Chapter 3: Kloey & Aubrey
Everyone had forgotten about Lila for the moment, assuming that she was asleep, and she had hidden in a medical-looking room down a small flight of stairs. She couldn't really hear much of the conversation, other than the obvious bits.
The silence that pervaded the room as a story was told. A sad story. Lila could feel the tone of it, even if she couldn't hear the story itself.
The laughter, breaking the tension as easily as one might shatter a thin layer of ice, as someone cracked a joke.
A shout of triumph, they'd found whatever they were looking for.
And then, a strange tension slowly crept through the room, as some discovery sank in. Something bad. Lila could almost feel… fear. The unknown tension was fear and… rage. No, more than that. Helplessness, and frustration, punctuated and emphasized by a rather long string of profanities, not even all in english, from the guy they'd called Owen (Lila would recognize that London accent anywhere). Something was very wrong. Something even the famed Torchwood couldn't do anything about.
Then she heard footsteps. Owen was coming back down, and Lila had nowhere to hide. She crouched down behind the table, but she knew that wouldn't last long. As Owen came around the table, Lila edged around to the side near the stairs. After making sure he was engrossed in the computer screen and a glass of alcohol, she quickly bolted up the stairs.
However, she'd forgotten about the dang pterodactyl. It landed in front of her, screeching, blocking her way. The girl who had been singing before looked up.
"Myfanwy, stop it. She's not food, and she currently poses no direct threat to the team."
That voice.
Lila felt like she'd heard it somewhere before. Like she knew that voice, knew it so well, and-
Lila shook her head, suddenly disoriented. Owen caught her as she almost fell back down the stairs.
"Yeah, took us all a while to get used to that, too." Owen gently brought her back down and laid her on the table she'd been lying on. "Just stay there until your ears stop ringing." Then something clicked. Lila could almost see the lightbulb go on over his head. "Wait a minute. How are you awake? That sedative should have knocked you out for at least an hour." Lila smirked a bit and turned to show him the minute patch of circuitry on her neck that had created a holographic illusion so that he had thought he stuck her with the needle, but had actually hit the circuitry. Enough of the sedative had gotten into her bloodstream to knock her out for a minute, but most of it had been siphoned off by the circuit, which she now peeled off her neck and dropped into the trash.
Owen gave her a weird look.
"One use only." Lila sat up, rubbing the back of her neck where the circuit had been. "And it seriously hurts when you take it off."
Owen moved to knock her out again, but the girl from before caught his arm before the needle could touch her. Which was weird, because Lila was sure that a second ago, said girl had been calming the pterodactyl down. Definitely nowhere near what Lila now mentally referred to as the med bay, for lack of a better word.
"Owen," She said, "Wait. She broke into the Hub. Maybe she can help us."
"Crystal, she broke into the Hub. What in the world makes you think she'd want to help us?"
"The fact that, for one thing, she's not freaking out. Look at her, Owen. Do you recognize that look? I know I do, because that's the exact same look Gwen had when she first walked through that door, isn't it? The exact same look you had, and Tosh. Do you remember when Jack asked me if I'd like to join Torchwood? I had the exact. Same. Look. That's how I know she'll help us, Owen. Because she's one of us. One of those people who know there is more to the universe than us. The only difference is that we're lucky enough to have seen it." Lila wasn't precisely sure when Crystal's eyes had switched from deep-sea blue to pure metallic gold, but Owen seemed to take it in stride. Lila guessed it was normal, then.
The guy who had come in first, however, the one wearing an old-style RAF coat, was heading for the door. Everyone looked up as the door opened. Crystal was in front of him, blocking his way, before anyone could even blink. "Jack, you can't. I did a full scan, every entrance is lined with explosives. You can't get in."
'Jack' held her gaze with a frozen glare. "I'll be fine, we both know I can handle explosions." He walked past Crystal, once again heading for the door.
"But Aaron can't."
That stopped Jack dead in his tracks. He obviously hadn't thought of that.
"You're not the only one at risk this time, Jack." Crystal's voice had taken on that almost melodic tone again. Jack seemed almost unaffected by it, but he obviously got the idea through his thick skull that this 'Aaron' guy was in danger, too. Honestly, the more time Lila spent around the male species, the more she wanted to smack the lot of them upside the head. Preferably with a heavy book. Or possibly a gun handle.
Lila didn't have a particularly high opinion of the male species.
At any rate, Jack had rather reluctantly gone back to the main control center and Crystal was back down in the med-bay having a rather heated conversation with Owen. Lila couldn't exactly hear what they were saying but she knew it was probably about her. After a few more seconds, Crystal walked over to Lila.
"Okay, Owen here simply wants to Retcon you and forget about this whole thing, but our friend's being held in a warehouse not far from here and not a one of us can get in without blowing it up. You managed to get into this place without setting off a single alarm. We need your help." Lila was amazed. The famed Torchwood Institute needed her help?
"Or, if you don't want to help, I can arrange for you to forget all about this place. You'll wake up tomorrow morning with absolutely no memory of this and you can get on with your life."
Lila was a bit wary, but a chance to work with Torchwood? Not to mention pull off the greatest break-in ever! Still, if even Torchwood couldn't manage it, was it really within the parameters of Lila's skills? She didn't know if she could even pull it off.
But when had that ever stopped her?
"Alright, you said you had scans of this place? Let me take a look."
Lila was just outside the warehouse, and just now realizing that her mile-wide competitive streak might just have gotten her into serious trouble. She hissed under her breath into the commlink she'd been temporarily issued.
"When you said the system was on a hairpin trigger, I didn't think you meant literally. This thing was cobbled together out of spare parts and junk. Oh, and did I mention the cubic inch of C4 covered in explosive putty at the heart of it all? I have no f****** idea how to disarm this thing."
Still, Lila had always had a knack for seeing every individual piece of a machine in almost a mental blueprint. She disconnected a couple wires, spliced two more together, and very carefully disconnected the tripwires. Then she flipped a switch and very carefully removed the explosive, quickly and quietly placing it a considerable distance from the mechanism. She let out a sigh of relief that that had actually worked.
"Okay. I'm in."
As Lila snuck into the abandoned warehouse, she heard a quiet ticking sound. As she looked into the other room, she saw Aaron strapped to some sort of ticking device. Suddenly she realized that it was an extremely complex bomb, and it was strapped to Aaron's chest!
"D***"
She had to get the bomb off of him and quickly before they both blew to pieces. As she was studying the wires Aaron regained consciousness.
"Hey," Lila said. "You awake?"
"Yeah," said Aaron.
"Good", said Lila, "Then you can help me get this bomb off of you without it blowing us both up."
"Wait,"said Aaron. "What bomb?"
"The one strapped to your chest that has only five more minutes until we both explode," said Lila.
"What?!" Aaron exclaimed.
"Chill out, i'm trying to defuse at least the straps, and hold still or I might accidently blow your head off."
"Well then hurry!" Aaron replied.
"Shut up," Lila said
Finally, with thirty seconds to spare she was able to unstrap the bomb from Aaron's chest. She quickly dropped it into the vacuum-sealed container she had brought, where it detonated harmlessly. She breathed a deep sigh of relief.
"Hallelujah," said Aaron.
"Oh my God, that was so freakin' close," said Lila.
Crystal's voice came through loud and clear over Lila's commlink.
"I'll say!"
Wait a minute. Lila had turned the commlink off when she was sneaking in. Lila turned around to see Crystal casually leaning against the doorframe Lila had just defused.
"Were you standing there the whole time?"
"Well, if you disconnected the wrong wire somebody had to save your sorry rear end. But no, I got held up slightly. I only just got here."
"Held up how?"
Ronaldo walked in, looking extremely annoyed and slightly offended.
"Apparently, the morons guarding this place aren't quite as trusting as I'd thought. I had to dig through the entire car before I found my ID, and even then I ended up bribing them ten bucks to let us through, and I'm pretty sure Crystal pulled some Jedi mind-trick thing on the ones in the parking lot."
"For the last time, it's not a Jedi mind-trick! It was minor psychic ability combined with a simple sonic resonance pattern."
"Says you! They waved us through with barely even a pause, and didn't even look at the ID card. They didn't even look at the dang van. I'm calling Jedi skills right there."
"I give up, I give up! You're worse than Owen in regards to fandom references."
"Says the girl who was talking to a pterodactyl in perfectly fluent Vulcan!"
"Says the boy who recognized that as Vulcan!"
Ronaldo looked a bit annoyed, but mostly amused.
"Oh, no. I had nothing to do with it, you can blame Aaron for that one. He's obsessed with that show, and I swear he speaks every language on it."
Owen's voice came over the commlink.
"If you three are done geeking out, can we please head back to the Hub now? It's been a very long day, I need either coffee or scotch, and Jack's cooking dinner tonight."
Crystal immediately dashed out of the warehouse as soon as Owen mentioned that Jack was cooking, making a beeline for the Torchwood van. Aaron, Lila and Ronaldo exchanged a slightly confused, but mostly excited and amused, look, and immediately ran after her.