A/N: Deluxe long chapter this time. I had a day off today because I'm ill, and this is the result. This explores the 'strange people' you're wondering about, and their back-stories, and we see Jack and the team again, puzzling over several strange occurrences. Ianto comes into it not as much as some of you may like, but I promise the next chapter is almost entirely based around Ianto and Jack, searching for each other, though one of them doesn't realize it at the time. Anyways, as usual, readers, do review, it makes my day. Enjoy.
When you wake up on an operating table with plugs shoved into holes in your chest and forearms after dying while working for Torchwood, several things go through your mind.
The first was how you came to be sitting on that operating table; Ianto could not conclusively prove that the two strangers he woke up to had stolen him from wherever he was meant to be, he had noticed the distinct lack of his fellow Torchwood operatives.
The second was why the holy hell there were plugs shoved in his body. He was fairly certain the large holes the plugs were plugged into weren't there when he'd last been alive. He yanked them out and screamed with the pain, and watched as blood slowly oozed from the wounds, warmly flowing down his torso and sides. He winced---
---the third happened to be a thought he couldn't form into coherent words. It was screaming anguish at his white shirt being ruined. And now his black suit trousers, he noted, as the blood began to spread into them.
The fourth was him wondering who the hell was calling him 'cariad' and who the fuck did they think they were?
The fifth was inexplicable, overwhelming happiness.
He was alive.
Alive.
He barely noted the presence of a non-descript man and strange woman at his sides, running for bandages for the wounds they'd inflicted on him, saying that he shouldn't have just yanked the plugs out, it was a delicate procedure and he was going to get blood everywhere in the nice, white room. A word formed, half-whispered on his lips, and he found he was hideously parched. Water was there in a cup at his mouth almost as soon as he'd formed the thought – the fierce-looking woman smiled sympathetically.
"Residual psychic energy. We're all linked for the moment. It'll pass."
Ianto nodded numbly, guzzling down the water as fast as his sore throat and muscles would allow. He tried the word out again, with no sound, to see how it felt on his dry lips, and wondered where he was.
Jack.
"Oh, cariad, you won't be able to see him just yet. You've got cleansing and training to go through."
Something in him snapped, though possibly not at the right thing. He gripped the woman's wrist in a white-knuckle grasp and rasped, "Don't call me cariad."
The plain man appeared at his other side, eyes angry, and hissed, "I'd watch your tone, Ianto Jones. We've just done you a huge favour." There was something of an edge to the man's tone that Ianto didn't like – it made the hairs on his arms and neck stand up. It practically screamed unnatural.
The pair grasped Ianto's upper arms, avoiding touching his lower arms and torso which had now, miraculously, been heavily bandaged with tourniquets. They hoisted him up with surprising ease, he thought, as the woman was shorter than him by a significant margin and the man was thinner than him. He allowed them to support him – his muscles were all tensed, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not relax them.
"Ah. That's the rigor mortis, Ianto. It'll dissipate after the injection."
His mind sparked at the word injection. He desperately wet his lips, and croaked, "Who are you people?"
"Friends, Ianto. We're your friends. We're here to make you better."
And with that, they pulled him into the dimly light corridor, and down to God knows where.
Martha did not like this at all.
It's not the skeleton of the Hub that gets her, or the knowledge that they'd lost Tosh's body in the explosion, or the terrible broken look Jack tries to hide.
Nor is it the tears that look like they're always just behind Gwen's eyes, hanging in place, or the haggard, tired way Rhys moves to protectively hold Gwen around the stomach, instinctively wanting to protect their future.
It was the fact that this blood, this damned sample of emerald blood, was from one of the most dangerous and rare species in the whole Universe, and Martha had no fucking clue how to go about tracking the creature down.
Her fingers froze at her keyboard, and then scrolled down on the pad of the laptop. Just their luck that the last remnant of Ianto at Torchwood had been stolen by a creature able to change its genetic code at will.
"The Umbreyta?" Gwen raised an eyebrow, leaning back into Rhys' embrace ever so slightly.
"Goes by many names. That's the Icelandic one, where they were first found. Let's just see…" Martha tapped at the keys anxiously, and sat back, satisfied, "There's the Welsh for you."
"The Drawsffurfio?" Rhys frowned, glancing at Gwen as comprehension dawned on her face, then looked back to Martha, "It's called 'transform'."
Martha nodded, gulping, "This species can blend in perfectly to human civilization. They have the ability to change itself into a human at will. The blood, the appearance, the brain structure, everything. It's only ever been photographed poorly because generally an observer only has a split second window to see it before it returns to its human form and disappears into a crowd."
She clicked, and pictures flooded the screen. Jack peered over her shoulder; he could make out large black spines, indigo skin, and wide, pure white eyes. He grunted in apprehension, "That's not a lot to work with, Martha."
She rolled her eyes, "I know, Jack. The only hope we have is to analyze the crime scene further with what little equipment I could bring and see if that turns up anything."
Jack groaned, pushing off from the wall of the warehouse in frustration, and spun around to glare at the sky, when something caught his eye.
Speak of the devil.
On the roof of the warehouse, perched like some terrible gargoyle, was the Umbreyta; the Drawsffurfio; the damn thing that took the coffee machine.
The spines sprouting from its back, its skull, and its arms and calves were pitch-black and deadly-looking – they sang I've come to kill you. Its indigo skin glistened and glowed subtly in the light afternoon air, and although its white eyes suggested blindness, Jack felt a coldness spreading in his stomach and knew that it was looking
right
at
him.
Somehow, its posture betrayed its true intentions. While the spines and skin and eyes bayed for his blood, the posture whispered curiosity. It cocked its head to one side, studying Jack for some immeasurable moment, and then raised the hand it had previously held behind its back.
In that long, slender-fingered hand was a coffee mug, its contents steaming faintly. Jack watched the creature take a sip, and clasp the cup in both hands, briefly, before leaping off the roof, and landing beside Jack, as nimble and light as a cat. The team froze in shock, staring numbly at the creature, before watching it hold out the mug for Jack, not a drop of the contents spilt.
As if sensing an opportune moment, the wind sent a tiny breeze towards the steam rising from the mug, carrying its scent directly to Jack's nose.
And suddenly Jack felt sick and giddy and terrified and hopeful all at once because there was that smell that he knew only one person could provide in a cup of coffee. And he winced and grinned at the same time because this was a lead. This was deliberate. This was someone trying to tell him something. He took the mug into his hands and drank deeply, eyes closed, and when he opened his eyes to the sound of air rushing by and feet on a hollow container he could see the Umbreyta running back up the wall of the warehouse, hoisting itself over onto the roof and footsteps thudding away into silence.
Jack sat with a soft thud, the mug drained of coffee and a stupid smile on his face. The others shook themselves, as if out of a trance, and turned to him, dumbstruck. Rhys was the first to break the vacuum of their reverie.
"Hate to be Captain Obvious, but that seemed deliberate."
Some time earlier…
They watched Ianto scream in agony through the one-way mirror for quite some time.
Eventually Cath clicked her tongue in disapproval, "Maybe this was a bad idea, Learner. He's in a bad way – maybe we should have waited for the rigor mortis to wear off naturally before we stuck that stuff in him."
Learner raised his eyebrows, "You and I both know the solution wouldn't have taken so well if we'd waited. You want him to be like us, correct?"
She eyed his human face anxiously. It was unsettling to hear his alien voice coming from his human body. Usually Learner was more careful about putting on a human tone; but not here, in the Basement. She sighed.
"He wasn't so far off being like us when he was Torchwood. They have the Hub, we have the Basement. We have Officials, they have operatives. Pretty similar."
Her companion's eyes turned dark, and he laughed derisively, "Though we don't have a catchy name like Torchwood. Cath, what we deal with here is much more serious than what they deal with. Without us, there would be no Earth for Torchwood to watch over. We're watching the watchmen, so to speak." His lips quirked into an easy smile, "God, we really are like something out of their comic books, aren't we?"
Cath scratched her arm absently, eying her pitch-black tattoos warily. Learner had it easy.
He'd never been human, not really. He could change his blood, and his brain, and his face, but underneath all that he was still an alien. Cath had been normal, once upon a time. She couldn't stop herself from thinking like a human.
It was like she was on fire. It was a freak accident, no fault of her own – the mosquito had been in a box in transit from South America, and it had been just her luck to open that box to check its contents at the warehouse and get bitten.
And now here she was, dying of frickin' yellow fever. Typical.
She was in the toxic stage, and far gone. She looked at her hands as she tossed and turned, her abdomen in agony, and still found herself startled by the yellow colour her skin had become. Huh, yellow fever. Duh, Catharine.
She knew that right now the doctors were expecting her to recover. The disease was only deadly in 20% of cases, and so the odds were good for her to be just fine. But Cath could feel it in her bones; she was not going to make it through this. She could feel the virus everywhere, feel it spreading and multiplying and killing her cells. Despite the respirator, she felt her throat constrict, and tears prick at her eyes. A song she'd heard long ago sprung to mind – 'the last contagious victim of this plague between us' – and wanted to sob. Darkness was spreading at the corners of her vision – not long yet.
Catharine Ryan was 19 and engaged when she passed away, just two days from her 20th birthday.
She was just 20 when she was brought back.
It was a painful process, coming back. Absolute agony. If she'd thought the yellow fever made her insides itch and scalded her skin, then she was sadly mistaken. She'd take the fever a hundred times over if this pain would just stop. Compared to this, yellow fever was a cold bath, a walk in the park in winter.
And then it stopped, and she felt cool hands on her arms, and soft comforting whispers in her ears. She chanced a glance to the source of the voice and addictive coolness, and looked into pure white eyes in an indigo, humanoid face. The creature stared back evenly, one hand smoothing her red hair back from her sweaty face and the other rubbing icy circles on her back, and Cath thought she'd never seen something – someone – so beautiful
"It's okay," the creature said. "Cath, you're back. You're safe."
"Who…are…you?" Cath managed, her throat pitifully dry.
"My name is Learner. I'm sorry".
Then the injection came.
She placed her hand in Learner's squarely, and squeezed, missing the cold feel his other skin had. She rested her head on his shoulder, "Learner, one day you'll understand."
Ianto Jones had stopped writhing and screaming. He got up slowly, and approached the one-way mirror, pressing both hands to it and scanning its surface.
Learner and Cath watched him, with bated breath. His eyes focused, and he was looking at them, through the mirror. He smiled tentatively, before smashing it with his fists.
Learner exhaled gustily, "Hello there. Feel better?"
They scanned the mug in every possible way with every bit of technology they had, and surprisingly found something. The whole mug was covered in writing in invisible ink.
They found it far too easily. The ink showed under a simple black light, suggested by Rhys, who said 'You secret agent types are bound to need to use that stuff at some point'. Jack smiled softly at the memory. The creature had wanted them to find the messages – the only problem now was translating them. They had the language in their system; it was a language picked up from intercepted alien signals, and they had only been able to distinguish letter combinations and what could possibly be the alphabet. However, the print on the mug was so small that they had to do it manually.
As Ianto would say, run through it the old-fashioned way. With my eyes. Jack laughed, thinking of the Welshman fondly. If translating this message was what would lead him to any remnants of Ianto, so be it. They'd get there.
"Jack." Jack looked up from his contemplation of life, the universe, and everything, and saw Gwen looking at him expectantly.
"Gwen?"
"Jack, the translation's done. You might like to read it."
