Disambiguation: In These Stones (Part 5/7)
Title: Disambiguation: In These Stones (Part 5/7)
Rating: Series ranges from PG to light NC-17. This entry's in the PG range.
Pairing(s): Jack/Ianto and Ianto/Owen. Occasional mention and hints of other pairings.
Notes/Summary: Disambiguation is an AU that follows the exploits of a parallel Torchwood where the events of "End of Days" didn't go as smoothly as they do in canon. Features Andy Davidson as a member of the team. Picks up where the original Disambiguation one-off story leaves off, so you'll probably want to give it a look. Betaed by riftugee, whose advice I took much more often than not, and without whom this piece wouldn't be nearly as shiny as it is now.
Part Five, in which nobody bends spoons, but brains go on the menu.
“Jack? We’ve got a problem.”
Ianto stepped into the locker area. The moist air coupled with the way his voice echoed off the tiles reminded him of a spelunking trip he'd taken to Daren Cilau as a teenager, and he wondered why that should cross his mind just now. He rounded the corner into the shower area in time to see Jack drop a pile of towels down next to Owen.
“Not now, Ianto. Medical emergency,” Jack told him as he took one from the heap and draped it over Owen’s shoulders. He tied another one around his waist.
“I need a stretcher, a shock blanket, and probably some glucose gel,” Owen yelled as he moved frantically to cover Andy up. “Oh, and tell Tosh to go prep an IV. I want to make sure he’s hydrated.”
“Got it,” Jack replied, and bolted for the door. Ianto dashed after him, using his earpiece to call in the IV order to Toshiko.
“It’s the morgue vaults,” Ianto explained as they ran toward the medical storage closet. “We didn’t notice at first, because they were still drawing power.”
Jack skidded to a halt and opened the closet door. He tore his way through the boxes and threw Ianto a tube of Insta-Glucose and a silver packet before trying to free a body board from its space behind a shelving unit. “Uh huh?”
“The refrigeration system isn’t functioning properly. That time leak from yesterday? We had one this morning. It took out the mini-fridge. On a lark, I ran a diagnostic on all the other refrigeration systems. Every vault system-wide has been set to just over room temperature. From Andy’s workstation.”
With a grunt, Jack wrenched the board free and heaved it into the hallway. “How long ago?”
“About two and a half days.”
Jack snatched the packet and the glucose from Ianto. “Okay. You go help Tosh. I’ll have my earpiece in again as soon as I get back to the showers. Call me if anything - and I mean anything - else happens.”
“Yes sir.”
# # #
Toshiko was just finishing preparing the IV when Ianto reappeared.
“Did you tell him?”
“Yes, though it’s not his top priority,” Ianto replied, and pulled Tosh out of the way.
Jack and Owen rushed in with Andy strapped to the body board. They’d rolled him up in the shock blanket, which they used to slide him onto the exam table. Owen cut a slit in the blanket with a pair of bandage scissors and freed Andy’s left hand in order to catheterize a vein. Owen and Jack were still clad only in damp towels. Trousers took a distant second to Andy’s well-being.
“Tosh, compile all the data you have so far on environmental and system status, and how it relates to our Rift data. Pull Andy’s usage logs while you’re at it. I want to know everything that's happened at his workstation,” Jack barked as he helped Owen connect Andy to the EKG machine.
“I’ll get right on it.”
Jack tossed Owen a wrapped syringe and continued. “Ianto, I want you to set the base to high alert status, but don’t lock us down yet. Pull up all the monitors and set them to display via the main Hub projector. I want to know if anything so much as sneezes in here. Oh, and find out what “death is the brother of sleep” means. Use the boardroom workstation.”
Ianto nodded and made for the stairs.
# # #
Thirty minutes later, the four of them sat in the boardroom. Jack and Owen still looked wet and rumpled, but they’d both taken the opportunity to get dressed before coming upstairs.
Owen fidgeted and kept glancing at his laptop. Onscreen was a CCTV image of Andy Davidson, dead asleep in the exam area. Beneath it was a block of EKG, blood pressure, and blood oxygen monitors so he could keep track of his patient remotely. Tosh sat across from him, tapping at her PDA, making sure all of her data on the anomalies was in order. Ianto, meanwhile, stood by one of the boardroom’s enormous plate glass windows and watched the Rift data scroll past. He’d set the CCTV to cycle through each of the major areas of the base: reception, several levels of cells, the vaults, the autopsy bay, and so on.
Jack nodded from his space at the head of the table and Toshiko began.
“According to our logs, the Rift has been unusually calm for the last two weeks; it’s been well within acceptable ranges and tolerances. We’re missing some data from when the system shut down because Ianto put the base into lockdown, but it’s unlikely that anything massive occurred during that time. That would show up as a series of ripples before and after. If something came through the Rift, it would have had to have been fairly unobtrusive.
“Environmental and system status are likewise pretty straightforward, with the exception that Andy used his workstation to change the morgue vaults’ refrigeration settings. Otherwise, the air handlers, environmental and climate controls and so on are just fine.”
Jack nodded grimly. “How’s the rest of his usage history?”
“Normal. In fact, the only other unusual thing that I can think of that happened in the last few days is those two instances of rapid decay that Ianto documented. One yesterday and one this morning.”
“Hold on,” Owen cut in. “Did you say rapid decay?”
Toshiko nodded. “Yeah, why?”
“I had to throw out a whole set of petri dishes yesterday. I thought it was a contamination problem with the agar plates, but it might be related.”
“Okay,” Jack said, taking stock. “We’ve got no Rift activity, but we’ve got a few irregularities here in the Hub, and one extremely strange bit of behavior on Andy’s part a couple of days before he collapsed. Owen, Andy told me he’d been having trouble sleeping at night, and I remember noticing him dozing off at his workstation.”
“Yeah. Insomnia, couple of nightmares. I was getting close to putting him on some sort of Z pills for it.”
“Z pills?” Jack asked.
“Zolpidem. It’s a sleep aid. We talked about it a little, but he was worried he wouldn’t be able to handle an emergency on them without a complementary dose of Provigil or Dextroamphetamine. Andy’s got some drug sensitivities, so he was going to give it a few days, see if it was a reaction to Ianto’s tranquilizers before we started experimenting.”
“Makes sense. Ianto, what do you have for us?”
Ianto turned to face the group and sat down at the table.
“No unusual activity on the CCTV. Oh, and no luck bringing the refrigeration settings back to spec. We’ve been shut out, and only Andy’s login has access.”
“So log in as Andy,” Jack suggested.
“We can't, that's the problem,” Ianto explained as Tosh rolled her eyes at Jack. “He's not only locked us out, but encrypted access to the system. We'll have to break the encryption before we can even think about brute force hacking his account.” Ianto took a deep breath. "Unless you happen to know his password?" he added with a wry smirk.
“Okay,” Jack continued, changing tack. “What about that thing that Andy said before he lost consciousness? ‘Death is the brother of Sleep?’”
Ianto smiled. “That I can help with. It’s a line from a children’s story by Oscar Wilde called ‘The Happy Prince.’ I’m not sure how the story fits our circumstances, but basically it’s about a statue of a dead prince befriending a swallow. The swallow helps the prince dismantle himself - remove the gems from his eyes and his sword, peel away his gold leaf - to help the poor. The bird falls in love with him in the process. In the end, the swallow dies of exposure to the elements, the prince’s heart breaks, and angels elevate the dead bird and the prince’s broken heart into Heaven.”
“That Wilde bloke was a regular ray of sunshine,” Owen mumbled as he leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
Ianto sighed. “It’s a late Nineteenth Century social commentary about the alienation homosexual men suffered here in Britain. It’s not meant to be a laugh a minute, Owen.”
Owen grunted something indistinct under his breath. Ianto continued.
“The line itself is an allusion to Greek mythology. Hypnos, the personification of sleep, was brothers with Thanatos, or death. They were both children of Nyx, the primordial night, whose other children included madness, misery, dreams, blame, and so forth.”
“Charming family,” Jack chuckled.
“Okay,” Toshiko said, looking perplexed. “So what does it all mean? I mean, why would Andy say that?”
The glass door swished open. Andy Davidson stood, swathed only in the tattered shreds of the shock blanket. His eyes glowed faintly. He smiled, a vicious grin spreading across his face.
Jack leapt to his feet and squared his gaze on Andy. “Gee, kids. I think it might have been a warning.”
# # #
Below their feet, the doors to every morgue drawer in the vaults blew open in unison.
# # #
“Andy -“ Toshiko began, moving slowly toward him. Jack grabbed her wrist and pulled her back.
Not Andy. Not anymore. The voice was jagged, clawing into their heads rather than coming out of his mouth. He is our host. Our living eyes.
“Okay, then. Who are you?” Jack asked.
In this land you may call us Meirwon, it hissed.
“Mare-on?” Jack asked, trying to fit his mouth around the alien word. He looked Andy over for telltale clues that might indicate something more familiar. “What’s that?”
“It’s Welsh, Jack. Meirwon. It means ‘dead,’” Ianto whispered.
Dead like you were, Jack Harkness. Dead like the Earth will be. We thank you and will remember you as our beacon. Andy’s mouth barely moved as the thing spoke, but its voice ground its way in behind their eyes and left them tasting ashes and rotten meat.
“What do you mean, beacon?” Jack asked, still sizing Andy up.
We saw you sleeping. Followed you home. You carried us through the veil. We found a sleeper and rode him into your world.
Jack blanched. “You’re from the Dark.” It was a statement, not a question.
Banished forever to the Other Place until Jack Harkness. We fed on his life. We made him dream...
“Psychic energy!” Tosh gasped. “You’re immaterial. You’re made of psychic energy! No wonder we couldn’t scan you!”
Something crashed in the Hub below as the first few among the dead - the ones from Owen’s cold storage area - stumbled in, milling aimlessly.
Our hands have come to build the gate. But first, to take your breath. Die and join us.
Andy’s arms flew wide, and all the windows in the boardroom shattered.
# # #
Jack Harkness dove across the table to tackle Andy Davidson. He collided with the smaller man with enormous force, and ground him hard into the floor. Jack pressed one of his hands over Andy’s eyes and held it there firmly. The thing screeched bloody murder in all of their brains, but it became apparent that without ‘living eyes,’ it could not see.
Toshiko, Owen, and Ianto bolted from the boardroom and into the main Hub area. Tosh zigged, running the long way around, while Ianto and Owen zagged and took the most immediate way down. They didn’t notice until Ianto had grabbed his messenger bag and they were nearly to the invisible lift. By that time, Toshiko’s way was blocked by a growing horde of walking corpses. She ducked into a corridor, and Owen had to physically restrain Ianto from chasing after her.
“She’ll be killed!” Ianto screamed, trying to fight his way out of Owen’s grapple.
“And so will we if we go after her!” Owen shouted back as he activated the lift beneath them. “Tosh knows her way around. If she can get out, she will.”
Ianto swore angrily, helpless to do anything but watch the invasion beginning below him as the paving stone ascended. When the lift reached the surface of the Plass, he heard the telltale sound of lockdown engaging beneath his feet.
# # #
“I’m going back in,” Ianto shouted, digging frantically through his bag.
“What? Are you insane? Did you not notice the hordes of fucking zombies? Or maybe the fact that Andy is suddenly some sort of super-powerful comic book villain? The base is locked down, Ianto! You’re not getting back in!”
“Oh, ye of little faith.” Ianto shook his head as he reached into his messenger bag and produced a familiar-looking alien device. “I took this the night I got Jack out of the morgue just in case my timing was off. I didn’t want to get caught in the dumbwaiter system.”
Owen snorted. “Okay, so you can get in. But that still leaves the zombies and uber Andy.” He reached after the alien lockpick, but Ianto tucked it behind his back.
“Back at Torchwood One, all of us had to undergo a minimum level of psychic training. Mostly it was self-defense. Only a handful of really talented agents moved on to the really interesting stuff.”
Owen cocked his head to the side. “So what, you’re like Uri Geller or something? Torchwood's biggest secret, a teaboy who knows when your coffee mug is getting a little dry?”
Ianto ignored Owen's jab and shook his head. “Hardly. They wouldn’t have wasted me in the archives if I were a powerful sensitive. I didn’t go much beyond the basic class. Psychic shielding. Using and recognizing low level psi devices. That sort of thing.”
“Okay, so?”
“So I think I should be able to get past the zombies, and maybe even Andy if he’s not actually looking at me. They're blind, Owen. They can detect life, but they can't see. All I have to do is shield myself adequately and I should be functionally invisible.”
Owen sighed. “Okay, fine. You can get in and sneak around. What are you going to do? Rearrange their stuff? Tie their shoelaces together?”
Ianto chewed his lip for a second before his eyes lit up and went wide. “There’s a psychic amplifier in the archives. If I can get to it, I may be able to stop Andy.”
Owen’s mind reeled. The whole thing sounded crazy. “Okay, fine. But I’m going with you.”
Ianto shook his head and shoved his bag into Owen’s hands. “Too dangerous. One person’s got a better chance of passing unnoticed than two. I’ve got better psychic training, and I know the archives better than anyone. Plus, we need someone on the outside to call Glasgow if I fail. You’re our last line of defense.”
For a moment, Owen looked like he was going to argue, but Ianto gave him a pleading look. Owen shook his head and looked down.
“Be careful, alright?”
Ianto nodded and extended his hand to shake. Owen clasped it tightly.
“Nice working with you, Dr. Harper.”
Owen smiled grimly. “And you, Mr. Jones.”
Ianto gave Owen’s hand a squeeze. “Wish me luck,” he said softly, and then turned and ran toward the tourist office.
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Rating: Series ranges from PG to light NC-17. This entry's in the PG range.
Pairing(s): Jack/Ianto and Ianto/Owen. Occasional mention and hints of other pairings.
Notes/Summary: Disambiguation is an AU that follows the exploits of a parallel Torchwood where the events of "End of Days" didn't go as smoothly as they do in canon. Features Andy Davidson as a member of the team. Picks up where the original Disambiguation one-off story leaves off, so you'll probably want to give it a look. Betaed by riftugee, whose advice I took much more often than not, and without whom this piece wouldn't be nearly as shiny as it is now.
Part Five, in which nobody bends spoons, but brains go on the menu.
“Jack? We’ve got a problem.”
Ianto stepped into the locker area. The moist air coupled with the way his voice echoed off the tiles reminded him of a spelunking trip he'd taken to Daren Cilau as a teenager, and he wondered why that should cross his mind just now. He rounded the corner into the shower area in time to see Jack drop a pile of towels down next to Owen.
“Not now, Ianto. Medical emergency,” Jack told him as he took one from the heap and draped it over Owen’s shoulders. He tied another one around his waist.
“I need a stretcher, a shock blanket, and probably some glucose gel,” Owen yelled as he moved frantically to cover Andy up. “Oh, and tell Tosh to go prep an IV. I want to make sure he’s hydrated.”
“Got it,” Jack replied, and bolted for the door. Ianto dashed after him, using his earpiece to call in the IV order to Toshiko.
“It’s the morgue vaults,” Ianto explained as they ran toward the medical storage closet. “We didn’t notice at first, because they were still drawing power.”
Jack skidded to a halt and opened the closet door. He tore his way through the boxes and threw Ianto a tube of Insta-Glucose and a silver packet before trying to free a body board from its space behind a shelving unit. “Uh huh?”
“The refrigeration system isn’t functioning properly. That time leak from yesterday? We had one this morning. It took out the mini-fridge. On a lark, I ran a diagnostic on all the other refrigeration systems. Every vault system-wide has been set to just over room temperature. From Andy’s workstation.”
With a grunt, Jack wrenched the board free and heaved it into the hallway. “How long ago?”
“About two and a half days.”
Jack snatched the packet and the glucose from Ianto. “Okay. You go help Tosh. I’ll have my earpiece in again as soon as I get back to the showers. Call me if anything - and I mean anything - else happens.”
“Yes sir.”
# # #
Toshiko was just finishing preparing the IV when Ianto reappeared.
“Did you tell him?”
“Yes, though it’s not his top priority,” Ianto replied, and pulled Tosh out of the way.
Jack and Owen rushed in with Andy strapped to the body board. They’d rolled him up in the shock blanket, which they used to slide him onto the exam table. Owen cut a slit in the blanket with a pair of bandage scissors and freed Andy’s left hand in order to catheterize a vein. Owen and Jack were still clad only in damp towels. Trousers took a distant second to Andy’s well-being.
“Tosh, compile all the data you have so far on environmental and system status, and how it relates to our Rift data. Pull Andy’s usage logs while you’re at it. I want to know everything that's happened at his workstation,” Jack barked as he helped Owen connect Andy to the EKG machine.
“I’ll get right on it.”
Jack tossed Owen a wrapped syringe and continued. “Ianto, I want you to set the base to high alert status, but don’t lock us down yet. Pull up all the monitors and set them to display via the main Hub projector. I want to know if anything so much as sneezes in here. Oh, and find out what “death is the brother of sleep” means. Use the boardroom workstation.”
Ianto nodded and made for the stairs.
# # #
Thirty minutes later, the four of them sat in the boardroom. Jack and Owen still looked wet and rumpled, but they’d both taken the opportunity to get dressed before coming upstairs.
Owen fidgeted and kept glancing at his laptop. Onscreen was a CCTV image of Andy Davidson, dead asleep in the exam area. Beneath it was a block of EKG, blood pressure, and blood oxygen monitors so he could keep track of his patient remotely. Tosh sat across from him, tapping at her PDA, making sure all of her data on the anomalies was in order. Ianto, meanwhile, stood by one of the boardroom’s enormous plate glass windows and watched the Rift data scroll past. He’d set the CCTV to cycle through each of the major areas of the base: reception, several levels of cells, the vaults, the autopsy bay, and so on.
Jack nodded from his space at the head of the table and Toshiko began.
“According to our logs, the Rift has been unusually calm for the last two weeks; it’s been well within acceptable ranges and tolerances. We’re missing some data from when the system shut down because Ianto put the base into lockdown, but it’s unlikely that anything massive occurred during that time. That would show up as a series of ripples before and after. If something came through the Rift, it would have had to have been fairly unobtrusive.
“Environmental and system status are likewise pretty straightforward, with the exception that Andy used his workstation to change the morgue vaults’ refrigeration settings. Otherwise, the air handlers, environmental and climate controls and so on are just fine.”
Jack nodded grimly. “How’s the rest of his usage history?”
“Normal. In fact, the only other unusual thing that I can think of that happened in the last few days is those two instances of rapid decay that Ianto documented. One yesterday and one this morning.”
“Hold on,” Owen cut in. “Did you say rapid decay?”
Toshiko nodded. “Yeah, why?”
“I had to throw out a whole set of petri dishes yesterday. I thought it was a contamination problem with the agar plates, but it might be related.”
“Okay,” Jack said, taking stock. “We’ve got no Rift activity, but we’ve got a few irregularities here in the Hub, and one extremely strange bit of behavior on Andy’s part a couple of days before he collapsed. Owen, Andy told me he’d been having trouble sleeping at night, and I remember noticing him dozing off at his workstation.”
“Yeah. Insomnia, couple of nightmares. I was getting close to putting him on some sort of Z pills for it.”
“Z pills?” Jack asked.
“Zolpidem. It’s a sleep aid. We talked about it a little, but he was worried he wouldn’t be able to handle an emergency on them without a complementary dose of Provigil or Dextroamphetamine. Andy’s got some drug sensitivities, so he was going to give it a few days, see if it was a reaction to Ianto’s tranquilizers before we started experimenting.”
“Makes sense. Ianto, what do you have for us?”
Ianto turned to face the group and sat down at the table.
“No unusual activity on the CCTV. Oh, and no luck bringing the refrigeration settings back to spec. We’ve been shut out, and only Andy’s login has access.”
“So log in as Andy,” Jack suggested.
“We can't, that's the problem,” Ianto explained as Tosh rolled her eyes at Jack. “He's not only locked us out, but encrypted access to the system. We'll have to break the encryption before we can even think about brute force hacking his account.” Ianto took a deep breath. "Unless you happen to know his password?" he added with a wry smirk.
“Okay,” Jack continued, changing tack. “What about that thing that Andy said before he lost consciousness? ‘Death is the brother of Sleep?’”
Ianto smiled. “That I can help with. It’s a line from a children’s story by Oscar Wilde called ‘The Happy Prince.’ I’m not sure how the story fits our circumstances, but basically it’s about a statue of a dead prince befriending a swallow. The swallow helps the prince dismantle himself - remove the gems from his eyes and his sword, peel away his gold leaf - to help the poor. The bird falls in love with him in the process. In the end, the swallow dies of exposure to the elements, the prince’s heart breaks, and angels elevate the dead bird and the prince’s broken heart into Heaven.”
“That Wilde bloke was a regular ray of sunshine,” Owen mumbled as he leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
Ianto sighed. “It’s a late Nineteenth Century social commentary about the alienation homosexual men suffered here in Britain. It’s not meant to be a laugh a minute, Owen.”
Owen grunted something indistinct under his breath. Ianto continued.
“The line itself is an allusion to Greek mythology. Hypnos, the personification of sleep, was brothers with Thanatos, or death. They were both children of Nyx, the primordial night, whose other children included madness, misery, dreams, blame, and so forth.”
“Charming family,” Jack chuckled.
“Okay,” Toshiko said, looking perplexed. “So what does it all mean? I mean, why would Andy say that?”
The glass door swished open. Andy Davidson stood, swathed only in the tattered shreds of the shock blanket. His eyes glowed faintly. He smiled, a vicious grin spreading across his face.
Jack leapt to his feet and squared his gaze on Andy. “Gee, kids. I think it might have been a warning.”
# # #
Below their feet, the doors to every morgue drawer in the vaults blew open in unison.
# # #
“Andy -“ Toshiko began, moving slowly toward him. Jack grabbed her wrist and pulled her back.
Not Andy. Not anymore. The voice was jagged, clawing into their heads rather than coming out of his mouth. He is our host. Our living eyes.
“Okay, then. Who are you?” Jack asked.
In this land you may call us Meirwon, it hissed.
“Mare-on?” Jack asked, trying to fit his mouth around the alien word. He looked Andy over for telltale clues that might indicate something more familiar. “What’s that?”
“It’s Welsh, Jack. Meirwon. It means ‘dead,’” Ianto whispered.
Dead like you were, Jack Harkness. Dead like the Earth will be. We thank you and will remember you as our beacon. Andy’s mouth barely moved as the thing spoke, but its voice ground its way in behind their eyes and left them tasting ashes and rotten meat.
“What do you mean, beacon?” Jack asked, still sizing Andy up.
We saw you sleeping. Followed you home. You carried us through the veil. We found a sleeper and rode him into your world.
Jack blanched. “You’re from the Dark.” It was a statement, not a question.
Banished forever to the Other Place until Jack Harkness. We fed on his life. We made him dream...
“Psychic energy!” Tosh gasped. “You’re immaterial. You’re made of psychic energy! No wonder we couldn’t scan you!”
Something crashed in the Hub below as the first few among the dead - the ones from Owen’s cold storage area - stumbled in, milling aimlessly.
Our hands have come to build the gate. But first, to take your breath. Die and join us.
Andy’s arms flew wide, and all the windows in the boardroom shattered.
# # #
Jack Harkness dove across the table to tackle Andy Davidson. He collided with the smaller man with enormous force, and ground him hard into the floor. Jack pressed one of his hands over Andy’s eyes and held it there firmly. The thing screeched bloody murder in all of their brains, but it became apparent that without ‘living eyes,’ it could not see.
Toshiko, Owen, and Ianto bolted from the boardroom and into the main Hub area. Tosh zigged, running the long way around, while Ianto and Owen zagged and took the most immediate way down. They didn’t notice until Ianto had grabbed his messenger bag and they were nearly to the invisible lift. By that time, Toshiko’s way was blocked by a growing horde of walking corpses. She ducked into a corridor, and Owen had to physically restrain Ianto from chasing after her.
“She’ll be killed!” Ianto screamed, trying to fight his way out of Owen’s grapple.
“And so will we if we go after her!” Owen shouted back as he activated the lift beneath them. “Tosh knows her way around. If she can get out, she will.”
Ianto swore angrily, helpless to do anything but watch the invasion beginning below him as the paving stone ascended. When the lift reached the surface of the Plass, he heard the telltale sound of lockdown engaging beneath his feet.
# # #
“I’m going back in,” Ianto shouted, digging frantically through his bag.
“What? Are you insane? Did you not notice the hordes of fucking zombies? Or maybe the fact that Andy is suddenly some sort of super-powerful comic book villain? The base is locked down, Ianto! You’re not getting back in!”
“Oh, ye of little faith.” Ianto shook his head as he reached into his messenger bag and produced a familiar-looking alien device. “I took this the night I got Jack out of the morgue just in case my timing was off. I didn’t want to get caught in the dumbwaiter system.”
Owen snorted. “Okay, so you can get in. But that still leaves the zombies and uber Andy.” He reached after the alien lockpick, but Ianto tucked it behind his back.
“Back at Torchwood One, all of us had to undergo a minimum level of psychic training. Mostly it was self-defense. Only a handful of really talented agents moved on to the really interesting stuff.”
Owen cocked his head to the side. “So what, you’re like Uri Geller or something? Torchwood's biggest secret, a teaboy who knows when your coffee mug is getting a little dry?”
Ianto ignored Owen's jab and shook his head. “Hardly. They wouldn’t have wasted me in the archives if I were a powerful sensitive. I didn’t go much beyond the basic class. Psychic shielding. Using and recognizing low level psi devices. That sort of thing.”
“Okay, so?”
“So I think I should be able to get past the zombies, and maybe even Andy if he’s not actually looking at me. They're blind, Owen. They can detect life, but they can't see. All I have to do is shield myself adequately and I should be functionally invisible.”
Owen sighed. “Okay, fine. You can get in and sneak around. What are you going to do? Rearrange their stuff? Tie their shoelaces together?”
Ianto chewed his lip for a second before his eyes lit up and went wide. “There’s a psychic amplifier in the archives. If I can get to it, I may be able to stop Andy.”
Owen’s mind reeled. The whole thing sounded crazy. “Okay, fine. But I’m going with you.”
Ianto shook his head and shoved his bag into Owen’s hands. “Too dangerous. One person’s got a better chance of passing unnoticed than two. I’ve got better psychic training, and I know the archives better than anyone. Plus, we need someone on the outside to call Glasgow if I fail. You’re our last line of defense.”
For a moment, Owen looked like he was going to argue, but Ianto gave him a pleading look. Owen shook his head and looked down.
“Be careful, alright?”
Ianto nodded and extended his hand to shake. Owen clasped it tightly.
“Nice working with you, Dr. Harper.”
Owen smiled grimly. “And you, Mr. Jones.”
Ianto gave Owen’s hand a squeeze. “Wish me luck,” he said softly, and then turned and ran toward the tourist office.
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