Jack Harkness is using all his considerable expertise to search for his friends...

A little of Jack's background and his exploration of his new environment...can he find his friends before it's too late?...this is Jack's scene

Scene 20

This was where Captain Jack Harkness excelled.

Where he was most skilled.

Moving unseen, flitting from place to place. Finding back corridors, ventilation shafts, any surreptitious way of getting around without being noticed.

He'd spent whole lifetimes, taken part in so many conflicts, been behind enemy lines.

On so many occasions, through so many ages.

He'd been a Time Agent, espionage, deception, cons, they were second nature to him.

Know how to blend into the woodwork, be silent, stay hidden.

The Tardis stood in an unguarded room at the end of a series of corridors. It's potential clearly unrecognised by their captors. Without it's pilot, they considered it rendered useless.

No one bothered about the innocuous Blue Box.

It was empty. It was going nowhere. It was harmless.

That was to Jack's advantage.

On leaving it for the first time, his initial thought had been to find The Doctor, but he soon realised how easy it was to be confused by the miles and miles of identical corridors and passageways.

Each door he entered, each room he discovered, he became distracted by the potentially lethal concoctions he saw each time he snuck inside.

It was much easier to move from place to place wearing the breathing pack instead of the full suit.

Kate's box of delights had come up trumps.

Neat and compact. A thin mask with a strap on pack, the size of a first aid box. Simple and brilliant.

He had three. Clara and The Doctor would need them too, when he eventually found them.

WHEN he found them, and he would find them.

Corridor after corridor. Labyrinthine.

Jack devised a clever marking system, low down on the walls, out of sight.

Tally marks.

Soon he knew which passageways he'd explored, which he hadn't.

Early on he discovered the vast laboratories.

Stark clinical rooms. On a massive scale.

Workers like ants...or drones in a beehive. In rows. Each one testing, experimenting, concocting.

Technology some of the most advanced he'd seen.

An enormous drug factory...like an opium farm...the potential to harvest thousands.

He'd never seen anything like it. No wonder the 456 were so keen for more children.

They could probably process millions here, if they really wanted to.

Entering an area which resembled a health spa, he was horrified to see numerous of the creatures, laying side by side, on beds, each one connected to a child.

Bought there for the purpose.

A drug induced euphoria enveloped them.

The inert child, unseeing, dolefully staring into space, the 456 wired up, and wired out...high as a kite.

The disgust Jack felt, the rising anger, the horror of it all.

It was almost too much.

There were also virology rooms.

These were more tightly controlled. More difficult to sneak his way inside.

They couldn't risk these diseases getting out. One spill could wipe out a whole planet...

And there was his plan.

Right there.

He couldn't hope to destroy all of this complex, it was too enormous.

But he could blow these labs.

Even The Doctor had seen that potential.

The resulting bacteriological explosion would finish them all, every last one.

Just as it had killed everyone in Thames House that day, so long ago.

Just as he'd watched Ianto die, in his arms. The vision forever burned on his brain.

When the 456 had released the strain, it had taken less than ten minutes.

But there was nothing he could do right now, other than position the charges and set the detonators, until he found The Doctor and Clara.

Once they were safe, he could programme the detonation to activate on the given signal, he had the palm pilot for that, another of Kate's useful little presents.

No, he had to find them first, and set them free.

The 456 were never going to listen to The Doctor's overtures of peace. They had no intention of doing so.

It was a fool's errand.

Jack laid his explosives. In every drain, every shaft he could find, around the whole perimeter of the complex.

The resulting blast would take out the entire block. The bacteria would do the rest for him.

He moved silently, stealthily.

No one knew he was there. No one had seen him. He had the run of the whole place.

No one would be hunting for someone they didn't know existed.

He had the advantage.

He must take care not to lose it.