Torchwood: Divergence
Book Two: Adferiad
Chapter 48
As the meeting started to break up, Martha caught a hold of Ianto's jumper sleeve when he rose.
"Need me to take a look at that?" she asked, pointing to his left hand and the blood splotched gauze that wrapped it.
"Might do to change the bandage again," the Changeling half-smiled. "Jerry made a grab for me when we were trying to sedate her earlier. I had to play bait so Jack could get a clear shot, and it took two darts to get her down."
"Wow, she actually had a go instead of cowering?" the team physician was surprised. "She must have really been in bad shape from that passenger to do that."
"She went into duck and cover mode once the tranquilisers toned down her adrenalin levels," Ianto pointed out as they descended into the Autopsy Lab and their medic pushed up his sleeve to begin removing the post shower applied bandages from his hand. "She was so bad before that though, that I honestly thought we'd be forced to destroy her. The pain of that thing eating away at her must've been horrific. I feel bad that we didn't catch on sooner."
"Okay, I can see the actual exposed bones and tendons moving when you shift your hand," Martha complained with an arched brow. "And you feel bad for not helping the culprit before now? I understand your point, but bloody hell… this likely won't be healed up till nightfall. It's good that you can move all the fingers, but the less you use it the faster the tissue will regenerate. So, let me give it a quick scan for debris… good… a nice dose of Chlorhexidine over the basin here… sorry, I know it must hurt something awful… now a pat dry, super heavy coat of antiseptic cream and new bandages. And I'm going to make you wear a sling, so you aren't tempted to use it."
"Ianto?!"
Jack's voice echoed through the Hub, the older immortal having just realised his partner hadn't followed him to the office.
"I'm with Martha," the eternal twenty-six-year-old replied, using the Bluetooth device he'd disinfected and put back on after their shower, rather than shouting. "She's doing terrible things to me down in the Lab."
The American appeared on the observation deck in seconds, grinned when he saw the Changeling being fitted with a pocket sling.
"I take it you weren't thrilled with the whole anatomy book peepshow bit," Harkness chuckled when their physician looked up at him. "Gotta give him credit though. He never let go of the canister and kept the spray full in Jerry's face till both darts kicked in. I didn't realise at the time that she'd ripped him up enough to show the works, or I wouldn't've had him help with the clean up and Xhoquitt disposal. But I wasn't aware of the grisly truth till he kept moving it away from the direct spray in the shower and cussed a blue streak in three languages when the soap hit it."
"It's fine," Ianto insisted quietly, giving Martha a smile and nod of thanks before heading up the stairs. "I'm not so enchanted with the sling and a full amputation would probably hurt less, but there's too much to do to dwell on the small things."
"Free pain management," Jack offered, pointing to his own mouth. "Ready, willing, and able to help."
The younger man moved to accept the offered kiss, blushing only slightly when Martha stage-whispered that they should 'get a room'… just like Owen used to in the past.
"Got one, thanks," their leader countered with his most charming smile, gently prodding his partner toward the work stations. "And I'd take that as doctor's orders if there wasn't work waiting. Come on, Barista Boy, let's go see if the Rift was naughty while we were otherwise occupied last night."
The two went to shadow Gwen, the younger man fielding his mobile from his trouser pocket when it chimed to indicate a text message. He frowned as he read it, whispered something to the Captain and headed for the office. Harkness followed; his own expression grim. After several minutes, the American's voice could be heard all the way in the Autopsy Lab.
"No fucking way is she getting by with that!" their leader roared. "I'll be damned if she's taking everything she knows about Torchwood to another country! Not gonna happen!"
He came storming out of the office, the rest of the team having gathered nervously at Cooper's station.
"Turlough," Jack began evenly after taking a deep, calming breath. "I need someone to get Retcon into a person's drink on a 12:00 pm flight out of Heathrow to New York. Would your girlfriend be willing to do it?"
"Get me the Airline, flight number and seat assignment," the redhead nodded. "I'll make sure Tegan has the pills and is working the flight. Can I ask why?"
"We just received an e-mail," the Captain explained, his blue eyes cold and steely. "Johnson has tendered her resignation to take a position with a new 'anti-terrorist' group in the United States. She's sure everything she learned from us will be very helpful to them, and is sorry it just didn't work out with Torchwood. But that it was great to get the inside scoop after what happened with the 456, and she can't wait to try out our techniques and 'a few little gadgets' to make a big impact with her new military team."
"She played us," Turlough growled with a frown. "Learned what she could, obviously stole things as well, but never actually intended to stay. I really don't like people like that. Get me the info I need for Tegan; she'll switch carry-on bags with Johnson and I'll 'lose' the rest of her luggage so we can go through it. No, she's not getting away with this."
"Air France, flight 310, departing Heathrow at 12:00 pm to New York with a twenty-minute non-disembarking layover in Labrador for a baggage exchange," Ianto called as he exited the office behind his partner. "I've frozen her ticket and made sure she can't get a refund or change aeroplanes. She'll have to take the flight or wait two days for the next availability due to post Holiday travel. She's assigned seat 114C, plane is fully loaded so it's unlikely she'll be able to move about. Just in case, I printed her current ID photo for your lady to use as reference. We never enabled her for remote access here, and I've run the system logs back to when they completed reconstruction. She hasn't done any downloading or other forbidden computer hacking, but she did try to override the coded locks on the Alien Armoury and attempted to get into the Tech Vault down past the morgue. She failed at both, so if she nicked anything it would be small, easy to conceal pieces we normally use around the Hub."
"If you can do without me for the trip to St. Mary's," Turlough stated evenly, his blue eyes mirroring his extreme displeasure over the situation as he took the papers the Archivist handed to him. "I'll go get everything arranged with Tegan. Martha, I need two crushed Level 6 Retcon in a sealed aspirin powder packet, and a few extras just in case they're necessary."
"Do whatever it takes," Jack told the young alien. "The rest of us will handle the Rift business."
"One way or another, Johnson is not leaving the United Kingdom without her memories wiped clean," the redhead replied, his voice unusually flat and cold. "This kind of bollocks is how my uncle deposed Father before. I won't tolerate that kind of betrayal again."
"So, she texted you, Ianto?" Gwen frowned, finding herself once more hating the woman in question… just like in London. "Why?"
"The text came from the Torchwood servers," Ianto explained. "I took over an alert Tosh had built into the firewalls so it sends me a message whenever anything tries to come into the system that's suspicious. Mainframe tells me what's inbound and where it's originating from, so I can reroute it through external buffers to see what it is without it actually touching our system. The title of the message was 'It's been interesting' and came from a public port but with Johnson's security ID. Probably loaded with spyware as well, or it wouldn't've pinged the firewall."
"Her message claimed she was already at a layover in Greenland," the Captain added. "But the CCTV of the airport lounge the signal originated from showed otherwise. She thought if she told us she was already out of the country, we wouldn't hunt her down."
"I can't believe she'd do something like this," Martha insisted, her irritation obvious as she handed Turlough the repurposed aspirin packet with its new finely powdered contents, and a small bottle of back up pills. "She's high security, covert operations. And Torchwood is directly accountable to the Crown. What she's planning is treason."
"That's pretty much what UNIT, MI5, and MI6 all said when I got them on a secure group chat under Jack's logon in the office," Ianto nodded, nervously tugging at the front edge of his sling with his good hand. "They're arranging a joint Agency and RAF greeting for her at her actual layover this evening, and are aware that we're trying to mitigate as well. Once she's in custody, her would be employer in America will be politely notified that she attempted to use them to flee justice here in the UK, and will likely backpedal as fast as they can once they're told she's suspected of selling security codes to Middle Eastern and North African militant groups."
"So, all this time she was coming in for an hour here and there, claiming she wasn't fit to be back at work," Cooper snarled, highly irritated. "She was just seeing what else she could steal from us and finding which organization would pay her the most for her services and secrets."
"Well, she was rather on the Government's bad side after the debacle in London," the team doctor pointed out, sounding somewhat guilty. "She took orders from the Home Office without co-ordinating with UNIT or the RAF, which her position was contingent upon. She arranged the assassination of military personnel still in advisory positions and blew up the centre of Millennium Square in a botched attempt to destroy Torchwood, because she was trying to 'blank page' Jack. The Institute, by the way has total immunity grandfathered back to its creation, so that was another big ding. She took civilian hostages without clearance, then tried to claim responsibility for driving off the alien threat when she went before a full Crown, government, military, and UNIT tribunal.
"She received an official reprimand, as well as a letter of condemnation from the Queen, stating she should have informed the Crown, the RAF, and the Future Options Committee of the Prime Minister's 'blank page' orders and allowed Torchwood to do its job in handling the 456 from the beginning. I'm surprised she wasn't locked up, but they just put her on total Reserve status instead. When I was hunting for team members, I thought she was being honest when she said she was eager to join because she wanted to prove herself, make amends. Not because she was looking to steal Torchwood secrets and defect to America. No wonder General Winters warned me to keep a close eye on her… I thought he was just worried that she'd screw up again."
"She did," Turlough stated firmly, pocketing the Retcon and itinerary as he put his coat back on and grabbed the bag with his laptop in it. "Johnson made the mistake of turning on Captain Harkness and Torchwood while I'm here. I lost my childhood to manipulators like her, and I'll be damned if my adopted nation or my friends will lose anything to that kind of betrayal now. So don't worry. There's nowhere she can run that I can't find her, and I'll make sure this plan works even if I have to borrow a page from the Doctor's current handbook and bend a few cosmic rules to manage it. Leave this to me, and I'll know you're all taking care of everything else."
"Be careful, she's likely armed and may have clearance to get a weapon onto the plane with her," Ianto warned, tossing the redhead a Bluetooth comm unit. "Stay in touch. I'll process a final logout on her while you're gone."
"Your safety and Tegan's takes priority over everything else," Jack added as the thirty-year-old Trion prince prepared to leave. "If you have any concerns in that area, get yourselves out of harm's way. We'll figure out something else, yeah?"
"Yes, Captain," Turlough nodded, heading out the cog-wheel door.
There was silence in the Hub when he'd gone, three of the remaining team members working to clamp down on the anger and hurt the former Commander's unexpected betrayal had caused. The fourth honestly wasn't surprised in the least, but sad that he'd been right all along.
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AN: Ianto never did trust Johnson… and she just proved him right. Definitely not a boring Boxing Day…
Thank you to those reading the story. And thank you to those who have followed, favourited, and reviewed. NM