Rift, Hellmouth, Same Difference (9/?)
Title: Rift, Hellmouth, Same Difference
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: "Buffy" through The Becoming, all of Torchwood.
Summary: Buffy gets sucked into the Hell vortex at the end of Becoming, only to end up on the rain-slicked streets of Cardiff. What's Torchwood to do with a lost Slayer?
Disclaimer: Joss owns "Buffy," RTD and the BBC own "Torchwood," I own my iPod.
AN: Thank you to the amazing revdorothyl for betaing!
Chapter One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight
Banner by the awesome skylar0grace
Chapter Nine
A joke. A sick, twisted joke. It had to be. Buffy kept running these thoughts through her head as she listened to Ianto’s tale while the Japanese techie dude worked his stuff on Robogirl. “So, she’s the mysterious Lisa, whose stuff you keep in a box in your room, and you’ve been hiding her in the basement ever since you started working here, and you’ve been running interference so I didn’t find her?” Ianto gave a slow nod. “Why don’t you just ask for help instead of hiding her? I mean, I’m sure Tosh could come up with something.”
“Torchwood would only see her as a threat to be destroyed,” Ianto said, glancing back at Lisa. “Anything that isn’t human they view as something that can only harm us. They wouldn’t let her live, especially because she has Cyberman components.”
“I think you’re being stupid,” Buffy told him bluntly, Oz chief in her mind. She was supposed to be going all Slayer on werewolves, but her thoughts were as long as he didn’t hurt anyone, he was good. As far as she knew, Lisa could be like him. She didn’t want to think of what would happen if Cybergirl ended up like Angel/Angelus. Before Ianto could answer her, the monitor attached to Lisa began to beep frantically.
“What’s going on? What have you done to her?” Ianto asked in alarm, rushing down the stairs to stand beside his girlfriend. The monitor began to show a flatline, as Lisa gasped for breath. “If she dies… ”
Buffy at this point had joined Ianto at the bottom of the medical bay, and stepped between the two men.
“Cool it, Ianto!” she snapped at him. Before she could say anything else, Lisa began taking deep breaths. Her eyes snapped open and she looked around wildly.
“Ianto?” she called out, a tinge of panic in her voice. Ianto gently squeezed her hand and gave her a wavering smile.
“Yes, I’m here,” he said, his face glowing with joy. “You’re breathing! It worked!” Buffy tried to step away to give the two some room, but Lisa had spied her.
“Who’s that, Ianto? Why is she here?” Lisa asked. Buffy shot a questioning look at Ianto, who motioned for her to come closer.
“Hi, I’m Buffy,” Buffy said awkwardly, giving Lisa a small wave. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Lisa replied, giving Buffy a small smile. “Why are you here?”
“Well, funny story about that…” Before Buffy could continue, the computer next to Ianto started to beep, interrupting his conversation with Tanyzuko, or whatever Ianto had called him.
Ianto frantically typed the command to pull up the CCTV footage from outside and resisted the urge to curse aloud when he saw the team returning to the Hub on the monitor.
“We need to go,” he said, going over to Lisa and helping her sit up. The other man began to gather the portable machinery. Buffy started straightening up the area, unsure of what else to do.
“I want to walk,” protested Lisa. Ianto looked at her like she was crazy.
“You just woke up!” he protested. “You’re too weak.”
“Please,” Lisa pleaded softly. Ianto looked at her, then gave a curt nod.
“You two help her,” Buffy said, continuing to clean up. “I’ll help run some interference. We still need to talk, Ianto,” she added, giving him a look that promised him trouble if he avoided her. The two men left, half-carrying Lisa between the two of them. This left Buffy by herself to process what she had just learned.
Although Ianto protested that Lisa couldn’t be a threat, Buffy wasn’t so sure. OK, maybe she was a little anti-robot after the whole Ted debacle, but what was to prevent Lisa from going all Borg Queen and “Resistance is futile” on them? “Buffy, you’ve officially spent way too much time around Xander,” she muttered to herself as she exited the medical bay and sat down at her desk, as if nothing unusual had occurred.
“Tosh, call up the radar within a fifty-mile radius of the Bay for the last six hours,” Jack was saying as the rest of the team entered the Hub. They didn’t look like they suspected anything was out of the ordinary. Buffy waved at them, but remained silent, still deep in thought. She’d heard the name “Cybermen” briefly mentioned when she had been given the Reader’s Digest History of Torchwood, but it had been along the lines of, “Cybermen…end of the world bad…destroy on sight.” Maybe Ianto was right in thinking that Lisa could overcome whatever had been done to her.
“Buffy, are you alright?” Tosh asked, looking at the girl. This was the quietest that Buffy had been in a long time, and Tosh didn’t know why this was. Buffy started, but gave Tosh a small smile.
“Extra peachy,” she said. Tosh studied her, but gave a mental shrug. Buffy would let them know if anything was wrong, she reasoned to herself. Buffy, meanwhile, began fiddling with a pen on her desk, half-listening to whatever the team was working on, something about a UFO. During this time, Ianto had come back and was making some coffee for Jack. Buffy made her way over to the coffee machine.
“Is she a threat?” she asked in a soft whisper. Ianto looked up at her. “Because if she is, I won’t let her harm anyone on this team.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Ianto asked in an angry whisper of his own. Buffy gave him a measured look and let a bit of the Slayer show for the first time since she had arrived here.
“I’ll do whatever I need to do to protect these people,” she answered, her voice taking on a deadly edge. “I won’t make that mistake again.” Ianto looked at her in shock. This wasn’t the Buffy he had grown used to seeing. She no longer was the teenage girl who was struggling to figure out her place in a new universe. This was someone who had been forced to shoulder a burden far beyond her years, and had done so for quite some time. “Again, is she a threat?”
“No,” Ianto answered, grabbing the coffee and walking towards Jack. Buffy followed him with her eyes, wondering if she could believe him. Fortunately, no one had noticed the exchange between the two of them. Buffy wandered back to her desk and watched everyone around her. Even if Lisa meant something to Ianto, Buffy wouldn’t let her do to this team what Angelus had done to the Scoobies.
The lights began to flicker, derailing Buffy's train of thought. “Is it just me, or are the lights going wonky on us?” Buffy asked no one in particular. Tosh quickly typed in a few commands on her computer.
“There’s an internal power drain,” Tosh said. “I don’t know what’s causing it, though. This shouldn’t be happening.”
“Tosh, run a system diagnostic,” Jack ordered. He was about to add something else when Ianto interrupted him.
“Actually…we’ve been having generator problems all evening,” he lied. He noticed Buffy rolling her eyes, but he refrained from shooting her a warning look. “I was down there checking earlier. A couple of bits of cabling have come loose. I thought I’d fixed it. Let me have another look.”
“Do you need help?” Buffy asked, knowing that Lisa was behind the drain. Ianto shook his head and walked calmly towards the sublevels. Buffy did her best to remain calm. Please, please, please let it be normal. Please don’t let it mean I need to do this, she silently prayed.
~*~*~
As Ianto dragged Tanizaki’s mangled body down the hallway, he reflected on what Buffy had asked him. Is she a threat? At the time, Ianto had answered with a firm “no,” but now he wasn’t so sure. Although he wanted to believe that Lisa, his Lisa was still there somewhere, he kept hearing Buffy’s voice in his head. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. He didn’t know if it was to the body, to the team, to Lisa, to Buffy, or to himself. “I’m so sorry.”
~*~*~
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Buffy anxiously awaited Ianto’s return. The rest of the team didn’t appear to be concerned by Ianto’s absence, content in trying to get the UFO out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Tosh had just sent the aliens a message telling them to clear out when the lights started going haywire again.
“Ianto, we’ve got another dose of darkness,” Jack called out to him through the communicator. “You find anything?” Nothing could be heard from the other end but static. “Ianto? I need to hear those beautiful Welsh vowels!”
Buffy’s blood froze. No, no, this couldn’t be happening.
“I’m looking for human heat signals in the sublevels, …and there’s two!” Tosh exclaimed, staring at the screen in shock. “Assuming one’s Ianto…”
“Who’s the other one?” Gwen interrupted. Buffy pretended to be intrigued, when really she was worried sick. If there were only two signals… Did Lisa give off heat, or did that mean that that someone was dead? Oh, God, she hoped not.
“I’m thinking we’re under attack,” Jack said, running to another station. “Our security’s been breached.”
“That’s impossible!” Tosh cried out, running after him. “Nobody can get in without triggering seven separate alarms.”
“Well, it looks like we need to be changing the locks, then,” Owen said, checking his gun. “I’m going down there to look for Ianto. You all right with that?” he asked Jack, as Gwen grabbed her gun and stood next to him.
“Keep your comms open at all times at all time!” Jack barked to the duo. “Any doubts, shoot first. Our priority is to find Ianto.” Owen and Gwen took off to the sublevels. As much as Buffy wanted to run off with them, she kept herself put. She would need to sneak down later.
“The power’s continuing to drain,” Tosh said, fingers flying over the keys. “I can’t pinpoint what’s causing it. All I have is a location!” She hit the keyboard in frustration. “This shouldn’t be happening!”
“Gwen, Owen, progress report,” Jack demanded, pacing back and forth.
“Signs…of…” Owen’s voice came in bits and pieces, intercut with static. Jack tapped his comm.
“We’re losing your comm signals,” Jack said. Buffy began to inch her way towards the entrance. “Don’t even think of moving, Buffy,” he said, shooting her a warning look. “Gwen, Owen? Can you hear me? Damnit! Can we get them back, Tosh?”
“Whatever it is, it’s interfering with the comms,” Tosh said. “I’m trying other channels, but nothing’s working.” She took a deep breath and turned to Jack. “There’s something else you need to see. I’ve gone back through our internal CCTV footage for the last couple of hours. Someone’s tried to remove the images from our system.” Jack grabbed Buffy’s arm and walked her over to the computer Tosh was at.
“Did you know about this?” he asked, looking Buffy in the eyes. Buffy was frozen, unsure of what to do. “Did you know?” he asked in deadly voice.
“Jack, you need to take a look at this,” Tosh said, pulling up an image on the computer. The images showed a strange man entering the Hub, only to be greeted by Ianto. Ianto then led the man into the sublevels.
“What is going on here?” Jack asked, turning to Buffy. “What do you know?” Buffy stayed silent, her eyes fixed on the computer screen. “Buffy!”
“I heard you the first time,” she said, her voice sounding cold to her ears, looking up to meet Jack’s angry gaze. “All I know is that Ianto’s down there, and I don’t know if he’s dead or not. I need to go help him!”
“You are not going anywhere, Buffy!” Jack shouted at her. “What do you know?”
“You don’t give a damn about Ianto,” Buffy said, her voice becoming practically Arctic. “You’re just angry that he did this behind your back.” Jack was about to reply when Tosh called out to him.
“Jack, the comms are back online. Gwen and Owen must have turned off whatever was draining the power,” Tosh reported. Jack continued to glare at Buffy as he raised his wristband to his mouth.
“Gwen, Owen? Can you hear me?” Nothing came back through. “If I don’t hear something within thirty seconds, I’m coming down there!” he tried again. This time, it appeared to go through.
“Jack, it’s Gwen,” Gwen’s voice came over the comm. Buffy let out a breath she didn’t even know she was holding in at the sound of Gwen’s voice.
“Any sign of Ianto?” Jack asked, his eyes never leaving Buffy’s face. Buffy gave him a glare worthy of Ripper, but remained silent.
“No.” This time it was Owen’s voice talking and there was barely controlled panic in his voice. “But we have parts of a Cyber conversion unit, fully powered up and working.” Both Jack and Tosh paled when they heard this, and Buffy felt even colder than she already was, if that was possible.
“This is no time for jokes,” Jack said.
“I’m deadly serious,” Owen protested. “I don’t know why it’s here, or how it got here, but it’s been draining our power.” Jack fell silent for a moment, deep in thought. “Jack? You there?”
“I want you back up here immediately!” he shouted, before turning to face Buffy. “Please tell me you didn’t know about this. Please tell me you haven’t been covering for him all this time.”
“I just found out today,” Buffy answered, her mind elsewhere. She needed to find Ianto and make sure he was OK. She needed to find a weapon, preferably something like a rocket launcher, and track down Lisa. She needed to be anywhere but facing Jack. Before Jack could ask her a new question, Gwen’s panicked voice broke through.
“Jack, code zero incursion. Repeat, code zero incursion! We’re under attack!”
“If you don’t hear from me within fifteen minutes, activate total shutdown procedures and get yourselves to safety,” Jack ordered, grabbing his gun and making his way to the entrance to the sublevels, only to find Buffy grabbing his arms.
“I’m coming,” she said, and Jack was struck by the change in her. The teenage girl was gone. In her place was something new. She bristled with a power he realized she had been containing all this time. “I told Ianto if she was a threat, I would deal with it.”
“You’re staying here with Tosh,” he said, trying to pry his arm from her grasp. She tightened her grip and he was struck by how strong she was.
“I don’t think you heard me correctly,” she said. “I’m coming with you. You’ve seen me take down a Weevil. I survived Hell, literal hell, complete with those nice little things called demons. I can take care of myself.” She swallowed, and Jack was interested to note a flash of pain in her eyes. “I told him I wouldn’t make that mistake again, and I plan to keep my word.”
“Fine,” he conceded through gritted teeth. He needed to get down there as fast as possible, and the only way he could do that was if he gave in. “Follow me and don’t get in the way.”
“Funny, I think it’d be the other way around,” she said in a voice that contained no humor. They remained silent after that, making their way quickly through the various levels until Buffy stopped, head cocked. “That’s Gwen,” she whispered before breaking into a run.
“Wait!” Jack called out, sprinting to catch up with her. He saw her slow down and soon they were running together. As they drew closer to the door, he could hear the faint sound of Gwen screaming. “Get behind me,” he ordered Buffy, unholstering his gun as they approached an open door. “Throw down any weapons, put your hands up and turn and face me!” he shouted as he entered the room, briefly noticing Owen lying unconscious on the floor before focusing his attention on the thing standing with its back towards him. The figure slowly turned around, and Jack was struck by the image before him.
It wasn’t a pure Cyberman, but more like a hybrid between one and a human. He was still studying her when the sound of Gwen screaming his name brought him out. He raised his gun to shoot, but Ianto rammed into him.
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing!” Ianto shouted at him. Jack tried to fight off Ianto, and, in the confusion, he lost sight of the thing.
“You’re fighting the wrong guy!” Jack shouted, as Buffy ripped something out of the wall. Gwen, strapped onto the conversion chamber, screamed louder as a bunch of deadly looking mechanical arms lowered towards her.
“Get me out of here! Someone, please!” Gwen cried. Jack was turning towards the controls when a projectile flew past his head and hit the mechanical arms. With bright flash, the arms exploded. Buffy didn’t say anything, but just walked over to the chamber and ripped apart the bands restraining Gwen. “Thanks, sweetheart,” Gwen gasped, grabbing Buffy for support.
“I’m so sorry, Gwen,” Ianto apologized, moving to help her before Jack.
“What are you sorry for, Ianto?” Gwen asked, rubbing her wrists. Jack, Buffy, and Ianto all remained silent. “Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Gwen demanded.
“Walk,” Jack ordered, gesturing to Ianto with his gun. “Now.” Ianto shot a look at Buffy, but her attention was on Owen.
“Let’s go,” she said quietly, hoisting Owen over her shoulder. Gwen stared at the sight of the small girl easily carrying the much larger Owen. “We left Tosh by herself. I’m not going to risk her life because there was no one was there to help her.” Ianto began walking, followed closely by the rest of the group.
“Clear?” Jack asked Ianto, who confirmed it as they moved down the hallway towards the main part of the Hub. They were inching along the corridor when Lisa appeared in front of them.
“There she is!” Gwen gasped, stopping suddenly. “What is she?”
“Some form of Cyberman,” Jack explained. Behind him, he was dimly aware of Buffy grabbing Owen’s gun. “They’re us, upgraded. Humans with emotions removed, created on a parallel world and supposedly destroyed on this one.”
“What are we going to do?” Gwen asked, when she noticed Buffy leaning a groggy Owen against the wall.
“We make sure she doesn’t get to the outside world,” Jack said grimly, pointing his gun at Ianto. “Now, move.”
Chapter Ten
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: "Buffy" through The Becoming, all of Torchwood.
Summary: Buffy gets sucked into the Hell vortex at the end of Becoming, only to end up on the rain-slicked streets of Cardiff. What's Torchwood to do with a lost Slayer?
Disclaimer: Joss owns "Buffy," RTD and the BBC own "Torchwood," I own my iPod.
AN: Thank you to the amazing revdorothyl for betaing!
Chapter One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight
Banner by the awesome skylar0grace
Chapter Nine
A joke. A sick, twisted joke. It had to be. Buffy kept running these thoughts through her head as she listened to Ianto’s tale while the Japanese techie dude worked his stuff on Robogirl. “So, she’s the mysterious Lisa, whose stuff you keep in a box in your room, and you’ve been hiding her in the basement ever since you started working here, and you’ve been running interference so I didn’t find her?” Ianto gave a slow nod. “Why don’t you just ask for help instead of hiding her? I mean, I’m sure Tosh could come up with something.”
“Torchwood would only see her as a threat to be destroyed,” Ianto said, glancing back at Lisa. “Anything that isn’t human they view as something that can only harm us. They wouldn’t let her live, especially because she has Cyberman components.”
“I think you’re being stupid,” Buffy told him bluntly, Oz chief in her mind. She was supposed to be going all Slayer on werewolves, but her thoughts were as long as he didn’t hurt anyone, he was good. As far as she knew, Lisa could be like him. She didn’t want to think of what would happen if Cybergirl ended up like Angel/Angelus. Before Ianto could answer her, the monitor attached to Lisa began to beep frantically.
“What’s going on? What have you done to her?” Ianto asked in alarm, rushing down the stairs to stand beside his girlfriend. The monitor began to show a flatline, as Lisa gasped for breath. “If she dies… ”
Buffy at this point had joined Ianto at the bottom of the medical bay, and stepped between the two men.
“Cool it, Ianto!” she snapped at him. Before she could say anything else, Lisa began taking deep breaths. Her eyes snapped open and she looked around wildly.
“Ianto?” she called out, a tinge of panic in her voice. Ianto gently squeezed her hand and gave her a wavering smile.
“Yes, I’m here,” he said, his face glowing with joy. “You’re breathing! It worked!” Buffy tried to step away to give the two some room, but Lisa had spied her.
“Who’s that, Ianto? Why is she here?” Lisa asked. Buffy shot a questioning look at Ianto, who motioned for her to come closer.
“Hi, I’m Buffy,” Buffy said awkwardly, giving Lisa a small wave. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Lisa replied, giving Buffy a small smile. “Why are you here?”
“Well, funny story about that…” Before Buffy could continue, the computer next to Ianto started to beep, interrupting his conversation with Tanyzuko, or whatever Ianto had called him.
Ianto frantically typed the command to pull up the CCTV footage from outside and resisted the urge to curse aloud when he saw the team returning to the Hub on the monitor.
“We need to go,” he said, going over to Lisa and helping her sit up. The other man began to gather the portable machinery. Buffy started straightening up the area, unsure of what else to do.
“I want to walk,” protested Lisa. Ianto looked at her like she was crazy.
“You just woke up!” he protested. “You’re too weak.”
“Please,” Lisa pleaded softly. Ianto looked at her, then gave a curt nod.
“You two help her,” Buffy said, continuing to clean up. “I’ll help run some interference. We still need to talk, Ianto,” she added, giving him a look that promised him trouble if he avoided her. The two men left, half-carrying Lisa between the two of them. This left Buffy by herself to process what she had just learned.
Although Ianto protested that Lisa couldn’t be a threat, Buffy wasn’t so sure. OK, maybe she was a little anti-robot after the whole Ted debacle, but what was to prevent Lisa from going all Borg Queen and “Resistance is futile” on them? “Buffy, you’ve officially spent way too much time around Xander,” she muttered to herself as she exited the medical bay and sat down at her desk, as if nothing unusual had occurred.
“Tosh, call up the radar within a fifty-mile radius of the Bay for the last six hours,” Jack was saying as the rest of the team entered the Hub. They didn’t look like they suspected anything was out of the ordinary. Buffy waved at them, but remained silent, still deep in thought. She’d heard the name “Cybermen” briefly mentioned when she had been given the Reader’s Digest History of Torchwood, but it had been along the lines of, “Cybermen…end of the world bad…destroy on sight.” Maybe Ianto was right in thinking that Lisa could overcome whatever had been done to her.
“Buffy, are you alright?” Tosh asked, looking at the girl. This was the quietest that Buffy had been in a long time, and Tosh didn’t know why this was. Buffy started, but gave Tosh a small smile.
“Extra peachy,” she said. Tosh studied her, but gave a mental shrug. Buffy would let them know if anything was wrong, she reasoned to herself. Buffy, meanwhile, began fiddling with a pen on her desk, half-listening to whatever the team was working on, something about a UFO. During this time, Ianto had come back and was making some coffee for Jack. Buffy made her way over to the coffee machine.
“Is she a threat?” she asked in a soft whisper. Ianto looked up at her. “Because if she is, I won’t let her harm anyone on this team.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Ianto asked in an angry whisper of his own. Buffy gave him a measured look and let a bit of the Slayer show for the first time since she had arrived here.
“I’ll do whatever I need to do to protect these people,” she answered, her voice taking on a deadly edge. “I won’t make that mistake again.” Ianto looked at her in shock. This wasn’t the Buffy he had grown used to seeing. She no longer was the teenage girl who was struggling to figure out her place in a new universe. This was someone who had been forced to shoulder a burden far beyond her years, and had done so for quite some time. “Again, is she a threat?”
“No,” Ianto answered, grabbing the coffee and walking towards Jack. Buffy followed him with her eyes, wondering if she could believe him. Fortunately, no one had noticed the exchange between the two of them. Buffy wandered back to her desk and watched everyone around her. Even if Lisa meant something to Ianto, Buffy wouldn’t let her do to this team what Angelus had done to the Scoobies.
The lights began to flicker, derailing Buffy's train of thought. “Is it just me, or are the lights going wonky on us?” Buffy asked no one in particular. Tosh quickly typed in a few commands on her computer.
“There’s an internal power drain,” Tosh said. “I don’t know what’s causing it, though. This shouldn’t be happening.”
“Tosh, run a system diagnostic,” Jack ordered. He was about to add something else when Ianto interrupted him.
“Actually…we’ve been having generator problems all evening,” he lied. He noticed Buffy rolling her eyes, but he refrained from shooting her a warning look. “I was down there checking earlier. A couple of bits of cabling have come loose. I thought I’d fixed it. Let me have another look.”
“Do you need help?” Buffy asked, knowing that Lisa was behind the drain. Ianto shook his head and walked calmly towards the sublevels. Buffy did her best to remain calm. Please, please, please let it be normal. Please don’t let it mean I need to do this, she silently prayed.
~*~*~
As Ianto dragged Tanizaki’s mangled body down the hallway, he reflected on what Buffy had asked him. Is she a threat? At the time, Ianto had answered with a firm “no,” but now he wasn’t so sure. Although he wanted to believe that Lisa, his Lisa was still there somewhere, he kept hearing Buffy’s voice in his head. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. He didn’t know if it was to the body, to the team, to Lisa, to Buffy, or to himself. “I’m so sorry.”
~*~*~
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as Buffy anxiously awaited Ianto’s return. The rest of the team didn’t appear to be concerned by Ianto’s absence, content in trying to get the UFO out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Tosh had just sent the aliens a message telling them to clear out when the lights started going haywire again.
“Ianto, we’ve got another dose of darkness,” Jack called out to him through the communicator. “You find anything?” Nothing could be heard from the other end but static. “Ianto? I need to hear those beautiful Welsh vowels!”
Buffy’s blood froze. No, no, this couldn’t be happening.
“I’m looking for human heat signals in the sublevels, …and there’s two!” Tosh exclaimed, staring at the screen in shock. “Assuming one’s Ianto…”
“Who’s the other one?” Gwen interrupted. Buffy pretended to be intrigued, when really she was worried sick. If there were only two signals… Did Lisa give off heat, or did that mean that that someone was dead? Oh, God, she hoped not.
“I’m thinking we’re under attack,” Jack said, running to another station. “Our security’s been breached.”
“That’s impossible!” Tosh cried out, running after him. “Nobody can get in without triggering seven separate alarms.”
“Well, it looks like we need to be changing the locks, then,” Owen said, checking his gun. “I’m going down there to look for Ianto. You all right with that?” he asked Jack, as Gwen grabbed her gun and stood next to him.
“Keep your comms open at all times at all time!” Jack barked to the duo. “Any doubts, shoot first. Our priority is to find Ianto.” Owen and Gwen took off to the sublevels. As much as Buffy wanted to run off with them, she kept herself put. She would need to sneak down later.
“The power’s continuing to drain,” Tosh said, fingers flying over the keys. “I can’t pinpoint what’s causing it. All I have is a location!” She hit the keyboard in frustration. “This shouldn’t be happening!”
“Gwen, Owen, progress report,” Jack demanded, pacing back and forth.
“Signs…of…” Owen’s voice came in bits and pieces, intercut with static. Jack tapped his comm.
“We’re losing your comm signals,” Jack said. Buffy began to inch her way towards the entrance. “Don’t even think of moving, Buffy,” he said, shooting her a warning look. “Gwen, Owen? Can you hear me? Damnit! Can we get them back, Tosh?”
“Whatever it is, it’s interfering with the comms,” Tosh said. “I’m trying other channels, but nothing’s working.” She took a deep breath and turned to Jack. “There’s something else you need to see. I’ve gone back through our internal CCTV footage for the last couple of hours. Someone’s tried to remove the images from our system.” Jack grabbed Buffy’s arm and walked her over to the computer Tosh was at.
“Did you know about this?” he asked, looking Buffy in the eyes. Buffy was frozen, unsure of what to do. “Did you know?” he asked in deadly voice.
“Jack, you need to take a look at this,” Tosh said, pulling up an image on the computer. The images showed a strange man entering the Hub, only to be greeted by Ianto. Ianto then led the man into the sublevels.
“What is going on here?” Jack asked, turning to Buffy. “What do you know?” Buffy stayed silent, her eyes fixed on the computer screen. “Buffy!”
“I heard you the first time,” she said, her voice sounding cold to her ears, looking up to meet Jack’s angry gaze. “All I know is that Ianto’s down there, and I don’t know if he’s dead or not. I need to go help him!”
“You are not going anywhere, Buffy!” Jack shouted at her. “What do you know?”
“You don’t give a damn about Ianto,” Buffy said, her voice becoming practically Arctic. “You’re just angry that he did this behind your back.” Jack was about to reply when Tosh called out to him.
“Jack, the comms are back online. Gwen and Owen must have turned off whatever was draining the power,” Tosh reported. Jack continued to glare at Buffy as he raised his wristband to his mouth.
“Gwen, Owen? Can you hear me?” Nothing came back through. “If I don’t hear something within thirty seconds, I’m coming down there!” he tried again. This time, it appeared to go through.
“Jack, it’s Gwen,” Gwen’s voice came over the comm. Buffy let out a breath she didn’t even know she was holding in at the sound of Gwen’s voice.
“Any sign of Ianto?” Jack asked, his eyes never leaving Buffy’s face. Buffy gave him a glare worthy of Ripper, but remained silent.
“No.” This time it was Owen’s voice talking and there was barely controlled panic in his voice. “But we have parts of a Cyber conversion unit, fully powered up and working.” Both Jack and Tosh paled when they heard this, and Buffy felt even colder than she already was, if that was possible.
“This is no time for jokes,” Jack said.
“I’m deadly serious,” Owen protested. “I don’t know why it’s here, or how it got here, but it’s been draining our power.” Jack fell silent for a moment, deep in thought. “Jack? You there?”
“I want you back up here immediately!” he shouted, before turning to face Buffy. “Please tell me you didn’t know about this. Please tell me you haven’t been covering for him all this time.”
“I just found out today,” Buffy answered, her mind elsewhere. She needed to find Ianto and make sure he was OK. She needed to find a weapon, preferably something like a rocket launcher, and track down Lisa. She needed to be anywhere but facing Jack. Before Jack could ask her a new question, Gwen’s panicked voice broke through.
“Jack, code zero incursion. Repeat, code zero incursion! We’re under attack!”
“If you don’t hear from me within fifteen minutes, activate total shutdown procedures and get yourselves to safety,” Jack ordered, grabbing his gun and making his way to the entrance to the sublevels, only to find Buffy grabbing his arms.
“I’m coming,” she said, and Jack was struck by the change in her. The teenage girl was gone. In her place was something new. She bristled with a power he realized she had been containing all this time. “I told Ianto if she was a threat, I would deal with it.”
“You’re staying here with Tosh,” he said, trying to pry his arm from her grasp. She tightened her grip and he was struck by how strong she was.
“I don’t think you heard me correctly,” she said. “I’m coming with you. You’ve seen me take down a Weevil. I survived Hell, literal hell, complete with those nice little things called demons. I can take care of myself.” She swallowed, and Jack was interested to note a flash of pain in her eyes. “I told him I wouldn’t make that mistake again, and I plan to keep my word.”
“Fine,” he conceded through gritted teeth. He needed to get down there as fast as possible, and the only way he could do that was if he gave in. “Follow me and don’t get in the way.”
“Funny, I think it’d be the other way around,” she said in a voice that contained no humor. They remained silent after that, making their way quickly through the various levels until Buffy stopped, head cocked. “That’s Gwen,” she whispered before breaking into a run.
“Wait!” Jack called out, sprinting to catch up with her. He saw her slow down and soon they were running together. As they drew closer to the door, he could hear the faint sound of Gwen screaming. “Get behind me,” he ordered Buffy, unholstering his gun as they approached an open door. “Throw down any weapons, put your hands up and turn and face me!” he shouted as he entered the room, briefly noticing Owen lying unconscious on the floor before focusing his attention on the thing standing with its back towards him. The figure slowly turned around, and Jack was struck by the image before him.
It wasn’t a pure Cyberman, but more like a hybrid between one and a human. He was still studying her when the sound of Gwen screaming his name brought him out. He raised his gun to shoot, but Ianto rammed into him.
“She doesn’t know what she’s doing!” Ianto shouted at him. Jack tried to fight off Ianto, and, in the confusion, he lost sight of the thing.
“You’re fighting the wrong guy!” Jack shouted, as Buffy ripped something out of the wall. Gwen, strapped onto the conversion chamber, screamed louder as a bunch of deadly looking mechanical arms lowered towards her.
“Get me out of here! Someone, please!” Gwen cried. Jack was turning towards the controls when a projectile flew past his head and hit the mechanical arms. With bright flash, the arms exploded. Buffy didn’t say anything, but just walked over to the chamber and ripped apart the bands restraining Gwen. “Thanks, sweetheart,” Gwen gasped, grabbing Buffy for support.
“I’m so sorry, Gwen,” Ianto apologized, moving to help her before Jack.
“What are you sorry for, Ianto?” Gwen asked, rubbing her wrists. Jack, Buffy, and Ianto all remained silent. “Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Gwen demanded.
“Walk,” Jack ordered, gesturing to Ianto with his gun. “Now.” Ianto shot a look at Buffy, but her attention was on Owen.
“Let’s go,” she said quietly, hoisting Owen over her shoulder. Gwen stared at the sight of the small girl easily carrying the much larger Owen. “We left Tosh by herself. I’m not going to risk her life because there was no one was there to help her.” Ianto began walking, followed closely by the rest of the group.
“Clear?” Jack asked Ianto, who confirmed it as they moved down the hallway towards the main part of the Hub. They were inching along the corridor when Lisa appeared in front of them.
“There she is!” Gwen gasped, stopping suddenly. “What is she?”
“Some form of Cyberman,” Jack explained. Behind him, he was dimly aware of Buffy grabbing Owen’s gun. “They’re us, upgraded. Humans with emotions removed, created on a parallel world and supposedly destroyed on this one.”
“What are we going to do?” Gwen asked, when she noticed Buffy leaning a groggy Owen against the wall.
“We make sure she doesn’t get to the outside world,” Jack said grimly, pointing his gun at Ianto. “Now, move.”
Chapter Ten