datapad.

"We've been walking in a straight line," she said, her voice a hissed whisper, "How the hell did we manage to walk in a circle?"

Her face was illuminated blue by the datapad, and she turned ghostly pale in the torchlight that Ianto shone on her as he turned to look at her. "Try not to think about it," he said, turning back around and walking a little way down the corridor, shining his torch into offices. The scanner readings said they weren't yet on top of the heat signature, but they needed to be cautious.

Monroe turned to the rest of the team. "Everyone stick together, we can't afford anyone to get lost." She turned, "That means you too, Ianto."

There was no response. She shone her torch into the dark, but it didn't show any sign of her wayward liaison. She didn't shout, or raise her voice, wary of being overheard. She started to reach up and tap her earpiece, but stopped, partway there, recalling her own instructions with regards to radio silence before they'd entered the building. She dropped her hand and grimaced.

"Shit," she said.

"Do we go look for him, sir?" she was asked.

She thought about it a moment. "No. Our priority is to stop the bomb. That's what we have to do. Let's go."

~*~

Ianto Jones was quite certain there hadn't been a wall behind him a moment earlier, nevertheless, however much he ran his hands over the surface, searching for some hidden mechanism or catch, it was clearly just a wall.

He sighed, and turned his torch into the corridor that stretched away from him.

"Right," he said, "Dark mysterious hallway of doom it is then."

~*~