The Torchwood - 4/10
Chapter 4
At first, bringing Isaac Bevan to the Archives was only meant to piss off Ianto. Jack knew he’d get angry sex that night. And angry sex with Ianto was fun. Then again, most sex with Ianto was fun. Just as Jack was following this train of thought by remembering the night with the honey and riding crop, Bevan interrupted him with another request for a signature.
“And if you’ll sign here, Captain, and initial at the bottom of the page, as well as where I’ve indicated at the end of subsection 367.3D-1, I’ll be able to upgrade your archival light bulbs to halogen. Next up I’ll need your signatures on the forms 79D, 25A, and 46G.”
“And what exactly am I supposed to be signing?” Jack asked. He was beginning to think that not letting Ianto come with them to the Archives had been a bad idea. Ianto knew what the forms were; Ianto usually just signed Jack’s name to whatever needed signing. Now Jack actually had to pay attention.
“Requisition for a new motor oil for the SUV, Torchwood Three’s monthly credit card allowances, and a letter stating that you received, reviewed, and agreed to abide by, the Torchwood Administrator’s Union Updated Handbook, respectively.”
“Wait, Torchwood has a union? We’re a secret organization, how can we have a union?” Jack asked incredulously.
“Torchwood was granted permission for an internal administrators union under Prime Minister Thatcher in acknowledgement of the accountants’ assistance in reducing budgetary expenditures by -“
“Yeah, ok, don’t care. But we only have one administrator here - Ianto Jones.”
“Yes Captain. But under the TAU, all Institute premises are required to provide TAU members with certain benefits which you will find listed on pages 13-17, as well as residual benefits including-“
“Right, ok, whatever. Give me the damn forms.” Jack quickly signed his name to the last document and sighed in relief as Bevan returned everything to his briefcase. Another successful review for Torchwood 3. Funny how they were never successful until Ianto joined them. Jack still had nightmares of the time Before Ianto (or BI, as he had come to call those years from his taking command until Ianto caught him in the warehouse), when Yvonne Hartman herself would appear for the review. The only reason the Hub was left in his command was because he flirted shamelessly with Hartman’s PA and always got her to ‘lose’ the paperwork.
Jack clapped his hands together happily and said, “Now then, who’s up for lunch? Ianto should be back by now. Wonder what he brought us!”
When Jack and Bevan finally reached the main Hub, they found Owen, Tosh, and Gwen gathered around Tosh’s workstation. Gwen was yelling at Owen about informing Jack that they’d lost contact with…And then she saw Jack and threw her hands up to cover her mouth.
The other two turned around slowly as Jack said, “Lost contact with whom?”
“Ianto, Jack. Mainframe keeps track of all of our mobiles. 30 minutes ago, Ianto’s mobile went offline. Not just turned off, but completely gone. She can’t find his signal anywhere,” Tosh explained quietly.
“Yeah, and the girls are worried. Right old mother hens they are. I say Ianto dropped it in the loo,” Owen replied caustically.
“That only happens to you, Owen,” Gwen said.
“And even if it did, Mainframe wouldn’t just lose it. She’d still be able to track the residual electrical signals until you flushed it down the drain,” Tosh said. She felt the sudden urge to stick her tongue out at the medic.
“Ok, have we tried CCTV? Surely if we look at the area where Mainframe last reported him, we’ll find him,” Jack said. He refused to be worried without cause. Ianto would just call him a patronizing SOB if he unleashed the team and their assorted weaponry without reason. Although, that would be another excuse for angry sex. Providing that Ianto wasn’t so angry to actually cut him off….That would just be cruel, and while Ianto was devious, he was never purposely cruel.
“I’ve got him coming out of China Gardens, Jack. CCTV shows him walking down St. Mary’s towards High Street,” Tosh said as she zoomed in to watch Ianto balancing several bags of assorted takeaways. “Ok, now he’s stopping outside an alley just before Wharton Street. Where’s he going?”
The team, Mr. Bevan included, watched as Ianto entered the alley. They continued watching. And continued. But nothing happened. Ianto never came out. They looked around at each other.
“Gwen,” Jack said slowly, “Get the SUV ready. Owen, you’re with us. We might need you. Tosh, stay on CCTV. Tell us if he comes out or if Mainframe picks up his phone again.”
“Right Jack,” Tosh replied, turning back to the screen to try and find another CCTV angle of the alley.
“Uh, Jack,” Gwen began, “What about Mr. Bevan?”
“Don’t worry about me Captain. Find your teammate. I’ll just go to the Conference room and begin collating the reports still awaiting your signature.” With a quick bow of his head, Mr. Bevan walked up the stairs. No one noticed as he slipped a small circular device from his pocket into one of Owen’s experimental plants currently residing on the top step.
After being apparently dismissed by Bevan, Gwen, Jack, and Owen hurried out to the SUV. Tosh continued to ring Ianto, hoping against hope that it was simply a technical glitch and that he’d pick up. She knew it wasn’t though. Ianto and Mainframe had an odd relationship - while Ianto had hidden Lisa in the bowels of the Hub, Mainframe had approved of his actions and helped keep the power fluctuations secret by diverting several relays. And wasn’t Tosh impressed that Ianto had somehow managed to befriend the computer!
When Jack, Gwen, and Owen arrived at the alley entrance, what they saw stopped all three dead in their tracks. Bags and cartons of Chinese, Thai, and Mexican take-aways were strewn across the dirty ground. Jack could see his usual order of Orange Chicken, along with Ianto’s Pad Siew mixed together, and watched as the sauces dripped together and headed slowly for the nearby drain. What scared him, though, was not the food, though he knew nothing would cause Ianto to simply throw their meals to the ground without making sure they wouldn’t spill. No, what scared him more than anything was the puddle of sticky, congealing blood next to the graffitied wall.
“Shit. Bollocks. Fuck. What’s he done now?” Owen asked. If Jack hadn’t known that Owen was merely covering up his own concerns, he would have lashed out at the medic. As it was, he was barely able to keep him own fright in check when he ordered Gwen and Owen to start scanning for any alien or rift residue.
“Jack? Are you picking anything up? Is Ianto there?” Tosh called through his earpiece.
“He’s not here Tosh. There’s no one here. There’s a small puddle of blood though. Owen’s going to take a sample,” Jack responded flatly. If there’s any god in this universe, don’t let the blood be his, he thought. Then he quashed those thoughts. Now was not the time for defeatism. Not was the time for the great and fearless captain to leap into the fray and inspire his troops. If he’d learned nothing else in his nearly 200 years of existence, it was how to act with the best of them.
Jack was just about to order Gwen to interview the shopowners when something familiar caught his attention. A smell….no, a taste, that’s it….Something he’d tasted before, something in the air….metallic….
“A transmit beam!” he shouted, startling Gwen and Owen so much that Owen, bending down to scoop up a blood sample, lost his footing and fell into the puddle.
“Yeah, thanks for that Jack,” he muttered.
“Can’t you smell it? Gwen, run a scan for Geritron particles in the air. Transmat beams always leave behind Geritron particles!”
As Gwen used her scanner to search for the elusive Geritron particles, Tosh’s voice suddenly blared in their ears. “Jack! You need to get back to Hub now! They’ve got Ianto!”
“Who does?! Tosh?! Tosh!” Jack shouted. There was nothing but static. “SUV Now!” All three teammates ran back to the SUV, cursing that they had to leave it behind at the corner of High Street to walk the pedestrian-friendly St. Mary’s.
When they reached the Hub and still couldn’t get in contact with Tosh, Jack, Gwen, and Owen entered through the Cog Door in full attack mode, completely prepared to defend their base. Their weapons at the ready and aiming for whichever intruder it was that cut off Tosh’s communications, they were surprised to see their friend sitting at her desk and typing frantically.
“Oh thank god, you’re here! Someone sent a message through, but something’s happened to our communications. Other than the message, we’re getting nothing in or out of the Hub. Mainframe’s being blocked, but I can’t figure out by what!” Tosh exclaimed. “Look at the screen, I’ll play the message again.” She pointed to the computer screen above her desk.
When Tosh hit the ‘play’ button, there was only static for the first five seconds. “Keep watching,” she whispered. Then they saw it. There, on screen in black and white, was a black-clad man stabbing Ianto. They watched in silent awe and fear as Ianto crumpled to the ground. When the two men disappeared in a flash of light, they could hear Jack muttering about bloody transmat beams. Then, the picture changed. Instead of the black and white footage, there was a color image of a beautiful blond woman wearing a very familiar ring on her left hand. When she lifted her face and looked into the screen, Jack gasped, “No. Oh no. No no no no no!”
“Jack?” Gwen began, “Isn’t that the late Prime Minister Saxon’s wife?”
The image of Lucy smiled a feral grin. “Hullo Captain! Remember me? I’m just borrowing this body for a while. Though I do have to say, dear sweet Lucy does keep her shape well, eh? Maybe I’ll keep her alive once I’m done with her.”
“No way! Absolutely no fucking way!” Jack shouted, banging his fist on Tosh’s workstation.
“You destroyed my paradise, Freak, and now I’m going to destroy yours. I have something here that belongs to you.” With that, Lucy/Master turned the camera around to show an image of Ianto and the Doctor’s cell. Jack’s mouth fell open, and Tosh, Gwen, and Owen swore. Even through the camera they could see that Ianto was ill. His normally expressive eyes were dull and bloodshot. He was clutching his left arm against his stomach, and he seemed to be leaning heavily against the Doctor. Meanwhile, the Doctor, apparently oblivious to the Master, was rubbing soothing circles on Ianto’s back while humming an old Gallifreyan lullaby. Or it could have been the chorus to ‘What Do You Do With a Drunken Sailor.” They couldn’t be entirely sure.
“My minion, ooooh I like minion! Listen Doctor! I have minions! Soon I’ll have millions of minions! Minions in millions!” Lucy/Master called from off-camera. “Anyway, my minion, love the minion, picked up this lump of trash in an alleyway. Decided to test a new poison on him. Very effective, eh?” Lucy/Master turned the camera back to her. “It was on the knife. Cagavian snake venom mixed with the juice from a Gregnatch bush. Deadly to humans.”
Lucy/Master leaned in to the camera, and Jack could see something lurking behind her eyes. “Now, I have what you want. You have something I want. I want you, Freak. You give yourself to me and I’ll free the human. I’ll call again in 24 hours. Oh, and by the way, don’t try tracking this. When I was at the end of the universe, I made friends with a few Ugorians. They’re letting me ‘borrow’ their ship in exchange for letting them keep Earth and all it’s water. Desperate desert people, the Ugorians! Like I said, this message is completely untraceable. And will self-destruct in 5 seconds… 4…. 3…. 2… 1… .BOOM!” Lucy/Master shouted.
The video ended with the hysterical sounds of Lucy crying, “Please Jack just listen to him! Please!”