War Games (3/4)
Title: War Games (3/4)
Author: nancybrown
Artist: madbottoms
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Martha, Lois, Francine, Johnson, Patanjali, OCs
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, Martha/Tom
Warnings: violence, spoilers up through COE (characters only), character death (mostly Jack)
Rating: R
Word Count: 27,600 (5,300 this chapter)
Betas: sariagray and bookwormsarah did tremendous work getting this to coherency, and I thank them. All remaining errors are mine alone.
Summary: Jack takes the team on a cross-training exercise with UNIT.
Notes: Set in a fake third season in which Lois Habiba, Agent Johnson, and Rupesh Patanjali have joined Torchwood. No familiarity with other stories in this series is necessary. Written for tw_bigbang.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
***
Chapter Three
***
Martha eased herself into a chair at the edge of the room. The teams worked in loose groups, bonding over cards and quickly-jotted notes, and the whole atmosphere was less "top secret organisations dedicated to protecting the Earth from alien threats," and much more "uni students cramming for exams." Elimination exams, she amended, noting the groups were noticeably smaller than they had been this morning.
Her left foot was encased in an inflatable boot to mimic the "injury" she'd sustained. Jack had offered to sign the cast by way of an apology. She'd declined.
"How are you feeling?"
Martha didn't look at her mother. "Fine. Everything looks normal. I'm seeing my doctor next week."
"Good." Francine took a seat beside her. "I asked how you were."
"I'm fine, Mum." She gestured at the teams. "Shouldn't you be listening in on discussions?"
"I have been. Red Team has the Artefact still. Their technician has analysed it. Their archivist claims it's a vital piece of equipment for a particular religious sect of the aliens."
"I have a vision. The words 'porcelain god' were spoken?" In deadpan, no doubt.
"Blue Team is concerned about the aliens themselves. Their exobiologist has been comparing them to other known species. This is hindered by one of their weapons experts, who keeps launching into tales of sleeping with each species mentioned."
"Ah. Any good stories?"
Mum shrugged. "I still refuse to believe the one about the two-headed ambidextrous frog. Your team is keeping to themselves. I saw plenty of notes, but I couldn't read them."
"I'll have to join in. Find out what the fuss is."
"I'm not sure I understand what's going on."
Martha shifted in her chair. "Where?"
"Here. This is meant to be cross-training, but I don't see much training going on, this morning notwithstanding."
"It's complicated. UNIT and Torchwood overlap in their missions, but we have very different methodologies. It used to be that Torchwood was an enormous organisation, very similar to UNIT, with its own soldiers and structured tiers, and long-term strategies. Only UNIT was alien-friendly in many cases, and Torchwood took anything alien as a threat, including the Doctor."
"And now?"
"We're approaching the three year anniversary of Canary Wharf." Mum closed her eyes for a moment; she'd been fond of Adeola, and had grieved all over again when Martha had told her the truth of how she'd died. "Only two people are left who were working for Torchwood three years ago. We're in a recession, and certain people are asking why we need multiple groups with the same mission, when one of those groups has a near-total mortality rate."
Mr Weeds stood back from Gold Team with his own grey notebook. Francine followed Martha's eyes as she watched him make a small mark on the paper.
Mum asked, "What would happen if the Torchwood resources were rolled into UNIT? One big organisation with the combined knowledge of two, wouldn't that make us all safer?"
Martha didn't have that answer. She'd wondered inside her own mind if that would be the best option. They could keep the Cardiff base active, but make it an official UNIT outpost with backup and oversight, and using proper procedures instead of "what worked before, unless Jack is remembering wrong."
But the last time Torchwood had been a large, structured group with policies and oversight, that situation had ended with Daleks in the sky and the clank of steel feet. Oversight hadn't helped them and oversight hadn't prevented UNIT from developing a weapon that could rip the Earth apart, nor Martha from nearly carrying out that dread order. Dad liked to joke about the custodians getting into the custard. Torchwood and UNIT had each other's backs, and watched each other suspiciously, and the world had yet to be destroyed.
Mum asked, "Would you be safer?"
"I need to go talk with my team." The cast made walking difficult, but not as difficult as staying would be.
***
Their first mistake was in showing their hand too casually. Everyone knew Red Team possessed the artefact.
Their second mistake was complacency: Fletcher had the bog roll and didn't even stow it into a sack or hide it.
Their third was in allowing Lois to distract them as she asked Jones a question.
Johnson seized the prize for Gold Team without any difficulty at all.
***
This was probably a stupid idea. She had called Andy, true, and let him know her plan, the part he could know about. A stakeout, Gwen had said, so kindly let the police know not to bother her.
Partly true.
She had her thermos filled with cocoa, her torch, her portable Rift scanner, and a sleeping bag because the temperature was going to drop tonight, and her car would be frigid in the car park beside the Thomas & Rose. She could see her breath as she stamped around outside.
"Are you sure?" Rhys asked her again. "Can't you watch the machine from home and get a good night's rest there?"
She kissed him, cold lips to his cheek. "If something comes through, I'll be able to deal with it better right here." She had a link to Mainframe, in case there was an alert somewhere else as she kept watch.
Something told her she needed to be here tonight.
***
***
Jack made as little noise as possible when he opened the door to their quarters, but the light from the corridor showed Ianto's open eyes. "Sorry," Jack said, closing the door quickly.
"You can turn on the light."
"I'm good in the dark."
Jack removed his clothing and draped it carefully over the desk to deal with in the morning. They'd shoved their two little beds together, though he half-expected to find Ianto had separated them again. There was no help for the sheets and blankets, which didn't cover them both properly laid out. Jack had slept in worse. Ianto probably had, too. He'd never slept in chains standing up, nor had he tried to sleep in a trench, but he'd described his first few flats in London and this was at least clean.
His mouth was soft when Jack's lips found his in the sullen dark. He said nothing, not as they moved together, vying for the best friction between hands and bellies, not as Jack groaned and came between them slickly, nor even as Jack slid down his body, cleaned him with broad laps of tongue, then swallowed him whole, sucking until he convulsed.
Warmth. Pleasure. Jack could give those when he had nothing else to offer.
He settled in next to Ianto. "It's a long story."
"Then keep it to yourself."
Jack blinked in the darkness. "What?"
Ianto rolled over. "Whatever's eating you this time, it's another long story in your past that for whatever reason you haven't bothered to share, or that slipped your mind, or wasn't important before now. You won't tell me when I need to know, but you'll crawl into bed with me and confess in the dark."
"I don't always."
"Often enough. Jack, I want to know. I can keep your secrets. Do me the favour of telling me when I ask you, not when whatever it is has festered inside of you until you need to fuck yourself numb enough to speak."
Jack glared in the darkness, but the effect was spoiled since Ianto couldn't see him. "I do not use your dick as a talking stick, thank you."
Ianto went quiet for a long time. Jack didn't know if he was angry, or maybe asleep. The normal rise and fall of his chest with slumber didn't come.
"Hey," Jack said, wondering what he was supposed to do now, if he should apologise, if he should get up and go bunk with Rupesh and Perry. Scratch that; he didn't think the rest of the team needed to know if he'd been exiled to the proverbial sofa.
"Tell me." Jack didn't miss the sound of defeat in Ianto's tired voice. Did he really do this that often?
He liked crawling in bed next to Ianto, not merely for another warm body but this particular sexy body attached to his sharp corkscrew of a mind. Jack had shared beds (and floors, and desks, and zero-G netting, a couple of swings, twice atop that modern art sculpture Miranda liked, not to mention all the vertical placeholders ... ) with as many partners as he'd had deaths. Rare though were the bed (etcetera) partners who stayed past cleanup, breakfast, or the holiday weekend, and rarer still were those whom Jack mentally recategorised as bed partners with actual sleeping involved as well as the familiar winding together of limbs out of comfort and affection.
He knew Ianto enjoyed sleeping with him, too. Jack had noticed he was less anxious, and less crabby, the days after Jack spent the whole night with him, and so he'd made an effort to stay. A threshold had been crossed at some point, not one Jack regretted at all, where they'd become one another's hot water bottle and teddy bear, and remained lovers, too.
Jack whispered his secrets into the dark like he would into the fur of a soft toy, the hard secrets, the friends and family lost, the lifetimes unlived, knowing Ianto would listen, would hold him, would still love him when Jack finished extracting whatever darkness ate at him. But Ianto wasn't a bottle or a bear, and while he would indeed love Jack regardless, he deserved answers.
"I shouldn't have invited Martha's mother."
"Tell me something not blindingly obvious."
Jack grinned, if a little sadly. "Not for why you think. Though Martha's not going to forgive me any time soon for this."
"No doubt. Jack, what's going on?"
"Trent was on the Valiant with us."
"Another prisoner?"
"A guard." Jack remembered the face of the soldier who'd refused to obey and died. He was alive, somewhere. "And a prisoner. We all were, in a way."
Ianto went very, very still. "Did he kill you?"
"Yeah."
"Does he remember?"
"I gave Retcon to almost everyone. His didn't take."
"Oh." Again, the long silence. "Martha didn't recognise him."
"Martha wasn't on the ship long. Francine will know who he is, though. I'd like her spared that."
"If he goes near either of you, I'll kill him myself."
Jack reached his arms out and, mindful of the dip between the beds, pulled Ianto close again. The scents in this room fought with those he always associated with Ianto, the warm coffee, the spiced aftershave, a hint of toothpaste. The sheets and pillows smelled of clinical detergents, and of previous bodies. Jack buried his nose against Ianto's cheek and breathed in.
"Promise me you won't."
"I won't let him hurt you again."
"He wouldn't. I'm never going to be his best friend or biggest fan, and I already told him if I caught him in the same room as any of you, I'd shoot first and ask questions later, but I'm not in danger from him. Don't go looking for trouble."
Jack felt rather than heard the deep sigh. "Are you going to be all right with him here?"
"Yeah."
"Because I meant it, about killing him." Ianto said it in a perfectly flat voice, but it was the same voice he used when he was telling tall tales to Gwen to see if she caught him out, that completely serious tone which meant he wasn't. Probably. Jack squeezed him, and kissed his cheek.
Teddy bear, maybe. Teddy bear with a gun, definitely. Jack couldn't imagine not loving him.
***
Lois woke to the sound of the alarms, and for a short second, she thought it was her clock. Then she heard Johnson's feet hit the floor, and she opened her eyes.
"What's going on?"
Clothes thrown on, they spilled into the corridor, Jack appearing only incrementally more awake than everyone else (and wearing the wrong shirt). His arm shot out and grabbed the nearest soldier jogging by. "Explain."
"Sir, we've just got word of a real spacecraft sighted heading this way." The soldier's voice was clipped; she wasn't part of the training but clearly knew who they were and why they were there.
"All right, people. Back on the clock. Kit. Yours. Now." Jack strode down the corridor towards a different destination in the building than Lois had previously seen. The rest of them dashed back into their rooms, Lois grabbing the two monitors, Johnson her gun. They met the other three in the corridor and hurried in the direction of Jack's retreating boots.
Jack was not best pleased by standing aside in the command centre, once they reached it, but he deferred to Colonel Fielding and the UNIT officers rather than immediately taking charge. He did however demand to know what was happening.
"It's an unidentified ship coming in hard. They're on an impact course for our base." Fielding looked at Jack. "Do you know anything about this?"
"Let me see the readouts."
Fielding indicated a station for Jack to sit. Lois kept her position against the wall. Their team looked incredibly out of place amongst the busy soldiers.
Jack's fingers flew over the keyboard, with files and schematics skimming by as he searched. The Captain had an encyclopaedic knowledge of half the alien species they encountered, and he was happy to allow those around him to assume that information came from having slept with them all. However, Jack had been one of the primary minds behind the construction of the Torchwood Mainframe, there wasn't a piece of alien tech he couldn't operate given time and interest, and if he really was from the future as he claimed, modern human technology was as advanced to him as a chariot or a mirror would be to Lois. More than one foe had made the fatal error of seeing Jack's devil-may-care attitude and mistaking his affectations for stupidity. She would not.
He grinned. "It's the Brix."
"Bricks?" asked Johnson. "We're being invaded by building materials?"
Beside her, Ianto relaxed. "No, the Brix are a species we've run into before," he explained quietly as Jack gave the same information to Fielding and the rest. "They're interesting. No homeworld left to speak of, just a wandering species who travel in large family groups through space, roving from planet to planet."
"What are they doing here?" Fielding frowned, obviously considering a large caravan showing up on Earth's doorstep.
Jack went back to the screen. "Not sure. You don't often find lone ships."
"A scouting party?"
"Doubt it. Not their style."
"But you've seen them on Earth before."
"Yeah." Jack sat back, sprawling in his chair as if he owned the place, and wasn't borrowing someone else's terminal. "Sometimes a couple of the juveniles will get it into their heads to steal Mum and Dad's spare shuttle and go joyriding. They wind up here, I give them a lecture, they go home."
Ianto said to Lois, "It's really amusing. He gets all stern."
"Sir," said Hollins, who was on Red Team. "They're coming in for a landing." She gave Fielding the coordinates.
Fielding looked over Jack's shoulder at the screen. "If they're as harmless as you say, Captain, we can continue the training exercise with a live demonstration. Ready the teams for a first contact."
Rupesh let out a disappointed noise. Jack stood and clapped him on the shoulder. "Look at it this way. You're dead. You can go back to bed now."
***
Martha won the argument about the cast with simple logic: this was a real situation, and if things went bad, someone could die if she wasn't in top form. She didn't expect anything to go bad. "Cake walk," Jack had explained apologetically to her in an undertone. "Sorry for making you get out of bed." He was sorry enough that he didn't even follow that up with a lewd suggestion about Martha in bed.
The trip to the Brix landing site took about twenty minutes, almost enough time for her to fall back asleep even in the bumpy jeep. She emerged when the jeep arrived at the outer perimeter they'd established around the projected landing site, and she lost her breath at the sudden cold. The temperature had dropped sharply in the night, from brisk to below freezing, with a thick, cold fog blanketing the grounds. Was that a side-effect of the ship's landing? Was it just January?
She shivered inside her coat, and took her bag.
"I'll handle it," Jack said as she neared where he waited with Fielding, her mum, and Mr Weeds. "We'll take a small group, read them the riot act, and send them on their way."
Mr Weeds didn't like the sound of this. "If the Brix come to Earth so often, why can't we give them a stronger warning to stay away next time? This is a waste of resources to send out all these personnel for joyriders."
"What would you suggest?"
"Shoot them. Let them know Earth is a threat, not a holiday location."
"If we shoot them, their parents are going to bring all their uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents, and they're going to kick our arses. This is easier." Jack finished making adjustments to the scanner in his hand. "Let's go."
Martha joined him. Jack lost his smile. "Martha, can you stay here?"
"'Cake walk,'" she said. "Also, I've met about as many aliens as you have, and that's saying something."
"Humour me?"
"Worried Gold Team is too far in the lead?"
Were they on Jack's turf, had Martha not been stewing all evening over her mother's words, he probably would have won the staring contest. He dropped. "Do me the favour of standing behind me?"
She considered arguing with him. "Fine."
The Brix vessel landed roughly, shaking the ground they stood on. Jack's hand automatically went to her arm to steady her. The ship's bulk disturbed the fog, casting eerie clouds in relief against the bright lights from the UNIT vehicles and the dull lights of the Brix hull.
The advance team fell in around them as Jack led the way, his "Welcome to Earth, are you gorgeous?" smile plastered on his face. Martha moved in his wake. Beside her, Ianto glanced over Perry's shoulder at the readings he took. No radiation levels above normal, no biohazards appeared on her own instruments. Just a typical ...
Jack's body blocked most of the force of the explosion. Unfortunately, that force blew him solidly into Martha.
***
Francine didn't scream, and didn't shout, and didn't demand someone do something. Cold fear moved into her, but it made her calm. Losing her head now would do no good.
Beside her, Colonel Fielding shouted orders to his men. These UNIT soldiers were well-trained for this sort of thing, she observed. One alien invasion was like another to them: a surreal thought, but something she'd been around enough to see in action. Speaking of seeing, there was little she could see from here. Between the heavy fog, which was getting worse, and the darkness, Francine could only make out shapes against the fires that were clearly burning nearby.
Martha was in there somewhere, but this was her job, and she was trained for this, and Francine was not going to treat her like a child and assume she couldn't handle it.
She'd try.
***
There was too much smoke, too much noise. Ianto's brain sluggishly fought for consciousness. He'd been thrown roughly to the ground, but a quick survey of his limbs accounted for them all, and no major injuries he could establish. He rolled to his feet, scanning around himself to assess the situation. Bodies lay everywhere, though thankfully most of them were moving. Non-deadly, then, except ...
A large metal spike, twisted and bent, ran through Jack's neck. His eyes looked up, sightless. Shouting for a medic was pointless. His brain woke up more. Martha was their medic, and had been with them. Jack's body was laying haphazardly over hers.
Arms sore, he rolled Jack off Martha. As a quick afterthought, and queasy for it, he took hold of the metal in Jack's neck. He pulled it free with a sickening sound and a fresh gush of blood. The miracle that brought Jack back might work faster with less in the way.
"Martha?"
"Ugh."
"Stay down, I'll check the area."
The others slowly made it to their feet, as Ianto heard more UNIT soldiers move in the fog towards their position. Jack wasn't the only injury. Martha crawled to her knees and began assessing the woman beside her, who'd suffered a large gash to her leg from shrapnel.
The aliens were nowhere to be seen in the darkness. That was not reassuring, not with the bulk of their ship looming and blinking in the fog.
"Over here," he said in a low voice that carried. "We've got wounded." Boots hurried to their position.
"Perry?"
Perry crouched over his instrument, his face lit up by the display. "Uh oh."
"Uh oh what?"
"Run. Now."
Ianto didn't stop to ask questions. It hurt to leave Jack's body behind, but he scooped the woman Martha was attending to up in one painful -- had he twisted his back? -- motion as Perry grabbed Martha's arm. The soldiers who'd heard Perry immediately turned tail. The others boiled around in sharp confusion.
The second explosion threw them all back to the ground.
As Ianto lay there dazed, he heard more footsteps. He swung his head around to see large, billowy forms moving towards their position. Not the Brix. Someone else. There was a sharp smell, like cedar chips. He covered his mouth and nose, but had already breathed in the gas.
The shapes changed, became larger. Beside him, Perry's face contorted into something grotesque. Ianto fell back away from him, horrified, the woman in his arms rolling away, her body shifting into something snakelike and awful. Hallucinogen, his brain provided.
"Martha, the gas, run," he gasped, and could not watch as what looked like a decayed and rotting beast shambled away.
Gunshots peppered out into the dark, and he saw purple trails behind them, fading into green. Ianto closed his eyes. His ears had trouble knowing which way was which, including up and down. Perry had been beside him. He reached out a hand, found a warm arm, and eyes squeezed tightly shut, he dragged the two of them into the darkness, away from the sounds of gunfire.
The sounds were everywhere, echoing and ricocheting. He and Perry stumbled against each other, unable to see. They needed to get back, needed to get away from the smell and the noise, needed to find the team and regroup.
Jack was back there, dead. Inside Ianto's fevered brain, he pictured Jack's corpse rising up, dripping and oozing, dead eyes latched on his. "Come with me," fell out of his mouth, along with green-black bile in great gobs. Ianto screamed.
"This way," came the awful voice, but it was Perry in his ear, his own face and mouth covered by his shirt. His specs were lost somewhere in the fog behind them, and he looked even younger without them. The only light was Perry's torch, carried in a shaking hand.
Ianto's feet moved without his consent, trudging through bracken, until the pair of them fell in a heap somewhere cold and wet. Shivers moved through his body, but his head was clearing. In the distance, he heard another explosion, and then screams.
"You all right?" Perry asked, teeth chattering from the cold. His jacket was torn in half.
"Yeah. You?"
"Yeah. What was that?"
Ianto had trouble thinking. "Hallucinogenic gas, I think. Possibly poisonous. We'll know soon enough, eh?"
Perry's brittle fear was naked on his face.
"We'll be fine," Ianto said, as reassuringly as he could. "We'll circle back 'round and rejoin the others. Stay far away from that stuff."
He got his bearings. They'd stumbled into a small copse, overgrown with weeds, dead and brown now in the winter. It was shelter from the wind, and nothing more. He touched his ear, but static greeted him. "Check your comm." Perry shook his head as he was greeted with the same.
Ianto tried his mobile. Whatever was blocking their signal stopped that as well. "Dammit."
The gunshots grew closer. Ianto took his weapon from its holster. Perry grabbed his, and his face fell. "Mine's loaded with Simunitions."
Ianto had a single clip of real bullets for his own handgun. He wondered how many of those still out there were similarly unprepared.
***
Lois had stood back when the initial contact was made, and been spared the first two explosions. She stood further back as the soldiers swarmed past, intent on recovery, rescue, and perhaps repelling an invasion.
The other Torchwood agents were nowhere to be seen in the confusion. For a brief, mad moment, she wondered if they'd all been killed. One fell swoop, no cleanup and no blame attached, she could have Gwen in custody within twenty-four hours. But the Captain would reanimate, and she'd still have to deal with him.
She hoped they weren't dead.
Dr Jones stumbled out of the fog, clutching her mouth and nose. Lois caught a whiff of cedar, pungent in her own nose. Then her paralysis broke and she hurried to Martha's side, quickly joined by Mrs Jones.
"Stay back," said Martha, waving them away. "The aliens released some sort of gas. The others are back there."
Shouts and turmoil surrounded them. Lois's head went foggy as Johnson approached her from nowhere.
"You," said Johnson, her eyes wide and angry. "You did this."
Lois took a step back. "You've been exposed to an alien toxin. Agent Johnson, stand down."
"You want us all gone!" Johnson advanced on her. She had her gun, was fumbling with it. "You're trying to kill us."
"No-one is trying to kill anyone," Lois said. She gestured to Martha's mother to help her daughter move away from the danger. Already, Martha seemed more alert. Perhaps the gas had a short half-life in the body. Johnson would come down any second from her own hallucinations.
Right?
A third explosion went off. There were more screams, and the smell of the gas grew. Martha and her mother had vanished into the fog, bodies of crazy things moved in the darkness around her, and Johnson stalked her like a giant cat.
Lois broke and ran for cover.
***
Jack gasped back to life, flailing for contact. Everything was dark, everything was loud, everything stank of rotted woodchips. Panic set in, but he wasn't under the ground, wasn't chained up.
He rolled to his side and scanned the area, thinking back. What had happened before he'd died this time?
Aliens. Brix? Yeah, a Brix ship. Well, probably Brix. Come to think of it, Brix ships were pieced together from other species' ships, so maybe that ID wasn't as clear as he'd considered.
Around him, he heard shouts, but couldn't make any sense of them. His head was fogging. That smell. That was Mantea, oh yes. He'd spent some good times partying on Mantea Prime back in the bad old days. Manteans considered certain oxygen-sensitive chemicals a delicacy, which never worked out well when they brought their snacks along into an oxygen-rich atmosphere. And Manteans flew ships the Brix sometimes bought or stole.
Jack didn't bother covering his face. He lay back and breathed in deeply. His metabolism would burn off the high faster than fighting it would. But the others ...
"Ianto?"
His head felt like it was a million miles wide as he turned to look, but Ianto wasn't close by. He'd been there a minute ago, or however long, and he usually insisted on being with Jack when Jack woke up. Crazy little rituals, that man, thinking to ensure Jack came back just by holding him, not understanding about the vortex or maybe not caring. Well, caring, certainly.
Jack smiled goofily. Then he frowned. No Ianto.
No others, either. Had Gwen been there? No. Gwen was back home. He ought to call her and wax poetic about the sex they were never going to have.
He touched his ear and was greeted with static, and at that same time, his head cleared. Buzz gone. Just as well.
Jack sat up. Forms moved around him. Manteans had already walked by, and humans were approaching.
"Hey, guys," said Jack, rising to his feet. "What's the situation?"
The closest UNIT soldier -- love those berets, okay, still a little high -- raised his rifle. "I've found one of the aliens, sir."
"Good," said Jack, right before a different UNIT guy, a Major who wasn't part of the training exercise, stepped into view.
The Major said, "You know what to do."
Jack had time to open his mouth before the soldier shot him dead.
***
Johnson's head swam, but as she chased after the traitor, she began to see things in sharper focus despite the fog. She was running through bracken. She was chasing ...
Johnson stopped. She was chasing Lois, when there were alien Legos to capture. No, Bricks. Or something. She shook her head, then placed a palm to her forehead.
"Sorry," she called out, but Lois's footsteps retreated from her.
There were shots fired from close by. Johnson ducked and went to a crouch, her own gun drawn. "Cease fire! Repeat, cease fire!"
"Stand down!" came the shout, a woman she didn't know, and it was followed by another round of shots.
Footsteps approached. "Cease fire! Friendlies here! We're with Torchwood!" Perhaps that wasn't the wisest thing to admit, but anything would do to keep herself from being shot.
"On your feet," came a voice from close by. Johnson held up her hands and rose slowly.
"Thank you for not shooting. What's the situation?"
"We've found one, ma'am," said the soldier, removing Johnson's gun.
"Bring her."
Johnson's arms were dragged behind her. "What's going on? Where are the aliens?"
"You are, miss," said the soldier, and her wrists were ziptied together expertly.
***
"Get down," Ianto said, gesturing to Perry. "There's live fire."
Footsteps crackled through the branches and leaves close by. Ianto readied himself. It could be the aliens, it could be a drugged UNIT soldier.
"Halt!" he said, bringing his gun up.
"Don't shoot!"
"Lois!" said Perry, scrambling to his feet. "Don't shoot her!"
"I'm not." Ianto lowered his gun. "We were about to double back to your position. What's the status?"
Lois let out a hysterical laugh. "You mean, other than Johnson trying to kill me? They're mad out there." There was a stutter of gunfire beyond them. Ianto pushed her roughly behind him into the shelter of the copse and turned around to face her.
"It's an hallucinogen of some sort. We both had a face full. Did you see Martha?"
She nodded. "I think she got out."
"All right." Ianto took a moment to think. "We need to get back to the base. We've only got one gun, and everyone outside is currently insane."
Perry sat back on his heels again. "Also, there are real aliens running around who might be bent on taking over the Earth."
"Typical day, then, for us." That pulled a tight smile from them both. "Right, we'll move together. I'll go in the lead. Lois, you stay between us. Perry, take whatever readings you can whilst we move. We can use ... "
There was another blast of gunfire from outside. Lois jumped, falling closer to Perry. Ianto didn't move at all. The ice running through his right side was enough to hold him stuck in place.
For a moment, everything went very quiet and still, the cold was just cold, could have just been a sudden drip of icy water from a rime-encrusted tree limb. Then the pain started, and suddenly his knees didn't work.
***
Chapter Four
Author: nancybrown
Artist: madbottoms
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Martha, Lois, Francine, Johnson, Patanjali, OCs
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, Martha/Tom
Warnings: violence, spoilers up through COE (characters only), character death (mostly Jack)
Rating: R
Word Count: 27,600 (5,300 this chapter)
Betas: sariagray and bookwormsarah did tremendous work getting this to coherency, and I thank them. All remaining errors are mine alone.
Summary: Jack takes the team on a cross-training exercise with UNIT.
Notes: Set in a fake third season in which Lois Habiba, Agent Johnson, and Rupesh Patanjali have joined Torchwood. No familiarity with other stories in this series is necessary. Written for tw_bigbang.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
***
Chapter Three
***
Martha eased herself into a chair at the edge of the room. The teams worked in loose groups, bonding over cards and quickly-jotted notes, and the whole atmosphere was less "top secret organisations dedicated to protecting the Earth from alien threats," and much more "uni students cramming for exams." Elimination exams, she amended, noting the groups were noticeably smaller than they had been this morning.
Her left foot was encased in an inflatable boot to mimic the "injury" she'd sustained. Jack had offered to sign the cast by way of an apology. She'd declined.
"How are you feeling?"
Martha didn't look at her mother. "Fine. Everything looks normal. I'm seeing my doctor next week."
"Good." Francine took a seat beside her. "I asked how you were."
"I'm fine, Mum." She gestured at the teams. "Shouldn't you be listening in on discussions?"
"I have been. Red Team has the Artefact still. Their technician has analysed it. Their archivist claims it's a vital piece of equipment for a particular religious sect of the aliens."
"I have a vision. The words 'porcelain god' were spoken?" In deadpan, no doubt.
"Blue Team is concerned about the aliens themselves. Their exobiologist has been comparing them to other known species. This is hindered by one of their weapons experts, who keeps launching into tales of sleeping with each species mentioned."
"Ah. Any good stories?"
Mum shrugged. "I still refuse to believe the one about the two-headed ambidextrous frog. Your team is keeping to themselves. I saw plenty of notes, but I couldn't read them."
"I'll have to join in. Find out what the fuss is."
"I'm not sure I understand what's going on."
Martha shifted in her chair. "Where?"
"Here. This is meant to be cross-training, but I don't see much training going on, this morning notwithstanding."
"It's complicated. UNIT and Torchwood overlap in their missions, but we have very different methodologies. It used to be that Torchwood was an enormous organisation, very similar to UNIT, with its own soldiers and structured tiers, and long-term strategies. Only UNIT was alien-friendly in many cases, and Torchwood took anything alien as a threat, including the Doctor."
"And now?"
"We're approaching the three year anniversary of Canary Wharf." Mum closed her eyes for a moment; she'd been fond of Adeola, and had grieved all over again when Martha had told her the truth of how she'd died. "Only two people are left who were working for Torchwood three years ago. We're in a recession, and certain people are asking why we need multiple groups with the same mission, when one of those groups has a near-total mortality rate."
Mr Weeds stood back from Gold Team with his own grey notebook. Francine followed Martha's eyes as she watched him make a small mark on the paper.
Mum asked, "What would happen if the Torchwood resources were rolled into UNIT? One big organisation with the combined knowledge of two, wouldn't that make us all safer?"
Martha didn't have that answer. She'd wondered inside her own mind if that would be the best option. They could keep the Cardiff base active, but make it an official UNIT outpost with backup and oversight, and using proper procedures instead of "what worked before, unless Jack is remembering wrong."
But the last time Torchwood had been a large, structured group with policies and oversight, that situation had ended with Daleks in the sky and the clank of steel feet. Oversight hadn't helped them and oversight hadn't prevented UNIT from developing a weapon that could rip the Earth apart, nor Martha from nearly carrying out that dread order. Dad liked to joke about the custodians getting into the custard. Torchwood and UNIT had each other's backs, and watched each other suspiciously, and the world had yet to be destroyed.
Mum asked, "Would you be safer?"
"I need to go talk with my team." The cast made walking difficult, but not as difficult as staying would be.
***
Their first mistake was in showing their hand too casually. Everyone knew Red Team possessed the artefact.
Their second mistake was complacency: Fletcher had the bog roll and didn't even stow it into a sack or hide it.
Their third was in allowing Lois to distract them as she asked Jones a question.
Johnson seized the prize for Gold Team without any difficulty at all.
***
This was probably a stupid idea. She had called Andy, true, and let him know her plan, the part he could know about. A stakeout, Gwen had said, so kindly let the police know not to bother her.
Partly true.
She had her thermos filled with cocoa, her torch, her portable Rift scanner, and a sleeping bag because the temperature was going to drop tonight, and her car would be frigid in the car park beside the Thomas & Rose. She could see her breath as she stamped around outside.
"Are you sure?" Rhys asked her again. "Can't you watch the machine from home and get a good night's rest there?"
She kissed him, cold lips to his cheek. "If something comes through, I'll be able to deal with it better right here." She had a link to Mainframe, in case there was an alert somewhere else as she kept watch.
Something told her she needed to be here tonight.
***
***
Jack made as little noise as possible when he opened the door to their quarters, but the light from the corridor showed Ianto's open eyes. "Sorry," Jack said, closing the door quickly.
"You can turn on the light."
"I'm good in the dark."
Jack removed his clothing and draped it carefully over the desk to deal with in the morning. They'd shoved their two little beds together, though he half-expected to find Ianto had separated them again. There was no help for the sheets and blankets, which didn't cover them both properly laid out. Jack had slept in worse. Ianto probably had, too. He'd never slept in chains standing up, nor had he tried to sleep in a trench, but he'd described his first few flats in London and this was at least clean.
His mouth was soft when Jack's lips found his in the sullen dark. He said nothing, not as they moved together, vying for the best friction between hands and bellies, not as Jack groaned and came between them slickly, nor even as Jack slid down his body, cleaned him with broad laps of tongue, then swallowed him whole, sucking until he convulsed.
Warmth. Pleasure. Jack could give those when he had nothing else to offer.
He settled in next to Ianto. "It's a long story."
"Then keep it to yourself."
Jack blinked in the darkness. "What?"
Ianto rolled over. "Whatever's eating you this time, it's another long story in your past that for whatever reason you haven't bothered to share, or that slipped your mind, or wasn't important before now. You won't tell me when I need to know, but you'll crawl into bed with me and confess in the dark."
"I don't always."
"Often enough. Jack, I want to know. I can keep your secrets. Do me the favour of telling me when I ask you, not when whatever it is has festered inside of you until you need to fuck yourself numb enough to speak."
Jack glared in the darkness, but the effect was spoiled since Ianto couldn't see him. "I do not use your dick as a talking stick, thank you."
Ianto went quiet for a long time. Jack didn't know if he was angry, or maybe asleep. The normal rise and fall of his chest with slumber didn't come.
"Hey," Jack said, wondering what he was supposed to do now, if he should apologise, if he should get up and go bunk with Rupesh and Perry. Scratch that; he didn't think the rest of the team needed to know if he'd been exiled to the proverbial sofa.
"Tell me." Jack didn't miss the sound of defeat in Ianto's tired voice. Did he really do this that often?
He liked crawling in bed next to Ianto, not merely for another warm body but this particular sexy body attached to his sharp corkscrew of a mind. Jack had shared beds (and floors, and desks, and zero-G netting, a couple of swings, twice atop that modern art sculpture Miranda liked, not to mention all the vertical placeholders ... ) with as many partners as he'd had deaths. Rare though were the bed (etcetera) partners who stayed past cleanup, breakfast, or the holiday weekend, and rarer still were those whom Jack mentally recategorised as bed partners with actual sleeping involved as well as the familiar winding together of limbs out of comfort and affection.
He knew Ianto enjoyed sleeping with him, too. Jack had noticed he was less anxious, and less crabby, the days after Jack spent the whole night with him, and so he'd made an effort to stay. A threshold had been crossed at some point, not one Jack regretted at all, where they'd become one another's hot water bottle and teddy bear, and remained lovers, too.
Jack whispered his secrets into the dark like he would into the fur of a soft toy, the hard secrets, the friends and family lost, the lifetimes unlived, knowing Ianto would listen, would hold him, would still love him when Jack finished extracting whatever darkness ate at him. But Ianto wasn't a bottle or a bear, and while he would indeed love Jack regardless, he deserved answers.
"I shouldn't have invited Martha's mother."
"Tell me something not blindingly obvious."
Jack grinned, if a little sadly. "Not for why you think. Though Martha's not going to forgive me any time soon for this."
"No doubt. Jack, what's going on?"
"Trent was on the Valiant with us."
"Another prisoner?"
"A guard." Jack remembered the face of the soldier who'd refused to obey and died. He was alive, somewhere. "And a prisoner. We all were, in a way."
Ianto went very, very still. "Did he kill you?"
"Yeah."
"Does he remember?"
"I gave Retcon to almost everyone. His didn't take."
"Oh." Again, the long silence. "Martha didn't recognise him."
"Martha wasn't on the ship long. Francine will know who he is, though. I'd like her spared that."
"If he goes near either of you, I'll kill him myself."
Jack reached his arms out and, mindful of the dip between the beds, pulled Ianto close again. The scents in this room fought with those he always associated with Ianto, the warm coffee, the spiced aftershave, a hint of toothpaste. The sheets and pillows smelled of clinical detergents, and of previous bodies. Jack buried his nose against Ianto's cheek and breathed in.
"Promise me you won't."
"I won't let him hurt you again."
"He wouldn't. I'm never going to be his best friend or biggest fan, and I already told him if I caught him in the same room as any of you, I'd shoot first and ask questions later, but I'm not in danger from him. Don't go looking for trouble."
Jack felt rather than heard the deep sigh. "Are you going to be all right with him here?"
"Yeah."
"Because I meant it, about killing him." Ianto said it in a perfectly flat voice, but it was the same voice he used when he was telling tall tales to Gwen to see if she caught him out, that completely serious tone which meant he wasn't. Probably. Jack squeezed him, and kissed his cheek.
Teddy bear, maybe. Teddy bear with a gun, definitely. Jack couldn't imagine not loving him.
***
Lois woke to the sound of the alarms, and for a short second, she thought it was her clock. Then she heard Johnson's feet hit the floor, and she opened her eyes.
"What's going on?"
Clothes thrown on, they spilled into the corridor, Jack appearing only incrementally more awake than everyone else (and wearing the wrong shirt). His arm shot out and grabbed the nearest soldier jogging by. "Explain."
"Sir, we've just got word of a real spacecraft sighted heading this way." The soldier's voice was clipped; she wasn't part of the training but clearly knew who they were and why they were there.
"All right, people. Back on the clock. Kit. Yours. Now." Jack strode down the corridor towards a different destination in the building than Lois had previously seen. The rest of them dashed back into their rooms, Lois grabbing the two monitors, Johnson her gun. They met the other three in the corridor and hurried in the direction of Jack's retreating boots.
Jack was not best pleased by standing aside in the command centre, once they reached it, but he deferred to Colonel Fielding and the UNIT officers rather than immediately taking charge. He did however demand to know what was happening.
"It's an unidentified ship coming in hard. They're on an impact course for our base." Fielding looked at Jack. "Do you know anything about this?"
"Let me see the readouts."
Fielding indicated a station for Jack to sit. Lois kept her position against the wall. Their team looked incredibly out of place amongst the busy soldiers.
Jack's fingers flew over the keyboard, with files and schematics skimming by as he searched. The Captain had an encyclopaedic knowledge of half the alien species they encountered, and he was happy to allow those around him to assume that information came from having slept with them all. However, Jack had been one of the primary minds behind the construction of the Torchwood Mainframe, there wasn't a piece of alien tech he couldn't operate given time and interest, and if he really was from the future as he claimed, modern human technology was as advanced to him as a chariot or a mirror would be to Lois. More than one foe had made the fatal error of seeing Jack's devil-may-care attitude and mistaking his affectations for stupidity. She would not.
He grinned. "It's the Brix."
"Bricks?" asked Johnson. "We're being invaded by building materials?"
Beside her, Ianto relaxed. "No, the Brix are a species we've run into before," he explained quietly as Jack gave the same information to Fielding and the rest. "They're interesting. No homeworld left to speak of, just a wandering species who travel in large family groups through space, roving from planet to planet."
"What are they doing here?" Fielding frowned, obviously considering a large caravan showing up on Earth's doorstep.
Jack went back to the screen. "Not sure. You don't often find lone ships."
"A scouting party?"
"Doubt it. Not their style."
"But you've seen them on Earth before."
"Yeah." Jack sat back, sprawling in his chair as if he owned the place, and wasn't borrowing someone else's terminal. "Sometimes a couple of the juveniles will get it into their heads to steal Mum and Dad's spare shuttle and go joyriding. They wind up here, I give them a lecture, they go home."
Ianto said to Lois, "It's really amusing. He gets all stern."
"Sir," said Hollins, who was on Red Team. "They're coming in for a landing." She gave Fielding the coordinates.
Fielding looked over Jack's shoulder at the screen. "If they're as harmless as you say, Captain, we can continue the training exercise with a live demonstration. Ready the teams for a first contact."
Rupesh let out a disappointed noise. Jack stood and clapped him on the shoulder. "Look at it this way. You're dead. You can go back to bed now."
***
Martha won the argument about the cast with simple logic: this was a real situation, and if things went bad, someone could die if she wasn't in top form. She didn't expect anything to go bad. "Cake walk," Jack had explained apologetically to her in an undertone. "Sorry for making you get out of bed." He was sorry enough that he didn't even follow that up with a lewd suggestion about Martha in bed.
The trip to the Brix landing site took about twenty minutes, almost enough time for her to fall back asleep even in the bumpy jeep. She emerged when the jeep arrived at the outer perimeter they'd established around the projected landing site, and she lost her breath at the sudden cold. The temperature had dropped sharply in the night, from brisk to below freezing, with a thick, cold fog blanketing the grounds. Was that a side-effect of the ship's landing? Was it just January?
She shivered inside her coat, and took her bag.
"I'll handle it," Jack said as she neared where he waited with Fielding, her mum, and Mr Weeds. "We'll take a small group, read them the riot act, and send them on their way."
Mr Weeds didn't like the sound of this. "If the Brix come to Earth so often, why can't we give them a stronger warning to stay away next time? This is a waste of resources to send out all these personnel for joyriders."
"What would you suggest?"
"Shoot them. Let them know Earth is a threat, not a holiday location."
"If we shoot them, their parents are going to bring all their uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents, and they're going to kick our arses. This is easier." Jack finished making adjustments to the scanner in his hand. "Let's go."
Martha joined him. Jack lost his smile. "Martha, can you stay here?"
"'Cake walk,'" she said. "Also, I've met about as many aliens as you have, and that's saying something."
"Humour me?"
"Worried Gold Team is too far in the lead?"
Were they on Jack's turf, had Martha not been stewing all evening over her mother's words, he probably would have won the staring contest. He dropped. "Do me the favour of standing behind me?"
She considered arguing with him. "Fine."
The Brix vessel landed roughly, shaking the ground they stood on. Jack's hand automatically went to her arm to steady her. The ship's bulk disturbed the fog, casting eerie clouds in relief against the bright lights from the UNIT vehicles and the dull lights of the Brix hull.
The advance team fell in around them as Jack led the way, his "Welcome to Earth, are you gorgeous?" smile plastered on his face. Martha moved in his wake. Beside her, Ianto glanced over Perry's shoulder at the readings he took. No radiation levels above normal, no biohazards appeared on her own instruments. Just a typical ...
Jack's body blocked most of the force of the explosion. Unfortunately, that force blew him solidly into Martha.
***
Francine didn't scream, and didn't shout, and didn't demand someone do something. Cold fear moved into her, but it made her calm. Losing her head now would do no good.
Beside her, Colonel Fielding shouted orders to his men. These UNIT soldiers were well-trained for this sort of thing, she observed. One alien invasion was like another to them: a surreal thought, but something she'd been around enough to see in action. Speaking of seeing, there was little she could see from here. Between the heavy fog, which was getting worse, and the darkness, Francine could only make out shapes against the fires that were clearly burning nearby.
Martha was in there somewhere, but this was her job, and she was trained for this, and Francine was not going to treat her like a child and assume she couldn't handle it.
She'd try.
***
There was too much smoke, too much noise. Ianto's brain sluggishly fought for consciousness. He'd been thrown roughly to the ground, but a quick survey of his limbs accounted for them all, and no major injuries he could establish. He rolled to his feet, scanning around himself to assess the situation. Bodies lay everywhere, though thankfully most of them were moving. Non-deadly, then, except ...
A large metal spike, twisted and bent, ran through Jack's neck. His eyes looked up, sightless. Shouting for a medic was pointless. His brain woke up more. Martha was their medic, and had been with them. Jack's body was laying haphazardly over hers.
Arms sore, he rolled Jack off Martha. As a quick afterthought, and queasy for it, he took hold of the metal in Jack's neck. He pulled it free with a sickening sound and a fresh gush of blood. The miracle that brought Jack back might work faster with less in the way.
"Martha?"
"Ugh."
"Stay down, I'll check the area."
The others slowly made it to their feet, as Ianto heard more UNIT soldiers move in the fog towards their position. Jack wasn't the only injury. Martha crawled to her knees and began assessing the woman beside her, who'd suffered a large gash to her leg from shrapnel.
The aliens were nowhere to be seen in the darkness. That was not reassuring, not with the bulk of their ship looming and blinking in the fog.
"Over here," he said in a low voice that carried. "We've got wounded." Boots hurried to their position.
"Perry?"
Perry crouched over his instrument, his face lit up by the display. "Uh oh."
"Uh oh what?"
"Run. Now."
Ianto didn't stop to ask questions. It hurt to leave Jack's body behind, but he scooped the woman Martha was attending to up in one painful -- had he twisted his back? -- motion as Perry grabbed Martha's arm. The soldiers who'd heard Perry immediately turned tail. The others boiled around in sharp confusion.
The second explosion threw them all back to the ground.
As Ianto lay there dazed, he heard more footsteps. He swung his head around to see large, billowy forms moving towards their position. Not the Brix. Someone else. There was a sharp smell, like cedar chips. He covered his mouth and nose, but had already breathed in the gas.
The shapes changed, became larger. Beside him, Perry's face contorted into something grotesque. Ianto fell back away from him, horrified, the woman in his arms rolling away, her body shifting into something snakelike and awful. Hallucinogen, his brain provided.
"Martha, the gas, run," he gasped, and could not watch as what looked like a decayed and rotting beast shambled away.
Gunshots peppered out into the dark, and he saw purple trails behind them, fading into green. Ianto closed his eyes. His ears had trouble knowing which way was which, including up and down. Perry had been beside him. He reached out a hand, found a warm arm, and eyes squeezed tightly shut, he dragged the two of them into the darkness, away from the sounds of gunfire.
The sounds were everywhere, echoing and ricocheting. He and Perry stumbled against each other, unable to see. They needed to get back, needed to get away from the smell and the noise, needed to find the team and regroup.
Jack was back there, dead. Inside Ianto's fevered brain, he pictured Jack's corpse rising up, dripping and oozing, dead eyes latched on his. "Come with me," fell out of his mouth, along with green-black bile in great gobs. Ianto screamed.
"This way," came the awful voice, but it was Perry in his ear, his own face and mouth covered by his shirt. His specs were lost somewhere in the fog behind them, and he looked even younger without them. The only light was Perry's torch, carried in a shaking hand.
Ianto's feet moved without his consent, trudging through bracken, until the pair of them fell in a heap somewhere cold and wet. Shivers moved through his body, but his head was clearing. In the distance, he heard another explosion, and then screams.
"You all right?" Perry asked, teeth chattering from the cold. His jacket was torn in half.
"Yeah. You?"
"Yeah. What was that?"
Ianto had trouble thinking. "Hallucinogenic gas, I think. Possibly poisonous. We'll know soon enough, eh?"
Perry's brittle fear was naked on his face.
"We'll be fine," Ianto said, as reassuringly as he could. "We'll circle back 'round and rejoin the others. Stay far away from that stuff."
He got his bearings. They'd stumbled into a small copse, overgrown with weeds, dead and brown now in the winter. It was shelter from the wind, and nothing more. He touched his ear, but static greeted him. "Check your comm." Perry shook his head as he was greeted with the same.
Ianto tried his mobile. Whatever was blocking their signal stopped that as well. "Dammit."
The gunshots grew closer. Ianto took his weapon from its holster. Perry grabbed his, and his face fell. "Mine's loaded with Simunitions."
Ianto had a single clip of real bullets for his own handgun. He wondered how many of those still out there were similarly unprepared.
***
Lois had stood back when the initial contact was made, and been spared the first two explosions. She stood further back as the soldiers swarmed past, intent on recovery, rescue, and perhaps repelling an invasion.
The other Torchwood agents were nowhere to be seen in the confusion. For a brief, mad moment, she wondered if they'd all been killed. One fell swoop, no cleanup and no blame attached, she could have Gwen in custody within twenty-four hours. But the Captain would reanimate, and she'd still have to deal with him.
She hoped they weren't dead.
Dr Jones stumbled out of the fog, clutching her mouth and nose. Lois caught a whiff of cedar, pungent in her own nose. Then her paralysis broke and she hurried to Martha's side, quickly joined by Mrs Jones.
"Stay back," said Martha, waving them away. "The aliens released some sort of gas. The others are back there."
Shouts and turmoil surrounded them. Lois's head went foggy as Johnson approached her from nowhere.
"You," said Johnson, her eyes wide and angry. "You did this."
Lois took a step back. "You've been exposed to an alien toxin. Agent Johnson, stand down."
"You want us all gone!" Johnson advanced on her. She had her gun, was fumbling with it. "You're trying to kill us."
"No-one is trying to kill anyone," Lois said. She gestured to Martha's mother to help her daughter move away from the danger. Already, Martha seemed more alert. Perhaps the gas had a short half-life in the body. Johnson would come down any second from her own hallucinations.
Right?
A third explosion went off. There were more screams, and the smell of the gas grew. Martha and her mother had vanished into the fog, bodies of crazy things moved in the darkness around her, and Johnson stalked her like a giant cat.
Lois broke and ran for cover.
***
Jack gasped back to life, flailing for contact. Everything was dark, everything was loud, everything stank of rotted woodchips. Panic set in, but he wasn't under the ground, wasn't chained up.
He rolled to his side and scanned the area, thinking back. What had happened before he'd died this time?
Aliens. Brix? Yeah, a Brix ship. Well, probably Brix. Come to think of it, Brix ships were pieced together from other species' ships, so maybe that ID wasn't as clear as he'd considered.
Around him, he heard shouts, but couldn't make any sense of them. His head was fogging. That smell. That was Mantea, oh yes. He'd spent some good times partying on Mantea Prime back in the bad old days. Manteans considered certain oxygen-sensitive chemicals a delicacy, which never worked out well when they brought their snacks along into an oxygen-rich atmosphere. And Manteans flew ships the Brix sometimes bought or stole.
Jack didn't bother covering his face. He lay back and breathed in deeply. His metabolism would burn off the high faster than fighting it would. But the others ...
"Ianto?"
His head felt like it was a million miles wide as he turned to look, but Ianto wasn't close by. He'd been there a minute ago, or however long, and he usually insisted on being with Jack when Jack woke up. Crazy little rituals, that man, thinking to ensure Jack came back just by holding him, not understanding about the vortex or maybe not caring. Well, caring, certainly.
Jack smiled goofily. Then he frowned. No Ianto.
No others, either. Had Gwen been there? No. Gwen was back home. He ought to call her and wax poetic about the sex they were never going to have.
He touched his ear and was greeted with static, and at that same time, his head cleared. Buzz gone. Just as well.
Jack sat up. Forms moved around him. Manteans had already walked by, and humans were approaching.
"Hey, guys," said Jack, rising to his feet. "What's the situation?"
The closest UNIT soldier -- love those berets, okay, still a little high -- raised his rifle. "I've found one of the aliens, sir."
"Good," said Jack, right before a different UNIT guy, a Major who wasn't part of the training exercise, stepped into view.
The Major said, "You know what to do."
Jack had time to open his mouth before the soldier shot him dead.
***
Johnson's head swam, but as she chased after the traitor, she began to see things in sharper focus despite the fog. She was running through bracken. She was chasing ...
Johnson stopped. She was chasing Lois, when there were alien Legos to capture. No, Bricks. Or something. She shook her head, then placed a palm to her forehead.
"Sorry," she called out, but Lois's footsteps retreated from her.
There were shots fired from close by. Johnson ducked and went to a crouch, her own gun drawn. "Cease fire! Repeat, cease fire!"
"Stand down!" came the shout, a woman she didn't know, and it was followed by another round of shots.
Footsteps approached. "Cease fire! Friendlies here! We're with Torchwood!" Perhaps that wasn't the wisest thing to admit, but anything would do to keep herself from being shot.
"On your feet," came a voice from close by. Johnson held up her hands and rose slowly.
"Thank you for not shooting. What's the situation?"
"We've found one, ma'am," said the soldier, removing Johnson's gun.
"Bring her."
Johnson's arms were dragged behind her. "What's going on? Where are the aliens?"
"You are, miss," said the soldier, and her wrists were ziptied together expertly.
***
"Get down," Ianto said, gesturing to Perry. "There's live fire."
Footsteps crackled through the branches and leaves close by. Ianto readied himself. It could be the aliens, it could be a drugged UNIT soldier.
"Halt!" he said, bringing his gun up.
"Don't shoot!"
"Lois!" said Perry, scrambling to his feet. "Don't shoot her!"
"I'm not." Ianto lowered his gun. "We were about to double back to your position. What's the status?"
Lois let out a hysterical laugh. "You mean, other than Johnson trying to kill me? They're mad out there." There was a stutter of gunfire beyond them. Ianto pushed her roughly behind him into the shelter of the copse and turned around to face her.
"It's an hallucinogen of some sort. We both had a face full. Did you see Martha?"
She nodded. "I think she got out."
"All right." Ianto took a moment to think. "We need to get back to the base. We've only got one gun, and everyone outside is currently insane."
Perry sat back on his heels again. "Also, there are real aliens running around who might be bent on taking over the Earth."
"Typical day, then, for us." That pulled a tight smile from them both. "Right, we'll move together. I'll go in the lead. Lois, you stay between us. Perry, take whatever readings you can whilst we move. We can use ... "
There was another blast of gunfire from outside. Lois jumped, falling closer to Perry. Ianto didn't move at all. The ice running through his right side was enough to hold him stuck in place.
For a moment, everything went very quiet and still, the cold was just cold, could have just been a sudden drip of icy water from a rime-encrusted tree limb. Then the pain started, and suddenly his knees didn't work.
***
Chapter Four