Fic: Time Enough and Life. (5/6)
Time Enough and Life part five
Link to part four
The storage facility is a complex of large storage units near Richmond, on the western edge of London. From the outside it gives the appearance of being a distribution centre for a retail firm, however closer inspection reveals that the single security guard on the on the gate isn't as alone or unarmed as he appears to be.
The security guard, after checking ID and calling through to somebody in the main complex for confirmation that they are expected, hands them visitor badges, and lets them in, telling them they can leave the car in the staff car park.
They are met in the car park by another member of security staff. The guy, who’s in his fifties, looks at home with the gun on his belt, and Jack suspects that he’s ex military.
“Jim Haynes,” he says, shaking their hands. “So you’re the blokes who deal with this weird stuff.”
“That’s us,” Jack says, relieved that they appear to have a no nonsense Yorkshire man rather than some jobsworth minister to show them around.
Unfortunately it is just going to be a case of being shown around the storage facility. Moving the files back to Cardiff had been one thing, taking whole cryo units with them is another, and Jack knows that it will raise questions if they do so without telling the FOC. So even if they do find what they are looking for, it’ll have to be an inspection and maybe a few pictures to send back to the Hub so they can be run through the mainframes visual database for matches.
“So what are you looking for then?” Jim asks.
“Twelve person sized cryogenics chambers used in a research project in the ‘70s.”
Jim thinks for a minute, before saying, “Right-o, big stuff then.”
“Does knowing the size of it help then?” Ianto asks.
“Yep. All the large stuff got put in those two,” he jerks his thumb towards a pair of long, low warehouse structures. Pointing at the others buildings, he says, “Smaller stuff that would fit in metre square packing crates went into that one, and really fragmented bits got shoved into smaller boxes in there.”
It’s not the best filing system that Jack’s heard of, but he supposes that at least it gives them a starting point.
“What’s in that one?” Ianto asks, indicating the smallest of the buildings, which is set in the centre of the group.
“Office, canteen, CCTV monitoring, bogs,” he says, sounding like he’d rather he inside there, probably in the canteen, than out here in the cold talking to them. “Basically anything that goes on around here that’s not storage, so if you want a cuppa or owt while you’re here, that’s where you want to go.”
“That’s good to know,” Ianto says with a slight smile. “But we’d better get started.”
“Okay then, follow me.” Jim walks off towards the two large warehouses.
Stopping by the door, he takes out a wipes a key card through a reader. For a moment nothing happens, and then the door slides open.
“Oh god,” Ianto says softly, horror in his eyes as looks at the vast open plan space filled with alien artefacts from Torchwood One.
Many things have noticeable scorch marks or blast damage, the burnt ozone smell of energy weapons fire still clinging to them, all these years later.
Ianto closes his eyes, hands balling into fists at his sides. There's a look of intense concentration on his face, which makes Jack realise that it's taking him a conscious effort to take long, slow breaths rather than give in to panic.
“You want to get some air?” Jack asks once Ianto seems a little more in control.
“No.” There's a tremor in his voice. “Because if I leave now I'm not going to come back in.”
Jack carefully puts a hand on Ianto's arm, trying not to startle him. “Maybe that's for the best.”
Ianto opens his eyes. Determination cutting through the fear. “I need to do this.”
“Is he going to be alright?” Jim asks once Ianto has gone in ahead of them.
Jack watches Ianto for a moment, then says, “I hope so. I really do.”
They walk slowly from one row of artefacts to the next, relying on Ianto's memories of what the cryo chambers look like to identify them.
Much of what is there, as far as Jack can tell, even without closer inspection, is damaged beyond repair. There are a few good pieces that he makes a note of to try to requisition later. Although he knows that much of what was any use to them was salvaged by Owen, Tosh and himself at the time.
They've been there about an hour when the guard, who's been watching Ianto's reactions with a mixture of curiosity and concern, says, “You were there, weren't you?”
Jack gives him a look that he hopes he'll understand as 'you don't have to answer that.'
Ianto nods slightly, an indication that he's understood, then, turning to the security guard says, “Yes, I was.”
“I thought so,” the guard says, stopping in front of a twisted pile of metal that might once have been some kind of alien storage device or maybe just really mangled vending machine. “I know that look. It was a rough clean up.”
He frowns then continues. “I wasn't there for the start of it, only once they were clearing out the lower levels and stores. It looked like hell in there.” He shakes his head. “They shouldn't have sent civvies in for that clean up.”
“It was hell,” Ianto says, sounding distant, his eyes a little unfocused as past horrors play themselves out behind them. “It was the screaming that was the worst. It was all around you, but you couldn't see where it was coming from. And when you finally did, you wished you hadn't, because you’ll never be able to forget. There was so much blood.” His voice drops to a shocked whisper. “People have so much blood in them. It gets everywhere.”
“Shit,” Jim says under his breath, then turns to Jack with an annoyed expression. “I wasn't one to give officers back chat when I was enlisted, sir. And I'm not now, but what the bloody hell were you thinking bringing him in here?”
“It was my idea,” Ianto says, still sounding rather distant and disconnected. “It’s no one’s fault.”
Ignoring the guard, Jack puts a hand on Ianto’s back. He can feel him shaking. “Do you want to go?”
“No.” Leaning into the touch, he takes several deep, shuddering breaths, and slowly the trembling lessens, although it doesn’t completely disappear.
“You’ve got nothing to prove, not to me.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“I'm working with the idea that after living through that I'm not likely to see worse,” Ianto says with a tight smile, which Jack knows means that the subject is no longer up for discussion. “So whatever happens now I know I can somehow get through it in the end.”
Jim nods, sad and understanding. “I hope that works out for you, lad. I really do.”
Despite the haunted look in his eyes, and the fact that Jack can see he's still periodically shaking, Ianto stubbornly continues with the search.
After four hours of looking through the debris and not finding anything, followed by a brief tea break and another couple of hours scouring the lists that describe what the fragmentary remains in the other warehouse look like, they admit defeat.
The single mention that they find about the cryo units is on door plaque, which lists what was kept in the room behind it. It had, from its room number, been in the most heavily damaged section of Torchwood One, from which no material in a salvageable condition was retrieved.
“There'll be enough information in the files,” Jack says, as he sees the dejected slump of Ianto shoulders, as they walk to the canteen.
“Maybe,” Ianto says sounding far from convinced.
“Even if there isn't we'll figure it out,” Jack says, searching for something that’s even vaguely optimistic. “We could call Martha in, she did a great job with Owen.”
“Because we know so much about what will happen to Owen, don't we?” Ianto snaps.
It probably hadn't been the best example, Jack thinks in hind sight. He's saved from having to answer Ianto's question by his mobile ringing.
It's Tosh.
Whatever she's got to tell him, Jack would rather Ianto and himself got to take the call in private.
Holding up his mobile, for Jim to see, Jack says, “You got a room we can use?”
“Sure, this way.”
Jim shows them to an unoccupied office. “I'll wait at the end of the corridor. Give me a shout when you're done.”
“Will do.”
Inside the office they wait until they hear Jim walk away before taking out bluetooth earpieces and putting them on. Not that they are as mundane as they appear to be, not since Tosh's modifications to them to sync their encryption with the one used by the mainframe.
“Hey, what you got for me?” Jack says cheerfully, although he's really not feeling it. “The Rift behaving itself?”
“It's been quiet. Only incident was last night, a couple of amorous weevils in Roath Park.”
“They were shagging,” Owen calls out in the background.
“Thank you, Owen.” Tosh sounds more amused than annoyed at the interruption. “How are things going in London?”
“No luck on finding the cryo units, it looks like they were destroyed.” Jack glances at Ianto, who's sat down at the desk. “There's not much else we can do here, so we're going head home.”
“We've got most of the information we can from the files, do you want to wait until you get back?”
Jack can hear the sadness hidden behind her professionalism, and he's torn between finding out now and having Ianto preoccupied by it all the way back to Cardiff, or to wait and have him worrying about what they've discovered for the same length of time.
Before he can answer one way or the other, Ianto says, “No, I'd rather know now. Whatever it is, it's got to be better than not knowing.”
Jack's not convinced that's actually true, sometime not knowing really is better. He knows he's not going to be able to get Ianto to believe that, and he says, “Okay, give us what you've got.”
“I transferred all the scans you sent me into the mainframe and ran it through a data striping program, so we could work with just the raw facts and figures. I cross referenced the information in the files, the people taking part, the units used and...”
“What Tosh is trying to say,” Owen interrupts. “Is that the cryo unit they stuck you in was the only one of its sort being used. That said a couple of the other units were one offs as well, so it doesn't look like you were singled out. It was just bad luck you got the one with the weird side effects.”
“It matches up with what I found out about the other people who were frozen,” Gwen says, joining the conversation. “Three of them are still alive, one from the five year group and two from the ten year group. They all seem to be ageing normally, and so do their children. So it's not all bad news.”
“How did the others die?” Ianto asks, brushing aside the one positive thing they've so far heard.
“One was heart disease, one was a motorbike crash, and the other three were Torchwood related.” Gwen stops. “Do you want to know what the Torchwood ones were?”
“Not really,” Ianto says, taking a shaky breath. “So it's just me then that's changed?”
“It does seem like that, sorry.”
“Any leads on who made it?” Jack asks, hoping that if they know who originally made the cryo unit they might have a better idea of how it worked and, if possible, how to reverse what it has done.
“Not yet,” Tosh says, sounding a little more hopeful this time. “I’ve got copies of plans that were made of it in 1968 when they recovered it from the Thames. I’m running a search using the text found on the side of it. There’s too little to run a translation program effectively, too few points of reference, but if I can get a match I might be able to get something.”
“If anybody can do it, Tosh, it’s you,” Jack tells her. His team have managed what has seemed like the impossible often enough for him to believe that they can achieve pretty much anything if they put their minds to it. “Okay, Owen, what you got for us?”
“The test results, what else?” Owen answers rather smugly. “They all came back okay. Well better than okay, they were perfect.”
“That's good, isn't it?” Jack says, relieved that there's at least one good piece of information amongst the uncertainty.
“Not really. No one’s results should be that good. Not even a health nut with the best genes in the world. So I started to look a bit deeper, ran the samples through that super fast DNA genome sequencer thing that fell through the Rift last year.”
“And?” Jack really doesn't like the sound of where this is going.
“Turns out Ianto's got a bit extra.”
“A bit extra what?”
“DNA, well not exactly DNA. It'd take the rest of the afternoon to tell you exactly what it is, but basically whatever it did, it did it at a genetic level. The changes are part of him.”
“There's nothing you can do?” Ianto asks, voice hoarse, eyes wide and shocked.
“It'd be like trying to scoop out a pint of beer you'd tipped into the ocean without getting any sea water in it.”
“Right, okay,” his voice drops to a barely above a whisper.
“I'm sorry,” Owen says sounding like he really means it. “Looks like me and Jack aren’t the only freaks round here anymore.”
Taking the earpiece out, Ianto puts it down on the table, his hands shaking.
“Ianto? Oi, you not going to complain about what I called you?” Owen says concerned, when there's there's no reply. “Ianto? Jack? You still there?”
“We're still here,” Jack says distractedly, his focus on Ianto. “Give us a minute.”
“I'm alright. I just need to think. Some space to think,” Ianto says, his voice still faint, and a little disjointed. “Some air.”
“I'll come with you.” Jack reaches to switch off the connection back to the Hub.
“No.” Ianto gets up and heads towards the door. “I want to be alone for a while, please.”
He doesn't like it, but he knows arguing about it will only make things worse. “Alright, but keep your phone on.”
Looking grateful that he's being allowed to go, Ianto nods, and then hurries out of the room.
With a sigh, Jack sits down on the vacated seat. He's not sure what he'd hoped the team would find out, but accidental genetic modification definitely isn't it.
There are probably a dozen different questions that he's sure he should be asking, but none of them seem as important as making sure Ianto is okay.
Putting Ianto's discarded earpiece into his pocket, Jack says, “You can give me the full report when we get back, I'll let you know when we're on our way.”
Not giving them time to ask any questions, Jack disconnects the call from the Hub, and goes to find Ianto.
"Bad news?" Jim asks, as Jack leaves the room and walks towards him.
"Something like that.”
"If you're looking for your man, I let him outside." Jim walks with him to the door. "The lad looked pretty rattled. Is something going on I should be worried about?"
Calling Ianto a lad seems ridiculous to Jack, knowing what he does, but he knows that to Jim Ianto looks to be in his early twenties and young enough to be his son.
His thoughts preoccupied with where Ianto has gone it takes Jack a moment to realise what Jim is asking. Whether something similar what happened to Torchwood One is happening now, and if, as somebody with experience of the clean up, he's going to be called on again.
Giving Jim a reassuring smile, Jack says, “Nothing like that, it's something personal that's been going on for a while.”
“Too much on top of seeing all this stuff again today then?” Jim says, following him out the building to the car park. “I thought he was going to lose it in there. Seen it happen a couple of times to blokes I've served with, everything piles up, and they just snap.”
Jack shivers. He's seen it too. Seen more wars, conflicts and deaths than he'd ever thought it was possible for one person to see. He's seen what it does to people, how it changes them, and sometimes it destroys them.
Wishing that he'd followed Ianto in the first place, he hurries over to their car, hoping that he might have gone there if he'd been looking for somewhere private and out of the rain that has now started to fall.
The car is empty, and there's no indication that Ianto has been there at all. Slamming his hands down on the roof in frustration, Jack looks around. The car park and what he can see of the depot complex are deserted apart from Jim and himself.
Getting out his mobile he calls Ianto. It goes straight to voice mail, the phone switched off.
Feeling more shaken by Ianto deliberately making it impossible to contact him than he wants to admit, Jack leans back against the side of the car, trying to decide what to do next. The storage depot is huge, and Jack knows that if Ianto is trying to avoid him that he'll be very difficult to find.
There's one option that's open to him though, before he calls back to the Hub and gets Tosh to put a trace on the GPS in his phone, and he says, “You said this place has CCTV, could you find where he went?”
“Yeah, sure.” Jim nods. “He can't be inside any of the buildings as they're all card only access. The camera cover the whole of the depot, there's nowhere he could have gone that I won't find him.”
“Can you call through? Get them to relay where he is to us?” Jack asks, hating that he's reliant on somebody he doesn't know for this.
“It's recorded, no one watches it,” Jim says, not sounding entirely happy about it. “That's budget cuts for you.”
It's not ideal, especially if Ianto is walking about, because by the time they've found him, and then left the CCTV viewing room to get to his location he could be somewhere entirely different. It'll have to do though.
Jack follows Jim back inside, and through the building to a small office with a couple of large server cases, and a bank of monitors.
“I thought you said nobody viewed the footage?” Jack asks. The set up of the room seems indicate otherwise.
“They don't anymore.” Jim sits down and logs in. “They use to, like I said budget cuts, told us no more hiring for non essential posts. You've have liked Babs, and she'd have been fussing over your man no end. But I guess we've all got to retire sometime, none of us stay young forever.”
Jack just nods. Retiring isn't something he's ever given a thought to. As a Time Agent he'd been more likely to die young or be invalided out than he ever was to get old. As a conman a fixed retirement age didn't apply, nor did it while he was with the Doctor, and after that old age was something he'd never have.
It only takes a couple of minutes for Jim to find what they are looking for.
A grainy image of Ianto talking to the security guard on the gate, who, after a moment or two, lets him out. He turns right out of the entrance and then is out of sight of the camera.
“Any idea where he'd be going?” Jim asks, pausing the feed. “Has he got any friends or family round here?”
“No.” Jack’s eyes stay locked on the screen. Unable to understand why Ianto is doing this, why he’s apparently running from him, he can feel fear, formless as yet, clawing at him. “Do you know what’s in the direction he went?”
“Not much. Parkland, a golf course, the Thames, a couple of pubs, and if you go far enough Kew Gardens. Anything there you'd reckon he'd head for?” Jim says logging out the system.
Ianto finding a pub and getting absolutely wasted is a distinct possibility, but so is just walking by the river. He's found him sitting by the bay back in Cardiff, just staring out at the water, looking lost, as he tries to work through whatever it was that was bothering him, but didn't feel he could share with anyone.
“If you want to get going I’ll sign you out,” Jim says, “You can leave your car here if you think you’re not going to be too long.”
Jack has no idea of how long he’s likely to be. Even if he finds Ianto quickly he doubts he’ll want to come back here to get the car. “I’ll take it with me.”
Part six
Link to part four
The storage facility is a complex of large storage units near Richmond, on the western edge of London. From the outside it gives the appearance of being a distribution centre for a retail firm, however closer inspection reveals that the single security guard on the on the gate isn't as alone or unarmed as he appears to be.
The security guard, after checking ID and calling through to somebody in the main complex for confirmation that they are expected, hands them visitor badges, and lets them in, telling them they can leave the car in the staff car park.
They are met in the car park by another member of security staff. The guy, who’s in his fifties, looks at home with the gun on his belt, and Jack suspects that he’s ex military.
“Jim Haynes,” he says, shaking their hands. “So you’re the blokes who deal with this weird stuff.”
“That’s us,” Jack says, relieved that they appear to have a no nonsense Yorkshire man rather than some jobsworth minister to show them around.
Unfortunately it is just going to be a case of being shown around the storage facility. Moving the files back to Cardiff had been one thing, taking whole cryo units with them is another, and Jack knows that it will raise questions if they do so without telling the FOC. So even if they do find what they are looking for, it’ll have to be an inspection and maybe a few pictures to send back to the Hub so they can be run through the mainframes visual database for matches.
“So what are you looking for then?” Jim asks.
“Twelve person sized cryogenics chambers used in a research project in the ‘70s.”
Jim thinks for a minute, before saying, “Right-o, big stuff then.”
“Does knowing the size of it help then?” Ianto asks.
“Yep. All the large stuff got put in those two,” he jerks his thumb towards a pair of long, low warehouse structures. Pointing at the others buildings, he says, “Smaller stuff that would fit in metre square packing crates went into that one, and really fragmented bits got shoved into smaller boxes in there.”
It’s not the best filing system that Jack’s heard of, but he supposes that at least it gives them a starting point.
“What’s in that one?” Ianto asks, indicating the smallest of the buildings, which is set in the centre of the group.
“Office, canteen, CCTV monitoring, bogs,” he says, sounding like he’d rather he inside there, probably in the canteen, than out here in the cold talking to them. “Basically anything that goes on around here that’s not storage, so if you want a cuppa or owt while you’re here, that’s where you want to go.”
“That’s good to know,” Ianto says with a slight smile. “But we’d better get started.”
“Okay then, follow me.” Jim walks off towards the two large warehouses.
Stopping by the door, he takes out a wipes a key card through a reader. For a moment nothing happens, and then the door slides open.
“Oh god,” Ianto says softly, horror in his eyes as looks at the vast open plan space filled with alien artefacts from Torchwood One.
Many things have noticeable scorch marks or blast damage, the burnt ozone smell of energy weapons fire still clinging to them, all these years later.
Ianto closes his eyes, hands balling into fists at his sides. There's a look of intense concentration on his face, which makes Jack realise that it's taking him a conscious effort to take long, slow breaths rather than give in to panic.
“You want to get some air?” Jack asks once Ianto seems a little more in control.
“No.” There's a tremor in his voice. “Because if I leave now I'm not going to come back in.”
Jack carefully puts a hand on Ianto's arm, trying not to startle him. “Maybe that's for the best.”
Ianto opens his eyes. Determination cutting through the fear. “I need to do this.”
“Is he going to be alright?” Jim asks once Ianto has gone in ahead of them.
Jack watches Ianto for a moment, then says, “I hope so. I really do.”
They walk slowly from one row of artefacts to the next, relying on Ianto's memories of what the cryo chambers look like to identify them.
Much of what is there, as far as Jack can tell, even without closer inspection, is damaged beyond repair. There are a few good pieces that he makes a note of to try to requisition later. Although he knows that much of what was any use to them was salvaged by Owen, Tosh and himself at the time.
They've been there about an hour when the guard, who's been watching Ianto's reactions with a mixture of curiosity and concern, says, “You were there, weren't you?”
Jack gives him a look that he hopes he'll understand as 'you don't have to answer that.'
Ianto nods slightly, an indication that he's understood, then, turning to the security guard says, “Yes, I was.”
“I thought so,” the guard says, stopping in front of a twisted pile of metal that might once have been some kind of alien storage device or maybe just really mangled vending machine. “I know that look. It was a rough clean up.”
He frowns then continues. “I wasn't there for the start of it, only once they were clearing out the lower levels and stores. It looked like hell in there.” He shakes his head. “They shouldn't have sent civvies in for that clean up.”
“It was hell,” Ianto says, sounding distant, his eyes a little unfocused as past horrors play themselves out behind them. “It was the screaming that was the worst. It was all around you, but you couldn't see where it was coming from. And when you finally did, you wished you hadn't, because you’ll never be able to forget. There was so much blood.” His voice drops to a shocked whisper. “People have so much blood in them. It gets everywhere.”
“Shit,” Jim says under his breath, then turns to Jack with an annoyed expression. “I wasn't one to give officers back chat when I was enlisted, sir. And I'm not now, but what the bloody hell were you thinking bringing him in here?”
“It was my idea,” Ianto says, still sounding rather distant and disconnected. “It’s no one’s fault.”
Ignoring the guard, Jack puts a hand on Ianto’s back. He can feel him shaking. “Do you want to go?”
“No.” Leaning into the touch, he takes several deep, shuddering breaths, and slowly the trembling lessens, although it doesn’t completely disappear.
“You’ve got nothing to prove, not to me.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“I'm working with the idea that after living through that I'm not likely to see worse,” Ianto says with a tight smile, which Jack knows means that the subject is no longer up for discussion. “So whatever happens now I know I can somehow get through it in the end.”
Jim nods, sad and understanding. “I hope that works out for you, lad. I really do.”
Despite the haunted look in his eyes, and the fact that Jack can see he's still periodically shaking, Ianto stubbornly continues with the search.
After four hours of looking through the debris and not finding anything, followed by a brief tea break and another couple of hours scouring the lists that describe what the fragmentary remains in the other warehouse look like, they admit defeat.
The single mention that they find about the cryo units is on door plaque, which lists what was kept in the room behind it. It had, from its room number, been in the most heavily damaged section of Torchwood One, from which no material in a salvageable condition was retrieved.
“There'll be enough information in the files,” Jack says, as he sees the dejected slump of Ianto shoulders, as they walk to the canteen.
“Maybe,” Ianto says sounding far from convinced.
“Even if there isn't we'll figure it out,” Jack says, searching for something that’s even vaguely optimistic. “We could call Martha in, she did a great job with Owen.”
“Because we know so much about what will happen to Owen, don't we?” Ianto snaps.
It probably hadn't been the best example, Jack thinks in hind sight. He's saved from having to answer Ianto's question by his mobile ringing.
It's Tosh.
Whatever she's got to tell him, Jack would rather Ianto and himself got to take the call in private.
Holding up his mobile, for Jim to see, Jack says, “You got a room we can use?”
“Sure, this way.”
Jim shows them to an unoccupied office. “I'll wait at the end of the corridor. Give me a shout when you're done.”
“Will do.”
Inside the office they wait until they hear Jim walk away before taking out bluetooth earpieces and putting them on. Not that they are as mundane as they appear to be, not since Tosh's modifications to them to sync their encryption with the one used by the mainframe.
“Hey, what you got for me?” Jack says cheerfully, although he's really not feeling it. “The Rift behaving itself?”
“It's been quiet. Only incident was last night, a couple of amorous weevils in Roath Park.”
“They were shagging,” Owen calls out in the background.
“Thank you, Owen.” Tosh sounds more amused than annoyed at the interruption. “How are things going in London?”
“No luck on finding the cryo units, it looks like they were destroyed.” Jack glances at Ianto, who's sat down at the desk. “There's not much else we can do here, so we're going head home.”
“We've got most of the information we can from the files, do you want to wait until you get back?”
Jack can hear the sadness hidden behind her professionalism, and he's torn between finding out now and having Ianto preoccupied by it all the way back to Cardiff, or to wait and have him worrying about what they've discovered for the same length of time.
Before he can answer one way or the other, Ianto says, “No, I'd rather know now. Whatever it is, it's got to be better than not knowing.”
Jack's not convinced that's actually true, sometime not knowing really is better. He knows he's not going to be able to get Ianto to believe that, and he says, “Okay, give us what you've got.”
“I transferred all the scans you sent me into the mainframe and ran it through a data striping program, so we could work with just the raw facts and figures. I cross referenced the information in the files, the people taking part, the units used and...”
“What Tosh is trying to say,” Owen interrupts. “Is that the cryo unit they stuck you in was the only one of its sort being used. That said a couple of the other units were one offs as well, so it doesn't look like you were singled out. It was just bad luck you got the one with the weird side effects.”
“It matches up with what I found out about the other people who were frozen,” Gwen says, joining the conversation. “Three of them are still alive, one from the five year group and two from the ten year group. They all seem to be ageing normally, and so do their children. So it's not all bad news.”
“How did the others die?” Ianto asks, brushing aside the one positive thing they've so far heard.
“One was heart disease, one was a motorbike crash, and the other three were Torchwood related.” Gwen stops. “Do you want to know what the Torchwood ones were?”
“Not really,” Ianto says, taking a shaky breath. “So it's just me then that's changed?”
“It does seem like that, sorry.”
“Any leads on who made it?” Jack asks, hoping that if they know who originally made the cryo unit they might have a better idea of how it worked and, if possible, how to reverse what it has done.
“Not yet,” Tosh says, sounding a little more hopeful this time. “I’ve got copies of plans that were made of it in 1968 when they recovered it from the Thames. I’m running a search using the text found on the side of it. There’s too little to run a translation program effectively, too few points of reference, but if I can get a match I might be able to get something.”
“If anybody can do it, Tosh, it’s you,” Jack tells her. His team have managed what has seemed like the impossible often enough for him to believe that they can achieve pretty much anything if they put their minds to it. “Okay, Owen, what you got for us?”
“The test results, what else?” Owen answers rather smugly. “They all came back okay. Well better than okay, they were perfect.”
“That's good, isn't it?” Jack says, relieved that there's at least one good piece of information amongst the uncertainty.
“Not really. No one’s results should be that good. Not even a health nut with the best genes in the world. So I started to look a bit deeper, ran the samples through that super fast DNA genome sequencer thing that fell through the Rift last year.”
“And?” Jack really doesn't like the sound of where this is going.
“Turns out Ianto's got a bit extra.”
“A bit extra what?”
“DNA, well not exactly DNA. It'd take the rest of the afternoon to tell you exactly what it is, but basically whatever it did, it did it at a genetic level. The changes are part of him.”
“There's nothing you can do?” Ianto asks, voice hoarse, eyes wide and shocked.
“It'd be like trying to scoop out a pint of beer you'd tipped into the ocean without getting any sea water in it.”
“Right, okay,” his voice drops to a barely above a whisper.
“I'm sorry,” Owen says sounding like he really means it. “Looks like me and Jack aren’t the only freaks round here anymore.”
Taking the earpiece out, Ianto puts it down on the table, his hands shaking.
“Ianto? Oi, you not going to complain about what I called you?” Owen says concerned, when there's there's no reply. “Ianto? Jack? You still there?”
“We're still here,” Jack says distractedly, his focus on Ianto. “Give us a minute.”
“I'm alright. I just need to think. Some space to think,” Ianto says, his voice still faint, and a little disjointed. “Some air.”
“I'll come with you.” Jack reaches to switch off the connection back to the Hub.
“No.” Ianto gets up and heads towards the door. “I want to be alone for a while, please.”
He doesn't like it, but he knows arguing about it will only make things worse. “Alright, but keep your phone on.”
Looking grateful that he's being allowed to go, Ianto nods, and then hurries out of the room.
With a sigh, Jack sits down on the vacated seat. He's not sure what he'd hoped the team would find out, but accidental genetic modification definitely isn't it.
There are probably a dozen different questions that he's sure he should be asking, but none of them seem as important as making sure Ianto is okay.
Putting Ianto's discarded earpiece into his pocket, Jack says, “You can give me the full report when we get back, I'll let you know when we're on our way.”
Not giving them time to ask any questions, Jack disconnects the call from the Hub, and goes to find Ianto.
"Bad news?" Jim asks, as Jack leaves the room and walks towards him.
"Something like that.”
"If you're looking for your man, I let him outside." Jim walks with him to the door. "The lad looked pretty rattled. Is something going on I should be worried about?"
Calling Ianto a lad seems ridiculous to Jack, knowing what he does, but he knows that to Jim Ianto looks to be in his early twenties and young enough to be his son.
His thoughts preoccupied with where Ianto has gone it takes Jack a moment to realise what Jim is asking. Whether something similar what happened to Torchwood One is happening now, and if, as somebody with experience of the clean up, he's going to be called on again.
Giving Jim a reassuring smile, Jack says, “Nothing like that, it's something personal that's been going on for a while.”
“Too much on top of seeing all this stuff again today then?” Jim says, following him out the building to the car park. “I thought he was going to lose it in there. Seen it happen a couple of times to blokes I've served with, everything piles up, and they just snap.”
Jack shivers. He's seen it too. Seen more wars, conflicts and deaths than he'd ever thought it was possible for one person to see. He's seen what it does to people, how it changes them, and sometimes it destroys them.
Wishing that he'd followed Ianto in the first place, he hurries over to their car, hoping that he might have gone there if he'd been looking for somewhere private and out of the rain that has now started to fall.
The car is empty, and there's no indication that Ianto has been there at all. Slamming his hands down on the roof in frustration, Jack looks around. The car park and what he can see of the depot complex are deserted apart from Jim and himself.
Getting out his mobile he calls Ianto. It goes straight to voice mail, the phone switched off.
Feeling more shaken by Ianto deliberately making it impossible to contact him than he wants to admit, Jack leans back against the side of the car, trying to decide what to do next. The storage depot is huge, and Jack knows that if Ianto is trying to avoid him that he'll be very difficult to find.
There's one option that's open to him though, before he calls back to the Hub and gets Tosh to put a trace on the GPS in his phone, and he says, “You said this place has CCTV, could you find where he went?”
“Yeah, sure.” Jim nods. “He can't be inside any of the buildings as they're all card only access. The camera cover the whole of the depot, there's nowhere he could have gone that I won't find him.”
“Can you call through? Get them to relay where he is to us?” Jack asks, hating that he's reliant on somebody he doesn't know for this.
“It's recorded, no one watches it,” Jim says, not sounding entirely happy about it. “That's budget cuts for you.”
It's not ideal, especially if Ianto is walking about, because by the time they've found him, and then left the CCTV viewing room to get to his location he could be somewhere entirely different. It'll have to do though.
Jack follows Jim back inside, and through the building to a small office with a couple of large server cases, and a bank of monitors.
“I thought you said nobody viewed the footage?” Jack asks. The set up of the room seems indicate otherwise.
“They don't anymore.” Jim sits down and logs in. “They use to, like I said budget cuts, told us no more hiring for non essential posts. You've have liked Babs, and she'd have been fussing over your man no end. But I guess we've all got to retire sometime, none of us stay young forever.”
Jack just nods. Retiring isn't something he's ever given a thought to. As a Time Agent he'd been more likely to die young or be invalided out than he ever was to get old. As a conman a fixed retirement age didn't apply, nor did it while he was with the Doctor, and after that old age was something he'd never have.
It only takes a couple of minutes for Jim to find what they are looking for.
A grainy image of Ianto talking to the security guard on the gate, who, after a moment or two, lets him out. He turns right out of the entrance and then is out of sight of the camera.
“Any idea where he'd be going?” Jim asks, pausing the feed. “Has he got any friends or family round here?”
“No.” Jack’s eyes stay locked on the screen. Unable to understand why Ianto is doing this, why he’s apparently running from him, he can feel fear, formless as yet, clawing at him. “Do you know what’s in the direction he went?”
“Not much. Parkland, a golf course, the Thames, a couple of pubs, and if you go far enough Kew Gardens. Anything there you'd reckon he'd head for?” Jim says logging out the system.
Ianto finding a pub and getting absolutely wasted is a distinct possibility, but so is just walking by the river. He's found him sitting by the bay back in Cardiff, just staring out at the water, looking lost, as he tries to work through whatever it was that was bothering him, but didn't feel he could share with anyone.
“If you want to get going I’ll sign you out,” Jim says, “You can leave your car here if you think you’re not going to be too long.”
Jack has no idea of how long he’s likely to be. Even if he finds Ianto quickly he doubts he’ll want to come back here to get the car. “I’ll take it with me.”
Part six