Torchwood: Divergence
Book Three: Rheoleiddiad
Chapter 22
Torchwood's two Hub residents had enjoyed quite the entertaining evening after the rest of the team had gone home. And unbeknownst to his partner, Jack had decided that instead of going out of the Country for Valentine's Day, he was going to set up a cosy little tryst at the house they now officially owned up in Abersychan. He'd leave Gwen in charge for a couple of days, take his lover out for a bit of fun, then head for the house to have a nice dinner, spend the rest of the evening "dabbling" to their hearts' content and return to Cardiff some time the next day. He had a week and a day to plan, and he was going to go all out.
But today it was regular duties, the Hub already humming, coffee brewing and Ianto off picking up breakfast for the team so it would be waiting when they arrived. Harkness was finishing up a few reports needing signed while the Rift logs spooled at Gwen's station, automatically looking out the office window when the cog-wheel door rotated open. He silently watched Cooper hang up her coat and stow her purse before peering at the information starting to display on the monitors in front of her, silently hoping the woman wouldn't be so argumentative and dogging his every step the way she had been this last week. The American smiled faintly, finding that for a change his mind fast-forwarded past the usual day dreams of having the former PC in his bed. Instead, his focus rolled right over to wondering what was taking his beloved Archivist so long at the café.
"Jack?" Gwen called from the Hub. "Did you and Ianto check a Rift spike this morning around about 3:30?"
"No," the Captain replied, coming out of the office. "We were otherwise occupied at that time, but I don't remember the alarm going off at all after you and the others left. Why? Is the Log showing an incursion that didn't trip the system?"
"Yeah," Cooper nodded. "It was a medium spike, and the Log shows a positive mass transferal, but it's not flagged the way they normally are when the alert goes off."
"Might have just been debris of some sort," Harkness shrugged. "Where did it come through?"
"Um…" the one-time constable did a quick triangulation to pinpoint the breach, frowning as the location came up. "Bloody hell… not far from here. Looks like the alley that backs up to the café and shops around it."
"Not good," Jack insisted, hurrying back into the office for his coat and gun. "Really, really not good."
"If it's just debris or tech, it shouldn't be a problem, yeah?" Gwen prodded, not understanding his sudden sense of urgency.
"Except I sent Ianto to the café to get breakfast for the team," the Captain explained, snagging a headset. "And it seems a little odd that it would take him this long if there wasn't a problem."
"How long's he been gone?" Cooper asked, pulling a Glock from the small arms locker and grabbing her own coat to follow the man.
"More than twenty minutes," her boss stated with a worried frown. "And his earcomm is down, I just tried it."
"Mobile?" was the automatic suggestion as they rode the lift up to the kiosk area.
"Charging in the bedroom," Jack growled. "Crap. This is not how I wanted to start my day."
They exited through the tourist office door and headed up along the Quay to the café, only to find the doors locked, all the shades down, and no lights on inside.
"Try knocking," Harkness told his self-appointed SIC. "I'm gonna go around to the alley where the spike registered."
The American took off at a run, great coat flapping, even as Cooper rapped loudly on the establishment's front door. She listened, hoping to hear some sign of movement inside, but there was nothing. Rattling the handles didn't offer any better results, so she decided to follow the Captain.
Gwen hit the alley just in time to see Jack shoulder open the back door of the café and enter the building with his gun drawn. The former PC bolted that way, skidding into the rear service area with her own weapon in hand, to find carnage in the kitchen. Something both vaguely cat-like and eerily human but about the size of a large dog lay in several pieces around the pantry door, its faintly metallic hide the colour of a ripe aubergine, a sticky tar-black ichor pooling around the remains that smelled strongly of sulphur. Wrinkling her nose is disgust, the green-eyed brunette reached up to activate her headset, but nothing happened.
"Jack?!" she called, wondering where he'd disappeared to and why the place was so quiet.
"Up front!" the Captain shouted in reply.
Cooper hurried through the kitchen, past the counter and into the small dining area, noting a very human blood trail along the route. At a booth in the far corner, the café staff and a couple of patrons were all slumped against one another, obviously deeply asleep. Near the front door, Jack was crouched beside his partner, the younger man sitting on the floor with a small, slightly overweight blonde-haired woman cradled in his lap. She had a set of ugly claw marks down her right forearm, but appeared otherwise unharmed. However, her lips were blue, her brown eyes glazed and staring into nothing. The name tag on her apron said "Ginny", and she was obviously new because the former PC had never seen her here before.
"What happened?" Gwen breathed, able to tell that the twenty-six-year-old Welshman on the floor was very upset but trying to hide it.
"Mr. Cutter asked her to get the boxes of veg and other supplies that had been delivered this morning," Ianto stated tightly. "She went to the back door, then we heard her scream and she came running up front with blood pouring from her arm. She said a monster had grabbed her when she reached for the first box. I pulled a clean tablecloth from the nearest setting and wrapped it around her arm, told Mr. Cutter to lock the door, make the place look closed so more customers wouldn't come in. Asked him to keep everyone up by the windows and be as still as possible while I had a look, because his phones were down when he tried to call 999.
"I thought it might be a Weevil, until I tried my Bluetooth and it was dead too. Then before I could go looking, some strange purplish coloured thing with fangs and claws sprang up onto the counter, looked like it was going to have another go at Ginny here. I didn't think… I just put out my wings to shield the people behind me. Scared them and the creature. It bolted toward the back again, I followed and had to take a sword to it because it turned on me as soon as my wings disappeared. I did a visual of the alley for any more like it and closed the door, did a check of the kitchen area for the same. When I was sure it was clear, I came back up front to a million questions about what it was… what I was."
He paused, his breathing having sped up considerably, and he took a minute to get it back to a more normal rate.
"I told them to all come sit in the booth and I'd explain over coffee," Ianto continued, his voice somewhat shaky. "So, I Retconned each cup, told them to sip and relax from the scare for a few minutes. When I saw it start to kick in, I told them they'd passed out from a gas leak. It wasn't till they were all asleep that I noticed Ginny wasn't there.
"I found her right up against the front doors, scared, shaking, gasping for air. The cloth had come off and as bad as the gashes on her arm were, they should've still been bleeding, but they'd stopped completely and turned almost black. I tried to help her over to the others but she collapsed here. She was already cyanotic, her skin going cold, breath failing… and I could see the Dark in her eyes when she looked at me. She asked if I was an angel come to take her to Heaven. I didn't want her to be afraid…"
The Changeling's voice broke slightly and he swallowed hard, then quietly pressed on.
"I lied and told her yes," he breathed, not looking at either of his teammates. "She passed the Door right before you got here. Her name was Ginny Laughlin, just moved to Cardiff from Leeds with her parents two weeks ago. She was eighteen years old, and this was her first day at her very first job. Now she's going to end up as a body in the Bay… took a wrong turn and slipped on wet paving, or some such."
The young Welshman drew a deep shuddering breath and let it out very slowly, then carefully eased the young blonde's body to the floor and prepared to stand.
"I need to call UNIT for a full hazmat," Ianto frowned, climbing to his feet with a helping hand from his partner. "Take the alien remains to the Hub for Martha to analyse, get Ginny's body into a cooler till we can work out a proper story. But whatever that thing is, it puts off some sort of field that kills all phone and wireless connections. And being dead doesn't seem to affect that property. So… now I'm not sure it's safe to take back to base after all."
"You two get over to the Hub," Gwen suggested. "Call UNIT, grab body bags, come back with the van, yeah? I'll stay to make sure no-one pokes around till this is sorted."
"We'll tell UNIT to bring one of those null-field containers to store part of the alien in till we can safely examine it," Harkness decided, steering Ianto toward the kitchen. "I'll co-ordinate with Andy about the gas leak story, start getting this taken care of. Try your comms now and then, see if that field fades. Now, are you sure you're okay alone?"
"Fine," Cooper nodded, seeing worry for her in his blue eyes and wishing it were more.
She tried to ignore that, watched them go, and then looked back down at the youthfully round blonde on the floor. They dealt with victims of alien attack regularly, but this was different. Most times the unfortunates were already dead when they arrived. She could only remember one time when she'd been holding a victim as they died, and that had been Clement MacDonald in London when the 456 had decided he was a liability… moments before Ianto had died in Jack's arms at the MI5 building. The feeling of utter helplessness still haunted her, so she could well understand the young Guardian's shell-shocked behaviour.
The former constable knelt by the young woman's body, reached out to gently close her eyes, straighten her skirt and the apron over it. A pretty little thing, she'd made it through eighteen years in Leeds, likely had all sorts of hopes and dreams for a future filled with happiness and a family of her own. Two weeks in Cardiff, and all of that was gone forever. The Rift had a way of doing that, and even the Torchwood operatives weren't immune.
If anything, they were even more vulnerable, because they faced what the Rift coughed up on a daily basis. Most ended up like Tosh and Owen, dying young and alone; unmarried, a life of dreams unfulfilled. She had Rhys and their daughter, so she was actually incredibly lucky. But she'd sacrificed many of her own dreams and wishes to stay with the Institute. Even Ianto had met the usual untimely end for team members, his death nearly destroying any chance of resurrecting Torchwood from the ashes the Home Office had turned it to, depriving the Earth of its staunchest defender by traumatising Jack Harkness enough to send him fleeing to the stars. But the young Welshman had been lucky too, because he clearly had something the others didn't… Jack's heart. So, he'd beaten the odds after all and been returned to life by alien means to save the Captain's sanity and very soul, for the sake of the future he'd been willing to give his life to preserve. And his return had sealed the tomb on one of her most shameful but treasured dreams. One that had been haunting her more and more over the past week or so when the Scieron Changeling had been away.
Trying not to think about it, Gwen quickly tested her comm. Static was all she heard, but at least it was better than the total silence from earlier. Perhaps whatever field the alien creature put off was actually fading now that it was dead. Unsure what else to do, she headed for the back door to wait for the rest of the team to return and start the clean-up.
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AN: I fear this is just the beginning of a very rough patch for Ianto…
Thank you to those reading the story. And thank you to those who have followed, favourited, and reviewed. NM