The Torchwood - 6/10
“Seriously? You want us to believe that a dead man destroyed the world, held you hostage, killed all of us but Ianto, and you pulled a Superman to turn back time?” Owen said incredulously. He was looking directly at Jack, just begging him to deny the story. Jack simply nodded. “Bugger all. And I thought giant bipedal blowfish were weird enough. What is this guy, Highlander? Do we gotta cut off his head or somat?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I thought he was dead. The Doctor thought he was dead. But now I’m not sure. And if anyone could escape death, it’d be him,” Jack answered, once again running his hands through his hair. Gwen absently noted how, despite how much he fussed with it, Jack’s hair always retained its perfect shape. She made a mental note to get the brand of his gel.
“Jack?” Tosh called through the intercom. “I’ve narrowed the search parameters for the signal affected Mainframe’s communications. It says….Jack, it says it’s coming from inside the Hub. Near the conference room actually!”
“Shit!” Jack jumped from his chair, knocking it over with a resounding crash. “Everyone fan out! Find anything that doesn’t belong here!” Tosh joined them as the four team members scoured the corners and nooks of the conference room.
“Blasted Tea-Boy. Not even a dustbunny! Jack, we’ve seriously got to get him something for his OCD,” Owen said, his body half sticking out of a floor cupboard.
“Trust me, Owen, he isn’t always neat,” Jack jeered wistfully.
“Jack, I found something!” Gwen called. She reached her hand into the plant on the top of the steps, pulling out Bevan’s circular metal device. “What is it?”
“I’ve seen this before. It’s an Ugorian Transmitter. Shit! It traces our conversations and sends them back to the main communications array, but it blocks anything from getting to us. I should have realized it when the Master said he made a deal with the Ugorians!”
“So how do we destroy it, Jack? I can’t see any seams to take it part!” Tosh said, feeling the device for any openings.
“It’s made to be used as a spy device during wartimes. It doesn’t come apart. Put it on the floor,” he ordered. As Tosh gently laid the circle on the grating, Jack pulled his Webley. Felling the familiar weight in his hands, he pulled the trigger, sending one bullet straight through the center of the device. All four members of Torchwood jumped as the circle made a hissing pop and burst into small flames. Tosh threw her cup of coffee on it, and they all watched in silence as the wet ashes fell through the holes in the grating. Just then, Mainframe’s systems came back online and the computer screen powered up. Once again all four people jumped as suddenly, as one, their mobiles and the Hub’s external phone lines began ringing.
Jack looked at his mobile and motioned for Gwen to pick up the Hub’s main line. “Colonel Mace? Torchwood’s a bit busy at the moment!....What?!.....Where? When?........Ok, hang on. Tosh!” Jack shouted across the room. “Pull up atmospheric readings for space over Asia!”
“Shit! Jack there’s something up there! A ship! A damn big ship!” Tosh cried.
Jack assured Colonel Mace that Torchwood was investigating the mysterious ship, and no, they had not meant to go AWOL this afternoon, and yes, they would inform the PM that any damage caused during their silence was directly cause by Torchwood malfeasance and that UNIT was devoid of any responsibility for said damage. So much for interagency cooperation, Tosh thought. Of course, having first-hand experience with UNIT, she certainly wasn’t surprised.
“Ok, problem 1,” Owen said as everyone gathered around Tosh’s station. “There is a giant spaceship in Earth’s orbit, and it isn’t even Christmas. Problem 2 - there’s the very real possibility that a dead man is holding Ianto and the Doctor hostage in exchange for our fearless leader. Problem 3 - we have to get Ianto back but have no way of actually getting onto said ship. And problem 4-“
“Seriously Owen? You have a problem 4?” Gwen asked.
“Problem 4,” Owen continued, “Is that we have currently been without caffeine for hours. I don’t know about you, but if this keeps up, I’m going to start going through withdrawal soon. We definitely need to get Ianto back.”
“Oh Owen, I didn’t realize how much you cared,” Jack drawled.
“Hey, he may just be a Tea-Boy, but he’s our damn Tea-Boy. The only one who gets to poison him is me.”
“Ok, as Owen has needlessly yet succinctly stated our current predicament, how do we get onto the Master’s ship, how do we get Ianto, and how do we get back?”
“Well, first off, he can’t get you Jack. We don’t know why he wants you, but we can’t just hand you over. Second, I think Mainframe has an idea,” Tosh said, pointing to a CCTV image of Jack’s office on her screen. “Mainframe pulled that image up herself.”
“What’s she getting at?” Jack asked, racking his brain for the significance of image of his desk.
“Maybe she’s bored without watching you and Ianto going at it like rabbits! Hey, now that you’ve got those new union regs, are you gonna have to pay Ianto overtime for those ‘weevil hunts’ you take him on?” Owen leered.
“Trust me Owen, not once had Ianto been undercompensated for his overtime. He always leaves fully satisfied.”
“Jack, ew. Enough. Can we get back to the situation at hand now?” Gwen said frowning.
“Hey, I always have Ianto in hand when - “ Jack began.
“And that’s enough,” Tosh said that stern voice that Jack had come to fear. “Can you think of any reason that Mainframe would think your desk was important?”
“No. I mean there’s nothing there but some paperwork and some old junk.”
“And the mysterious coral, can’t forget that,” Owen said, rolling his eyes.
“Owen, that’s it! You’re a genius!” With that, Jack gave his medic a kiss on the lips and ran into his office to retrieve the bit of coral. Owen proceeded to run to the Autopsy room to wash his mouth out with industrial-grade disinfectant.
“Tosh, do we still have that Malacasant emission amplifier lying around?” Jack asked as he ran back up to his teammates.
“Yeah, I think so. Why?”
“Ok, Tosh go get it. Gwen, load us up with weapons from the armory. Owen…Owen! Get back here! Load up your medical kit. We don’t know what shape Ianto will be in when we find him.”
“Jack, what are we doing?” Gwen asked as she began making a list of assorted weapons they’d need.
“This bit of coral is a baby TARDIS. It contains Huon particles. I’m gonna use the amplifier to, well, amplify the particles. Wherever the Doctor and the Master are, the Doctor’s TARDIS will be there too. If I amplify it enough, it should attract the TARDIS’s attention and act as its own transmat beam, pulling us into the center of the TARDIS console.”
“So we’re going to use a chunk of coral like a magnet to pull us into space?” Owen asked with an eyebrow lift worthy of the great Ianto himself. “You don’t ever have an actual plan do you? You just make this shit up as you go.”
“That’s half the fun!” Jack said grinning widely. “Now get ready. If I’m right, we’re about to go to war. Tosh, have UNIT stand by. If this works, the Ugorians will be pissed that the Master reneged on his promise to give them Earth. They may come and try to take it. Tell Mace to have his ships ready; Ugorian fighter vessels are big, but notoriously slow. With enough advance warning, his people should be able to pick them out of the sky!”
“If we’re gonna keep going on these ‘saving the world’ binges, we need a catchphrase,” Gwen said, moving off towards the armoury.
“I draw the line at matching tattoos!” Owen called after her. Too concerned with Ianto, no one had the time to stop and wonder how the Ugorian transmitter had gotten into the Hub.
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“Psst! Ianto! Hey, Ianto! Wake up,” the Doctor called, shaking Ianto’s shoulder. Ianto blearily opened his eyes, narrowing them quickly to try and keep the Doctor in focus.
“W’s wr’ng?” he slurred.
“You were asleep for too long that time. Two hours, seven minutes. Here, drink some of this.” The Doctor lifted the water bucket’s ladle to Ianto’s lips in an attempt to keep the young man hydrated. Even with the nearly hourly injections from their mysterious UNIT scientist, Ianto was fading fast. His breathing was labored and slow, and he frequently coughed up blood. His fever was dangerously high, and his whole body was shaking with the effort of trying to cool his internal organs. His stomach burned from the wound, and his left arm was a maze of blacks and blues from where the needles were injected. Still, he had yet to complain, something the Doctor was very impressed by. Himself, he could barely stand a headache, much less the combined effects of two very dangerous poisons. Thank Rassilon for a superior immune system!
“I’m sorry Doctor, but I’m tired. It’s hard to stay awake,” Ianto apologized. Or, at least that’s what he’d intended to say. His mouth and tongue were too dry to form the words, though, and what actually came out not only nearly unintelligible, but, due to his exhaustion, was said in Welsh.
“I know, I know. But you need to try and stay awake, ok? Your team still has 12 hours before the Master calls them again. We need to come up with a plan to stop Jack from coming to your rescue.”
“Not gonna happen. Jack needs to be the hero. You did that to him. Doesn’t know who he is if he’s not the hero,” Ianto muttered sleepily.
“Right. Well. Ok” the Doctor said, distinctly uncomfortable with talking about his impact on Jack. “We need to keep you awake though. Oh I know! Story time! Too bad we don’t have a campfire. These things are always better with a campfire. And marshmallows. Campfires need marshmallows. And chips!”
“Chips at a campfire Doctor? You certainly have high-class taste,” Ianto countered.
“I’ll have you know, young man, that …..Oh. You were being sarcastic again, weren’t you? It’s so hard to tell with you, really. Next time give me a warning. Hand signals or something, so I know when to stop listening….But anyway, I was going to say, tell me about your family. You must have loads of stories there, enough to keep us awake for a while anyway.”
“Not much to tell really. Mam, Tad, brother. Basic small-town family life in Newport.”
“What’s your Mum’s name then? How did she meet your Da?”
“Brother’s Sam. Mam’s Susan, Tad’s Liam. Mam traveled with her grandfather before she met her first husband, David. He died and she moved to Cardiff, met Tad when she wanted her slacks hemmed. Tad’s a tailor.”
“Your mum traveled with her grandfather Ianto?”
“Yeah. She didn’t talk about it, not really. She called be ‘Ian’ for short, said it was the name a friend who traveled with them for a while. When we were little, she’d tell us fantastic made-up stories of their travels together. Other worlds, aliens and the like. Guess that’s what made me want to work for Torchwood.”
The Doctor swallowed. He had left Susan in London in the 1980s. He had sensed something familiar in the back of Ianto’s mind. Could it be possible?
“And what do you think about those stories now, Ianto?”
“Don’t know really,” Ianto rasped. “I guess part of me wanted to believe they were real. I wanted to make her believe again.”
“What do you mean?”
“She used to be happy. All light and life and music. Then one day I came home from school. She was sitting on the kitchen floor, surrounded by broken crockery. She just kept saying ‘they’re gone, they’re gone’ and ‘it’s so quiet’. She held me for hours until Tad came back from the shop and the childminder brought Sam ‘round. We rocked together, with her just saying it was so quiet and they were all gone, over and over again. Tad had to take her to Providence Park. She died there a few years back.” With that, Ianto used the last of his strength and began coughing up more blood. Closing his eyes and mumbling something about being sorry, he fell into another fitful sleep.
“I’ll protect you Ianto. I will, I promise. I failed her, but I won’t fail you.” The Doctor avowed softly, rocking the young man in his arms the same way his mother had rocked him all those years ago. Had Ianto been awake, he’d have been struck by the similarity.