He smiled, he laughed, he charmed Sherry Wexler. He was honest, reliable Pete Tyler, the man whose drinks made you healthy and kept you trim, a titan of industry in that he had taken a no-name, rubbish tonic and turned it into an empire, while at his heart staying a humble man who loved his beer and his wife. He played his part, grinning and gaping the whole time. And the minute he was outside of the BBC studio, the facade faded.
Miles stood outside waiting. His PA handed him a Vitex without a word.
"God, those things are such rubbish. Why do I have to do them?"
"Your agreement with Lumic. You'd remain the face and sell the brand, man the day-to-day operations, and dance like a monkey if he required. That's why."
Pete glared over at his assistant but said nothing. He may be a prat, but Miles was usually spot on in his sarcasm. "Price I pay for selling out, eh?"
Miles shrugged. He was a good company man, Miles was, and by company, Pete really meant Torchwood. Pete had asked no questions when Yvonne Hartman had assigned the talented and acerbic Miles to serve as his personal assistant, though he did think it was odd that a man who clearly had been trained to field work would be assigned to fetch him coffee and schedule his calendar. There was no denying Miles was efficient at it, brutally so, manning his insane schedule like a field commander. Pete had no doubt that should something truly dangerous occur to him, Miles could handle that too, despite the neatly gelled and dressed figure he cut.
"I sold out because that's what I was told to do." Pete wasn't sure why he felt the need to defend himself. Miles didn't particularly care. But it had stung, selling Vitex. Sure, he hadn't built up the company himself, that had all been Torchwood. For all they kept up their public face of being a technological research facility, putting out mind numbing studies and reports on a regular basis, behind the scenes they moved adeptly, and much of Vitex's rise was due to that adroitness. But he had still shepherded much of it. The company face, the direction, the major decisions had all been his. The company was his baby. And yet, he'd been forced to give it up for Torchwoods bigger agenda. They had made him, he supposed, and they could easily destroy him. And so he went along with it.
"Ours is not to reason why, sir, just do or...be killed or something." Miles barely looked up from the phone in his hand, scrolling up and down the interface, frowning at it in consternation over his thick,black-framed glasses.
"You have a phone?" Pete frowned at the device in his PA's hand.
"Yes, sir, it's how I keep track of your ridiculous schedule."
"Where are your earpods?"
Miles barely blinked up from what he was doing. "I broke one yesterday, I've put in a requisition to get a new pair."
"Broke? Do I want to know how?"
"Like as not, sir, unless you really desire a lecture on the mating habits of the Xanthian puffer fish."
"Is that alien?"
"Yes," Miles replied, holding out his phone. "Your wife called."
Pete stared at the device, unsure of whether to be excited by this or not. It could be hit or miss with Jacks. "What's she want?"
Impatience flickered across Miles' face. "Since I haven't listened to her dulcet tones screaming on my voicemail, I don't know. Why don't you call her and find out?"
"What good are you to me then," Pete muttered, taking the phone and dialing back the number.
"I'd take a bullet for you, sir, but there are lines even I won't cross."
"Right," Pete murmured, waiting for the distinct sound of the line ringing through. Jackie of course would have her pods on, she practically lived with them in. Sure enough, she picked up on the first ring.
"What," she snapped, delightful as ever.
"You called?" Pete didn't bother introducing himself. In the background he could hear the sounds of plates clattering and the bustle of movement. Obviously the party arrangers were there already.
Jackie's tone softened only a little, growling now instead of outright snapping. "You are planning to be here this afternoon, right? I've got too much going on, and you told me you'd be here."
"Said I would, Jacks." He could see Miles shaking his head out of the corner of his eye.
"We have two-hundred guests and the heads of state of three countries coming tonight, Pete, and you can't just fob me off with work."
"Of course not, sweetheart. It's your fortieth birthday!"
"Thirty-nine," she snapped. "My biography says thirty-nine."
That stupid biography. He bit back a curse, smiling tightly instead. "Jacks, I said I'd be there and I will."
"Right. And I hope you got me something good this year. Not like the private cooking lessons last year."
"I set you up with the President's private chef, Jacks." He'd ever heard the end of that faux paux. He'd thought it would be something fun to do together. She'd taken it as an insult to both her cooking and her sensibilities. What else did they have a private chef for? She could use her own if she wanted to know how to make a cuppa. And where was the private zeppelin she always wanted?
"Yeah, well, at least you made it up with the new Lexus. Now, be here at three o'clock. The official photographer will be here, and I want you looking sharp and not like you just stumbled out of a booze up with your boardroom."
He felt his shoulders slump in defeat. "Yeah...I'll be there."
"Good." There was a crash and Jackie swore loudly in a way that would likely shock the likes of Sherry Wexler. "I've got to go, the idiots we've hired just knocked over one of the arrangements, thousands of pounds, down the drain." Without preamble she clicked off, leaving Pete holding the phone to his ear in silence.
Miles merely held out his hand. "Still think the pink, mink slippers are a good idea?"
Pete sighed, handing over the phone to him, scrubbing at his face. "Jacks wants me there early to take publicity shots or somesuch."
"Whinging for a zepplin, yet?" Miles delighted in complaining about Jackie. They'd never gotten on, not since he'd first appeared at the house and had Jackie shrieked at him about coming to do work when she had a personal tennis arrangement for them with the pairs who'd won Wimbledon. The fact that Miles told her that she could shove her and her Wimbledon pair up her arse, and he could help her with it likely didn't endear him to her either, and neither had Pete's refusal to fire him when she'd stormed into his office, outraged. The two had existed for some time now in a state of detente, choosing not to acknowledge the others existence while snipping about them when they weren't there.
"Something like that," Pete sighed, glancing at his watch. "Let's get this meeting with Yvonne done before I head out to face the beast?"
"That description could go either way, you know," Miles mumbled, earning another sharp look from Pete, for which he was completely unapologetic for.
Torchwood Tower sat on the other side of town, a giant glass monstrosity, barely finished when he first had come to Canary Wharf years ago. Emblazoned over its chrome and glass doors was the stately emblem of the Torchwood Institute, a symbol of the old guard, the world that had been before. Established by Queen Victoria as one of her final acts, Torchwood as far as the world was concerned carried out a mandate for research on behalf of the British people, though many murmured they were merely a front for MI-5. It was closer to the truth than any of them would like. Torchwood likely would be offended at being associated with MI-5. Pete wasn't, in all honesty. He was a spy, and that's what they did, ensuring that no alien threat or technology got so far out of hand that it would threaten the peace and stability of the British Republic. And sitting at the very head of the entire mechanism was the woman who had turned his world upside down so long ago.
"Mr. Tyler, here to see Dr. Hartman?"
Pete nodded at the pretty secretary behind the sleek, modern desk. "The usual."
The brunette smiled and rose, leading him into the large, plush office Yvonne had claimed as her own since taking leadership of the institute ten years before. She'd been bucking for it for a while, a shoe in most said. She'd been with the Institute since she was still in her university days, one of the best and the brightest. Pete didn't know about that, but he was certain that Yvonne Hartman was perhaps one of their most driven and focused, and the most ruthless. Clearly, she had no qualms about making the hard decisions when it came down to what she thought was her personal, not just the Torchwood, mandate, to protect Great Britain from all threats.
She stood behind her desk, another sleek glass and chrome edifice, one that suited Yvonne's cool and deliberate sensibilities. She looked as if she was merely gazing out of the window across the landscape of London, looking down on the Thames out of boredom, but in fact he could hear her holding one half of what sounded like a friendly conversation.
"Yes...yes, that's right, I had to order it. Because the Russian Prime Minister worried for the Tzar and his families life, and as one of the last royal families in the world, they rather are a national treasure. Yes, well, I know how we feel about that sort of thing, but let the Russian cling to their dark corner of the world. They were barely into the Industrial Revolution, after all, and if we hadn't stepped in they'd be a screwed, and who'd clean up the mess? We need to get more resources in there? Work with their private sector, else there will be trouble. I know the imperial family is amenable, they've been reaching out for years, but you know, distrust of royalty in this day and age. Right."
She turned ever so slightly, noticing Pete as he settled himself into one of her white, leather chairs, waiting expectantly and pretending not to listen. She smiled dazzlingly at him, even as she continued to speak."
"Well, I have to let you go, Mr. President, it's been such a pleasure catching up with you, but I have someone here to see me now. Do stop by sometime and do lunch? Yes? All right, I'll have out assistants connect. Mmmm...yes, it's been good talking to you as well. Goodbye!"
With a flick of one of her manicured nails, the blue light of her ear pod turned off, and she sighed. "The man could talk for England if given half a chance."
"It's why we elected him President, isn't it?" Pete smiled blandly, knowing Yvonne would titter inanely at the joke. She obliged, grinning at him as she shook her blonde hair, blown and styled artfully today. Yvonne had graduated from the "oh-so-serious" look of a uni student trying to show off to the suits and glamorous look of a power broker. Unlike Jackie, the change suited her. Yvonne always had been able to make the hard decisions.
"Peter, you are funny. That's why I always liked you."
"I do have the charm," he conceded, knowing she would eat it up. That Yvonne had a fancy for him was like saying that the Thames was a river. She'd made it plain from their first meeting that she was interested should he ever tire of Jackie. After all she was everything Jackie wasn't; intelligent, educated, powerful, and well-bred. Which was precisely why he had stayed away from the likes of Yvonne. He had a feeling that a woman as smart and powerful as she was would see Pete as more an asset than a lover. When it came down to brass tacks, Pete would be expendable. Jackie, for all of her other failings, was at least loyal. Well...he used to believe she was.
"The President mentioned that he's going to your wife's birthday party." She uttered the term "wife" like one might say "shit".
"He's on the invite list, yeah. So the Presidents of France and Italy."
"Close, personal friends of Jackie's, I suppose?" One perfect eyebrow arched knowingly and in a way that caused Pete's jaw to clench.
"They are friends. We've had business with them. Business I might remind you that you send me on? I was supposed to be making nice with them regarding the European Free Trade Zone, getting us access to their national production reports."
"I remember," Yvonne murmured, not at all apologetic. "Still, business, pleasure...come on, Peter, why do you indulge that woman and her childish demands?"
"Because she's my wife," he said simply and emphatically.
It wasn't the answer Yvonne wanted to hear. She scowled, her jaw hardening as she shifted from temptress to tyrant in the blink of an eye. "Well, if you have time to give lavish parties for your soon to be ex, then you have time to do the work that has afforded you that lifestyle."
She moved from her view to slip into her elegant office chair, calling up his files on the touchscreen tablet sitting on her desk. Pleasure had given way to business, for which Pete was eternally glad. "Lumic has me busy. Since I sold Vitex to him, he's got me running a majority of the facetime for it, not to mention keeping tabs on a lot of his other corporate interest. I've been mostly busy with the CyberNet project, particularly the media downloads to the ear pods he developed."
"So I noticed," Yvonne murmured, scanning quickly through his reports. "Lumic is leaving a lot in your hands it seems. Why?"
"Part of it is his health."
"That part is true then?" She looked up at him, curious.
Pete nodded. "The cancer spread,. It's only his advanced medical technology that's keeping him alive."
"But he keeps sending out messages over CyberNet?"
"He's dying, not dead yet. He's been busy with something, some secret project of his, very hush, hush, won't even tell me about it."
A frown formed between Yvonne's perfectly sculpted brows as she considered this. "You've not been able to discover anything?"
"Not for lack of trying," Pete replied. "I've combed through the files I can get to. And I've been using the Preacher's skills to see what they can hack into."
"The Preachers?" She looked confused for the briefest of moments. "Oh, yes, your vigilante group." She stopped short of being truly condescending.
Pete grimaced. "They aren't a vigilante group. They are an anarchist society standing against the wrongs caused by modern industry."
"Right! Anarchist, vigilante, what have you, and you don't find it ironic that you, an upstanding member of said industrial society, are fostering a group of rabble-rousing, malcontents?"
"No," Pete replied, honestly. If anything, he found it vaguely funny. Perhaps that's why he used the codename "Gemini" with them. It spoke to the split nature of his world, Pete Tyler, whose face was plastered all over London, working with a group of revolutionaries, mostly angry kids, who thought they were giving a finger to the man and sticking it to him. In truth, perhaps it was because he missed those good old days when he was just one of the guys.. And also because as an insider and a spy, he knew the dirty rotten side of the world that gave his wife lavish birthday parties on her fortieth birthday, a side that he heartily wished he could do something about.
"The Preachers have been able to do the things I haven't been able to do. They can use the information I give them in ways that I can't, and in exchange, they feed back to me with what they find."
"And they've found nothing on Lumic's plans?"
"Not much, I am guessing it's mostly medical experiments judging from the evidence I have found. But Lumic is supposed to be back in a few days. I imagine he will want to see me."
"Right." Yvonne glanced at the file curtly, before closing it, turning to regard him fully. "When he does, drop whatever you are doing and meet with him."
Not an unusual request, for sure, but still it surprised Pete when they had so little to go on. "Why?"
Yvonne's mouth pursed hard. The way it did when she was debating on whether it was wise or not to tell him the truth. She didn't need to. It clicked so loudly in his head, he could nearly hear it in his ears.
"Whatever he's up to, Torchwood has allowed it."
"We encouraged, not allowed," she replied tartly, though that didn't stop the shifty flicker of her eyes towards the cityscape outside. "Under my predecessor, John Lumic was given an unprecedented amount of access to a level of technology that was far advanced."
"That's where he got his steel." It was all starting to make a disturbing amount of sense to Pete, and he wasn't liking the picture that was being painted.
"Not just that, but yes. Technology of all sorts, but yes, his steel, which of course was essential in the building of the zeppelins. Lumic was given carte blanche to a great deal of information. The earpods for example." She fingered the one in her right ear. "Technology that was scavenged off of half a dozen alien items by Lumic's research team."
Pete felt his own pods itch in his ears. "You just let them have free reign?"
"I didn't, no." She defended herself, eyes narrowing, before distaste and frustration flickered across her face. "John Lumic is well connected with very deep pockets. For years, whatever he has wanted, he has got, and that included Torchwood. And now we are seeing the consequences."
"That's why you put me on his detail." Pete grimaced, seeing just how much of his life had been twisted and spun by Torchwood. He couldn't say anything to that, however. He had agreed to it. "You needed an inside man to see just how fast and free he was running."
"Lumic has been notoriously secretive about what he got and what he's doing with it. That's why we maneuvered Vitex into his personal arsenal, because we knew he'd come to like you, trust you, and want to use your talent. Everyone knew Lumic was dying, that he'd have to put someone in charge to help him run things. You were ideal."
That he was. There was no denying it. And Pete couldn't cry wolf, not when he had agreed to that arrangement himself. "Lumic only trusts me so far. He has his own plans and schemes, I see glimpses. You think what he's doing has something to do with what he had access too?"
Yvonne replied by passing the tablet over to him. On it was a picture of a robot, the sort you saw in the old, B Hollywood movies he'd watched as a kid. Whatever it was, it wasn't working, but he had a feeling that if Torchwood had their hands on it, it had at one point.
"What, a giant robot?" He passed the tablet back. "Lumic's got an entire division that does nothing but robots, got some that can hold trays and play footie."
"Not just a robot." She stared at the tablet for long moments. "It was found in America in 1947, it and about ten others, in some sort of ship. Scared the locals, but did very little harm. We obtained two of the specimens for research from the American military. As far as we can tell, these creatures aren't robots."
Pete laughed. "What are they then?"
"Humans." She replied.
Pete sobered instantly. "You can't be serious."
"Human and not from this universe," she continued, her expression grim. "DNA sampling actually turned up one of them as being a man who was perfectly alive and living in Vancouver, healthy and hale. But his brain was in this machine, and had been for some time."
"Another universe?' Pete's brain couldn't quite wrap itself around that. "You aren't joking, are you?"
"Even our scientist believe it's possible, Peter, just no one has found evidence of it Except for this."
Pete had seen many things while working at Torchwood. Aliens, spaceships, wonder drugs...but another universe? "And Lumic knows about it?"
"Yes," she replied tersely. "You can see why, with his current health condition, we'd be worried about this technology."
Insanity...it was all insanity…
"So, you what, let Lumic just muck about with something from another universe?" Pete threw himself of of the leather chair, brain spinning as he glared at the ever-present zeppelins clogging the clear skies of London. He had always known it was a careful dance Torchwood played, denying the existence of extraterrestrials with one hand, while fostering out evidence thereof to those they found worthy enough to let in on the secret. Some had played the game better than most. What disturbed him was how fast and loose John Lumic was let on things that no one kept an eye on. Not that Lumic had done anything, as far as Pete could tell, that was remotely illegal. But Torchwood wouldn't have placed him at Lumic's side if they didn't fear him. He glanced back at Yvonne, who watched him impassively.
"You think he's trying to make more of those, then?"
"He's dying, isn't he?" She lifted a shoulder matter-of-factly. "Some reports say he should have died ages ago, but he's too damned stubborn to do it. And if you had a mind like Lumic's, one that could turn out half the wonders he has with used, broken bits of alien junk, and make as much money off of it as he has, do you think you'd be content with just letting your body fail you?"
"So he's going to try and run it for himself?"
"Like as not, though he'd have to get permission to even attempt it. And he'd need the backing of a major world government to do that."
Pete eyes narrowed as he considered. "You don't think Britain will agree to it?"
Yvonne smiled sweetly. "Why do you think I was just on the phone with the President."
"Ah," he nodded, unsurprised. "And you want me to..."
"Do what you've always done, Peter." She smiled shifted, teasing. "Pull out the charm and the obsequiousness. Earn his trust, see what he's planning. Let us know when you do."
Pete glanced back out the window, at one of the giant zeppelins floating lazily outside the window. Robots with human brains from another universe. What in the hell had anyone from Torchwood been thinking.
"What if he is doing something, and it's illegal? How we going to stop him?" Pete's eyes slid to Yvonne.
"Torchwood has contingency plans for such things." She hardly looked perturbed by the idea. But Pete could still see the flicker of worry in her eyes, even as she hid it with her bright, inviting smile. "All we need from you, Pete, is information."
Right. As simple as that. Pete's gut churned with the feeling this was all going to go pear shaped. After all, if Torchwood had let Lumic run roughshod on them so far, what was to say they could stop him even if they wanted to?
"No worries, Peter!" She rose, crossing to where he stood, patting his cheek with a fondness that was both patronizing and invasive. "Do your job, all will be well, and maybe your wife can get the zeppelin she wants. And after you've met with Lumic, come chat with me over dinner to have a debrief. Maybe 7 Park Place? You and me? Just the two of us?"
There was no mistaking the invitation in her eyes as she let one, manicured nail trail down his jaw. "And you can tell me how things are going with your divorce."
"Right," he murmured, pulling away with as impassive a look as he could manage. "Off to do my duty for my country and all that, right?"
"If that's what it takes to keep Jackie happy, I suppose." She smirked. She knew that wasn't what he meant, but she couldn't help one last dig. He chose to ignore it as he turned on his heels, removing himself with as much haste as he dared, biting back the curse that mentally was repeating itself, loudly. What was the old saying? One man, two women, trouble? Caught between a shrew and a panther, and one of them was going to be the death of him.
And now there was Lumic.
Miles sat quietly outside of the office, flipping through a tablet, only looking up when Pete marched past him. Without a word he fell in step, wisely waiting till they were out of the receptionists earshot. "So, what does the Iron Lady want from you now?"
What didn't she want? Peter wanted to laugh, but couldn't bring himself to do it. "I want you to get a hold of the Preachers, whoever that woman is, Moore, the one that babysits them. I need intel on what they've found out."
"Yes, sir," Miles murmured quietly.
"Get on that. I'm taking the car, driving out home myself. If I've faced one dragon today, I can face another." He scowled darkly at nothing in particular. "Make sure the slippers get to Jackie in time for the party, right."
For once, Miles wisely held back any smart response.