Sleeping Dragons 03.06
SLEEPING DRAGONS
Episode 03 - Smiths & Joneses
by Soledad
Author’s notes: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the secondary index page.
Warning: gratutious technobabble.
CHAPTER 06
“I want the murder victim to be brought to the Hub,” Jack told Detective Swanson as they were climbing into the SUV, followed by Martha. “If an alien is involved, the case is ours.”
“And if Jones personally is involved, it’s ours,” Swanson riposted, not backing off an inch.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Why would Ianto murder someone he doesn’t even know?”
“We don’t know that,” Swanson pointed out. “We still haven’t got an ID on the victim, so we cannot refuse the possibility out of hand that we are dealing with a regular murder case. As for the why… don’t take it personally, Captain, but in my opinion not a single one of you is completely sane. You won’t be able to work for Torchwood and do the things you’re doing if you were.”
“There is that,” Jack admitted ruefully.
“Besides,” Swanson continued, “we can hardly bring any dead bodies to your base for investigation while said base is under lockdown because of a possible alien infiltration. So let’s see what’s going on there before we get all territorial and start fighting over the case, shall we?”
“She’s right, Jack,” Martha said gently. “Priorities, remember?”
Jack nodded reluctantly. His instincts were screaming at him to throw his weight around and take over the murder investigation, to clear Ianto from the slightest shadow of suspicion, but right now he had more urgent things to do. The Hub was his top priority, especially as Ianto was out of the equation. They needed to know what was going on.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They found the invisible lift off-line, which was not really surprising. The lockdown wouldn’t be of much use with a direct way in and out of the Hub, after all. The same was true for the tourist office, but at least there they had an emergency back door now, thanks to Ianto’s thoroughness and Tosh’s technical ingenuity.
“There are only three people on this planet - or outside of it, for that matter - whom the system would let in during a lockdown,” Jack explained, laying his flat hand on the surface of what appeared to be some small electronic an panel; a dysfunctional one. “Tosh, Ianto and me.”
The panel came alive, scanning his palm, the digital image of which appeared on the screen in a multitude of shockingly bright yellow pixels, and a flat electronic voice said, “Handprint identification positive: Captain Jack Harkness, Command Level, Number Three. Please prepare for retina identification scan.”
Jack stepped closer to the panel, enduring the unknown sort of beam scanning his eye with a slight grimace.
“Retina identification positive: Captain Jack Harkness, Command Level, Number Three,” said the artificial voice. “Please give password code for voiceprint identification.”
“Captain Jack Harkness; identification code BOE-53-slash-one-eight-nine-seven-slash-Cymru-blue,” Jack said in a clipped tone.
There was a short pause; then the computer voice announced emotionlessly, “Voiceprint identification positive: Captain Jack Harkness, Command Level, Number Three. You may enter Security area Oh-One. Limited intercom use within the base will be provided.”
At the same time, the sealed door of the tourist office swung open noiselessly. Swanson looked into the darkness behind in suspicion.
“What’s the meaning of all the technobabble?” she asked.
“It means we can go as far as the tourist office and have CCTV and comm access within the Hub,” Jack explained. “That will help us to find out what the actual emergency is and why they found it necessary to put the base under lockdown.”
“You mean we can’t even enter the Hub itself?” Swanson clarified.
Jack shook his head. “No. For that, we’d need either Tosh or Ianto… well, Tosh, in this case. The system would only lift the lockdown before it has run its twenty-four-hour-cycle if two of us with common level clearance order it, both undergoing a triple identification check.”
“That’s grossly paranoid,” commented Swanson.
Jack shrugged. “Perhaps. But we’ve made really bad experiences in the past; this, hopefully, will help us to avoid further such crisises.”
He walked into the harmless-looking tourist office, which had definitely gained a pleasant feminine touch since first Emma and then Beth had taken it over, and sat down behind the reception desk. The big, outdated computer monitor - not the usual flat screen from the Hub but a real monstrosity from the 1990s - came alive, the words TORCHWOOD LOCKDOWN flashing across the screen.
A screen that clearly was capable of tricks it shouldn’t be, because when Jack pressed both his thumbs to if, the lockdown announcement vanished from it, replaced by the acknowledgement of his identity: ACCESS PROVIDED: CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS.
“Now we are making some headway,” Jack muttered, hitting some keys on the seemingly aged keyboard.
The image onscreen changed again, this time showing the CCTV feed from the main Hub. In the right upper corner the symbol of a loudspeaker appeared, and Jack nodded in satisfaction.
“Sally, this is Jack,” he said. “What happened?”
To his surprise, it was Lloyd’s voice that answered.
“Captain, this is Lloyd. You won’t reach them via the comm system; they’re down in the sub-basements.”
“Why?” Jack asked with a frown.
“I have no idea,” Lloyd confessed. “I was working in the DNA-lab when I got sealed in. Sally said something about a possible alien intrusion before the connection broke, but I could not discover any lifesigns from here. Of course, my scanner doesn’t have a very long range; it’s supposed to work inside the lab, as you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jack sighed.
Swanson looked at him impatiently. “So, what are you gonna do about it?”
“Nothing,” Jack replied grimly. “I can’t risk calling Tosh in to lift the lockdown before communication with Sally and Andy is re-established and I can be sure that it’s safe”
“So we just wait here?” Swanson demanded.
“You don’t have to stay here,” Jack said. “All we can do is to wait, and Martha and I can do that on our own. There’s no reason to waste your time; I’m sure you’ve got better things to do.”
Swanson gnawed her lower lip in frustration for a moment or two; then she nodded reluctantly. As much as she hated to admit, Jack was right. She needed to deal with the paperwork concerning the newest murder case - not to mention all the older cases piling depressingly on her desk - and the sooner she got that out of her hair the better it would be for her.
“All right,” she said. “But if there’s any news…”
“…I’ll call you,” Jack finished for her.
With that promise, Swanson left, and Jack sat down behind the counter and prepared himself for a long, boring wait. He hated being reduced to the role of a watcher, but at the moment there was nothing he could do about it. At least he had Martha as company.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In the meantime, Sally and Andy had reached Sublevel Two, where random pieces of alien tech were waiting to be categorized, neutralized if necessary, and put away in the Physical Archives that filled many more, deeper levels of the sub-basement. They had found nothing suspicious on Sublevel One, where the cells were located - currently mostly empty, save for a few Weevils.
Even the Weevils had been relatively calm. Janet, their long-time resident, had growled at them, as she always did when anyone but Owen would approach her cell, but that had been all.
“I wonder where they came from,” Andy commented as they were descending the spiral staircase to the next level. “I mean, I know they’ve come through the Rift, but they must have a home planet somewhere.”
“Or somewhen,” Sally replied absently, her eyes glued to the lifesign detector. “Mark Lynch, that insane real estate bloke with the Weevil Fight Club, believed that they were actually humans - or rather what humans would become in the far future.”
“Could that be true?” Andy asked with a frown. The thought was not a pleasant one.
Sally shook her head. “Nah; according to Owen and Lloyd they’re basically reptiles, and their body chemistry clearly shows that they’ve evolved in a completely different environment. Probably on a world with a very distant or dying sun, with lots of sulphur and ammoniac in the atmosphere. That’s why they prefer the sewers, Lloyd says; it’d dark down there, and it stinks.”
Andy grinned. As funny as it sounded, it was probably true. Lloyd knew her stuff, and while she didn’t find it beneath her dignity to phrase her thoughts so that people without a PhD could also understand, she was right, most of the time.
“Any lifesigns yet?” he asked. Sally shook her head again.
“Nope. But I can still get that signal, periodically. It goes on every eight seconds for six second. Then it paused, and in eight seconds it goes on again.”
“Some kind of distress call?” Andy guessed.
“If it is, it’s none I’ve ever heard of,” Sally answered. “The frequency is an unusual one, and so is the pattern; neither of them is in our database.”
“Can’t you triangulate it?” Andy asked.
“No; too much interference, and the walls down here are too thick,” Sally adjusted the setting of her handheld scanner to get a clearer direction. “We’ll have to follow the signal and see where it takes us.”
“Let’s hope it isn’t a trap,” Andy muttered.
“That’s what you have the big gun for,” Sally replied with a shrug.
They reached Sublevel Two and turned to the left, where Trevor’s secondary lab was situated. It wasn’t actually a lab in the strictest sense of the word; rather a storeroom, in which Torchwood’s three’s Number Two geek kept such pieces of alien tech that he intended to take a closer look at some indefinite later time but hadn’t had the chance to actually do so yet.
Unlike the main lab, in which he spent most of his time - when he wasn’t out Weevil hunting - this lab was cluttered with an eclectic collection of stuff, in no particular order.
At least none that Andy could have recognized at first sight.
“Strange,” he muttered. “I always thought Trevor would be nearly as anal retentive as Ianto.”
“Oh, he is; in the lab in which he actually works,” replied Sally. “The difference is that Ianto is organized by nature, while in Trevor’s case it’s mostly Torchwood One conditioning. Cluttering one’s workplace was apparently a no-go at Headquarters.”
“While making a complete mess in other, insignificant storerooms was no problem at all?” Andy eyed the chaos warily.
Sally nodded. “Which is rotten luck for us, because the dratted signal comes directly from that corner over there.”
“The one behind those big, ugly metallic spider… things?” Andy asked, knowing that he’d be the one expected to climb over said big, ugly metallic spider things and look for the possible source of the signal. Especially as Sally was wearing a pencil shirt today - completely unsuited to crawl over any unorganized heap of alien junk.
Being a gentleman did have its disadvantages.
On the other hand, Sally in a tight pencil skirt was a sight well worth a little climbing.
His mind made up, Andy pushed his sonic rifle - manufactured by Torchwood One after Toshiko’s plans and retrieved after the Battle of Canary Wharf - in Sally’s hand.
“Do me a favour: should any of those spiders as much as twitch, shoot ‘em to pieces, all right?”
Sally laughed. “They’re not alive, you know.”
“Perhaps not,” Andy allowed. “But with alien tech, you can never know what would trigger ‘em - or what are they gonna do, once triggered.”
“That’s true,” Sally aimed the rifle at the spiders that were of the size of those modern, round hoovers that could roam a flat on their own, getting around corners and stuff. Jack called them maintenance drones, for the lack of better understanding of their possible function. “Well, what are you waiting for? We haven’t got all day.”
They actually had, as it took the lockdown twenty-four hours to run its cycle, but she would have preferred to end it sooner, if she could.
“For the panic to lessen enough so that my legs would stop trembling,” Andy replied honestly.
He had learned early on in their relationship that playing the macho would not impress her at all. Honesty, on the other hand, usually did.
“Go on,” she encountered him, grinning. “I’ll change your nappies later.”
Andy forcibly suppressed all inappropriate mental images his brain chose to supply based on that promise - and there were quite a few of those - before he would carefully meander through the big heap of alien junk.
No, not junk, he corrected himself. The stuff that ended up here had already gone through the first level of selection, so it had to have at least some potential usefulness. Personally, he couldn’t imagine what use, for example, the artefact could be that looked like two halves of a brown football (the round kind used by soccer, not the egg-shaped US-version) with a translucent sphere pulsating emerald light sandwiched between them. But he wasn’t one of the geeks, so his ignorance was understandable.
As he passed by, the sphere began to spin, but it stopped as soon as she got four steps or so away from it. He ignored it, just like what Jack had called a Hoix signal beacon - translucent turquoise sphere with a silver antenna on top, resting on folded metallic legs. As Andy came closer to it, the legs slowly unfolded, lifting the sphere to eye level, and it began to emanate a soft pulsing turquoise light, but that was all it could do. According to Trevor, the only parts of the thing that still functioned were the proximity sensors. Sure enough, as soon as he got three steps away from it, the thing folded its telescopic legs and practically “sat down”, like a hen on its net.
Andy grinned - some of this alien stuff was downright funny - and walked around some particularly big piece of junk… and that was when he saw it. Whatever it was. A roughly rectangular box, looking like some kind of sensor grid right out of Star Trek. A dull grey piece of metal, charred by electronic fire.
And within the grid, something was blinking. It blinked steadily for eight seconds. Then it paused for six seconds. Then the cycle began anew, just as Sally had described the pattern of the unknown signal.
“I think I’ve found it,” he called to her, over the heaps of junk. “It’s some metal box, with a blinking… thing inside. Seems harmless enough; unless it’s a bomb, of course.”
Which, knowing Torchwood’s record with alien encounters, wouldn’t be the first time - or the last one. They were both aware of that fact.
“I hope it’s not,” Sally replied seriously. “The vaults are strong enough to contain an explosion, but we aren’t.”
“So, what are we gonna do?” Andy asked. “Shall I take it out of here and put it into the Secure Archives, or is there a chance that it would go off if I moved it?”
“I don’t know,” Sally admitted. “I guess we better leave it alone. Does it have a temporary ID sticker on it?”
“Wait a minute… yep, there it is,” Andy rattled down the numbers and Sally typed them into her Torchwood-issue PDA. “Got it?”
“Yeah,” she said with deliberate slowness, “and it ain’t good, I’m afraid. Got away from that thing, but be careful. No sudden movements, and no rattling it.”
Andy felt his panic rise again. He was an ex-constable and a field agent, used to deal with living things, not wit possibly lethal tech.
Granted, said living things would sometimes shoot at him or try to eat him - Weevils and Hoix in particular, but he hadn’t forgotten the Nostrovite, either, that had thought him eligible for dinner - but that was something he could deal with. Spooky alien tech, on the other hand…
He carefully retracted his path through all the junk to where Sally was still staring at her PDA with an unhappy frown.
“What does it say?” he asked.
“According to the code, it’s part of Jenny’s navigation system,” she replied. “It used to be welded to the ship’s hull on the outside and generated a force field that would deflect micrometeorites, so that they would not damage the hull.”
Andy shook his head. “Believe me, whatever hit this piece of junk, it wasn’t a micrometeorite,” he said. “It looks rather like plasma burns to me. Besides, hasn’t Jenny’s ship been brought to the big hangar?”
Sally nodded. “It was. But Tosh and Trevor removed some damaged parts to study and to repair them if they can. This must be one of those parts, I reckon.”
“Why is it sending out a signal then?” Andy asked.
“There are two possible reasons for that, none of them good for us,” Sally answered grimly. “Come. I must contact Jack and ask for instructions. This requires a command-level decision, and with Ianto out of the equation for the time being…”
“You’ve put the Hub under lockdown,” Andy reminded her. “Which means: no phone calls in or out.”
“Theoretically, that is right,” she said. “But you forget that I used to be a communications tech at UNIT London. If we go back to the main Hub, I can access the security computer in the tourist office and send Jack a distress call. They’ll have realized by now that we’re under lockdown; he’ll fetch Tosh and lift it from the outside.”
“What about the thing over there, though?” Andy made a vague gesture in the direction of the still blinking grey box. “We just leave it back there?”
“That’s the safest thing we can do with it at the moment,” Sally replied. “The geeks can find a way to switch it off, I hope. Right now, we must see to get out of here.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jack and Martha had been waiting in the tourist office for almost an hour; Jack pacing up and down like a caged tiger and Martha consulting her PDA. At first they had tried to talk… that is, it had been mostly Martha, intent on easing Jack’s tension, but to no end. Jack was simply too worried to carry on a conversation. Worried about Ianto, worried about the possible reason for the lockdown, worried about the risks Sally and Andy were probably taking.
So, after a while she simply fell silent and ignored Jack’s pacing as well as she could, while mentally going over her to-do-list back in her lab at the local UNIT base. It was a long list; and the fact that she spent so much time at Torchwood didn’t help making it any shorter. She secretly admitted that she needed to set her priorities, and that they ought to be related to her actual work. She just didn’t know how to do it. Jack needed her, and in a manner, she needed Jack, too.
End of the World Survivors Club - that was what Jack had called them, the two of them and her family, and it was very true, in more levels that she would care to admit. Still, she needed to do something about her working schedule, and soon.
Her thoughts were interrupted when the security screen on the counter came alive. At the same time, Jack’s mobile phone went off.
“A distress call,” Jack said, checking the display.
“Meaning what?” Martha asked.
“Meaning that Sally needs me and Tosh to come in and lift the lockdown,” Jack explained. “If she could access the security system here, though, she must be back in the main Hub area. In which case…” he leaned over the counter and hit a key. “Sally, this is Jack. I’m in the tourist office. What’s going on down there?”
“We’ve got a Level Three emergency,” Sally informed him.
“Possibly dangerous alien tech uncontained within the base,” Jack interrupted for Martha. “What kind of tech are we dealing with, Sal?”
“I’m not sure,” Sally admitted. “Mainframe has spotted some sort of signal, coming from within the Hub, aiming generally to the outside. Frequency and pattern are a combination we haven’t come across before. So I’ve ordered an emergency lockdown while we tracked down the source, Andy and I.”
“Have you found it?” Jack asked.
“Yes, Captain. It comes from a piece of alien tech, currently in Trevor’s secondary lab on Sublevel Two. As far as I can tell, it’s some kind of signal beacon, but I can’t be sure. I’m not a scientist - not yet, anyway.”
The fact that she has been studying applied mathematics for the last three years was really not much help in the current situation.
“Are you sure it’s harmless?” Jack asked.
“I didn’t say it was harmless,” Sally replied sharply. “I said it’s possibly a signal beacon, but it can just as well be a bomb. And even if it is a signal beacon, the important question remains: who is it sending signals to and why.”
“Or whether they can receive the signals at all,” Andy’s voice added.
“Worst case scenario is: they can, and they are hostile,” Jack said sourly. “Which mean we need to find a way to switch it off. I’ll call Tosh in, so that we can get inside, and then we’ll see what we can do.”
“Captain,” there was obvious hesitation in Sally’s voice, "you may wish to take precautions concerning the girl, Jenny. She stays with Tosh and would want to come in with her.”
“So what?” Jack honestly didn’t see why that would be a problem.
“Sir, the alien beacon… bomb… whatever… It’s within a piece of tech removed from Jenny’s ship,” Sally told him bluntly. “That’s how it got into the Hub to begin with.”
“What?” Jack was so shocked he could barely trust his ears; and Sally wasn’t done yet.
“Captain, I know that we planned to organize spare parts for her ship from one of the London storehouses, but I think we should not. Not yet. If she’s an impostor, or has otherwise malevolent intentions, we should not enable her to leave the planet - or even the city - at will. In fact, putting her in one of the cells would be the safest things for us all.”
“You want me to put the Doctor’s daughter in a cell, next to a Weevil?” Jack was close to losing it.
“We have no proof that she really is whom she says she is; not until the DNA-test has run its cycle,” Sally pointed out. “And even if she is the Doctor’s daughter, she’s not the Doctor. Who, by the way, is not exactly a friend of Torchwood. So yes, I thing the only sensible thing would be to put her in a cell, until we can be sure about her - and until we figure out who the device removed from her ship is signalling and why. That’s what Ianto would do.”
“Because he hates the Doctor,” Jack muttered.
“He has his reasons; valid ones,” Sally answered coldly. “In case you haven’t noticed, you two and Tosh are probably the only ones here who don’t have issues with the guy. But that’s not why Ianto would put her in a cell. He may be a lot of things, but petty is not one of those things. He’d do it because it’s necessary. Were you not so blinded by the fact that she might be the Doctor’s daughter, you’d be the first to suggest it.”
Which was very true, although Jack hated to admit it. So he reluctantly called Tosh and asked her to come in and bring Jenny with her, for safety reasons, as he put it. Then he made a second round of calls, informing Trevor and Mickey that their trip to London had been cancelled due to an emergency, and asking them to come in as soon as possible. They grumbled, as he had expected them to do, but promised to hurry up.
Finally he called Swanson on a secure line, telling her about the discovery and about the doubts that had been voiced concerning Jenny.
“I see,” Swanson said thoughtfully. “What are you going to do about it?”
“There’s very little I can do, until our geeks provide us with some answers,” Jack admitted. “I’ll have to keep her contained in the Hub for a while.”
“The Weevils will be grateful for the company,” Swanson commented dryly. “But will you be able to put her in a cell at all? What little you’ve told me about her would suggest that she could beat up people twice her size with one hand bound to her back.”
“Oh, I don’t intend to fight her,” Jack replied. “I’m simply gonna order her into that cell. She’s indoctrinated to obey orders from a superior officer, and by the time she realized that she’s been tricked, she’ll be put away safely.”
There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the connection.
“You’re a ruthless man, Captain Harkness,” Swanson finally said.
“Kathy, you’ve no idea just how ruthless I truly am,” Jack returned grimly. “Do you want to come back when the lockdown has been lifted?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Swanson replied. “Right after I got in, a hone call came: Jones has vanished from the hospital.”
Jack nearly dropped the phone.
“What? How could that happen? He was unconscious and had two of our doctors watching him!”
“That’s what I’m going to figure out,” Swanson told him. “All I know it that Doctor Harper was called away to help treat some Weevil victim. When he got back, less than ten minutes later, Doctor Milligan was lying on the floor, knocked out, and Jones was gone.”
Chapter 07
Episode 03 - Smiths & Joneses
by Soledad
Author’s notes: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the secondary index page.
Warning: gratutious technobabble.
CHAPTER 06
“I want the murder victim to be brought to the Hub,” Jack told Detective Swanson as they were climbing into the SUV, followed by Martha. “If an alien is involved, the case is ours.”
“And if Jones personally is involved, it’s ours,” Swanson riposted, not backing off an inch.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Why would Ianto murder someone he doesn’t even know?”
“We don’t know that,” Swanson pointed out. “We still haven’t got an ID on the victim, so we cannot refuse the possibility out of hand that we are dealing with a regular murder case. As for the why… don’t take it personally, Captain, but in my opinion not a single one of you is completely sane. You won’t be able to work for Torchwood and do the things you’re doing if you were.”
“There is that,” Jack admitted ruefully.
“Besides,” Swanson continued, “we can hardly bring any dead bodies to your base for investigation while said base is under lockdown because of a possible alien infiltration. So let’s see what’s going on there before we get all territorial and start fighting over the case, shall we?”
“She’s right, Jack,” Martha said gently. “Priorities, remember?”
Jack nodded reluctantly. His instincts were screaming at him to throw his weight around and take over the murder investigation, to clear Ianto from the slightest shadow of suspicion, but right now he had more urgent things to do. The Hub was his top priority, especially as Ianto was out of the equation. They needed to know what was going on.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They found the invisible lift off-line, which was not really surprising. The lockdown wouldn’t be of much use with a direct way in and out of the Hub, after all. The same was true for the tourist office, but at least there they had an emergency back door now, thanks to Ianto’s thoroughness and Tosh’s technical ingenuity.
“There are only three people on this planet - or outside of it, for that matter - whom the system would let in during a lockdown,” Jack explained, laying his flat hand on the surface of what appeared to be some small electronic an panel; a dysfunctional one. “Tosh, Ianto and me.”
The panel came alive, scanning his palm, the digital image of which appeared on the screen in a multitude of shockingly bright yellow pixels, and a flat electronic voice said, “Handprint identification positive: Captain Jack Harkness, Command Level, Number Three. Please prepare for retina identification scan.”
Jack stepped closer to the panel, enduring the unknown sort of beam scanning his eye with a slight grimace.
“Retina identification positive: Captain Jack Harkness, Command Level, Number Three,” said the artificial voice. “Please give password code for voiceprint identification.”
“Captain Jack Harkness; identification code BOE-53-slash-one-eight-nine-seven-slash-Cymru-blue,” Jack said in a clipped tone.
There was a short pause; then the computer voice announced emotionlessly, “Voiceprint identification positive: Captain Jack Harkness, Command Level, Number Three. You may enter Security area Oh-One. Limited intercom use within the base will be provided.”
At the same time, the sealed door of the tourist office swung open noiselessly. Swanson looked into the darkness behind in suspicion.
“What’s the meaning of all the technobabble?” she asked.
“It means we can go as far as the tourist office and have CCTV and comm access within the Hub,” Jack explained. “That will help us to find out what the actual emergency is and why they found it necessary to put the base under lockdown.”
“You mean we can’t even enter the Hub itself?” Swanson clarified.
Jack shook his head. “No. For that, we’d need either Tosh or Ianto… well, Tosh, in this case. The system would only lift the lockdown before it has run its twenty-four-hour-cycle if two of us with common level clearance order it, both undergoing a triple identification check.”
“That’s grossly paranoid,” commented Swanson.
Jack shrugged. “Perhaps. But we’ve made really bad experiences in the past; this, hopefully, will help us to avoid further such crisises.”
He walked into the harmless-looking tourist office, which had definitely gained a pleasant feminine touch since first Emma and then Beth had taken it over, and sat down behind the reception desk. The big, outdated computer monitor - not the usual flat screen from the Hub but a real monstrosity from the 1990s - came alive, the words TORCHWOOD LOCKDOWN flashing across the screen.
A screen that clearly was capable of tricks it shouldn’t be, because when Jack pressed both his thumbs to if, the lockdown announcement vanished from it, replaced by the acknowledgement of his identity: ACCESS PROVIDED: CAPTAIN JACK HARKNESS.
“Now we are making some headway,” Jack muttered, hitting some keys on the seemingly aged keyboard.
The image onscreen changed again, this time showing the CCTV feed from the main Hub. In the right upper corner the symbol of a loudspeaker appeared, and Jack nodded in satisfaction.
“Sally, this is Jack,” he said. “What happened?”
To his surprise, it was Lloyd’s voice that answered.
“Captain, this is Lloyd. You won’t reach them via the comm system; they’re down in the sub-basements.”
“Why?” Jack asked with a frown.
“I have no idea,” Lloyd confessed. “I was working in the DNA-lab when I got sealed in. Sally said something about a possible alien intrusion before the connection broke, but I could not discover any lifesigns from here. Of course, my scanner doesn’t have a very long range; it’s supposed to work inside the lab, as you know.”
“Yeah, I know,” Jack sighed.
Swanson looked at him impatiently. “So, what are you gonna do about it?”
“Nothing,” Jack replied grimly. “I can’t risk calling Tosh in to lift the lockdown before communication with Sally and Andy is re-established and I can be sure that it’s safe”
“So we just wait here?” Swanson demanded.
“You don’t have to stay here,” Jack said. “All we can do is to wait, and Martha and I can do that on our own. There’s no reason to waste your time; I’m sure you’ve got better things to do.”
Swanson gnawed her lower lip in frustration for a moment or two; then she nodded reluctantly. As much as she hated to admit, Jack was right. She needed to deal with the paperwork concerning the newest murder case - not to mention all the older cases piling depressingly on her desk - and the sooner she got that out of her hair the better it would be for her.
“All right,” she said. “But if there’s any news…”
“…I’ll call you,” Jack finished for her.
With that promise, Swanson left, and Jack sat down behind the counter and prepared himself for a long, boring wait. He hated being reduced to the role of a watcher, but at the moment there was nothing he could do about it. At least he had Martha as company.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In the meantime, Sally and Andy had reached Sublevel Two, where random pieces of alien tech were waiting to be categorized, neutralized if necessary, and put away in the Physical Archives that filled many more, deeper levels of the sub-basement. They had found nothing suspicious on Sublevel One, where the cells were located - currently mostly empty, save for a few Weevils.
Even the Weevils had been relatively calm. Janet, their long-time resident, had growled at them, as she always did when anyone but Owen would approach her cell, but that had been all.
“I wonder where they came from,” Andy commented as they were descending the spiral staircase to the next level. “I mean, I know they’ve come through the Rift, but they must have a home planet somewhere.”
“Or somewhen,” Sally replied absently, her eyes glued to the lifesign detector. “Mark Lynch, that insane real estate bloke with the Weevil Fight Club, believed that they were actually humans - or rather what humans would become in the far future.”
“Could that be true?” Andy asked with a frown. The thought was not a pleasant one.
Sally shook her head. “Nah; according to Owen and Lloyd they’re basically reptiles, and their body chemistry clearly shows that they’ve evolved in a completely different environment. Probably on a world with a very distant or dying sun, with lots of sulphur and ammoniac in the atmosphere. That’s why they prefer the sewers, Lloyd says; it’d dark down there, and it stinks.”
Andy grinned. As funny as it sounded, it was probably true. Lloyd knew her stuff, and while she didn’t find it beneath her dignity to phrase her thoughts so that people without a PhD could also understand, she was right, most of the time.
“Any lifesigns yet?” he asked. Sally shook her head again.
“Nope. But I can still get that signal, periodically. It goes on every eight seconds for six second. Then it paused, and in eight seconds it goes on again.”
“Some kind of distress call?” Andy guessed.
“If it is, it’s none I’ve ever heard of,” Sally answered. “The frequency is an unusual one, and so is the pattern; neither of them is in our database.”
“Can’t you triangulate it?” Andy asked.
“No; too much interference, and the walls down here are too thick,” Sally adjusted the setting of her handheld scanner to get a clearer direction. “We’ll have to follow the signal and see where it takes us.”
“Let’s hope it isn’t a trap,” Andy muttered.
“That’s what you have the big gun for,” Sally replied with a shrug.
They reached Sublevel Two and turned to the left, where Trevor’s secondary lab was situated. It wasn’t actually a lab in the strictest sense of the word; rather a storeroom, in which Torchwood’s three’s Number Two geek kept such pieces of alien tech that he intended to take a closer look at some indefinite later time but hadn’t had the chance to actually do so yet.
Unlike the main lab, in which he spent most of his time - when he wasn’t out Weevil hunting - this lab was cluttered with an eclectic collection of stuff, in no particular order.
At least none that Andy could have recognized at first sight.
“Strange,” he muttered. “I always thought Trevor would be nearly as anal retentive as Ianto.”
“Oh, he is; in the lab in which he actually works,” replied Sally. “The difference is that Ianto is organized by nature, while in Trevor’s case it’s mostly Torchwood One conditioning. Cluttering one’s workplace was apparently a no-go at Headquarters.”
“While making a complete mess in other, insignificant storerooms was no problem at all?” Andy eyed the chaos warily.
Sally nodded. “Which is rotten luck for us, because the dratted signal comes directly from that corner over there.”
“The one behind those big, ugly metallic spider… things?” Andy asked, knowing that he’d be the one expected to climb over said big, ugly metallic spider things and look for the possible source of the signal. Especially as Sally was wearing a pencil shirt today - completely unsuited to crawl over any unorganized heap of alien junk.
Being a gentleman did have its disadvantages.
On the other hand, Sally in a tight pencil skirt was a sight well worth a little climbing.
His mind made up, Andy pushed his sonic rifle - manufactured by Torchwood One after Toshiko’s plans and retrieved after the Battle of Canary Wharf - in Sally’s hand.
“Do me a favour: should any of those spiders as much as twitch, shoot ‘em to pieces, all right?”
Sally laughed. “They’re not alive, you know.”
“Perhaps not,” Andy allowed. “But with alien tech, you can never know what would trigger ‘em - or what are they gonna do, once triggered.”
“That’s true,” Sally aimed the rifle at the spiders that were of the size of those modern, round hoovers that could roam a flat on their own, getting around corners and stuff. Jack called them maintenance drones, for the lack of better understanding of their possible function. “Well, what are you waiting for? We haven’t got all day.”
They actually had, as it took the lockdown twenty-four hours to run its cycle, but she would have preferred to end it sooner, if she could.
“For the panic to lessen enough so that my legs would stop trembling,” Andy replied honestly.
He had learned early on in their relationship that playing the macho would not impress her at all. Honesty, on the other hand, usually did.
“Go on,” she encountered him, grinning. “I’ll change your nappies later.”
Andy forcibly suppressed all inappropriate mental images his brain chose to supply based on that promise - and there were quite a few of those - before he would carefully meander through the big heap of alien junk.
No, not junk, he corrected himself. The stuff that ended up here had already gone through the first level of selection, so it had to have at least some potential usefulness. Personally, he couldn’t imagine what use, for example, the artefact could be that looked like two halves of a brown football (the round kind used by soccer, not the egg-shaped US-version) with a translucent sphere pulsating emerald light sandwiched between them. But he wasn’t one of the geeks, so his ignorance was understandable.
As he passed by, the sphere began to spin, but it stopped as soon as she got four steps or so away from it. He ignored it, just like what Jack had called a Hoix signal beacon - translucent turquoise sphere with a silver antenna on top, resting on folded metallic legs. As Andy came closer to it, the legs slowly unfolded, lifting the sphere to eye level, and it began to emanate a soft pulsing turquoise light, but that was all it could do. According to Trevor, the only parts of the thing that still functioned were the proximity sensors. Sure enough, as soon as he got three steps away from it, the thing folded its telescopic legs and practically “sat down”, like a hen on its net.
Andy grinned - some of this alien stuff was downright funny - and walked around some particularly big piece of junk… and that was when he saw it. Whatever it was. A roughly rectangular box, looking like some kind of sensor grid right out of Star Trek. A dull grey piece of metal, charred by electronic fire.
And within the grid, something was blinking. It blinked steadily for eight seconds. Then it paused for six seconds. Then the cycle began anew, just as Sally had described the pattern of the unknown signal.
“I think I’ve found it,” he called to her, over the heaps of junk. “It’s some metal box, with a blinking… thing inside. Seems harmless enough; unless it’s a bomb, of course.”
Which, knowing Torchwood’s record with alien encounters, wouldn’t be the first time - or the last one. They were both aware of that fact.
“I hope it’s not,” Sally replied seriously. “The vaults are strong enough to contain an explosion, but we aren’t.”
“So, what are we gonna do?” Andy asked. “Shall I take it out of here and put it into the Secure Archives, or is there a chance that it would go off if I moved it?”
“I don’t know,” Sally admitted. “I guess we better leave it alone. Does it have a temporary ID sticker on it?”
“Wait a minute… yep, there it is,” Andy rattled down the numbers and Sally typed them into her Torchwood-issue PDA. “Got it?”
“Yeah,” she said with deliberate slowness, “and it ain’t good, I’m afraid. Got away from that thing, but be careful. No sudden movements, and no rattling it.”
Andy felt his panic rise again. He was an ex-constable and a field agent, used to deal with living things, not wit possibly lethal tech.
Granted, said living things would sometimes shoot at him or try to eat him - Weevils and Hoix in particular, but he hadn’t forgotten the Nostrovite, either, that had thought him eligible for dinner - but that was something he could deal with. Spooky alien tech, on the other hand…
He carefully retracted his path through all the junk to where Sally was still staring at her PDA with an unhappy frown.
“What does it say?” he asked.
“According to the code, it’s part of Jenny’s navigation system,” she replied. “It used to be welded to the ship’s hull on the outside and generated a force field that would deflect micrometeorites, so that they would not damage the hull.”
Andy shook his head. “Believe me, whatever hit this piece of junk, it wasn’t a micrometeorite,” he said. “It looks rather like plasma burns to me. Besides, hasn’t Jenny’s ship been brought to the big hangar?”
Sally nodded. “It was. But Tosh and Trevor removed some damaged parts to study and to repair them if they can. This must be one of those parts, I reckon.”
“Why is it sending out a signal then?” Andy asked.
“There are two possible reasons for that, none of them good for us,” Sally answered grimly. “Come. I must contact Jack and ask for instructions. This requires a command-level decision, and with Ianto out of the equation for the time being…”
“You’ve put the Hub under lockdown,” Andy reminded her. “Which means: no phone calls in or out.”
“Theoretically, that is right,” she said. “But you forget that I used to be a communications tech at UNIT London. If we go back to the main Hub, I can access the security computer in the tourist office and send Jack a distress call. They’ll have realized by now that we’re under lockdown; he’ll fetch Tosh and lift it from the outside.”
“What about the thing over there, though?” Andy made a vague gesture in the direction of the still blinking grey box. “We just leave it back there?”
“That’s the safest thing we can do with it at the moment,” Sally replied. “The geeks can find a way to switch it off, I hope. Right now, we must see to get out of here.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jack and Martha had been waiting in the tourist office for almost an hour; Jack pacing up and down like a caged tiger and Martha consulting her PDA. At first they had tried to talk… that is, it had been mostly Martha, intent on easing Jack’s tension, but to no end. Jack was simply too worried to carry on a conversation. Worried about Ianto, worried about the possible reason for the lockdown, worried about the risks Sally and Andy were probably taking.
So, after a while she simply fell silent and ignored Jack’s pacing as well as she could, while mentally going over her to-do-list back in her lab at the local UNIT base. It was a long list; and the fact that she spent so much time at Torchwood didn’t help making it any shorter. She secretly admitted that she needed to set her priorities, and that they ought to be related to her actual work. She just didn’t know how to do it. Jack needed her, and in a manner, she needed Jack, too.
End of the World Survivors Club - that was what Jack had called them, the two of them and her family, and it was very true, in more levels that she would care to admit. Still, she needed to do something about her working schedule, and soon.
Her thoughts were interrupted when the security screen on the counter came alive. At the same time, Jack’s mobile phone went off.
“A distress call,” Jack said, checking the display.
“Meaning what?” Martha asked.
“Meaning that Sally needs me and Tosh to come in and lift the lockdown,” Jack explained. “If she could access the security system here, though, she must be back in the main Hub area. In which case…” he leaned over the counter and hit a key. “Sally, this is Jack. I’m in the tourist office. What’s going on down there?”
“We’ve got a Level Three emergency,” Sally informed him.
“Possibly dangerous alien tech uncontained within the base,” Jack interrupted for Martha. “What kind of tech are we dealing with, Sal?”
“I’m not sure,” Sally admitted. “Mainframe has spotted some sort of signal, coming from within the Hub, aiming generally to the outside. Frequency and pattern are a combination we haven’t come across before. So I’ve ordered an emergency lockdown while we tracked down the source, Andy and I.”
“Have you found it?” Jack asked.
“Yes, Captain. It comes from a piece of alien tech, currently in Trevor’s secondary lab on Sublevel Two. As far as I can tell, it’s some kind of signal beacon, but I can’t be sure. I’m not a scientist - not yet, anyway.”
The fact that she has been studying applied mathematics for the last three years was really not much help in the current situation.
“Are you sure it’s harmless?” Jack asked.
“I didn’t say it was harmless,” Sally replied sharply. “I said it’s possibly a signal beacon, but it can just as well be a bomb. And even if it is a signal beacon, the important question remains: who is it sending signals to and why.”
“Or whether they can receive the signals at all,” Andy’s voice added.
“Worst case scenario is: they can, and they are hostile,” Jack said sourly. “Which mean we need to find a way to switch it off. I’ll call Tosh in, so that we can get inside, and then we’ll see what we can do.”
“Captain,” there was obvious hesitation in Sally’s voice, "you may wish to take precautions concerning the girl, Jenny. She stays with Tosh and would want to come in with her.”
“So what?” Jack honestly didn’t see why that would be a problem.
“Sir, the alien beacon… bomb… whatever… It’s within a piece of tech removed from Jenny’s ship,” Sally told him bluntly. “That’s how it got into the Hub to begin with.”
“What?” Jack was so shocked he could barely trust his ears; and Sally wasn’t done yet.
“Captain, I know that we planned to organize spare parts for her ship from one of the London storehouses, but I think we should not. Not yet. If she’s an impostor, or has otherwise malevolent intentions, we should not enable her to leave the planet - or even the city - at will. In fact, putting her in one of the cells would be the safest things for us all.”
“You want me to put the Doctor’s daughter in a cell, next to a Weevil?” Jack was close to losing it.
“We have no proof that she really is whom she says she is; not until the DNA-test has run its cycle,” Sally pointed out. “And even if she is the Doctor’s daughter, she’s not the Doctor. Who, by the way, is not exactly a friend of Torchwood. So yes, I thing the only sensible thing would be to put her in a cell, until we can be sure about her - and until we figure out who the device removed from her ship is signalling and why. That’s what Ianto would do.”
“Because he hates the Doctor,” Jack muttered.
“He has his reasons; valid ones,” Sally answered coldly. “In case you haven’t noticed, you two and Tosh are probably the only ones here who don’t have issues with the guy. But that’s not why Ianto would put her in a cell. He may be a lot of things, but petty is not one of those things. He’d do it because it’s necessary. Were you not so blinded by the fact that she might be the Doctor’s daughter, you’d be the first to suggest it.”
Which was very true, although Jack hated to admit it. So he reluctantly called Tosh and asked her to come in and bring Jenny with her, for safety reasons, as he put it. Then he made a second round of calls, informing Trevor and Mickey that their trip to London had been cancelled due to an emergency, and asking them to come in as soon as possible. They grumbled, as he had expected them to do, but promised to hurry up.
Finally he called Swanson on a secure line, telling her about the discovery and about the doubts that had been voiced concerning Jenny.
“I see,” Swanson said thoughtfully. “What are you going to do about it?”
“There’s very little I can do, until our geeks provide us with some answers,” Jack admitted. “I’ll have to keep her contained in the Hub for a while.”
“The Weevils will be grateful for the company,” Swanson commented dryly. “But will you be able to put her in a cell at all? What little you’ve told me about her would suggest that she could beat up people twice her size with one hand bound to her back.”
“Oh, I don’t intend to fight her,” Jack replied. “I’m simply gonna order her into that cell. She’s indoctrinated to obey orders from a superior officer, and by the time she realized that she’s been tricked, she’ll be put away safely.”
There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the connection.
“You’re a ruthless man, Captain Harkness,” Swanson finally said.
“Kathy, you’ve no idea just how ruthless I truly am,” Jack returned grimly. “Do you want to come back when the lockdown has been lifted?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” Swanson replied. “Right after I got in, a hone call came: Jones has vanished from the hospital.”
Jack nearly dropped the phone.
“What? How could that happen? He was unconscious and had two of our doctors watching him!”
“That’s what I’m going to figure out,” Swanson told him. “All I know it that Doctor Harper was called away to help treat some Weevil victim. When he got back, less than ten minutes later, Doctor Milligan was lying on the floor, knocked out, and Jones was gone.”
Chapter 07