~*~
Part Seven
~*~
In Torchwood London's heyday, the fourteenth floor was something of a rite of passage. It was the done thing for new members of a department to get sent up there on some meaningless errand, while their much more knowledgeable colleagues took bets on how long it would take them to get back. When they inevitably returned (except for that one girl from Ianto's department who had gotten so dreadfully lost they'd had to track her subcutaneous implant to find her), cross and thoroughly confused, the department would generally take the incensed newbie out for drinks to mollify them.
The lesson was well-learnt, however. Never assume anything is what it seems, even if it just looks like a corridor.
Ever since the place had been built, different methods of marking the halls had been attempted, none of which managed to make navigating any easier. Eventually, you started to get a 'feel' for where things were. You had to trust your instincts, and so, given that was all Ianto had to rely upon, he fixed his goal in his mind, looked into the dark black depths of the hallway, and set out, striking out in what seemed to be as good a direction as any.
In the end, it was the noises that gave it away. The humming was audible first, a low frequency vibration that made his joints ache and set his teeth on edge. As he followed that humming sound, he could hearing the clattering of metal, like someone picking up something and putting it down again, the sounds of wires being cut, and then, just underneath that, a soft and irregular beeping.
He turned a corner and could see where it was coming from. Light was spilling into the hallway around the next corner, standing out sharply in the complete dark. Ianto clicked off his torch and stuck it into a convenient pocket and slowly, silently, removed his weapon from its holster and eased off the safety.
He turned the corner, and saw the doorway from which the light spilled, and heard the low muttering. One voice, male, talking to himself, but too softly to be clearly audible. Ianto crept forward, slowly, praying for nothing to creak or catch and make his presence known, and even so carefully peeked around the doorframe.
There was definitely only one man inside. He was kneeling in the middle of what had been a large open-plan office, with the tables and chairs shoved to the sides to clear a rough space in the middle. It was a mess, with papers and folders and bits of equipment lying around, and there was even a potted plant in the corner that had long since died through neglect. It was an exterior room, windows decorating one side of the room, unusual in a building this size, through which could be seen the hazy dual-reality of the outside world.
Fluorescent lights on stands had been sit up in the roughly circular clearing in the centre of the room, throwing harsh white light around in and indiscriminate fashion. It cast long eerie shadows, but was more than enough for Ianto to see what was going on.
The man, his clothes worn and shabby, was kneeling with his back to the door, working on something that came up to about waist height. Ianto wasn't in the right position to see what it was, but the man was picking up and putting down screwdrivers, pliers and wire clippers, and was surrounded by bits of metal detritus. He was definitely working on something electronic, and Ianto was staking his life on the fact that it was almost certainly the Quantum Bomb that hadn't yet destroyed everything.
He didn't need the best guess he had made from the files, though he'd later wonder if some lingering trace of psychic training from Torchwood had made him pick the correct file out of the dozens provided by UNIT; he knew exactly who it was. He recognised the voice, the accent, and the permanently mussed blond hair, and the glint of a face he could see in the reflection. It was definitely Sean Bartram.
He couldn't see anything nearby that resembled a weapon. Ianto took a slow, deep breath and eased himself fully into view, stepping into the room.
Sean Bartram didn't notice him.
Ianto, briefly and ridiculously, found himself at a loss for words. Part of him cringed away from apeing such silly Hollywood behaviour as running into a room and yelling, but he was at a loss for a suitable phrase to announce his presence. A slightly baffled 'er, hello?' seemed to lack appropriate gravitas.
What would Jack say, he wondered?
"As much as I appreciate the rear view, you should put the pliers down and step away from the big old bomb. I'm too pretty to be blow to smithereens just yet."
Ianto fought the urge to roll his eyes at the mental recreation of Jack that his brain had decided to produce. Definitely not the approach Ianto wanted to take.
Finally, he decided to opt for the simple approach, kept his weapon down and pointed at the floor, not wanting to startle the object of his attention.
"Hello, Sean," he said.
~*~
They'd met at the office Christmas party, the name of which was slightly inaccurate, since it wasn't actually held in the offices of Torchwood London. It had been wisely decided, at some point, that putting dozens of extremely drunk employees within reach of potentially lethal alien technology and labs full of experimental pharmaceuticals was generally a bad idea, and so Torchwood London hired out a different hotel every year for its staff to get trashed in.
Ianto hadn't really wanted to go this year. At the last minute, Lisa had apologetically produced a copy of the roster which showed that she had been assigned to keep an eye on an all-night experiment, and there was no way she'd be able to make the party. Ianto had been fully intending to skip out on the event, until the memo from Director Hartman came around the building, politely reminding everyone that seasonal office get-togethers were vital for 'team cohesiveness' and 'communications facilitation'.
You didn't get anywhere in Torchwood without learning to read between the lines, and in this case the message was quite clear: attendance is mandatory.
So Ianto had grimaced, gone, and consoled himself that it was, at least, a free bar.
He'd spent the meal portion of the evening sitting at a table with about half a dozen other people from his division, and had the experience of being the only unaccompanied person at the table, which just made him feel depressed, and the moment the bar opened, he made a beeline for it and managed to stay there for two pints and a rum and coke. He was just starting to wonder whether or not that had been enough to qualify as having 'attended' the party, the speeches started up, which lasted through another two drinks.
He had a vague recollection of rolling his eyes at Director Hartman's usual pro-Imperialism speech, the likes of which virtually everyone in the room could recite by heart, followed up by a "you're all special, you make the company great, I love you guys" speech from the head of R&D, which never failed to get cheers, but which were always slightly sarcastic ones.
Ianto was grateful when the music started up, nearly deafening in its intensity.
"And the funny part is, we had to pay for tickets to hear these people go on and on."
The sentence was shouted to make itself heard over the music, and, at first, Ianto thought that he was just accidentally eavesdropping on someone else at the bar. It was only when he felt an elbow nudge into his side that he noticed that there was a man standing next to him, smiling in amusement, and he realised that the man had been talking to him.
It was hard to see anything in the room, given that it had been plunged into darkness and illuminated only from the fast moving coloured lights that highlighted the dance floor, but the bar had several strips of light, presumably for the staff, and so Ianto could make out a tall, lanky man, his hair a light colour, blond, Ianto thought, as he squinted slightly. He was dimly aware that it was possibly the alcohol that was making such judgements difficult to render.
"Pay for two tickets," Ianto corrected, raising his voice and leaning forward to make himself more audible. "My girlfriend stood me up."
"Ouch," the man said, "Work stuff?"
"Of course," Ianto rolled his eyes. The Torchwood Christmas party, for security reasons, was employees only. "She got stuck covering an experiment. I'm a Torchwood widower." He affected dramatic woe, which prompted sniggering from his companion.
"I'm-" he seemed about to introduce himself, but someone else that Ianto didn't recognise approached, and the man broke off with a "Hey, how are you, mate?" and threw an apologetic look at Ianto. "Hey, sorry. 'Scuse me, would you?"
Ianto shrugged, picking up his latest drink (another rum and coke, possibly a double) and nodding easily. He moved away, planting himself at an empty table where someone had abandoned a bowl of what seemed to be olives, left over from the starters of the meal. He nibbled on them, and drank his drink (which was refreshed once or twice by one of the hotel staff), slouching back in his chair and watching the dance floor without really paying attention to any of the bodies that flailed about in what only the British would call 'dancing'.
'Fear us, alien hordes,' Ianto thought to himself, and laughed around the rim of his glass. 'For we could get our groove on at any moment.'
"Nice to see you're having a good time," a female voice came from above him.
Ianto tilted his head back to see who it was, and nearly fell off his chair as Director Hartman's visage loomed, upside down, above him. He attempted to scramble into some sort of sensible sitting position, but it wasn't until he attempted to move that he found that his coordination had, without his consent, become completely shot to hell.
"Director, ma'am…" he said, hurriedly, as she sat down in the chair next to him, smiling broadly.
"Oh, call me Yvonne," she said, breezily, waving one hand dismissively. In her other hand was clutched a rather hefty glass of something that looked, in the dim light, like orange juice. "I'm sure that I sent a memo around regarding informality in the workplace."
"Ah, ok… Yvonne," Ianto would have normally demurred, but, along with his coordination, his inhibitions had apparently similarly gone to hell. "Nice party," he said, for lack of anything better to say.
Yvonne looked pleased. "Well, we do try." She tilted her head significantly towards the dance floor. "You're not tempted to get up and dance?"
"Bit strange to do it on your own," Ianto said.
Yvonne's eyes gleamed in the dim lighting. "Oh yes, some things are definitely best done in pairs."
"Or, you know, as a group." Ianto could have slapped himself on the forehead, as his brain helpfully supplied images of groups of people doing things that weren't called dancing except in euphemism.
Yvonne was looking at him speculatively. "You're… Ianto, yes? Researcher?"
"Junior," Ianto corrected.
"Aha," Yvonne nodded, leaning forward conspiratorially. "I find it so important to be on a first name basis with all of my employees," she said. "I feel that it makes for a much more intimate working environment."
Yvonne's hand landed on his thigh, and edged upwards, and Ianto realised from that, and the slightly unfocused look in her eyes, that it probably wasn't just orange juice in her glass.
He was trying to think of the best way to get out of the situation with his dignity, and job, intact, when a pair of hands landed on his shoulders, sliding down over his chest. He had a brief, terrifying vision of being accosted by all the senior execs at the party, and of screaming that he wasn't that kind of girl and running for his life, but mostly he found himself frozen still as the owner of the hands leaned down and said, into his ear, warm breath brushing his neck,
"Ah, here you are."
Ianto blinked. His brain wasn't entirely functioning properly, but he thought he recognised the voice.
Yvonne's face had acquired a brief look of 'well, shit', that passed quickly, before she donned her usual bright and broad smile that, nevertheless, seemed a little strained. "Oh, I see. I didn't mean to… intrude."
"Not at all," Ianto said, quickly, unsure of how his escape had been achieved, but not willing to shun it.
"You know, I think I see Mark Hodgson over there. Excuse me, we really must discuss the plans for retrofitting the Jvari pods. Oh, Mark!" Yvonne got up so quickly that her drink sloshed over her fingers, which she ignored, before hurrying away on high heeled boots.
The body pressed against Ianto's shoulders started to shake with laughter, and released him to come around and sit in the chair that Yvonne had just vacated. It was the man from the bar.
"Sorry," he said, not looking very apologetic. "I thought you needed rescuing. You had this look of a rabbit caught in the oncoming headlights of a steamroller."
Ianto laughed. The adrenaline still buzzing through his system combining with the alcohol made him feel more than a little lightheaded. "You, sir, have my eternal gratitude."
The man stuck out his hand. "Sean Bartram," he said.
Ianto shook it, though his grab was a little clumsy. "Ianto Jones," he returned.
And that made them, in the traditional manner of the truly drunk, best friends.
~*~
Sean froze, and his head jerked up. Ianto could see his eyes going wide in his reflected image in the glass. Sean turned, still crouching, and blinked owlishly at Ianto. In his hands he held a pair of pliers and a transparent cylinder with some sort of cloudy white substance inside. He was messing with a cap that was sealed at one end with rather clumsy looking electronics.
"I… Ianto?" Sean looked astonished, though not at getting caught, it seemed. "I thought you were dead."
"Likewise," Ianto said, with forced lightness. "Mind stepping away from that?"
"You mean this thing?" Sean turned sideways and laid his hand on the device he had clearly been working on.
It was, as Ianto had initially thought, about waist-high, roughly egg-shaped and standing on a tripod base. Rough was the key word in any description he could have applied to it. Torchwood's original designs would have no doubt called for the bomb to be house in a sleek casing, disguising its lethal capacity behind a veneer of modern aesthetics. Sean Bartram had obviously had no such capabilities.
Some of the materials were mundane, bits of wire and plating that could be found from any industrial supplier, but some of them were clearly alien. Ianto recognised a hodgepodge of different species' technology, and doubtless there was more in the core of the device that he couldn't see. Things didn't quite meet where they were soldered or welded together, and edges were rough, jagged and uneven. There was a keypad on the top which looked like it had been glued on.
"You've been busy, I see. UNIT has you on file as a smuggler of alien technology," Ianto said, "I'm guessing you weren't smuggling it. You were keeping it. To build this?"
"Among other things," Sean agreed, fiddling with some of the wires sticking out of the cylinder in his hands. He nodded towards the table next to Ianto. "Want a coffee? I vaguely remember a good portion of your time being spent feeding your addiction. If you've been caught up in the indeterminate waveform you probably need it."
Ianto flicked his eyes in the direction that Sean indicated, for just a second, but Sean made no move to lunge for a weapon or otherwise attempt to jump him, so he took a second, longer, look. There was indeed a thermos sitting on the table, a tartan-covered affair that wouldn't have looked out of place in a photograph of a 70's picnic. There were also a couple of half-eaten banana sandwiches wrapped in clingfilm next to it. But it was the small brown glass bottle that caught Ianto's attention.
Keeping his eyes on Sean, he edged that way, picking up the bottle with his free hand and glancing at the label. His eyes widened. "Amphetamines? Sean, are you building a bomb while you're high?"
Sean twisted two tiny pieces of wire together with his gloved hands. "Well yes," he said, looking at Ianto like he was a particularly moronic species of dormouse. "The moment I made the decision to build the bomb, and had sufficient materials to construct a working bomb, the possibility existed of detonation. So." He gestured vaguely with his hands, his gaze darted around the room, no doubt nervous about someone appearing from behind Ianto to shoot him.
Ianto suddenly realised he was in the room with a probably very crazy individual who was hopped up on speed.
"I had to work fast," Sean continued, still twitchily fiddling with the cylinder. "I knew someone would come for me. There wasn't any time for sleep. I didn't think it'd be you that came. Thought if anyone did, they'd just find the repeater. Working for UNIT now, are you?"
It was a reasonable assumption, given Ianto's state of dress. "Not quite," he said, slowly, "But I'm working with UNIT."
"So what? Government? MI5?"
Ianto shook his head slowly. "I'm still Torchwood, Sean."
Sean stiffened, becoming almost preternaturally still. But his breathing was short, rapid, and if Ianto squinted across the intervening space, he could see that Sean's pupils were wide open. "Torchwood was destroyed," Sean started, but then stopped himself, "Cardiff, right? That's the only other place you could have gone. Scotland's not even big enough to be called a branch. One bloke who minds the library at the House part time, isn't it?"
"That's right," Ianto said, carefully.
Sean drew a shaky breath. "Right," he said, forcing a bright smile onto his face, "Well, hey, nice to know you survived, anyway. Pity you didn't move to Australia or something. Really sorry about that."
Ianto stared at him. Sean smiled and stared back. But the expression was a dull one, mere hints of desperation showing around the eyes, although that might have just been the drugs. "You're not a murderer, Sean," he said, calmly, "You were a scientist. So what changed? Why are you so keen on killing most of western Europe?"
"It's the most efficient way to deal with the situation," Sean said, seriously, eyes restlessly flicking towards Ianto before his gaze would roam around the room.
"Situation?"
"Torchwood," Sean said, in surprise, as if expecting Ianto to know that.
Unfortunately, Ianto had the feeling that he was floundering, with no actual idea what Sean meant. "Sean-"
Sean, at least, seemed to find it important to explain things to Ianto. "Torchwood isn't just confined to this place, this tower. It's in Wales, and Scotland, and its ideas have permeated our society. It's been here for a hundred years, quietly whispering in the ears of the population that we're strong, powerful, better than everyone else. It's led to the decay of society, it's put us on the path to our own downfall.
"The technology, the experiments, it was all just one facet," Sean said, earnestly. "Forgetting about the aliens - the Cybermen might have come over eventually, and the sphere with the Daleks would have come anyway. We might have had the same problem, but Torchwood's faults extend beyond that one single incident."
Ianto thought that might have been a good enough reason on its own, but he said nothing.
"No," Sean continued, "Torchwood has been a part of Britain for a century, a festering, unseen canker that has gnawed away at society. Its ideology has permeated throughout its people, and the only way to save Humanity is to eradicate it. When it's gone, Earth will be able to look at the aliens with open eyes, and save themselves. Torchwood would only destroy them."
'Jesus Christ,' Ianto thought, 'This guy is insane.'
He didn't say that, of course. He had no intention of annoying a man on the verge of mass destruction.
"You don't mean that, Sean," he said.
"Yes I do," Sean said, and smiled twitchily at him. "You want an example? Ever heard of Project K?"
Ianto frowned. "No."
"Oh well. I would have thought you had, working at Cardiff. It doesn't matter, or it won't. Torchwood's arrogance beggars belief. We were always so proud of ourselves. We thought we were the best, the greatest, of anyone, anywhere on the planet. Look what it got us. Journalists who investigated us were suddenly and mysteriously sectioned. Our own staff disappeared off to the sixth floor if they showed too much unusual psychic ability. And now we start to see similar things happening throughout the country, the world."
'Insane, and a conspiracy nut to boot,' Ianto amended his original assessment of Sean's mental health.
"This is the world that Torchwood made!" Sean threw his hands outwards, gesturing wildly. "A world that doesn't care about the people in it, or what they go through."
He stared, wide-eyed, at Ianto. "Do you want to know? Do you want to see?"
Before Ianto could say anything, Sean reached up, tearing at the collar of the jumpsuit he was wearing – bulky and ill-fitting, Ianto had thought when he'd seen it – and unzipped it, pulling it down, exposing…
Ianto stifled a gasp, and felt nauseous as his stomach did a nervous flip. His right shoulder, and a good part of his torso, glinted dully in the light, thin plates of burnished metal sheeting covering them. Wires were exposed, awkwardly poking into flesh that was dull, pallid and bloodless. Ianto knew the technology so well that he didn't even have to think about it.
Sean Bartram, it seemed, had not escaped the Battle of Canary Wharf unscathed.
~*~
The last time they'd seen each other, they'd been creeping through the hallways of Torchwood Tower, five of them, and two guards. The emergency exits had been sealed, their only hope, the guards had said, was to try and make it to the ground floor doors, which appeared to be more or less unguarded. Two of the staff, twins girls who had worked in the Psych department together, were clinging to each other, crying in near unison, though they tried to keep quiet for fear of attracting unwanted attention. Ianto could sympathise.
He was gripping Lisa's hand so tightly he was sure he was hurting her, but she didn't complain. She wasn't crying, but she was shaking, her tremors becoming apparent the moment they stopped for more than a second or two. Sean was pressed against his side, and Ianto could feel his rapid, frightened breathing. The five of them were pressed into a recess in the corridor wall while the guards scouted ahead a short way, making sure the way was clear.
"We're all going to die, aren't we?" Sean said, frantically glancing back and forth down the corridor, clearly terrified of anything emerging to attack them.
"We are not going to die," Lisa said, sounding angry, though Ianto was fairly certain it was an attempt to hide her fear. "Ianto, tell him."
Ianto couldn't speak, couldn't bring himself to lie to himself and the others like that. He kept his lips pressed together, and tightened his grip on Lisa's hand. She winced, and glanced away.
"I heard that the weapons systems have been destroyed," one of the twins, Miriam or Heidi, he wasn't sure which, "Internal security's down. What sort of thing could cause this? What were those things? Robots?"
"I heard one of them say they were 'Cybermen'," Sean said, "I… I don't remember them from the files though."
"I do," Ianto said, "I think they were in connection with UNIT or the Doctor or something. I think… I… I don't know. I saw them grab some people, before I got out…"
"Cybernetics," the other twin moaned, clutching her sister closer, "Oh god. I heard screaming. God."
Ianto fumbled by his side, after a moment finding Sean's hand with his and gripping just as tightly as he was holding onto Lisa. Sean's hand was clammy with fear, and he shot Ianto a look that meant Ianto knew the physical touch was as comforting for him as it was for Ianto.
They hadn't even known what was going on, at first. The whole tower had been abuzz with the news that the TARDIS - the TARDIS for Heaven's sake - had arrived in one of the hangars, and gossips, rumours and speculation had been flying around faster than the speed of light. Chat about what it could mean, what Director Hartman would do (would she hold to the letter of the charter and see him destroyed, would he be contained, would he be questioned, imagine what he could teach). And then the ghost had become real, and they'd started killing.
Then the other things appeared, which one researcher identified as Daleks, right before they killed him, and half of Ianto's division. The rest of them barely made it out of the room fast enough. He'd run into Lisa and the others creeping through the hallways, trying desperately to get out, not knowing what was happening other than the fact that people were dying, and there was a lot of screaming coming from behind closed doors.
There were footsteps, and Ianto leaned forward slightly to spy their two guards, black clad and carrying rifles, coming back towards them, looking around anxiously.
"Come on," one said, gesturing. "It seems to be clear."
It might have been when they had checked, but as they turned the corner, the lift doors slid open, disarmingly naturally, revealing only an empty lift shaft, and two of the creatures that had been named as Daleks were hovering inside. They glided out, settling on the floor, and turning towards their small group, bringing their weapons to bear.
The guards, to their credit, didn't hesitate. They immediate opened fire. The bullets, though, never reached the Daleks, and, after a moment, having quickly expended their ammunition, they stopped firing. They knew enough about alien technology to recognise a kinetic field when they saw one.
The Daleks seemed unimpressed. "EXTERMINATE," they said.
In bright flashes of light that left lines seared into Ianto's retinas, the two men screamed, and died. They stood there, shocked, staring, and it was Lisa's, "Run!" that spurred them all into moving, fleeing as a group backwards the way they came, terrified, not caring where they were going, as long as it was away from the Daleks.
"EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE." The Daleks said it over and over, scraping over every last nerve Ianto possessed, and he reflexively ducked at the sounds of the Daleks firing after them, pursuing them down the corridors.
One of the shots hit the wall, gouging a hole in the plaster and striking the cables and tubes running behind the walls. It might not have been so bad, only knocking out some lights, if half the main trunking leading to the hangar levels didn't run through this section of the building. The shot ruptured a fluid line, which started venting pressurised coolant into the corridor, flash freezing anything in its path. One of the Daleks was caught side-on, electronic shrieks filling the air as unevenly cooled metal suddenly ruptured under the strain.
"Run!" Lisa yelled again, "The plasma lines-!"
She didn't need to finish the sentence, nor did she have time to. They were already running. Deprived of coolant convecting the heat away, the superheated plasma that ran through the building as part of its power supply, feeding fusion generators in the sublevels, caused the surrounding electrics to overheat and spark, and then one of the lines broke free, its housing melted, and the plasma was released into the air.
It caught the walls, and they immediately burst into flames from the exposure to the plasma's high temperature.
The twins crashed through the doors to the emergency stairway, and the five of them ran through, coughing from the choking fumes released by the walls catching fire, and started to run, staggering, down the stairs. They were on the fifth floor, and need to get to the ground. In the end, they only made it down two flights before one of the doors crashed open. Two Cybermen came through the doorway from the third floor and stared up at them.
"Soldiers are required," one said. "You will be given the Emergency Upgrade."
The five of them didn't waste time arguing, just turned and ran back upwards again, with no plan in mind other than to get away. To get anywhere that wasn't confronted by cybernetic robots that spoke in ominous terms about Upgrades. On the fourth floor, the door opened, banging aside, and Ianto had a brief glimpse of silver-coloured metal before he felt something immovable thudding into his chest.
Then he felt pain. He'd once stuck his fingers in a light socket by accident, felt his muscles contract and yank his way before the pain hit him, and he realised how much electric currents actually hurt. But this was longer, more sustained, and Ianto was sure that he was dead-
He crashed to the ground, struggling to breath, his chest feebly inflating enough to keep him alive, but he couldn't move. He heard Lisa screaming, and one of the twins, and felt a body land painfully across his legs. He had no idea who it was; he couldn't move his head to look downwards.
The thud of heavy, artificial footsteps caused the stairway to shake, and he stared at the dented and scuffed feet of one of the Cybermen.
"Take them to level nine," one said, and Ianto was brusquely rolled over, and surprisingly warm metal fingers closed around the clothes at the back of his neck. He was dragged up the stairs, the edges of the steps themselves banging into his legs. If he could have thought through the sheer blinding terror, he would have thought that if he was going to survive, he'd have dreadful bruises.
But he couldn't think. He just wanted to scream, but was unable to give voice to the desire. As they dragged them through the doors, he could see three, maybe four, free standing nearly cylindrical partitions, but it was the overwhelming stench that would have made him throw up if he hadn't been almost completely paralysed. There was the heavy metal tang of blood, the smell of piss undercutting it, but, most overwhelmingly, he could smell what he first thought was burning meat and then, as he felt the heat from one of the partitions they passed, accompanied by screams, he realised it was burning flesh.
He couldn't raise his head, but he wanted to, he desperately wanted to, when he heard Lisa moaning, and then her voice, rising in terror.
"Oh God, no! Let me go! LET ME GO! OH GOD! IANTO!!" Her voice became muffled; she must have been dragged behind one of the partitions, and her words became nothing but incoherent screams, and Ianto desperately wanted to weep, realising that those had probably been her last words.
Then he heard Sean as well. The two of them had either been given a lesser jolt, or Ianto was taking longer to come around properly, because he was still completely immobile. All he could hear Sean say was the same phrase, over and over, "My fault. God, my fault. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
Ianto couldn't look up. He was still being held at the back of the neck by one of the cybernetic monsters, could only look straight down, where his head was tilted. Blood was pooled in the doorway that seemed to protect the access to whatever was behind the partition. He didn't have to wait long. It slid aside, and he was pulled inside. The Cyberman slipped slightly on the pool of blood, and let out a short artificial bleat of what might have been surprised, before it yanked Ianto up, one handed, and lay him flat on a metal table.
There was a pressure on his hands as the restraints locked into place. The inside of the partitions were caked with dried and baked blood splatters, and Ianto could smell blood so close to him he knew he must have been lying in some left over from the previous occupant of the slab.
He wished he could scream like Lisa was, like Sean was starting to, but instead he could only stare upwards dully as a piece of machinery he'd never seen before irised open, and the stuff of nightmares emerged.
Later, when Ianto was picking through the remnants of the once-proud Torchwood Institute, London Office, he found a thick document detailing a potential usefulness for the Tower's pet rift, in so much as it could provide virtually limitless energy, removing the British dependence on foreign oil and gas, whilst being environmentally friendly. There was a note scrawled in red from Director Hartman on the front, simply saying "Brilliant!". It was the document that had led directly to the instigation of the ghost shifts, and everything that had come afterwards.
On the last page, it was signed by the man who had made the recommendations: Torchwood Officer No. 872, Doctor Sean Bartram.
~*~
Sean shrugged back into the jumpsuit, sealing it carelessly with one hand. Ianto must have had a stricken expression on his face, because he shrugged. "It doesn't hurt."
"God," Ianto breathed. He had thought he had become rather used to the sensation of his heart breaking, but, apparently it was just as bad as the last time. "Why didn't you tell anyone?"
He need not have asked. Sean hadn't been able to find anyone for the same reason that Ianto hadn't been able to tell anyone about Lisa.
"Don't be thick," Sean said, "You think they'd accept me? Aliens are the enemy, remember? Torchwood's mandate is to destroy aliens."
"I'm so sorry, Sean," Ianto said, gently, "They should have helped us. They shouldn't have abandoned us like that."
"It's not about that!" Sean screamed the sentence, and then visibly reined himself in. "It's not about that," he repeated, in a calmer tone, though Ianto could tell he'd been shaken. "Humanity deserves to be free of Torchwood. I'm going to do that."
Ianto shook his head, urgently, "No. Torchwood is needed. Maybe they don't need Torchwood Tower, and they didn't need Yvonne Hartman trying to bring glory to the Empire, but someone's got to protect people from the things that would harm us. The unfriendly aliens, the things on Earth that no one understands but could still hurt us."
And who protects us? He heard his own voice, addressing Tosh, not so long ago.
He took a deep breath, closing his eyes briefly. We protect each other. He answered his own question and knew, deep down, that it was the right answer. That was how it should be and Torchwood had failed Ianto, Sean, Lisa and the other twenty five survivors of the massacre.
"This isn't the way," Ianto said, talking a small, slow step forward. "Come with me back to Cardiff. We've a good doctor, he can help." Although Ianto would die before admitting any grudging respect for Owen's abilities to the man himself. "And the Captain…" Ianto hesitated. "He'll help." At least, Ianto thought that Jack wouldn't turn someone away if the alternative was major global catastrophe.
"So naïve," Sean said, sadly. "I'm surprised you still have any faith in Torchwood left."
"So am I," Ianto admitted, "But I do. Come on, Sean. This isn't you." It was so unlike the man, that Ianto knew, for certain, that he'd almost certainly gone mad in the aftermath of Canary Wharf. He didn't seem to have any implants near his brain, he seemed to be still Human-
Unlike Lisa, a treacherous little voice whispered.
All that had happened was that he'd had a limb replaced (and, of course, was burdened not only with the loss of everyone he cared about but the inescapable knowledge that he was mostly responsible). They could remove the machinery, wipe his memory with Jack Harkness's oh-so-handy and yet somewhat reprehensible chemical formula, euphemistically named Retcon, and they could make up some story about a car accident and memory loss, and Sean would be fine.
"Please," he knew he was begging. "Please come with me."
"I'm really very sorry, Ianto." Sean said, and shook his head. "But this is for the best."
Sean abruptly, with so little foreshadowing of the motion that Ianto didn't even realise he was going to move until he'd finished, Sean took the cylinder he'd been fiddling with, and in one smooth motion, slammed it into a matching housing in the top of the bomb, and twisted it into place. The sounds from the Quantum Bomb changed. An up-scaling hum issued from somewhere inside it, and more status lights lit up, the keypad mounted on it changed to a simple activation key. It would only take a single touch.
He'd finished the bomb, and Ianto cursed himself for letting Sean distract him with meaningless chatter, with words that did nothing except stop Ianto from being aware what he was doing.
Ianto realised he was still holding his gun. He brought it to bear quickly. "Sean, step away," he ordered, trying to sound as firm and fearsome as he could.
Sean didn't seem impressed, just looked at him sceptically. "Oh, Ianto," he said, and smiled, "Both of us know you're not that sort of person."
The sort of person to shoot him, he meant. He reached for the bomb.
Ianto shot him three times. Bang, bang, bang. There was hardly any effort involved. A slight tightening of his finger on the trigger, and it was no more difficult than landing hits inside the paper targets on UNIT's range. He wasn't even aware he'd done it, truly, until a look of surprise crossed Sean's face, and he staggered forwards, tripping over his own feet and landing on his knees.
The shots had landed in his chest, missing the artificial implants and hitting only flesh, ugly blooms of dark red instantly appearing on the front of his shirt. But it hadn't killed him instantly. He reached out blindly with one hand, reaching for the bomb's activation switch.
Ianto shot him one last time, and this time the shot caught him in the face. Sean Bartram tumbled backwards, unmoving, clearly dead.
Ianto's ears were ringing, the loud sound of his fired shots still reverberating in his skull, and it took him a moment to realise that the only sounds in the room were the beeps of the bomb's systems, and his own harsh breathing. Slowly, cautiously, he approached Sean, still not lowering his weapon even though he knew that he had shot the man, knew that he had to have killed him.
Telling himself that, and seeing the result up close were two entirely different things.
He stood over Sean's body and looked down at him. The damage caused by Ianto's shots to his chest was the least of the damage. Torchwood's rounds weren't exactly explosive, but they were extremely damaging if you hit in just the right place. The final shot to his face had entered, by the looks of it, just below his eye, taking away his cheekbone, destroying the eye sockets, and taking a significant portion of the skull with it. His brain was exposed, bits of ripped up grey matter swimming in blood that had continued to be pumped around the body for a second before the heart stopped completely, and the dark fluid was leaking out onto the floor forming a slowly expanding pool.
Iatno stared down at Sean Bartram and realised that he was dead. It should have been obvious, really, the state of his body and the way he was so very unnaturally still, but that thought was only just starting to penetrate his brain. He'd dealt with dead bodies for months know, at Jack's behest, a duty given to him in an unkind attempt to scare him off. He'd rationalised it to himself that the bodies weren't really people anymore, that they were just bits of flesh, and the thing that made them Human was gone somewhere… else.
He'd even, indirectly, been the cause of deaths. He'd had to handle the corpses of Doctor Tanizaki and their pizza delivery girl while they were still warm, known that they had died because of him, that he was responsible.
But still, he'd never actually killed someone himself.
It was something he'd never thought of. In Torchwood people died, and often Torchwood was the cause, and Ianto had thought himself able to deal with that, thought that he'd come to terms with it a long time ago (though it had caused him no small amount of disgust when he'd seen how callously the people in Cardiff seemed to act towards those unfortunate enough to be aught up in their oh-so damaging wake). But he'd never actually killed someone.
Sean sightlessly stared back up at him, and Ianto realised he'd taken a life. He had made the decision to end someone's life, to take away their remaining days and leave nothing but a cooling shell. He was someone's son, a scientist, a friend, a lover, and Ianto had, in a tiny flexing of the muscles that had barely required any conscious thought, ended all that.
He had always treated the cavalier attitude the others had towards guns and fighting and weapons with nonchalance. It was just something they talked about in missing briefings, or he read about in reports. He didn't…
He didn't kill people.
Except he did, and the proof was sticking to his boots.
His stomach tightened, and he felt a rush of sweetness on his tongue. He dropped the gun, uncaring (thankfully, it didn't go off), and stumbled away from the body, crashing through some of the furniture that had been pushed aside, and landed heavily against the wall. No, the window. He could feel the cool glass against his palms as he slumped to his knees. He vomited, feeling miserable and guilty, throwing up the half-digested remnants of a UNIT field ration, and Sergeant Tumenggung's whiskey.
He could hear footsteps approaching, but spared them no more thought than a brief feeling of bitterness for being too late, too busy completely voiding his stomach completely, spitting out bile onto the floor. The acidic stench mixed with the smell of blood, and he would have thrown up again if he had anything left in his stomach. Instead he just retched.
"Jesus," he dimly heard, "is that-?"
"We're clear, sir."
"Fan out. Check the surrounding rooms. Make sure there's nothing and no one else. Corporal?"
The voices were a white noise that Ianto screened out without thinking, closing his eyes. He vaguely wished he could pray, wished that he'd ever found religion something to believe in. Instead of a comforting prayer or thoughts of divine will, all he could think was what Tumenggung had said to him.
"I'm going to keep saying this until you have these words burned into your brain: never, ever draw your weapon, unless you're damned sure you're going to use it."
A shadow fell across him, and he looked up to see Monroe standing over him, her expression sympathetic but firm. She held out his weapon, handle first, and waited patiently for him to wipe his mouth with his sleeve and stagger into some semblance of standing.
"We need you to disarm the bomb," she said, her eyes flickering towards the device, which still whirred menacingly. "You're the only one who knows how."
He looked over at the Quantum Bomb, and the body that still lay there. No one had made any attempt to move it or cover it up, but then that was hardly the priority at that moment. Steeling himself (and his stomach) Ianto picked his way through furniture he had overturned, and stood over the bomb, looking at the keypad. It was pretty standard, one that had been a generic one made by the Torchwood engineers for interfacing with alien technology. He keyed for general access and started looking around the systems.
Sean's head was right next to his foot. Ianto had felt a bit of bone crunch underfoot as he had stopped, and blood was still seeping through the carpet, clinging to his shoes. The metallic stench wafted up every time Ianto made the slightest movement.
"In a way," he said, conversationally, his voice a little hoarse from the acid that had washed through his throat, "He was right."
Monroe was standing a few feet away, watching him carefully as he worked. She stiffened when he spoke, but her voice was light as she answered. "Oh? How so?"
"The world doesn't care. If it did, then there would be any need for sneaky underhand organisations and their abhorrent tactics." Ianto's fingers danced across the menu. It wasn't that hard to figure out. The bomb prompted him for a fifteen digit code.
He entered the date of the Battle of Canary Wharf, and, with a sad recollection of a conversation between the two of them, the word 'swordfish'.
The bomb chirped and gave him deeper access. He started to work on breaking the deeper encryption layers.
"No need," he said, "For Torchwood, in other words. Would that be a paradox? Torchwood was created to protect a world that wouldn't need it if it hadn't been created?"
Monroe folded her arms lightly, watching him closely. "There'll always be a need for people like Torchwood, and UNIT," she added. "Because that's the way the world is. Thinking that things might have been different could drive you mad."
"Sean wanted to change the world," Ianto said, glancing down at the slack face below his eyeline. "He always did. That's why he joined Torchwood. That's why he proposed the things he did. He wanted to make a difference."
Monroe shrugged. "Doesn't everyone?"
Ianto shook his head sadly. "I didn't. I just wanting meaning, looked for it here. But I was probably looking in the wrong place. Torchwood Tower is a monument to pride, a modern day Tower of Babel struck down by God, or, in our case, aliens." The keypad chirruped, and a new directory unfolded in response to his careful hacking, this one more protected, and more easily affecting the detonation systems. He frowned as he concentrated.
She shifted her weight from foot to foot. "Did that make him right?"
"I think if you start trying to pick out what's right and what's wrong, we're all going to come out as monsters." Ianto glanced up from the keypad for a moment to look at her. "I know I don't. How about you?"
"I don't know. I try not to think about such things."
Ianto shook his head. "Forgive me for being blunt, Louise, but that would be why you're a soldier. You take orders. Torchwood liked its outcasts, its rebels, the people who were nominally marginalised by society. It's how the Institute managed to hold separate from the government and the world at large, because it was full of people that didn't think the way everyone else did. And, eventually, you start to justify it as being better than everyone else."
"Then," Monroe spoke hesitantly, uncomfortably, "What would you say the solution is?"
"To end it all," Ianto said, and smiled tiredly, "And to try to forget it ever existed."
He tapped a final key and stepped back. Monroe's head whipped around as, outside the windows, the doubling up of reality vanished. It was the decision gate, the moment of the point of no return, the instant where the waveform collapsed and the future was set in stone.
And in the centre of the room, between them, the bomb exploded.
~*~