Chapter Twenty-Two
Late that morning, the Hub was almost unnaturally quiet. Usually if the staff wasn't out in the field, there was some sort of activity: conversations, phone calls, something. Uncomfortably pregnant, Gwen had decided to stay home for a change since Rhys was back from his road trip. Meanwhile, Toshiko was working on her computer, Owen was cleaning up the medbay after a particularly messy autopsy, Rose was trying to make some sense out of the mess on her desk, and the Doctor was off in the storage cupboards somewhere in the basement, scavenging for useful bits of alien tech for the TARDIS console. The only one who was unaccounted for was Ianto Jones, but that didn't last for long.
"I've got one," he called as he entered the Hub.
"You're late." Owen's voice echoed up from the medbay.
"Shut it, Owen," Ianto replied automatically.
"You've actually got one? Bring it here," Toshiko called from her workstation on the balcony.
Ianto climbed the short flight of stairs, sat down on a stool next to her and handed her a small plastic card.
"I need that back," he told her. "Today. And in one piece."
Tosh held it up to the light. She frowned as she examined it.
"Get Rose," she ordered.
Ianto rolled his eyes but got up to get her. He hated being bossed around, but as low man on the totem pole, he seemed to be on the receiving end of orders from everyone at Torchwood Three. Toshiko rarely told him what to do, however, so he usually didn't mind helping her out.
"What is it, Tosh?" Rose asked, descending the stairs from her office and joining her at her computer.
The other woman handed her the card. "That's one of the new identification cards the government is issuing to everyone after their DNA testing. It shouldn't be possible, but somehow they are managing to produce them while you wait." She sounded incredulous.
Rose stared at it, turning it over and over in her hands. "Where'd you get this?"
"It's my sister's," Ianto answered from behind her. "She went in early this morning. I persuaded her to lend it to me for a few hours."
"Tosh, can you replicate this?" she asked, handing it back.
Toshiko shook her head. "No. I can make all sorts of false IDs, but this is something new. I can't do this one. In fact, I doubt Torchwood Four could do it either."
"Ianto, get the Doctor. He's down rummaging through the storage area," Rose ordered. Ianto sighed audibly as he turned towards the stairs. Her mouth twisted into a small grin. "Please?"
"Thank you, Rose," he replied, turning back to her and inclining his head. "I would be delighted to." As he headed down the stairs, the women chuckled as they heard him mutter, "About time someone had some manners around here."
When the Doctor joined them a few minutes later, Rose immediately handed him the registration card. "Is there any way you can duplicate this?"
He pulled his glasses out of his pocket and put them on before scrutinizing the card.
"Ianto, do you have a magnifying glass?" he asked after a moment, and Ianto pulled one out of a nearby drawer.
The Doctor peered through it to examine the card in detail. "Not sure what it's made of. Almost looks like plexiglass, but not quite. Imbedded electronics, holographic images of the individual and the fingerprint of her right index finger, looks like… a miniature imprinting of the results of the DNA swab…." He turned it over in his hand and sighed heavily. "No, I can't," he said. He shoved his glasses back in his pocket and rubbed one eye in irritation. "Would have been a piece of cake with the TARDIS, but ours is just not up to anything like this and won't be for months."
"Well, Dad was insistent that no one know we're here," she said. "Maybe we can just get away with not going."
"You won't be able to do that," Ianto told her. "They are instituting random searches. After the deadline, if you don't have one of those on you, you risk imprisonment."
"I could give you false identification so that you could pass for someone else during the registration process," Toshiko told them. "It's just a matter of finding someone who physically resembles you, who used to live here, and who isn't here anymore because they moved or died or something."
"That would work for me," Rose said. "But that wouldn't work for the Doctor. He can't give a DNA sample."
Owen climbed up to the balcony to join them. "I may have a way around that."
~oOo~
Sitting at his desk in his Torchwood office, Pete Tyler stared at his computer screen and watched the latest news on the continuing violence in London. He had to make a plan to get Jackie and Tony out of the city, he told himself. He had a few ideas, but all of them were risky, and all of them relied on others to keep them safe. But with the Doctor, Rose, Jake and Mickey gone, he wasn't sure who he could trust.
His mind ran through everyone he knew: friends, neighbors and colleagues at both Torchwood and Vitex. Other than Jackie, Tony and Rose, he had essentially no family. He had a distant cousin in Scotland and another in Canada, but he hadn't seen either of them in decades. With his work schedule, he hadn't made many friends and his neighbors were virtual strangers to him. Until the break-in, he would normally have relied on someone at Torchwood with this, but now there was no one.
Or was there?
Yes, there actually was someone. There was someone he didn't know well but Rose, Jackie and the Doctor all trusted. And whom he was certain wasn't involved in any of this mess. But how to contact her?
Pete sat there a moment, considering the possibilities. Not by mobile since it was probably being monitored. The same went for email. And ever since he had been followed, he was wary of arranging any sort of meet. No, he needed a legitimate reason to contact her.
And then it occurred to him that there was one, there was a reason to see her that no one would question. But how to do it?
He opened the center drawer of his desk. Pens, pencils, pads of paper… But nothing sharp. No scissors, no letter opener, not even a stapler.
Pursing his lips, he looked around the small room. Book shelves, a couple of extra chairs, a calendar and a bulletin board filled with snapshots and a drawing Tony made. And then his eyes landed on the filing cabinet in the corner. He remembered one of the drawers had a jagged edge. That would do.
Having finally made a decision, he grabbed a small pad of paper out of a drawer, scribbled out a short note and put it in one of the pockets of his trousers. Then he got up and, after hanging his suit jacket on the back of his chair and rolling up his sleeves, walked over to the filing cabinet. Gritting his teeth, he opened the drawer and, in one quick move, ran the back of his left arm across the sharp metal. As blood welled up from the cut he had made, he winced at the momentary pain. He grabbed a handkerchief out of his other pocket and held it on the wound.
"Dammit," he swore loudly and Todd ran into the room.
"What's wrong, Director?"
"Oh, I accidentally cut myself on the file cabinet. I need to head down to the infirmary. Will you ring Dr. Jones and let her know I'm on my way?"
"Of course, Director," Todd replied and headed to his desk to make the call.
Pete grinned.
~oOo~
Dr. Martha Jones walked down the hall to the loo near her office, clutching a small piece of paper in her hand and thinking about the encounter she had just had with Director Tyler. It had seemed routine at first; he had come to the infirmary to have her treat a scratch he had on his arm. The wound had seemed fairly deep for an accidental scratch, but not unusually so. She had followed the cleaning and bandaging of it with a tetanus shot while they had engaged in the usual chitchat about family and television shows. It wasn't until he slipped the paper into the palm of her hand as he left that she realized anything was unusual.
After entering the ladies' room, she quickly checked to see if there was anyone else there. There was no one at the sinks and no feet visible under the doors of the stalls. After locking herself in the one at the far end, she opened the slip of paper in her hand and quickly read it. She raised her eyebrows. It seemed all very James Bond. Director Tyler is lucky I have an eidetic memory, she thought with a wry grin.
Following the instructions on the paper, she flushed it down the toilet before returning to her office.
~oOo~
Toshiko Sato took a deep breath before she sauntered into the dimly lit lounge in the lobby of a hotel off Mermaid Quay. It was still early, so there were few other customers in the place and only one at the bar, a heavyset balding man in his mid-thirties wearing a poorly fitting grey suit and tie. He was sitting at one end, nursing a drink and eating some sort of snack out of a bowl placed nearby. Crossing to the bar herself, she smiled at him before sitting down somewhere in the center. She placed one elbow on the arm of her barstool and casually rested her weight on it.
The bartender, a tall, blonde woman in a white blouse and a black waistcoat and tie, came over to take her order.
"Appletini, please," she requested. Running her fingers through her thick, black hair to fluff it a bit, she smiled again at the man sitting at the end of the bar. The bartender came back with a bright green drink in a tall martini glass. Surreptitiously Tosh took a small pill out of her pocketbook, a Torchwood-made anti-intoxication drug, and put it in her mouth before picking up her drink and taking a sip.
"Mmm," she said in appreciation, putting her glass back down on the bar. "Oh, that's good. I've been needing that all day."
"Rough day?" the man at the end of the bar asked.
"Oh, the worst," she said, taking another sip of the almost fluorescent green drink.
He picked up his drink, something that looked like two fingers of scotch, and rounded the bar to sit next to her.
"I work in IT," Tosh continued, "and my boss was on my back all day."
"He sounds like a real piece of work," he said.
"She," Tosh responded, adding the smallest amount of irritation to her voice. "And she puts the 'b' in bitch."
"Sorry to hear that," he said. "By the way I'm Simon. Simon Hill."
"Michiko, Michiko Imai," Toshiko said. "So what do you do, Simon?"
"I'm a doctor. I work over at A & E at the hospital. Well, normally at any rate," he said. "They've farmed me out to deal with this DNA testing mess."
"Oh, yeah," she said. "So you're working on that?"
He nodded. "I don't like it, but I don't have much choice, really. The way things are going, if I don't do it, I could be arrested."
"Boy, that's rough," she said, finishing the end of her drink. "Is it warm in here?" she asked, pulling at the collar of her red, silk blouse with one finger. She took off her jacket and hung it on the back of her chair and then fanned herself with her hand. Her blouse had two buttons unbuttoned, and she unbuttoned a third, revealing the tiniest peak of her black lace bra underneath. Simon's eyes widened, and he cleared his throat.
"I'm going to have another scotch. Can I get you another… whatever that is, Michiko?" Simon asked.
Toshiko smiled at him. "Appletini," she said, "and I'd love another."
An hour and a half later, the lounge had begun to fill up as the after-work crowd came in. Meanwhile, Simon and Toshiko were still sitting at the bar as he regaled her with stories from the hospital.
"And then I said to her, I know he's like a member of your family, but you still can't bring a goat into A & E!" He laughed loudly at his own joke, making the other customers nearby turn and stare at them.
Toshiko laughed politely and wished she were anywhere else than there. Like on a weevil hunt or maybe at one of Owen's alien autopsies.
Simon stood up abruptly. "If you'll excuse me, I'll be right back. Now don't you go anywhere," he said with a wink. She smiled at him and gave him a little wave before he turned and headed towards the men's toilet.
As soon as he was out of sight, her smile faded and she rolled her eyes. Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a small vial of a colorless liquid and poured it into his drink. She then pulled out her mobile. "Give me about 15 more minutes and then call me. Thanks." She quickly stowed her mobile back in her purse, just in time for Simon to return.
"So, where were we?" he asked, hefting himself back onto the barstool next to her. She plastered a false smile on her face while inwardly groaning.
"You were telling me something about a goat?"
~oOo~
"I'm so sorry," Toshiko said expressively, closing her mobile. "That was my mother. She thinks she's coming down with the flu, and she needs me to stop by tonight. Maybe we could take a rain check on dinner."
Simon nodded and yawned. "Perhaps that would be a good idea," he said. "I'm developing a bad headache, and for some reason I can hardly keep my eyes open."
"Well, you'd better get home, then," she suggested. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Simon. Maybe we can do it again sometime."
He got up and walked out the door, staggering a bit as he did so. As soon as she was sure he was gone, Toshiko sighed in relief.
"Thank God that's over," she said under her breath.
~oOo~
Jake sat in front of his computer at a long wooden table in the main room at Torchwood Two. He had an office; he just preferred to work in common areas rather than in the relative isolation of a separate room. Not that it mattered as there was only one other person in the building, and she was wearing headphones and listening to music on her EPod.
The Scotland branch of Torchwood was aptly, and unoriginally, nicknamed "The Pub" as it was located in an abandoned pub on the outskirts of Glasgow. Set back from the street and a distance away from the surrounding buildings, it was small compared to Cardiff's Hub and was nothing compared to sprawling compound of Torchwood Four or the nearly abandoned Torchwood One at Canary Wharf. But it was quiet and unobtrusive and suited the staff of Torchwood Two as well as the Hub did for the crew in Cardiff and the former factory did for Torchwood's London employees.
Jake, however, having just arrived in Scotland a week earlier, was feeling a bit of culture shock. And a little homesick. Although Glasgow was a relatively big city, well, big by Scotland's standards at any rate, it was nothing compared to London. Jake had been traveling for quite a while on Torchwood business, most recently to America, and practically as soon as he got back Pete sent him up here. He had been looking forward to spending a little time in his hometown before having to travel again, but that was Torchwood for you, he thought.
And although Jake understood everyone, the accents took a bit to get used to. It wasn't as bad as dealing with Americans, though. Some of them he couldn't understand at all. But he expected that when he went there. After all, they were Americans. Foreigners. And although Scotland was a separate country, he didn't think of it as foreign.
No, the real problem with Glasgow was the boredom. Unlike in London and in Cardiff, there weren't a lot of aliens and certainly no invasions. And unlike Cardiff, where he had been assigned for a year, there weren't even any staffing problems. Not that he really had a staff. There were only two other staff members in Torchwood Two. Audrey Griffith, a girl still in her late teens, was listed as a cleaning woman but also did anything else that needed doing in the office, including filing and making coffee. Martin Douglas, the field agent, did the initial investigation of any rumors of mysterious happenings in the country. Typically they amounted to nothing. In those rare cases where there was a real problem, Pete usually sent someone up from London to deal with it.
Jake had sent Martin out to investigate strange lights that had been reported on the moor. It was pointless, really. Probably just bored kids getting wasted, but they had to check it out anyway. At least Martin has something interesting to do for the next couple of days, Jake had thought at the time.
Meanwhile Audrey was mopping the floor for the fourth time that week, not because it needed it, but just because she had nothing better to do.
Jake stared at the screen in front of him, trying to figure out who the traitor was in Torchwood Four. There must be something, he told himself, that could tie the break-in at the mansion to whoever was working with Lisa Hallett. It just was beyond the realm of belief to think that they weren't related.
If he just hit it hard enough, went through all the connections again, he was sure he could find something.
~oOo~
At the flimsy desk in a cheap motel a few blocks away from Torchwood Two, a man sat working on a slim, laptop computer. He was in his early thirties and tall and muscular; he looked like a bodybuilder or perhaps a player for an American football team.
A woman in her early twenties sat on one of the two beds in the room, remote control in hand, flipping through the stations on the television. The motel only received local stations, and at the moment they were only broadcasting local news. She exhaled loudly in frustration and threw the remote on the bed next to her. It bounced once before it came to rest.
"Bloody Glasgow," she cursed. "I'm missing all my shows."
"You watch too much telly anyway," the man responded. "S'not good for you."
"What the hell do you care?" she asked. "You're not my father." She got up and restlessly paced the room. "I am so bored! There must be a pub around here somewhere. You wanna go?"
"Sure. I'm almost done. Just a tiny bit more tweaking… There," he said, standing up. "Now, even when we aren't here, I'll be able to track everything Jake Simmonds does on his computer."