Jack gasped out of the darkness with his usual, horrifying feeling of having the life gouged out of him despite the fact that life was now dispersing eagerly through all of his buzzing synapses. He coughed to clear his throat and sat up, running a hand across his forehead to make sure that the bullet wound had healed properly. He checked the back of his head too, as the exit wound was always a lot messier- and he knew that from experience. Everything had healed as usual; not like he was expecting any different.
He had been laid out on the sofa beneath the tiled Torchwood logo- Ianto and Gwen must have carried him there between the two of them. He could see Ianto cleaning up the mess from his death, features carefully blank, as Gwen rushed over. Jack jumped in before she had the chance to open her mouth.
'Where is he? Where's he gone?'
Gwen came to a sudden stop in front of him.
'He just disappeared after he shot you. I was taking a few shots at him myself, but they just seemed to be going through him,' she answered. She didn't seem too fazed by it all, just another day at Torchwood. 'So, all in all, I'd say, not human. Who was he, Jack?'
Jack ignored her, partially out of his own need to dodge the question, looking around his surroundings with a slight frown.
'How long was I out?'
'About five minutes,' Ianto answered, walking over to them with a bucket in one hand, deep crimson shirt sleeves rolled up. 'I would've timed it but…' he gestured with the bucket.
'But that's-,'
'Longer than, uh, usual, I know.'
'Longer than usual for you anyway,' Gwen added, sinking into the sofa besides Jack, who took this as his cue to stand up, as if Gwen had created some sort of spring board motion. Gwen looked up at him.
'Who was he?' She asked again.
'Not who I thought he was. Not what I thought he was.'
He started to pace a few lengths up and down, knowing Gwen wouldn't be satisfied with his vague answer. Ianto placed a hand on Jack's shoulder to still him, before pulling him into a quick hug as he had taken to doing whenever Jack died and Jack breathed in his warmth and that lingering scent of coffee that seemed to have been pressed into the young man's suits when he ironed them. Nobody had thought too offer Jack comfort upon coming gasping back to life before. It was… nice.
Ianto clapped him on the back (something he only did when Gwen was around, and Jack resisted the urge to smirk at Ianto's idiosyncrasies) and relinquished his grip. He cleared his throat.
'Something wasn't quite right about your, uh, head wound,' he said.
'Aside from the fact that it miraculously healed?'
'I'm thinking more about the fact that the miraculous healing took longer than your previous injuries,' Ianto stepped delicately around the fact that Jack had died, once again. 'The entry point of the bullet, it was… blurry.'
'Blurry?'
'Yep.'
'Like someone had coloured over the lines in a colouring book,' Gwen added, arms folded across her chest as she leant back into the sofa. 'That guy was the same too, if you looked closely. It was hard to tell unless you paid attention to his… edges, but they weren't…'
'Distinct,' Ianto finished. 'Like he wasn't fully solid.'
'Yeah,' Gwen agreed quickly, looking to Jack. 'Other than that though, he looked real, like you could reach out and touch him.'
'That bullet felt real and solid enough,' Jack told them. 'Solid enough to do its job. Speaking of which, where is it? The bullet? If we can find it we can study this…' he couldn't think of a better term, so used Ianto's with a slight quirk of the eyebrows, 'blurriness, see what that's all about.'
'It's gone,' Gwen said and Ianto nodded. 'We've checked.'
'It shattered the mirrored panel on the water tower but, I think, as soon as its trajectory was brought to a halt it disappeared.'
'Like the guy did.'
'Probably about the same time, in fact.'
'O-kay,' Jack drawled, straightening up. 'Something is definitely wrong and if I didn't know better, I'd guess that someone is intentionally screwing with us here.'
Ianto and Gwen shared a glance.
'You knew him, didn't you, Jack?' Gwen started softly, watching her boss closely. 'That look on your face… Like you'd seen a ghost.'
'Because I did.'
'What?'
'Alex Hopkins, leader of Torchwood Cardiff, died 12:02 am, January first, 2000,' Jack reeled off the details flatly, as if he read them off a sheet of paper and had not bore witness to the event itself. 'Suicide- but not before he shot and killed his entire team. Mercy killings, he called them. I was the last person he ever spoke to before he brought the gun to his own head.'
'But… why?'
Jack didn't answer for a long moment; he was gazing over at a far corner of the Hub, about where the ghost of Alex had appeared. Then he shrugged.
'He couldn't cope, he didn't think he was ready for whatever was coming.'
'Is something coming?'
Again, Jack shrugged. 'Who knows?'
Jack met with Gwen's dissatisfied green gaze and knew immediately what she was thinking to his apparent indifferent lack of answers- You know more than you're letting on. Again.
'And now Alex is back,' Ianto stated, and Jack looked away from Gwen, glad to be free of her line of questioning. 'At least, he was back, and he didn't come through the Rift either.'
'You're right,' Gwen agreed, having decided to let Jack's avoidance slide. For now. 'No alarms or new Rift readings. So why did his… his ghost come back? I mean, we don't actually believe in ghosts, do we?'
'Residual hauntings and paranormal activity maybe, but you can usually find something scientific or alien at the root of these things,' Jack replied. 'Some aliens even take on a gaseous form and humans just to jump to the conclusion that they're ghosts. Most species have some sort of myths relating to hauntings, but the idea of spirits and ghosts is very human.'
'If we're going on the assumption that someone or something is trying to freak us out, and they're not using the Rift, then the next logical conclusion would be that there is some sort of tech or something in the Hub that's… doing whatever it is the whole ghost thing is,' Ianto said, from where he stood off to the side, hands in his trouser pockets.
'True,' Jack nodded. He tested the smooth skin on his forehead again. It felt the same as usual, but the bullet… If he had had more time to register the bullet before it had ripped its way through his brain, he might've noticed something different from the previous times he had been shot point-blank in the head. And wasn't that an experience to be comparing to previous? 'Ianto, run a scan for signs of active technology anywhere within the vicinity of the Hub and if you don't find anything, expand the radius of the search about a mile or so.'
'Right.'
Ianto immediately turned in the direction of his work station, ready to call up the codes to run the search using the mainframe. However, upon stepping towards his office chair, Ianto found that he was going to be unable to take his seat and access the computer.
Because Tosh was already sat there doing just that.
…*…
A/N: Shorter chapter than my usual, but I don't think I'm going to have too much time for writing them as long as they were in Assurances. This does mean that there will be more chapters and more frequent (hopefully) updates though! Plus, it seemed awkward when I tried to directly continue this chapter from where I have decided to leave it. Thanks to those who have reviewed, alerted and favourited!
