"When did Rose get attacked?" Alec asked, abruptly.
He was always known for his persistence and his methods were questionable, to the point of him irritating the witness and the people he worked with. It seemed like he lacked sensitivity and manners, when really at heart, it was all about helping the victim. He had to detach himself sometimes; otherwise he would never be able to look through a case file. But when the person in question was someone he cared about, nothing would stop him from finding the truth.
But before Jack could ask to how he knew about her injury, Rose spoke. "I think I ripped a couple of my stitches. It's bleeding a little."
She was lying and her boss knew it.
"I need to examine her." Jack said, narrowing his eyes at the officer that was pissing him off. It was tempting to punch him; it would almost worth getting arrested for it, to wipe that sneer of his scruffy face.
"You're not a doctor." Alec pointed out.
"Neither are you." Rose groaned. "I'm fine, it's just sore."
"You didn't answer the question, Captain, when was she hurt?"
"This morning." Rose snapped. "Before we saw you at Helen's home." She hissed at the contact when Jack wrapped his arm around her shoulder, even the briefest of contact sent waves of pain through her torso. Alec was right for once, she needed medical attention.
"I have everything under control, but I have to look at her stitches." Jack stated.
Forgetting their volume control, Alec and Jack bickered for a few moments until Ellie noticed the alarmed looks from the paramedics and the crowd.
"If we are going to talk about this, can we do away from the eyes of the public? Your house maybe?" Ellie suggested, pointing at the rental behind them.
"Or the car?" Jack countered. With Rose running to play hero by herself and Jack being left to help Ellie, the house was still in ruins. The damage inside had barely been touched, and the message on the wall did not need to inspected by Broadchurch's finest.
Torchwood had given the detective one too many excuses. There was something in the house they were hiding, something linked the case, he was sure of it. Alec mumbled something incoherent and shoved past the Captain, making his way to the up the drive. Jack's incompetence could have cost Rose her life. He hadn't seen the true extent of the damage to her shoulder, but he saw the blood stain when she took off her jacket in the pub basement and if it wasn't for the pacemaker, his heart would have stopped. Rage boiled through his system as he kicked the door open and stormed inside to inspect the residence.
Jack rolled his eyes and swore under his breath, while the paramedics gaped at the drama unfolding in front of them. However they quickly returned to their work when Ellie unimpressed gaze fell on them.
"Don't you have a job that needs doing?" she yelled.
"You're got the situation under control, have you?" Alec remarked when he heard Jack's footsteps behind him. Rose and Ellie wandered through the door and closed it behind them.
The broken home was a sight that made his blood run cold, until he caught a whiff of familiar smell from upstairs. He dashed to track the scent. Jack stepped forward to chase after him when Rose shook her head, silently telling him to stay back.
"I'll go." she mouthed, then left the room.
Surveying the damage, Ellie lifted up a torn t – shirt and asked the question that everyone had thought from the start. "What have you got yourself into?"
Rose discovered Alec in her room by what used to be her bed. Not a sight she thought she would ever see. Crouched down, he regarded the bloody photo on the floor. Beaming manically, the man he assumed to be her dead fiancé and Rose, looked happy. She was younger, her hair flowing past her shoulders, while he was older than he expected. He imagined it to a young guy that she had met while travelling, not someone who could be mistaken to be her dad.
"How did he die?" Alec asked.
"Saving the world." Rose replied, standing at the door.
Alec rose to his feet and handed her the photo. She took it off him, their fingers brushing against each other.
"Thanks." she whispered.
"The message is from them?"
"Yeah."
"And the dead sheep?"
"They haven't just been killing people."
Alec ran his hands through his hair, and shook his head. "What are you?" He looked her up and down as if she was a stranger. Just a blonde girl in trouble. No, she would never be just that.
"A headache." she confessed. "Do you want to run away?"
"I don't know." Alec licked his dry lips, raising his fingers to stroke the apple of her cheek. His cold skin sent a shiver down her body, but she embraced it.
"Are you scared?" Rose asked, her hand slipping over his, her thumb slipping his palm, mimicking his movements, soothing his nerves.
"Yes." he admitted, shaking. His head leaned in slightly, his mouth inches from hers.
"I meant about the case."
With those words, he yanked his hand back, clearing his throat. "Right, of course." There was a flash of sorrow in his eyes. "Sorry, I shouldn't have."
"No, Alec…" Rose started, her hand still clutching the photo.
"So station," he said, choosing to ignore her comment. For a second, in that moment, he wished he never met her. "Make sure Jack looks at that wound."
The police officers attended to the situation outside, while Jack patched up Rose Tyler. Her shoulder was not bad, and a few of stitches needed to be redone. Jack gave her something for the pain and made his usual joke of you'll feel a little prick, but Rose didn't laugh, she couldn't even muster a giggle.
Jack sighed and bandaged her up. Whatever had occurred at the pub must have been intense to wind her up like this. Even with her repeating that she was fine, her friend pulled her into a well needed hug, careful not to aggravate the wound.
It was a long drive back to the station. Everyone stayed silent. The tension built like a frosty wall, growing higher as the minutes counted down. Fidgeting in her seat, Rose kept her eyes to the ground to avoid Alec's gaze. While the blonde wished to be back in Cardiff moving John's boxes, Alec's bloody memories of the days gone past were starting to take their toll. He finally let his mind wander back to what he witnessed in the alley, how the murderer moved in basement. It disappeared right in front of him. Humans can't do that. Rose said it wasn't human. She admitted it.
"What the fuck was that?"
"Your killer. Well, one of them." she corrected.
"That can't be— that wasn't-." he stammered.
"Wasn't what?"
"A normal person couldn't move like that, it's impossible." he declared.
"Exactly."
"A human shouldn't be able to do that."
"Exactly." she repeated, waiting for him to catch up.
What the hell had he got himself into? He hated thinking how long that… thing had been in the town without him knowing, how many people it had killed. All those bodies, stripped to the bone. No human could have done that. Not really. The teeth marks that Brian had examined told them it was animal. He squeezed his eyes shut, remembering the bloody smile of the killer. He raised a hand to his temples and rubbed them gently, trying to focus on the facts. It had to be human. What other explanation could there be? But if that thing was human, it still didn't explain how it got into Helen's locked house without a key or any signs of forced entry.
He shuddered at the thought, his actions catching the attention of colleague. He told her that he was feeling cold and she accepted his response and carried on.
In the back, Jack rolled his eyes. The Torchwood agent's mind whirled with every possible scenario. Had Alec told Ellie? If he did, what did he say? Would Ellie understand? Alec was a cynic; could he begin to grasp the idea of aliens from another world? Yet, Jack kept his mouth shut. The police worked with facts, just like his own team. So before they had left the house, Jack had grabbed their own equipment to show the officers the evidence they had collected.
Once arriving at the police building, Alec slammed the car door behind him and pressed onwards to the doors without looking back. Rose pulled up the zip on her jacket and followed him inside, remembering her words.
"Can we talk about this after the case? Stay professional."
Their kiss was gone and forgotten, locked away in the back of her mind. Her feelings, even if she was still unsure of how strong they were, had to be under control.
Grabbing the case, Jack stepped out the car and glanced around his surroundings. In the distance he could hear happy tourists enjoying their evening, the sound of laughter filling the air. Despite the dire circumstances, he spluttered a laugh. Once more into the breach, he thought. DS Miller glared at him, confused at his reaction. He winked at her before dashing inside to catch up with his friend.
Above them, standing on the cold rooftops of the Broadchurch police station, a hooded figure growled. His black eyes darted from human to human, before finding his target, and then he vanished in a green puff of smoke.
"Not the office this time?" Rose mused as Ellie led them into an interrogation room.
Jack noted the cool blue walls and wiggled his eyebrows at Rose. Torchwood talked to their suspects in dank cells of the basement whereas the police had a proper room with chairs and a desk. They were lucky if they could communicate with their accused or if they spoke any English. Weevils were particularly difficult.
"Sit down please, Captain, Miss Tyler." Alec said, gesturing at the seat.
Jack glanced at her and then the officer, but instead of sitting down, he leant back against the wall, and his arms crossed, the equipment by his feet. From this angle, he could study the officer's reactions better.
"Will this be recorded?" Jack asked, nodding at the device on the table.
"No." Alec said, firmly.
Ellie's eyebrows shot up. "Sir, we have to…"
He raised a hand to shut her up and turned to the blonde sitting opposite him.
"Now you can explain to me what happened." The cracks were beginning to show in his tough exterior. His voice was relaxed but Rose sensed the tremor of fear hidden underneath.
"We saw the murderer." she stated, her warm eyes finally meeting his gaze.
"Who was he?"
"We don't have a name." Rose said, "But we haven't been honest about everything."
Jack pushed himself away from the wall. "We told you that Torchwood deals with specialist cases and that part was correct. But we were vague on the specialist part."
"How vague?" Ellie asked.
There was a brief pause before Jack continued. There was no easy way, so…
"The murderer you saw tonight was not what you think. It was not human." He ignored their bewildered looks and carried on. "It was an alien. From outer space."
A flicker of confusion rippled across Ellie's face, her eyes widened with rage.
"Are you taking the piss?!" she shouted.
Alec stayed silent, his lips pressed together as his head resting on his propped up elbows.
"Are you seriously telling me that little green men are killing these people? What kind of organisation are you?"
"Actually not little but they are green." Jack said, not helping matters.
"Ellie, we are telling the truth." Rose interjected, her hand resting over her heart.
"That's DS Miller to you." Ellie scolded, causing Rose to swallow hard. "Come on, do you really expect us to believe you?"
"We have proof, DS Miller." The Bad Wolf remarked, her tone sharper than before.
"Blurry photographs?" Ellie asked, sarcastically.
Jack heaved the case onto the desk with a loud thump, silencing Ellie's outburst. He was shocked by her harsh words; he expected it from Hardy, but not her. Strange enough, he hadn't uttered a word. His brown eyes scanned the room, ending with a glance to Rose. Alec nervously tugged his ear, his eyes on Rose's injured shoulder. Torchwood must have got too close, so he retaliated. The sight of the blood stained bandages made his stomach turn.
Alec Hardy took a deep breath and then interrupted Ellie. "Miller, hear them out. Let's see this evidence, Captain."
His co-worker followed his lead and allowed Jack to turn on the laptop, the scanner laid next to it, gently beeping. With a couple of taps on the keyboard, Jack loaded Torchwood's secret programme.
"The aliens have the ability to teleport from one place to another and every time they use their abilities, it leaves an energy trace. Using the equipment from our base, we can detect its signal and we tracked them to Broadchurch."
Rose lifted the laptop and placed it in front of the police officers. It showed a map of Wales and the South of England with yellow dots showing the journey of aliens back and forth in the last week.
"Where does they come from?" Ellie asked. "The Moon? Mars?"
"We don't know." Jack admitted.
"What are their names?" Her tone was sceptical, matching the look on her face.
"We don't know." Jack repeated.
Ellie turned to face her boss, almost pleading for the man she once knew to come to his senses and see the horse shit in front of him. "Sir, this is crazy. Please tell me you don't believe them?"
Alec took a moment before answering, his voice quiet. "I believe that there is something that we are not equipped to deal with ourselves, whether it's from another planet or not is another question."
"What?" Rose said, jumping to her feet. "Are you kidding?"
"What do you expect me to say?" Alec replied, his eyes snapping to her.
"You know what you saw. What he did." Rose ran her hands through her hair. "This is denial, Alec."
"I saw something that moved extremely quick, but it was dark…"
Rose scoffed. "It wasn't that dark."
Behind the blonde, she heard the faint sound of typing while the blood rushed through her body, giving that extra energy she needed to fight her case and make the idiot DI see the obvious truth.
"Did it look something like this?" Jack asked, turning the laptop back to the officers, a hint of smile in his voice.
Both their eyes widened as they saw the clear image of the picture that Clare Foster had drawn of the creature. Alec felt as if the hollow eyes were looking into his soul, the darkness creeping in. He gently shook his head and rubbed his eyes, to loosen the image from his mind. Ellie's eyes focused on the large claws, larger enough the strip flesh of the bone. She gulped, and from the corner of her eye, she saw the saw the colour drain from Alec's face. This couldn't be the same thing he saw in the alley. Could it? Alec never got scared of anything. Never. He swallowed a lump in his throat, and gently nodded.
Jack clicked the button again and a photo of the spaceship inside the warehouse loaded. Gwen had taken after she had phoned Ianto and sent the information for Jack to see if he had recognised the design. Unfortunately, he didn't, but he knew that John would have.
"Right then." Jack said.
"It's fake," Ellie said, quietly, hoping that it was still a joke. A bad prank. "That's fake, it has to be."
"No, it's not." Rose answered, grimly. "It's really not."
Feeling guilty for her choice of words, Rose sunk back into her chair and her gentle tone returned, her attention to Alec. "I know this hard to understand, to take it all in. I was the same. People have different reactions to this. Remember what Becky said? How she acted. It's completely normal to…"
"This isn't normal!" he yelled, slamming his hand against the desk with such force the laptop bounced. "There is no such thing as creatures from outer space."
"Yes, there is."
Alec's searched her face for signs that she was lying, and to his dismay discovered nothing. Could she actually be…
"You need to take a minute." Jack ordered, stepping forward.
"Sir?" Ellie said, the anger leaving her system.
Pushing the chair back, it crashed to the ground and he all but fled the room with Ellie on his heels. Struggling for breath, he strode down the hall, his legs straining under their heavy weight. For what seemed like hours was actually seconds and he finally made it down the corridor away from them.
"Sir?" Ellie repeated, running after him.
"I want them out. I want them out of this town." he muttered. "Out of our lives."