VS3:13 -- "It All Changes", Part One
It's the end of the world as we know it… and nothing's fine.
It All Changes
by: kel_reiley, thaddeusfavour, xtricks, the VS team (it takes a village, folks!)
It's always midnight somewhere, and the only six humans in space were asleep in their zippered cocoons when the emergency communications alert went off with flashing red lights and insistent alarms. The crew was out of their beds and heading to their stations before they'd entirely woken up.
"Центр управления полетами вызывает международную космическую станцию. Чрезвычайная ситуация! Это не учение. Повторяю - чрезвычайная ситуация."
"Station here," Oyuz said, zipping up her suit as Sten pulled himself out of the air and into the neighbouring seat, checking the station's status. "What's the problem?"
The reply was in English, if heavily accented, and as brusque as every other Russian she'd ever talked to. "Suspend all activities and evacuate immediately."
"Evacuate?" Oyuz yelped, shocked. She looked to Sten and he shook his head, bewildered. "There's nothing wrong up here-"
"You must evacuate now!" There was fear in the man's voice, thousands of kilometres away, and that convinced Oyuz when otherwise she might have argued with the Russians and their top-down bureaucracy.
Sten leaned over. "Only one of the escape capsules is working," he reminded her. He tilted his head aft, toward the bay where a bent strut blocked the second Soyuz rocket, their last-ditch evacuation pod. They'd been working on it, between other duties, but hadn't considered it urgent. Until now.
"We-" Oyuz paused to steady her voice. "We only have one capsule available, and they only hold three. Can someone - the Chinese - come get us? What's going on?"
"Look eight degrees off Jupiter," Mission Control told them and Sten scrambled to bring up the telescope.
"Ну и что это? Астероиды?" Vilma murmured from the hatchway as the telescope's monitor flickered to life, the bright disk of Jupiter looming in the upper corner.
"Asteroids don't just appear!" Sten snapped, and Oyuz could only shake her head in bewilderment. Specks of bright lights drifted around the edge of Jupiter, obviously out of synch with the rest of the debris out there. They didn't belong and they hadn't been there two days ago. And that was impossible. As impossible as the entire Earth moving light years through space and back again. As impossible as so many things in the last few years, whispered about but never openly admitted.
"What are they?" Oyuz whispered. The cluster of dots had moved visibly as they watched, uncannily fast.
"Invasion," Mission Control said flatly. "You have to get back to Earth. There is no one to come for you."
"That's ridiculous- it-"
"Copy, Mission Control," Oyuz said, cutting off the argument ready to blow up pointlessly. "We'll do our best."
She twisted around then, a hand on Sten's shoulder to keep from drifting into the ceiling. His muscles were knotted and trembling; whatever protests his mouth was spitting out, his body believed. "Johnny, Kiril, Leonid - get your suits on and get the Soyuz up and running."
Sten twitched under her hand and Vilma inhaled sharply, as if she were about to protest but didn't; most of the crew were married, or going to be - Oyuz was very conscious of the engagement ring on a chain around her neck - but Johnny, Kiril and Leonid had children. Families who'd need them for whatever happened next. She gave them a tight smile. "Don't wait for us."
Leoind swallowed hard, relief and shame warring visibly on his face. "Капитан."
Oyuz nodded. "Just go."
That left the three of them. "Well," she said briskly. "Let's see if a good kick and some duct tape can't solve our problems."
UNIT Lab V217, London, UK
"...and it's clear that the samples collected on the Valiant are the same as the samples collected from around the UK - refer to sample collection document for exact locations. This species is remarkable in that it seems to have sprung up overnight."
Shawna looked up from her work to wave at him. She seemed to be wrapping up her notes on the specimens UNIT had collected, so G.M. settled on one of the lab stools to wait.
"During dissection, a set of bilateral pouches lying adjacent to the oesophagus was discovered. They appear to function as a crop, and it is worth noting that every specimen collected thus far has a full one, no evidence of disgorging or digestion. Said contents have been submitted to lab for identification."
G.M. grinned and quietly waved the papers in his hand. Shawna looked a question at him and he nodded, pointing to the papers. She clicked off the recorder.
"Well, why didn't you say so?" she asked excitedly, reaching for the lab results, but G.M. held them out of her reach.
"Ah, ah, ah," he scolded. "What did your mother say about 'please' and 'thank you?'"
"Please give me the papers before I'm forced to kill my boyfriend," she said, lunging across the table to snatch them from him. "Thank you very much!"
G.M. laughed, but still managed to steal a quick kiss before she sat back to examine the data. UNIT had added an entomology department a couple of months ago. He'd met Shawna Phillips, scientist and bug-enthusiast, six weeks, two days, and three hours ago. He would call it love at first sight, but since he didn't believe in that, he'd have to go with fun at first sight. Movies, books, science, even a fascination with trains: they shared so many common interests that he was sometimes surprised he hadn't known her his entire life.
"Hey, you'll like this," she said glancing up at him with a little smile. He loved her smiles. "You were right. They are able to sense the Rift. I asked the Cardiff office to run some field tests - which I had to set up, they don't have any scientists there, only soldiers - and the things seem to orient on the Rift before going about their business. They don't fly to it like moths, but they definitely know it's there. So..."
"So?" he asked, grinning, knowing what was coming.
She shook her head ruefully. "So, you were right. I was wrong. You are the king of the lab... for this week anyway."
He jumped up and did his victory dance. Shawna laughed before continuing to examine the reports. "That means pizza is on you Saturday, and I get to pick the movie," he crowed. "How about Infestation? 2009, Chris Marquette-"
"Oh my God! You won't believe what they've been eating!"
"Weetabix? I still can't believe you eat that stuff."
She made a sound like a game show buzzer. "No! Wrong answer!" Shawna leaned forward, grinning. There was a devilish-glint in her brown eyes that worried him.
Widening her eyes dramatically and dropping her face into a comically blank expression, she intoned, "Braaaiiinnnsss! Braaaaiiiiinnnnnnssssssss!"
"Zombie bugs?" he asked, looking around. "Where's a cricket bat when you really need one?"
"Well," she said, scanning the rest of the papers, "they're quite alive, so I think a good boot heel will do the trick. The interesting thing is that the brain-bits are so well preserved. If I picked this bit of brain up somewhere, I'd think the person had only been dead for a couple of minutes. Bugs with brain tissue in their crops are one thing. Bugs with nearly-living brain tissue raises some questions. And..." She paused, staring at the paper she'd been scanning, then looked up at G.M., all trace of humor gone. "I'd say bugs with nearly-living human brain tissue may be approaching the cricket bat solution."
"Human brains? They've been eating human brains?" G.M. shivered, fighting the urge to run his hands through his hair just to make sure he wasn't covered in bugs. No, he wasn't.
"Right. Plus some other stuff. Let's see, brain tissue in samples... sheep... rat... ha. The ones from Cardiff have been eating brains from non-terrestrial species. Figures. I mean, with the Rift and all." She put the papers down, flipping through them quickly. "Ha! Here. I sent a couple of samples away to be checked against known species and... oh, shit."
G.M. jumped to his feet, unable to resist brushing his hands down his arms. "What? What is it?"
"The entomology experts I sent it to report that the samples don't match any known species. And," she held up a report, turning it so that he could see the UNIT Labs letterhead, "our biology department says the samples have certain markers in their DNA that can't be found on Earth."
"So?" G.M. asked softly, knowing what was coming. "So... probably not giant, mutant, irradiated insects from New Mexico, then?"
"You watch too many movies. These are one hundred percent alien bugs."
The Hub, Cardiff, UK
Fresh shirt in hand, Jack clambered up the ladder and into his office. He marched straight toward the med bay, trying to stuff his arms into the sleeves. He could hear Gwen on the phone as he approached.
"I'm fine, love. Really."
And he could hear the tinny notes of Rhys yelling over the line from all the way across the room. "Fine?! You were in a car crash, Gwen. It's on the bloody news!"
Jack winced, but he watched as Gwen pulled her top back down over her rounded belly. It was a good thing he'd installed the force-net in the SUV last month when he'd had the chance.
He tried to catch Megan's eye. She ignored him and, instead, snatched the phone out of Gwen's hand. "Mr. Williams. Dr. Megan Muli. I assure you, Gwen is all right. She's sustained no injuries and the baby is perfectly healthy. Strong heartbeat, everything looks normal." Without a second thought, she handed the phone back to Gwen, then turned and began packing away the Biwötcii scanner.
"See," said Gwen, "I'm fit as a fiddle." She spotted Jack and flashed him a smile, her hand resting on her stomach.
Jack smiled back, and glanced at the other corner of the med bay, his mood darkening. Megan must have seen something in his expression, because she looked up directly at him and said, "Ze's unconscious again. I think all that tired hir out. Best to let hir rest."
And that was that, for Megan turned away from him and continued… whatever it was she was doing. Pulling his shirt all the way on properly, Jack headed into the main Hub toward Ianto's work station. He was typing furiously at his computer, a look of consternation on his face. It was… almost cute. Jack buttoned up his shirt, and had to scratch a bit at his neck under the collar.
"The dry cleaners are using too much starch again."
Ianto grunted without looking up. "Jack, I've already had to switch services twice this year. These guys don't speak English and they already think I'm a serial killer or something, what with all the mysterious stains of blood and guts I come in with nearly every week."
"So, what are you saying?"
"Deal with it or clean your own shirts."
Jack scratched at his neck again, flexing his shoulders beneath the stiff fabric. "I'm all itchy."
"You're itchy because you didn't shower after you destroyed the car," Ianto said, still without looking up at him, though there was no venom in his voice.
"How's it coming with the stuff you got from… Naz?" Jack asked. He wasn't entirely sure why the alien in his Hub was making him feel so uncomfortable. He knew enough about the species to know they weren't really any worse than any other and, from what Megan had told him, ze was just as terrified of...
"Still working on it. You're on the news, by the way," Ianto said, clicking the mouse a few times and pointing to his monitor. A news feed from the BBC showed the SUV careening through the streets of Cardiff, then some stills of the abandoned, overturned vehicle and the destroyed communications van at the scene.
"Huh." Jack pulled his braces up over his shoulders and let them snap into place. "Good thing Erin was there to give us a ride back to the Hub."
Ianto rolled his eyes. "It's all over the internet, Jack. It's on bloody Twitter. I fucking hate Twitter."
Jack sighed, and rubbed at his forehead. "I think it's fair to say that we're not going to be able to contain this one."
"This is going to be bad, isn't it?" Ianto asked, looking at him for… what? Confirmation? Reassurance?
Jack could only shake his head. If these creatures were… what he thought they were, then this was going to be very bad. And Jack simply didn't have the energy to think about that just now.
"Is this how it happens?" Ianto asked suddenly.
"What?"
"The twenty-first century. Is this how it all changes?"
They stared at one another for a moment. Jack didn't know how to answer that. Ianto's monitor beeped; they both turned, and Jack moved to read the screen over Ianto's shoulder, placing one hand in the small of Ianto's back.
"Doesn't look like Tosh's translation program is really getting anywhere with this. The mainframe can make sense of the binary, but this..." Ianto clicked the mouse again and brought up several windows. "It looks like it might be a personal file on Naz. ID maybe?"
"Name, rank, and serial number. Well, not that last one so much. Ze's military."
"You can read it?" Ianto turned to look at him, hopeful.
"No," Jack said, "but I recognise the form. This bit is probably hir full name - or title, I guess. And this indicates rank. Or station - I'm not familiar with their system. Time Agents try to steer clear of military operations if at all possible. Unless it's the mission," he added with a forced smile.
"I suppose that can wait, but what do we do about this?" Ianto said, bringing up another window.
Jack moved his hand up to Ianto's shoulder, and leaned further into him to see #wtfcardiff scrolling across the screen. Ianto's fresh shirt was vivid plum, as stiffly starched as his own, and the heat of his body was warm beneath it as Jack smoothed a thumb along his shoulder. "Ignore it," he nodded at the screen. "We've got too much to do."
Ianto's fingers stilled above the keyboard and he stared at the monitor, mouth pressed tight, then he nodded slightly.
Jack tightened his grip. "It's not important," he said. When had they run out of time? Because they had. There was no more time and they weren't ready.
Jack let his hand fall away and turned to do something - anything - else. He watched Megan hurrying up from the med bay, a bright red case with a white cross blazoned on it slung over her shoulder and, he noted with satisfaction, a gun at her belt. Beyond her, the Nwaxan-chu lay quietly on a trolley, the bearer of bad news, and Jack couldn't control his scowl. His eyes drifted toward the entrance to cold storage. With one quick glance over his shoulder at Ianto - still engrossed in the translation matrix - Jack made his way across the Hub and down to cold storage.
The metal was cold under his fingertips as he smoothed his hand over the control panel keeping Gray in suspended animation. What did his brother know? Some secret that could save everyone? Something he could do to finally fight back against the monsters that had torn apart their world, their family and his mind? Jack clenched his fists. He was supposed to take care of Gray, now more than ever.
"That chamber isn't correctly entered in my records," Megan said from behind him, and Jack turned to see her standing in the doorway. It was clear she'd been about to go on, but she paused, eyes narrowing as she looked at him. Jack spread his hands protectively against Gray's drawer.
"Let's keep it that way," he said. After the visit from the Time Agents, Megan had been briefed on the situation. By Ianto. She'd tried to corner Jack more than once, but he had always been good at evading people.
"This isn't a good time to let distractions overwhelm us," she said quietly. "Human though that is."
"Oh, can't have that," Jack raised an eyebrow and gave her a meaningless smile. She came the rest of the way into the room, glancing briefly to the chamber before returning her attention to him. "He might be able to help us," Jack said, swallowing against the thread of plea in his voice.
"Can he?" Megan asked levelly. This wasn't something Jack could ask Gwen, or Ianto - to look beyond what Gray had done to what he could do. To look beyond Tosh and Owen and half of Cardiff still in ruins and, maybe, see a fragment of hope. "I'm not sure the best cure of a trauma-induced psychosis is more exposure to trauma."
"If these are what I think they are. Monsters from my past... from our past. I lost him," Jack stopped anguished. "They found him. He might have the secret to defeating the… them."
Megan frowned thoughtfully. "If that's true, that's incredibly valuable. But I know you, Jack, and if it were true, if you were sure, you wouldn't be hesitating."
Jack didn't have an answer. He couldn't comprehend what had turned his clever little brother into the man who'd crossed millennia and light-years solely to make him suffer, and killed those Jack loved to do it. The touch of Megan's hand on his arm made Jack start.
"Sometimes the best mercy is to leave things lie," she said quietly. "And you have family here and now, who need you."
He looked over her shoulder to see Ianto leaning in the doorway behind her, expressionless. "It's UNIT," he said. "It's time."
"Yeah," Jack said after a pause. He walked away from Gray, feeling memory slip through his fingers again, as it had all that time (and time to come) ago. "Come on, Doc, let's put on a show."
"We're patching our communications through UNIT in St. Athan," Ianto said. "We might have better equipment, but they've got more of it."
"Ha! I know something you don't," Gwen said, taking her seat at the conference table. "Erin told me UNIT was getting Mr. Smith to handle the connections for them. So they're patching everyone through him."
"Huh. They could have told me."
"Probably didn't want to admit they needed help," Gwen said as she adjusted her comm and smiled into the camera. "They're still a tad touchy on the subject."
The door banged open and Jack strode into the room. Gwen rolled her eyes. At least he wasn't wearing the coat. Megan followed him more sedately, closing the door behind her and taking a seat.
"Are we on?" Jack asked.
"If you mean, has the meeting started, no," Gwen answered. "If you mean is everything set up, yes. Ianto's just finishing."
"Great." Jack sat down beside Gwen. "Let's get this show on the road."
"World leaders, Jack. Let's try to avoid insulting everyone right off the bat." Gwen glared at him when he gave her the obvious 'Who? Me?' look.
"Don't worry, Gwen. I'll be good," Jack said. "Besides, you don't think we'll be meeting Obama, do you? They'll all send chiefs of staff and military commanders in case this is a waste of time."
"Smile, everyone," Ianto said. "They can see you in three... two... one."
Gwen watched as the monitor filled with faces, small squares showing people sitting in conference rooms just like - well, sort of like - this one. Most of the world was represented. UNIT was there, of course. She recognized them, as well as the commander of the Valiant and some of his staff. Area 51, the Americans, were completely unfamiliar, as were the groups from Russia, China, Italy, France... Might as well name the people she knew and leave it at that. Gwen squared her shoulders and took a calming breath. She wondered if UNIT, the UN, or NATO was planning on starting the meeting. She glanced over at Jack to ask him if he knew, when he began speaking. After a moment of surprise, Gwen turned to the camera with a fixed smile on her face, wishing she'd gone with her first thought and locked Jack in a closet for the duration of the conference.
"Captain Jack Harkness. Torchwood. As some of you already know, the Earth is about to be attacked by an alien space fleet. We have a rough estimate of about a thousand ships manned by a race called the Wirrin. It's been six hours since the advance scouts sent the signal to commence with the invasion. Which means we've got..." Jack made a show of looking at his watch, "no time left."
There was silence from the other attendees, then questions flying back and forth as everyone tried to speak at once.
"We have received the information UNIT has sent," the general from Russia spoke above the others, drawing their attention. "We also have news. All contact to the International Space Station has been lost. Three of our cosmonauts evacuated in time, but we believe that the other three, and the station itself, are gone. Russia is forced to agree with UNIT on this matter. The Earth is under attack."
"This is... ridiculous! Or else a joke," the minister from Italy complained. "You expect us to believe that this... this... invasion fleet has gone unnoticed?" The minister slapped a hand onto his table dramatically. "We pay UNIT to take care of these things, and they can't even give us proper warning?"
"Ha!" The French colonel scoffed. "When you actually pay your dues, you can complain."
As if it was a signal, sides were taken and a general round of bickering broke out. Gwen noticed Jack looking at his watch again. He leaned closer to her.
"Not bad," he said softly. "Less than three minutes. Unfortunately, we don't have time to waste on this."
"Quiet!" Major Hopps's parade-ground bellow brought silence. Gwen could see that even Colonel Mace, head of UNIT in the UK, was eyeing his subordinate with surprise. "Pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, but we don't have the time to conduct business as usual. Colonel Mace?" Major Hopps deferred.
"The major is correct," Colonel Mace said. "I suggest we let Torchwood finish the briefing and then decide on a course of action without the usual back and forth."
"Right then," Jack said before anyone could protest. "We can expect an assault on the ground and from the air. Once they're within range, our communications are going to go to hell, so we'll need to plan for that. Best idea-"
"What are these things?" The general from the Chinese delegation, a sharp-eyed woman, sat with hands folded on her table. "We've seen the evidence. We have confirmed it. But you have not yet told us what we can expect."
"Giant bugs," Jack said. "Ianto, show and tell time."
Jack stood, and Ianto thumped a large plastic Tupperware tub onto the table in front of him. Jack pulled off the lid with a flourish, reached in and pulled out the head of one of the roaches. Gwen jerked back in disgust as he pushed the bin aside and smacked the gruesome thing down in front of the camera.
"We'll stream some briefing videos to you. They're fast and strong and these-" Jack grabbed the jaws and extended the mandibles, "make them very, very deadly." Jack relaxed his grip, and the mandibles slid back into the mouth with a snap. "They're also intelligent and as capable of tactics and strategy as we are."
"How did they get here? Where do they come from? What do they want?" Gwen wasn't sure who had asked what, as two or three people all seemed to be speaking at once.
"All very good questions," Jack said. "And completely irrelevant. Well, except for what they want. They want to kill us and take over the Earth."
"Are you sure?" the general from China asked. "Have you spoken to them?"
"Sadly, no," Jack said. "I was too busy killing them. Look, I'm not going to tell you how I know, but take my word for it, these things do not come in peace. They're monsters, and the only way we're going to survive as a species is if we fight back with everything we've got. That means no holding back, by the way. Everyone fights, or we may all die."
"Captain," Colonel Mace said, "I'm sure UNIT can-"
"UNIT's not going to be enough this time," Jack interrupted. "Understand me, there will be enemy troops landing all over this planet. You're going to need all the help you can get."
"There's no way to keep a lid on this, is there?" One of the Americans finally spoke up. "I mean, this is going to be world-wide, and it's not like we can blame it on swamp gas or secret military testing, right?"
"Not a chance," Jack said. He smiled, but the grim slash of his lips bore none of Jack's usual humour. "Everything changes. Right here. Right now. It's time to grow up and leave the kiddie pool. We-" Jack glanced down. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile, which appeared to be vibrating. "Sorry, but I've got to take this."
Gwen watched, stunned, as Jack strode out of the room. She could just see him as he flipped the phone open, before he closed the door to the conference room. Ianto cleared his throat, catching her attention and nodding to the camera. Gwen spun around.
"Let's just keep going, shall we?" She started to push her chair closer to the camera, when she realised that would also bring her closer to the roach's head. "Ianto, would you please?" She gestured to the creature. He smiled, a small quirk of his lips, and collected the head, popping it back into the plastic tub.
"Now then," Gwen said. "I'm Agent Gwen Cooper, Torchwood. Might I suggest informing not only your military, but your civilian law enforcement as well? After all, you're going to need them to deal with events on a local level."
"How are we going to coordinate anything without communications?" the French colonel asked. "From what your captain said, once the attack begins, all of our troops and civilian forces will be operating independently."
"We might be able to help with that, at least to some extent," a young man from Area 51 said. "Some of the alien technology we've gathered functions beyond the normally used-" He stopped short, a quick breath escaping from him, then he rubbed his side and glared at one of his companions.
The American military bloke who'd elbowed him in the ribs looked into the camera. "We don't have enough equipment for all the field units, but we could provide enough for us to keep in touch with each other. Plus, we could install this on UNIT's fancy airship, the Valiant. It's probably the only craft we've got that's going to make a real difference in this fight. It'll be more useful if we can actually talk to the crew."
Gwen could see the commander from the Valiant conferring with his command staff, then turning to nod at the camera. "Anything you can do would be much appreciated. We'll make arrangements to receive your technical team."
"We'll be happy to send teams to UNIT, Torchwood, Russia," there was just the slightest pause before the American general continued, "and China as well. That's all we've got."
"We'll be happy to accept your help," Gwen said. "We may be able to boost our sensors and get information on the fleet that we can share. With UNIT's assistance, we could coordinate the defence from the Hub. We've also got access to an advanced supercomputer whose base communications are immune to the bugs' interference-" So Mr. Smith, the exceedingly polite computer in Sarah Jane's attic had assured her. Gwen turned to the American's with a hopeful smile. "If I send you an access frequency do you think you can patch your equipment into it? That'll give us a routing hub better than pretty much anything on the planet."
"Decentralizing the communications system could save our bacon," the young American technician spoke up again, leaning away from his superior's sharp elbows. "We should be able to throw something together."
"Would it be possible, do you think, to use those time-lock devices that UNIT has in storage to protect the Earth?" a young woman in a nice business suit asked. She was with the UK group, and Gwen assumed she'd read the report UNIT had made of the incident without truly understanding it.
"I think you'll find that the time-lock is a weapon, not a defence," Major Hopps answered. "We'd end up being frozen in time for a few seconds for the rest of eternity."
"Could they be reset? Made to... to loop a longer period of time, perhaps?" she asked persistently.
"Not bloody likely," the major responded. "No instruction manual."
"But-"
"While the idea has merit," Colonel Mace intervened, "at this time the devices only serve one purpose, and that purpose would mean a living death for the entire planet. I'd prefer to offer up a vigorous defense and, if necessary, go down fighting."
"Is this all we can do?" one of the representatives from Norway asked. "Wait for them to attack?"
"What else?" the Russian general said. "The American's shuttles are useless for battle and the Valiant is only one ship."
Gwen looked at the door where Jack had gone. She turned back to the conference, her voice strong and confident as she told them, "I promise you, if there's another way, we'll find it."
Apparently, lines like that only worked in the movies. Gwen winced as all channels erupted into chaos again, questions and accusations flying from every direction. Gwen looked over at Ianto, who shook his head at her.
The door banged open behind them and Jack entered. "Look what I found just sitting outside on our doorstep." He stepped aside to reveal-
"Martha!" Gwen jumped up, as best she could, out of her seat and hurried over, enveloping Martha Jones in an exuberant hug. "So glad you're here," she whispered in Martha's ear. Then she pulled back to look the other woman in the eye. "How did you get here?"
"UNIT has ways. Your plass serves well as a helicopter pad," Martha said. She put both hands on Gwen's shoulders and took in the sight of her. "Look at you. You're twenty-three weeks along now? Everything going well? And you, Jack." She smirked at him, nodding toward his stomach. "How's it going there?"
Jack glared, a hand rubbing over his belly absently. "Bit of a crisis here," he reminded them.
"It always is," Martha said. "I had to cut my honeymoon short for this. Tom's in London helping out. Ianto," she said, giving him a huge smile, "looking good. And-"
"Ah, yes." Jack stepped forward to make introductions. "Martha Jones, Dr. Megan Muli."
"It's so nice to finally meet you, Megan," said Martha, offering her hand.
"Likewise." Megan stood and shook the outstretched hand firmly. "We probably have lots to go over."
"Yes, of course." Martha looked back over at Jack. "Sorry, your doctor and I have been secretly consulting, Jack. Anyway, we should get back to business, yes? Ladies and gentlemen. Colonel Mace, sir," Martha addressed the screen with a salute.
He was one of the swarm. One. He had come aboard the tiny, insignificant orbital station of the dominant species. Two of the soft bodies remained. Two. They resisted, but they were no match for him; he was a soldier of the Third Hatching, not a soft worker of the Second. Three. He killed them quickly, severing their necks, removing their strange nerve centres. Large and grey; too soft, as the rest of their bodies were too soft.
Dead, the information would expire if he did not consume it, so he thrust the soft, grey, wrinkly meat into his mouth and swallowed. Disgusting. Everything about the soft bodies was disgusting. He shuddered, his wings rustling, as he digested the knowledge, information flooding his brain. Space capability, technology, targets... these brains were valuable. He must return to the First Hatchers. This knowledge must be preserved.
The planet below them was rich. Rich. They could scavenge for years after the deaths of the soft bodies. Scavenge the metal, scavenge the technology they couldn't build for themselves. These brains and others like them would provide the knowledge to take what they needed. Their species would survive. Their species would thrive.
One of the swarm. One. He must return to the ship of the First Hatchers. He must bring them this new knowledge. He would be honoured as they killed him to consume his nerve centres, taking the knowledge, preserving the knowledge, for the good of the swarm.
The swarm approached the planet as he made his way back. Other ships passed his, going to the planet where the soft bodies lived, circling it. As he died, his brain consumed by a First Hatcher, the first ships dove through the atmosphere, beginning the attack.
There was a distinctly horrible crunching noise coming from under the kitchen table. Rhiannon sighed and looked under there to see the cat hunched over in that guilty posture he adopted whenever he was eating something that he shouldn't be.
"Boots!" she said, and he looked at her in round-eyed horror, jaws still furiously crunching. "Get that outside! Go on! Get!"
She chased him out, and the last she saw of him was his tail vanishing into the bushes. Rhiannon grabbed her shoes, swearing when she saw the clock on the microwave. Bloody hell. She'd be lucky if she got to the school before the kids got out, and - well, sue her - she was still feeling a bit protective towards her little girl. She half-walked, half-ran out of the house, slamming the door behind her, willing all the clocks in the world to slow down.
David hated it, having his mum at the gates when they finished up for the day, and he always submitted to holding her hand with all the grace of a prisoner being sent up before the firing squad, but he usually didn't let go once she'd grabbed him. Rhiannon hurried down the footpath, past the park, hoping to catch up a few precious minutes between now and the bell at the end of the day. A buzzing at her hip nearly made her jump out of her skin, and she realised belatedly that it was her phone. She answered without looking at the screen.
"Hullo?"
A quiet breath in, carrying down the line even over her own slight puffing. "Rhi, it's me."
Ianto. Her stomach dropped; not that he didn't ever call - all right, he didn't really call much, but he'd been getting better - but this wasn't the evening, when he'd had a few and she could hear Jack adding his commentary in the background. This was still daytime, with the sun bright overhead and the kids about to come out from school, and she could hear in his voice that something was wrong.
"What is it? Are you okay?" she asked, picking up the pace. All right, she could get the kids, leave them with Nerys and go to wherever Ianto was.
"I'm okay," he said, quickly. "I'm okay… I just… Rhi, I need you to do something. It's going to sound mad."
"Madder than you working for Torchwood?" she asked, rounding the corner. She could see the school; people were waiting at the gate, expectant. So the bell hadn't gone yet - she was still on time.
"It's sort of…" he said, breaking off, "hard to explain. Just… get somewhere you can defend. Somewhere safe. Not too many entrances. Somewhere you know."
Rhiannon looked up over the wire fence, taking in the classrooms. Heavy brick and concrete; windows that locked. Blinds that could be drawn. Water. A canteen. She realised that she was taking stock even before she'd got any sense out of her little brother.
"Defend?" she asked. "Are we going to war?"
"Rhi, just trust me," he said. "I can't talk now. I just need you to get the kids and Johnny, even the damn cat, and get somewhere safe. It's an invasion."
"Should we arm ourselves? Is this something that Johnny can hit with a lump of two-by-four, or is this little green men coming from the sky?" she asked, hearing Ianto's breath catch. Oh fuck.
"Bit of both," he said. "They don't like bright light. Think they might use smell and sound to communicate. Mobiles will probably go out after a while."
"And where will you be?" she asked.
"I'll be where I'm most useful," Ianto said, and that made her skin prickle hot and cold; they'd talked about London, and what had happened, and Lisa. Ianto in the line of fire was an image that didn't fit with her ideas about her brother - not her shy Ianto. He'd shown her his gun, when she'd asked, and her hand had trembled when she'd held it, this thing that dealt death, like in the movies.
"Ianto?" Rhiannon asked. "He'll take care of you this time, won't he?"
Ianto exhaled, a sort of staticky, whistling sound over the line. "He always does," he replied. "I've… really got to go. Take care, Rhi."
"You too," she said to the empty air. She clutched the phone tight, her connection to him, as if she could somehow pull him here, safe beside her. Rhiannon sighed. She shoved the phone into her pocket as the bell rang and kids poured into the playground, running for the bus, for their parents. Okay then. Here it was; Ianto had saved Mica - Torchwood had saved Mica. So how much did she trust Ianto to not be having her on? She took a deep breath and made her decision.
"All right!" she called, up over the afternoon babble of voices, of people meeting other people. "Nerys! Tim! I need a quorum!"
Everyone at the school knew Rhi Davies, good old Rhi Davies. She'd been on the board of governors nearly as long as the kids had been at the school; acted as the secretary for a few years, got sick of that, then been elected chair because no one else had wanted to bloody do it. And she did it because she needed something to complain about, something to fill in the gaps in the days. Because this was their school, their kids, and someone had to give a shit, because the rest of the country certainly didn't.
"What's going on?" Nerys asked. "You look like you've seen a bloody ghost."
"Ianto just called me," she said. "Something's happened. Something Torchwood."
"What?" asked Nerys. "Is it a bombing? We'd've heard it, wouldn't we? Like last time? Where we all thought it was kids setting off fireworks but it was the bloody city going up?"
"He said to prepare for invasion," Rhiannon said, tucking her clammy palms under her arms.
"Oh bloody hell," Tim replied. "You sure he's not having you on?"
"Ianto doesn't do that," Rhiannon said. "Come on. Graeme and Susan've got to be not too far off, and if we have those two and us, then that's a quorum."
"I'll go," said Tim. "I bet they're in the teacher's lounge."
He pushed through the crowded playground, making his way across to the buildings. Nerys was chewing on her lip, watching Rhiannon as if Rhi had suddenly turned into a copper or something.
"What are you planning to do?" asked Nerys.
"We're going to use the school," said Rhiannon, grimly. "We can barricade ourselves into a classroom."
"And if Ianto's wrong?"
"He's not wrong," she said, as Mica came barrelling towards them. "Come on, Mica! Where's your brother?"
"He's over there with Dav!" said Mica. Rhiannon smiled.
"Okay," she said. "You go and wait with the boys, and we'll come get you. Tell the others they're not to go home yet, okay?"
"Okay," said Mica, skipping off and immediately harassing her brother. Rhiannon sighed.
"I've got the others!" Tim called, and the two teachers came to join them by the gate, an impromptu meeting of the school governors surprisingly easy to call to order.
"Okay," Rhiannon said. "I just got a call from my brother. He's… he used to live here. Long time ago."
Graeme was on his phone, one of those fancy iPhone things, looking at the internet.
"Ianto's with Torchwood," she said, and felt a little stir of pride at that. "He said something's coming… something bad."
"Torchwood," said Tim, pulling nervously at the cuffs of his shirt. "You sure?"
"I've seen his gun and everything," said Rhiannon. "He reckons we've got to get somewhere safe, and I reckon that the school's the safest place on the estate."
"Looks like…" Graeme said, head still buried in his phone, "WikiLeaks is saying something big is coming down. Your brother might be right, Rhi." He flipped through more screens. "Yeah, the Guardian has the terror alert threat raised to… oh bloody hell. Looks like he is right. No details, but people are being warned to keep off the streets."
"Of course he's bloody right!" she said. "Now, question is, how do we keep people here?"
"We can use the phone tree that we've got set up for snow days," said Susan. "Tell people to stay indoors, in the cellar or something."
"I'll put something on Twitter," said Graeme.
"We can grab people now," said Nerys, and Rhiannon nodded. "Can you get onto your brother again? Get any more details?"
"So it's not human, then?" asked Tim. "I mean, it's not… if it's Torchwood, it's weird shit, yeah?"
Rhiannon looked at the sky. It was perfect, pure blue, the sort of blue that seemed to stretch as deep as the sea. Nothing bad could happen under a clear blue sky, could it? She looked away, watching the kids.
"Yeah," she said, hearing her own voice as if she were a million miles away, looking at Dav unsuccessfully trying to pull the head off Mica's birthday Barbie doll.
"Come on," Tim said. "We'll get everyone in the gym."
"The gym?" Susan asked.
"Less windows," he said, his expression fixed. "And they've got that wire in 'em, don't they."
Nerys walked with Rhiannon, back to the remaining parents by the gate, keeping pace with her as they went. "You sure we're making the right decision?" Nerys asked. "It's a pretty big call to make, barricading ourselves in like this."
"I trust Ianto with my bloody life," said Rhiannon, as helicopters flew over.
"That's good," said Nerys, as nearby, David bounced on the balls of his feet, pointing at the sky. "Looks like we might be about to test that out."
Clouds were coming on and hiding the sun behind grey. Andy Davidson's shift should have been over ten minutes ago, but it wouldn't look good if he up and left now for a pint after work with his mates.
"I heard chatter over the wire." Andy manoeuvered the police car around a bollard and down the ramp into the hospital's underground car park. "Nothing concrete, something out from Splott, but they figured them to be kids maybe."
"I don't think it was kids who called this in, PC Davidson." Kathy Swanson pulled off her sunglasses as they slipped into the relative darkness of neon lighting and concrete.
"Just saying." Andy harrumphed and took them one level deeper. It wasn't his favourite thing to be teamed with the boss again; someone had whispered Torchwood through the break room and laughed their arses off when Swanson nodded at him to come along, based on an anonymous call: something weird, they said, probably a loony.
"Over there." Swanson pointed to the left and Andy pulled the car into the spot dutifully, barely catching up when Swanson got out and made for the lifts.
"So I was thinking," Andy began as the lift doors closed and Swanson pressed the button for reception, "maybe it had to do with the notices we got out from the country this morning, yeah? Could really be that something big came down."
The lift pinged, the doors opened, and Andy trotted behind Swanson to the information desk.
"DI Swanson, Cardiff Police," she said, nodding at the boy at reception. "We were called in because of some strange... animals?"
The boy groaned and tried to hide it behind a cough. "That'd be third floor, they're always pulling these pranks. Amy, she's a mate, she works there and-" The boy stopped when he looked up at Swanson again. "It's probably nothing, just them being idiots."
"We'd still like to take a look. Third floor?" she asked, leaning forward on the reception desk.
The boy looked at her, at Andy, back at Swanson, and shrugged. "Yeah. I'm just saying, it's probably Preston being a git. Thinks it's funny what with the alien invasions."
Swanson pocketed her shades and stepped back to the lift.
"Really." The boy grabbed for Andy's sleeve. "He doesn't mean anything by it. He just likes to have a laugh up there, and-"
"Thanks," Andy said and looked at the boy's nametag. "Thanks, Nathan. It's fine. We'll just take a look." Andy made it into the lift just before the doors closed. "Does look like a prank then," he said.
Swanson shrugged. "Let's hope you're right and it's nothing to do with Harkness and his little band of alien hunters."
When the lift doors slid open, they did so to complete silence that was pierced by a sudden scream, quickly muffled again. Andy reached for his baton, fingers tightening around it. Would have done them good to be all CSI now with guns and whatnot. They stepped out of the lift just as the doors were making to close again. A hand waved for them down the hallway and, after looking left and right down the empty corridor, they walked there. Andy was waiting for one of the 'feral beasts' to jump them. It all looked a bit drawn-out to be a prank at this point.
"DI Swanson, PC Davidson. You called emergency services," Swanson said at the nurse's station, speaking to a young bloke, an older lady and a girl huddled behind the counter, crouching so as to be invisible behind the barricade of chairs.
"Me," the bloke said, whose nametag read Preston. "Right. I wanted to go down for a smoke, see, we're only allowed to smoke outside, funny rule that, and I went down the stairs because Donny was blocking the lift with a bed and- They're just in there. They're like, like-" He shook his head and pointed at the door opposite, a little further down the corridor.
"All right," Swanson said quickly, "we'll have a look." But the glance that she threw in Andy's direction said that they'd be out of here in five minutes, after Swanson got to tear someone a new arsehole for playing pranks. She glared at Andy, nodded her head down the hallway; Andy realised that on the off-chance it wasn't a prank, he was the one with the stab vest.
The door was solid steel save for a tiny sliver of meshed glass, practically useless, that, but he walked in front of her anyway; they clung to the painted cement walls as if that was going to save them should something nasty appear on the other side. By the time they got there, Andy had convinced himself that whatever was on the other side was waiting for him, especially. He kept his back pressed to the wall, took a deep breath, then turned to look through the glass. The handrails were shiny black, the stairs dull concrete, the walls a happiness-inducing baby blue. He glanced across to Swanson and shook his head. He nodded to the door and held up three fingers.
Swanson gestured 'What?' with her hands, mouthing it.
Andy nodded at the door with more insistence, punching the air with his three fingers.
"Three what, Davidson?" Swanson shouted. It cracked through the air in the empty corridor.
Clearly no one was watching the same shows on the telly that he did. "I'm going in on the count of three," he said and counted down by closing his fingers to his fist one by one. He pushed the door to the stairwell open and drew his baton, inching inside. "Nothing," he shouted back into the corridor, then reached for his radio. "Don't know what he saw, but it's not here."
"Copy that," Swanson said, over the crackle of background static.
The door swung closed behind him as he stepped farther onto the landing. Just out of his sight, down below, there was something, a shadow on a shadow. Andy squinted into the darkness. He reached for his radio again. "I might be seeing something here." He paused, staring, willing his eyes to pick it up. "Maybe a dog, I don't know, it's dark in he-"
As he inched farther, the motion sensors flickered on the neon lights in the stairwell, the strips crackling to life. Andy's radio went to static as he pressed at the buttons. And from the shades of stairwell from the floor beneath, the flutter of wings, of legs, of bodies rose up as, half-crawling and half-flying, the black mass of something turned into individual things.
"Oh my god." Andy pressed at the buttons on his radio. "Bugger me, oh- These are..." Through the crackle of no signal and the sound of a stairwell alive with creatures, Andy couldn't find the words. In front of him beetles the size of cats, sharp-looking front claws extending from their heads, were advancing. Some crawled up the steps, the rest of them flying like a second, a third wave, roaring up in the middle column between the stairs, all the way up through the floors.
Andy stumbled back, one step, two, as he tried to take in the things, black and horrible and too big to be anything normal, anything from this planet. Some of the things made for the lights, slamming against them and bouncing back. Faintly, the smell of burned meat filled the air, and Andy gagged. They rose up louder, faster, more and more of them, and then in their midst, bigger than any man, an even bigger version with wings and feelers and claw-like teeth. Andy swung his baton around himself, the first of them nearly at his feet, but they didn't inch back, didn't do anything but advance.
He stumbled back, looking into the eyes of that giant insect thing, and it stared right back at him.
One moment caught in non-motion.
Then it pounced the second Andy stretched backwards. It caught him across the cheek, red hot pain, but Andy pulled open the door and squeezed around it, shutting it in the thing's face.
"Davidson! Your radio! What was going on there?" Swanson shouted from the reception desk.
The thing stared at Andy through the glass door. The cut on his face was burning, probably bloody. The thing moved its head back and forth, like it was studying him, teeth clicking in its face and mandibles snapping idly.
"This door isn't locking," Andy said, not taking his eyes off the thing, the thing not taking its eyes off him. The smaller ones crowded against the door, stacking themselves two and three high. He could feel the give of the door when they pushed on it, the latch not slipping in place like it should.
"What?" Swanson asked.
"Why is this door not latching?" Andy asked through clenched teeth. He didn't fancy having to hold this door shut for the rest of his life, which would be very short if all he had were his bare hands and weight. Sooner or later they'd break in.
"We taped it over when we were moving the patients," the older woman replied. "So we didn't have to keep unlocking it.
"Oh. Just lovely," Andy grumbled, and Preston high-pitch squeaked. Wouldn't be making any more prank calls, that one. "The patients," he continued. "They're off this floor? You got them out?"
"Yes."
"Call the lift, Preston." The thing scratched at the glass. "Now." From the corner of his eye Andy could see Preston inch around the nurse's station and run for the lift, pressing at the buttons. The lift doors pinged, third floor.
Andy held up his hand, three fingers, towards the desk and counted down.
Three. The thing twisted its head, then its feelers, ten or twenty of them in a bushel of feelerdom, reached for the door knob, twisting it down.
Two. Andy backed away one step, both hands still on the door, pushing it closed. The thing locked eyes with him.
One. It tilted its head and regarded him, and Andy felt as if they had a perfect moment of communication, mano y buggo, in which that gaze told him everything that it was going to do to him once the door was open.
"Now!" Andy shouted and sprinted for the lift. Swanson and the girl and the older nurse ducked out from behind the reception desk in front of him. Behind him, the black alien things spilled into the corridor. Andy stumbled into the lift. "Up! Up! Up!" He hammered at the control panel, pressing all the buttons that would take them away. The lift doors closed in slow motion, the black, scuttling oversized beetles rushing towards them.
Doors closing.
Three metres, two metres, one metre. A beetle tried to squeeze in and the doors closed on it, paused as if to open again; they all stared at it in wide-eyed horror, frozen as they watched the army of black things advancing behind it, the giant one waving through them, half-ducked in the low corridor.
Doors closing, the lift voice repeated.
"They're going to get us," Preston said, half a whimper.
The beetle struggled in the doors, then tried to spread its wings as if to push the door open.
"Oh you stupid, stupid..." The girl, Amy, placed her trainer to the thing's head and pushed. "...thing!" The beetle fell back, the doors closed.
Going up.
It All Changes: Part Two
It All Changes
by: kel_reiley, thaddeusfavour, xtricks, the VS team (it takes a village, folks!)
It's always midnight somewhere, and the only six humans in space were asleep in their zippered cocoons when the emergency communications alert went off with flashing red lights and insistent alarms. The crew was out of their beds and heading to their stations before they'd entirely woken up.
"Центр управления полетами вызывает международную космическую станцию. Чрезвычайная ситуация! Это не учение. Повторяю - чрезвычайная ситуация."
"Station here," Oyuz said, zipping up her suit as Sten pulled himself out of the air and into the neighbouring seat, checking the station's status. "What's the problem?"
The reply was in English, if heavily accented, and as brusque as every other Russian she'd ever talked to. "Suspend all activities and evacuate immediately."
"Evacuate?" Oyuz yelped, shocked. She looked to Sten and he shook his head, bewildered. "There's nothing wrong up here-"
"You must evacuate now!" There was fear in the man's voice, thousands of kilometres away, and that convinced Oyuz when otherwise she might have argued with the Russians and their top-down bureaucracy.
Sten leaned over. "Only one of the escape capsules is working," he reminded her. He tilted his head aft, toward the bay where a bent strut blocked the second Soyuz rocket, their last-ditch evacuation pod. They'd been working on it, between other duties, but hadn't considered it urgent. Until now.
"We-" Oyuz paused to steady her voice. "We only have one capsule available, and they only hold three. Can someone - the Chinese - come get us? What's going on?"
"Look eight degrees off Jupiter," Mission Control told them and Sten scrambled to bring up the telescope.
"Ну и что это? Астероиды?" Vilma murmured from the hatchway as the telescope's monitor flickered to life, the bright disk of Jupiter looming in the upper corner.
"Asteroids don't just appear!" Sten snapped, and Oyuz could only shake her head in bewilderment. Specks of bright lights drifted around the edge of Jupiter, obviously out of synch with the rest of the debris out there. They didn't belong and they hadn't been there two days ago. And that was impossible. As impossible as the entire Earth moving light years through space and back again. As impossible as so many things in the last few years, whispered about but never openly admitted.
"What are they?" Oyuz whispered. The cluster of dots had moved visibly as they watched, uncannily fast.
"Invasion," Mission Control said flatly. "You have to get back to Earth. There is no one to come for you."
"That's ridiculous- it-"
"Copy, Mission Control," Oyuz said, cutting off the argument ready to blow up pointlessly. "We'll do our best."
She twisted around then, a hand on Sten's shoulder to keep from drifting into the ceiling. His muscles were knotted and trembling; whatever protests his mouth was spitting out, his body believed. "Johnny, Kiril, Leonid - get your suits on and get the Soyuz up and running."
Sten twitched under her hand and Vilma inhaled sharply, as if she were about to protest but didn't; most of the crew were married, or going to be - Oyuz was very conscious of the engagement ring on a chain around her neck - but Johnny, Kiril and Leonid had children. Families who'd need them for whatever happened next. She gave them a tight smile. "Don't wait for us."
Leoind swallowed hard, relief and shame warring visibly on his face. "Капитан."
Oyuz nodded. "Just go."
That left the three of them. "Well," she said briskly. "Let's see if a good kick and some duct tape can't solve our problems."
UNIT Lab V217, London, UK
"...and it's clear that the samples collected on the Valiant are the same as the samples collected from around the UK - refer to sample collection document for exact locations. This species is remarkable in that it seems to have sprung up overnight."
Shawna looked up from her work to wave at him. She seemed to be wrapping up her notes on the specimens UNIT had collected, so G.M. settled on one of the lab stools to wait.
"During dissection, a set of bilateral pouches lying adjacent to the oesophagus was discovered. They appear to function as a crop, and it is worth noting that every specimen collected thus far has a full one, no evidence of disgorging or digestion. Said contents have been submitted to lab for identification."
G.M. grinned and quietly waved the papers in his hand. Shawna looked a question at him and he nodded, pointing to the papers. She clicked off the recorder.
"Well, why didn't you say so?" she asked excitedly, reaching for the lab results, but G.M. held them out of her reach.
"Ah, ah, ah," he scolded. "What did your mother say about 'please' and 'thank you?'"
"Please give me the papers before I'm forced to kill my boyfriend," she said, lunging across the table to snatch them from him. "Thank you very much!"
G.M. laughed, but still managed to steal a quick kiss before she sat back to examine the data. UNIT had added an entomology department a couple of months ago. He'd met Shawna Phillips, scientist and bug-enthusiast, six weeks, two days, and three hours ago. He would call it love at first sight, but since he didn't believe in that, he'd have to go with fun at first sight. Movies, books, science, even a fascination with trains: they shared so many common interests that he was sometimes surprised he hadn't known her his entire life.
"Hey, you'll like this," she said glancing up at him with a little smile. He loved her smiles. "You were right. They are able to sense the Rift. I asked the Cardiff office to run some field tests - which I had to set up, they don't have any scientists there, only soldiers - and the things seem to orient on the Rift before going about their business. They don't fly to it like moths, but they definitely know it's there. So..."
"So?" he asked, grinning, knowing what was coming.
She shook her head ruefully. "So, you were right. I was wrong. You are the king of the lab... for this week anyway."
He jumped up and did his victory dance. Shawna laughed before continuing to examine the reports. "That means pizza is on you Saturday, and I get to pick the movie," he crowed. "How about Infestation? 2009, Chris Marquette-"
"Oh my God! You won't believe what they've been eating!"
"Weetabix? I still can't believe you eat that stuff."
She made a sound like a game show buzzer. "No! Wrong answer!" Shawna leaned forward, grinning. There was a devilish-glint in her brown eyes that worried him.
Widening her eyes dramatically and dropping her face into a comically blank expression, she intoned, "Braaaiiinnnsss! Braaaaiiiiinnnnnnssssssss!"
"Zombie bugs?" he asked, looking around. "Where's a cricket bat when you really need one?"
"Well," she said, scanning the rest of the papers, "they're quite alive, so I think a good boot heel will do the trick. The interesting thing is that the brain-bits are so well preserved. If I picked this bit of brain up somewhere, I'd think the person had only been dead for a couple of minutes. Bugs with brain tissue in their crops are one thing. Bugs with nearly-living brain tissue raises some questions. And..." She paused, staring at the paper she'd been scanning, then looked up at G.M., all trace of humor gone. "I'd say bugs with nearly-living human brain tissue may be approaching the cricket bat solution."
"Human brains? They've been eating human brains?" G.M. shivered, fighting the urge to run his hands through his hair just to make sure he wasn't covered in bugs. No, he wasn't.
"Right. Plus some other stuff. Let's see, brain tissue in samples... sheep... rat... ha. The ones from Cardiff have been eating brains from non-terrestrial species. Figures. I mean, with the Rift and all." She put the papers down, flipping through them quickly. "Ha! Here. I sent a couple of samples away to be checked against known species and... oh, shit."
G.M. jumped to his feet, unable to resist brushing his hands down his arms. "What? What is it?"
"The entomology experts I sent it to report that the samples don't match any known species. And," she held up a report, turning it so that he could see the UNIT Labs letterhead, "our biology department says the samples have certain markers in their DNA that can't be found on Earth."
"So?" G.M. asked softly, knowing what was coming. "So... probably not giant, mutant, irradiated insects from New Mexico, then?"
"You watch too many movies. These are one hundred percent alien bugs."
The Hub, Cardiff, UK
Fresh shirt in hand, Jack clambered up the ladder and into his office. He marched straight toward the med bay, trying to stuff his arms into the sleeves. He could hear Gwen on the phone as he approached.
"I'm fine, love. Really."
And he could hear the tinny notes of Rhys yelling over the line from all the way across the room. "Fine?! You were in a car crash, Gwen. It's on the bloody news!"
Jack winced, but he watched as Gwen pulled her top back down over her rounded belly. It was a good thing he'd installed the force-net in the SUV last month when he'd had the chance.
He tried to catch Megan's eye. She ignored him and, instead, snatched the phone out of Gwen's hand. "Mr. Williams. Dr. Megan Muli. I assure you, Gwen is all right. She's sustained no injuries and the baby is perfectly healthy. Strong heartbeat, everything looks normal." Without a second thought, she handed the phone back to Gwen, then turned and began packing away the Biwötcii scanner.
"See," said Gwen, "I'm fit as a fiddle." She spotted Jack and flashed him a smile, her hand resting on her stomach.
Jack smiled back, and glanced at the other corner of the med bay, his mood darkening. Megan must have seen something in his expression, because she looked up directly at him and said, "Ze's unconscious again. I think all that tired hir out. Best to let hir rest."
And that was that, for Megan turned away from him and continued… whatever it was she was doing. Pulling his shirt all the way on properly, Jack headed into the main Hub toward Ianto's work station. He was typing furiously at his computer, a look of consternation on his face. It was… almost cute. Jack buttoned up his shirt, and had to scratch a bit at his neck under the collar.
"The dry cleaners are using too much starch again."
Ianto grunted without looking up. "Jack, I've already had to switch services twice this year. These guys don't speak English and they already think I'm a serial killer or something, what with all the mysterious stains of blood and guts I come in with nearly every week."
"So, what are you saying?"
"Deal with it or clean your own shirts."
Jack scratched at his neck again, flexing his shoulders beneath the stiff fabric. "I'm all itchy."
"You're itchy because you didn't shower after you destroyed the car," Ianto said, still without looking up at him, though there was no venom in his voice.
"How's it coming with the stuff you got from… Naz?" Jack asked. He wasn't entirely sure why the alien in his Hub was making him feel so uncomfortable. He knew enough about the species to know they weren't really any worse than any other and, from what Megan had told him, ze was just as terrified of...
"Still working on it. You're on the news, by the way," Ianto said, clicking the mouse a few times and pointing to his monitor. A news feed from the BBC showed the SUV careening through the streets of Cardiff, then some stills of the abandoned, overturned vehicle and the destroyed communications van at the scene.
"Huh." Jack pulled his braces up over his shoulders and let them snap into place. "Good thing Erin was there to give us a ride back to the Hub."
Ianto rolled his eyes. "It's all over the internet, Jack. It's on bloody Twitter. I fucking hate Twitter."
Jack sighed, and rubbed at his forehead. "I think it's fair to say that we're not going to be able to contain this one."
"This is going to be bad, isn't it?" Ianto asked, looking at him for… what? Confirmation? Reassurance?
Jack could only shake his head. If these creatures were… what he thought they were, then this was going to be very bad. And Jack simply didn't have the energy to think about that just now.
"Is this how it happens?" Ianto asked suddenly.
"What?"
"The twenty-first century. Is this how it all changes?"
They stared at one another for a moment. Jack didn't know how to answer that. Ianto's monitor beeped; they both turned, and Jack moved to read the screen over Ianto's shoulder, placing one hand in the small of Ianto's back.
"Doesn't look like Tosh's translation program is really getting anywhere with this. The mainframe can make sense of the binary, but this..." Ianto clicked the mouse again and brought up several windows. "It looks like it might be a personal file on Naz. ID maybe?"
"Name, rank, and serial number. Well, not that last one so much. Ze's military."
"You can read it?" Ianto turned to look at him, hopeful.
"No," Jack said, "but I recognise the form. This bit is probably hir full name - or title, I guess. And this indicates rank. Or station - I'm not familiar with their system. Time Agents try to steer clear of military operations if at all possible. Unless it's the mission," he added with a forced smile.
"I suppose that can wait, but what do we do about this?" Ianto said, bringing up another window.
Jack moved his hand up to Ianto's shoulder, and leaned further into him to see #wtfcardiff scrolling across the screen. Ianto's fresh shirt was vivid plum, as stiffly starched as his own, and the heat of his body was warm beneath it as Jack smoothed a thumb along his shoulder. "Ignore it," he nodded at the screen. "We've got too much to do."
Ianto's fingers stilled above the keyboard and he stared at the monitor, mouth pressed tight, then he nodded slightly.
Jack tightened his grip. "It's not important," he said. When had they run out of time? Because they had. There was no more time and they weren't ready.
Jack let his hand fall away and turned to do something - anything - else. He watched Megan hurrying up from the med bay, a bright red case with a white cross blazoned on it slung over her shoulder and, he noted with satisfaction, a gun at her belt. Beyond her, the Nwaxan-chu lay quietly on a trolley, the bearer of bad news, and Jack couldn't control his scowl. His eyes drifted toward the entrance to cold storage. With one quick glance over his shoulder at Ianto - still engrossed in the translation matrix - Jack made his way across the Hub and down to cold storage.
The metal was cold under his fingertips as he smoothed his hand over the control panel keeping Gray in suspended animation. What did his brother know? Some secret that could save everyone? Something he could do to finally fight back against the monsters that had torn apart their world, their family and his mind? Jack clenched his fists. He was supposed to take care of Gray, now more than ever.
"That chamber isn't correctly entered in my records," Megan said from behind him, and Jack turned to see her standing in the doorway. It was clear she'd been about to go on, but she paused, eyes narrowing as she looked at him. Jack spread his hands protectively against Gray's drawer.
"Let's keep it that way," he said. After the visit from the Time Agents, Megan had been briefed on the situation. By Ianto. She'd tried to corner Jack more than once, but he had always been good at evading people.
"This isn't a good time to let distractions overwhelm us," she said quietly. "Human though that is."
"Oh, can't have that," Jack raised an eyebrow and gave her a meaningless smile. She came the rest of the way into the room, glancing briefly to the chamber before returning her attention to him. "He might be able to help us," Jack said, swallowing against the thread of plea in his voice.
"Can he?" Megan asked levelly. This wasn't something Jack could ask Gwen, or Ianto - to look beyond what Gray had done to what he could do. To look beyond Tosh and Owen and half of Cardiff still in ruins and, maybe, see a fragment of hope. "I'm not sure the best cure of a trauma-induced psychosis is more exposure to trauma."
"If these are what I think they are. Monsters from my past... from our past. I lost him," Jack stopped anguished. "They found him. He might have the secret to defeating the… them."
Megan frowned thoughtfully. "If that's true, that's incredibly valuable. But I know you, Jack, and if it were true, if you were sure, you wouldn't be hesitating."
Jack didn't have an answer. He couldn't comprehend what had turned his clever little brother into the man who'd crossed millennia and light-years solely to make him suffer, and killed those Jack loved to do it. The touch of Megan's hand on his arm made Jack start.
"Sometimes the best mercy is to leave things lie," she said quietly. "And you have family here and now, who need you."
He looked over her shoulder to see Ianto leaning in the doorway behind her, expressionless. "It's UNIT," he said. "It's time."
"Yeah," Jack said after a pause. He walked away from Gray, feeling memory slip through his fingers again, as it had all that time (and time to come) ago. "Come on, Doc, let's put on a show."
"We're patching our communications through UNIT in St. Athan," Ianto said. "We might have better equipment, but they've got more of it."
"Ha! I know something you don't," Gwen said, taking her seat at the conference table. "Erin told me UNIT was getting Mr. Smith to handle the connections for them. So they're patching everyone through him."
"Huh. They could have told me."
"Probably didn't want to admit they needed help," Gwen said as she adjusted her comm and smiled into the camera. "They're still a tad touchy on the subject."
The door banged open and Jack strode into the room. Gwen rolled her eyes. At least he wasn't wearing the coat. Megan followed him more sedately, closing the door behind her and taking a seat.
"Are we on?" Jack asked.
"If you mean, has the meeting started, no," Gwen answered. "If you mean is everything set up, yes. Ianto's just finishing."
"Great." Jack sat down beside Gwen. "Let's get this show on the road."
"World leaders, Jack. Let's try to avoid insulting everyone right off the bat." Gwen glared at him when he gave her the obvious 'Who? Me?' look.
"Don't worry, Gwen. I'll be good," Jack said. "Besides, you don't think we'll be meeting Obama, do you? They'll all send chiefs of staff and military commanders in case this is a waste of time."
"Smile, everyone," Ianto said. "They can see you in three... two... one."
Gwen watched as the monitor filled with faces, small squares showing people sitting in conference rooms just like - well, sort of like - this one. Most of the world was represented. UNIT was there, of course. She recognized them, as well as the commander of the Valiant and some of his staff. Area 51, the Americans, were completely unfamiliar, as were the groups from Russia, China, Italy, France... Might as well name the people she knew and leave it at that. Gwen squared her shoulders and took a calming breath. She wondered if UNIT, the UN, or NATO was planning on starting the meeting. She glanced over at Jack to ask him if he knew, when he began speaking. After a moment of surprise, Gwen turned to the camera with a fixed smile on her face, wishing she'd gone with her first thought and locked Jack in a closet for the duration of the conference.
"Captain Jack Harkness. Torchwood. As some of you already know, the Earth is about to be attacked by an alien space fleet. We have a rough estimate of about a thousand ships manned by a race called the Wirrin. It's been six hours since the advance scouts sent the signal to commence with the invasion. Which means we've got..." Jack made a show of looking at his watch, "no time left."
There was silence from the other attendees, then questions flying back and forth as everyone tried to speak at once.
"We have received the information UNIT has sent," the general from Russia spoke above the others, drawing their attention. "We also have news. All contact to the International Space Station has been lost. Three of our cosmonauts evacuated in time, but we believe that the other three, and the station itself, are gone. Russia is forced to agree with UNIT on this matter. The Earth is under attack."
"This is... ridiculous! Or else a joke," the minister from Italy complained. "You expect us to believe that this... this... invasion fleet has gone unnoticed?" The minister slapped a hand onto his table dramatically. "We pay UNIT to take care of these things, and they can't even give us proper warning?"
"Ha!" The French colonel scoffed. "When you actually pay your dues, you can complain."
As if it was a signal, sides were taken and a general round of bickering broke out. Gwen noticed Jack looking at his watch again. He leaned closer to her.
"Not bad," he said softly. "Less than three minutes. Unfortunately, we don't have time to waste on this."
"Quiet!" Major Hopps's parade-ground bellow brought silence. Gwen could see that even Colonel Mace, head of UNIT in the UK, was eyeing his subordinate with surprise. "Pardon me, ladies and gentlemen, but we don't have the time to conduct business as usual. Colonel Mace?" Major Hopps deferred.
"The major is correct," Colonel Mace said. "I suggest we let Torchwood finish the briefing and then decide on a course of action without the usual back and forth."
"Right then," Jack said before anyone could protest. "We can expect an assault on the ground and from the air. Once they're within range, our communications are going to go to hell, so we'll need to plan for that. Best idea-"
"What are these things?" The general from the Chinese delegation, a sharp-eyed woman, sat with hands folded on her table. "We've seen the evidence. We have confirmed it. But you have not yet told us what we can expect."
"Giant bugs," Jack said. "Ianto, show and tell time."
Jack stood, and Ianto thumped a large plastic Tupperware tub onto the table in front of him. Jack pulled off the lid with a flourish, reached in and pulled out the head of one of the roaches. Gwen jerked back in disgust as he pushed the bin aside and smacked the gruesome thing down in front of the camera.
"We'll stream some briefing videos to you. They're fast and strong and these-" Jack grabbed the jaws and extended the mandibles, "make them very, very deadly." Jack relaxed his grip, and the mandibles slid back into the mouth with a snap. "They're also intelligent and as capable of tactics and strategy as we are."
"How did they get here? Where do they come from? What do they want?" Gwen wasn't sure who had asked what, as two or three people all seemed to be speaking at once.
"All very good questions," Jack said. "And completely irrelevant. Well, except for what they want. They want to kill us and take over the Earth."
"Are you sure?" the general from China asked. "Have you spoken to them?"
"Sadly, no," Jack said. "I was too busy killing them. Look, I'm not going to tell you how I know, but take my word for it, these things do not come in peace. They're monsters, and the only way we're going to survive as a species is if we fight back with everything we've got. That means no holding back, by the way. Everyone fights, or we may all die."
"Captain," Colonel Mace said, "I'm sure UNIT can-"
"UNIT's not going to be enough this time," Jack interrupted. "Understand me, there will be enemy troops landing all over this planet. You're going to need all the help you can get."
"There's no way to keep a lid on this, is there?" One of the Americans finally spoke up. "I mean, this is going to be world-wide, and it's not like we can blame it on swamp gas or secret military testing, right?"
"Not a chance," Jack said. He smiled, but the grim slash of his lips bore none of Jack's usual humour. "Everything changes. Right here. Right now. It's time to grow up and leave the kiddie pool. We-" Jack glanced down. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile, which appeared to be vibrating. "Sorry, but I've got to take this."
Gwen watched, stunned, as Jack strode out of the room. She could just see him as he flipped the phone open, before he closed the door to the conference room. Ianto cleared his throat, catching her attention and nodding to the camera. Gwen spun around.
"Let's just keep going, shall we?" She started to push her chair closer to the camera, when she realised that would also bring her closer to the roach's head. "Ianto, would you please?" She gestured to the creature. He smiled, a small quirk of his lips, and collected the head, popping it back into the plastic tub.
"Now then," Gwen said. "I'm Agent Gwen Cooper, Torchwood. Might I suggest informing not only your military, but your civilian law enforcement as well? After all, you're going to need them to deal with events on a local level."
"How are we going to coordinate anything without communications?" the French colonel asked. "From what your captain said, once the attack begins, all of our troops and civilian forces will be operating independently."
"We might be able to help with that, at least to some extent," a young man from Area 51 said. "Some of the alien technology we've gathered functions beyond the normally used-" He stopped short, a quick breath escaping from him, then he rubbed his side and glared at one of his companions.
The American military bloke who'd elbowed him in the ribs looked into the camera. "We don't have enough equipment for all the field units, but we could provide enough for us to keep in touch with each other. Plus, we could install this on UNIT's fancy airship, the Valiant. It's probably the only craft we've got that's going to make a real difference in this fight. It'll be more useful if we can actually talk to the crew."
Gwen could see the commander from the Valiant conferring with his command staff, then turning to nod at the camera. "Anything you can do would be much appreciated. We'll make arrangements to receive your technical team."
"We'll be happy to send teams to UNIT, Torchwood, Russia," there was just the slightest pause before the American general continued, "and China as well. That's all we've got."
"We'll be happy to accept your help," Gwen said. "We may be able to boost our sensors and get information on the fleet that we can share. With UNIT's assistance, we could coordinate the defence from the Hub. We've also got access to an advanced supercomputer whose base communications are immune to the bugs' interference-" So Mr. Smith, the exceedingly polite computer in Sarah Jane's attic had assured her. Gwen turned to the American's with a hopeful smile. "If I send you an access frequency do you think you can patch your equipment into it? That'll give us a routing hub better than pretty much anything on the planet."
"Decentralizing the communications system could save our bacon," the young American technician spoke up again, leaning away from his superior's sharp elbows. "We should be able to throw something together."
"Would it be possible, do you think, to use those time-lock devices that UNIT has in storage to protect the Earth?" a young woman in a nice business suit asked. She was with the UK group, and Gwen assumed she'd read the report UNIT had made of the incident without truly understanding it.
"I think you'll find that the time-lock is a weapon, not a defence," Major Hopps answered. "We'd end up being frozen in time for a few seconds for the rest of eternity."
"Could they be reset? Made to... to loop a longer period of time, perhaps?" she asked persistently.
"Not bloody likely," the major responded. "No instruction manual."
"But-"
"While the idea has merit," Colonel Mace intervened, "at this time the devices only serve one purpose, and that purpose would mean a living death for the entire planet. I'd prefer to offer up a vigorous defense and, if necessary, go down fighting."
"Is this all we can do?" one of the representatives from Norway asked. "Wait for them to attack?"
"What else?" the Russian general said. "The American's shuttles are useless for battle and the Valiant is only one ship."
Gwen looked at the door where Jack had gone. She turned back to the conference, her voice strong and confident as she told them, "I promise you, if there's another way, we'll find it."
Apparently, lines like that only worked in the movies. Gwen winced as all channels erupted into chaos again, questions and accusations flying from every direction. Gwen looked over at Ianto, who shook his head at her.
The door banged open behind them and Jack entered. "Look what I found just sitting outside on our doorstep." He stepped aside to reveal-
"Martha!" Gwen jumped up, as best she could, out of her seat and hurried over, enveloping Martha Jones in an exuberant hug. "So glad you're here," she whispered in Martha's ear. Then she pulled back to look the other woman in the eye. "How did you get here?"
"UNIT has ways. Your plass serves well as a helicopter pad," Martha said. She put both hands on Gwen's shoulders and took in the sight of her. "Look at you. You're twenty-three weeks along now? Everything going well? And you, Jack." She smirked at him, nodding toward his stomach. "How's it going there?"
Jack glared, a hand rubbing over his belly absently. "Bit of a crisis here," he reminded them.
"It always is," Martha said. "I had to cut my honeymoon short for this. Tom's in London helping out. Ianto," she said, giving him a huge smile, "looking good. And-"
"Ah, yes." Jack stepped forward to make introductions. "Martha Jones, Dr. Megan Muli."
"It's so nice to finally meet you, Megan," said Martha, offering her hand.
"Likewise." Megan stood and shook the outstretched hand firmly. "We probably have lots to go over."
"Yes, of course." Martha looked back over at Jack. "Sorry, your doctor and I have been secretly consulting, Jack. Anyway, we should get back to business, yes? Ladies and gentlemen. Colonel Mace, sir," Martha addressed the screen with a salute.
He was one of the swarm. One. He had come aboard the tiny, insignificant orbital station of the dominant species. Two of the soft bodies remained. Two. They resisted, but they were no match for him; he was a soldier of the Third Hatching, not a soft worker of the Second. Three. He killed them quickly, severing their necks, removing their strange nerve centres. Large and grey; too soft, as the rest of their bodies were too soft.
Dead, the information would expire if he did not consume it, so he thrust the soft, grey, wrinkly meat into his mouth and swallowed. Disgusting. Everything about the soft bodies was disgusting. He shuddered, his wings rustling, as he digested the knowledge, information flooding his brain. Space capability, technology, targets... these brains were valuable. He must return to the First Hatchers. This knowledge must be preserved.
The planet below them was rich. Rich. They could scavenge for years after the deaths of the soft bodies. Scavenge the metal, scavenge the technology they couldn't build for themselves. These brains and others like them would provide the knowledge to take what they needed. Their species would survive. Their species would thrive.
One of the swarm. One. He must return to the ship of the First Hatchers. He must bring them this new knowledge. He would be honoured as they killed him to consume his nerve centres, taking the knowledge, preserving the knowledge, for the good of the swarm.
The swarm approached the planet as he made his way back. Other ships passed his, going to the planet where the soft bodies lived, circling it. As he died, his brain consumed by a First Hatcher, the first ships dove through the atmosphere, beginning the attack.
There was a distinctly horrible crunching noise coming from under the kitchen table. Rhiannon sighed and looked under there to see the cat hunched over in that guilty posture he adopted whenever he was eating something that he shouldn't be.
"Boots!" she said, and he looked at her in round-eyed horror, jaws still furiously crunching. "Get that outside! Go on! Get!"
She chased him out, and the last she saw of him was his tail vanishing into the bushes. Rhiannon grabbed her shoes, swearing when she saw the clock on the microwave. Bloody hell. She'd be lucky if she got to the school before the kids got out, and - well, sue her - she was still feeling a bit protective towards her little girl. She half-walked, half-ran out of the house, slamming the door behind her, willing all the clocks in the world to slow down.
David hated it, having his mum at the gates when they finished up for the day, and he always submitted to holding her hand with all the grace of a prisoner being sent up before the firing squad, but he usually didn't let go once she'd grabbed him. Rhiannon hurried down the footpath, past the park, hoping to catch up a few precious minutes between now and the bell at the end of the day. A buzzing at her hip nearly made her jump out of her skin, and she realised belatedly that it was her phone. She answered without looking at the screen.
"Hullo?"
A quiet breath in, carrying down the line even over her own slight puffing. "Rhi, it's me."
Ianto. Her stomach dropped; not that he didn't ever call - all right, he didn't really call much, but he'd been getting better - but this wasn't the evening, when he'd had a few and she could hear Jack adding his commentary in the background. This was still daytime, with the sun bright overhead and the kids about to come out from school, and she could hear in his voice that something was wrong.
"What is it? Are you okay?" she asked, picking up the pace. All right, she could get the kids, leave them with Nerys and go to wherever Ianto was.
"I'm okay," he said, quickly. "I'm okay… I just… Rhi, I need you to do something. It's going to sound mad."
"Madder than you working for Torchwood?" she asked, rounding the corner. She could see the school; people were waiting at the gate, expectant. So the bell hadn't gone yet - she was still on time.
"It's sort of…" he said, breaking off, "hard to explain. Just… get somewhere you can defend. Somewhere safe. Not too many entrances. Somewhere you know."
Rhiannon looked up over the wire fence, taking in the classrooms. Heavy brick and concrete; windows that locked. Blinds that could be drawn. Water. A canteen. She realised that she was taking stock even before she'd got any sense out of her little brother.
"Defend?" she asked. "Are we going to war?"
"Rhi, just trust me," he said. "I can't talk now. I just need you to get the kids and Johnny, even the damn cat, and get somewhere safe. It's an invasion."
"Should we arm ourselves? Is this something that Johnny can hit with a lump of two-by-four, or is this little green men coming from the sky?" she asked, hearing Ianto's breath catch. Oh fuck.
"Bit of both," he said. "They don't like bright light. Think they might use smell and sound to communicate. Mobiles will probably go out after a while."
"And where will you be?" she asked.
"I'll be where I'm most useful," Ianto said, and that made her skin prickle hot and cold; they'd talked about London, and what had happened, and Lisa. Ianto in the line of fire was an image that didn't fit with her ideas about her brother - not her shy Ianto. He'd shown her his gun, when she'd asked, and her hand had trembled when she'd held it, this thing that dealt death, like in the movies.
"Ianto?" Rhiannon asked. "He'll take care of you this time, won't he?"
Ianto exhaled, a sort of staticky, whistling sound over the line. "He always does," he replied. "I've… really got to go. Take care, Rhi."
"You too," she said to the empty air. She clutched the phone tight, her connection to him, as if she could somehow pull him here, safe beside her. Rhiannon sighed. She shoved the phone into her pocket as the bell rang and kids poured into the playground, running for the bus, for their parents. Okay then. Here it was; Ianto had saved Mica - Torchwood had saved Mica. So how much did she trust Ianto to not be having her on? She took a deep breath and made her decision.
"All right!" she called, up over the afternoon babble of voices, of people meeting other people. "Nerys! Tim! I need a quorum!"
Everyone at the school knew Rhi Davies, good old Rhi Davies. She'd been on the board of governors nearly as long as the kids had been at the school; acted as the secretary for a few years, got sick of that, then been elected chair because no one else had wanted to bloody do it. And she did it because she needed something to complain about, something to fill in the gaps in the days. Because this was their school, their kids, and someone had to give a shit, because the rest of the country certainly didn't.
"What's going on?" Nerys asked. "You look like you've seen a bloody ghost."
"Ianto just called me," she said. "Something's happened. Something Torchwood."
"What?" asked Nerys. "Is it a bombing? We'd've heard it, wouldn't we? Like last time? Where we all thought it was kids setting off fireworks but it was the bloody city going up?"
"He said to prepare for invasion," Rhiannon said, tucking her clammy palms under her arms.
"Oh bloody hell," Tim replied. "You sure he's not having you on?"
"Ianto doesn't do that," Rhiannon said. "Come on. Graeme and Susan've got to be not too far off, and if we have those two and us, then that's a quorum."
"I'll go," said Tim. "I bet they're in the teacher's lounge."
He pushed through the crowded playground, making his way across to the buildings. Nerys was chewing on her lip, watching Rhiannon as if Rhi had suddenly turned into a copper or something.
"What are you planning to do?" asked Nerys.
"We're going to use the school," said Rhiannon, grimly. "We can barricade ourselves into a classroom."
"And if Ianto's wrong?"
"He's not wrong," she said, as Mica came barrelling towards them. "Come on, Mica! Where's your brother?"
"He's over there with Dav!" said Mica. Rhiannon smiled.
"Okay," she said. "You go and wait with the boys, and we'll come get you. Tell the others they're not to go home yet, okay?"
"Okay," said Mica, skipping off and immediately harassing her brother. Rhiannon sighed.
"I've got the others!" Tim called, and the two teachers came to join them by the gate, an impromptu meeting of the school governors surprisingly easy to call to order.
"Okay," Rhiannon said. "I just got a call from my brother. He's… he used to live here. Long time ago."
Graeme was on his phone, one of those fancy iPhone things, looking at the internet.
"Ianto's with Torchwood," she said, and felt a little stir of pride at that. "He said something's coming… something bad."
"Torchwood," said Tim, pulling nervously at the cuffs of his shirt. "You sure?"
"I've seen his gun and everything," said Rhiannon. "He reckons we've got to get somewhere safe, and I reckon that the school's the safest place on the estate."
"Looks like…" Graeme said, head still buried in his phone, "WikiLeaks is saying something big is coming down. Your brother might be right, Rhi." He flipped through more screens. "Yeah, the Guardian has the terror alert threat raised to… oh bloody hell. Looks like he is right. No details, but people are being warned to keep off the streets."
"Of course he's bloody right!" she said. "Now, question is, how do we keep people here?"
"We can use the phone tree that we've got set up for snow days," said Susan. "Tell people to stay indoors, in the cellar or something."
"I'll put something on Twitter," said Graeme.
"We can grab people now," said Nerys, and Rhiannon nodded. "Can you get onto your brother again? Get any more details?"
"So it's not human, then?" asked Tim. "I mean, it's not… if it's Torchwood, it's weird shit, yeah?"
Rhiannon looked at the sky. It was perfect, pure blue, the sort of blue that seemed to stretch as deep as the sea. Nothing bad could happen under a clear blue sky, could it? She looked away, watching the kids.
"Yeah," she said, hearing her own voice as if she were a million miles away, looking at Dav unsuccessfully trying to pull the head off Mica's birthday Barbie doll.
"Come on," Tim said. "We'll get everyone in the gym."
"The gym?" Susan asked.
"Less windows," he said, his expression fixed. "And they've got that wire in 'em, don't they."
Nerys walked with Rhiannon, back to the remaining parents by the gate, keeping pace with her as they went. "You sure we're making the right decision?" Nerys asked. "It's a pretty big call to make, barricading ourselves in like this."
"I trust Ianto with my bloody life," said Rhiannon, as helicopters flew over.
"That's good," said Nerys, as nearby, David bounced on the balls of his feet, pointing at the sky. "Looks like we might be about to test that out."
Clouds were coming on and hiding the sun behind grey. Andy Davidson's shift should have been over ten minutes ago, but it wouldn't look good if he up and left now for a pint after work with his mates.
"I heard chatter over the wire." Andy manoeuvered the police car around a bollard and down the ramp into the hospital's underground car park. "Nothing concrete, something out from Splott, but they figured them to be kids maybe."
"I don't think it was kids who called this in, PC Davidson." Kathy Swanson pulled off her sunglasses as they slipped into the relative darkness of neon lighting and concrete.
"Just saying." Andy harrumphed and took them one level deeper. It wasn't his favourite thing to be teamed with the boss again; someone had whispered Torchwood through the break room and laughed their arses off when Swanson nodded at him to come along, based on an anonymous call: something weird, they said, probably a loony.
"Over there." Swanson pointed to the left and Andy pulled the car into the spot dutifully, barely catching up when Swanson got out and made for the lifts.
"So I was thinking," Andy began as the lift doors closed and Swanson pressed the button for reception, "maybe it had to do with the notices we got out from the country this morning, yeah? Could really be that something big came down."
The lift pinged, the doors opened, and Andy trotted behind Swanson to the information desk.
"DI Swanson, Cardiff Police," she said, nodding at the boy at reception. "We were called in because of some strange... animals?"
The boy groaned and tried to hide it behind a cough. "That'd be third floor, they're always pulling these pranks. Amy, she's a mate, she works there and-" The boy stopped when he looked up at Swanson again. "It's probably nothing, just them being idiots."
"We'd still like to take a look. Third floor?" she asked, leaning forward on the reception desk.
The boy looked at her, at Andy, back at Swanson, and shrugged. "Yeah. I'm just saying, it's probably Preston being a git. Thinks it's funny what with the alien invasions."
Swanson pocketed her shades and stepped back to the lift.
"Really." The boy grabbed for Andy's sleeve. "He doesn't mean anything by it. He just likes to have a laugh up there, and-"
"Thanks," Andy said and looked at the boy's nametag. "Thanks, Nathan. It's fine. We'll just take a look." Andy made it into the lift just before the doors closed. "Does look like a prank then," he said.
Swanson shrugged. "Let's hope you're right and it's nothing to do with Harkness and his little band of alien hunters."
When the lift doors slid open, they did so to complete silence that was pierced by a sudden scream, quickly muffled again. Andy reached for his baton, fingers tightening around it. Would have done them good to be all CSI now with guns and whatnot. They stepped out of the lift just as the doors were making to close again. A hand waved for them down the hallway and, after looking left and right down the empty corridor, they walked there. Andy was waiting for one of the 'feral beasts' to jump them. It all looked a bit drawn-out to be a prank at this point.
"DI Swanson, PC Davidson. You called emergency services," Swanson said at the nurse's station, speaking to a young bloke, an older lady and a girl huddled behind the counter, crouching so as to be invisible behind the barricade of chairs.
"Me," the bloke said, whose nametag read Preston. "Right. I wanted to go down for a smoke, see, we're only allowed to smoke outside, funny rule that, and I went down the stairs because Donny was blocking the lift with a bed and- They're just in there. They're like, like-" He shook his head and pointed at the door opposite, a little further down the corridor.
"All right," Swanson said quickly, "we'll have a look." But the glance that she threw in Andy's direction said that they'd be out of here in five minutes, after Swanson got to tear someone a new arsehole for playing pranks. She glared at Andy, nodded her head down the hallway; Andy realised that on the off-chance it wasn't a prank, he was the one with the stab vest.
The door was solid steel save for a tiny sliver of meshed glass, practically useless, that, but he walked in front of her anyway; they clung to the painted cement walls as if that was going to save them should something nasty appear on the other side. By the time they got there, Andy had convinced himself that whatever was on the other side was waiting for him, especially. He kept his back pressed to the wall, took a deep breath, then turned to look through the glass. The handrails were shiny black, the stairs dull concrete, the walls a happiness-inducing baby blue. He glanced across to Swanson and shook his head. He nodded to the door and held up three fingers.
Swanson gestured 'What?' with her hands, mouthing it.
Andy nodded at the door with more insistence, punching the air with his three fingers.
"Three what, Davidson?" Swanson shouted. It cracked through the air in the empty corridor.
Clearly no one was watching the same shows on the telly that he did. "I'm going in on the count of three," he said and counted down by closing his fingers to his fist one by one. He pushed the door to the stairwell open and drew his baton, inching inside. "Nothing," he shouted back into the corridor, then reached for his radio. "Don't know what he saw, but it's not here."
"Copy that," Swanson said, over the crackle of background static.
The door swung closed behind him as he stepped farther onto the landing. Just out of his sight, down below, there was something, a shadow on a shadow. Andy squinted into the darkness. He reached for his radio again. "I might be seeing something here." He paused, staring, willing his eyes to pick it up. "Maybe a dog, I don't know, it's dark in he-"
As he inched farther, the motion sensors flickered on the neon lights in the stairwell, the strips crackling to life. Andy's radio went to static as he pressed at the buttons. And from the shades of stairwell from the floor beneath, the flutter of wings, of legs, of bodies rose up as, half-crawling and half-flying, the black mass of something turned into individual things.
"Oh my god." Andy pressed at the buttons on his radio. "Bugger me, oh- These are..." Through the crackle of no signal and the sound of a stairwell alive with creatures, Andy couldn't find the words. In front of him beetles the size of cats, sharp-looking front claws extending from their heads, were advancing. Some crawled up the steps, the rest of them flying like a second, a third wave, roaring up in the middle column between the stairs, all the way up through the floors.
Andy stumbled back, one step, two, as he tried to take in the things, black and horrible and too big to be anything normal, anything from this planet. Some of the things made for the lights, slamming against them and bouncing back. Faintly, the smell of burned meat filled the air, and Andy gagged. They rose up louder, faster, more and more of them, and then in their midst, bigger than any man, an even bigger version with wings and feelers and claw-like teeth. Andy swung his baton around himself, the first of them nearly at his feet, but they didn't inch back, didn't do anything but advance.
He stumbled back, looking into the eyes of that giant insect thing, and it stared right back at him.
One moment caught in non-motion.
Then it pounced the second Andy stretched backwards. It caught him across the cheek, red hot pain, but Andy pulled open the door and squeezed around it, shutting it in the thing's face.
"Davidson! Your radio! What was going on there?" Swanson shouted from the reception desk.
The thing stared at Andy through the glass door. The cut on his face was burning, probably bloody. The thing moved its head back and forth, like it was studying him, teeth clicking in its face and mandibles snapping idly.
"This door isn't locking," Andy said, not taking his eyes off the thing, the thing not taking its eyes off him. The smaller ones crowded against the door, stacking themselves two and three high. He could feel the give of the door when they pushed on it, the latch not slipping in place like it should.
"What?" Swanson asked.
"Why is this door not latching?" Andy asked through clenched teeth. He didn't fancy having to hold this door shut for the rest of his life, which would be very short if all he had were his bare hands and weight. Sooner or later they'd break in.
"We taped it over when we were moving the patients," the older woman replied. "So we didn't have to keep unlocking it.
"Oh. Just lovely," Andy grumbled, and Preston high-pitch squeaked. Wouldn't be making any more prank calls, that one. "The patients," he continued. "They're off this floor? You got them out?"
"Yes."
"Call the lift, Preston." The thing scratched at the glass. "Now." From the corner of his eye Andy could see Preston inch around the nurse's station and run for the lift, pressing at the buttons. The lift doors pinged, third floor.
Andy held up his hand, three fingers, towards the desk and counted down.
Three. The thing twisted its head, then its feelers, ten or twenty of them in a bushel of feelerdom, reached for the door knob, twisting it down.
Two. Andy backed away one step, both hands still on the door, pushing it closed. The thing locked eyes with him.
One. It tilted its head and regarded him, and Andy felt as if they had a perfect moment of communication, mano y buggo, in which that gaze told him everything that it was going to do to him once the door was open.
"Now!" Andy shouted and sprinted for the lift. Swanson and the girl and the older nurse ducked out from behind the reception desk in front of him. Behind him, the black alien things spilled into the corridor. Andy stumbled into the lift. "Up! Up! Up!" He hammered at the control panel, pressing all the buttons that would take them away. The lift doors closed in slow motion, the black, scuttling oversized beetles rushing towards them.
Doors closing.
Three metres, two metres, one metre. A beetle tried to squeeze in and the doors closed on it, paused as if to open again; they all stared at it in wide-eyed horror, frozen as they watched the army of black things advancing behind it, the giant one waving through them, half-ducked in the low corridor.
Doors closing, the lift voice repeated.
"They're going to get us," Preston said, half a whimper.
The beetle struggled in the doors, then tried to spread its wings as if to push the door open.
"Oh you stupid, stupid..." The girl, Amy, placed her trainer to the thing's head and pushed. "...thing!" The beetle fell back, the doors closed.
Going up.
It All Changes: Part Two