Jackie Tyler was fuming. Absolutely bloody furious. She had fully expected the Doctor to do his thing, and force them to surrender Jack and Ianto to him. She'd hoped that he would have. But then Yvonne bloody Hartman had shown him that freaky bloody sphere, and he forgot all about why they were there in the first place.
She wanted to slap him again, and from the way he was avoiding looking at her, she suspected that he knew it, too.
Right then, Hartman was prattling on about her ruddy ghost shifts, and something about an alternate power source. Most of it went over Jackie's head, and regardless, she was only interested in one thing. Taking advantage of a brief lull in the conversation, Jackie grabbed the Doctor's arm and spoke in a angry hiss.
"What about Jack and Ianto? You'd better not have forgotten about them!"
Hartman, who had been supervising one of her subordinates, turned sharply to stare at them.
"What was that, Miss Tyler?"
The Doctor clamped a hand over Jackie's mouth even as she started to respond, and spoke dismissively.
"Never mind her. She's just babbling. Does that a lot, lately, babbles. Interesting word, that, actually. Rolls nicely off the tongue, don't you think? Babble..."
Hartman, however, was not to be distracted, and she cut the Doctor off sharply.
"That's quite enough of that, Doctor. Now, what did you say, Miss Tyler?"
Jackie pulled away from the Doctor and spoke angrily, ignoring his obvious frustration.
"You've got two boys locked up here somewhere. Jack and Ianto. Where are they?"
Hartman looked amused, much to Jackie's rapidly increasing aggravation.
"Jack? So that's its name. I have to admit, I had wondered if it even had an identity of its own."
And abruptly, the Doctor forgot his frustration towards Jackie, and turned on Hartman with a frightening ferocity.
"He is not an it."
An infuriatingly smug smile spread across the director's face.
"It isn't even human, Doctor. Now that we're on the subject, though, I am curious. Rumour is that it was once your companion. I don't suppose you'd care to clarify that for us? I believe there are several bets going on it. Although, personally, I'd be inclined to bet against it being true. After all, you wouldn't class it as a companion so much as a…"
"Pet?" someone at one of the terminals suggested when she paused, and a ripple of laughter went through the room. It was quickly silenced, though, when the Doctor turned his furious glare on the offending worker. Hartman, however, was unperturbed.
"That's it, exactly. A pet! That is, of course, if you like feral dogs."
Jackie started forward, and was only held back by the Doctor's iron grip on her arm. She glared at him, enraged, but his attention was solely on Hartman.
"I want to see him. Now."
To his quiet fury, Hartman didn't so much as flinch in the face of his demand. Instead, she smirked to herself and turned to the closest computer terminal, quickly typing in a command that would bring up the CCTV link to Jack's cell. A moment later, they were looking at the image of a stark white, bare cell on the monitor. A cell that was unmistakably empty.
"Something the matter?" the Doctor queried. The rage in his tone had all but evaporated, and now he was watching her with ill-suppressed amusement. Ignoring him, Hartman activated her comm. device and spoke quickly.
"Robin, get the hell back to Secure Archives. It's out of its cell! …Probably Adams, you idiot! I warned you never to leave him alone down there. Now go! And check on Jones while you're at it."
She promptly cancelled the connection and smiled frostily at the Doctor.
"Just a minor issue. We'll have it back under control soon enough."
She turned away again, and Jackie shot the Doctor a suspicious look, which he returned with a tiny, smug grin.
"Just you wait," she hissed at him. "I'm gonna slap you so hard when we get out of here!"
The Doctor didn't reply, and though he continued to grin, on the inside he was in turmoil. He only hoped that if indeed it was Rose who was responsible for the break-out, then she had been successful in getting both Jack and his friend to the safety of the TARDIS. He dreaded to think of what might happen if she was caught. He dared not imagine it. And as for Jack, who had been Torchwood's prisoner for so long now…
Though the Doctor dared not admit it to either Jackie or Rose, he was not looking forward at all to seeing Jack again. Part of that had to do with his discomfort with Jack as a fixed point, but it was also very strongly to do with guilt — an emotion that he was not used to experiencing in this particular regeneration. He had used Jack and then abandoned him, effectively abusing the faith Jack had placed in him. He couldn't imagine what it must have been like for Jack, to be the only living person left on Satellite Five, and then to be trapped and imprisoned on Earth for more than a lifetime.
What the Doctor truly feared was to look into those pale blue eyes once more, and see condemnation and hatred rather than forgiveness and love. Oh, make no mistake, he knew what he deserved; it wasn't forgiveness and mostly certainly not love. However, even after all this time he believed he knew Jack, and he wanted more than anything to believe that the former Time Agent was essentially still the same man who had died for him on that godforsaken satellite so far into the future.
He just prayed to Rassilon that Jack would once more show that he was bigger on the inside.
Gage walked forward slowly, his eyes fixed on the massive sphere that was suspended at the other end of the room, well above their heads. Just looking at the damned thing made him feel sick to his stomach, and a brief glance told him that Rose and Ianto were experiencing much the same reaction. Jack, however…
He felt no surprise to see that Jack had scuttled away from all of them to cower in the far corner of the room, as far away from the sphere as it was possible to be. There was a look of wide-eyed terror on his face, and even as Gage watched, he buried his face in his arms in a futile attempt to hide.
Gage nudged Ianto, who nodded grimly in acknowledgement. He, too, had immediately noticed Jack's reaction to the sphere, and didn't seem surprised by it. Neither had a chance to comment, though, as the researcher manning the lab approached them.
"Adams? And… my god, is that you, Jones? Bloody hell, what are you two doing here? And weren't you locked up, Jones? And who the hell are those two… Shit, it's him, isn't it? The thing that you escaped with! The creature…"
Ianto's already frayed temper came dangerously close to snapping, and he wheeled around to glare at the man.
"He's not a thing! Stop calling him that!"
No one had the opportunity to reply to that, because at that moment the door behind them opened and Spence strode in. He had a gun in his hand, and a triumphant sneer on his face.
"Got you," he snarled, his focus directly on Ianto. "Did you really think we'd let you get away from us again? You stupid little bastard, you won't live to see the end of today now."
Ianto's breath caught as he spotted Jack in the corner. At Spence's appearance, Jack's fear dissipated and was replaced with a primal rage and hatred, all of which was directed entirely towards Robin Spence. Ianto could see him tensing, and realised with horror that he was about to attack.
"Jack, no! Stay there!" Ianto yelled. As much as he wanted to see Spence suffer for everything he'd done, the fact remained that Spence had a gun, and that gave him the upper hand. This was a markedly different situation to that night, weeks ago, when Jack had taken down two drunken bullies who had been armed only with stun sticks. Spence was dead cold sober, and a crack shot, with the sadistic streak to match. No matter what damage Jack might initially be able to do, Spence would still likely as not have time to shoot him dead.
He had no desire to see Jack suffer the pain of being shot again, regardless of whether he came back from it, and so was relieved when Jack relaxed fractionally and sank back into the corner. Spence, however, grinned like a loon and turned to face Jack.
Ianto saw what was coming a second before Spence pulled the trigger. Jack went down with a cry of pain, clutching at the bullet wound in his stomach. Uttering a howl of rage, Ianto disregarded his own advice and charged at Spence, but the other man was simply too quick. The gun swung around and, as Ianto came within arm's length, the butt of the weapon caught Ianto squarely on the temple, sending him to the floor in a dazed heap.
"Little bastard," Spence spat again. He then turned his glare on Gage. "I'll deal with you later."
Leaving Ianto crumpled on the floor, Spence strode over and grabbed Rose roughly by the wrist, pulling her over to the computer monitor.
"Let me go!" she yelled, struggling in vain to escape his grip. She looked anxiously from Ianto to Jack, and her heart clenched painfully as she realised the bullet wound had killed Jack. "You son of a bitch, you killed him!"
"Don't worry, little girl," Spence retorted. "It's not permanent. Now stop fighting me, or I might have to hurt you too!"
Rose ceased her struggles, if only for knowing that she would be of no help to Jack if this lunatic made good on his threat to harm her. Spence typed in the code to link him to the Director's office, and a moment later Yvonne Hartman's face appeared on the screen.
"I found them, Yvonne," he announced smugly. "Jones, Adams and the freak are in the sphere chamber, as well as this one. If I'm not mistaken, she arrived at the same time as the Doctor."
On the monitor, Hartman shifted around to reveal the Doctor beside her.
"Familiar to you, Doctor?"
"Never seen her before in my life."
Had Rose not known the Doctor better, she might have squawked in protest and given the game away. As it was, Hartman's next words prompted her to put up at least another cursory struggle against Spence.
"So you won't mind if we shoot her, then."
The Doctor sighed loudly in mock exasperation.
"Oh well, it was worth a try. All right, that's Rose Tyler."
Hartman's eyebrows rose fractionally, and she turned away from the monitor to stare at someone behind her who was just out of the camera's range.
"So this is…?"
"Her mother, Jackie."
The amusement in Hartman's voice was palpable.
"You take mother and daughter pairs, then?"
The Doctor grimaced, and the look on his face had Rose briefly wanting to laugh.
"Necessity this time, I'm afraid. But please, when this goes down in the history books, don't say I travelled with her mother."
"Ooh, you," Jackie growled.
"Yvonne, what do you want me to do with them?" Spence asked, and it was painfully clear to everyone that he was hoping she'd give the go-ahead to shoot all of them.
"You said you're in the sphere chamber?"
"That's right."
"Fine. Just keep them there for the time being. Keep shooting it if you have to. We'll deal with them after the next ghost shift. You can handle that, can't you, Robin? I don't need to send extra personnel, do I?"
Spence twitched just slightly. He could hear the undercurrent in her tone only too well.
"I've got it covered," he answered tersely. "They're not going anywhere."
Hartman smiled coolly.
"Very good. Next ghost shift is in fifteen minutes. I'll see you down there in thirty."
Then the transmission ended, and the monitor went dark. Spence stared at it for a moment longer before looking around at his unwilling guests with sadistic glee. Gage had, by then, gone to Ianto's side and was helping him to sit up, while holding a handkerchief to the spot on his head where he'd been struck by Spence. Rose took her moment and wrenched free from Spence, and hurried over to Jack. Spence looked around at them all with a cruel grin.
"Half an hour, kids. Start saying your prayers, because you're about to meet your maker."
to be continued...