Torchwood: Divergence Book Four: Hatchweliad
Chapter 3
They were nearing the location of the defunct hatchery, could already see fire shooting into the air in the ever-darkening sky. Suddenly, a column of all too familiar crimson light rose high above the flames, only to disappear a few seconds later.
"Oh, God," Gwen blurted, afraid of what it meant.
"What the hell?" Jack growled, accelerating even more. "I still feel him… no cold, gaping holes inside… he's not dead. So, what was that portal for just now?"
"Would the Scieron intervene if he was trapped and couldn't escape the building on his own?" Turlough prodded, wondering if the Other Dimensional Shadows would go that far for their Chosen.
"I don't know for sure," Harkness admitted, wishing the van could go faster. "They refer to him as their 'child' or 'little brother' and seem to treat him like kin, so it's possible."
They finally reached the fenced property the hatchery occupied, could see the SUV just inside the damaged gates and a man in a security guard's uniform wandering toward it in obvious shock.
"Secure him," the Captain ordered as they scrambled from the van and grabbed their gear. "We need to find a way into the building. I'll deploy the fire suppressor, hope it works so we can locate Ianto."
"He's definitely still in there," Turlough stated, having just sedated the guard. "Rent-a-Twat there emptied his gun into him."
" What?!" Jack and Gwen shouted in unison.
"He was babbling about giant dogs and a sword-wielding zombie that he shot six times but it wouldn't stay down," the team's Time expert explained, pointing to an open door where the smoke-streaked guard had apparently exited. "Can you deploy from there?"
Grim faced, his blue eyes angry when he looked away from the lightly sedated man on the ground, the immortal American primed the alien device as he made a run for the doorway and tossed it inside. There was a sound like a kettle boiling over, then a strange concussive wave radiated out from the hatchery, nearly knocking them all flat. But the fire had been completely snuffed by the alien device, allowing the team to access the now dark but still scorchingly hot building.
The three Torchwood operatives entered the nearly gutted structure, Harkness retrieving the Tolkath device as they came through the door. Then they began to search the ruins with their hand torches, desperate to find their obviously injured friend.
"Ianto?" Jack called, hoping the twenty-six-year-old would be able to answer him. "Ianto?!"
His shouts were oddly muffled in the big open building, as though the wave that had smothered the fire was suppressing sound as an after effect. They found the smoking, charred corpse of the half-armoured Death Hound, but there was no sign of the young Welshman they'd come to help other than his soot covered hand torch sitting on a set of gantry stairs not far from the downed canine.
" Ianto?!" the Captain's voice was taking on a slightly panicked edge, he and Gwen checking the steaming containment tanks of sludgy stagnate water to see if the Changeling had tried to take refuge in one of them to escape the flames.
"Blood trail!" Turlough called from the less damaged side of the big building. "Heads for the rear wall over here."
Together the trio hurried that way, tracking the heavy smear of deep, heat dried crimson across the dirty concrete floor, areas of the still wet fluid becoming more frequent as they went. Their friend was bleeding badly and obviously unable to walk, an occasional gory handprint indicating he was having to crawl. They made it to the rear door, found it ajar, but lost the blood trail just outside. Water poured from a heat-ruptured pipe near the exit, flooding the cracked tarmac and effectively washing away the dark fluid they'd been following.
" Ianto?!" Jack shouted, panning his light around the area but seeing no sign of his partner.
Then he noticed two glowing red spots across the back lot in the darkness, took a few cautious steps closer as he turned his torch that way and stared in disbelief. A small black and white dog stood several metres away, still little more than long-furred hide over bones, Scieron light shining where the eyes should be. This was definitely the dog they'd found at Harwood's months ago, the victim of a cruel alien resurrection that his beloved Archivist had mercifully sent back to the Dark. It had broken the younger immortal's heart and put him into a seizure at the time, his Faery Shadow Mother having come to offer reassurance and spirit the little Shetland Sheepdog's quiet corpse away. Now she was back, apparently as a vessel for the Scieron. She truly was what David Davies had seen when his sister had been run down several weeks past.
"Where is he, Hardd?" Harkness called, using the name Rhys had told them after the original incident.
The dog whined and chuffed, then turned to trot toward the small shed nearby that housed the valve controls for draining the big outdoor ponds. She disappeared behind it, the Captain bolting for the outbuilding and around it to see where she'd gone. He'd just hit the corner of the structure when he heard a barely audible whisper.
"Good… girl…"
Huddled against the back of the shed, soaked in blood and dirty water, Ianto Jones sat with the quasi-undead dog pressed close to his side, her bony muzzle worriedly nuzzling his left ear.
"Ianto…" Jack breathed, able to hear Gwen and Turlough running across the flooded tarmac to catch up.
He knelt in the water by his partner's side, met the little herding dog's glowing gaze.
*Fix what you have broken, Eternal* the American heard a familiar eldritch voice whisper in his mind. *We can help heal his body, but you allowed the wounds the green-eyed ysglyfaethwr inflicted upon his heart and soul… you and she must find the way to mend them.*
Then the skeletal canine turned to lick the Changeling's cheek with a dry tongue and simply disappeared in a flare of heat-laden red light. Harkness blinked, reaching for the twenty-six-year-old shivering against the shed wall.
"Hey…" Ianto rasped breathlessly, blinking up at the older man with a wince that turned to the lost child look that always made his partner's heart ache. "I got the Hound… but it didn't… go so good… with the guard…"
"You did great," the Captain reassured. "You still got the stupid bastard out alive, yeah?"
Ianto took a shallow, rattling breath, tried to smile but just didn't have the strength.
"They…" he began weakly, a trickle of blood starting to ooze from the corner of his mouth. "They sent Hardd… to help me… like… she did David…"
"I saw her," Jack nodded, never breaking eye contact with the younger immortal as the rest of the team arrived. "She led me to you. She's still a good dog even now, and she remembers that you helped her."
The young Guardian's unsteady gaze shifted up past his partner's face for a moment, something dark and desolate coiling in his blue eyes before he quickly looked away.
"I need all lights on him," Turlough ordered curtly, having seen the terrible pain in the younger man's gaze and well aware it had nothing to do with his injuries. "Say goodbye to another shirt, this one's full of holes and about to lose all its buttons."
He pulled the ruined pale blue work shirt up out of the front of the injured Welshman's waist band, stripped it open with a scattering of blue discs, then quickly used padding and pressure bandages to control the bleeding from the gunshot wounds.
"Lower left abdominal, right mid-lung field, left distal clavicular," the redhead stated with a frown, easing the Archivist forward to run a vinyl gloved hand over his entire back and pull the T3 laser-site augmented Glock from his waistband. "Only the clavicular is a through shot, the other two bullets are still inside somewhere. Which means the joys of surgery for you back at the Hub, Ianto. Let me pack the exit wound here and get a look at whichever leg was hit."
"Right…" Ianto whispered; his eyes now closed to hide his misery. "Thigh and knee…"
A carefully wielded pair of shears from the medical kit opened the correct trouser leg from waistband to mid-shin, and Turlough examined the damage.
"He missed your right femoral artery by a hair's breadth, but still hit something that's pumping out a lot of blood," he informed his patient as he used a shot of lidocaine and epinephrine to ease the pain and slow the haemorrhaging, carefully easing the long needle as deep into the wound itself as he could before injecting the medications, then applying a large pressure bandage to the gaping hole. "Slug's still in the muscle too. And… crap… this one managed to completely blow apart the joint. No wonder you had to crawl. Let me immobilize it, then we'll get you home, yeah?"
"Which vehicle?" Jack asked, worried about his lover's clench-jawed silence even as he distractedly handed the empty 9mm to the woman hovering behind him and pocketed his own hand torch.
"SUV's faster and a smoother ride," the thirty-year-old alien acting as field medic pointed out, tightly binding his patient's ruined knee. "Gwen can bring the van back."
"Is it safe to pick him up?" the Captain prodded, wanting to get moving.
"Just be careful of that knee," Turlough warned, packing up the medical kit with quick efficiency and closing it tight.
He helped their leader gather the injured Welshman into his arms and stand, then hurried ahead back toward the vehicles. They needed to get their Archivist back to base and properly cared for, the sooner the better.
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Welsh Bits:
ysglyfaethwr - predator
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AN: Mother Shadow has a very sharp opinion of Gwen... I think Turlough would agree.
How many guessed that little Hardd was the 'guide' the Scieron sent for Ianto? Hehehe… she is definitely my wee personal indulgence in this story, and will be back periodically. She's a good girl.
Thank you to those reading the story. And thank you to those who have followed, favourited, and reviewed. NM