Torchwood/Doctor Who/SJA ficlet: Sneak Attack
Title: Sneak Attack
Shows: Torchwood/Doctor Who/Sarah Jane Adventures crossover
Author: rustydog
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Just characters for the three shows, circa 2008. I've probably taken some creative license with the timing, given how tricky it is to sync up timelines between the Whoniverse shows.
Words: 1971
Beta: travels_in_time, thank you!
Summary: Someone is using doughnuts as a Trojan horse.
Notes: Written for the lovely donutsweeper's birthday, using a character and a story element created by her*.
Rani knocked and then let herself in to Sarah Jane's house. "Good morning!" she called.
Sarah Jane called back from the kitchen, "Morning! Have you had tea yet?"
Rani went to the kitchen and set a flat paper box on the table. "Not yet," she said. "Mum and Dad are acting really weird and I just had to get out of there. Oh, here are some doughnuts, by the way. Dad brought them in the house this morning. He and Mum each had one already, but I don't think they'll be interested in any more for awhile." She shuddered at the thought.
Sarah Jane was looking at Rani oddly. "If you don't mind my asking... how exactly is your parents' behaviour 'weird'?"
Rani grimaced, trying to think of how to put it, while simultaneously trying not to think about it at all. She was saved when Luke came in, yawning, his hair still mussed from bed.
"Morning, Mum," he said huskily. "Morning, Rani. Oh, are these doughnuts? Clyde says they make a boy strong." He reached for the box.
*
The car blipped cheerfully when Martha pressed her remote key. Before she opened the driver's side door, she noticed a tuft of reddish fur pinched in the handle. Odd. Maybe a dog brushed too close to the car? It would have to be an unusually tall dog, but it wasn't out of the question. Well, no matter.
She settled into the driver's seat and checked the rearview mirror - and noticed something in the back seat, a flat white box. That shouldn't be there. A UNIT agent couldn't be too careful; she listened for a moment, checked for any unusual smells, but there was just a scent of oil and sugar. She twisted around and gingerly lifted the lid of the box.
Doughnuts.
She smiled and shook her head ruefully. Tom must have gone out before his early shift and got them. For a doctor, he was surprisingly unobservant about how sugar affected her. She certainly shouldn't eat any before work.
She would put the doughnuts in the break room at HQ. The UNIT clerks would love her forever.
*
Donna stared out the window while she typed. In most of the temp jobs she'd had, you never even saw a window, much less had a desk facing a whole wall of them. In England, you'd be facing a wall of rain most of the time anyway. But today was clear and beautiful, and she was transcribing audio recordings of meetings, so it wasn't like she needed to look at the computer screen.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed some odd movement. At first she assumed it was a pigeon, but in the next moment an object lowered into view. It was right outside the window to the left of her desk: a flat, white bakery box. It was descending little by little in tiny jerks, and she noticed that it was suspended on string. Someone had to be standing on the roof or a higher floor letting it down.
Donna rolled her eyes. Those pranksters on the seventh floor thought they were so clever. Well, she'd show them. She could do things with a ruler, paper clips, and an Acco staple remover that they had never dreamed of. Even though the windows up here only opened two inches, she was certain she could get the contents of that box into her office. Then she'd send the box back up, empty.
She'd been feeling a bit peckish, anyway.
*
"Jack," Tosh called, "I think you'll want to look at this."
When Jack came out of his office, she explained, "The Hub computer is talking to some alien tech in London, specifically..." she tracked a spot on a map of Wales and southern England "Ealing. Does that mean anything to you?"
Jack shook his head slowly. "I don't think so. What kind of tech? What are they saying?"
"It has to be some kind of computer with excellent AI. It's reporting a pattern of 'disturbances' at three locations - an office building near Chiswick, UNIT headquarters, and, interestingly, right at the location of the AI, um, Bannerman Road. UNIT, Jack - that doesn't sound good."
"Bannerman Road? I do know that address. Can you ring and see if everyone there is okay? Ask for Sarah Jane. I'll try to contact UNIT."
"What's going on, Jack?"
Jack frowned. "Well, there are former associates of the Doctor at two of those addresses. I don't know about Chiswick, but I think someone may be trying to get the Doctor's attention."
*
Jack dialed the number from memory.
"Martha? What's going on?"
"Oh my god, Jack, how did you find out? Is it spreading?"
"How I found out is kind of complicated, but no, I think whatever is happening is isolated to your location and two other places near London. For now. So, you're on the inside - exactly what are we talking about? All I've heard is 'a disturbance.'"
Jack heard a series of thuds on the other end of the line.
"Martha? Are you okay?"
Martha laughed, sounding nervous. "I'm fine, and the door of this storage room is pretty strong, but I'm worried about the staff, Jack. There are four clerks outside wanting to... don't laugh... I think they want to seduce me? And they're fighting with each other."
"Well, I don't blame them, you're quite a catch, Martha Jones."
"Jack."
"Okay, I assume that's not normal behavior for UNIT clerks. Who's winning the fight, by the way?"
"The women, by the sound of it. They're vicious!"
"Don't I know it. Okay, what was the situation before anything happened? Anything new on base, any intrusions?"
"No, nothing. I accessed the surveillance systems from in here - there was nothing unusual. The only thing we've got here from the outside is a few cups of Starbucks and the doughnuts I brought."
"Doughnuts? Are you sure?" Jack smacked his head with his palm as the realization hit him. "Martha, where did the doughnuts come from?"
"I thought they were from Tom... no one else has a key to my car, and they were in the back seat this morning."
"What time?"
"Around nine. I got home really late yesterday."
"Just to save me time, where do you live?" He wrote down the address she gave him. "Martha, hang on, we're working on it from here. You going to be okay?"
"I can take care of myself, Jack."
"I know. Talk to you soon."
Jack hung up the phone and returned to Tosh's station. "What's the news from Bannerman Road?"
Tosh swiveled around in her chair to face him. "Sarah Jane Smith is all right, but she says her son Luke is acting very out of character, and she had to blockade him in his room. And she says hello to you, by the way."
Jack smiled, acknowledging the greeting. "'Out of character'... how, did she say?"
"Well, I didn't really understand, but she said he was suddenly acting like an ordinary teenage boy, and she had to get him away from his friend from across the street... I think she said Ronnie."
"Ronnie, eh?" Jack chuckled, then sighed. "Okay, that's what I thought. Listen, can you get CCTV of Bannerman Road and this street?" He handed her the scrap of paper with Martha's address. "Maybe for a period of two hours before 09:00?"
Tosh nodded. "Both those streets should have cameras. Give me a few minutes. What are we looking for?"
Jack shrugged. "Suspicious activity, possibly involving pastries." When Tosh frowned at him, he put up his hands defensively. "I swear! You... don't remember any odd pastry-related situations around here, do you?"
Tosh looked at him suspiciously, and he shook his head. "It's a shame, really, it would make the gravity of this situation a little more clear. Oh well. CCTV?"
Tosh got to work, and in a few minutes had downloaded and analyzed the location footage they needed. "Look here," she pointed out to him, "at Martha's address, 07:23, you can see a white thing moving along the pavement. It looks like a bakery box. I just can't tell how it's moving, but then-"
On the black and white footage, the box stopped next to a car, and four small, fuzzy figures emerged from underneath it to climb onto the car door. One gnawed something, two others balanced themselves on the handle, and the door slowly opened a couple of inches.
"After that, the box is moved into the car. The camera is so far away from this spot, though, the resolution is terrible. I can't tell what the creatures are."
"Oh, I have a good idea," Jack said. "Damn. I didn't think he'd be back this soon."
"Who, Jack?"
But before he could answer, they heard a cheerful greeting.
"I'm back!" Gwen came around the water tower, carrying a flat, white box. "Jack, that infestation in the supermarket was not rats. Owen went home to shower."
"Gwen, what are you carrying?"
"Oh, I know you said we shouldn't have any more doughnuts in the Hub, but I think Ianto ordered these. They were in the tourist information office. You don't know how much I've been craving chocolate-"
Several things happened at once: Gwen opened the box and reached in, Tosh shouted, Jack leaped towards Gwen, a small furry figure slipped in the door Gwen had entered from and streaked across the floor, and an alarm began hooting.
*
An hour later, Jack rang Martha back. To his relief, he learned that UNIT had managed to restrain the compromised clerks.
"It's definitely the doughnuts, have they isolated the doughnuts?" he asked too quickly, still feeling some of the adrenaline of their own situation in the Hub.
"Doing tests on them now, Jack! Do you know any more?"
"Not about the chemical composition of the doughnuts, though Owen is working on that too. I think you just need to keep the, ah, victims isolated until the effect wears off. But we found the saboteurs and got them to give us the location of the source. Tosh is sending specifications to you."
"Yeah, Jack, I just received it. I thought it was a joke. We're watching for... a squirrel?"
"It was an interesting interrogation."
"I can imagine."
"Listen, there were two other locations around London affected. We're in touch with the people in Ealing, but could you send somebody to do damage control at an office building in Chiswick? The satellite Tosh accessed picked up an unusual heat signature in one of the closets on the seventh floor."
"I'll go myself. I need to get some fresh air after spending the morning in that storage room, anyway."
"Just be careful - we don't know how many people were affected there, but Tosh says the police were called. And Martha, we have reason to suspect the main targets were associates of the Doctor."
"I'll be discreet. Have you found a motive?"
"We're going on the assumption they want the Doctor to notice them, but other than that, no. I'm not finished with the interrogation, though."
"Well, Jack... next time you come to London, I want to hear the whole story."
Jack laughed. "I promise."
After he hung up the phone, Jack headed back down to the cells, where their tiny perpetrator was probably still scampering frantically back and forth in front of the glass door. Doctor and motives aside, if there was a secondary Rift somewhere in Wales or England, spitting out mind-altering pastries, Jack wanted to know more about it.
He found an empty cell. Near the ceiling, the grille that covered a small air vent was gnawed through.
Jack swore with frustration and tapped his earpiece. "Tosh, you said you were refining the settings on that squirrel detector? How's that coming?"
* Murray the squirrel and alien donuts both belong to donutsweeper - thanks again for letting me play in your playground!
Shows: Torchwood/Doctor Who/Sarah Jane Adventures crossover
Author: rustydog
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Just characters for the three shows, circa 2008. I've probably taken some creative license with the timing, given how tricky it is to sync up timelines between the Whoniverse shows.
Words: 1971
Beta: travels_in_time, thank you!
Summary: Someone is using doughnuts as a Trojan horse.
Notes: Written for the lovely donutsweeper's birthday, using a character and a story element created by her*.
Rani knocked and then let herself in to Sarah Jane's house. "Good morning!" she called.
Sarah Jane called back from the kitchen, "Morning! Have you had tea yet?"
Rani went to the kitchen and set a flat paper box on the table. "Not yet," she said. "Mum and Dad are acting really weird and I just had to get out of there. Oh, here are some doughnuts, by the way. Dad brought them in the house this morning. He and Mum each had one already, but I don't think they'll be interested in any more for awhile." She shuddered at the thought.
Sarah Jane was looking at Rani oddly. "If you don't mind my asking... how exactly is your parents' behaviour 'weird'?"
Rani grimaced, trying to think of how to put it, while simultaneously trying not to think about it at all. She was saved when Luke came in, yawning, his hair still mussed from bed.
"Morning, Mum," he said huskily. "Morning, Rani. Oh, are these doughnuts? Clyde says they make a boy strong." He reached for the box.
*
The car blipped cheerfully when Martha pressed her remote key. Before she opened the driver's side door, she noticed a tuft of reddish fur pinched in the handle. Odd. Maybe a dog brushed too close to the car? It would have to be an unusually tall dog, but it wasn't out of the question. Well, no matter.
She settled into the driver's seat and checked the rearview mirror - and noticed something in the back seat, a flat white box. That shouldn't be there. A UNIT agent couldn't be too careful; she listened for a moment, checked for any unusual smells, but there was just a scent of oil and sugar. She twisted around and gingerly lifted the lid of the box.
Doughnuts.
She smiled and shook her head ruefully. Tom must have gone out before his early shift and got them. For a doctor, he was surprisingly unobservant about how sugar affected her. She certainly shouldn't eat any before work.
She would put the doughnuts in the break room at HQ. The UNIT clerks would love her forever.
*
Donna stared out the window while she typed. In most of the temp jobs she'd had, you never even saw a window, much less had a desk facing a whole wall of them. In England, you'd be facing a wall of rain most of the time anyway. But today was clear and beautiful, and she was transcribing audio recordings of meetings, so it wasn't like she needed to look at the computer screen.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed some odd movement. At first she assumed it was a pigeon, but in the next moment an object lowered into view. It was right outside the window to the left of her desk: a flat, white bakery box. It was descending little by little in tiny jerks, and she noticed that it was suspended on string. Someone had to be standing on the roof or a higher floor letting it down.
Donna rolled her eyes. Those pranksters on the seventh floor thought they were so clever. Well, she'd show them. She could do things with a ruler, paper clips, and an Acco staple remover that they had never dreamed of. Even though the windows up here only opened two inches, she was certain she could get the contents of that box into her office. Then she'd send the box back up, empty.
She'd been feeling a bit peckish, anyway.
*
"Jack," Tosh called, "I think you'll want to look at this."
When Jack came out of his office, she explained, "The Hub computer is talking to some alien tech in London, specifically..." she tracked a spot on a map of Wales and southern England "Ealing. Does that mean anything to you?"
Jack shook his head slowly. "I don't think so. What kind of tech? What are they saying?"
"It has to be some kind of computer with excellent AI. It's reporting a pattern of 'disturbances' at three locations - an office building near Chiswick, UNIT headquarters, and, interestingly, right at the location of the AI, um, Bannerman Road. UNIT, Jack - that doesn't sound good."
"Bannerman Road? I do know that address. Can you ring and see if everyone there is okay? Ask for Sarah Jane. I'll try to contact UNIT."
"What's going on, Jack?"
Jack frowned. "Well, there are former associates of the Doctor at two of those addresses. I don't know about Chiswick, but I think someone may be trying to get the Doctor's attention."
*
Jack dialed the number from memory.
"Martha? What's going on?"
"Oh my god, Jack, how did you find out? Is it spreading?"
"How I found out is kind of complicated, but no, I think whatever is happening is isolated to your location and two other places near London. For now. So, you're on the inside - exactly what are we talking about? All I've heard is 'a disturbance.'"
Jack heard a series of thuds on the other end of the line.
"Martha? Are you okay?"
Martha laughed, sounding nervous. "I'm fine, and the door of this storage room is pretty strong, but I'm worried about the staff, Jack. There are four clerks outside wanting to... don't laugh... I think they want to seduce me? And they're fighting with each other."
"Well, I don't blame them, you're quite a catch, Martha Jones."
"Jack."
"Okay, I assume that's not normal behavior for UNIT clerks. Who's winning the fight, by the way?"
"The women, by the sound of it. They're vicious!"
"Don't I know it. Okay, what was the situation before anything happened? Anything new on base, any intrusions?"
"No, nothing. I accessed the surveillance systems from in here - there was nothing unusual. The only thing we've got here from the outside is a few cups of Starbucks and the doughnuts I brought."
"Doughnuts? Are you sure?" Jack smacked his head with his palm as the realization hit him. "Martha, where did the doughnuts come from?"
"I thought they were from Tom... no one else has a key to my car, and they were in the back seat this morning."
"What time?"
"Around nine. I got home really late yesterday."
"Just to save me time, where do you live?" He wrote down the address she gave him. "Martha, hang on, we're working on it from here. You going to be okay?"
"I can take care of myself, Jack."
"I know. Talk to you soon."
Jack hung up the phone and returned to Tosh's station. "What's the news from Bannerman Road?"
Tosh swiveled around in her chair to face him. "Sarah Jane Smith is all right, but she says her son Luke is acting very out of character, and she had to blockade him in his room. And she says hello to you, by the way."
Jack smiled, acknowledging the greeting. "'Out of character'... how, did she say?"
"Well, I didn't really understand, but she said he was suddenly acting like an ordinary teenage boy, and she had to get him away from his friend from across the street... I think she said Ronnie."
"Ronnie, eh?" Jack chuckled, then sighed. "Okay, that's what I thought. Listen, can you get CCTV of Bannerman Road and this street?" He handed her the scrap of paper with Martha's address. "Maybe for a period of two hours before 09:00?"
Tosh nodded. "Both those streets should have cameras. Give me a few minutes. What are we looking for?"
Jack shrugged. "Suspicious activity, possibly involving pastries." When Tosh frowned at him, he put up his hands defensively. "I swear! You... don't remember any odd pastry-related situations around here, do you?"
Tosh looked at him suspiciously, and he shook his head. "It's a shame, really, it would make the gravity of this situation a little more clear. Oh well. CCTV?"
Tosh got to work, and in a few minutes had downloaded and analyzed the location footage they needed. "Look here," she pointed out to him, "at Martha's address, 07:23, you can see a white thing moving along the pavement. It looks like a bakery box. I just can't tell how it's moving, but then-"
On the black and white footage, the box stopped next to a car, and four small, fuzzy figures emerged from underneath it to climb onto the car door. One gnawed something, two others balanced themselves on the handle, and the door slowly opened a couple of inches.
"After that, the box is moved into the car. The camera is so far away from this spot, though, the resolution is terrible. I can't tell what the creatures are."
"Oh, I have a good idea," Jack said. "Damn. I didn't think he'd be back this soon."
"Who, Jack?"
But before he could answer, they heard a cheerful greeting.
"I'm back!" Gwen came around the water tower, carrying a flat, white box. "Jack, that infestation in the supermarket was not rats. Owen went home to shower."
"Gwen, what are you carrying?"
"Oh, I know you said we shouldn't have any more doughnuts in the Hub, but I think Ianto ordered these. They were in the tourist information office. You don't know how much I've been craving chocolate-"
Several things happened at once: Gwen opened the box and reached in, Tosh shouted, Jack leaped towards Gwen, a small furry figure slipped in the door Gwen had entered from and streaked across the floor, and an alarm began hooting.
*
An hour later, Jack rang Martha back. To his relief, he learned that UNIT had managed to restrain the compromised clerks.
"It's definitely the doughnuts, have they isolated the doughnuts?" he asked too quickly, still feeling some of the adrenaline of their own situation in the Hub.
"Doing tests on them now, Jack! Do you know any more?"
"Not about the chemical composition of the doughnuts, though Owen is working on that too. I think you just need to keep the, ah, victims isolated until the effect wears off. But we found the saboteurs and got them to give us the location of the source. Tosh is sending specifications to you."
"Yeah, Jack, I just received it. I thought it was a joke. We're watching for... a squirrel?"
"It was an interesting interrogation."
"I can imagine."
"Listen, there were two other locations around London affected. We're in touch with the people in Ealing, but could you send somebody to do damage control at an office building in Chiswick? The satellite Tosh accessed picked up an unusual heat signature in one of the closets on the seventh floor."
"I'll go myself. I need to get some fresh air after spending the morning in that storage room, anyway."
"Just be careful - we don't know how many people were affected there, but Tosh says the police were called. And Martha, we have reason to suspect the main targets were associates of the Doctor."
"I'll be discreet. Have you found a motive?"
"We're going on the assumption they want the Doctor to notice them, but other than that, no. I'm not finished with the interrogation, though."
"Well, Jack... next time you come to London, I want to hear the whole story."
Jack laughed. "I promise."
After he hung up the phone, Jack headed back down to the cells, where their tiny perpetrator was probably still scampering frantically back and forth in front of the glass door. Doctor and motives aside, if there was a secondary Rift somewhere in Wales or England, spitting out mind-altering pastries, Jack wanted to know more about it.
He found an empty cell. Near the ceiling, the grille that covered a small air vent was gnawed through.
Jack swore with frustration and tapped his earpiece. "Tosh, you said you were refining the settings on that squirrel detector? How's that coming?"
* Murray the squirrel and alien donuts both belong to donutsweeper - thanks again for letting me play in your playground!