Jenny winced as the alarm went off to remind everyone inside the cog door was opening.
"Do you go through this every time?" she asked stepping carefully into the cage before Ianto pushed open the metal grill.
Tosh looked up and smiled, glad to see a new face and raring to explore new theories. Gwen leapt up from her seat in front of the bank of computer screens she barely understood, she could see Tosh was about to launch into full on tech mode and she for one had other questions that needed answering.
"You look so much better." Said Gwen quickly grabbing her waist and steering her away from Torchwoods resident geek, Jenny winced as Gwens hand connected with the scar on her hip which launched Gwen into a tirade of apologies. The whittering brought Owen up from his sunken pit which allowed Ianto, as always to quietly slip away.
Jack was brought out of his office by the commotion.
"So you decided to come back" he said smiling broadly. Part of him had expected her to do a moonlight flit, he would have, and he wouldn't have blamed her.
"Lets do lunch after my team have used and abused you." He took his coffee from the tray as Ianto came gliding by, she smiled and nodded as three of the team started to move in each with their own agenda. It was like a wolf pack going in for the kill, he chuckled to himself as he took the stairs two at a time hollering for Ianto as he went. If the archivist liked filing he had an enjoyable morning ahead, he looked at his watch, well the hour that was left, where had the boy been? Jenny took an involuntary step back,
"Mine first I'm afraid, medical imperative." Said Owen airily. He was going to beat Tosh into a purely factual reason for her continued existence without resorting to alien tech, the analyzer down in the basement didn't count. Jenny quickly fled to the autopsy bay and rolled up her sleeve.
It took less than twenty minutes for Owen to complete the tests he wanted to do, things were going in the right direction they both agreed but swirling the vial of blood still looked like weak Ribena. After changing the dressing on her hip Jenny declined the opportunity to participate in an alien post mortem, it was one of the few times she had seen his eyes sparkle. Walking slowly up the stone steps she was marvelling at the changes in the centre of the Hub, lost in her own world she nearly walked into a beaming Tosh who saw a fellow scientist ready to discuss the wonders of an extra-terrestrial world. What she wanted to show her was the research she had put together on the energy flows she had recorded around the various deaths and resurrections that had occurred in the Hub. She took Jenny to a work station off the main Hub, she felt a little weird replaying Owens and Jacks deaths where they could see them. Together they played with a few different calibrations while Tosh tried to gently pump her for information, but Jenny gave away very little that she hadn't already found out about through an all night sift of Torchwood databases.
If Jenny hadn't been thinking of an exit strategy after an hour with Tosh, watching her own near death, twice, would have sealed it. However she was a scientist and increasing the resolution of the energy scan to prove that there had been a minute flicker of energy left as they all walked away, a spark of energy as Jack touched her forehead when he was wiping away the dried blood had caught her interest. An idea was forming as she watched, then re-watched Owens return from some place beyond
"Have there been any other near deaths in the Hub since you installed this system?"
Tosh tutted, she didn't really have long enough to list them all, she wondered if Lisa and Myfanwy counted.
"Start with the team members past and present, long list I know but it's a beginning."
"I suppose Suzie must be a prime candidate, but she died outside."
"Pair of genius like us should be able to retrospectively engineer a solution to show any energy surge."
"Genii" said Tosh quietly.
"Geniuses" countered Jenny. This was an argument that could run for days.
"Tosh love, your computer is getting really annoying" said Gwen sticking her head round the corner. "It keeps beeping and we don't know why, Ianto is wandering round with his hockey stick again."
Tosh sighed "What beep exactly?"
"Sounds like the funny noise the contestants used to get on catchphrase."
"Oh, it shouldn't be doing that" said Tosh quickly walking off her boot heels tapping rapidly across the metal gantry. Jenny smiled self-consciously and Gwen smiled back
"Really I could have managed a few more minutes" said Jenny with a smile
"No really I'm about to fling her bloody computer into the Bay." She said adding her gap tooth smile "Ianto's ordering lunch if you're interested." With an upward intonation which Jenny couldn't decide whether it sounded Bristolian or Neighbours.
"I've been promised a lunch date."
"Don't let Ianto hear you, he's the jealous, repressed type" said Gwen with a mock serious face
"Stores it all up and then massacres the village?" Said Jenny smiling, it wasn't reciprocated and she knew she had hit a nerve, she grimaced and then walked towards Gwen grabbing her arm as she left the room. "Where's expensive? I think Torchwood owes me."
Tosh was tapping furiously at her keyboard as the males of Torchwood looked on in various states of concern. Owen was twirling a pen and looking over his shoulder, mostly he wanted the stupid noise to stop, Ianto was standing at Tosh's left arm trying to follow the steps she was taking so he could stop the really annoying game show noise and Jack was genuinely concerned at the apparent sudden activity of a non-terrestrial nature.
"I set this programme a few months ago. It monitors low levels of alien or rift energy that aren't normally trouble." She pushed her glasses back up her nose and smiled, she didn't feel the need to finish the sentence as it was obvious to her what the answer was.
"So if they aren't normally trouble why would you bother to monitor them?" drawled Jack leaning back because he knew they could be in for a long ride.
"Well single episodes would be too small for us to deal with all the time but these seem to have a pattern, so perhaps they are part of something bigger."
"So what set off the programme today?"
Tosh tapped again and shook her head before tapping again, Ianto got impatient and tapped something on the keyboard over her shoulder, the computer squealed again and brought up a map.
"I was just about to say" spat Tosh tapping for effect "That four objects with rift partials on them just suddenly appeared but there is no rift activity in the area."
"QED Business Park, Pontypridd, the rift doesn't extend that far." Said Ianto
"Objects coated in rift partials do not just appear without a rift activity being logged." Said Jack as a statement of fact.
Tosh bashed away at the keyboard, hit the sensitive touch screens of her console like she was wearing oven gloves and still came up with no explanation.
"Could have been shielded and uncovered." Piped up Jenny from Gwens desk.
Jack spun on his heel and fixed her with a look that screamed 'how could you know more than me'?
"Nope, technology hasn't been invented on earth and we would know if a ship big enough to get here from the far side of the galaxy - where they do have the technology was hanging round."
"Could have come through the rift itself?" said Ianto
"And then it would be covered in rift particles Sherlock." Countered Owen, Ianto scowled at being beaten.
"Again assuming the ship is visible." Said Jenny steadily.
Jack looked at her with hooded eyes, he really didn't like it when someone else had the answers.
"Well we'll never find out sitting round here, Ianto get the wheels, and meet us up top, I'll have to rain check that lunch."
Jenny waved a hand in supplication as the team all hared off in different directions, a well formed ballet that climaxed in a synchronised exit through the old Victorian cog door. Time to go exploring thought Jenny.
The vaults were extensive and little changed from Jenny's memory, except back in the day there had been an army of archivists and an Olympic sized typing pool to write up the reports the boffins produced. Ianto had proudly shown her the front two rooms, each the size of an indoor tennis court and filled with the flotsam sent through the rift or transported by the odd passing alien but they only contained the stuff he had been able to catalogue. When she had wanted to go further Ianto had tried to put her off, wanting to go back to the Hub but she finally convinced him to take her a little further down the corridor to the fifties area. It was the earthquake that did most of the damage, the vibrations from the building of the barrage, he wrung his hands as she pushed open the door. The cobwebs were holding together most of the boxes and some of the shelves were beyond repair, she could tell the damage wasn't all from natural disaster the blood in splatters showed where someone had taken their anger and vengeance out on themselves or worse someone else. Something happened around the Millennium explained Ianto, he hadn't yet got sufficiently ahead to start on tidying up and re-cataloguing these artefacts, he didn't know what most of them were, the file room had been flooded.
Jenny walked round picking up one or two small pieces and putting them back on the shelf, she smiled and picked up picked up a small plastic McDonald's toy, it was from the third Shrek movie.
"I wondered where that went, Bloody Owen I banned him from coming down here." Said Ianto, he could remember the day vividly, about two years before – he hadn't been there long – Owen and Suzie making fun of him for looking like the green ogre and throwing the toy around, hitting him with it on more than one occasion.
"We picked it up from the floor of the lowest corridor in about 1950." She blew the dust of ages from it and looked on the wonky shelving unit and found it's original box, full of Transformers, My Little Ponies, toys and kids watches of all descriptions. "Had a penchant for Maccy D's at one time did you?" she asked handing over the dusty box.
"Still do when we're sick of pizza." He said marvelling at the toys he had assumed he had thrown out over the years, he had always insisted there was a black hole under the coffee table. "You don't remember a silver engraved fountain pen do you?" he asked, it had been a special present from his dad, one day he had leant over to pick up a pizza box and it had fallen from his pocket. She started picking her way over boxes, careful not to step on anything important, half way down the room she stopped and picked up a box to read the faded contents, it was empty the contents probably at her feet somewhere.
"1952/55367#2 Silver pen like object, deep etching, possibly alien language. Signed out then signed back in July 1957, let me guess it was a cartridge pen?" Ianto nodded. "Would have foxed the life out of them, ink in plastic, must be down here somewhere."
At that point Ianto had returned to Jacks calls and Jenny didn't really feel up to scrabbling round floors, but now she was feeling better, imagine a room full of objects sucked back nearly 60 years, there must have been some heavy activity a few years ago, she was going to find that pen and then start returning the objects to order, re-write the information cards and clean up, she owed some of her colleagues that for the memory and Ianto for his kindness. It was a wreck in that room and the dust was chocking in parts but she went over the shelving unit where she had found the empty box and started to scan round the floor. Jenny had retrieved all the boxes she thought had come from the trashed shelving unit and cleared away the broken wood, cutting her hands to ribbons, remembering too late that she wasn't going to heal in her normal fashion. After arranging the boxes in a line across the cleared space she started throwing the artefacts in the correct box to clear the floor, if they had survived an earthquake they could take a three foot drop as they arched into from her hand to the floor. After half an hour of picking up the broken pieces she still hadn't found the pen but imagined she had made a sizable dent in the mess. When she stood up and surveyed the damage she realised she was fooling herself, coughing fit to bust a lung through the dust she decided to make a cup of coffee.
As she progressed back up the corridor she could hear a buzzing noise that seemed to be getting louder. Opening the last door the buzz turned into a whining scream pitched at just the right intensity to really annoy, it was coupled with flashing lights and a warning message scrolling across every computer screen. Automatically she banged a few keys at Tosh's station and tried the old standby of Ctrl, Alt, Delete, as it expected it didn't work but it did bring up the password request window. Jenny flicked through the open drawers looking for a Post-it with her password on it, but came up blank. She spun round on the spot trying to work out which one of this team that she had yet to really sus-out would be stupid enough to write down a password for a top secret organisation, she quickly decided it was likely to be any of them. As the noise seemed to increase in intensity she had a sudden brain wave, she went back to the computer and tapped in a long code. After a few tense seconds the screen saver disappeared and an old fashioned DOS page opened up, Jenny smiled as it was replaced with a web based form. Quietly she thanked whatever alien had provided the technology 70 years ago to build a super efficient semi-sentient computer that had remembered the backdoor code she had put in the system when she was building it. She also thanked the fact that most Torchwood employees of the time had no idea what she was doing so when they wiped the rest of her details from planet Earth they hadn't known about this one.
The form had the address of the business park on it and a large red flashing button that had the word Acknowledge written across it in yellow, she clicked on it and immediately the noise stopped and the bank of screens all changed into maps and building outlines. She sighed and rubbed her forehead trying to release the tension that the blaring sirens had caused. She scanned the information biting the inside of her lip as she realised why the alarms started, feeling round in her pocket she pulled out the alarm Jack had given her. What Jack obviously hadn't mentioned was that it could also tell the difference between sleep and unconscious. She looked at the other screens which were all the information she needed to get to the source of the alarm, maps, CCTV, satellite views and plans of the building, one screen was blank except a set of scrolling numbers which looked suspiciously like the access codes and GPS co-ordinates for a military satellite.
Jenny looked round the desk and quickly found the hand held device she needed, information on the screen was no good if she was going to help out in the wider world. Just as she worked out how to get the maps downloaded the final screen flashed into life, it was an infrared view from above, god knows how much rocket fuel that took to reassign. Superimposed over the last known plan of the building it showed three heat signatures ringed in blue, no one was two bodies close together, from directly overhead it looked like one was standing, two were sitting very close together by one wall and another was laid full length close to another internal wall, not moving. There were three other heat sources ringed in red, unknowns all standing. Jenny clicked again looking for the final heat signature till she realised Owen was never going to show up. The PDA bleeped as the final packet landed in it's massive memory, she snatched it from the desk and walked purposefully over to the armoury, she overrode the code and stepped into the Aladdin's cave. She eyed the Derudian Blaster, deadly with little mess to clear up as it vaporised flesh instantly, however it was three foot long and looked like it was made from the off cuts of a plumbers yard. Instead she took hold of a standard earth pistol and checked the clip stored next to it, the projectiles were not standard issue - instead of the ten or so rounds it would normally hold there were many more tiny rounds, alien tech swapped for enough uranium to get some Purites home meant they had the technology to downsize ammunition by increasing the potency of gunpowder and hardening the bullet tips.
She felt the weight and balance of two pistols and looked round for something to put them in, grabbing a briefcase with a self forming lining that took the gun and the four clips she thought she would need. She clipped the lid shut and walked out the Hub and hailed a taxi at the back of the Senedd.
"Ponty Please, fast as."
The cab driver pulled out muttering about "Sodding civil servants"
"Transport are you love?" asked the driver more civilly.
"Yes, taxi licensing department and I'm late for a meeting." she said snappily.
The driver looked ahead and reduced his speed to the local limit.
"Think I know a short cut will save some time." He said nervously. Jenny clicked her tongue irritably and made out she was checking a super important email, the infra red view was showing the body by the wall still wasn't moving and the heat signature was cooling.