VS3:06 -- "Gordian Knot", Part One
Cardiff: a modern city full of modern people, their lives tied together by mobiles and computers, cars and stoplights and all of it balanced precariously on a rift in time and space. Tonight, the city falls dark - police stations, hospitals, streets and even the Hub. Someone is killing the city. Without their most basic technology, how will Torchwood solve the mystery before it's too late?
Gordian Knot
by: curriejean, kalichan
Critically eyeing the tower he'd constructed (two desks, one on top of the other, and then a step ladder on top of them), Ianto wondered for approximately the eleven-hundredth time if the architects of this super-secret science fiction base had been a) psychotic, b) alien, c) capable of levitation, or d) some exciting combination of the above. Clearly, they hadn't had regular maintenance performed by normal human beings in mind as a priority, because a simple task like, for instance, changing the light bulbs, was, in the Hub, a task of epic proportions that had to be planned and strategised like some sort of tactical assault.
Ianto wasn't all that comfortable with heights, but the structure he'd made was, in principle, stable, and he'd done this successfully once before. Anyway, he was pretty sure that breaking one's neck was a relatively quick and painless, if ignominious, way to go, and thus unlikely to happen to any Torchwood operative. Besides, he couldn't put it off any longer; the lights had been flickering on and off for a few days now, and the Hub wasn't the most pleasantly lit place under the best of circumstances.
"Rather like working in a dungeon," he muttered, as he prepared to climb his edifice, a bag containing an enormous light panel slung round his neck. "Or a horror movie."
"What are you doing up there?" Gwen called from her workstation below, where she was doing something on her computer.
"Nothing much," he replied. "Just changing the light bulbs." He'd have asked Gwen to help him, but they still hadn't had the conversation they needed to have, all together, about any coming changes in Gwen's duties, and until they did (maybe never, if they were waiting for both Jack and the Rift to be reasonable), he thought he should refrain from inviting her to climb about the rafters of the place. Better safe than sorry, even if the notion might offend her.
As for JJ, he was upstairs, straightening leaflets, if he knew what was good for him, and in any event, Ianto wasn't ready to let the lad lark about the Hub's narrow gantries just yet. He still seemed to have that eager, awkward gangliness of a young puppy, not yet quite sure where his flesh left off and air began. Ianto could easily visualize a large number of contusions and bruises occurring as a result, and he was fairly certain that at least half of them would end up being his own. No, JJ was better off where he was at present. Besides, even after all those instructional videos, he might still be convinced of the glamour of this operation, and you couldn't get more prosaic than light bulbs. Best not to shatter all illusions quite so quickly, or there'd be nothing left for him to cling to when things got dark, as they undoubtedly would, and probably sooner rather than later.
Gwen, he realised, was still talking. "The outages are really beginning to drive us round the twist. Are they happening near you?"
"I've not noticed, but I don't get home all that much," Ianto admitted. "The new Chinese takeaway lost theirs though. They were giving the food away free, which was quite nice, I thought. And then I heard the same thing happened at The Captain's Wife, you know, that pub and restaurant in Penarth, near Swanbridge."
"Jack doesn't own the place, does he?"
"Not that I've heard, but who really knows?"
Gwen shrugged. "True. He has kept other islands from us in the past. Well, from me, anyway." Ianto grimaced at that. "Still," she went on, "I suppose there are other captains in existence, and if Jack owned it, they'd probably never lose power."
"I don't know," Ianto said. "Flat Holm's not exactly luxury accommodations. And it's not like they haven't lost power, too, loads of times."
"Seriously? God, I don't know what bloody SWALEC's doing with themselves, but it's really getting to be too much. I feel as if I'm back in India or something."
After levering himself onto the second desk, Ianto paused for a second. "God forbid," he said through his teeth.
"You really didn't like it there, did you?"
"No, I really, really didn't. Too much heat, too much weird, too much everything."
Gwen laughed. "Too many of Jack's exes?"
"Much as I'd like to, I can't really blame them on India," Ianto said, considering. "They're rather scattered throughout the known universe, from what I can gather. But everything else I can."
"You sound a bit racist there, you know."
"No, I hate Switzerland too," Ianto said without thinking, and Gwen burst out laughing again.
"We've dealt with more aliens here in Cardiff then we have abroad," she pointed out.
"Who... said... I... didn't hate it... here as... well?" Ianto asked in short bursts, while he reached out from the top of the ladder to un-slot the old panel, trying not to overbalance in the process.
"You're completely mental," Gwen said fondly. "Are the outages why our lights have been flickering too? I thought we were on a generator or something."
"Parts of us are, other parts aren't." The new light bulb locked into place. "Got you!" Ianto congratulated himself. "Anyway," he added to Gwen, "I don't think the outages have got anything to do with it. It's unlikely they'd affect us. And I checked the fuses-"
"We have fuses?" she interrupted.
"No, of course not, but it's simpler to call them that. Anyway, I checked them, and they're quite all right, so it must be the bulbs, and I've been letting that slide. It's been a year, at least, since I looked at them, and I'm sure when the Earth was moved, they must've been shaken loose or something. Probably all over the electrical system, now that I think of it. That'd explain the blackouts."
"Are you done now?" she asked. "Because I've got these reports that I could use your help with-"
"Hah," he said bitterly. "One down, a hundred and forty-three to go. I'll be quite fit when I'm done with this lot."
"Don't think you need to worry about that," she said, the smirk in her voice clearly evident. "Nothing wrong with a man with meat on his bones."
"And you, a married lady," he shot back. "Been checking me out, have you?"
"Married, but not blind - isn't that what they say?"
"Eyes on your work and off my arse, thank you," he returned.
"Spoilsport. You never say that to Jack!"
"He's better at multitasking. Slightly." He grinned to himself, and then began making his way down from his perch. Almost at the bottom, the lights flickered again, and this time they blew out completely, leaving the Hub in a sort of ghostly half-light, as the emergency lights lit up one by one.
"Fucking hell," Ianto said exasperatedly. He heard curses from downstairs, where Gwen had clearly lost the report she'd been working on. She could swear like a sailor, that woman.
He turned to head for the emergency power grid, and then immediately reached for his gun, which was, unfortunately, not there, because changing light bulbs didn't usually require actual weaponry.
There was a woman standing in front of him and he'd never seen her before in his life. The faint light tinted her face an odd shade of green, and she looked completely horrified.
"...Question is... It's different. It's all different! How did you get here?" she wailed. "We were just-"
Ianto blinked. "What do you mean, how did I get here? How did you?"
"Ianto?" Gwen called from downstairs. "What's that?"
"I must have fallen asleep," the woman faltered, "but I was just..."
"Who's up there?" Gwen shouted.
"I don't know!" Ianto called back. "Get up here!"
Gwen came barrelling up the stairs, gun drawn, and then saw the woman standing there. "All right," she said steadily, "keep your hands where I can see them."
The woman jumped. "How did you... you were there, too... I don't..."
"Who the hell are you and how'd you get in here?"
"Stop asking me that!" the woman shouted. "You did this. You drugged me. Or something. We were... where's the other one? How did he know I would be-"
"Take it easy," Gwen said, as soothingly as possible, without lowering the gun.
"The other one?" Ianto repeated, and his heart raced. "Jack?" he said, into the comm link. "Jack, are you there? JJ?" There was no answer. "Gwen," he said, "can you hear me on your comm?"
"No," Gwen said. "They're not working."
"Who's the other one?" Ianto asked the woman as calmly as he could. "Was he Asian? Caucasian?"
The woman blinked out.
Ianto and Gwen stared at each other, and at the empty space where the woman had been a split-second ago.
"We have to find them," Gwen exclaimed. "I'm going up to the Tourist Office."
"I don't understand what happened," Ianto said, as they hurried for the stairs.
"Me neither."
"You go, I'll catch you up," he said. "I'll try to get power back to the comms. We might need them, if we're under attack. And I want my gun. Use the lift. It doesn't use regular power."
"Okay," Gwen said, already pulling ahead of him and racing towards the platform.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck," Ianto said, in a steady stream, as he ran back and forth, resetting wires and pulling switches in a frantic effort to get the Hub back up on its feet.
He heard a crackling in his ear. Good, he'd got the comms up. "Jack?" he tried again.
"Ianto, what the hell?"
"You're there," he said in relief.
"Yeah, possibly not for long." Ianto could hear something grunting, and then a crash.
"Where are you?"
"I'm holding a weevil at bay with a chair," Jack said. "This lock seems to have disengaged. Could you get down here? Sometime this year would be nice."
"Right away."
As Ianto hurried down to the cell level, armed with the tranquilizer, he heard Gwen in his ear. "JJ's fine. No sign of our mysterious visitor."
"What do you think she meant, 'the other one?'"
"No idea."
"Okay, I'll tell Jack when I've rescued him from Janet."
"Right."
As it turned out, Jack hadn't seen the woman.
From under the desk, as she fiddled with one set of wires, Gwen said, "I don't see how anyone could just waltz in here, Jack, past all our safeguards. And the power outage? Right at that moment."
"The timing is suspect," Ianto admitted, "but it might be coincidence. Everyone's been having those. She couldn't be responsible for all of that, surely."
"Doesn't seem likely," Jack agreed. "Was she armed?"
"Not so far as we could see," Ianto said.
"Actually, she seemed, I don't know, frightened." Gwen attached another wire. "Is this one what you wanted, Jack?"
"Yeah," he said. "That's good. See, we'll hook the essentials into my vortex manipulator: Rift monitor, comms, phones, locks, and all the doors. The air recycling and the emergency lights are already using the alien tech. We just want to add in a few extras while we get this power thing sorted out."
"Can we do the other computers too?" Ianto asked.
"Not yet," Jack said grimly. "We'll have to sacrifice them for the time being. Don't want to overload the power supply. It's already strained. You done there, Gwen? Okay. JJ, can you hear me?"
"Loud and clear," came JJ's answer.
"Your door working?"
"Yes, si... Jack."
"Fine. Head down here."
"Right. Will do."
"Now," Gwen said, "how do we think we're going to find our mysterious stranger without computers or CCTV?"
"We'll think of something," Jack said. "We usually do."
Ianto sighed. "She'll probably find us."
"They usually do that, too."
As JJ headed down the damp stone hallway that led to the Hub proper, holding a flare to light the way, he shivered with excitement. They were under siege. Admittedly, it was creepy, but also, well, actually kind of cool.
Then suddenly in front of him, a woman appeared. Like, literally appeared. JJ jumped about two feet into the air.
"Who are you?" the woman demanded frantically. "Where am I? How did I-"
JJ put out one hand in what he hoped was a soothing manner, but was afraid was actually rather ineffectual. With the other, he tapped on his comm as unobtrusively as he could. "Um, guys," he said hesitantly into it. "You should get here. Now. Our guest seems to have, ah, returned."
"We'll be right there," Jack replied.
"Who are you talking to?" the woman said, her voice rising as she started to advance on him. "How did you do this to me?"
Keep her talking, JJ thought frantically. "I think you were just downstairs. Weren't you? With my colleagues? A little while ago?"
"NO!" she shouted. "No. I wasn't."
"Okay," JJ said. "No problem. That's fine." There was a pause as they stared at each other, and he fumbled for words. This was ridiculous. He'd never had a problem filling space with words before. "How did you get here, though?" he tried finally.
She looked at him blankly.
"Because one minute you weren't there, and then you suddenly were."
"Who are you?"
"Torchwood," JJ said, and even at this totally inappropriate moment, he felt a sort of glow. "We're Torchwood. You didn't answer my question."
"I don't know what that is," she shrieked. "I want to go home-"
"Let's all calm down, okay?" Jack's voice interrupted, and JJ breathed a sigh of relief. Backup had arrived. The woman broke off her cry and spun to face Jack, Ianto and Gwen, who'd come up behind her and had their guns drawn.
"Okay?" Jack said again. "There's a large potential for violence here, and we don't want anyone to get hurt, right?"
"You're the ones with guns!"
Jack raised an eyebrow. "You're the one who broke into my base."
She stared at him, without replying.
"And you were just downstairs," Ianto said. "Just a few minutes ago."
"STOP SAYING THAT," she shouted. "I just... I want to go home."
"Ah. I think I see what's going on," Jack said. "What we've got here is a case of temporal disturbance. Are you not from around here?" She didn't reply, and he tried again. "This is Earth. Are you from Earth?"
"Are you crazy?" she demanded.
"Are you?"
She started shaking her head vehemently, touching her arms repeatedly, almost clawing at them. "I want to go home. Where am I?"
"Don't worry. We'll get you home," Gwen said gently. "Do you know where you are now?"
She shook her head.
"You're in Cardiff."
"Cardiff? No, I was there already..." She trailed off.
"Okay, good. That's a start. What's your name?" Jack asked.
"Siana," she said.
"Lovely name," Jack said, and Gwen elbowed him.
Ianto rolled his eyes. Then he thought of something. Jack had mentioned temporal disturbance. "Siana," he said, as non-threateningly as possible, "what year is it?"
"What kind of-" And then suddenly she was gone.
"Fabulous," Jack said.
JJ blinked. "She's gone again."
"You have an amazing talent for stating the obvious," Jack snapped.
"Sorry."
"It is a bit disconcerting," Ianto said reassuringly.
"Okay," Jack said, "everyone downstairs. We need the computers if we're going to find her. We'll just have to reboot everything. And I think we need to figure out where these power outages are coming from. This doesn't smell right."
"Oh, really, you think?" Gwen said.
"She seemed really upset," JJ said.
"Don't worry about that too much," Jack said. "You need a clear head. Try not to get distracted."
"Right," JJ said, but somehow he could still see the woman-Siana's terrified face. She'd looked ordinary, really. And scared shitless. He hurried after the rest of the team.
"Okay," Ianto said, "I think we're almost up and running. Phones are back, now that we've got new batteries in. What's the plan after we get the computers up?"
"Run her description through missing persons," Jack said. "And look for any unusual disturbances. Maybe also check for power outage reports, just on the off chance that it is all connected, though I still don't see why..."
JJ cleared his throat.
"What is it?" Gwen asked.
"Maybe psychiatric wards? She seemed a little nuts," JJ said tentatively.
"Good idea," Jack said.
Jack's mobile rang, its tinny jangle making them all start in surprise.
"Captain Jack Harkness," he said into it. "What?... WHAT? Okay, well... it's electrical?... Everything's going? Shit. How many of them are there?... Only one?.... Shit. Okay, I'm on my way... No. You absolutely do need me... Look, are we gonna do something about this, or should we just waste time chatting about it?... Yeah, I thought so."
"What is it?" Gwen asked.
"St. Jude's Hospital," Jack said, as he grabbed devices from the racks and jammed them in his pockets. "It's being held hostage. Details weren't exactly clear, but they've got the electrical system. Something is inside the grid. And if it can get to ours as well, which, hey, it obviously can, it's bad. I have to go. Now."
Ianto asked, "Shouldn't we come with you?"
"No," Jack rapped out. "UNIT's got folks in the field already."
"Why UNIT?" JJ asked tentatively. "I mean, how do they know it's not just hackers or something?"
Jack gave him a look. "Hackers don't take out electricity like that. They might've cut the power, but it wouldn't affect things that are battery operated, right? Use your head. It's obviously something else. And this close to the Rift? Of course UNIT's edgy. I'd be worried if they weren't. I'm taking the SUV. It wasn't on, so it should be fine. Only things that were currently running seem to have been disrupted. Ianto, you and JJ stay here. If the Hub loses power again, we're all screwed. I don't anticipate problems, but if I'm wrong, and this thing can mess with my wriststrap, everything we just plugged into it could go down again. Stay on your guard, and if you get a clue as to what's doing this, feel free to share. Gwen, you try to track down Siana. She could be connected. I don't believe in coincidence. If we get the computer search running, fine, or you could head to the police station and start making inquiries there."
"You sure?" Gwen asked.
Jack patted his Webley and held up his vortex manipulator. "Got all the backup I need for now, thanks. And it doesn't run on juice. I'll be fine. Let's just get this done, people. And stay in touch."
They all nodded, but he was already running toward the garage.
Gwen paced the upper walkway.
She had seen that girl before. That woman. What was she, early to mid-twenties? Probably, and she looked like some kind of ghost, so pale, with thin white-blonde hair, albino maybe, which would help narrow the search down considerably, except her eyes weren't-
"Okay," said Ianto from down below. JJ sat wringing his hands on the sofa across from where Ianto stood, still seeming a job interviewee for the moment, and Gwen had to admit the staging was already a bit funny. "What did she look like?"
"You saw her, too. I don't understand-"
"I wrote down what I saw. It's your turn."
Gwen ran her fingertips along the rail as she walked, and wondered whether she should listen. Witnesses influenced witnesses. Ianto's approach was a good one: record first, ask questions later. Gwen would have done that, but she was still thinking, still searching her memory for the whole story.
"She was... female. Uh."
"Right." Ianto had a pad in his hand, and did not use his pen. He stood statue-still, and it only served to animate JJ with more fervour.
"Thin. My age. Light hair. D-dark eyes."
Gwen danced her nails along the rail, her steps creaking. Sounded about right. Blue, deep, deep blue. Pupils huge. Striking. Gwen had been stricken before, somewhere. A long time ago.
"Better," said Ianto, doing JJ the comforting favour of marking the pad. Gwen squinted at Ianto with suspicious humour, unseen. It could very well have been that he was enjoying this. "And what was she wearing?"
"Pyjamas."
Ianto shook his head, very, very subtly. "Detail," he said. "You deduced 'pyjamas.' From what?"
JJ jumped, and Gwen tried to turn her tight smile into a frown to hide it, just in case JJ looked up. To be fair, she was enjoying this a little, too.
"White," JJ said. "With stripes. Had a... had a collar. Light green! White top and bottoms, long sleeves, vertical light green stripes, no - no, I would say more..."
Ianto scribbled with a smile as subtle as his nod had been, which grew only slightly whilst JJ kept on.
"...more like turquoise, light greenish turquoise, and she had a bracelet, looked like, I'm not sure. A string bracelet, something woven."
Ianto's eyebrows rose in time with Gwen's, and he glanced quickly up at her. No, she hadn't noticed that, either. She shrugged infinitesimally, and Ianto nodded. "Was she married?" he asked. Nice one.
JJ slouched. "I have no idea."
Ianto tossed the notepad onto the coffee table. "She wasn't wearing a ring," he said, one hand on a hip. "Remember to look for rings in the future." The show over, he headed for the tea station to fix JJ his reward, and JJ fell back on the settee, running a hand through his hair, looking for all the world as though he knew something had just happened, but had no clue what it was.
Gwen smiled. JJ already had what he needed, now it was just a matter of practice, and keeping his wits about him in the throes of fear so great there was a danger of wetting oneself. But he was definitely coming along. She descended the spiral steps and took her jacket up from a chair back. "Heading out," she said. "To the station." Maybe Andy would be about. "I'll pick up a newspaper too."
"I've already done a search of the Missing Persons database," Ianto returned, his image crossed with cords and wire shelving. "Not a match going back three months. More extensive one running now."
"Ianto, if I know the hell they're all going through due to the outages, and I do, they haven't updated it today."
Ianto's head dipped, and he came around with a mug. "Say 'Hi' for Jack," he said, handing the mug to JJ, who muttered soft thanks.
Gwen laughed at the revolving lights above the cog. "If Jack wants me to say anything on his behalf, I don't think it's 'Hi,'" she said as she crossed the threshold, then stuttered a step. That was exactly what Ianto had meant.
All but one of the UNIT officers knew Jack's face, apparently. When he arrived at St. Jude's, the red sea of berets had parted for him like, well, the Red Sea, so as he jogged toward the revolving reception door, looking up at the building, he was surprised to find a feminine hand, spidery, jabbing its fingertips into his chest.
"Just going to waltz on into a hostage situation, are you? Just like that?" She had the voice of a newscaster.
Jack fought the compulsion to listen. "You know, I don't know what we did here without you UNIT guys trying to tell us what to do."
"Me neither. It's amazing you didn't get us all killed. I guess you had to settle for blowing up half the city. There's a reason we're here, you know. You need us."
"That's a nice hat," he replied inconsequentially. "Looks a lot like all the ones that got out of my way when I got here."
"You like my hat?"
"Yeah, Erin. It's a nice hat. Rest of you's not so bad, either. I might feel up for a liaison with the liaison when this is all over. You've got my number already, right?"
Erin was the one to do the looking-up-and-down. And the smirking. "I'm afraid you're not my type, Captain."
Jack returned the smirk. "You kidding? I'm everybody's type."
She squinted at him, and it was flirtatious. What a bluffer. If she thought she was going to follow him inside, he would make sure it was for his reasons.
Erin dropped her hand to hold it with her other behind her back, and yet, Jack couldn't quite bring himself to move forward. He didn't like that, not one little bit. "Would you like a briefing?" she asked, looking him straight in the eye.
"I prefer debriefings, actually," he said, waggling his eyebrows. Erin didn't react. At all. Annoyed, Jack slid his eyes side-to-side, his arms falling limp. "All ears, no time. Go."
"She has been moving among the floors quickly," Erin began.
"How quickly?"
"Hard to tell. Witnesses are skittish and difficult to communicate with. Communications out of the building are down. We disabled the elevators ourselves, before she could get to them, and our culprit seems to have slowed, or stilled. Aside from expressing her dislike of red hats, she has made no demands, only threats, occasionally appearing at windows. As far as we can tell, she hasn't rounded up the hostages. They remain spread throughout the hospital. She claims full responsibility for the outages, and plans to cause one here. She mentioned Intensive Care specifically. She's angry, possibly insane, and thus likely to react with excessive force if startled. Also, I'd like to point out that what she's doing? Not really possible for an ordinary human. But I'm sure you've realised that."
"Probably before you did. Hmmm. Sneaky," Jack considered, frowning thoughtfully, feeling the weight of his Webley on his thigh. "I can do sneaky."
Erin smiled brightly. "I'm not so sure you can, Captain," she said through it. "Are you?"
"Oh yeah, with you behind me," Jack assured, finally feeling permitted - he was giving permission to himself, that was all - to move past her and start the door revolving with the flat of his hand. It wasn't like he was going to take any chances after the last UNIT cock-up. "Way behind me."
"Good luck," Erin called, nearly cut off as Jack stopped the door on the other side.
Gwen sat in police reception, feeling strangely put off by the desk officer. She thumbed through her newspaper - it was always easier to think with something concrete, solid and printed between her fingers - but wasn't reading it. Nor was she thinking about what she had planned to be thinking about.
The desk sergeant (Gwen felt bad enough for not remembering her name) had cheerily asked if Gwen had lost weight. "Love that shirt," she had said, and Gwen had immediately wondered how awful it looked. The sergeant could see the new pounds, Gwen was sure - only five, but Gwen didn't wear baggy clothing - and the sergeant was calling her fat.
So Gwen sat down in reception with her newspaper instead of pulling out her ID and passing through the door. She had simply asked for Andy and felt obliged to wait.
Gwen stared at the newsprint, following the curves of the letters (so curvy), without reading them, and thought she might cry, and thought that was ridiculous, and thought she might cry over being so ridiculous. Above her head, a grated light bulb browned and revived. Still, she stared at the page.
She could be calm about this. Calm and reasonable, and she would handle... This. She turned to a page outlining an airliner disaster overseas, a grid of faces, most from ID photos, and scanned them.
So, this girl, this woman. Siana. Gwen tried to imagine what Siana might look like if calm, rather than horrified, if her eyes narrowed a little and her mouth slacked into an awkward, shy smile, or a straight, bored line.
"Aren't you a fright," Andy said from her left. "Could try not looking like you'll lose breakfast all over Tim's clean floor. What's up?"
Gwen looked up at Andy, the overhead light flickering again in his hair. She absorbed his characteristically concerned smirk, and knew. "Um."
"I'm not a ghost, Gwen." Andy put his hands on his hips, his playful annoyance bobbing his head side-to-side. "I said, what's up?"
Gwen jumped to her feet, then her tiptoes. She knew! She'd figured it out! She grabbed Andy's forearms and planted a kiss on his cheek. "Thank you, Andy!" she said, and bustled her way through a few other officers, nearly knocking one over - "Sorry!" - on her way to the door.
"What the hell was that? You playing jokes?" Andy called after her. "Boss put you up to it? It's not April, by the way. You let him know that for me, alright? Get him a bloody calendar for Christmas or-"
Gwen waved a hand behind her without turning around, clomped onto the street and, speed-walking, touched her ear. "Ianto, Siana's a missing person. Extend the search years back. Her disappearance coincided with a negative Rift spike. Tosh..." Gwen trailed off, and restarted. "I helped Andy. Tosh helped me. Then you helped me. Remember?"
Nothing came back to her. "Ianto?" Gwen tapped her ear again, again, took out her tiny bud, replaced it, and tapped it three, four more times. "Jack?" Not a sound, not a damn sound, not even static. Completely dead. "Shit," she spat, climbing into her car, yanking the seatbelt hard over her shoulder (and carefully easing it across her stomach).
Something had just happened to Jack. That meant something might or might not have happened to the Hub. She could stop there to find out whether it was experiencing another outage and then head to St. Jude's regardless, or she could head straight to St. Jude's from here.
It was not the most difficult decision she had ever made.
Hospitals gave Jack the creeps. He knew them best when they were full of soldiers that he had (or may as well have) ordered into the line of fire himself, but that wasn't the only reason they spooked him. It was because they were, generally, for healing.
The whole of St. Jude's was a pretty ruthless reminder that no one else could so easily do it on their own. Also, they housed absolutely no antiques. Zero. Well, aside from the medical technology, which still looked pretty antique to Jack, not to mention somewhat barbaric. Better than the nineteenth century, of course, but still. And then there were all the people getting close to their expiration date. How many reasons was he at by now? Four, five? He was just getting started.
Jack took every corner like a secret agent. His self image had been permanently altered ever since he made himself sit through all those Bond films. The theme music running through his head helped him smile at the patients he startled - a few meandering the halls with IV poles, most in their rooms. He checked every room, charming away the disapproving frowns of doctors and nurses. They seemed used to tense situations, hardened and unafraid of his gun.
He made extra-sure this would happen by winking and whispering, "Torchwood," to most of them, staff and patients alike. Keep it a secret, he was telling them, and they nodded, or smiled, or winked back. Excellent.
Jack didn't climb up to Intensive Care until he was absolutely sure he would have to. Intensive Care units were very, very creepy.
"Jack, are you humming the 'Mission Impossible' theme?"
That wasn't a Bond film. "No," he said, and turned off the audible-receive on the comm before Ianto could correct him, because he required complete silence for this.
He snuck around the door from the stairs and into a long hallway, and crept along the wall. He didn't mind playing UNIT's mineshaft canary. He was the only candidate guaranteed not to end up in one of these beds himself. Plus, he complemented their nightingale, wherever the lovely Miss Jones was lately. How could he expect anyone to turn down a deal like that?
"I know you're there."
All of Jack froze but for his neck, which whipped his face around in the opposite direction. His arms swiftly brought his gun, and the rest of him, with it.
A pale blonde woman in pyjamas, with the coal eyes of a snowman, stood twenty feet down the white hall. "And I know where you were," Jack replied, keeping his aim on her, mainly because she showed no sign of fear. Anymore.
"Oh?" She lifted an eyebrow, and started moving slowly toward him. Or she had always been moving toward him, and he was just noticing now. It was that slow. Hard to tell. "Do tell."
Strange, how she echoed a word in Jack's head just then. He shook it slightly, and in an afterthought, used the opportunity to touch his ear, turning his comm back on. "How are you, Siana?"
"Who's Siana?" She crossed her arms and took another step. "I don't know you."
"You sure about that?"
Her body language was absolutely sure. "I've never seen you before in my life." She moved a bit faster now. "But I like you."
"Most do."
"Is that her? What floor?" Ianto hissed in his ear.
"I can see why. You're a long string," said not-Siana. "I have a feeling." Huh. Interesting. Jack hoped Ianto was getting this.
"If your name's not Siana, then what is it?" Jack asked, very deliberately.
Ten feet away and creeping, she rolled her eyes, tossing a gossamer lock of hair from her face. "No one ever gets it right. It's Sian. No 'a'. My name is Sian. That's all."
Five feet. Definitely faster. Jack took his finger off the trigger. He could shoot after he figured out whether he needed to. "People make mistakes, Sian," he said.
"Too often." She lunged, arms forward, hands open, so Jack lunged too, wrapping his free hand fully around her alarmingly thin forearm, and boy was that ever a stupid mistake, because there went the ground, right out from under him, definitely not here anymore.
Gordian Knot: Part Two
Gordian Knot
by: curriejean, kalichan
Critically eyeing the tower he'd constructed (two desks, one on top of the other, and then a step ladder on top of them), Ianto wondered for approximately the eleven-hundredth time if the architects of this super-secret science fiction base had been a) psychotic, b) alien, c) capable of levitation, or d) some exciting combination of the above. Clearly, they hadn't had regular maintenance performed by normal human beings in mind as a priority, because a simple task like, for instance, changing the light bulbs, was, in the Hub, a task of epic proportions that had to be planned and strategised like some sort of tactical assault.
Ianto wasn't all that comfortable with heights, but the structure he'd made was, in principle, stable, and he'd done this successfully once before. Anyway, he was pretty sure that breaking one's neck was a relatively quick and painless, if ignominious, way to go, and thus unlikely to happen to any Torchwood operative. Besides, he couldn't put it off any longer; the lights had been flickering on and off for a few days now, and the Hub wasn't the most pleasantly lit place under the best of circumstances.
"Rather like working in a dungeon," he muttered, as he prepared to climb his edifice, a bag containing an enormous light panel slung round his neck. "Or a horror movie."
"What are you doing up there?" Gwen called from her workstation below, where she was doing something on her computer.
"Nothing much," he replied. "Just changing the light bulbs." He'd have asked Gwen to help him, but they still hadn't had the conversation they needed to have, all together, about any coming changes in Gwen's duties, and until they did (maybe never, if they were waiting for both Jack and the Rift to be reasonable), he thought he should refrain from inviting her to climb about the rafters of the place. Better safe than sorry, even if the notion might offend her.
As for JJ, he was upstairs, straightening leaflets, if he knew what was good for him, and in any event, Ianto wasn't ready to let the lad lark about the Hub's narrow gantries just yet. He still seemed to have that eager, awkward gangliness of a young puppy, not yet quite sure where his flesh left off and air began. Ianto could easily visualize a large number of contusions and bruises occurring as a result, and he was fairly certain that at least half of them would end up being his own. No, JJ was better off where he was at present. Besides, even after all those instructional videos, he might still be convinced of the glamour of this operation, and you couldn't get more prosaic than light bulbs. Best not to shatter all illusions quite so quickly, or there'd be nothing left for him to cling to when things got dark, as they undoubtedly would, and probably sooner rather than later.
Gwen, he realised, was still talking. "The outages are really beginning to drive us round the twist. Are they happening near you?"
"I've not noticed, but I don't get home all that much," Ianto admitted. "The new Chinese takeaway lost theirs though. They were giving the food away free, which was quite nice, I thought. And then I heard the same thing happened at The Captain's Wife, you know, that pub and restaurant in Penarth, near Swanbridge."
"Jack doesn't own the place, does he?"
"Not that I've heard, but who really knows?"
Gwen shrugged. "True. He has kept other islands from us in the past. Well, from me, anyway." Ianto grimaced at that. "Still," she went on, "I suppose there are other captains in existence, and if Jack owned it, they'd probably never lose power."
"I don't know," Ianto said. "Flat Holm's not exactly luxury accommodations. And it's not like they haven't lost power, too, loads of times."
"Seriously? God, I don't know what bloody SWALEC's doing with themselves, but it's really getting to be too much. I feel as if I'm back in India or something."
After levering himself onto the second desk, Ianto paused for a second. "God forbid," he said through his teeth.
"You really didn't like it there, did you?"
"No, I really, really didn't. Too much heat, too much weird, too much everything."
Gwen laughed. "Too many of Jack's exes?"
"Much as I'd like to, I can't really blame them on India," Ianto said, considering. "They're rather scattered throughout the known universe, from what I can gather. But everything else I can."
"You sound a bit racist there, you know."
"No, I hate Switzerland too," Ianto said without thinking, and Gwen burst out laughing again.
"We've dealt with more aliens here in Cardiff then we have abroad," she pointed out.
"Who... said... I... didn't hate it... here as... well?" Ianto asked in short bursts, while he reached out from the top of the ladder to un-slot the old panel, trying not to overbalance in the process.
"You're completely mental," Gwen said fondly. "Are the outages why our lights have been flickering too? I thought we were on a generator or something."
"Parts of us are, other parts aren't." The new light bulb locked into place. "Got you!" Ianto congratulated himself. "Anyway," he added to Gwen, "I don't think the outages have got anything to do with it. It's unlikely they'd affect us. And I checked the fuses-"
"We have fuses?" she interrupted.
"No, of course not, but it's simpler to call them that. Anyway, I checked them, and they're quite all right, so it must be the bulbs, and I've been letting that slide. It's been a year, at least, since I looked at them, and I'm sure when the Earth was moved, they must've been shaken loose or something. Probably all over the electrical system, now that I think of it. That'd explain the blackouts."
"Are you done now?" she asked. "Because I've got these reports that I could use your help with-"
"Hah," he said bitterly. "One down, a hundred and forty-three to go. I'll be quite fit when I'm done with this lot."
"Don't think you need to worry about that," she said, the smirk in her voice clearly evident. "Nothing wrong with a man with meat on his bones."
"And you, a married lady," he shot back. "Been checking me out, have you?"
"Married, but not blind - isn't that what they say?"
"Eyes on your work and off my arse, thank you," he returned.
"Spoilsport. You never say that to Jack!"
"He's better at multitasking. Slightly." He grinned to himself, and then began making his way down from his perch. Almost at the bottom, the lights flickered again, and this time they blew out completely, leaving the Hub in a sort of ghostly half-light, as the emergency lights lit up one by one.
"Fucking hell," Ianto said exasperatedly. He heard curses from downstairs, where Gwen had clearly lost the report she'd been working on. She could swear like a sailor, that woman.
He turned to head for the emergency power grid, and then immediately reached for his gun, which was, unfortunately, not there, because changing light bulbs didn't usually require actual weaponry.
There was a woman standing in front of him and he'd never seen her before in his life. The faint light tinted her face an odd shade of green, and she looked completely horrified.
"...Question is... It's different. It's all different! How did you get here?" she wailed. "We were just-"
Ianto blinked. "What do you mean, how did I get here? How did you?"
"Ianto?" Gwen called from downstairs. "What's that?"
"I must have fallen asleep," the woman faltered, "but I was just..."
"Who's up there?" Gwen shouted.
"I don't know!" Ianto called back. "Get up here!"
Gwen came barrelling up the stairs, gun drawn, and then saw the woman standing there. "All right," she said steadily, "keep your hands where I can see them."
The woman jumped. "How did you... you were there, too... I don't..."
"Who the hell are you and how'd you get in here?"
"Stop asking me that!" the woman shouted. "You did this. You drugged me. Or something. We were... where's the other one? How did he know I would be-"
"Take it easy," Gwen said, as soothingly as possible, without lowering the gun.
"The other one?" Ianto repeated, and his heart raced. "Jack?" he said, into the comm link. "Jack, are you there? JJ?" There was no answer. "Gwen," he said, "can you hear me on your comm?"
"No," Gwen said. "They're not working."
"Who's the other one?" Ianto asked the woman as calmly as he could. "Was he Asian? Caucasian?"
The woman blinked out.
Ianto and Gwen stared at each other, and at the empty space where the woman had been a split-second ago.
"We have to find them," Gwen exclaimed. "I'm going up to the Tourist Office."
"I don't understand what happened," Ianto said, as they hurried for the stairs.
"Me neither."
"You go, I'll catch you up," he said. "I'll try to get power back to the comms. We might need them, if we're under attack. And I want my gun. Use the lift. It doesn't use regular power."
"Okay," Gwen said, already pulling ahead of him and racing towards the platform.
"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck," Ianto said, in a steady stream, as he ran back and forth, resetting wires and pulling switches in a frantic effort to get the Hub back up on its feet.
He heard a crackling in his ear. Good, he'd got the comms up. "Jack?" he tried again.
"Ianto, what the hell?"
"You're there," he said in relief.
"Yeah, possibly not for long." Ianto could hear something grunting, and then a crash.
"Where are you?"
"I'm holding a weevil at bay with a chair," Jack said. "This lock seems to have disengaged. Could you get down here? Sometime this year would be nice."
"Right away."
As Ianto hurried down to the cell level, armed with the tranquilizer, he heard Gwen in his ear. "JJ's fine. No sign of our mysterious visitor."
"What do you think she meant, 'the other one?'"
"No idea."
"Okay, I'll tell Jack when I've rescued him from Janet."
"Right."
As it turned out, Jack hadn't seen the woman.
From under the desk, as she fiddled with one set of wires, Gwen said, "I don't see how anyone could just waltz in here, Jack, past all our safeguards. And the power outage? Right at that moment."
"The timing is suspect," Ianto admitted, "but it might be coincidence. Everyone's been having those. She couldn't be responsible for all of that, surely."
"Doesn't seem likely," Jack agreed. "Was she armed?"
"Not so far as we could see," Ianto said.
"Actually, she seemed, I don't know, frightened." Gwen attached another wire. "Is this one what you wanted, Jack?"
"Yeah," he said. "That's good. See, we'll hook the essentials into my vortex manipulator: Rift monitor, comms, phones, locks, and all the doors. The air recycling and the emergency lights are already using the alien tech. We just want to add in a few extras while we get this power thing sorted out."
"Can we do the other computers too?" Ianto asked.
"Not yet," Jack said grimly. "We'll have to sacrifice them for the time being. Don't want to overload the power supply. It's already strained. You done there, Gwen? Okay. JJ, can you hear me?"
"Loud and clear," came JJ's answer.
"Your door working?"
"Yes, si... Jack."
"Fine. Head down here."
"Right. Will do."
"Now," Gwen said, "how do we think we're going to find our mysterious stranger without computers or CCTV?"
"We'll think of something," Jack said. "We usually do."
Ianto sighed. "She'll probably find us."
"They usually do that, too."
As JJ headed down the damp stone hallway that led to the Hub proper, holding a flare to light the way, he shivered with excitement. They were under siege. Admittedly, it was creepy, but also, well, actually kind of cool.
Then suddenly in front of him, a woman appeared. Like, literally appeared. JJ jumped about two feet into the air.
"Who are you?" the woman demanded frantically. "Where am I? How did I-"
JJ put out one hand in what he hoped was a soothing manner, but was afraid was actually rather ineffectual. With the other, he tapped on his comm as unobtrusively as he could. "Um, guys," he said hesitantly into it. "You should get here. Now. Our guest seems to have, ah, returned."
"We'll be right there," Jack replied.
"Who are you talking to?" the woman said, her voice rising as she started to advance on him. "How did you do this to me?"
Keep her talking, JJ thought frantically. "I think you were just downstairs. Weren't you? With my colleagues? A little while ago?"
"NO!" she shouted. "No. I wasn't."
"Okay," JJ said. "No problem. That's fine." There was a pause as they stared at each other, and he fumbled for words. This was ridiculous. He'd never had a problem filling space with words before. "How did you get here, though?" he tried finally.
She looked at him blankly.
"Because one minute you weren't there, and then you suddenly were."
"Who are you?"
"Torchwood," JJ said, and even at this totally inappropriate moment, he felt a sort of glow. "We're Torchwood. You didn't answer my question."
"I don't know what that is," she shrieked. "I want to go home-"
"Let's all calm down, okay?" Jack's voice interrupted, and JJ breathed a sigh of relief. Backup had arrived. The woman broke off her cry and spun to face Jack, Ianto and Gwen, who'd come up behind her and had their guns drawn.
"Okay?" Jack said again. "There's a large potential for violence here, and we don't want anyone to get hurt, right?"
"You're the ones with guns!"
Jack raised an eyebrow. "You're the one who broke into my base."
She stared at him, without replying.
"And you were just downstairs," Ianto said. "Just a few minutes ago."
"STOP SAYING THAT," she shouted. "I just... I want to go home."
"Ah. I think I see what's going on," Jack said. "What we've got here is a case of temporal disturbance. Are you not from around here?" She didn't reply, and he tried again. "This is Earth. Are you from Earth?"
"Are you crazy?" she demanded.
"Are you?"
She started shaking her head vehemently, touching her arms repeatedly, almost clawing at them. "I want to go home. Where am I?"
"Don't worry. We'll get you home," Gwen said gently. "Do you know where you are now?"
She shook her head.
"You're in Cardiff."
"Cardiff? No, I was there already..." She trailed off.
"Okay, good. That's a start. What's your name?" Jack asked.
"Siana," she said.
"Lovely name," Jack said, and Gwen elbowed him.
Ianto rolled his eyes. Then he thought of something. Jack had mentioned temporal disturbance. "Siana," he said, as non-threateningly as possible, "what year is it?"
"What kind of-" And then suddenly she was gone.
"Fabulous," Jack said.
JJ blinked. "She's gone again."
"You have an amazing talent for stating the obvious," Jack snapped.
"Sorry."
"It is a bit disconcerting," Ianto said reassuringly.
"Okay," Jack said, "everyone downstairs. We need the computers if we're going to find her. We'll just have to reboot everything. And I think we need to figure out where these power outages are coming from. This doesn't smell right."
"Oh, really, you think?" Gwen said.
"She seemed really upset," JJ said.
"Don't worry about that too much," Jack said. "You need a clear head. Try not to get distracted."
"Right," JJ said, but somehow he could still see the woman-Siana's terrified face. She'd looked ordinary, really. And scared shitless. He hurried after the rest of the team.
"Okay," Ianto said, "I think we're almost up and running. Phones are back, now that we've got new batteries in. What's the plan after we get the computers up?"
"Run her description through missing persons," Jack said. "And look for any unusual disturbances. Maybe also check for power outage reports, just on the off chance that it is all connected, though I still don't see why..."
JJ cleared his throat.
"What is it?" Gwen asked.
"Maybe psychiatric wards? She seemed a little nuts," JJ said tentatively.
"Good idea," Jack said.
Jack's mobile rang, its tinny jangle making them all start in surprise.
"Captain Jack Harkness," he said into it. "What?... WHAT? Okay, well... it's electrical?... Everything's going? Shit. How many of them are there?... Only one?.... Shit. Okay, I'm on my way... No. You absolutely do need me... Look, are we gonna do something about this, or should we just waste time chatting about it?... Yeah, I thought so."
"What is it?" Gwen asked.
"St. Jude's Hospital," Jack said, as he grabbed devices from the racks and jammed them in his pockets. "It's being held hostage. Details weren't exactly clear, but they've got the electrical system. Something is inside the grid. And if it can get to ours as well, which, hey, it obviously can, it's bad. I have to go. Now."
Ianto asked, "Shouldn't we come with you?"
"No," Jack rapped out. "UNIT's got folks in the field already."
"Why UNIT?" JJ asked tentatively. "I mean, how do they know it's not just hackers or something?"
Jack gave him a look. "Hackers don't take out electricity like that. They might've cut the power, but it wouldn't affect things that are battery operated, right? Use your head. It's obviously something else. And this close to the Rift? Of course UNIT's edgy. I'd be worried if they weren't. I'm taking the SUV. It wasn't on, so it should be fine. Only things that were currently running seem to have been disrupted. Ianto, you and JJ stay here. If the Hub loses power again, we're all screwed. I don't anticipate problems, but if I'm wrong, and this thing can mess with my wriststrap, everything we just plugged into it could go down again. Stay on your guard, and if you get a clue as to what's doing this, feel free to share. Gwen, you try to track down Siana. She could be connected. I don't believe in coincidence. If we get the computer search running, fine, or you could head to the police station and start making inquiries there."
"You sure?" Gwen asked.
Jack patted his Webley and held up his vortex manipulator. "Got all the backup I need for now, thanks. And it doesn't run on juice. I'll be fine. Let's just get this done, people. And stay in touch."
They all nodded, but he was already running toward the garage.
Gwen paced the upper walkway.
She had seen that girl before. That woman. What was she, early to mid-twenties? Probably, and she looked like some kind of ghost, so pale, with thin white-blonde hair, albino maybe, which would help narrow the search down considerably, except her eyes weren't-
"Okay," said Ianto from down below. JJ sat wringing his hands on the sofa across from where Ianto stood, still seeming a job interviewee for the moment, and Gwen had to admit the staging was already a bit funny. "What did she look like?"
"You saw her, too. I don't understand-"
"I wrote down what I saw. It's your turn."
Gwen ran her fingertips along the rail as she walked, and wondered whether she should listen. Witnesses influenced witnesses. Ianto's approach was a good one: record first, ask questions later. Gwen would have done that, but she was still thinking, still searching her memory for the whole story.
"She was... female. Uh."
"Right." Ianto had a pad in his hand, and did not use his pen. He stood statue-still, and it only served to animate JJ with more fervour.
"Thin. My age. Light hair. D-dark eyes."
Gwen danced her nails along the rail, her steps creaking. Sounded about right. Blue, deep, deep blue. Pupils huge. Striking. Gwen had been stricken before, somewhere. A long time ago.
"Better," said Ianto, doing JJ the comforting favour of marking the pad. Gwen squinted at Ianto with suspicious humour, unseen. It could very well have been that he was enjoying this. "And what was she wearing?"
"Pyjamas."
Ianto shook his head, very, very subtly. "Detail," he said. "You deduced 'pyjamas.' From what?"
JJ jumped, and Gwen tried to turn her tight smile into a frown to hide it, just in case JJ looked up. To be fair, she was enjoying this a little, too.
"White," JJ said. "With stripes. Had a... had a collar. Light green! White top and bottoms, long sleeves, vertical light green stripes, no - no, I would say more..."
Ianto scribbled with a smile as subtle as his nod had been, which grew only slightly whilst JJ kept on.
"...more like turquoise, light greenish turquoise, and she had a bracelet, looked like, I'm not sure. A string bracelet, something woven."
Ianto's eyebrows rose in time with Gwen's, and he glanced quickly up at her. No, she hadn't noticed that, either. She shrugged infinitesimally, and Ianto nodded. "Was she married?" he asked. Nice one.
JJ slouched. "I have no idea."
Ianto tossed the notepad onto the coffee table. "She wasn't wearing a ring," he said, one hand on a hip. "Remember to look for rings in the future." The show over, he headed for the tea station to fix JJ his reward, and JJ fell back on the settee, running a hand through his hair, looking for all the world as though he knew something had just happened, but had no clue what it was.
Gwen smiled. JJ already had what he needed, now it was just a matter of practice, and keeping his wits about him in the throes of fear so great there was a danger of wetting oneself. But he was definitely coming along. She descended the spiral steps and took her jacket up from a chair back. "Heading out," she said. "To the station." Maybe Andy would be about. "I'll pick up a newspaper too."
"I've already done a search of the Missing Persons database," Ianto returned, his image crossed with cords and wire shelving. "Not a match going back three months. More extensive one running now."
"Ianto, if I know the hell they're all going through due to the outages, and I do, they haven't updated it today."
Ianto's head dipped, and he came around with a mug. "Say 'Hi' for Jack," he said, handing the mug to JJ, who muttered soft thanks.
Gwen laughed at the revolving lights above the cog. "If Jack wants me to say anything on his behalf, I don't think it's 'Hi,'" she said as she crossed the threshold, then stuttered a step. That was exactly what Ianto had meant.
All but one of the UNIT officers knew Jack's face, apparently. When he arrived at St. Jude's, the red sea of berets had parted for him like, well, the Red Sea, so as he jogged toward the revolving reception door, looking up at the building, he was surprised to find a feminine hand, spidery, jabbing its fingertips into his chest.
"Just going to waltz on into a hostage situation, are you? Just like that?" She had the voice of a newscaster.
Jack fought the compulsion to listen. "You know, I don't know what we did here without you UNIT guys trying to tell us what to do."
"Me neither. It's amazing you didn't get us all killed. I guess you had to settle for blowing up half the city. There's a reason we're here, you know. You need us."
"That's a nice hat," he replied inconsequentially. "Looks a lot like all the ones that got out of my way when I got here."
"You like my hat?"
"Yeah, Erin. It's a nice hat. Rest of you's not so bad, either. I might feel up for a liaison with the liaison when this is all over. You've got my number already, right?"
Erin was the one to do the looking-up-and-down. And the smirking. "I'm afraid you're not my type, Captain."
Jack returned the smirk. "You kidding? I'm everybody's type."
She squinted at him, and it was flirtatious. What a bluffer. If she thought she was going to follow him inside, he would make sure it was for his reasons.
Erin dropped her hand to hold it with her other behind her back, and yet, Jack couldn't quite bring himself to move forward. He didn't like that, not one little bit. "Would you like a briefing?" she asked, looking him straight in the eye.
"I prefer debriefings, actually," he said, waggling his eyebrows. Erin didn't react. At all. Annoyed, Jack slid his eyes side-to-side, his arms falling limp. "All ears, no time. Go."
"She has been moving among the floors quickly," Erin began.
"How quickly?"
"Hard to tell. Witnesses are skittish and difficult to communicate with. Communications out of the building are down. We disabled the elevators ourselves, before she could get to them, and our culprit seems to have slowed, or stilled. Aside from expressing her dislike of red hats, she has made no demands, only threats, occasionally appearing at windows. As far as we can tell, she hasn't rounded up the hostages. They remain spread throughout the hospital. She claims full responsibility for the outages, and plans to cause one here. She mentioned Intensive Care specifically. She's angry, possibly insane, and thus likely to react with excessive force if startled. Also, I'd like to point out that what she's doing? Not really possible for an ordinary human. But I'm sure you've realised that."
"Probably before you did. Hmmm. Sneaky," Jack considered, frowning thoughtfully, feeling the weight of his Webley on his thigh. "I can do sneaky."
Erin smiled brightly. "I'm not so sure you can, Captain," she said through it. "Are you?"
"Oh yeah, with you behind me," Jack assured, finally feeling permitted - he was giving permission to himself, that was all - to move past her and start the door revolving with the flat of his hand. It wasn't like he was going to take any chances after the last UNIT cock-up. "Way behind me."
"Good luck," Erin called, nearly cut off as Jack stopped the door on the other side.
Gwen sat in police reception, feeling strangely put off by the desk officer. She thumbed through her newspaper - it was always easier to think with something concrete, solid and printed between her fingers - but wasn't reading it. Nor was she thinking about what she had planned to be thinking about.
The desk sergeant (Gwen felt bad enough for not remembering her name) had cheerily asked if Gwen had lost weight. "Love that shirt," she had said, and Gwen had immediately wondered how awful it looked. The sergeant could see the new pounds, Gwen was sure - only five, but Gwen didn't wear baggy clothing - and the sergeant was calling her fat.
So Gwen sat down in reception with her newspaper instead of pulling out her ID and passing through the door. She had simply asked for Andy and felt obliged to wait.
Gwen stared at the newsprint, following the curves of the letters (so curvy), without reading them, and thought she might cry, and thought that was ridiculous, and thought she might cry over being so ridiculous. Above her head, a grated light bulb browned and revived. Still, she stared at the page.
She could be calm about this. Calm and reasonable, and she would handle... This. She turned to a page outlining an airliner disaster overseas, a grid of faces, most from ID photos, and scanned them.
So, this girl, this woman. Siana. Gwen tried to imagine what Siana might look like if calm, rather than horrified, if her eyes narrowed a little and her mouth slacked into an awkward, shy smile, or a straight, bored line.
"Aren't you a fright," Andy said from her left. "Could try not looking like you'll lose breakfast all over Tim's clean floor. What's up?"
Gwen looked up at Andy, the overhead light flickering again in his hair. She absorbed his characteristically concerned smirk, and knew. "Um."
"I'm not a ghost, Gwen." Andy put his hands on his hips, his playful annoyance bobbing his head side-to-side. "I said, what's up?"
Gwen jumped to her feet, then her tiptoes. She knew! She'd figured it out! She grabbed Andy's forearms and planted a kiss on his cheek. "Thank you, Andy!" she said, and bustled her way through a few other officers, nearly knocking one over - "Sorry!" - on her way to the door.
"What the hell was that? You playing jokes?" Andy called after her. "Boss put you up to it? It's not April, by the way. You let him know that for me, alright? Get him a bloody calendar for Christmas or-"
Gwen waved a hand behind her without turning around, clomped onto the street and, speed-walking, touched her ear. "Ianto, Siana's a missing person. Extend the search years back. Her disappearance coincided with a negative Rift spike. Tosh..." Gwen trailed off, and restarted. "I helped Andy. Tosh helped me. Then you helped me. Remember?"
Nothing came back to her. "Ianto?" Gwen tapped her ear again, again, took out her tiny bud, replaced it, and tapped it three, four more times. "Jack?" Not a sound, not a damn sound, not even static. Completely dead. "Shit," she spat, climbing into her car, yanking the seatbelt hard over her shoulder (and carefully easing it across her stomach).
Something had just happened to Jack. That meant something might or might not have happened to the Hub. She could stop there to find out whether it was experiencing another outage and then head to St. Jude's regardless, or she could head straight to St. Jude's from here.
It was not the most difficult decision she had ever made.
Hospitals gave Jack the creeps. He knew them best when they were full of soldiers that he had (or may as well have) ordered into the line of fire himself, but that wasn't the only reason they spooked him. It was because they were, generally, for healing.
The whole of St. Jude's was a pretty ruthless reminder that no one else could so easily do it on their own. Also, they housed absolutely no antiques. Zero. Well, aside from the medical technology, which still looked pretty antique to Jack, not to mention somewhat barbaric. Better than the nineteenth century, of course, but still. And then there were all the people getting close to their expiration date. How many reasons was he at by now? Four, five? He was just getting started.
Jack took every corner like a secret agent. His self image had been permanently altered ever since he made himself sit through all those Bond films. The theme music running through his head helped him smile at the patients he startled - a few meandering the halls with IV poles, most in their rooms. He checked every room, charming away the disapproving frowns of doctors and nurses. They seemed used to tense situations, hardened and unafraid of his gun.
He made extra-sure this would happen by winking and whispering, "Torchwood," to most of them, staff and patients alike. Keep it a secret, he was telling them, and they nodded, or smiled, or winked back. Excellent.
Jack didn't climb up to Intensive Care until he was absolutely sure he would have to. Intensive Care units were very, very creepy.
"Jack, are you humming the 'Mission Impossible' theme?"
That wasn't a Bond film. "No," he said, and turned off the audible-receive on the comm before Ianto could correct him, because he required complete silence for this.
He snuck around the door from the stairs and into a long hallway, and crept along the wall. He didn't mind playing UNIT's mineshaft canary. He was the only candidate guaranteed not to end up in one of these beds himself. Plus, he complemented their nightingale, wherever the lovely Miss Jones was lately. How could he expect anyone to turn down a deal like that?
"I know you're there."
All of Jack froze but for his neck, which whipped his face around in the opposite direction. His arms swiftly brought his gun, and the rest of him, with it.
A pale blonde woman in pyjamas, with the coal eyes of a snowman, stood twenty feet down the white hall. "And I know where you were," Jack replied, keeping his aim on her, mainly because she showed no sign of fear. Anymore.
"Oh?" She lifted an eyebrow, and started moving slowly toward him. Or she had always been moving toward him, and he was just noticing now. It was that slow. Hard to tell. "Do tell."
Strange, how she echoed a word in Jack's head just then. He shook it slightly, and in an afterthought, used the opportunity to touch his ear, turning his comm back on. "How are you, Siana?"
"Who's Siana?" She crossed her arms and took another step. "I don't know you."
"You sure about that?"
Her body language was absolutely sure. "I've never seen you before in my life." She moved a bit faster now. "But I like you."
"Most do."
"Is that her? What floor?" Ianto hissed in his ear.
"I can see why. You're a long string," said not-Siana. "I have a feeling." Huh. Interesting. Jack hoped Ianto was getting this.
"If your name's not Siana, then what is it?" Jack asked, very deliberately.
Ten feet away and creeping, she rolled her eyes, tossing a gossamer lock of hair from her face. "No one ever gets it right. It's Sian. No 'a'. My name is Sian. That's all."
Five feet. Definitely faster. Jack took his finger off the trigger. He could shoot after he figured out whether he needed to. "People make mistakes, Sian," he said.
"Too often." She lunged, arms forward, hands open, so Jack lunged too, wrapping his free hand fully around her alarmingly thin forearm, and boy was that ever a stupid mistake, because there went the ground, right out from under him, definitely not here anymore.
Gordian Knot: Part Two