Twenty years later...
The shrieking bounced off the walls. High-pitched and squalling, it permeated through Pete Tyler's eardrums, sending chemical impulses to his dreaming brain that initiated panic and alarm in him, even before he was cognizant. Without warning, he threw back covers and sheets, feet hitting the floor as he sat, blinking at a rather ugly picture of what he supposed some artist thought a traditional, British village looked like.
The shrieking didn't stop.
Bleary turned towards the earbuds on the nightstand. The obnoxious noise ended, but it's aftermath still reverberated through the still air and through his skull, earning a sleepy grunt as he contemplated why he shouldn't throw the blasted piece of plastic against the wall again? Because, he realized with grudging admission, he would just have to buy a new ones. And in an age when everyone on the planet had ear pods that streamed information at them twenty-four, seven, he shouldn't be without. With a reluctant sigh he barked the name of Miles Connor.
"The master has awakened, has he?" Miles dry, nasal drawl sounded at the other end, bemused and unrepentant. Not for the first time Pete wondered why he put up with it, and remembered that Miles was one of the best PA's he'd had ever...not to mention he knew six ways to kill a human.
"It's too early in the morning for your lip, Miles, and you are too far away to kill." Not that he could manage that feat. Pete knew that despite the slick, neatly gelled blonde hair and the trim, ultra-hipster black-framed glasses was a man who had spent years in special operations for the Republic of Great Britain and had worked on missions that even Pete couldn't know about. Besides, he was a whiz at handling his schedule, could type 90 words a minute, and made an amazing cup of coffee, so he was useful to keep around.
"Promises, promises, are you up yet?"
Pete lied. "I'm moving to the kitchen right now." He flopped back on the pillows.
"Since I hear no coffee maker going, I will assume you are still in bed." Miles sardony even sounded like a smirk. Pete rolled his eyes. "It's currently six in the morning, you have a meeting at 8 with the Vitex board regarding latest earnings report, a ten o'clock interview with Sherry Wexler at the BBC…"
"Sherry? She the blonde or the brunette?" Pete scrubbed at his bristled face, already beginning to hate his day.
"She's gone ginger now, she's interviewing you for some piece on British titans of business."
He glanced at his rumpled and well-worn pajamas and snorted. "Some titan. Obviously haven't seen me without a shave."
"Let them keep their fantasy. It will break their heart to know you still have t-shirts from the 1970's," Miles assured him blandly. "Then at noon, you have Yvonne Hartman?"
Pete made a face and groaned.
"What does she want?"
"You, naked, on her Union Jack sheets, preferably with a bottle of fine French wine and a box of chocolates."
If Pete had been drinking anything he would have choked. Instead he spluttered at the imagery, cringing at the visuals. "Bloody hell, Miles, what did you have to go and do that for?"
"It's why they pay me so well, you know," he replied without a hint of regret. "You know she has wanted you for years, right?"
Twenty to be exact. And he knew, ever since that fateful night when everything changed.
"Right, I'll do it, get a report together for me so I can take something. Anything else?"
"The last matter of business, of course, is the matter of tonights event. Chicken or fish?"
Pete's stomach curdled at the thought of either.
"Do I have to?"
"It is your wife's birthday party, sir."
Jackie...his wife.
"I suppose we have to keep up appearances." The words tasted sour coming out of his mouth. "Pick whatever, I don't care, like as not won't be eating it anyway."
"She'll notice," Miles warned, his tone sing-song. There was no love lost there for Jackie.
"What else is new?" His rubbed his hands over his eyes, trying to ignore visions of Jackie screeching at him later for ruining her birthday. "Did you send the gift I asked you to get her?"
There was a long pause on the other end of the line.
"Miles…"
"Sir, are you sure pink bunny slippers are how you want to convey the fact that you are still in love with your estranged wife?"
"It was the first present I ever got her!" It had been a cheap pair from some dodgy market. They looked as if they would melt if they got too near an open heating source and most of the fur had come off in the first wash, but Jackie had kept them for years early on, sentimentally claiming that they were her warmest pair, even when clearly they weren't.
"Sir, that's cute and all, but don't you think diamonds or a new fur would be nicer?"
"Miles, you hate my wife," he growled into the phone. "What in the world do you care?"
"I don't. But I also hate that you are miserable without her."
The sigh that emanated from Pete told the whole, sad story. He stared at the bleak, gray light out of the window. "I am such a sodding prat, aren't I?"
"I'd call it something different, but to each their own," Miles muttered in that cool, smug way that seem to convey both his superiority and his indifference.
"Jackie has diamonds enough, Miles. And besides, the slippers have fur, mink or some other such rodent they've dyed that hideous color she likes so much."
"I guess it will be memorable."
"I hope." Pete finally managed to drag himself to the edge of the bed. His toes searched out his slippers, sliding into them. With effort, he rose, joints creaking in ways he didn't want to think about. "Anything else?"
"You finally out of bed?"
"Yes, you vile bastard, and I'm making my coffee. Have the driver be here for me at 7:30, right?"
"Your wish is my command, even if I think pink, mink-fur bunny slippers are ridiculous."
"Sod off," he snapped, clicking off his phone, even as he could hear his assistant's laughter on the other end. He stood by the bed, rubbing his face, contemplating whether to shower or get coffee. The need to wake up quickly screamed shower, and so he wandered into his small, cold en suite, flipping on the water, letting it warm as he stared at himself blearily in the mirror.
Jackie's birthday. She would be...thirty-nine now? Forty? Hell, he lost count, trying to think back to their wedding years before. She'd been eighteen? She had to be forty now, right? Not that she'd admit it. Jackie Tyler would rather cut the fat diamond off her finger than admit to her real age. Of course, considering the current state of their marriage, he was surprised she hadn't. Given how much she had whined till he had given it to her as a tenth anniversary present years ago, he doubted she'd ever let that go.
Forty years...God, that made him...he didn't want to think about it, knowing it was depressing. Over fifty, that much he'd admit to. And he looked every bit of it. His ginger hair had begun thinning ages ago, and he now simply kept it buzzed short, utilitarian and smart, thankfully with no gray yet. But what he lacked there, he made up for with the lines on a face that used to be always smiling, always happy, always making a joke or dreaming an idea. That had been years ago, though. The old Pete Tyler, the one who had spent his days beating the streets just to pick up a quid, and his evenings bowling with his mates, or playing in his band, or getting pissed on his own body weight's worth of beer. When was the last time he had done anything fun like that?
Back before Yvonne Hartman and Torchwood showed up in his life.
He still recalled that rainy night, thought about it often. He'd gotten in that car and been told that there were things in this world he couldn't imagine. Of how there were aliens and rifts, and technologies that would make even his wildest, most fanciful creations seem like children's toys. He had scoffed at the pale, slip of a girl, but she had shrugged and driven him to Canary Wharf. And what he saw there that night convinced him that not only was she right, but that the entire universe and how he understood it was completely wrong.
"That's why we need you, Peter," she had said, smilingly charmingly as he had tried to take it all in. They stood in a cold, sterile lab, somewhere in the bowels of the glass and metal building, staring at something that by all rights shouldn't exist. It wasn't big, only as tall as he was and barely as wide, but it was advanced, that much was for sure, far more so than anything Pete had ever seen. And Yvonne assured him, it was alien. "We need men like you, men who have vision and talent, to help us make sense of all this. And to help us protect our planet from itself."
"From itself?" Pete had blinked at her as if she were mad. "The technology here, the things that it could do…"
"Can change the world under the right circumstances, yes. But under the wrong ones, what could happen?" She blinked mildly at an alien spaceship, the sort you'd see in those bad movies as a kid in the cinema. "And of course, there's always the aliens themselves. They are around, mostly quiet, keep to themselves and their own business. But every so often...well, there are those who have ideas. We try to take care of it quietly, of course."
"What, like Men in Black?"
She'd laughed at that. "Peter, you're too cute. That old, wives tale, nothing like that. Torchwood was established by the family of our old, royals under a charter by the Queen. One of the last she signed before they permanently had to remove the royal family because of the raging Lycanthropy. Their hope was that through our work we could protect Great Britain from whatever outside threats may come. Say what you will against the old royals, they were patriots. And it's our job to make sure that work gets carried out."
Pete honestly didn't care one way or the other about the old royal family. But he did care about him and his life. "Is this stuff you want me doing dangerous?"
"For you? Probably not. We need you to be our eyes and ears."
"What, you mean like a spy? Like with a tux and martini while he's shooting up people?"
"This isn't one of those John Shackleton movies, with the super spy who gets all the women and all the gadgets." Yvonne glanced towards the spacecraft. "Well, at least some of the gadgets. The truth is, Peter, what we need is someone who isn't out to make a splash. We need someone who can fit in, someone who is friendly, gregarious, charming, but smart and cunning as well."
"And you want me to spy on what?"
"Torchwood is a research institute, Peter, we monitor the situations on Earth, we try to keep it safe as best we can, and we hope that nothing gets too out of control. We have had access to technology that has been able to change the world radically in the 140 years since our charter. But we aren't in the business of making money and profit. Sometimes, we partner with those who are interested in the technology. Other times, there are those who would want the technology and not bother asking. Still, there are those out there who stumble on something, some bit of alien refuse left behind, and not realizing what they have, begin messing about. We have to keep tabs on what's out there, who has what, and what it could be doing."
"Corporate espionage?" It finally made sense to him. He scrubbed at his face, the growth of whiskers rough against his palms. "You want someone on the inside keeping an eye on things for you?"
"Yes," she replied simply.
"Why me?" After all, in his battered jeans and worn out t-shirt, he hardly screamed corporate spy. He wasn't sure he'd even be picked up by a grungy, local band.
"We've been watching you for a while," she replied, smiling genuinely. It didn't stop Pete from becoming horrified at the very idea.
"Watching me? Why? What have I done?"
"It's not what you've done, it's what you could be. Don't think your work hasn't been noticed."
"Work?" He snorted, running nervous fingers through what was left of his ginger hair. "Clearly you ain't been watching too proper, work is something I don't have."
"I thought the plans you had for low-cost solar power were quite impressive."
"That, I was just borrowing bits and pieces off other people's work I saw in the engineering mags," he waved it off impatiently before stopping. Wide-eyed, he turned to her. "How did you know about that?"
"You turned it into one of those mags, remember? A contest for prize money?"
Pete felt his mouth go dry as he stared at the young woman, who only grinned glibly. "That was three years ago, and I didn't win anything."
"No, you didn't, we gave the prize to some nutter in Manchester who figured out how to have a self-flushing toilet, but that wasn't the point."
"You?"
Yvonne nodded airily. "Torchwood subsidizes most of those magazines you like, you know, a way for us to see what's out there, monitor what is ours, what isn't, and whether it's a threat or not. Control, limits, that's what this game is all about! And besides, it helps us find promising talent. And you, Peter, have promise."
"Yeah, so much you gave the prize to someone else."
"Well, we can't make it that obvious. Besides, we wanted to see what your story was." She wandered across the white tile to a computer monitor in the wall. Without even using a keyboard, she pressed the screen and text and images began flying across. "You were always gifted in math and science, did well in the subjects in school, even sat your A-levels. Could have done uni if you wanted. But you didn't. Why not?"
Was his life an open book to this strange woman and her weird machines? He glared at the offending screen first, then at her, feeling his pale cheeks burn slightly. "Couldn't afford it, right? Problem with that?"
"No," she replied without bothering to look at him. "I see here you've done the odd job, catch as catch can. Not exactly the sort I would think would settle down with a wife."
She finally glanced over her shoulder at him speculatively. "Though you are fit enough, I can see why the ladies like you."
"Alright, enough, you've had your fun and games, and leave Jackie out of this." This stranger had trodden on one of his sacred cows, and that was being good enough for his wife. "She's a good woman, deserves a lot better than me, that's for sure, and I don't care what that stupid machine there says, I never have cheated on her."
"I'm not one to judge." Yvonne's gaze swept him up and down for a long moment. Pete had a feeling that she rather wished he did step out on Jackie. "Besides, she will suit perfectly for what we want."
"Let's not bring Jackie into...whatever this...is." Pete waved his arms wildly around him. "I'm not even sure what this is. What is it you want me doing?"
"I told you, we want you to spy," Yvonne replied patiently.
"But how?"
"Simple," she turned back to the screen. "What's the one thing you want more than anything, Peter?"
His patience was wearing thin, but he humored the strange woman anyway. "To be able to do things right. To support my wife and show her I'm a real man who can take care of his family."
"Not really," Yvonne murmured, still reading whatever was in front of her. "Let's be honest with ourselves, Peter. You don't want to be a real man. You want to be a great man. A man who is taken seriously, not thought of as a gad about who can't grow up. You want to show people you know your product, you know your business, and you know how to make things people would like."
"Yeah," he shrugged, wondering why that was in any way particularly different from what he had told her. "I wouldn't mind, you know, having a business of my own, doing the type of things I'd want to do."
"Like Vitex?"
"Well, maybe, sure, why not? I mean, the stuff they got me selling tastes like horse piss, they could do so much better with it."
"It's not horse piss, no, but judging from the chemical make up, I'd not drink it myself." Yvonne made a face, turning away from her screen. "I'm fairly certain some of those added minerals are toxic in high enough doses."
"What? You have analyzed it?"
"Of course, and don't drink it, Peter, that stuff might kill you. You have ideas for it, right?"
Too gobsmacked by the idea they had actually analyzed the stuff, and half afraid to know what was in it, he nodded vaguely. "Yeah, I mean...I had ideas to make it taste better, get more flavors, maybe add things like electrolytes, like those sports drinks, or maybe mineral water."
"Sounds brilliant. So when would you like to start doing that?"
What was she going on about? "What you mean, start, I don't know, couple of years, when I make enough to buy the rights?"
Yvonne acted as if she hadn't heard him. "How about next week? I think our lawyers can finalize all of it by then, and well, then it's the investors, and more lawyers, that bit will get complicated, but I'm sure given two months, we could get the new and improved Pete Tyler Vitex into production. And of course, advertising...you'd be a great pitch man, you know."
She might as well have been speaking Greek for all the sense she was making. "Wait, hang on, what in the bloody hell are you talking about?"
"Vitex, Peter, I thought that much was clear. Your new company."
He stared at the woman, who looked barely out of uni, talking about spying and aliens and technology and making him the head of Vitex, and wondered vaguely if he wasn't mad. Maybe Jackie had clocked him in the head with her shoe as he stormed out, and this was all his dream as he lay sprawled on the floor. "I don't own Vitex."
"You will tomorrow." Yvonne uttered it as if it was as sure as the sun rising, and just as cheerfully. "Torchwood is interested in you, Peter. We want to make you our man on the inside as it were, our spy. The best way to do that is to make you one of the boys, one of the elite circle who run British industry. Get to know them, become their pal, make deals, get involved in their business. And let us know what you find out."
He really had to be dreaming this, or he had to be insane. "And it's that simple? Like...some fairy godmother? You and your Torchwood, you come in, you buy me a company, just like that?"
"Just like that," Yvonne replied. There was something of the predator in this woman in her no-fuss suit and her cool, pulled back hair. Nothing about Yvonne Hartman screamed attractive in the way he'd come to know it, no overdone hair and makeup, no cheap, tight clothes. But he supposed she was pretty enough. She was certainly into him, judging by the way her gazed flickered over him once more, as a slow smile spread across her face. He felt uncomfortably like a tiny mouse standing before a giant lioness, knowing that in about five seconds she would swallow him whole if he let her.
"And all I got to do is just...spy on these fat cats for you, that's it?"
"That's all you have to do."
She didn't look like the devil. Frankly, she looked like a girl who had just got done with school and was trying to seduce her old tutor. But something about this all rang far too good to be true. But he thought of Jackie back home in their hole of a flat, in the dingy estates, crying her eyes out and wanting something better for her life. And he wanted something better for her too. This could give them everything they wanted. He could have his dream, she could have a husband to be proud of and a life of ease. It could be everything they wanted.
"Yeah, alright." He said it so casually, perhaps cockily, earning a pleased grin from the woman in front of him. "We got a deal?"
"Of course." She held out her cool hand, shaking his own firmly. "I'm so pleased you could come on board, Peter."
That had been the start, of course. Not that overnight things changed for him and Jacks, no. In fact, she spent the better part of the next two weeks scoffing at him. He hadn't told her the Torchwood angle, of course, Jackie would never keep her mouth shut on that sort of thing. But he told her he'd had some investors interested in helping him buy Vitex, and she had laughed in his face and said she'd believe it when they had money in their account to pay rent. Another two months later, she wasn't laughing anymore. Vitex was off the ground, with Pete as the majority stockholder, and they were out of the Estate and into a posh place in the city. Vitex was taking the country by storm, and suddenly Pete's ugly mug was on billboards and buses, and every time he wandered into a pub to watch a match, someone would mention how he looked like the bloke selling the vitamin drink that they saw on someadvertl. Soon, the quiet life of Pete Tyler, with its bowling and beer, and occasionally a band, went the way of the public. He was suddenly the CEO of a company that had taken the soft drink world by storm, and now sold everything from vitamin waters to power bars, even sponsored sporting teams, and had a race car. The posh place in the city turned into an estate in the countryside. Now paparazzi followed them everywhere, interested in the minutest details of their life. And Jackie, for her part, revelled in the attention, even as Pete longed for the days when the pair of them were nothing more than a faceless couple in a crowd.
And as wonderful as things became, it changed them too.
He hadn't wanted to admit it, not for a long time. He loved Jacks. He loved that he could do these things for her. But just as the lack of money strained their marriage once, so too did the surfeit of it. They both changed for the worse, Jackie becoming superficial and vain, concerned more with overcoming her chavvy background and being accepted by polite society than staying true to herself. And Pete, now the head of a diversified, multinational corporation growing faster than he could keep up with, work became his life and passion. Each hurt by the changes in the other, they retreated into their separate worlds, Jackie to parties and dinners, Pete to boardrooms and offices. And one day, many years later, they both woke up to realize they were leading two separate lives, far apart from one another.
And then there was Torchwood...he never mentioned that.
The end came with more of a whimper than an explosion. Jackie, sitting at breakfast as servants waited on her hand and foot, reading the tabs, fussing that he hadn't made it to yet another of her society parties. Pete had tuned her out for the most part, busy flipping through his emails. It was only when she tossed a piece of buttered toast at his nose that he looked up and saw the tears in her eyes. She'd been talking to him for fifteen minutes and he hadn't even been listening. And all the pleading and apologizing in the world couldn't stop her from sobbing and storming out, off to what had been their shared bedroom before he took to sleeping in his home office of a night. He'd felt guilty of course, had thought about going up to console her, to assure her that he loved her, but had no desire to tangle with Hurricane Jackie first thing in the morning. Instead, he finished his coffee, gathered his things, and reasoned it would all blow over by dinner time.
At midday he received the divorce papers from an attorney that Jackie had hired. He'd been too properly shocked to say anything, stunned Jackie would actually go through it. He'd talk to her, work it all out. He told Miles so, even as the other man said nothing and shot him quiet, pitying looks. He'd begged and pleaded, but Jacks had remained sadly firm on the matter. Oh, of course, they would keep things hush hush, for the sake of appearances and Vitex. He had of course sold that to John Lumic two years before, but Pete was still the face of the brand. It wouldn't do to have rumor run rampant. When the time was right, they would reveal it to the world, tell everyone they would remain friends, and move on. It was for the best, after all. They were different people.
Pete bought his apartment in the city, fully furnished, not that he cared what it looked like. He moved his things from the estate, set up shop there. It was convenient enough, he supposed, and yes, the artwork was drab, the place cold and austere and terribly lonely. And it had no Jackie. And he hated to admit it, despite the drama and the distance, he loved her. Always had. And he wished in that moment he had never said yes to Yvonne Hartman.
The man staring at his reflection in the mirror looked far older even than his fifty-three years. Steam began to blur the edges, and he blinked, realizing that the shower by now was ready, and he had things to do and people to see. Pete Tyler, Vitex businessman, Torchwood spy, the man you could trust.
Frankly, he couldn't even trust himself anymore.