Hello :) Again :)
I've split this chapter into two because it was getting quite long so ... Part One.
CHAPTER TEN
Jack was waiting for them outside the Tourist Office, hands on his hips, with a fierce glow in his eyes.
"What the hell happened?"
"Inside, Jack," Owen murmured, ushering a pale Tosh through the door. Rhys followed silently, unable to get the picture of the blood on Gwen's door out of his head. Owen recognised the first symptoms of shock in the Welshman and placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"She'll be okay mate."
They didn't speak again until the entire team was seated around Tosh's workstation, staring in horror at the screen. Martha had provided them all with steaming cups of coffee and it was these that they clutched as the devastation filled the screen.
"Shit," Martha intoned every time that a new photo appeared.
"So you think that she was still there when you ..."
The lights faded suddenly and the hum of the computers stopped. The Hub was deadly silent.
"What the fuck happened?" Rhys started.
"We went into lock down." Tosh's voice could be heard through the gloom, somewhere to his left. "The backup lights should be on by now though."
"So why the fuck aren't they?"
"Aww, does wittle Whysie not like the dark?"
"Stop fucking around Owen!" Rhys ordered, but there was a definite note of panic in his voice.
"Tosh?" Jack's voice too held a tremble that she'd never heard there before.
"I don't know Jack. I'm sorry but I really don't know!"
A horrific realisation struck Martha and she voiced it uncertainly: "If the lights aren't coming on, how do we know that the locks on the vaults aren't open?"
"Tosh!" Owen demanded. She took the signal appropriately and was tapping urgently at the dead keyboard before he'd finished the syllable. His body warmth close behind her was slightly comforting but she'd much prefer it if the "Bloody computers would turn on!" The tail end of her thoughts filled the Hub loudly.
"Okay Toshiko, I think that we all need to calm down now." Jack's comforting voice was behind her now. "Let's face it – with me as the captain what could possibly happen?" Martha and Owen made small sounds of indignation.
"Which is why we're sat in the dark hoping the weevils aren't creeping towards us, eh Harkness."
"Oh don't worry Owen, the weevils we would hear."
"That's encouraging," he muttered darkly.
"Better have your guns ready just in case, boys and girls."
When they were still sat there five minutes later Jack suggested a game of sardines in the dark. Once they'd all proclaimed that he was 'an idiotic prick", the focus had shifted to 'I Never' with a bottle of scotch that Jack had pulled from his greatcoat.
"You get bored quickly, don't you Jack?"
"Oh yes."
In truth he was dreading the moment that the lights returned. The light-hearted guise might have been working in the dark but the moment that the team could see him again – see his face – they'd be no fooling anyone.
"I'm really sorry." Tosh sounded genuinely upset. "I can't understand what …"
The lights flickered on slowly.
"Take it all back. That was all me!"
They breathed a sigh of relief as the top level vaults proved full and locked. The same proved true for the next levels … and the next. But then came the inevitable moment when the sigh didn't – wouldn't come.
"Alex," breathed Martha.
"Seal the entrances, Tosh. Where is he?"
Tosh frantically searched the CCTV cameras, working her way up through the levels. "He couldn't have gone far," she consoled as she looked, "It was pitch black down there and all the passages and weevils … he'd have to be one hell of a kid."
"But he's not a kid Toshiko; he's a spy, which was why he was in our basement in …"
"He's there Jack." Tosh's voice dropped to a whisper. She pointed at the screen and the team craned their necks to see - in the entrance to the autopsy bay crouched Alex.
"Okay Tosh, start running that trace on Gwen please. Rhys with me, Owen and Martha stay back." The team nodded their affirmative.
He started to walk towards the autopsy bay. They turned to stare at him in disbelief until he started talking. "Rhys I left that paperwork on the Teletubbies down in the bay. Did you see it earlier?"
"Urm … oh, no. I'll just go and look for it, shall I?"
"Cheers."
Rhys turned his back on the stairs and gave Alex a chance to come clean. That was the first mistake. Alex drove his heel into the small of his back, causing Rhys to drop to the floor with cries of agony. Jack leapt forward and grabbed the boy, lifting him bodily from the floor and away from Rhys.
"That wasn't very smart," Jack muttered as Martha rushed forwards to Rhys.
"Keeping me locked in your basement wasn't very smart either but it didn't stop you," Alex stopped struggling for long enough to say. Jack dumped him in a chair and stood over him to prevent any escape routes.
"If you try to escape – and I really don't want to do this but I will – I will stun you and you will find yourself back in the cells. Deal?"
He didn't reply immediately but simply watched Jack through narrowed eyes.
"Let me introduce you to my team." He waved at Tosh and a watery eyed Rhys standing with the two medics. "Captain Jack Harkness at your service. The guy that you just kicked was Rhys Williams, Dr Martha Jones, Owen Harper, and Toshiko Sato."
"That's doctor to you!" Owen retorted sharply.
Alex stared openly at the last three people, analysing their faces, comparing them to the grainy images of CCTV footage that he'd been shown. It was definitely, without a shadow of a doubt them and he realised, with sinking revelation, that if they could kill thousands of people and still be stood here, guilt free, they'd have no qualms about killing him or Gwen too.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because we think that you have the completely wrong end of the stick here."
"Somehow I don't think so. You killed," he turned to Owen and Martha now, "thousands of innocent people and you're still stood here complaining that he didn't call you 'doctor'! You're sick in the head, the whole lot of you!"
Jack took a step back so that Alex was able to get a glimpse of Tosh's stricken face. "You're wrong Alex. My team didn't kill thousands of people. They saved millions of people. That's why they're stood here today."
"We are talking about the same event here aren't we?"
"Russia."
"Yeah, so how on this earth did you get to that conclusion?"
"There are a lot of things on this earth that you don't understand Alex."
"Try me then."
There was a short pause during which Martha nodded marginally.
"Aliens."
The silence was longer this time.
"Aliens?" Alex repeated incredulously.
Jack inclined his head once, smiling at some unknown joke. "There's a rift in space and time. Aliens or time refugees and artefacts fall through."
"That's your explanation?"
"Yes."
"It's crap." Despite his smart talk and cool interior Alex was feeling tenser that he ever had on an op before. If they were telling the truth – and the logical part of his brain was wholeheartedly rejecting the idea – then he had no idea what he was doing. His own uncertainty riled him more than the fact that he'd just be told that aliens existed. That he could still pass off as a fanciful story; his churning insides were another matter altogether.
Owen and Martha exchanged an exasperated look.
"Have a look at this Alex." The Japanese accent in the words marked out who was speaking immediately. Her voice was softly spoken and she smiled at him as Jack escorted him to her computers. The photos on her sideboard shouted to the rooftops that she was the most unlikely terrorist that Alex had yet met.
Jack kept one hand grasped tightly on his left shoulder as he walked stiffly across the metal grating to the workstation. When he realised that he wasn't planning on running anywhere, the grip loosened slightly. It was evident as soon as he moved one finger and Alex was secretly pleased that they were just about beginning to relax around him.
"CCTV records and rift monitoring for that day. Official reports, ours, the Russian police, RIS are all here so you can compare them. We're not murderers." There was such gentle conviction in her voice that he believed her; nearly.
Alex was awarded all of fifteen seconds skimming over the Torchwood report of the massacre when a second window blocked his view of the inhuman script.
Tosh swore silently as she watched it fly from the minimized box that she'd made it to the inescapable full screen that it was now. More of the uniform writing filtered through a bar at the bottom, captioning several graphs and screenshots. Gwen stared unblinkingly at them from her Torchwood employee photograph, jolting Alex's stomach.
He'd nearly forgotten what they'd done.
"Where's Gwen?"
"We don't know."
"Well you've got a lot of information there."
"We're trying to find her." Jack was stood behind him, reading the blue screen over his shoulder. Every syllable that he spoke was clipped.
"What do you mean 'trying to find her'?"
"She was kidnapped." His gaze was drawn inexplicably to another photo on screen, the date marking it as having been taken earlier that evening. The havoc that had been thrusted upon the cosy little flat was evident everywhere, right down to the blood stain on the door.
"What have you done to her?" Jack walked tiresomely away from the computer, kneading his head with his hands. "What she ever done to you to deserve this?"
"She's done a lot of things."
"So you do this," he gesticulated furiously at the screen, "to her!"
"You've got the wrong end of the stick again Alex," Jack said tiresomely, still with his back to him.
"Stop treating me like a kid!" he yelled, "Are you going to keep me locked up with her down in your basement again? Or maybe you're going to kill me like you did to all those innocent people?"
Jack spun around, his greatcoat knocking a mug off the table next to him.
"Yes!" He was shouting too. "That's exactly what we're going to do!"
That was the second mistake.
Fighting down the blind panic and fury that was erupting inside him, Alex grabbed a gun – a 9mm Browning High Power pistol – from Toshiko's desk and held it against her head.
"You really shouldn't leave guns lying around. A kid can never resist playing with new toys!"
It was in slow-motion that he watched the two people in front of him – Martha and Owen – pull their guns on him. It would have been a majestic move to withhold if it wasn't for the ugly sticks of metal that it produced. He knew that the move would have been mirrored by Jack and Rhys behind him.
He waited for the inevitable onslaught of bullets ripping into his flesh … but it didn't come. It was only now that he was faced with the prospect of four extremely angry adults with guns that he realised that his wise move had probably only made the situation worse. The only way out was play it through to the end reasoned his brain.
He shifted his body so that Toshiko was between him and the muzzles of the guns.
"Let me go and leave Gwen alone." His voice sounded so pathetic all of a sudden. The adrenaline was coursing through his body but he knew that he'd never pull the trigger; he couldn't do it to Mrs Jones and he wouldn't be able to do it here.
"You're in no position to make demands!" Jack snarled.
"Actually I am."
He pressed the metal harder into the woman's hair.
"You won't do it Alex." Martha spoke to reassure, although judging by the shaking and furious expression on Owen's face, it wasn't solely for him.
As he clicked off the safety catch in reply, he focussed on the man. If he was a weak link, he would exploit it. But it could go one of two ways – his escape or his death.
He glanced back to the woman whose head he was currently holding a gun too. He wasn't even sure that it was loaded but judging by the whimper that escaped her mouth as he turned, he was betting that he was training a ready, loaded gun on her.
Toshiko forced herself to keep still and look at the photo on her desk that she'd shoved into Owen's hands only an hour ago. Her breathing quickened as she felt the coolness of the gun against her skull.
Above her head, Alex and Owen's eyes locked.
Alex was momentarily unnerved by the sheer hatred and raw terror that was emanating from him. His hand shook and scrapped against the woman's head.
Several things happened in close succession.
A loud screech, courtesy of Myfawny, tore through the tense air as Owen, already bouncing on the balls of his feet, lunged forward.
Alex jumped a foot into the air as the noise ripped through his ears. He released Tosh, spinning around wildly for the source of the interrupting commotion. He didn't see Owen until the urgent yells of Martha and Rhys whipped his head around again and he caught a glimpse of him before he was thrown backwards into the desk. The hard surface of the desk came rushing up to meet him and his head smashed against the corner.
He went dizzy; hardly aware that his arm was pulled roughly down, then brutally twisted behind his body. Somehow he still had the gun in his hand so when Alex's finger tightened reflexively, a round of bullets tore into the space behind him.
Rhys screamed once as the bullets hit, first him then Jack, tearing into flesh, puncturing his skin in numerous places.
He crumpled to the floor like a puppet and Gwen announced her presence with a piercing scream of agony that escaped her mouth unwillingly as she saw Rhys and Jack collapse. She'd been forced to watch the scene from high above in Jack's office, kept still and silent by Bilis who had taken them here.
"RHYS!"
Her strength had suddenly trebled as the gunshots sounded and she bit down hard onto Bilis' withered hand. He cursed and momentarily released her. Gwen took immediate advantage and sprinted for the door. She made it to the stairs before he appeared in front of her again.
"RHYS! NO!"
Tosh, Owen and Martha stared upwards in shocked disbelief. Alex watched Gwen move and tried to get up too, only to be forced down again by Owen. His head slumped forwards as he finally succumbed to unconsciousness, not before he registered the fact that Gwen had been grabbed by some random person and had disappeared in front of his eyes.
The shocked silence descended onto the Hub as quickly as it had been interrupted.
It lasted for about three seconds before Owen and Martha moved simultaneously towards their fallen colleagues' sides.
There was blood everywhere; the mens' mingled together as it filtered through the metal grating. Even as they ran towards them, they knew that there no chance. There was no chance that Rhys or Jack was still alive, had been alive for long after the bullets hit them.
And they weren't.
Rhys lay broken; his left leg was twisted at a strange angle where he'd been thrown backwards as the metal casts hit him. Jack lay behind him, breathing shallowly as he clawed his way back into life.
Tosh silently crept up behind Owen and he turned reflexively.
"He's …"
"He's dead Tosh."
Martha let out a quiet sob when Owen said the words and even Owen paled horribly. Only Tosh said nothing, pushing past the doctors and kneeling besides Rhys, carefully avoiding the large pool of blood.
"Tosh, don't …"
She reached down to Rhys' face and gently touched his cheek. It never got easier; losing her friends never made her more detached or more mature, like her mother told her once at her father's funeral when she was nine years old. It just hurt.
Her eyes met with Rhys', staring upwards at her face. He was accusing her: why didn't she show some courage and grab the gun from Alex as he'd held her hostage? Why had she even left her gun on her desk? She blinked furiously and the illusion passed; when she looked down again they were empty and staring. She willed her slim fingers to close his eyes and it was only once she'd done so that she stood up.
Her boots squelched disgustingly. Looking down she discovered that despite her best efforts her shoes were covered in blood and gore and her hands had inadvertently landed in one of the puddles as she'd steadied herself.
There was blood on her hands.
A loud gasp penetrated the air as Jack regained full consciousness.
"Now, that one hurt," he muttered to himself, brushing himself off. "Oh my god, look at my shirt! It was the best of the bunch. Pure 100% cotton that was and …"
"Jack," whispered Tosh, breaking his rant.
Jack's eyes flew from Tosh's numb face, to the crumpled leap that was Alex, to the man on the floor with him. He closed his eyes but could see, imprinted onto his eyelids, the burning picture of Rhys Williams lying next to him.
The remaining three members of his team turned away, ashamed to be intruding.
He blinked away the sharp tears that were forming and forced down the taste of something bitter in his throat. They'd never been best friends but they'd been partners in crime in pulling pranks on Owen or making up inappropriate jokes to tell to Tosh and Martha just to see them squirm.
"Does it not occur to you to move if there's a round of bullets heading towards you?" he muttered distractedly, despite knowing that what he was saying was complete inane rubbish.
He rose silently to his feet. There was Owen, tenderly wiping Tosh's hands clean of the blood, Tosh looking too pale, too distant and Martha typing steadily at a computer, not pausing as the tears splashed onto the keyboard every time she blinked.
"Owen, help me," Jack called, nodding back towards the body.
Together, they carried Rhys down the stairs to the autopsy bay. Jack winced numerous times as he felt his stomach contract, automatically mending the damage that had been caused.
They laid him down carefully on the table. His face was seemed so pale underneath the red paint that covered it.
He looked up at his girls as he arranged his hands by his side. Tosh was now sat at the computer and Martha was behind her. They were whispering furiously and Martha laid a comforting hand on Toshiko's shoulder. Sensing his gaze, they looked over but dropped their eyes almost immediately.
"Jack." It was Owen's turn to catch his attention and lay a comforting hand on his shoulder. "While you were … out, we saw Gwen." Owen shifted uncomfortably, cursing the fact that Jack had to know about every little detail. "Please, don't say anything, just listen. She started screaming when she saw you both get shot and, I dunno, broke free of Bilis and tried to run down the stairs and she was shouting and then Bilis caught her up and then they disappeared. I think she'd watched it all. I think Bilis made her."
He was silent. He saw Owen and Martha exchange a worried glance and was aware of Tosh's quiet concern but he didn't really register it.
Bilis. Fucking. Manger.
He growled from deep within his throat and Owen withdrew his hand instinctively.
"Bilis fucking Manger?"
"Yeah," confirmed Owen tentatively.
"Right, have you run a scan for transportation activity, Tosh?"
"Pardon?" She seemed genuinely unable to answer the question so then it was his turn to be shocked. But then, he reflected later, it was probably more to do with his abrupt change of demeanour than Toshiko losing brain cells.
"It's running now," Martha supplied.
"We need to find Gwen." He looked once more at the still warm corpse of Rhys Williams before running up the stairs. "We can mourn later but right now, if we don't find her, we could be mourning one more person."
"Jack, if Bills kidnapped her at the flat and we couldn't trace anything then I really do doubt that we're going to have something … oh." Tosh stopped and looked at the screen in mild surprise.
Jack rushed to her side. "Owen, I want you to get the SUV ready. Martha, Alex is coming with us."
"But …"
"I know what he did but he didn't mean to and I didn't mean what I said either. He's coming with us so try to patch him up and wake him up. Please."
The pair separated so Jack finally got a clear view of the screen.
"They're on the outskirts of Cardiff. A," she peered closer at the miniscule map in the corner of the screen, "Coates Woods."
"Can you take this with you?"
"Yeah, just give me two seconds." She fiddled with a few buttons, surreptitiously obscuring Jack's eye line with her body. "It's on my laptop."
"Toshiko Sato, how did you do that so quickly?" Jack probed as they hurried to the lift.
They stepped on together and Tosh linked her arm through Jack's as they jolted upwards; heights had never been her forte.
"We work in an alien catching secret base!" Tosh replied in a tone that suggested that he shouldn't really ask questions.
They exchanged a small smile and for a moment, the dead body beneath them and the reason for the conversation was forgotten. But then Owen hooted impatiently the moment that he saw them step off the slab and it all came rushing back.
"What...?"
He had parked the SUV in the middle of the Plass and already an angry official looking man was stomping his way towards them.
"Get in before we get given another fine and a very long lecture by Mr Grumpy over there," he called irritably.
Jack opened the door and unceremoniously threw Owen out of the driver's seat. He glanced briefly at Martha, sat in the front passenger seat. She had a hand covering her eyes and looked faintly queasy.
"I think the poor tourists might have more of a chance if I'm driving."
Martha snorted derisively.
Grumbling under his breath, Owen ran towards the back door and scrambled in after Tosh, nearly sitting on her lap as he inadvertently kicked the door shut with his foot. She moved away, nearly squashing Alex against the other door. He groaned as he came round and his head collided with a hard object once more.
A few club-goers paused in quiet amusement as the old man drew closer to the black SUV.
"Jack!"
He slammed his foot onto the accelerator and performed a great sweeping of the Plass. The few late night pedestrians scattered like pigeons as they registered the monstrous car heading straight for them.
"BLOODY TORCHWOOD!" bellowed the man as they passed him again.
"Real smooth Owen!" muttered Toshiko sarcastically once she'd regained her balance and dignity.
Jack's driving at the best of times wasn't the perfect chauffeur driven ride that the girls (and on occasion, Owen) wished it were. They screeched down the streets of Cardiff, not bothering with petty things like pedestrian crossings or traffic lights.
He sped down a residential street at sixty miles per hour. "Jack! Where are you going? It's that way!"
"I know a shortcut. Trust me."
"But this is an estate Jack Harkness! There are children around!" Martha protested as they mounted the pavement on two wheels.
"For god's sake," grumbled Owen, "I have said it before and I will say it again." He leant forward so he was speaking directly – and slowly, like to a child – to Martha. "IF there are kids around at midnight, they've got it coming!"
Martha blushed and looked at the clock. "Not midnight yet."
Alex groaned again as he regained full consciousness. He was moving, at speed and - when he craned his neck around – realised exactly who he was with.
He'd held a gun to the woman's head who was sitting next to him but she was looking straight at him, completely calm. In actual fact, she was staring blankly out of the window, unaware of Alex.
"Where are we going?"
Toshiko's head jerked around.
"I really think that you, my friend, would serve well to shut your mouth?" Jack sounded murderous.
"Answer my question."
He didn't, refusing to say anymore. The car fell silent until Alex persevered.
"Why don't you have me tied up in your basement?"
Silence.
"Why don't you have me tied up in your car?"
Silence still from the four adults.
"I shot you."
That got a reaction.
Jack turned around slowly in his seat and fixed his eyes directly on Alex. "You killed me. You killed my friend." Alex squirmed under his glare and at once realised that there were four adults in the car, instead of the expected five. He was grateful when Jack dropped his gaze to return to watching the road.
Shit.
Jack's voice continued and he let it wash over him. He had killed a man; in cold blood, he had shot and murdered a defenceless man.
"If I had my way, you would be locked up in our basements because you murdered us both. But I came back so I guess you're lucky. If you kill someone why not kill someone who comes back to life. But you didn't know that then. You killed me and Rhys and it doesn't matter if you're a kid or not."
"Jack…" warned Owen, somewhere in the car. It sounded distant as Jack's voice bored into him, hitting exactly on the sore points. The captain sent Owen a look and then glared at Alex again. His knuckles were white on the wheel.
"The only reason that you're with us now is because we are going to save Gwen and you might be useful. I don't know whether you realise or not now but we save people. We save the human race from aliens and time and themselves sometimes. You killed someone who helps to protect the very country that you work for. Ironic, no?"
"JACK!" screamed Martha suddenly. She lunged for the wheel.
The car swerved sharply as Jack fought to regain control of the car as the headlights of the lorry that they'd been inches from hitting blared past them to the right.
"Mmmbitch," muttered Martha angrily as she slumped in her seat.
Toshiko suddenly stifled a sob. She had one hand pressed over her mouth and her entire body was shaking with the effort of not crying.
"Tosh…" Owen muttered reassuringly.
The tears split from her wide eyes and Owen pulled her gently into a protective embrace. Martha and Jack kept their eyes resolutely on the road ahead but Alex watched silently out of the corner of his eye.
"It wasn't your fault Tosh. There was nothing you could have done."
Owen shot a filthy glare at Alex as he tried to console Toshiko and Alex realised with a jolt what she was so upset about.
He struggled to find the right words and the courage to speak them but eventually he managed to choke out a sentence. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to … I was just trying to help … All I want is to be a normal kid."
To his great surprise, Toshiko swallowed down the last of her tears thickly and placed an arm around Alex's shoulder.
The rest of the journey was spent in silence, aside from the constant screeching of tyres and squealing of brakes as they went round corners on two wheels.
.....
"Well this is …"
"Creepy."
"I was thinking more along the lines of nice," Jack deadpanned.
Owen had it right though. The wood, which all of them had passed many times, looked pretty and idyllic in the light but now it looked … creepy. It seemed to stretch out into the darkness for … ever, if Alex could believe that there was such a thing as never-ending. But he couldn't – everything good and everything bad had to end at some point, be it through death or sheer good fortune – so logic told him it was only miles.
"Okay Team. We're going to split up. Owen and Martha go east. I'll go west. Tosh … stay in the SUV with Alex … please." Both Toshiko and Alex opened their mouths to protest.
"I can help with …"
"Why do you insist on …"
"Shut it. There is no way that he is coming with us. If we get him killed, MI6 will want our heads as well as 5. And out of us all, I think that you," he addressed Tosh, "are least likely to kill him ourselves out of the lot of us."
Toshiko sighed heavily, but retrieved her rift monitor from the back seat without another word. "There's no rift energy or anything remotely out of the ordinary but this is definitely where Bilis took her."
When she looked up again, Jack and Alex were having a staring competition over her head. If looks could kill, Alex would have killed Jack a few more times, and Alex would be lying spread-eagled on the floor too.
"It's the best shot we've got at finding her," Martha said.
"I'll see you later," Martha and Owen called as they disappeared into the trees, armed with their guns and a torch.
"Look after yourself," muttered Jack in Toshiko's ear as he too passed.
Alex and Toshiko were left standing alone by the side of the empty road and the dark wood. The trees seemed to creep in on them and the pair turned simultaneously to clamber back into the SUV. As soon as Alex had jumped into the back, Toshiko locked the doors and spun the car around so that the headlights were illuminating the trees closest to them.
They sat in silence for a minute, anxious for some contact from the others.
"Why can't we contact them?" Alex wondered.
"Because if they find something they'll radio in. If we just randomly contact them for a little chit-chat they could have been, say, stalking Bilis and us talking to them could screw it up. But if we find energy trace which could help, then we radio them. Okay?"
"Crystal."
The silence stretched once again. The wind blew an eerie tune against the side of the vehicle but the road and the trees remained silent.
"Jack doesn't mean it, you know." Toshiko turned to face Alex openly, her wide brown eyes reflecting the blue light of the interior. "He's angry now but with himself more than anyone. You'd think that he'd have retired really because he blames himself for the deaths of everyone that he recruits. When Ianto died, just after Gwen left, that was the worst I've ever seen Jack but this … I don't know Alex, I think it's going to destroy him." Tosh swallowed thickly. "He's watched so many people die; one day he might hold mine or Owen's or Martha's body as we bleed to death and then he'll have to shut us away in the mortuary because that's regulation. And he'll box away all our stuff and put it into a garage where it'll stay until it rots away."
There was a long hush, which Alex broke by tentatively asking, "What's wrong with him?"
Toshiko laughed hollowly. "You're a clever … young man Alex," she deadpanned, remembering his aversion to being called a child. "He can't die. That might seem like such a gift to start but then you realise that everything around you is going to die. And you won't."
"How?" Alex breathed.
"I don't know."
"And there really are … aliens?"
"Really. There's so many worlds out there but sometimes I think that all we get is the rubbish; the weevils, the Bilis', the – as an old colleague of mine said before she shot herself – the shit."
"Bilis isn't human?"
Toshiko didn't say anything for a few moments. "What do you think?" she replied finally.
Alex had long fallen asleep and Toshiko was fighting to keep her tiredness at bay. She yawned profusely and was glad to hear Owen's voice echoing in her ear, even though he did sound so peeved.
"Two bloody hours we have been out here Tosh and I'm freezing my arse off. There's nothing. No trails or traces. There's shit all. At least you get to sit in the warm cosy van with your new friend. Next time I'm going to be nice to the murderer."
"He's not a murderer Owen. If he was he would have pulled the trigger on me too. He's just a kid, no matter how much he hates being called one."
"Yeah well …"
Alex stirred in the back, moaning quietly as he stretched out his aching neck. "What is that noise?" he muttered, with his face pressed into the seat.
"What?" Toshiko questioned at his muffled tone.
"Sshhh." Alex muttered.
They kept quiet, listening intently. The scratching circled the SUV slowly, louder and louder until it was a crescendo of noise positioned by the front left wheel.
"It's just an animal," Toshiko said, although her head to screaming that nice, peaceful animals didn't do that.
"Owen?" Alex took the initiative and radioed back to Owen. "There's something at the SUV."
"Tosh? You okay?" Alex felt a sharp pang at the amount of concern in his voice and wished that someone, some family, would do that for him.
The noise stopped suddenly and Alex and Toshiko exchanged apprehensive glances.
"What …"
Toshiko screamed as, seemly from out of nowhere, a heavy object was thrown bodily onto the bonnet of the SUV. A tiny bloodstain smeared the windscreen and the object came to a halt lying with its front pressed against the window.
Gwen seemed to be in shock as she stared, with empty eyes, into the SUV. Alex stifled a yell as Bilis appeared behind her. He looked straight into the car too, meeting Toshiko's terrified eyes. He grabbed Gwen at the precise same moment as Toshiko threw open the door. By the time her foot touched the ground, she had gone.
Screams.
The woods were echoing with them. They bounced off trees and burnt the ears of the shaken Toshiko and Alex. There was something inhuman about it and Toshiko returned to the SUV and leapt into the back, pressing buttons on the screens dotted about before Alex could realise what had happened.
Torchwood was proving to be something of a whirlwind job.
"TOSHIKO!" Jack made them all jump. "WHERE IS SHE?"
"TOSH? TOSH, BABE? ARE YOU OKAY?"
"IS THAT GWEN? TOSH, IS THAT GWEN?"
Only Alex stood quiet as the three Torchwood members bellowed into Toshiko's ear.
"QUIET!" She bawled, just to shut everyone up. "She was here, at the SUV but Bilis took her again."
"So where is she now?" Jack demanded.
"There is NO energy, Jack. I can't tell you what the machines AREN'T picking up! I don't know."
Jack swore. "I'll use my ears then." They could hear him running as the unearthly shrieks continued. Owen and Martha continued more slowly, probing each bush, every tree with their guns to make sure that they didn't miss anything important.
"She's up ahead!" Jack panted after about thirty seconds as he continued sprinting towards the source of the noise. "Owen, Martha!" He could hear them haring through the hedgerow too now, beating at protruding branches with their hands or their heads, whichever hit them first.
"This isn't right." Toshiko muttered as she rechecked the data she was receiving. "There's no energy pattern. Nothing; it's like … it's being dampened. We knew Bilis had taken her here because he let us but now … IT'S A TRAP!" The entire team jumped as Toshiko bellowed desperately to Jack. "JACK! IF YOU GO IN THERE WE LOSE YOU! DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT HARKNESS. HE'S BLOCKING THE ENERGY! JACK!"
"We either lose me or Gwen, Toshiko."
"JACK!" Owen yelled.
Four miles deep in the wood, Jack stepped forward in a small clearing. There was no light but as his eyes adjusted to the darkness he could just make out a figure bent over something on the ground that was wriggling and squirming desperately.
Bilis stood up slowly and turned to face Jack, waving a long thin samurai sword, which was glistening dark and dripping.
The screams stopped; they turned into shallow whimpers.
Toshiko and Alex, Owen and Martha looked at their partner.
"Jack?" Martha persisted in her earpiece, despite knowing that it was a futile attempt. "Jack?" She tapped her earpiece frantically but only succeeded in creating a painful piece of static for her team mates to suffer from. Owen gently reached up and stilled her hand.
The silence was worse than the screams.
"Glad you could finally make it … Captain," Bilis sneered.
Jack didn't remove his eyes from the moaning Gwen. "I would say it's good to see you …"
Bilis laughed humourlessly and, with unprecedented speed, dropped the sword. It fell to the muddy floor with a thud and Gwen's head snapped up. Her wide eyes took in the old fashioned revolver Bilis was holding before travelling to its target.
Their eyes met.
"JACK!" Gwen screamed.
Bilis pulled the trigger.
Well my friends, there is now only (for certain this time) two chapters left now. And reviews make me write those two chapters quicker ;P
Thank you for the reviews for the previous chapter.
It was the strangest thing yesterday because I borrowed 'The Twilight Streets' from the library. In it, Bilis comes back for revenge and he says at one point 'And you, Gwen Elisabeth Cooper, you are the bait.' Deja vu, or what? And one last thing, this is my first post since Children of Earth (I think) and I can not believe they killed Ianto. Toshiko was my favourite, then Owen, then Ianto, then Myfanwy ('cos dinosaurs are cool) and THEY'RE ALL DEAD! Grrr :( So I'm thinking of writing a team fic, with Everyone in :) Therapy.
R&R s'il vous plait.
