A/N:

Thank you again for the reviews that this has received!

LizzRH – your comments were very much appreciated and helped shape part of this, with Ianto overhearing Johnson (which works brilliantly to give him a sense of how bad the situation really is.)

WickedwitchoftheSE – Wendy going werewolf, huh? I think I can arrange that ;-) (not this chapter, though, too much else going on.)

To everyone who has asked about Day Four and Ianto's fate: I'm *not* deviating from the timeline I wrote for the Bonny Welshman stories. Jack and Ianto have 14 years together… not as long as some might want (even me, that's why I sent Ianto back to him), but Torchwood agents really don't live to collect their pensions.


Chapter Thirteen:
Day Two, Part Two

"While I breath, I hope"
Latin Proverb


"So this is what you do?" Gibbs inquired as he sat back watching Abby and McGee working. It had taken her less than thirty seconds to get rid of the scrawny little tech who had 'violated' her lab. After throwing a small fit about the state of the room, she pushed McGee out of the way and took over the computer so she could log into some outside server, presumably Torchwood's. Apparently, he wasn't doing it fast enough for her.

"This is what we do," the younger man answered his former boss with a smile as he watched Abby work.

She frowned. She hit a couple of keys over again. And again. And again.

"Something's wrong," she said over her shoulder. "I can't get into the network. It's like the computers at the Hub are all down." Only the computers were never down, not ever. Not unless no one was there and there was no way they weren't all there, not with what was going on with the children.

Tim scooted in next to her. "Here, let me try." He typed in his user ID and password only to get the same error message she had. "Hmph," he typed the information in a second time. He got the same error. His information wasn't being rejected it wasn't being received. Frowning, he did a quick check of the settings on the computer he was sitting in front of, but no, the problem wasn't on their end. The Hub's network was down.

"Something the matter?" Gibbs queried, coming up behind them.

"We should be able to connect directly to the…Institute's… internal computer network," Tim faltered at the word 'institute', still trying to maintain some cover story that didn't involve he and Abby catching aliens for a living. "Hang on, let me try something else," he said, as he tried logging onto the Torchwood server itself. Access was granted immediately. His frown deepened.

"Well?" Gibbs asked, staring at the honeycombed "T" logo that now occupied the computer screen. "It looks like you're in."

"That's just the server," Abby told him miserably. She started typing anyway, trying suss out the problem. She'd designed the new networking software herself. It had been working perfectly before they left.

"We can get into the main server without a problem," Tim explained to his former boss, a man who did not speak 'computer'. "But we should be able to connect with whoever's still working on the network, whoever's still there."

Gibbs glanced at his watch. "It's gotta be what…ten o'clock at night on the other side of the Atlantic?"

"Uh-uh, no way," Abby insisted. "Jack is there. With something like this going on, Jack wouldn't be anywhere else." The information she was getting from the server indicated that the network had gone down just after an internal lockdown had been triggered. That meant…she pushed the thought aside. It didn't mean anything. "Jack is there, striding around the Hub looking all impressive and Ianto is making coffee and snarky comments and Mickey's…if he's messed up my system again, I'll kill him!" she seethed. It was obvious to both men that she was latching onto anything to avoid having to digest the information she was seeing on the computer screen in front of her.

McGee was seeing the same information. The Hub had gone into lockdown, protocol two. Jack said the last time he'd had to use protocol two was a hundred years ago when they recovered a canister filled with unstable anti-matter particles the Rift had dumped in the middle of the bay. He'd gotten the rest of the team out just in time… and it had taken them over a year to fully rebuild.

Tim pulled his mobile phone out of his jacket pocket and dialled his boss's number. It took six rings for him to pick up. "Boss—"

"This is Jack Harkness," said the recorded voice. "Leave a message and I'll get back to you."

He hung up the phone; Abby was looking at him hopefully with big green eyes.

"I got his voicemail," he told her the truth, even though he knew what it wasn't what she really wanted to hear. She wanted to hear that Jack was fine.

"Try again," she told him. "You have to try again—" she reached for the phone, but Tim evaded her.

"Hang on, I'm trying Ianto's," he said before she grabbed at it again.

A moment later, he got the Welshman's voicemail as well. Under any other circumstances he would have drawn a very different conclusion about what those two were up to, however…he hung up and dialled Mickey's phone, this time without telling Abby what he was sure she knew already. Ianto hadn't answered either.

It took three rings, but a familiar voice finally came over the line, a real person this time, not another recording:

"Yeah?"

"Mickey," he breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe it was just a technical glitch, some stupid malfunction. It wouldn't be the first time since they hooked up the new network that the system had given them problems. It was usually just a little hiccup.

"Tim? What's goin' on?" Mickey asked him.

"That's what we're trying to find out. I can't get a hold of either Jack or Ianto and it's happening again, with the kids—"

"Yeah, I know, I'm still at Nerys'. This time they said 'we are coming back.' That means they've been here before, yeah? Whoever they are."

"Yeah," Tim agreed. He'd perched himself on the edge of the nearest table, a bad habit he'd picked up from several of his colleagues. "Abby and I are inside the NCIS headquarters in Washington, DC," he explained. "We can log onto the main server, but can't seem to get into the Hub's network."

"Mickey—!" Nerys' called his name in the background. "Oh my God—Mickey!"

"Hang on, mate, something's just come on the tele…oh my God…"

A fresh wave of panic washed over Tim. "What is it, what's going on?"

"Timmy?" Abby got closer so she could find out what was making Tim look the way he was looking, his face all pinched together like that. "What is it, what's happening over there?" she demanded into the phone.

Tim wrestled it back from her. "Hang on—Mickey? Are you still there?"

"Yeah, I'm here," he sounded like somebody had just kicked him in the gut. "There's been an explosion… a bomb…"

"Mickey!" Abby made another grab for the phone.

Tim blocked her. "I'm putting you on speaker so Abby can hear you," he said for both their benefits as he hit the button for speaker and set the phone down on the table.

Nerys was crying in the background, saying something to her Mam about an explosion by the bay.

"What's going on over there!" Abby demanded.

"There's been an explosion," Mickey told them, his tone almost deadpan. "They're sayin' it was a bomb…some…they think it was terrorists...terrorists targeting the…"

"No!" Abby yelled in the direction of the phone, cutting him off before he could finish his sentence. "No, no, no, no, no, no! Don't say it. Don't you dare say it!" she turned to Gibbs who wrapped his arms around her instinctively, protectively, not knowing, but guessing what was coming next. She was already starting to cry.

The colour had drained from McGee's face.

"Abbs," Mickey's voice over the phone was deathly calm. "It was the bay. Right by the Tourist Office. There—there's nothing left. There's just… there's nothing left, just rubble and fire, a great big hole in the ground…my God. There's no way… if anyone was in there…Jack's the only person who could've survived that and even then...my God."

Abby sobbed into Gibbs shoulder while he held her tight. He didn't understand the significance of the Tourist Office but he could guess that somewhere around there was where this 'Hub' of theirs was supposed to be.

Tim broke out of his stupor and turned to the computer; a moment later he had the newsfeed from Cardiff up on the monitor, although he kept the volume muted. He didn't need to hear what was being said to feel sick to his stomach, the video was enough. Mickey was right. There were no survivors, there couldn't be. He wasn't even sure Jack…

On the other end of the line, Nerys was sobbing… Tim picked up the phone and killed the speaker—Abby, her face still awash with tears, pulled away from Gibbs and yanked it out of his hands before he could say anything.

"You listen to me Mickey Smith," she said into the phone. "You find them. Do you hear me! They're not dead. I know they're not dead. So you just find them. You go there and you dig Jack out of that hole and you find the rest of our team!" She flipped the phone shut without waiting for a reply.

"Abby…" Tim reached out for her, but she pulled away. "Abbs," his tone was soft.

"No. They're not dead, Timothy," she told him in a defiant tone. "I would know if they were dead." Her gaze fell the image on the computer screen and she started crying again. "Oh God. Janet! She was… and Myfanwy!" she bawled, this time collapsing into Tim's arms. "What if she was in there—"

"I'm sure Myfanwy got out," he soothed her. "Janet too. You'll see. You'll be spoiling that silly…bird… again before you know it. Come on," he lifted her chin so he could dry off her cheeks, rubbing away her tears gingerly with his thumbs. "Mickey will find Jack and together they'll find the rest of the team. Abbs, you know they will. In the meantime we need to work on this thing with the kids. We need to figure out what's causing it because the rest of the team has their hands full. Ok?"

Still sniffling, Abby nodded and straightened herself. She accepted the tissue Gibbs offered. "How did anybody even get a bomb into the Hub, anyway?"

"We don't know it was aimed at us," Tim told her. "It could be anything. Abbs—Abby," he said her name more sharply. "You have to focus."

She was clutching his mobile. "First I have to call Sam and make sure he's all right. He should be helping Mickey find Jack."

"Abbs," he took the phone gently from her hands. "Let Mickey handle it."

"We can't just sit here doing nothing!"

"You're right," he said, his tone full of both patience and sympathy. "We can't do nothing." He was unaware of the way Gibbs was watching them, of the look of approval on the older man's face at the way he was handling the situation, especially Abby. "We have to work on this so we have something to report when Jack comes back. You know he's going to want to know what we've been doing while he was gone." Assuming he was coming back… he'd seen Jack come back, but not…not from something like this.

Abby nodded into his hands. "But first I'm going to call Bobby. They might still be in New Jersey," she insisted when he gave her that look, the one that begged her to concentrate on something else.

"All right," he relented anyway, handing her back the phone. "Call Bobby. Then we'll get to work." He cast half a glance at Gibbs, but if he thought anything of the more unusual things he'd heard, he was doing a good job of keeping it to himself.

…………………………………………………….

Crouching in the smoky darkness, sheltered by rubble, Ianto heard the woman speaking into the phone. Target one had been eliminated.

Jack. Jack had been… he was target one. He was dead… but he would come back. He always came back.

Targets two, three and four had escaped.

Ianto prayed that meant Gwen was all right. But she had to be. She had to be on her way home, to Rhys, RJ.

"We don't know where the fifth target is," he heard the woman saying.

Target five…Mickey. He was still with Nerys. How long would it be, the Welshman wondered, before they started searching the homes of their families? How far would they go? Would they look for him at his Mam's? Gavin's? Cade's? What the Hell would Cade do when armed men came storming into his house…? The bloody idiot would probably get himself shot… for once, the thought of something like that happening to Cade didn't make him feel any better.

The woman was speaking again:

"The teams deployed to the United States should be landing in just a few hours. We will round them up."

Ianto closed his eyes. The United States. They knew where the rest of them were.

He hugged Jack's wrist strap tight against his chest, conjuring an image of the older man up in his mind. Those blue eyes he loved so much…that smile… strong arms holding him tight. That scent. Fifty first century pheromones at their best… "I'll be back for you, Jack," he whispered into the darkness. "Just as soon as I can, I'll be back for you, I promise. I won't leave you alone in the dark."

As soon as the coast was clear, he skittered silently into the night.

…………………………………………………………..

"You're not coming with me!" Mickey snapped at Ianto's sister, just barely keeping himself from yelling at her, and that was only because he was sure Remy was still awake. He'd packed a bag with a change of clothes and some first aid supplies from the medicine cabinet. His laptop was already tucked up in its heavily padded travelling case. His gun and boot knife. In his jeep, he had his field kit and a stun gun. A shovel. He supposed that made him as ready as he was going to be.

Except that Nerys was standing there, her eyes red-rimmed, her cheeks tear stained. Only instead of continuing to cry, she was glaring. Angry. Determined. Defiant. Sometimes he wondered if she and Ianto were really related at all, they didn't act at all alike half the time, or at least it didn't seem it at the moment with her seething at him like she was.

"You're not leaving me here in the bloody dark while you go swanning off into God knows what!" she informed him.

"Do you have any idea what's going on out there?" he gestured wildly towards the window, the night beyond.

"No. Do you?"

He swore. "No. Look," he tried to compose himself, to sound rational. "I know you want to find out what happened to them as much as I do, but until we know what's really going on, you need to stay here, where it's safe."

"What make here any safer than anywhere else?" she wanted to know. "I've been around a bit, you know? Those Daleks? I even met the pet pterodactyl. I know what's out there. You're not shutting me out, not when my baby brother—" her words caught in her throat.

"Nerys, please," he wrapped his arms lightly around her shoulders. "Stay with Remy and your mother…"

"No," she pulled away, swiping the back of her hand across her tear stained face and forcing a brave expression. "I'm coming with you and that's final. I swear, if you try to stop me, I'll just follow you."

Mickey took back what he'd just thought about her and Ianto not being alike. They were both as stubborn as bloody mules! "All right, fine. But so help me, if anything happens to you…Ianto will kill me."

"Is that all you're worried about then, my brother killing you?"

"No. No, that's not all I'm worried about," he pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. "Now go change shoes."

"What's wrong with these?" she held up her foot; she was wearing a pair of canvas slip-ons.

He rolled his eyes. "Get those boots we bought to go camping in—and please tell me you broke them in like I said. And bring a jacket," he added as she turned towards her wardrobe.

"It's not cold out."

"Just do it. And hurry up, yeah?"

"All right, all right," she paused just long enough to give him a soft kiss. "I'll just be a second, promise.".

Your brother is going to kill me… he mused sullenly.

While he waited for her to get herself together, Mickey went to find Nerys' mother. She was in the kitchen drinking a cup of orange jasmine tea; she looked exhausted, both physically and mentally. Emotionally.

"You and Remy should get out of the city," he told her. "Go to Cade's or something."

"What makes you suggest a thing like that? It's nearly eleven o'clock at night."

"I just think… I think it'll be safer than here, that's all. You know, with everything going on out there? Better yet if you have someone you can go to who's not related, a friend or something. No big deal, just…just get out of here for a while."

She regarded him a long moment. "Who do you work for?" she wanted to know.

He blinked, caught off guard by the question, the calmness of her tone.

"Mickey, I know you don't work for the Tourist Board."

"Of course I do work for the Tourist Board," he forced a smile. "I'm just worried about you, that's all."

"I figured it out a long time ago," she told him, gazing down into her cup. "Nerys doesn't know I know—and I'd like to keep it that way. I just want to know where Ianto is. I want to know he's all right. That he's…" she choked back a sob, covering her mouth with her hand. She wanted to know that he was still alive.

"The truth is I don't know if he's all right," he said, laying a hand gently on her arm. "But if he's alive, I'll find him, I promise. I'll bring him home."

She looked up at him, "And Jack?"

"Ah, don't worry about him," he grinned. "He's a hard man to get rid of."

…………………………………………………………….

"Don't tell me where you're going," Ianto said when Gwen took the receiver from Rhys. He was standing in a phone booth, keeping a watchful eye on his surroundings. So far it didn't look as if anyone had trailed him from the pier. "Just tell me you're all right."

"Yeah, yeah, we're ok," she surveyed her own surroundings; Rhys was scrambling madly looking for the stupid car keys because he could never put them up in the same place twice. Sam was packing a bag for them—he'd been staying with them for a bit, sleeping on the sofa and helping out with the baby…well, not so much a baby any more, she thought as she glanced over to her son, now nearly nine months old. She thought about all those other mothers out there, the other fathers, the nightmare this must be for them. "Ianto, it's the government," she told him. "I don't know which branch or why or what they want—"

Rhys had finally found the car keys, he held them up triumphantly.

"It doesn't matter," Ianto told her over the phone. "All that matters is that we're not dead yet."

"Yeah. Yeah, right," she agreed trying to sound brave. Trying to be brave. "I have to go, but…how do I find you?"

He paused, glanced around the street; no one seemed to be paying any mind to one scuffed up, bruised man using a public telephone in the middle of the night. "I'll find you after I've found Jack."

"Ianto, how?" How would he find him, how would he find her?

"I don't know. But I will. I promise."

"Take care of yourself, Ianto."

"You too. I'll see you soon."

"Yeah. See you soon."

He hung up and headed back towards the Bay. Mickey had to have seen the news by now, he had to be on his way, they just had to find each other.

……………………………………………………………………………..

After getting Sam and RJ settled safely, she hoped, at her parent's house, Gwen told Rhys that she was going to London. She'd borrowed some cash from her father; he didn't have much on him, but she would take what she could get. Chances were their accounts were frozen by then.

Her parents were worried—scared sick, more like it. She couldn't tell them what was going on, why she looked like she'd been dragged through Hell, why she'd showed up at their place at midnight, or even why she couldn't tell them anything. All she could do was pray her family would be safe while she did her job.

"London?" Rhys asked; they were alone in the kitchen. Gwen's Mam had insisted she take a few things from the cupboard. "Why London? If someone is trying to kill you…"

"London is where they make the decisions," she told him. "So London is where I need to go to figure out what's really going on," she shouldered her bag.

"You don't really think you're going without me, do you?" he asked in an incredulous tone.

"Rhys, I can't ask you to come with me, it's too dangerous."

He flashed one of his big goofy grins, the kind that always made her smile too. "So don't ask."

"God, I love you," she leant up; he met her kiss half way. "Come on then, we'd better get moving—assuming you haven't lost the car keys again," she teased.

He laughed and jingled them in front of her nose. "Right here, thank you very much." Then, in a more serious tone, as they headed towards the front door, "do you really think they'll be safe here?" he asked.

"Mam and Tad'll look after RJ—and Sam—he's—yeah, they'll fine," she hoped she wasn't lying.

"I figured out a while ago he wasn't human, Gwen. I'm ok with that. I mean…at least he's not as batty as that Doctor fellow," he grinned.

She smiled back. She'd figured he knew about Sam, but he hadn't asked, he'd just taken it in stride. He took so much in stride, it really didn't seem fair… he was such a good man, a good husband. Good father. She reached for her midsection. Jack was going to kill her when he got back. Please come back to us...

Her gaze moved towards the blackened sky overhead, all those stars. Alien worlds. They weren't all bad. There were aliens like Sam, like the Doctor. Jack had told her once that he always showed up when the world was in danger. She wondered if he was here now, somewhere, trying to put things right…

Twenty minutes later, well away from her parents' house, Gwen had Rhys pull over.

"What're you doing?" he asked when she got out.

"We can't go any further in that. It has GPS. They can track us."

He glanced back towards the direction they'd come; it had never occurred to him… what if…. "RJ…" he looked around nervously, but there was no sign of pursuit, at least not yet.

"He'll be all right," she assured him in a tone that was filled with more confidence than she really felt. "Sam will look after him."

"What? Sam? I thought your parents—?" she'd said her parents would look after Sam and RJ.

"Sam's a very clever young man. If anything happens, he'll get RJ and my parents out of the house and find somewhere safe for them to sit tight and wait this out. Now come on. Let's go."