The Torchwood - 5/10
For a few moments, Jack, Owen, Gwen, and Tosh just sat staring at the blank screen. Then Owen turned to Jack and said, “Right Captain Flash! I’m tired of your ex-es popping in. What’d you do to this one, huh?”
“So not the time, Owen,” Jack growled. “Tosh, do everything you can to trace that message.”
“But Jack, Mainframe’s locked out, remember? Nothing in, nothing out,” Tosh replied.
“Then find out what the hell is doing that and stop it!” Jack yelled, running his fingers through his hair frantically.
As Tosh turned towards her computer to try and find the cause of Mainframe’s troubles, Gwen spun around to face Jack angrily, “Right Jack. What the hell is Mrs. Saxon doing with Ianto? And who was that other man?”
“Yeah, fine. Tosh, keep working. Gwen, Owen, with me in the conference room; let me tell you a story about a year that never happened. Tosh, listen in on the Hub’s internal comms, ok?”
Tosh nodded, too busy working to do more than that to acknowledge the Captain. When Jack, Gwen, and Tosh entered the conference room, they stopped dead at the sight of Isaac Bevan studiously collating various colored forms.
“Ah. Isaac,” Jack stuttered. “Can I call you Isaac?” Isaac lifted his head inquiringly. “Listen, we’re having a bit of an emergency today. Why don’t you head out, huh? Torchwood’ll put you up in a hotel, of course.”
“Um Jack, Ianto’s the one who makes the reservations,” Gwen hissed.
“But Captain, you still have to sign the other requisition forms, and the new Archival database needs going over, and then there’s the yearly financial report that -“ Bevan stammered.
“Yeah, listen, I really don’t care. Tell the PM’s office I’ll be in touch.” Jack watched as Owen walked up behind Bevan and pulled something from his pocket.
“But Captain, standard operating procedures require that all forms be filled out correctly and completely prior to the Committee agent’s dismissal and so far you’ve only completed half of what the Committee sent over, and-“
“Ok, Committee Boy. Time for a nap.” With that, Owen jabbed a needle into Bevan’s arm.
“Owen!” Gwen shouted.
“Just a sedative mixed with a bit of Retcon, Gwen. Bevan here’ll go to sleep and wake up feeling like a million bucks. I vote for leaving outside an S&M club. It’s always the quiet ones, you know.”
“You keep a sedative in your pocket?” Gwen asked suspiciously.
“You should see what else I keep in my pocket,” Owen leered.
“Jack?” Tosh called over the internal comms, “Bevan’s got a cousin Nikki living with her son Jonah across town. We can drop him off with them. Tell them he worked all night and collapsed from exhaustion. It is tax season and all.”
“Great. Let’s leave him on the couch for now,” Jack said as he helped Owen carry Bevan down the steps.
“Ok, here goes. Get comfy, cause this is a bit of a story,” he said to the rest of the team once they were seated.
“So Ianto, what’s your favorite color?”
“Excuse me Doctor?” Ianto coughed.
“Just trying to be polite. Always best to be polite. Polite people don’t get killed,” the Doctor answered.
“Not to negate that statement, Sir, but you’re currently being held hostage by a dead man. You may have missed the polite train,” Ianto said, rolling his eyes.
The Doctor looked over at where Ianto was laying on one of the mattresses. He was concerned with the young man’s harsh breathing. “Took my jacket and my sonic screwdriver,” he muttered sotto voce. Could have gotten us out with the sonic screwdriver, he thought.
“And the non sequitors begin…” Ianto answered, his reply cut off by another coughing fit. As the Doctor helped him sit up to relieve the pressure on his lungs, he was surprised to see small flakes of blood on Ianto’s lips. Oh that’s not good, he thought.
As the Doctor began to stroke Ianto’s back, the other man looked up and said, “Doctor, while I appreciate the concern, I’d rather you come up with one of your fantastically well-thought out plans instead of rocking me like a child.”
“Fantastically well-thought out plan? If I’m not mistaken Mr. Jones, that was another bit of sarcasm. I’ll have you know that all my plans are fantastic, well-thought out or not!”
“How you managed to defeat the Cybermen and Daleks I’ll never know. You can’t even get us out of a bloody room!” With that, Ianto sagged against the Doctor, silently surprised that for a such a slender man, his shoulders were quite comfortable.
Before the Doctor had a chance to respond, the cell door opened, admitting the same three guards Ianto met when he first woke. As the smaller man approached the prisoners, the two larger men drew their weapons at the same time.
“Wakey wakey, Mr. Jones. Time for another injection,” he chuckled.
“Oh no! No injections! Not till you tell us what’s in there!” the Doctor cried, placing himself between Ianto and the man. “For all we know, it’s a sex hormone! I refuse to have sex under duress! Again!”
“Shut up!” the man said as he walked up to the Doctor. “It’s a composite drug. Won’t stop Mr. Jones from dying, but it slows the poison’s progression. Red had me create it. Now move, or the guards will shoot you and move you themselves!”
“It’s alright, Doctor,” Ianto rasped. “I think he’s telling the truth.”
As the Doctor watched the man come closer to Ianto, he noticed the telling lines around the man’s eyes, and a collar around his neck. “What’s she done to you?” he asked. “Why are you here?”
After he injected Ianto, the man looked briefly back at the other two guards to make sure they were out of earshot. “I was a UNIT scientist on the Valiant. I’m here because I sold my soul to the Devil, and he came to collect.” With that, the man looked sadly at Ianto. “I’m so sorry. If I could stop him, I would do…I have to go. Red keeps track of us with these.” He pointed to the collar, let out a deep sigh, and walked slowly back out the door.
“Well, that was informative,” the Doctor said, rolling his eyes and bouncing up to examine the door.
“Who’s Red, Doctor?” Ianto asked, closing his eyes again. Watching the Doctor bounce around reminded him of the time his father took his sailing on the Irish Sea. He was seasick for hours afterwards.
“Hmm? Oh, that’s Lucy. The guards hate her. She always wears a red dress because the Master likes the color on her. But if she hears the guards call her anything that, she kills them. Or rather, the Master kills them. Or has her kill them. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure how it works; probably just a psychic graft, but then the Master was always into big things, and a graft is sooo small time.”
As the Doctor proceeded to feel, sniff, and lick the door, Ianto decided the wisest course of action would be to ignore him and come up with his own plan. Any being, alien or otherwise, who licked things was someone, in Ianto’s estimation, that needed a childminder. No wonder he and Jack got along; they were both childish and had a mouth fetish. Ianto hoped that they hadn’t decided to indulge each other in that fetish; there were only so many images Ianto’s mind could take before he’d have to powerwash it clean.
Ianto tried to come up with an ingenious and fool-proof plan (thinking that with the Doctor and a telepathic dead man, the more fool-proof, the better), but his mind didn’t want to obey him. His plans kept getting more and more farfetched, until he finally forced himself to stop thinking when he began seriously considering the merits of simply seducing Lucy and killing her in her post-orgasmic haze. La petite morte indeed, he thought, sniggering to himself.
With his eyes closed, he heard the cell door open again. He was about to ask the Doctor what the guards wanted now, when a hand was suddenly clamped across his mouth. He quickly opened his eyes to see the tearful face of Lucy Saxon staring at him. She turned to the three guards behind her, and in an authoritative voice that would have made Churchill proud, ordered them to wait for her outside.
She turned back to Ianto and the Doctor moved slowly around to kneel next to him.
“Lucy?” the Doctor asked softly, “What’s going on?”
“Even Time Lords need sleep sometimes Doctor,” she replied. She grimaced as her attempt at lightheartedness fell flat. “It’s not often, but when it happens, it’s the only time I’m ever alone. It’s so quiet now Doctor, so peaceful. I just wanted to say how sorry I am for all this and -“
“Mrs. Saxon,” Ianto interrupted, “It’s not your fault.”
“Give me the ring, Lucy. Give me the Master’s ring and I’ll do everything I can to stop him,” the Doctor coaxed. He slowly inched towards Lucy, afraid of startling her.
She looked at him, tears pouring down her face. “I can’t, Doctor. I want to, but I can’t. I pulled it out of the pyre. It burned my hand. And now it won’t come off!” She turned her hand so that Ianto and the Doctor could see her palm. Both men grimaced, and Ianto had to force himself not to turn away. Where once her skin had been pale and soft, it was now covered in burn scars. The Doctor looked closely at her ring finger and sucked in a quick breath. The ring had burned into the skin, and the human body, ever resourceful, had attempted to heal itself by growing new skin around the ring. The only way to remove it would be to remove Lucy’s entire finger.
“Oh Lucy,” the Doctor tutted as he softly stroked the scars. “I’ll do everything I can to help you, ok? I promise. But you have to fight him, Lucy. You can’t let him win!”
“I’m sorry Doctor. I can’t stop him anymore. He knows everything I know, sees everything I see. When he wakes up, he’ll know I was here. He’ll make me beat myself as punishment again. I can’t help you.”
“There must be something you can do, Lucy,” Ianto pleaded. “Anything! You can’t let him get Jack! If he becomes immortal, there’ll be no stopping him.”
“I know, but I-“ Lucy’s voiced garbled for a moment and her hand shook in the Doctor’s grasp.
“Well, well, well,” came a colder version of Lucy’s voice. “I see my pretty toy has been playing house with our vistors. They’re so much fun when they’re domestic, aren’t they Doctor? You’ve had a fair share of pretty things yourself. Tell me, how did you keep them in line?”
“Leave her alone Master! She didn’t tell us anything!” the Doctor cried.
Lucy/Master pulled her hand from the Doctor’s. “Yes, Doctor I know. I’m a bit omnipresent at the moment, you know. Everything she does, blah blah blah. Can’t have her acting against me though.” Lucy/Master stood up and called in the guards. “The Freak has 20 hours left. What will he do? Will he choose the Tea-Boy over the world? Does he love you enough? Would you like a daisy? You can count the petals, ‘He loves me, he loves me not…’ Doesn’t matter though, ‘cause you’re gonna die anyway. Even the injections can’t keep you alive forever. Want to know how it’ll happen?”
Ianto looked Lucy/Master square in the eye, refusing to show his fear or acknowledge how weak he was already feeling.
“Oh, it’s gonna be fun to break you, Freak’s Pet. Listen closely.” Lucy/Mater bent low towards Ianto’s ear. “Your lungs are gonna fill with blood. It’s already started. But before you can drown in your own liquids, you’re gonna have a cascading organ failure.”
Lucy/Master stood again and backed away. “The scientists and I have a pool to see which organ will go first. I say the kidneys. They bet the liver, pancreas, and appendix. Ohhh, death by burst appendix! That’ll be fun to watch. Hope it’s the kidney’s though. If I win, I get to destroy Japan. If they win, I get to destroy Korea. I so liked burning Japan last time!” Lucy/Master practically skipped out the door, leaving the Doctor and Ianto alone.
Before the two could say anything to each other, Lucy/Mater popped his head back in.
“Oh, and just in case you were thinking of killing Lucy to kill me, the Doctor’s DNA is being used to grow me a new body. It’s currently the size of a ten-year-old. Few more hours and I can be rid of this,” he sneered, waving his hands Lucy’s obviously feminine parts. He jumped back and slammed the door shut.
“You know the one bad thing about this whole mess?” the Doctor asked.
“Besides wondering if the Master is currently engaging in a very weird form of necrophilia?” Ianto answered caustically.
“At least we know that ‘cascading organ failure’ hasn’t affected your tongue yet. No, I’m talking about how now that the Master has my DNA, he isn’t watching me very closely. It’s like he’s forgotten I’m here. Now that’s rude. I always remember who’s arrested me. He can’t even give me the courtesy of remembering he kidnapped me.”