Fic - Lost Archives: Under G is Ghosts
Title: Lost Archives: Under G is Ghosts
Series: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Jack, Gwen , Ianto, Alice
Rating: R
Spoilers: Fragments (TW 2.12)
Beta: Jooles34
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood or the characters therein, they belong to the BBC and RTD. Any original storylines, characters and places are my property.
Summary: Owen never expected to come face-to-face with Torchwood's pace in the archives.
Author’s Notes: A new story in the Lost Archives series. I give you this, a gift for the first day of Chicago TARDIS.
Lost Archives: Under G is Ghosts
“Jack, we have a problem,” Owen nearly yelled, trotting up the stairs from archives like something was after him.
“Find a cobweb bigger than you?” Gwen chided from her desk as she ran the latest scan of missing person reports.
Jack tried not to chuckle at the offended look Ianto shot Gwen from across the room. Oh yeah, she was probably getting decaf for the week. Jack stepped all the way out of his office and into the Hub, arms folded across his chest.
“What is it?” he asked Owen as the younger man sidled up next to him.
“There’s a pissed off ghost in the archives.”
“There’s no such things as ghosts,” Jack replied, trying to resist rolling his eyes.
“You want to make a bet on that?”
Owen grabbed Jack by the wrist and dragged him down towards archives. Jack shot Ianto a pleading look which was rebuffed as Ianto went about picking up empty coffee mugs. Jack wrenched his arm free and followed Owen down to the early archives. A chill crept up his back making him visibly shudder.
“What were you doing down here?” Jack asked, trying to remember the last time he had even needed to be down in that section of the archives.
Owen grunted, moving forward. “Research. But I never expected to find a ghost.”
“There are no such thing as ghosts, Owen. What do I have to d-”
Jack shut his mouth as soon as the lights went out, plunging him and Owen into darkness. Jack fell forward into Owen’s outstretched arm, at least he hoped it was Owen’s arm. Jack could hear both of them breathing as he tried peering into the darkness.
Pulling his Bluetooth earpiece from his pocket, Jack tapped it twice. “Tosh? Ianto?”
“It won’t work,” Owen muttered. “Mine didn’t work before.”
“You could have mentioned that earlier,” Jack hissed at him.
“I was a bit more concerned about introducing you to her.”
“Her who?”
“Her there,” Owen said.
The dimness eased enough for Jack to make out a figure at the far end of the hallway. He took a step forward and his breath caught in his throat as he recognised the person. It was wrong, so wrong. In front of Jack stood Alice Guppy. The same Alice who had been dead for nearly 100 years. An unearthly light bathed her.
Alice slowly raised up her right arm, pointing a gun straight at Owen and Jack. Jack’s heart pounded in his throat. He was unable to breathe, but he heard her cocking the gun clear as day. Jack turned on his heel, slamming Owen into the wall as the gun fired.
Jack stood up, steadying himself, but felt nothing. He looked down as his hands patted his own chest. He hadn’t been hit. He was fine. But if he was fine… Quickly Jack hauled Owen up from the floor and started patting him down.
“We have a ghost and you want to fucking feel me up?” Owen grumbled, slapping Jack’s hands away.
“You aren’t hurt?”
“Only the throbbing in my chest from you slamming me into the wall. What the bloody hell did you do that for?”
“She was aiming at you.”
“And she didn’t hit anything with that bullet before.” Owen slapped Jack’s hand away from his side. “This is creepy enough as it is. Maybe we should get the others.”
“Sure,” Jack said, never taking his eyes off his own phantasmagoria.
Shaking his head in disbelief, Jack started walking backwards, still not letting Alice out of his sight. He could hear the doorknob rattling and glanced back at Owen. The doctor was pulling ferociously on the handle to no effect.
“Owen?”
“It won’t fucking open,” Owen growled.
Jack reached back and put his hand over Owen’s gripping the old doorknob. Jack didn’t remember them closing the door and now it was suddenly locked on them? Bracing his feet against the floor, Jack and Owen pulled, and still it wouldn’t budge. Taking a chance, Jack turned his back to Alice, and put both hands over Owen’s.
“On the count of three. One… Two… Three!”
Both men grunted with exertion, but the doorknob didn’t move an inch. Jack let go, a sheen of sweat coating his palms. Wiping his hands on his trousers, he watched as Owen slumped back against the heavy oak door.
“Shit.” Owen swore, shaking his head. Owen’s head snapped up, his eyes growing wide. Scrambling to his feet, Owen nearly snarled at something behind Jack. “Fuck!”
Jack spun around, trying to keep his nerves calm. Alice seemed to smirk at them, that smile that used to give Jack shivers anytime she passed him. He could swear when she was wearing that smile she was coming up with different ways to kill him. She strode towards the two men, purposeful and intent.
Manoeuvring his body in front of Owen’s, Jack faced Alice with his arms open. “What are you?” Jack asked loudly.
Alice merely chuckled, arms outstretched, reaching for the men. Jack held his ground, legs and chest tensing. He wouldn’t let her, or anything parading around as Alice - because that was wrong on so many levels - get near Owen or the rest of his team.
“Stay back!” Jack’s chest rumbled as Alice stopped in front of him and disappeared.
Jack let out a breath he didn’t realise he had been holding. He could feel his heart hammering inside his ears. Alice was gone for now, but how long would that last? Owen stepped around Jack, arms reaching into the air where the figure had just been. Now there was nothing.
* * * * *
Looking down at his watch, Jack noticed that he had been pacing for ten minutes. For ten minutes before that he and Owen had been fighting with the door which had still not budged. Stopping before one of the chest-high filing cabinets, Jack buried his head in his arms on top of it. No communications, no way out, and a ghost of Alice Guppy - not the first person he wished to see come back from the dead. Jack had Owen to worry about as well. He would survive, but he wasn’t letting anything happen to Owen.
“Who was she?” Owen asked from his position on the floor.
“What?”
“Your face, it looked like you recognised her, Jack.” Owen pointed a finger at him. “And when you yelled at her, you didn’t ask ‘who are you,’ but rather ‘what are you.’”
“It’s not what you think.”
“I’m not Ianto. You don’t have to protect me if you shagged her fifty years ago - Wait!” Owen thought for a minute. “Make that a hundred years from her style of dress.”
Jack’s jaw would have dropped open if it had not already been nestled against his arm. He swore he saw Owen smirking in the dim emergency lighting. Owen leaned back against the wall, stretching his long legs out, his labcoat pooled around him.
“What? I know things. Surprised you, didn’t I?”
“A bit,” Jack replied.
Jack and Owen lapsed into silence. Jack pulled off his earpiece and flipped open his wrist strap. Fiddling with a couple of dials, he worked on amplifying the power of the earpiece so they could get a message to the team floors above them. Finishing up, Jack gave the device enough power just shy of blowing it up.
Fitting it in his ear, Jack tried it again. “Tosh? Ianto?” He waited a moment, watching Owen scramble up the wall and stand next to him. “Tosh? Ianto? Gwen?” Only silence greeted him.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” Jack confirmed.
Owen turned around and kicked the nearest filing cabinet, the thud echoing off the stone walls. “Gah! That was fucking brilliant,” he grumbled, holding his foot up in the air. Leaning back against the wall, he turned to Jack. “I’ve been thinking…”
“So have I,” Jack said looking up at the emergency lights. “If we cut the power to the emergency lights it should trigger a warning on Tosh’s system. They might come and investigate.” Jack flipped open his wrist strap again and aimed it at the lights. Punching in a few commands didn’t work. “Looks like Alice overrode the commands. Guess we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. Give me leg up, will you?” Jack said, standing next to the wall.
Jack swore Owen rolled his eyes at him, but wasn’t going to say anything now. Owen squatted down next to Jack, and laced his fingers together in front of his knee. Jack put a foot on Owen’s knee and using a nearby filing cabinet for leverage he pushed/pulled himself up, reaching for the older light fixture. Wrapping his hand around it, he pulled, but it did not budge.
“Jack?”
“Almost got it,” Jack muttered, raising his hand from the cabinet and wrapping both hands around the fixture.
He kicked away from Owen and used his weight to pull the fixture out of the socket, creating a shower of sparks and shocking himself in the process. Jack let out a cry and fell to the ground, bruising his hip. His breath hitched in his throat as he tried to speak. Next to him, Owen kicked the fixture away and knelt next Jack in the darkness. He could feel Owen’s hands on his, checking for injuries by feel in the dark.
“Do you bloody feel better now?” Owen chided.
“No,” Jack croaked.
The room was suddenly filled with a light that seemed less of light and more an absence of darkness. Both men looked up into the furious face of Alice Guppy. It made Jack think of Dante’s Inferno, or that really bad movie he caught on late night telly the other evening with Ianto. All thoughts were stopped as Alice opened her mouth wide and a keening wail pierced the air. Jack and Owen quickly covered their ears, hoping to keep the banshee at bay.
* * * * *
“Want to hear my idea now?” Owen snidely asked from Jack’s side in the pitch black.
“Why not,” Jack muttered. It had been five minutes since Alice had finally shut up and disappeared into the mist again.
“Well shit, since this ghost-”
“There’s no such thi-”
“Or whatever it is, seems to be confined here, we follow the rules for residual hauntings.”
“And what’s that?”
“Why is it stuck here? Why have we not seen this ‘ghost’ anywhere else in the Hub. Why now?”
“Now could be because this is the first time in a long while anyone has been down here.” Jack turned towards Owen, even though the young doctor couldn’t see him, his shirt rustling in the stillness. “Just why were you down here?”
“Research,” Owen succinctly replied. “I say we start looking in these cabinets and see what we find. Why does the lady like the basement so much?”
Jack propped his elbow up on one knee, running his fingers through his hair, letting out a groan. “And how do we look through the cabinets now?” Jack asked, staring at the darkness, not even a ghost to see by.
There was movement next to him, and what sounded like Owen moving his labcoat around. Suddenly there was a small beam of light. Owen then brought it up to illuminate his grinning face.
“I’m prepared,” Owen snarked. He stood up and walked over to one of the cabinets, pulling it open and grabbing a handful of files. “While I read, why don’t you work on the door again oh mighty one.”
Jack bit his tongue and pushed up from the cold floor, stomping over to the door. He felt around the edges wondering why the door was so thick, and just why the hinges were on the outside. What were they trying to keep in? After several minutes of prying on the door to no avail, Jack made a mental note that should he go back in time and meet the person who designed the Hub, he would smack them around the head for this.
“Shit.”
Jack turned towards Owen and was rewarded with a beam of light in his face. Shielding his eyes, he tried to look at the other man.
“Just how old are you, Jack?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s files here from 1899, 1900, 1902, and they have a Captain Jack Harkness mentioned in them.”
“That must be my grandfather,” Jack replied too easily.
“Bullshit!” Owen advanced on him, their noses nearly touching. “We all know about your special superhero ability to not die, and with some of the stuff you have joked about… This is you isn’t it. You’ve been a part of fucking Torchwood for over a hundred years.” It was a statement, not a question.
Jack seethed. He had never actively hid it from them, but how did he explain his past to anyone, even Owen. Despite everything that happened because of Owen opening the Rift, or rather because of it, he never trusted the doctor more than he did now. How did one explain so much history to someone like so…21st Century?
“I am Torchwood,” Jack huffed out. That would have to suffice.
“Right,” Owen drawled out.
Anything else Owen planned to say was superseded by a pounding on the door from the outside world.
“Jack? Owen?” Ianto’s muffled voice called through the door.
“We’re in here,” Jack called out, moving to lay his hands on the door.
“Are you okay?” Gwen questioned from the other side.
“Physically we’re fine,” Owen cried out. “But if the ghost keeps showing up, we won’t be for long.”
“The hinges are on this side, we’ll get you out.” Ianto sounded so confident it made Jack smile.
“Right. While they do that we still have a haunting to figure out,” Owen stated, walking away. “Jack, there’s a locked drawer here. I don’t suppose you happen to have the key?”
Jack joined Owen in front of the filing cabinet. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a massive keyring, holding up three of them. “These are the oldest ones I have,” Jack replied, handing them over to Owen.
On the second try, Owen was successful and pulled open the drawer, only to have it wrenched from his fingers and slammed shut. Owen snatched his hand away as if it had been burned.
“You okay?” Jack quickly asked.
‘Yeah, just stings. What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know, but I think that might be just the drawer we need.” Jack took Owen’s penlight and looked at the drawer. “We need to prop it open with something.”
“In a room with nothing in it,” Owen muttered. Suddenly Owen was ripping off his labcoat and folding it up in his hands. He held it out to Jack. “Here. Jam this in there.” Jack took the bundle as Owen grabbed the lock and the handle, and then pulled. “NOW!”
Jack shoved the labcoat into the opening between the drawer and the gears. Owen grunted as the drawer tried to slide back. Suddenly both men were flung backwards, off their feet, landing together in a heap five feet away from the open drawer.
“Ow,” Owen mumbled.
Jack wasn’t paying attention to Owen, having it instead focused on Alice, who stood before them, a face on her that would make the Furies blush. Jack got up to his knees as a roaring began in his ears that sounded like the world being ripped apart.
“You’re not real,” Jack screamed at the spectre.
Before Jack could react, Alice flew at them. Her hands grabbed at Owen, but merely passed through his arms. Her fiery gaze turned on Jack and she hauled back, slapping him hard across the face. Jack’s hand flew up, cradling his stinging cheek as the slap reverberated in the room. Owen grabbed Jack under the arms, pulling him away from Alice.
“What the fuck was that? How did she actually hit you?”
“I don’t know,” Jack replied, flexing his jaw. “You need to see what’s in that drawer.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Have a little talk with Alice,” Jack said, a scowl on his face. He stood up, brushing Owen away. “So, what brings you back here honey?”
Jack watched Owen out of the corner of his eye as the younger man crept towards the open drawer. Alice moved towards him, her gun suddenly in her hand again. For the life of him, Jack couldn’t figure out where she had pulled it from. There was a noise from the door that indicated Ianto and Gwen had started working on their escape. Alice’s body whipped towards the door, murder on her face. Jack couldn’t take the chance that she might be able to touch them, too.
“Hey! I wasn’t done talking to you bitch!” Jack remained calm as her head craned back towards him. “Yeah, you. I never got to properly thank you for that time you killed me, and that other time you killed me. Oh, and that other time you killed me, and the last time you killed me, and all the times in between.” He tried to not pay attention to Owen and focused on keeping Alice busy.
“And just why aren’t you dead, yet?” Alice asked, moving towards Jack, stroking the gun barrel.
“You should remember that. I have a problem with women killing me. Well, women, men, aliens, anything that has to do with dying. Especially if it’s a Torchwood operative, I really take that personally.” Jack smirked at Alice.
She opened her mouth to retort when her head spun around like the exorcist, glaring at Owen as he clutched a small box to him. Owen nodded at Jack, he had found what she was guarding. Alice started to glow fiery red. As she swooped towards Owen, Jack sprinted to the doctor, throwing his body over Owen, taking the full brunt of Alice’s attack.
Jack let out a throaty moan as he crumpled onto Owen. His hands dug into the doctor’s shoulders, trying to find some support. Owen went to put the box on the floor so he could help Jack, put Jack just grasped Owen’s hands, holding them over the box.
“Don’t let her get it,” Jack muttered.
“Take it,” Owen hissed, shoving the box into Jack’s hands. He ripped off the top of the metal box and stepped over Jack’s legs as the older man’s body slumped to the floor on top of the remains. “Hey! You know, you dress worse than my gran, and she lost her mind before she died.” Owen taunted Alice, walking to the other side of the room.
“You act so smart,” Alice sneered, standing in front of Owen.
Owen held the box lid in front of him, his hands hanging down what would have been the sides of it. “Oh, but I am quite smart. Hell, I’m bloody brilliant!”
Jack looked down in to the box, disgusted at what he saw. He knew Emily could be vicious, but this was unbelievable. The entity slowly moved. If the brain was human, Jack would almost say it was breathing.
“OOOooo… so scary. Big bad Torchwood come to teach me a lesson?”
“You are an arrog-”
“Shut it lady. I work for Torchwood, and guess what? I’ve shot my boss before.”
“Great, something they can bond over,” Jack mumbled incoherently.
Owen dropped the lid in his hand, sending it to the ground with a clatter. Folding his hands into his stomach, Owen grimaced at Alice. Jack didn’t even hear what retort the man threw at the ghost as she turned to Jack. She looked like a Fury had cross-bred with a Fairy. Without thinking, Jack plunged both hands into the box and held the brain to his body.
Jack could feel the spasms run through his nerves. His whole body felt like it was attached to an electric chair being powered by the nuclear plant. He fell to the ground and although he stopped breathing, Jack held on to the alien brain. His mind somehow noted how Owen had rushed to his side, held his shoulders, and kept his head from slamming into the concrete. Some time after that his vision blurred and then faded to black.
First there was the thrumming at the front of his skull. Jack became acutely aware of his fingers and toes slowly flexing. His nerves were suddenly super-sensitive to the slightest touch. Jack hoped that would fade in time.
“I know you’re awake, might as well open your eyes and tell me what the fuck happened.”
Jack smiled as he recognised the tone of Owen’s voice. It wasn’t the pissed off little punk he tried to project to everyone, but rather the caring friend and doctor, genuinely concerned about what had happened. Jack blinked, sucking in his breath as his eyes adjusted to the bright lights of the autopsy bay.
“The creature?”
“Dead,” Owen stated, a hint of melancholy in his voice.
“Are we sure?”
“I ran every scan I could on it. There is no way it’s alive.” Owen sat down on the rolling stool and slid over next to the table Jack was on. “So?”
“How did we get out?”
Owen let out a dramatic sigh, nearly rolling his eyes. “Once you mind melded with the thing and finished frying your system the lights came back on and the door opened. Ianto and Gwen were nearly done fighting with it anyway. Now, about this?”
“It was the reason for the haunting.”
“What?”
“The brain was still alive - barely. It projected the image of the person who had been responsible for its death so it could be protected.”
“Hell of a security detail.”
“For a moment there I was linked with it, I could hear what it had to say. Torchwood kept it down there for safekeeping. They realised it had a massive psychic power and wanted to keep it so it could be used to protect the Empire in the future.”
“Kind of like what we do?” Owen crossed his arms, staring at Jack.
“We don’t harvest sentient species, and kill them so we can keep their remains to power future weapons,” Jack huffed out, sitting up on the table. “What they did…”
“Was full of shit.” Owen stood up, and headed for the computers. Instead, he picked up the metal box. “Your fuck-buddy is waiting for you, waiting to see how you are. But, what should we do with this? Cold storage?”
Jack jumped down from the table and stood next to Owen, putting his hands over the younger man’s, closing all of them around the box. “No, it’s been locked up here too long.”
It was some hours later that Jack and Owen came back to the box, having made a decision with what to do with the contents. They were both surprised to find the brain had turned to dust. Whether it was removing it from the basement, or allowing air into the box that had done it they could only guess. Jack had no clue what Torchwood had done with the body, and even Ianto couldn’t find any record of it. That bothered all of them.
Standing under the stars, by the railing that stretched along the Bay, Owen held the box containing the once living alien’s remains. Jack shook his head at the utter waste of it all. His Torchwood was different, he had told the Doctor that, and after days like today he was even more determined to make sure it stayed different.
Owen looked back at Jack, holding the box over the water. Jack nodded his head slightly. Nothing needed to be said. What could they say? Tilting his hand, Owen poured the dust out of the box. Both men watched as a gust of wind swirled the lost alien up towards the stars and away from the memory of being murdered at the hands of Alice Guppy all those years ago.
Owen tossed the box into the Bay and pulled his leather coat tightly around him. Zipping it up, Owen huddled like a turtle down into the collar. “Will you be okay?” Owen asked.
“I’m tougher than I look.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Go. It’s been a long day, and you have an even longer day ahead of you tomorrow,” Jack stated, heading back towards the tourist office.
“Why?” Owen turned and glared after Jack.
“Since you like research so much, you have a project to start tomorrow - in the archives.”
“That’s Ianto’s job,” Owen retorted.
“It’s no one’s specific job,” Jack returned. “But, I would like you to do this one. Will probably need a medical opinion for it.”
“What the fuck is it?”
“No one has been through some of those archives in years - not even the almighty Ianto Jones - and after today it seems evident that maybe we should. I want to know what else Torchwood has hidden down there. And if there are any other poor, unfortunate souls stuck down in some musty cabinet because someone thought they could help or were a threat to the Empire, but not enough to deem the decency of cryogenics.”
“Bollocks…” Owen stared down at his booted feet as he shuffed them against the pavement. He finally looked back at Jack. “Fine,” he replied tersely. “But, I get to sleep in because of that.”
“I think I may, too,” Jack replied. “Go,” he said, turning back to the tourist office.
He smiled as he heard Owen muttering a string of curses as he took off across the Plass. Owen would do it, he was a good man. Jack just wished he knew what the hell Owen would find down there. Something told him this was not the last odd thing they would unearth in the archives.
Jack locked the door to the tourist office behind him and hustled through the secret tunnel towards his bed, and Ianto.
Series: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Jack, Gwen , Ianto, Alice
Rating: R
Spoilers: Fragments (TW 2.12)
Beta: Jooles34
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood or the characters therein, they belong to the BBC and RTD. Any original storylines, characters and places are my property.
Summary: Owen never expected to come face-to-face with Torchwood's pace in the archives.
Author’s Notes: A new story in the Lost Archives series. I give you this, a gift for the first day of Chicago TARDIS.
Lost Archives: Under G is Ghosts
“Jack, we have a problem,” Owen nearly yelled, trotting up the stairs from archives like something was after him.
“Find a cobweb bigger than you?” Gwen chided from her desk as she ran the latest scan of missing person reports.
Jack tried not to chuckle at the offended look Ianto shot Gwen from across the room. Oh yeah, she was probably getting decaf for the week. Jack stepped all the way out of his office and into the Hub, arms folded across his chest.
“What is it?” he asked Owen as the younger man sidled up next to him.
“There’s a pissed off ghost in the archives.”
“There’s no such things as ghosts,” Jack replied, trying to resist rolling his eyes.
“You want to make a bet on that?”
Owen grabbed Jack by the wrist and dragged him down towards archives. Jack shot Ianto a pleading look which was rebuffed as Ianto went about picking up empty coffee mugs. Jack wrenched his arm free and followed Owen down to the early archives. A chill crept up his back making him visibly shudder.
“What were you doing down here?” Jack asked, trying to remember the last time he had even needed to be down in that section of the archives.
Owen grunted, moving forward. “Research. But I never expected to find a ghost.”
“There are no such thing as ghosts, Owen. What do I have to d-”
Jack shut his mouth as soon as the lights went out, plunging him and Owen into darkness. Jack fell forward into Owen’s outstretched arm, at least he hoped it was Owen’s arm. Jack could hear both of them breathing as he tried peering into the darkness.
Pulling his Bluetooth earpiece from his pocket, Jack tapped it twice. “Tosh? Ianto?”
“It won’t work,” Owen muttered. “Mine didn’t work before.”
“You could have mentioned that earlier,” Jack hissed at him.
“I was a bit more concerned about introducing you to her.”
“Her who?”
“Her there,” Owen said.
The dimness eased enough for Jack to make out a figure at the far end of the hallway. He took a step forward and his breath caught in his throat as he recognised the person. It was wrong, so wrong. In front of Jack stood Alice Guppy. The same Alice who had been dead for nearly 100 years. An unearthly light bathed her.
Alice slowly raised up her right arm, pointing a gun straight at Owen and Jack. Jack’s heart pounded in his throat. He was unable to breathe, but he heard her cocking the gun clear as day. Jack turned on his heel, slamming Owen into the wall as the gun fired.
Jack stood up, steadying himself, but felt nothing. He looked down as his hands patted his own chest. He hadn’t been hit. He was fine. But if he was fine… Quickly Jack hauled Owen up from the floor and started patting him down.
“We have a ghost and you want to fucking feel me up?” Owen grumbled, slapping Jack’s hands away.
“You aren’t hurt?”
“Only the throbbing in my chest from you slamming me into the wall. What the bloody hell did you do that for?”
“She was aiming at you.”
“And she didn’t hit anything with that bullet before.” Owen slapped Jack’s hand away from his side. “This is creepy enough as it is. Maybe we should get the others.”
“Sure,” Jack said, never taking his eyes off his own phantasmagoria.
Shaking his head in disbelief, Jack started walking backwards, still not letting Alice out of his sight. He could hear the doorknob rattling and glanced back at Owen. The doctor was pulling ferociously on the handle to no effect.
“Owen?”
“It won’t fucking open,” Owen growled.
Jack reached back and put his hand over Owen’s gripping the old doorknob. Jack didn’t remember them closing the door and now it was suddenly locked on them? Bracing his feet against the floor, Jack and Owen pulled, and still it wouldn’t budge. Taking a chance, Jack turned his back to Alice, and put both hands over Owen’s.
“On the count of three. One… Two… Three!”
Both men grunted with exertion, but the doorknob didn’t move an inch. Jack let go, a sheen of sweat coating his palms. Wiping his hands on his trousers, he watched as Owen slumped back against the heavy oak door.
“Shit.” Owen swore, shaking his head. Owen’s head snapped up, his eyes growing wide. Scrambling to his feet, Owen nearly snarled at something behind Jack. “Fuck!”
Jack spun around, trying to keep his nerves calm. Alice seemed to smirk at them, that smile that used to give Jack shivers anytime she passed him. He could swear when she was wearing that smile she was coming up with different ways to kill him. She strode towards the two men, purposeful and intent.
Manoeuvring his body in front of Owen’s, Jack faced Alice with his arms open. “What are you?” Jack asked loudly.
Alice merely chuckled, arms outstretched, reaching for the men. Jack held his ground, legs and chest tensing. He wouldn’t let her, or anything parading around as Alice - because that was wrong on so many levels - get near Owen or the rest of his team.
“Stay back!” Jack’s chest rumbled as Alice stopped in front of him and disappeared.
Jack let out a breath he didn’t realise he had been holding. He could feel his heart hammering inside his ears. Alice was gone for now, but how long would that last? Owen stepped around Jack, arms reaching into the air where the figure had just been. Now there was nothing.
* * * * *
Looking down at his watch, Jack noticed that he had been pacing for ten minutes. For ten minutes before that he and Owen had been fighting with the door which had still not budged. Stopping before one of the chest-high filing cabinets, Jack buried his head in his arms on top of it. No communications, no way out, and a ghost of Alice Guppy - not the first person he wished to see come back from the dead. Jack had Owen to worry about as well. He would survive, but he wasn’t letting anything happen to Owen.
“Who was she?” Owen asked from his position on the floor.
“What?”
“Your face, it looked like you recognised her, Jack.” Owen pointed a finger at him. “And when you yelled at her, you didn’t ask ‘who are you,’ but rather ‘what are you.’”
“It’s not what you think.”
“I’m not Ianto. You don’t have to protect me if you shagged her fifty years ago - Wait!” Owen thought for a minute. “Make that a hundred years from her style of dress.”
Jack’s jaw would have dropped open if it had not already been nestled against his arm. He swore he saw Owen smirking in the dim emergency lighting. Owen leaned back against the wall, stretching his long legs out, his labcoat pooled around him.
“What? I know things. Surprised you, didn’t I?”
“A bit,” Jack replied.
Jack and Owen lapsed into silence. Jack pulled off his earpiece and flipped open his wrist strap. Fiddling with a couple of dials, he worked on amplifying the power of the earpiece so they could get a message to the team floors above them. Finishing up, Jack gave the device enough power just shy of blowing it up.
Fitting it in his ear, Jack tried it again. “Tosh? Ianto?” He waited a moment, watching Owen scramble up the wall and stand next to him. “Tosh? Ianto? Gwen?” Only silence greeted him.
“Nothing?”
“Nothing,” Jack confirmed.
Owen turned around and kicked the nearest filing cabinet, the thud echoing off the stone walls. “Gah! That was fucking brilliant,” he grumbled, holding his foot up in the air. Leaning back against the wall, he turned to Jack. “I’ve been thinking…”
“So have I,” Jack said looking up at the emergency lights. “If we cut the power to the emergency lights it should trigger a warning on Tosh’s system. They might come and investigate.” Jack flipped open his wrist strap again and aimed it at the lights. Punching in a few commands didn’t work. “Looks like Alice overrode the commands. Guess we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. Give me leg up, will you?” Jack said, standing next to the wall.
Jack swore Owen rolled his eyes at him, but wasn’t going to say anything now. Owen squatted down next to Jack, and laced his fingers together in front of his knee. Jack put a foot on Owen’s knee and using a nearby filing cabinet for leverage he pushed/pulled himself up, reaching for the older light fixture. Wrapping his hand around it, he pulled, but it did not budge.
“Jack?”
“Almost got it,” Jack muttered, raising his hand from the cabinet and wrapping both hands around the fixture.
He kicked away from Owen and used his weight to pull the fixture out of the socket, creating a shower of sparks and shocking himself in the process. Jack let out a cry and fell to the ground, bruising his hip. His breath hitched in his throat as he tried to speak. Next to him, Owen kicked the fixture away and knelt next Jack in the darkness. He could feel Owen’s hands on his, checking for injuries by feel in the dark.
“Do you bloody feel better now?” Owen chided.
“No,” Jack croaked.
The room was suddenly filled with a light that seemed less of light and more an absence of darkness. Both men looked up into the furious face of Alice Guppy. It made Jack think of Dante’s Inferno, or that really bad movie he caught on late night telly the other evening with Ianto. All thoughts were stopped as Alice opened her mouth wide and a keening wail pierced the air. Jack and Owen quickly covered their ears, hoping to keep the banshee at bay.
* * * * *
“Want to hear my idea now?” Owen snidely asked from Jack’s side in the pitch black.
“Why not,” Jack muttered. It had been five minutes since Alice had finally shut up and disappeared into the mist again.
“Well shit, since this ghost-”
“There’s no such thi-”
“Or whatever it is, seems to be confined here, we follow the rules for residual hauntings.”
“And what’s that?”
“Why is it stuck here? Why have we not seen this ‘ghost’ anywhere else in the Hub. Why now?”
“Now could be because this is the first time in a long while anyone has been down here.” Jack turned towards Owen, even though the young doctor couldn’t see him, his shirt rustling in the stillness. “Just why were you down here?”
“Research,” Owen succinctly replied. “I say we start looking in these cabinets and see what we find. Why does the lady like the basement so much?”
Jack propped his elbow up on one knee, running his fingers through his hair, letting out a groan. “And how do we look through the cabinets now?” Jack asked, staring at the darkness, not even a ghost to see by.
There was movement next to him, and what sounded like Owen moving his labcoat around. Suddenly there was a small beam of light. Owen then brought it up to illuminate his grinning face.
“I’m prepared,” Owen snarked. He stood up and walked over to one of the cabinets, pulling it open and grabbing a handful of files. “While I read, why don’t you work on the door again oh mighty one.”
Jack bit his tongue and pushed up from the cold floor, stomping over to the door. He felt around the edges wondering why the door was so thick, and just why the hinges were on the outside. What were they trying to keep in? After several minutes of prying on the door to no avail, Jack made a mental note that should he go back in time and meet the person who designed the Hub, he would smack them around the head for this.
“Shit.”
Jack turned towards Owen and was rewarded with a beam of light in his face. Shielding his eyes, he tried to look at the other man.
“Just how old are you, Jack?”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s files here from 1899, 1900, 1902, and they have a Captain Jack Harkness mentioned in them.”
“That must be my grandfather,” Jack replied too easily.
“Bullshit!” Owen advanced on him, their noses nearly touching. “We all know about your special superhero ability to not die, and with some of the stuff you have joked about… This is you isn’t it. You’ve been a part of fucking Torchwood for over a hundred years.” It was a statement, not a question.
Jack seethed. He had never actively hid it from them, but how did he explain his past to anyone, even Owen. Despite everything that happened because of Owen opening the Rift, or rather because of it, he never trusted the doctor more than he did now. How did one explain so much history to someone like so…21st Century?
“I am Torchwood,” Jack huffed out. That would have to suffice.
“Right,” Owen drawled out.
Anything else Owen planned to say was superseded by a pounding on the door from the outside world.
“Jack? Owen?” Ianto’s muffled voice called through the door.
“We’re in here,” Jack called out, moving to lay his hands on the door.
“Are you okay?” Gwen questioned from the other side.
“Physically we’re fine,” Owen cried out. “But if the ghost keeps showing up, we won’t be for long.”
“The hinges are on this side, we’ll get you out.” Ianto sounded so confident it made Jack smile.
“Right. While they do that we still have a haunting to figure out,” Owen stated, walking away. “Jack, there’s a locked drawer here. I don’t suppose you happen to have the key?”
Jack joined Owen in front of the filing cabinet. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a massive keyring, holding up three of them. “These are the oldest ones I have,” Jack replied, handing them over to Owen.
On the second try, Owen was successful and pulled open the drawer, only to have it wrenched from his fingers and slammed shut. Owen snatched his hand away as if it had been burned.
“You okay?” Jack quickly asked.
‘Yeah, just stings. What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know, but I think that might be just the drawer we need.” Jack took Owen’s penlight and looked at the drawer. “We need to prop it open with something.”
“In a room with nothing in it,” Owen muttered. Suddenly Owen was ripping off his labcoat and folding it up in his hands. He held it out to Jack. “Here. Jam this in there.” Jack took the bundle as Owen grabbed the lock and the handle, and then pulled. “NOW!”
Jack shoved the labcoat into the opening between the drawer and the gears. Owen grunted as the drawer tried to slide back. Suddenly both men were flung backwards, off their feet, landing together in a heap five feet away from the open drawer.
“Ow,” Owen mumbled.
Jack wasn’t paying attention to Owen, having it instead focused on Alice, who stood before them, a face on her that would make the Furies blush. Jack got up to his knees as a roaring began in his ears that sounded like the world being ripped apart.
“You’re not real,” Jack screamed at the spectre.
Before Jack could react, Alice flew at them. Her hands grabbed at Owen, but merely passed through his arms. Her fiery gaze turned on Jack and she hauled back, slapping him hard across the face. Jack’s hand flew up, cradling his stinging cheek as the slap reverberated in the room. Owen grabbed Jack under the arms, pulling him away from Alice.
“What the fuck was that? How did she actually hit you?”
“I don’t know,” Jack replied, flexing his jaw. “You need to see what’s in that drawer.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“Have a little talk with Alice,” Jack said, a scowl on his face. He stood up, brushing Owen away. “So, what brings you back here honey?”
Jack watched Owen out of the corner of his eye as the younger man crept towards the open drawer. Alice moved towards him, her gun suddenly in her hand again. For the life of him, Jack couldn’t figure out where she had pulled it from. There was a noise from the door that indicated Ianto and Gwen had started working on their escape. Alice’s body whipped towards the door, murder on her face. Jack couldn’t take the chance that she might be able to touch them, too.
“Hey! I wasn’t done talking to you bitch!” Jack remained calm as her head craned back towards him. “Yeah, you. I never got to properly thank you for that time you killed me, and that other time you killed me. Oh, and that other time you killed me, and the last time you killed me, and all the times in between.” He tried to not pay attention to Owen and focused on keeping Alice busy.
“And just why aren’t you dead, yet?” Alice asked, moving towards Jack, stroking the gun barrel.
“You should remember that. I have a problem with women killing me. Well, women, men, aliens, anything that has to do with dying. Especially if it’s a Torchwood operative, I really take that personally.” Jack smirked at Alice.
She opened her mouth to retort when her head spun around like the exorcist, glaring at Owen as he clutched a small box to him. Owen nodded at Jack, he had found what she was guarding. Alice started to glow fiery red. As she swooped towards Owen, Jack sprinted to the doctor, throwing his body over Owen, taking the full brunt of Alice’s attack.
Jack let out a throaty moan as he crumpled onto Owen. His hands dug into the doctor’s shoulders, trying to find some support. Owen went to put the box on the floor so he could help Jack, put Jack just grasped Owen’s hands, holding them over the box.
“Don’t let her get it,” Jack muttered.
“Take it,” Owen hissed, shoving the box into Jack’s hands. He ripped off the top of the metal box and stepped over Jack’s legs as the older man’s body slumped to the floor on top of the remains. “Hey! You know, you dress worse than my gran, and she lost her mind before she died.” Owen taunted Alice, walking to the other side of the room.
“You act so smart,” Alice sneered, standing in front of Owen.
Owen held the box lid in front of him, his hands hanging down what would have been the sides of it. “Oh, but I am quite smart. Hell, I’m bloody brilliant!”
Jack looked down in to the box, disgusted at what he saw. He knew Emily could be vicious, but this was unbelievable. The entity slowly moved. If the brain was human, Jack would almost say it was breathing.
“OOOooo… so scary. Big bad Torchwood come to teach me a lesson?”
“You are an arrog-”
“Shut it lady. I work for Torchwood, and guess what? I’ve shot my boss before.”
“Great, something they can bond over,” Jack mumbled incoherently.
Owen dropped the lid in his hand, sending it to the ground with a clatter. Folding his hands into his stomach, Owen grimaced at Alice. Jack didn’t even hear what retort the man threw at the ghost as she turned to Jack. She looked like a Fury had cross-bred with a Fairy. Without thinking, Jack plunged both hands into the box and held the brain to his body.
Jack could feel the spasms run through his nerves. His whole body felt like it was attached to an electric chair being powered by the nuclear plant. He fell to the ground and although he stopped breathing, Jack held on to the alien brain. His mind somehow noted how Owen had rushed to his side, held his shoulders, and kept his head from slamming into the concrete. Some time after that his vision blurred and then faded to black.
First there was the thrumming at the front of his skull. Jack became acutely aware of his fingers and toes slowly flexing. His nerves were suddenly super-sensitive to the slightest touch. Jack hoped that would fade in time.
“I know you’re awake, might as well open your eyes and tell me what the fuck happened.”
Jack smiled as he recognised the tone of Owen’s voice. It wasn’t the pissed off little punk he tried to project to everyone, but rather the caring friend and doctor, genuinely concerned about what had happened. Jack blinked, sucking in his breath as his eyes adjusted to the bright lights of the autopsy bay.
“The creature?”
“Dead,” Owen stated, a hint of melancholy in his voice.
“Are we sure?”
“I ran every scan I could on it. There is no way it’s alive.” Owen sat down on the rolling stool and slid over next to the table Jack was on. “So?”
“How did we get out?”
Owen let out a dramatic sigh, nearly rolling his eyes. “Once you mind melded with the thing and finished frying your system the lights came back on and the door opened. Ianto and Gwen were nearly done fighting with it anyway. Now, about this?”
“It was the reason for the haunting.”
“What?”
“The brain was still alive - barely. It projected the image of the person who had been responsible for its death so it could be protected.”
“Hell of a security detail.”
“For a moment there I was linked with it, I could hear what it had to say. Torchwood kept it down there for safekeeping. They realised it had a massive psychic power and wanted to keep it so it could be used to protect the Empire in the future.”
“Kind of like what we do?” Owen crossed his arms, staring at Jack.
“We don’t harvest sentient species, and kill them so we can keep their remains to power future weapons,” Jack huffed out, sitting up on the table. “What they did…”
“Was full of shit.” Owen stood up, and headed for the computers. Instead, he picked up the metal box. “Your fuck-buddy is waiting for you, waiting to see how you are. But, what should we do with this? Cold storage?”
Jack jumped down from the table and stood next to Owen, putting his hands over the younger man’s, closing all of them around the box. “No, it’s been locked up here too long.”
It was some hours later that Jack and Owen came back to the box, having made a decision with what to do with the contents. They were both surprised to find the brain had turned to dust. Whether it was removing it from the basement, or allowing air into the box that had done it they could only guess. Jack had no clue what Torchwood had done with the body, and even Ianto couldn’t find any record of it. That bothered all of them.
Standing under the stars, by the railing that stretched along the Bay, Owen held the box containing the once living alien’s remains. Jack shook his head at the utter waste of it all. His Torchwood was different, he had told the Doctor that, and after days like today he was even more determined to make sure it stayed different.
Owen looked back at Jack, holding the box over the water. Jack nodded his head slightly. Nothing needed to be said. What could they say? Tilting his hand, Owen poured the dust out of the box. Both men watched as a gust of wind swirled the lost alien up towards the stars and away from the memory of being murdered at the hands of Alice Guppy all those years ago.
Owen tossed the box into the Bay and pulled his leather coat tightly around him. Zipping it up, Owen huddled like a turtle down into the collar. “Will you be okay?” Owen asked.
“I’m tougher than I look.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Go. It’s been a long day, and you have an even longer day ahead of you tomorrow,” Jack stated, heading back towards the tourist office.
“Why?” Owen turned and glared after Jack.
“Since you like research so much, you have a project to start tomorrow - in the archives.”
“That’s Ianto’s job,” Owen retorted.
“It’s no one’s specific job,” Jack returned. “But, I would like you to do this one. Will probably need a medical opinion for it.”
“What the fuck is it?”
“No one has been through some of those archives in years - not even the almighty Ianto Jones - and after today it seems evident that maybe we should. I want to know what else Torchwood has hidden down there. And if there are any other poor, unfortunate souls stuck down in some musty cabinet because someone thought they could help or were a threat to the Empire, but not enough to deem the decency of cryogenics.”
“Bollocks…” Owen stared down at his booted feet as he shuffed them against the pavement. He finally looked back at Jack. “Fine,” he replied tersely. “But, I get to sleep in because of that.”
“I think I may, too,” Jack replied. “Go,” he said, turning back to the tourist office.
He smiled as he heard Owen muttering a string of curses as he took off across the Plass. Owen would do it, he was a good man. Jack just wished he knew what the hell Owen would find down there. Something told him this was not the last odd thing they would unearth in the archives.
Jack locked the door to the tourist office behind him and hustled through the secret tunnel towards his bed, and Ianto.