Jack skidded to a halt when he entered the storeroom, stunned by the mixed up jumble of a mess that it was in. How much of the chaos was from Torchwood's neglect and how much was from the Doctor's recent efforts he wasn't sure. As his eye caught on the pile of rubble where the cyber converter had been, he suspected the later. He turned as he heard Gwen coming up behind him.
"Start working over there with that first cabinet," Jack ordered indicating a gun metal gray storage cabinet with doors with his chin. "Look for anything that is marked with J-12 or could be mistaken for J-12. We aren't sure it was a bin number, so examine everything. I'll check where he was working. Hopefully he left a clue or two there as to what we are dealing with or looking for."
"I suppose it would be too much to ask that he kept notes." asked Gwen as she started over to her assigned cabinet.
"Definitely," the captain laughed coldly as he started to go through the items on the table, "he's the type who feels if it's important he'll remember it, and if he doesn't remember it, it wasn't important."
"Works for him, does it?" responded Gwen as she turned over a metallic cube, checking all sides for any markings before replacing it on the shelf.
"Mostly, but I've seen it catch up with him a few times, like now. A computer file or voice log would really come in handy at the moment." Jack stopped talking and frowned at the mess on the table. It was mostly tools and spare parts, a tea pot with a matching cup, but no sign of what the Doctor had been working on last. He sat down in the lone chair, there had to be a clue in here somewhere.
With a frustrated sigh he stretched out his leg. His foot bumped into something. Looking down he saw the Toclafane shell rolling away from him in an arc, making a thumping sound as it moved from one black lacquered metallic petal to the next. It stopped when it hit one of the table legs, almost embracing it between two of the petals. Curiosity piqued, he bent over and reached down to pick it up only to find he had to work it free of the leg. It reluctantly came free, scraping some paint off the support as it did so.
Frowning he turned it over in his hand as he leaned back in the chair, trying to figure out what the Doctor could have been doing with the shell. When he'd brought it back to the Hub the Doctor had treated it as if it was the golden egg itself. So what was it doing discarded so cavalierly on the floor?
As he examined the shell he could identify the disconnected life support system, loose wires and tubes, but there was nothing obvious that could tell him what the Doctor had wanted with it. He briefly wondered if perhaps his friend had disabled it. He glanced at the pile of scrap that had been the cyber converter. No, this device was far too intact to have received that treatment at the hands of the Time Lord.
"Nothing in this one," Gwen declared, breaking into his thoughts as she slammed the cabinet door shut with a loud metallic clang.
"Did you see anything that looked like it shouldn't be there?" Jack asked putting the Toclafane shell down on the table.
"Now how would I know that? It's all alien to me. It'd be better if you asked me if anything looks like it does belong."
"Point taken, keep looking," Jack ordered.
"Yes sir," Gwen replied curtly. Her voice then softened, "We'll figure this out Jack, don't worry."
"What makes you so sure?"
"He's your friend, you won't fail him."
The muscles on Jack's jaw tightened briefly. "That wasn't enough for Tosh and Owen," he stated quietly. Gwen opened her mouth to respond but no words came out, Jack broke the uncomfortable silence. "Go on, get back to work," he barked.
He watched as Gwen shrugged and moved on to the next storage unit. She was immediately on task, carefully but quickly examining every shelf and item on it. It was time he got back to work also. Contemplating the table, he felt he was missing something, something important. He examined the teapot. He wasn't sure why. Trying to read the tea leaves perhaps. Didn't work, the tea was well confined in a strainer, there were no leaves.
'The Doctor had been doing something that involved the Toclafane shell, but what?' Jack wondered. His eye caught a part lying on the table. Small, black, it was familiar to him, but he hadn't seen one in a while. Picking it up he saw it was damaged, a slight bubbling on the surface consistent with a burnout of some kind. The TARDIS had a ton of them in her circuitry. It had to be Gallifreyan in origin.
'What would the Doctor want this for?' he asked himself as he rolled the part between his thumb and index finger. 'Or is this what he replaced?'
Jack picked up the shell again, examining the inside closely. There were two parts identical to the damaged one left in the shell. He could see several ports that might accommodate additional ones. He tested his theory with the burnt out part. It fit perfectly. So the Doctor had been cannibalizing the shell for its parts. Its Gallifreyan parts. He looked around for the device that the Doctor had been working on. It wasn't on the table or under. Nor had it contributed to the debris around the table. It must be somewhere in this room.
"Gwen," Jack yelled as he stood up from the table, "I know what we're looking for. It's gold, shiny, oblong shaped, about the size of a DVD player but no sharp corners, rounded, and has uh this etching on it like the symbol at the car park only more complicated."
Gwen looked over to him hope then doubt crossing her face. "You sure?
"Positive. It's got to be what he meant," Jack replied as he quickly went to the nearest shelf unit on his side of the room. "It's the last thing he was working on and now it's missing."
Gwen frowned. "He might also have meant something he saw here."
Jack didn't even bother to turn around to answer her, instead he just kept quickly going through the storage units on his side of the room as he responded. "Look it's a gut feeling, but it's a strong gut feeling. And if I had listened to my gut instead of being so stupidly bureaucratic in our search we would have it by now. My gut is also telling me we don't have much time left, so get back to work."
From the sounds behind him, Jack could tell Gwen was doing as she was told and moving far more quickly than before. The unit he was on was not much help. It had some labels, all R with a hash mark except the top one which had a J but no number other mark that he could see. The label was worn though, so as a precaution, he scanned it with his wrist device, just in case there was a 12 the Doctor could see but he couldn't. Disappointment hit him as he saw it was the manufacturer's name.
The next unit was more difficult. It was labeled, but with barcodes. He was about to skip checking them, thinking the Doctor wouldn't have been able to read it, but stopped himself. The TARDIS might still be helping her pilot with translations. Barcode patterns had to be in her data banks. He scanned them, no joy. All A's followed by three digits, numbered consecutively. There was no rhyme or reason for the markings from one unit to the other. They seem to have been gathered from random storage areas around Cardiff. He expanded that region when he saw the next shelf. It was labeled in Jathaaese. Torchwood had apparently scavenged a lot more than an energy weapon from that downed sunglider.
Fortunately Jack was fluent in Jathaaese, having had a few assignments on Jathaa. The warlike race that lived there knew the importance of R&R. Jack never found those assignments particularly arduous. They had no equivalent for "J" in their language however. So it wouldn't be here. He gave the shelves a cursory look, there was nothing that looked even remotely like what the Doctor had been working on, and moved on.
Soon Jack was beginning to wonder if he had overlooked the device. There were only four unsearched storage units between him and Gwen. He couldn't imagine the Doctor would have bothered to put it this far back in the room. Going through the motions, he was now convinced was heading down another dead end, he moved to the next storage unit. It looked more like it belonged in a hobbyist's garage than in a government facility. Open in structure, its gun metal gray were shelves bulging with spare parts and cables. He was about to give it a pass when his eyes stopped on a middle shelf, its label clear and easy to read: J-12.
"Oh, please be it," pleaded Jack unaware he had spoken out loud.
"Have you found it?" asked Gwen stopping in her work.
"I've found a shelf labeled J-12," replied Jack as he started removing coils of cable. "I haven't found the device though. It's just junk back here. Nothing's intact. Wait..." A glint of gold caught Jack's eye. Way in the back of the shelf. He started to reach for it and saw it move, a slight tilt upward. That meant the part he didn't see had moved downward, possibly starting on a path off the shelf itself. He backed off.
"It's not there?" asked Gwen, who was now standing behind him.
"Oh it's there, but it's about to fall off the back," replied Jack as he pushed past her to have a look at the back of the open shelf unit and found himself thwarted by the 5 cm gap between that unit and the next. To his dismay it was the same on the other side.
"What was he thinking, stuffing it in the back like that?" asked Jack, exasperated and not expecting an answer. Gwen provided one anyway.
"Maybe he was hiding it from the creature. Maybe it's the creature that wants us to find it, not him."
Jack thought for a moment, 'Could she be right? Could they be on the creature's errand, not the Doctor's? He pushed the idea from his mind, he didn't have time for it. "No, it's the Doctor who wants us to find this."
"All right then," said Gwen, "how do we get it out safely?"
Jack stared at the unit then shook his head with a laugh when he realized how simple the solution was. "Start stuffing things in the shelf below it till they reach the wall. Give it nowhere to fall then we can get it out."
They quickly took large items from the other shelves and jammed them into the lower shelf. Soon Jack saw the movement he wanted, the gold corner of the device moving down meaning the other corner was now supported. "Okay that's enough." He carefully removed the items in the front of the shelf and revealed what he had been looking for. Intact, undamaged and hopefully, operational.
"Now comes the hard part," declared Jack as he picked up his prize from the shelf.
"The hard part?" queried Gwen, incredulously.
Jack smiled wryly as he answered. "Yes figuring out what it is and how to operate it." He was turning the device over in his hands when another idea struck him. "Look, this might not even be what he was talking about. It could be something he saw when he put this on the shelf. Go through everything on there and see if there is anything else we should be looking at."
Gwen raised her eyebrows. "Are you sure I'm the one to do that?"
"Yes, from what I saw it was mostly mundane earth parts. Just bring me anything that isn't. I'll be over at the table trying to open this up without breaking it."
At the table Jack continued to turn the device trying to discover its purpose. This was going to be a difficult puzzle. He recognized the markings as Gallifreyan. Not good, he'd never learned how to read that language. The Doctor had always ignored him when asked what a specific marking meant. All the time he had spent on the TARDIS and he didn't even know what the Gallifreyan for Exit was. He could see no seams, openings or controls. Just the unreadable markings.
He started to trace one of the lines and felt a vibration beneath his fingers. Had he turned it on? He continued to trace the pattern and was rewarded with a display screen. Amazingly the language of the display was fifty first century common, his native tongue. 'At last a break,' he thought.
Reading the instructions that had come up on the screen he realized this was indeed the correct device, the hunt was over.
"Well that's convenient," said Gwen, who had come up behind him unnoticed holding a few Sfiphix children's toys in her hands. "It's in English."
"English?" repeated Jack surprised. "No, it's…" he stopped himself as he realized what was going on. "It's telepathic. It's doing the translation for us."
"Why bother with words then? Why not just put the instructions in our mind direct"
"That's not as easy as you would think. Words make a better interface. Gives the recipient a chance to digest the information in their own way. Important when dealing with cross species communication."
"So is it what we were looking for then?"
"Yes, it is," affirmed Jack as he stood up from the table tucking the device under his arm. "Let's go, it's time to see whether it works or not."
Gwen followed Jack as he set off at a quick trot. "Ianto, let me into the cell block," Jack yelled as he entered the main office area.
"You found it?" Ianto asked as he entered a few strokes on his keyboard. Jack heard the click of the locking mechanism for the cell block opening.
"Yes, it's here," Jack looked down at the device. "And disarm that cell."
"No, sir."
Jack turned back from the open door to the cell block, fury in his eyes. "What?"
"No, you don't know if that will work. It might make things worse. We need the cell in case things go wrong."
The captain stole a glance at Gwen to see if he could get some support there and saw none. Wrong time to throw his weight around. "Alright you have a point. Come on, I might need some help."
Ianto gave a worried glance at his monitor. "What is it?" Jack asked.
"I have Dr. Jones coming in." explained the aide.
"What? What does she want?"
"I called her in. The Doctor's condition is deteriorating, we might need her expertise."
"Okay, but she can wait at the door for a few minutes, can't she?"
"I told her not to worry about traffic lights that I would take care of them. She's in the city now and someone needs to monitor the program as a precaution."
"What's her ETA?"
"Ten minutes."
Jack smiled. "Good work, I hadn't thought of that but you're right we may need her." He then turned to Gwen. "Looks like it's just you and me then, you ready?"
"Of course."
Jack hurried through the cell block aware of the ambassador and Frank as they passed them by. One sitting on his bed, frail and pathetic, staring at nothing. The other out cold, most likely drugged by Ianto. Both problems he would have to deal with later, but didn't have time for now.
Outside the Doctor's cell he quickly went over the instructions for the device. Simple enough: target the alien energy, extract it, it goes into a holding area where it can be destroyed. He saw his friend shudder when he opened the door. 'Don't worry my friend it will be over soon,' he said silently.
He started to scan the Doctor's body and his hopes for an easy solution plummeted and shattered into a thousand pieces. The energy signatures were hopelessly intertwined one green, one yellow. There was no central core that he could see and both seemed to be hanging on to the other, so it was impossible to tell who was the invader and who was the invaded. He quickly scanned his own hand, as the Doctor's screams started echoing off the cell walls, hoping perhaps a body's native energy was represented by a specific color. No joy, his energy was blue.
As he saw his friend thrashing on the floor he thought to just pull one color energy out and if he was wrong put it back and pull the other. With the intertwining it would take a long time, but it was the only hope they had. He started to pull on a tip of the yellow energy lifting its grasp on the green. An alarm showed on the device. The containment chamber was disabled. He released the energy and shut down the device. The Doctor's screams subsided into ragged sobs, He rolled on his side and Jack could see trails of red blood dripping from his nose and mouth. His eyes staring at nothing, as if blind.
Jack's hands shook. He wanted to smash the energy extractor into bits for the harm it had caused, but it was still the only hope they had. He put it down gently and stepped into the cell wanting to assure his friend he would find a solution. The Doctor's reaction was immediate, arched back and screaming, his hands pounded against the hard floor. Jack heard a sickening crack as he backed out.
Feeling helpless as he closed the door to the cell, he turned to see Gwen, whose face was filled with sympathy, when what he really wanted was for someone to blame him as much as he blamed himself.