Revelations Part 5
Title: Revelations
Part: 5 of 10-ish...
Chapter Title: In Which We Finally Have a Crisis of the Alien Variety, Ianto is a Bad-Ass, and Jack is a Twat.
Pairing: Janto, mention of Rhys/Gwen, mention of Tom/Martha, Ianto/Martha fag-hag fabulousness.
Rating: R for this part of the chapter
Excerpt:
It's always bloody huge warehouses and underground labyrinths with aliens, isn't it? Couldn't one of them pick a nice, small, summer cottage to set up base in and drag their victims to? But no. They always have to choose the most ominous, dark, large, overly dramatic structure within a twenty kilometre radius.
Tossers.
Ianto's breath rattles in his lungs as he rushes down the corridor, dress shoes clacking rhythmically on the stone floor. He's counting in his head; steps, metres, turns- 1, 2, 3, 9, left. 2, 3, 4, 12, right. Right. Left. He turns sharply, back slams against wall, gun held by both hands to snug up against his heart. Another door kicked in. A frantic visual search reveals it to be as empty as the rest.
Back to the corridor, counting again. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, right. It's always bloody huge warehouses and underground labyrinths with aliens, isn't it? Couldn't one of them pick a nice, small, summer cottage to set up base in and drag their victims to? But no. They always have to choose the most ominous, dark, large, overly dramatic structure within a twenty kilometre radius. Tossers.
The dim lighting isn't making navigation very easy. He has a scanner to help direct him, though, and the mental count gives him an idea of where he is in the building. Lucky he'd had a chance to look at the blueprints.
Lots of their plans go off half-cocked, but this is turning out to be one of the worst ever. They really need to work on their intelligence gathering instead of muddling about like blind cattle in a tea shop. He wishes Tosh were here. She always was the best at figuring this stuff out.
He smirks. She'd probably be screaming at him for barging in headlong after losing radio contact with the others an hour ago. Usually he'd agree with her, but he'd been alone in the Hub and out of options.
Ianto slips on the slick floor and winces, trying not to think about what it's probably slick with. He's adding his own blood trail to the mix, a couple of gashes on his side bleeding sluggishly through his suit, down a pant leg. No time to stop and dress the wounds.
Time to focus. What information he does have will probably be his best weapon. The life of his team members may depend on it. He picks up the pace, moving faster down the corridor as he counts, collating in his mind all of what he knows about this particular brand of enemy along the way.
13 hours earlier
"What have you got for us, Martha?" Jack asks, lounging casually in his chair at the head of the table. Ianto's passing out the coffee- everyone's got deep rings under their eyes courtesy of the last two days. Three bodies have turned up, and the state they're in is....disturbing, to say the least.
Martha gives a weak smile of thanks as he hands her a mug. She brings up the victim profiles on the screen.
"Jennifer Hedgington, Norton Hill, and Sarah Clifford. Their bodies have three things in common. First, a series of puncture marks on the shoulders, hips, and feet are nearly identical, though the rest of the wounds each exhibits were a result of self-defense, ranging from a broken wrist to various bruises, gashes, and scrapes along with evidence of the victims being restrained at the wrists and ankles. Overall, no life-threatening injuries were sustained prior to their deaths." She brings up photos to highlight each of her points. Gwen winces a little and looks away.
"Secondly, each victim was massively dehydrated and malnourished as if they'd starved to death, which brings us to the third similarity, cause of death being organ failure." The photos she brings up this time make everyone feel a little sick. The bodies look like Holocaust victims, prominent bones beneath brittle skin covered in a patchwork of cuts and bruises.
"But Jennifer Hedgington was reported as missing only three days prior to her body being found, Norton Hill and Sarah Clifford two days prior. How is it possible for them to get to that point of starvation in four days or less?" Gwen cuts in, looking puzzled.
"That's the problem. It shouldn't be possible. They could have died from dehydration in that period, but the state the bodies were in suggests long term deprivation," Martha says.
"Could they have been taken somewhere- I mean, some when?" Mickey asks. "Tortured and starved for weeks and then dumped back almost as soon as they're noticed missing?"
"No. According to their blood work they have none of the mutations in their lymphocytes that would indicate travel through space and time," Martha responds.
"Besides," Jack interjects, "why go to all the trouble to transport someone to a different time just to starve them and dump them? You'd risk a time storm to space the jumps so closely together. If you had the technology to do it in the first place."
"What about the puncture wounds they all have in common?" Ianto asks. "Do we know what caused those?" Martha smiles.
"That was going to be my next point, actually." She pulls up another chart showing an energy pattern. "I was able to read this residual pattern from the puncture marks on all three victims. The pattern shows there was a high concentration of energy exhausted in and around the wounds. Whatever was used to make them, it's a substance unlike any I've ever seen before- definitely not metal or glass, even though the marks are so precision accurate they would have had to have been made by some sort of scalpel or other perfectly sharpened object." Jack heaves a sigh and crosses his arms in agitation.
"So where does that leave us? What leads do we have?"
"Actually," Ianto says, turning to Jack from where he'd been staring intensely at the screen for the past couple of minutes, "If the residual energy pattern is stable, I might be able to isolate the right parameters to put out a trace on the source of it."
"Good. Get to it. Gwen, I want you and Mickey to follow up on the criminal investigation of the murders, see if we can find any witnesses. I want all the doors knocked on within five blocks of where the bodies were found since CCTV was a dead end." Mickey groans but any complaint he might have is stopped when Gwen cuffs him upside the head.
"C'mon, you lout," she says. "It was my job everyday for five years before I fell in with this lot. Don't go actin' like you've got more important things to do."
"Martha," Jack says over the grumbling that breaks out between Mickey and Gwen as they head out, "I want the autopsy reports on my desk by lunchtime with every small anomoly highlighted in bright red ink. I want everything explored that could give us a hint as to what happened to these people. Double check. Triple check, if you have to."
"On it," Martha says, grabbing the files she'd brought with her and heading to the medical bay. Ianto and Jack stand to follow her after Jack takes a last gulp of his coffee.
"And here I was just thinking it's been nice and quiet since you got back from vacation," Jack comments wryly as they walk companionably to the Hub from the conference room.
"Nice and quiet? Really, sir?" Ianto asks with a smirk, "I was under the impression that each new crisis serves your hero complex and gives you delusions of grandeur. Without the dashing escapes, last minute rescues, and saving the world you'd only get bored."
Ianto's caught off guard and lets out a decidedly unmanly squeak when Jack sweeps him into his arms, dipping him dramatically. He laughs before kissing Jack soundly through a smile. Jack pulls back with an answering grin of his own.
"With you as my personal entertainment?" he asks, giving Ianto a squeeze before placing him on his feet again. "Boredom is not an issue."
Ianto rolls his eyes good naturedly and gives the exasperating man one more quick kiss before splitting off towards the computers to go work on isolating the energy pattern.
"Delusions of grandeur, sir," he tosses over his shoulder.
Jack chuckles and heads into his office.
Ianto'd been able to isolate the energy pattern ten hours later. The dread of seeing another one of the people of Cardiff turn up wasted away to nothing had been more than enough motivation to work quickly. When Ianto had been able to put out a trace to a specific location, Jack had left him to monitor in the Hub while he and Martha went to meet Mickey and Gwen at the location, an old tactiles factory near the outskirts of the city. They'd all felt like time was moving against them, which probably directly affected how it had all proceeded a bit too quickly for safety's sake.
Now, with his side aching and his heart racing, Ianto regrets their haste. It had seemed like it was going to be an easy strike; only three readings of alien life in the building, one in the center and one at each of the two entrances. Jack had been confident it'd be in, out, and back in time for coffee. If only they'd been a bit more cautious... not that Ianto's really the poster-child for safety right now.
At least the element of surprise is on Ianto's side. He shudders to think what these aliens would be like fully prepared for attack- he'd taken out the guard relatively easily but she'd still managed to land a swipe at him with claw-like hands before succumbing to three gun-shot wounds. Still, that leaves only one left since Jack and the team killed the guard at the other entrance after a brief fire-fight.
And then they'd inexplicably dropped out of contact.
His steps slow as he moves towards the center of the building. The scanner blinks in his hand, calibrated with the parameters of the residual energy source. And conveniently, the single blip of alien life left happens to be in the same room. He should only be a few hundred yards away. Praying he's not too late, he creeps slowly closer to his destination.
Jack's eyes snap open and his chest heaves with the first gasping, agonizing breath of life that comes after another death. He looks around, quickly taking stock, groaning when he realizes he's been strapped by his wrists and ankles to a surgical table, spread-eagle like a center piece at a bondage party. And someone's taken his shoes and socks.
The room is huge; looks like it was built for storage. There are ten other tables spaced throughout it, and Jack's heart rate doubles when he realizes Martha, Mickey, and Gwen are similarly strapped to tables; Martha on his left, Gwen and Mickey on his right.
They're all breathing, seemingly unconscious. Jack struggles against the bonds but they're too tight. He does manage to shake the table quite a bit, though, and in the wake of the ruckus Martha moans and begins to stir.
"Martha? You with me?" Jack asks, twisting his head so he can look at her. Her eyes flutter open.
"Whoa... deja vu," she groans after taking stock of her surroundings. She turns her head slightly to Jack, her eyes unfocused, voice raspy. "What happened?"
"We got ambushed," he says, expression going grim. "Some sort of boobie trap. All I remember is we were still a good ways north of the remaining alien life signals. We entered a hallway to head closer to the center of the building. You three collapsed--"
"Whatever sedative it must have been wouldn't work on you...none of them do," Martha interjects. Jack nods.
"I just had time to check all your vitals when it felt like a truck hit me in the back of the head- they must have killed me when the sedative didn't work. Next thing I know, I'm waking up here strapped to a surgical table," Jack says, struggling against the restraints again briefly. "Not a bad way to wake up under certain circumstances, but I highly doubt this is one of those times."
Martha snorts. The last of the fogginess leaves her head, and she tests her straps like Jack has been doing. "Bollocks," she mutters. Then she turns to Jack again, her face etched in sudden worry as a thought occurs to her. "Gwen and Mickey alright?" she asks. Jack spares a glance towards the other two before looking back to Martha.
"They're breathing. Hopefully they're only unconscious. If you're any indication, they should be coming around soon--" Jack cuts himself off when there's the sound of movement from across the room, a door opening with an ominous creak. He raises his head as far as he can, neck straining, to see who or what is coming into the room.
He catches a flash of metallic, crimson hair, pale skin and bright red eyes that are about two sizes too big for the roughly human-like face they're set in. The alien seems to be male, androgynously pretty but with muscles rippling in the places where bare-flesh is visible. Jack resists the urge to roll his eyes. With the flowing black clothes the alien looks straight out of some low-budge Hollywood vampire movie. Sometimes Jack feels like most intelligent life on other planets goes through a course in campness as a requirement. Though Jack can't really complain- he's no exception when it comes to that.
The alien's pushing something- a device Jack doesn't recognize- on a cart. The whirring and clacking noises emanating from the thing instantly make Jack nervous. He struggles again when the alien's unnaturally large eyes zoom in on him and narrow.
"Resilient," the thing croaks out in a multi-tonal voice. Probably has some sort of translating device on hand- they always seem to give the impression of tinny re verb, no matter how high quality. "I thought it was strange you didn't react the same as the others."
"Just call me iron-lungs," Jack quips. He shoots Martha a glance. Her face is grim beside him, but there's not any fear. He can always count on Martha in tough situations. The alien's face splits into a disturbing, slightly manic smile.
"Indeed. Though it is even more strange that you survived such a blow to the back of your head. Your physiology is decidedly different from your companions. Most interesting." He rolls the cart to the center of the room, fiddling with the controls until the machine lights up. Then he moves to Gwen and Mickey, a couple of syringes in hand.
"Hey!" Jack shouts helplessly, hearing Martha renewing her struggles beside him, "What do you think you're doing?"
"Calm down, child. I am merely reviving them. They must be awake for the extraction to work," the alien chides, slipping the needle into a vein on Gwen's arm. How he manages the delicate work with bumbling-looking claws, Jack has no idea. Almost as soon as he's pulled the needle out, Gwen's eyes snap open and she gasps.
"Jack!" she shouts, futilely trying to struggle away, "What the hell is going on?!"
"Calm down!" Jack says as she continues to struggle. The alien ignores her and moves to repeat the process with Mickey. "Don't panic; you'll only injure yourself. We'll get out of this." The alien chuckles.
"I look forward to seeing how you'll manage it," he comments as Mickey's eyes jolt open.
"Awww, fuck," Mickey moans after his eyes dart around. "Anyone got a plan?" he asks when the alien leers at him before stepping back.
"I'm working on it," Jack grumbles, scrambling as far away on the table as he can go when the alien approaches him, pushing the blinking, whirring device along with him. "I believe you mentioned something about an extraction? Care to elaborate?" Jack asks, trying to buy some time.
Please, please, please let this be one of the megalomaniac villains who feels the need to explain his evil plan.
The alien smiles before pressing a button, and viscus, flowing tentacles shoot out from the machine. They look like they're made of oil, and six stab into Jack's shoulders and hips through his clothes, four more attaching themselves to the soles of his feet. Photos of the victims flash in his mind. The tentacles weave together in the middle where they lead back to the machine, making it seem like Jack's attached to a giant, frayed rope. The sounds of protest coming from his team buzz in his ears, seemingly from a distance.
They are so fucked.
"You are quite unique," the alien says, looking at some readouts from the device. "Strong. It will most certainly sell for a fortune." He's not even looking at Jack- it's like he's talking to himself.
"What will?!" Jack grits out, a tingling sensation beginning to emanate out from the pain in his shoulders, hips, and feet. The alien's face snaps up, surprised, as if he'd forgotten Jack was even there, engrossed as he'd been in the strange machine.
"Your life, child," the alien states wickedly after a pause, flicking a switch with an evil smirk on his face.
Jack starts to scream. His head snaps back, muscles tensing at the pain. It feels... it feels similar to fighting Abaddon, only weaker, concentrated in the points on his body where the rope-like tentacles writhe in his skin. He can feel his body struggling to regenerate, the pain ebbing and then intensifying like waves crashing into sand.
After a few moments that feel like an eternity, the agony cuts off. Jack heaves in deep breathes, hearing Gwen's teary voice call his name, Martha asking if he's alright, telling him to stay with them. Mickey's silent, glaring daggers at the alien as if a look alone will kill him. The alien's not paying attention again, frowning at the device.
"Must need a recalibration," he mutters in that echoing voice, strangely-adept claws clacking on some sort of keyboard, knobs and buttons adjusted. Jack laughs.
"C'mon, that was it?" he blusters, sweat beading on his brow. The alien glares up at him, flipping a few more switches.
"If you continue on being so... persistent in holding on to yourself, I suppose I'll just have to move on to your companions before figuring out what to do with you," he says, and Jack's blood runs cold. "First I will attempt to raise the--"
Suddenly, a gunshot rings in the air, and the alien shrieks and grips its left shoulder, dark amber blood spilling out from between its claws. With a growl it spins around to face the attacker.
Ianto stands near the door, gun still raised, a dark expression on his handsome face. Jack could kiss him if he wasn't tied up.
"Ianto!" Gwen exclaims. Jack really needs to talk to her about how she handles herself in hostage situations- distracting the rescuer when he's got his gun trained on the enemy is not the best strategy. Luckily, Ianto's not deterred, his stance never flinching.
"Step away from them, please," he says, voice cold and sarcastically polite. The alien hisses, (So cliché, Jack thinks) before jutting a hand towards the machine. Another shot rings out, and the alien is left with a bullet lodged in the offending limb. He lets out another shriek of pain before slumping, swaying slightly on his feet.
"Now that wasn't very nice," Ianto says. "Attempt that again and you'll get another of those somewhere a little more vital." The alien laughs crazily.
"You children are all so simple- your rage so pointless," he rasps. "I assure you, my second must already be aware of your presence. Kill me if you dare. It is of little import when she will soon drain your friends and your mate while you watch on, tormented." Ianto smirks.
"Boyfriend, actually," he says, cocking his gun again. "And I can assure you, your second in command is already dead."
Jack's eyes widen because... boyfriend??... but he's brought back to the scene at hand when the alien screams in rage, lunging at Ianto.
It's over quickly. Three more shots ring out, and the alien falls to the floor in a pool of strangely-colored blood, the last rasp of breath rattling from his lungs. Ianto puts the safety back on his gun before tucking it in his waistband. He pulls out a scanner, giving the dead alien a wide berth as he walks over to the machine Jack's still connected to.
"Are you all alright?" Ianto asks, using the scanner to take readings from the device.
"Fine. Just a bit creeped out. Can you get us unstrapped from these bloody tables?" Gwen asks.
"In a moment," Ianto says, pausing to smile reassuringly at her. "I just want to get Jack unhooked from this thing... Don't want it to suddenly switch on and start doing whatever the hell it does."
"I second that," Jack says. "And hey. Bursting in with the bad-ass, last minute rescue is my thing," he pouts, falling back on banter to distract himself from that one word bouncing around in the back of his head. Boyfriend, huh?
Ianto looks up briefly from where he's taking readings.
"Are you seriously complaining?" he asks with a smirk. The scanner beeps. "There, this should do it," he says before pressing a series of buttons. Jack grunts when the freaky liquid tentacle things retract from his body and slink back to curl around their metal carapace. Ianto moves over to unstrap Jack from the table.
When his wrists are free, Jack sits up and rubs them, not quite meeting Ianto's concerned gaze. The others are silent, not wanting to interrupt what they probably think is a private reunion. Jack's stomach flips, and the tension between him and Ianto becomes awkward.
"Right," Ianto says, his voice quiet and sad when Jack simply stands up on the other side of the table after he's free, still not allowing their eyes to meet. Jack heads over to where Martha is tied down, and Ianto breaks away to deal with Gwen and Mickey.
Jack moves on autopilot, refusing to acknowledge the fact that Martha is giving him a disappointed and slightly accusing stare.
"Caxtarids," Mickey says, placing the data-storage device on the conference table. They'd found it during the search and clean-up phase. "That's what they call themselves."
They've been back at the Hub three hours, and now the name of the game is organization. Martha's taken care of Ianto's wounds, passed out a healing balm for the worst of everyone's bruises. She's leaving the autopsies of the aliens to start on later. Ianto's passed out coffees to keep everyone on their feet since they're all going on close to 24 hours with no sleep. Jack's finished with the preliminary report. Mickey and Gwen have been left to deal with the various bits of technology the aliens had brought with them. Seems they've hit the mother load in a tiny interface resembling a flash-drive.
"This little baby," Mickey continues, "is a combination of the captain's log, field reports, and...list of merchandise."
"Merchandise?" Martha asks, leaning forward in her chair.
"They're traders- slavers, really," Mickey says. "Nasty business. From what this information drive tells us, most of them were wiped out by biological warfare a hundred years back- some sort of virus triggered to destroy Caxtarid DNA. A few stragglers were off-planet at the time of the attack and survived. Since they're a war-like race, expert torturers, they didn't really have much skills beyond invading and taking what they needed. Their numbers were cut down to so few that they split off into small platoons like the one we dealt with, their mission to gather more...merchandise to sell in a desperate bid to build their resources back up."
"Where does the extraction device come in?" Jack asks.
"Now that- creepy piece of technology- what it does is it extracts the bio-chemical energy from a victim, kind of like taking the power out of a battery. It's why all the victims were whithered away to nothing. It extracts the life force, for lack of a better term, and channels it into a small containment chamber," Mickey says, connecting the information drive to the screen and pulling up blueprints of the device.
"It converts the energy so that the person drained actually has their basic consciousness transferred as well," Gwen cuts in, a disgusted look on her face. "Once the energy is converted and contained, it creates a portable servant, capable of powering a ship, computers, any compatible technology. Because there's still an amount of intelligence left with the energy extracted, the life force becomes like a very advanced AI. It's self-healing, able to seek out problems in any system and fix them automatically. As such, the things are highly sought after."
"Let me get this straight," Martha says incredulously. "You're basically saying that this machine extracts someone's soul and puts it to work for the highest bidder? How is that even possible?"
"You've traveled through space and time, seen the end of the world, the entire Earth kidnapped, and now you choose to suspend belief?" Ianto asks with a raised eyebrow.
"Good work," Jack tells Gwen and Mickey. "Submit a report to Ianto on Caxtarids to add to the archives. I want that information storage device with it, but dismantle and destroy the rest of the technology we found in the factory. Especially that damn extraction device. You'll need to get it from me- I've locked everything even remotely dangerous-looking in the safe." He leans back in his chair and gives the team a level stare. "It can wait until tomorrow, though. For now, I want everyone to go home and get some rest." His sentences are curt, to the point, and then he's standing, leaving the conference room without a backwards glance.
He's not even looked at Ianto once since they got back.
"What's his problem?" Mickey asks. He doesn't argue against going home, though. They're all exhausted. Mickey's face splits into a yawn as he gets up to leave.
"I'll go talk to him," Ianto says, wincing as his side twinges when he stands up.
"Best we clear out quickly then," Martha says, giving Ianto a sympathetic squeeze on the shoulder before following Mickey.
"Good luck," Gwen adds before leaving herself. "Knock some sense into him; he's acting like a twat."
"Oh, I know," Ianto says, a bit of humor warming the edges of his eyes. "Believe me, I know."
Part: 5 of 10-ish...
Chapter Title: In Which We Finally Have a Crisis of the Alien Variety, Ianto is a Bad-Ass, and Jack is a Twat.
Pairing: Janto, mention of Rhys/Gwen, mention of Tom/Martha, Ianto/Martha fag-hag fabulousness.
Rating: R for this part of the chapter
Excerpt:
It's always bloody huge warehouses and underground labyrinths with aliens, isn't it? Couldn't one of them pick a nice, small, summer cottage to set up base in and drag their victims to? But no. They always have to choose the most ominous, dark, large, overly dramatic structure within a twenty kilometre radius.
Tossers.
Ianto's breath rattles in his lungs as he rushes down the corridor, dress shoes clacking rhythmically on the stone floor. He's counting in his head; steps, metres, turns- 1, 2, 3, 9, left. 2, 3, 4, 12, right. Right. Left. He turns sharply, back slams against wall, gun held by both hands to snug up against his heart. Another door kicked in. A frantic visual search reveals it to be as empty as the rest.
Back to the corridor, counting again. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, right. It's always bloody huge warehouses and underground labyrinths with aliens, isn't it? Couldn't one of them pick a nice, small, summer cottage to set up base in and drag their victims to? But no. They always have to choose the most ominous, dark, large, overly dramatic structure within a twenty kilometre radius. Tossers.
The dim lighting isn't making navigation very easy. He has a scanner to help direct him, though, and the mental count gives him an idea of where he is in the building. Lucky he'd had a chance to look at the blueprints.
Lots of their plans go off half-cocked, but this is turning out to be one of the worst ever. They really need to work on their intelligence gathering instead of muddling about like blind cattle in a tea shop. He wishes Tosh were here. She always was the best at figuring this stuff out.
He smirks. She'd probably be screaming at him for barging in headlong after losing radio contact with the others an hour ago. Usually he'd agree with her, but he'd been alone in the Hub and out of options.
Ianto slips on the slick floor and winces, trying not to think about what it's probably slick with. He's adding his own blood trail to the mix, a couple of gashes on his side bleeding sluggishly through his suit, down a pant leg. No time to stop and dress the wounds.
Time to focus. What information he does have will probably be his best weapon. The life of his team members may depend on it. He picks up the pace, moving faster down the corridor as he counts, collating in his mind all of what he knows about this particular brand of enemy along the way.
13 hours earlier
"What have you got for us, Martha?" Jack asks, lounging casually in his chair at the head of the table. Ianto's passing out the coffee- everyone's got deep rings under their eyes courtesy of the last two days. Three bodies have turned up, and the state they're in is....disturbing, to say the least.
Martha gives a weak smile of thanks as he hands her a mug. She brings up the victim profiles on the screen.
"Jennifer Hedgington, Norton Hill, and Sarah Clifford. Their bodies have three things in common. First, a series of puncture marks on the shoulders, hips, and feet are nearly identical, though the rest of the wounds each exhibits were a result of self-defense, ranging from a broken wrist to various bruises, gashes, and scrapes along with evidence of the victims being restrained at the wrists and ankles. Overall, no life-threatening injuries were sustained prior to their deaths." She brings up photos to highlight each of her points. Gwen winces a little and looks away.
"Secondly, each victim was massively dehydrated and malnourished as if they'd starved to death, which brings us to the third similarity, cause of death being organ failure." The photos she brings up this time make everyone feel a little sick. The bodies look like Holocaust victims, prominent bones beneath brittle skin covered in a patchwork of cuts and bruises.
"But Jennifer Hedgington was reported as missing only three days prior to her body being found, Norton Hill and Sarah Clifford two days prior. How is it possible for them to get to that point of starvation in four days or less?" Gwen cuts in, looking puzzled.
"That's the problem. It shouldn't be possible. They could have died from dehydration in that period, but the state the bodies were in suggests long term deprivation," Martha says.
"Could they have been taken somewhere- I mean, some when?" Mickey asks. "Tortured and starved for weeks and then dumped back almost as soon as they're noticed missing?"
"No. According to their blood work they have none of the mutations in their lymphocytes that would indicate travel through space and time," Martha responds.
"Besides," Jack interjects, "why go to all the trouble to transport someone to a different time just to starve them and dump them? You'd risk a time storm to space the jumps so closely together. If you had the technology to do it in the first place."
"What about the puncture wounds they all have in common?" Ianto asks. "Do we know what caused those?" Martha smiles.
"That was going to be my next point, actually." She pulls up another chart showing an energy pattern. "I was able to read this residual pattern from the puncture marks on all three victims. The pattern shows there was a high concentration of energy exhausted in and around the wounds. Whatever was used to make them, it's a substance unlike any I've ever seen before- definitely not metal or glass, even though the marks are so precision accurate they would have had to have been made by some sort of scalpel or other perfectly sharpened object." Jack heaves a sigh and crosses his arms in agitation.
"So where does that leave us? What leads do we have?"
"Actually," Ianto says, turning to Jack from where he'd been staring intensely at the screen for the past couple of minutes, "If the residual energy pattern is stable, I might be able to isolate the right parameters to put out a trace on the source of it."
"Good. Get to it. Gwen, I want you and Mickey to follow up on the criminal investigation of the murders, see if we can find any witnesses. I want all the doors knocked on within five blocks of where the bodies were found since CCTV was a dead end." Mickey groans but any complaint he might have is stopped when Gwen cuffs him upside the head.
"C'mon, you lout," she says. "It was my job everyday for five years before I fell in with this lot. Don't go actin' like you've got more important things to do."
"Martha," Jack says over the grumbling that breaks out between Mickey and Gwen as they head out, "I want the autopsy reports on my desk by lunchtime with every small anomoly highlighted in bright red ink. I want everything explored that could give us a hint as to what happened to these people. Double check. Triple check, if you have to."
"On it," Martha says, grabbing the files she'd brought with her and heading to the medical bay. Ianto and Jack stand to follow her after Jack takes a last gulp of his coffee.
"And here I was just thinking it's been nice and quiet since you got back from vacation," Jack comments wryly as they walk companionably to the Hub from the conference room.
"Nice and quiet? Really, sir?" Ianto asks with a smirk, "I was under the impression that each new crisis serves your hero complex and gives you delusions of grandeur. Without the dashing escapes, last minute rescues, and saving the world you'd only get bored."
Ianto's caught off guard and lets out a decidedly unmanly squeak when Jack sweeps him into his arms, dipping him dramatically. He laughs before kissing Jack soundly through a smile. Jack pulls back with an answering grin of his own.
"With you as my personal entertainment?" he asks, giving Ianto a squeeze before placing him on his feet again. "Boredom is not an issue."
Ianto rolls his eyes good naturedly and gives the exasperating man one more quick kiss before splitting off towards the computers to go work on isolating the energy pattern.
"Delusions of grandeur, sir," he tosses over his shoulder.
Jack chuckles and heads into his office.
Ianto'd been able to isolate the energy pattern ten hours later. The dread of seeing another one of the people of Cardiff turn up wasted away to nothing had been more than enough motivation to work quickly. When Ianto had been able to put out a trace to a specific location, Jack had left him to monitor in the Hub while he and Martha went to meet Mickey and Gwen at the location, an old tactiles factory near the outskirts of the city. They'd all felt like time was moving against them, which probably directly affected how it had all proceeded a bit too quickly for safety's sake.
Now, with his side aching and his heart racing, Ianto regrets their haste. It had seemed like it was going to be an easy strike; only three readings of alien life in the building, one in the center and one at each of the two entrances. Jack had been confident it'd be in, out, and back in time for coffee. If only they'd been a bit more cautious... not that Ianto's really the poster-child for safety right now.
At least the element of surprise is on Ianto's side. He shudders to think what these aliens would be like fully prepared for attack- he'd taken out the guard relatively easily but she'd still managed to land a swipe at him with claw-like hands before succumbing to three gun-shot wounds. Still, that leaves only one left since Jack and the team killed the guard at the other entrance after a brief fire-fight.
And then they'd inexplicably dropped out of contact.
His steps slow as he moves towards the center of the building. The scanner blinks in his hand, calibrated with the parameters of the residual energy source. And conveniently, the single blip of alien life left happens to be in the same room. He should only be a few hundred yards away. Praying he's not too late, he creeps slowly closer to his destination.
Jack's eyes snap open and his chest heaves with the first gasping, agonizing breath of life that comes after another death. He looks around, quickly taking stock, groaning when he realizes he's been strapped by his wrists and ankles to a surgical table, spread-eagle like a center piece at a bondage party. And someone's taken his shoes and socks.
The room is huge; looks like it was built for storage. There are ten other tables spaced throughout it, and Jack's heart rate doubles when he realizes Martha, Mickey, and Gwen are similarly strapped to tables; Martha on his left, Gwen and Mickey on his right.
They're all breathing, seemingly unconscious. Jack struggles against the bonds but they're too tight. He does manage to shake the table quite a bit, though, and in the wake of the ruckus Martha moans and begins to stir.
"Martha? You with me?" Jack asks, twisting his head so he can look at her. Her eyes flutter open.
"Whoa... deja vu," she groans after taking stock of her surroundings. She turns her head slightly to Jack, her eyes unfocused, voice raspy. "What happened?"
"We got ambushed," he says, expression going grim. "Some sort of boobie trap. All I remember is we were still a good ways north of the remaining alien life signals. We entered a hallway to head closer to the center of the building. You three collapsed--"
"Whatever sedative it must have been wouldn't work on you...none of them do," Martha interjects. Jack nods.
"I just had time to check all your vitals when it felt like a truck hit me in the back of the head- they must have killed me when the sedative didn't work. Next thing I know, I'm waking up here strapped to a surgical table," Jack says, struggling against the restraints again briefly. "Not a bad way to wake up under certain circumstances, but I highly doubt this is one of those times."
Martha snorts. The last of the fogginess leaves her head, and she tests her straps like Jack has been doing. "Bollocks," she mutters. Then she turns to Jack again, her face etched in sudden worry as a thought occurs to her. "Gwen and Mickey alright?" she asks. Jack spares a glance towards the other two before looking back to Martha.
"They're breathing. Hopefully they're only unconscious. If you're any indication, they should be coming around soon--" Jack cuts himself off when there's the sound of movement from across the room, a door opening with an ominous creak. He raises his head as far as he can, neck straining, to see who or what is coming into the room.
He catches a flash of metallic, crimson hair, pale skin and bright red eyes that are about two sizes too big for the roughly human-like face they're set in. The alien seems to be male, androgynously pretty but with muscles rippling in the places where bare-flesh is visible. Jack resists the urge to roll his eyes. With the flowing black clothes the alien looks straight out of some low-budge Hollywood vampire movie. Sometimes Jack feels like most intelligent life on other planets goes through a course in campness as a requirement. Though Jack can't really complain- he's no exception when it comes to that.
The alien's pushing something- a device Jack doesn't recognize- on a cart. The whirring and clacking noises emanating from the thing instantly make Jack nervous. He struggles again when the alien's unnaturally large eyes zoom in on him and narrow.
"Resilient," the thing croaks out in a multi-tonal voice. Probably has some sort of translating device on hand- they always seem to give the impression of tinny re verb, no matter how high quality. "I thought it was strange you didn't react the same as the others."
"Just call me iron-lungs," Jack quips. He shoots Martha a glance. Her face is grim beside him, but there's not any fear. He can always count on Martha in tough situations. The alien's face splits into a disturbing, slightly manic smile.
"Indeed. Though it is even more strange that you survived such a blow to the back of your head. Your physiology is decidedly different from your companions. Most interesting." He rolls the cart to the center of the room, fiddling with the controls until the machine lights up. Then he moves to Gwen and Mickey, a couple of syringes in hand.
"Hey!" Jack shouts helplessly, hearing Martha renewing her struggles beside him, "What do you think you're doing?"
"Calm down, child. I am merely reviving them. They must be awake for the extraction to work," the alien chides, slipping the needle into a vein on Gwen's arm. How he manages the delicate work with bumbling-looking claws, Jack has no idea. Almost as soon as he's pulled the needle out, Gwen's eyes snap open and she gasps.
"Jack!" she shouts, futilely trying to struggle away, "What the hell is going on?!"
"Calm down!" Jack says as she continues to struggle. The alien ignores her and moves to repeat the process with Mickey. "Don't panic; you'll only injure yourself. We'll get out of this." The alien chuckles.
"I look forward to seeing how you'll manage it," he comments as Mickey's eyes jolt open.
"Awww, fuck," Mickey moans after his eyes dart around. "Anyone got a plan?" he asks when the alien leers at him before stepping back.
"I'm working on it," Jack grumbles, scrambling as far away on the table as he can go when the alien approaches him, pushing the blinking, whirring device along with him. "I believe you mentioned something about an extraction? Care to elaborate?" Jack asks, trying to buy some time.
Please, please, please let this be one of the megalomaniac villains who feels the need to explain his evil plan.
The alien smiles before pressing a button, and viscus, flowing tentacles shoot out from the machine. They look like they're made of oil, and six stab into Jack's shoulders and hips through his clothes, four more attaching themselves to the soles of his feet. Photos of the victims flash in his mind. The tentacles weave together in the middle where they lead back to the machine, making it seem like Jack's attached to a giant, frayed rope. The sounds of protest coming from his team buzz in his ears, seemingly from a distance.
They are so fucked.
"You are quite unique," the alien says, looking at some readouts from the device. "Strong. It will most certainly sell for a fortune." He's not even looking at Jack- it's like he's talking to himself.
"What will?!" Jack grits out, a tingling sensation beginning to emanate out from the pain in his shoulders, hips, and feet. The alien's face snaps up, surprised, as if he'd forgotten Jack was even there, engrossed as he'd been in the strange machine.
"Your life, child," the alien states wickedly after a pause, flicking a switch with an evil smirk on his face.
Jack starts to scream. His head snaps back, muscles tensing at the pain. It feels... it feels similar to fighting Abaddon, only weaker, concentrated in the points on his body where the rope-like tentacles writhe in his skin. He can feel his body struggling to regenerate, the pain ebbing and then intensifying like waves crashing into sand.
After a few moments that feel like an eternity, the agony cuts off. Jack heaves in deep breathes, hearing Gwen's teary voice call his name, Martha asking if he's alright, telling him to stay with them. Mickey's silent, glaring daggers at the alien as if a look alone will kill him. The alien's not paying attention again, frowning at the device.
"Must need a recalibration," he mutters in that echoing voice, strangely-adept claws clacking on some sort of keyboard, knobs and buttons adjusted. Jack laughs.
"C'mon, that was it?" he blusters, sweat beading on his brow. The alien glares up at him, flipping a few more switches.
"If you continue on being so... persistent in holding on to yourself, I suppose I'll just have to move on to your companions before figuring out what to do with you," he says, and Jack's blood runs cold. "First I will attempt to raise the--"
Suddenly, a gunshot rings in the air, and the alien shrieks and grips its left shoulder, dark amber blood spilling out from between its claws. With a growl it spins around to face the attacker.
Ianto stands near the door, gun still raised, a dark expression on his handsome face. Jack could kiss him if he wasn't tied up.
"Ianto!" Gwen exclaims. Jack really needs to talk to her about how she handles herself in hostage situations- distracting the rescuer when he's got his gun trained on the enemy is not the best strategy. Luckily, Ianto's not deterred, his stance never flinching.
"Step away from them, please," he says, voice cold and sarcastically polite. The alien hisses, (So cliché, Jack thinks) before jutting a hand towards the machine. Another shot rings out, and the alien is left with a bullet lodged in the offending limb. He lets out another shriek of pain before slumping, swaying slightly on his feet.
"Now that wasn't very nice," Ianto says. "Attempt that again and you'll get another of those somewhere a little more vital." The alien laughs crazily.
"You children are all so simple- your rage so pointless," he rasps. "I assure you, my second must already be aware of your presence. Kill me if you dare. It is of little import when she will soon drain your friends and your mate while you watch on, tormented." Ianto smirks.
"Boyfriend, actually," he says, cocking his gun again. "And I can assure you, your second in command is already dead."
Jack's eyes widen because... boyfriend??... but he's brought back to the scene at hand when the alien screams in rage, lunging at Ianto.
It's over quickly. Three more shots ring out, and the alien falls to the floor in a pool of strangely-colored blood, the last rasp of breath rattling from his lungs. Ianto puts the safety back on his gun before tucking it in his waistband. He pulls out a scanner, giving the dead alien a wide berth as he walks over to the machine Jack's still connected to.
"Are you all alright?" Ianto asks, using the scanner to take readings from the device.
"Fine. Just a bit creeped out. Can you get us unstrapped from these bloody tables?" Gwen asks.
"In a moment," Ianto says, pausing to smile reassuringly at her. "I just want to get Jack unhooked from this thing... Don't want it to suddenly switch on and start doing whatever the hell it does."
"I second that," Jack says. "And hey. Bursting in with the bad-ass, last minute rescue is my thing," he pouts, falling back on banter to distract himself from that one word bouncing around in the back of his head. Boyfriend, huh?
Ianto looks up briefly from where he's taking readings.
"Are you seriously complaining?" he asks with a smirk. The scanner beeps. "There, this should do it," he says before pressing a series of buttons. Jack grunts when the freaky liquid tentacle things retract from his body and slink back to curl around their metal carapace. Ianto moves over to unstrap Jack from the table.
When his wrists are free, Jack sits up and rubs them, not quite meeting Ianto's concerned gaze. The others are silent, not wanting to interrupt what they probably think is a private reunion. Jack's stomach flips, and the tension between him and Ianto becomes awkward.
"Right," Ianto says, his voice quiet and sad when Jack simply stands up on the other side of the table after he's free, still not allowing their eyes to meet. Jack heads over to where Martha is tied down, and Ianto breaks away to deal with Gwen and Mickey.
Jack moves on autopilot, refusing to acknowledge the fact that Martha is giving him a disappointed and slightly accusing stare.
"Caxtarids," Mickey says, placing the data-storage device on the conference table. They'd found it during the search and clean-up phase. "That's what they call themselves."
They've been back at the Hub three hours, and now the name of the game is organization. Martha's taken care of Ianto's wounds, passed out a healing balm for the worst of everyone's bruises. She's leaving the autopsies of the aliens to start on later. Ianto's passed out coffees to keep everyone on their feet since they're all going on close to 24 hours with no sleep. Jack's finished with the preliminary report. Mickey and Gwen have been left to deal with the various bits of technology the aliens had brought with them. Seems they've hit the mother load in a tiny interface resembling a flash-drive.
"This little baby," Mickey continues, "is a combination of the captain's log, field reports, and...list of merchandise."
"Merchandise?" Martha asks, leaning forward in her chair.
"They're traders- slavers, really," Mickey says. "Nasty business. From what this information drive tells us, most of them were wiped out by biological warfare a hundred years back- some sort of virus triggered to destroy Caxtarid DNA. A few stragglers were off-planet at the time of the attack and survived. Since they're a war-like race, expert torturers, they didn't really have much skills beyond invading and taking what they needed. Their numbers were cut down to so few that they split off into small platoons like the one we dealt with, their mission to gather more...merchandise to sell in a desperate bid to build their resources back up."
"Where does the extraction device come in?" Jack asks.
"Now that- creepy piece of technology- what it does is it extracts the bio-chemical energy from a victim, kind of like taking the power out of a battery. It's why all the victims were whithered away to nothing. It extracts the life force, for lack of a better term, and channels it into a small containment chamber," Mickey says, connecting the information drive to the screen and pulling up blueprints of the device.
"It converts the energy so that the person drained actually has their basic consciousness transferred as well," Gwen cuts in, a disgusted look on her face. "Once the energy is converted and contained, it creates a portable servant, capable of powering a ship, computers, any compatible technology. Because there's still an amount of intelligence left with the energy extracted, the life force becomes like a very advanced AI. It's self-healing, able to seek out problems in any system and fix them automatically. As such, the things are highly sought after."
"Let me get this straight," Martha says incredulously. "You're basically saying that this machine extracts someone's soul and puts it to work for the highest bidder? How is that even possible?"
"You've traveled through space and time, seen the end of the world, the entire Earth kidnapped, and now you choose to suspend belief?" Ianto asks with a raised eyebrow.
"Good work," Jack tells Gwen and Mickey. "Submit a report to Ianto on Caxtarids to add to the archives. I want that information storage device with it, but dismantle and destroy the rest of the technology we found in the factory. Especially that damn extraction device. You'll need to get it from me- I've locked everything even remotely dangerous-looking in the safe." He leans back in his chair and gives the team a level stare. "It can wait until tomorrow, though. For now, I want everyone to go home and get some rest." His sentences are curt, to the point, and then he's standing, leaving the conference room without a backwards glance.
He's not even looked at Ianto once since they got back.
"What's his problem?" Mickey asks. He doesn't argue against going home, though. They're all exhausted. Mickey's face splits into a yawn as he gets up to leave.
"I'll go talk to him," Ianto says, wincing as his side twinges when he stands up.
"Best we clear out quickly then," Martha says, giving Ianto a sympathetic squeeze on the shoulder before following Mickey.
"Good luck," Gwen adds before leaving herself. "Knock some sense into him; he's acting like a twat."
"Oh, I know," Ianto says, a bit of humor warming the edges of his eyes. "Believe me, I know."