Torchwood: Divergence
Book Three: Rheoleiddiad
Chapter 25
It had already been quite the busy morning, and the rest of the day looked to be shaping up for more of the same.
Jack accepted his cup of barely sugared black coffee from his partner, reached out with his free hand to rub the back of the younger man's neck. Ianto gave him a brief reassuring smile, then offered a chocolate glazed cinnamon roll with a questioning expression.
"What evil genius came up with these?" the American asked after taking a bite.
"Me, actually," Lois smiled broadly. "You said chocolate, but they really didn't have anything but the éclairs yet. Then a batch of cinnamon rolls came out of the oven, so I asked if they could use chocolate instead of the regular icing. I think I started a trend, because a lot of the people in line behind me wanted theirs that way too."
"She's brilliant," Martha pointed out, then grinned at their leader. "Do I get a bonus for recruiting her?"
"Technically," Ianto put in quietly, choosing a small éclair and sipping his latte. "Gwen and Rhys recruited her in London. But good choice for your 'dream team' assembly."
"You are way too versed in packing up my flights of fancy," the team medic laughed. "Though I'll forgive you, because you took care of that ghastly piece of work at the café this morning. The venom in the claw marks on Miss Laughlin is an incredibly potent combination of paralytic and neurotoxin. Nastiest bit is that there's absolutely no way to combat it with Earth medicine of any kind. It's a strange, almost polymer like compound with high levels of silicon and sulphur crystals threaded through it. Might be why the creature didn't register as a life form, if it's got a similar make up. And that means we'll need to update the Rift system to recognise the whole lot once I've got the breakdown."
"So, she was honestly dead from the moment of contact," Turlough surmised. "UNIT had a tough time getting up the residue from its blood as well. Something about it seems familiar, but I just can't place it."
"Omicron Twelve," Harkness grimaced, having seen the both guilty and relieved look in his lover's eyes a moment before, and wanting him to have a little time to accept the reality of the situation. "Closed world, way on the other side of the known Universe from here. The life forms are a partially crystalline silicon, nitrogen, and raw alcohol base, with various other chemicals thrown in depending on the species, able to survive in almost any atmosphere. I thought I recognised the smell the corpse gave off, and your rundown on the venom, Martha, pretty much confirmed it.
"It's a very kill or be killed planet. No dominant species, no civilizations or technology, just constant predator and prey exchanges. The whole world is stuck in a perpetual state a lot like the Earth's Jurassic period. It's considered so dangerous, that if you get knocked out of the shipping lane and crash there, no-one will attempt a rescue. Not even the most well armoured, armed, and aggressive species out there. The fact that the Rift can reach it is extremely bad news. We're really fortunate that Ianto was the one that faced it, because nothing we have short of that Utu-Gethy energy lance has any chance of doing those creatures any damage. Scieron steel was highly effective though, and didn't include the risk of destroying half the building."
"Omicron," Turlough nodded from the couch. "That's right. The Doctor was daft enough to land there once. We stayed for barely a minute and abandoned planet. He was repairing external structural damage to the TARDIS for weeks. Definitely reminded him why he hadn't been there in a couple hundred years. I thought that thing looked familiar. A pack of them were trying to rip their way inside to get at us."
"Wow, glad I missed that romp," Martha commented with wide eyes. "Any idea when that field will die out so I can analyse the remains?"
"I'd wait till well after lunch to be safe," the Trion prince suggested. "Are you done with the young woman from the café?"
"Yeah, but we have a problem," the team physician frowned. "There's no way to purge that venom from her system or tissues, so we can't allow her body to be autopsied. Best bet is to have UNIT do a cremation. But what do we do to explain her disappearance after that?"
"Is her DNA clean?" Ianto asked unexpectedly.
"Looks to be," Martha nodded with a quirked brow, wondering what he had in mind.
"It's a very involved process, maybe too much for this," the twenty-six-year-old explained uncomfortably. "But Tosh had to do a total cover once on a Council Member who got on the wrong side of a hungry Bacillian Hornet. No safe way to explain the wounds or the toxins in their bloodstream, so she had me find a close body type match from the unidentified corpses in our body bank. Then she completely degraded that corpse's DNA, introduced what clean DNA she could scavenge from the original victim into areas of the new body that normally get tested. A little hands-on to make the replacement unrecognisable, make sure to bollocks possible dental or fingerprinting IDs as well. Then she had me put them in the victim's car and push it off that hairpin turn along the coast a bit east of Cogan. Which was a very cold, wet, long walk back to the base because I couldn't find a taxi, and I'd prefer not to repeat it. The Inquiry into the 'accident' determined it was the actual victim, not the body we used, and ruled out foul play."
"Quiet, sweet little Toshiko made the body 'unrecognisable'?" Martha gaped.
"That girl had a dark side you're probably glad you never saw," Jack nodded with a reminiscent smirk. "I remember that one. Owen was at a seminar or something he had to attend to retain his medical license and the like, so Tosh did it all her way. Scary. It was always so easy to forget she was an MD as well."
"Must've been before my time," Gwen frowned, not recalling circumstances where a prominent person in Cardiff fell victim to the Rift. "So, do we try the same thing?"
"Or do we just have her cremated and let her simply drop off the grid?" Turlough asked solemnly. "Happens all over the world, no Rift necessary."
"Ianto?" the Captain prodded quietly. "How do you want Ginny Laughlin's remains handled?"
The young Welshman was quiet for several minutes, his blue-grey eyes dark and unhappy.
"I know it may sound cruel," he breathed with a frown. "But honestly, I think it would be better to have her disappear. It seems kinder to her parents to spare them mourning some mangled and broken counterfeit, better a little false hope than taking such horrific memories to their graves. At least without a body they can always remember her the way they last saw her. And it's the safer, less likely to backfire option."
"But that's…" Cooper began heatedly, only to have the Changeling turn the lost child look on her.
"I know you don't approve," Ianto stated softly, holding her unfriendly gaze. "It's the same as all the Rift victims Torchwood cares for on Flat Holm Island. But it's truly kinder to the family. Think of what happened with Jonah Bevan's mother when you pushed for 'closure'."
That definitely silenced any further protests on the raven-haired woman's part, though she stared at their leader with pleading eyes. The American however, shook his head after a moment to let her know she was being overruled, his expression both apologetic and sympathetic.
"Contact UNIT," he pronounced evenly. "Let them know what we need done and why. We'll bring her up to the carpark for them when they arrive. Till then, pick up whatever projects you've got going and we'll see what the Rift spits out next."
"I brought over her purse along with anything else I could identify as hers, and her ratty Mini-Cooper is a few slots down from the SUV," Turlough put in as he rose from the couch. "Likely best to put all the small stuff with her to burn, and sink the car after dark. No loose ends that way."
"Do it," Jack agreed, not meeting Gwen's now sullen gaze. "Ianto, I need help with my back-logged paperwork again."
The pair disappeared into the office, the lights coming up inside, the door still open. And within minutes, the former PC of the team was at the threshold.
"Please don't do this," she pressed. "That poor girl's parents have the right to some kind of closure. Making them spend their lives looking for her isn't just wrong, it's low and heartless."
"It took Tosh three full days to pull off the cover last time," Harkness stated evenly, his face neutral but his eyes softening, some of his old feelings surfacing at the woman's distress without his realising it. "And we had to hold our breaths for two weeks afterward, wondering if it even worked. This is the more certain way."
"There has to be something else we can do," Cooper insisted stubbornly, refusing to give in. "Arrange a fiery motor accident, make them use dental records only. Surely fire would hide the claw marks and the venom."
"You think it's kinder to have her parents identify a charred corpse?" Ianto asked sharply, his tone clipped and is eyes dark, his mood having been steadily spiralling toward a strange, hopeless depression for the last twenty minutes or so.
"It's better than spending their lives bleeding their bank accounts dry chasing a lie," Gwen countered harshly, sure she was right. "You already lied to her, don't do the same to her parents just because it's the easy way out. Please, Jack. You have us do the right thing this time since Ianto's too close to the incident to see that sweeping this away isn't the answer. Don't make Torchwood the bad guys again."
The Captain sighed, meeting the woman's tearful yet determined gaze and obviously swinging over to her side of the argument, apparently ignoring her pointed commentary regarding his partner's actions at the café and ability to objectively do his job.
"Ask Martha if what you propose is feasible," he relented. "If she says yes, have Turlough help you sort out the particulars."
Jack rose from behind the desk, gave Ianto an automatic comforting pat on the back as he quickly passed behind him to put an arm around an obviously triumphant Gwen's shoulders and escorted her out into the Hub toward her workstation. So much for the promise to put his partner above his self-proclaimed second-in-command.
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AN: The downward spiral has begun, and it's not going to be pretty…
Thank you to those reading the story. And thank you to those who have followed, favourited, and reviewed. NM