Torchwood fic: The Essence of Zhivka (Part 3 of 3)
Part Three of The Essence of Zhivka, written for tw_bigbang 2010.
Header and Part One | Part Two
art by _medley_
PART THREE
"You're right there," Tosh said in their earpieces, "the park, I can see him on the playground. Guys, he's right in front of the girls."
As the SUV came in view of the south side of the park, Owen could see the drama Tosh was describing from her CCTV view. Through some trees was some play equipment. Just as Jack pulled the SUV to a screeching halt, Owen saw the girls break into a run with the ugly man right behind them.
Owen had his door open before the SUV came to a stop, and sprinted toward the playground, Gwen pulled her car up and was out, right behind him, with Jack behind her. But the distance was too great: feet pounding the turf, Owen watched as the man snatched up the smaller girl, holding her menacingly with an arm around her waist and his other hand over her mouth. The little girl looked like she was throwing a fit as the man snarled at the older sister. Suddenly he dropped the girl, shaking his hand as if in pain, and turned to shuffle off in another direction. Owen was close enough to see now that he was looking at a device in his hand.
When they reached the girls, Gwen stopped to check on them while Owen and Jack kept on running toward the man. It was then that Owen noticed the boy limping toward them from another area of the park. It was Rhodri, and the man was headed toward him now.
Just as Owen and Jack got within range to tackle the man, something large and grey exploded in front of them with a roar. Owen pulled up as the dog easily knocked the man over and then the two were rolling on the ground, a tangle of wiry fur, black cloth, snarling, shouting, and finally a glint of metal.
The moment Owen spotted the knife, there was a yelp and the huge dog rolled to the side then curled up, biting at her flank. The man in black was up in a flash, no longer running toward the boy, but away from all of them.
Owen could have caught him easily, but once again there was no need. The Man in the Hat ran right into a wall of burly men in hard hats. Two of them threw him to the ground, one stepped on his neck, another pinned his arms, and a third, the smallest and wiriest of the group, picked up the knife and shouted at him in a foreign language.
Then Jack swept up in his impressive coat, gun drawn. "Hello!" he said in the disarming tone that served him so well and so often. "Torchwood, we appreciate the help, but we can take it from here." He took up a square stance over the Man-now deprived of his Hat-and aimed the gun at his head.
The construction workers/builders stepped back quickly, and Owen saw their faces shifting from controlled anger to wariness in an instant. But they seemed unwilling to just leave.
"Police?" the wiry one said, clearly the speaker for the group.
"Something like that," Jack replied with a charming smile, gun still pointed at the man on the ground.
The workers were shifting on their feet uneasily. "We not let him hurt little girls," the speaker said. "This is very bad man. You keep him?"
"We will see that he never hurts little girls again," Jack promised in a tone Owen recognized as the one that meant serious business.
"You are good men," added Gwen, who had just arrived with Sofie in her arms. The little girl's head was buried against Gwen's neck and Nelly was standing so close that she brushed Gwen's shoulder. "We'll make sure the girls are safe."
The short builder nodded, then glanced at Nelly. There was a moment of eye contact, Owen noticed, as if they knew one another, and Nelly nodded ever so slightly. The worker dropped the menacing man's knife in the grass, said something in his native language, and he and the other men left their prisoner, turned and walked back in the direction from which they had come. Across the street from the park, Owen could see a building with scaffolding up around it.
The man in black, who had been face down in the grass while his neck was being trodden on, was starting to roll over. Jack shouted at him and knelt to press his weapon against the back of the man's head.
Owen stepped forward to help Jack get the man in cuffs. Crouching, he pulled the left arm around and was reaching for the right when his knee knocked something hard inside the dirty black coat. After securing the cuffs, Owen patted the coat and fished around until he found the opening of a pocket. He slipped his hand in and withdrew the octagonal box Gwen had recovered, and lost, before.
"Owen?" Jack said sharply, sounding startled. Just then they heard a shout in the distance, a young boy's voice.
God. He'd forgotten Rhodri. Owen looked around and saw the boy back at the site of the first clash with Torbalan, kneeling over a large shape on the ground. Owen turned back; Jack was looking at him strangely, but nodded, held out his hand for the box, and told Owen, "Go." Owen handed Jack the box and ran.
~~~
The dog was bleeding from a wound in her side. Rhodri had put a cloth on the wound and was cradling the dog's head in his lap, his face looking very tense, on the verge of tears. When he looked up, Owen thought he saw puzzlement, then a shock of recognition pass over the boy's face. But they had other things to worry about for now.
Owen knelt next to the dog. "What's her name?" he asked.
"Gypsy," the boy said hoarsely.
"Okay, Rhodri, I'm going to help Gypsy, but I need you to help me."
Rhodri looked startled when he heard his name, but he nodded.
Owen adjusted the bloody cloth, which-was it a sock? He looked at Rhodri again and saw a discarded trainer on the ground next to him. One of his feet was bare and looked swollen. Well, they'd deal with that later.
"Press your hand down here and put pressure on the wound while I check how Gypsy's doing, okay?"
Rhodri nodded again and moved so that he could reach Gypsy's flank. The dog whined and thumped her tail. Owen was just getting a look at her eyes with his pen light when they were interrupted by a long, high pitched wail.
He looked up to see Sofie about twenty feet away, standing next to the stuffed sheep, which was face-down in the grass. Head thrown back, Sofie let out a scream that made Owen's skin crawl, and then continued to cry so hard, she seemed to be having trouble even drawing breath.
Owen looked around for help and saw Nelly and Gwen running toward Sofie. Nelly reached her first, knelt and wrapped her arms around her sister. But the little girl stiffened and squirmed out of her embrace, refusing to be consoled. Nelly began speaking to her in Bulgarian, asking her questions, Owen assumed. Rhodri looked over at Owen, his face more drawn and worried than ever.
Gwen reached the girls and knelt next to Sofie as well. "Was she hurt?" she asked Nelly. "Did the man hurt her? I know she was scared-"
"She say she is not hurt," Nelly said, shaking her head. "She say the sheep is gone." Nelly turned back to Sofie and spoke to her urgently, gesturing to the toy on the ground. To Gwen she reported, "She say Zhivka is die like mother. I do not understand."
Gwen leaned around Nelly to look to Owen, her face grimly questioning. He nodded in agreement: whatever entity they had detected in the sheep must have expired, and Sofie could feel it. Gwen sighed and turned back to Nelly.
"I'm so sorry, can you tell her?" Gwen asked. "I know it's a strange thing, but there was something... alive in her sheep, and it's gone now. Sofie is right." She reached out and took Sofie's small hand while Nelly spoke to her. Sofie had stopped crying to listen, but then her face crumpled again. She looked at Gwen for a moment and finally flung herself into Gwen's arms. Gwen gathered her up and got to her feet.
Just then Jack's voice came over their earpieces. "I've got our piece of filth locked in the SUV. Anytime one of you can join me would be great, I may need some help getting him to the Hub."
Gwen spoke first. "Jack, I really need to get these girls home. They've been traumatised-"
"Fine. Owen?"
"I'm there, Jack, but-ah... I'm bringing some extra passengers, okay?"
"What?"
"This dog is injured, and there are no vets open round here at the weekend. We can't just leave them."
"You want to bring the boy too?"
"I have a feeling he'll have some useful information for us."
"Great, I warn Gwen not to get involved with these kids, and it's you of all people-"
"Jack, I'm asking."
There was a moment's silence.
"Fine," Jack said finally, "but they're your responsibility. Until the matter is done."
Owen understood Jack's implication, but he was certain he could find a way to deal with the whole situation without resorting to retconning an eight-year-old kid.
"Can you walk to the side of the park?" Owen asked Rhodri. The boy nodded firmly. "Okay, we're taking Gypsy somewhere I can help her a lot better. You're going to love this." He gathered up the dog in his arms and heaved himself up. When he had chosen the puppy, he'd been told it would become a big dog, but he'd had no idea she would be this big.
Rhodri was standing beside him, holding his trainer in one hand and the blood-soaked sock in the other and balancing on his good foot. "Let's go," he said gamely. Owen grinned.
~~~
It never took much urging to convince Jack to drive fast. Owen sat in the back with a weapon discreetly trained on their captive, trying to keep the man quiet, while Rhodri crouched in the cargo area with his dog. It was a good thing the boy was small. If only he were temporarily deaf as well, Owen, thought. The disheveled man next to him kept muttering about "bringing death."
Normally Owen would have taken Rhodri into the Hub via the invisible lift; if a visitor wasn't going to remember it anyway, Jack's reasoning went, why not treat them to the full, spectacular experience? But it seemed risky to carry a huge, wounded dog across the plas, small boy with one bare foot in tow, and then just disappear. People were more likely to make reports when there were children or animals involved. Not that Torchwood cared about public calls to the police, but sometimes it really was easier to avoid the attention.
So they all trooped in through the staff entrance. Tosh met them and eagerly took the mysterious box for analysis. Jack escorted Torbalan, none too gently, down to a cell, and Owen rushed the dog to the medical bay, Rhodri limping at his heels. Owen noticed, when he turned back to check on him, that the boy was looking around at the Hub, but instead of the awed expression that was common to the Hub's infrequent visitors, Rhodri merely continued to look worried.
Owen laid Gypsy carefully out on one of the large steel tables. The dog thumped her tail and whined when Rhodri patted her head. Owen looked around. He knew nothing about how to anaesthetize animals, but he'd done a few species of aliens and was used to improvising. The problem was going to be adapting an oxygen mask for a dog's muzzle. He didn't want to intubate her.
Owen tapped his earpiece. "Ianto, you around? I could use some assistance with a medical procedure."
Ianto responded quickly. "Jack asked me to get something from the archives, I'm several levels down. Five minutes?" His reply crackled, as the bluetooth network sometimes did when one party was in certain parts of the Hub, near devices that caused interference.
"It is an emergency," Owen answered. "A little more urgent than some ancient paperwork, I'm thinking."
Owen set to work prepping the dog. He tried to send Rhodri upstairs to wait, or at least make him sit down to rest his injured ankle, but the boy wouldn't leave. In fact, he noticed Owen struggling with the mask and made a suggestion for adapting it with some synthetic sheeting and surgical tape. He didn't seem at all disturbed to be in a medical environment where razors and scalpels were about to be used. While he fetched the tape, Owen smiled slightly to himself. He wasn't surprised this kid was tough, in all the right ways.
In the end, Rhodri really wouldn't be sidelined, and assisted with the procedure more than Ianto. Owen had to suction clotted blood and use a device he called the "subdermal knitter" to repair mild injury to some internal tissues. The knife hadn't done as much damage as it could have. He closed her up with ordinary sutures, as much for deniability as anything. If Rhodri told his mum Gypsy had been stabbed and then seen to by a doctor, she would want to see stitches.
He thought about giving Gypsy some universal blood replacement fluid he'd been experimenting with, but he wasn't sure enough to risk it, so she got fluids only. When they were finished, Ianto went back to his research task, whatever it was, and Owen made Gypsy comfortable. Rhodri didn't want to leave her side; he remained there, stroking her head.
"Hey," Owen said gently, "it's gonna take a while for her to wake up. Why don't you sit down?"
Rhodri looked doubtful.
"Just... over here on the steps. You can watch her the whole time."
Rhodri nodded and hobbled to the stairs, sitting on the sixth step up where there was a good view of the surgery table. He put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.
Owen really hoped the dog was going to make it. If she didn't... well, when it came down to it, it would be his fault. Another success laced with failure. It wasn't just coincidence that had got Rhodri and Gypsy involved in this situation; Owen had pulled them in.
He sat down two steps below Rhodri and tapped the boy's leg gently. "Let me see your ankle, mate," he said. Rhodri lifted his foot, and Owen stretched out the leg so that it could rest across his lap. He probed the ankle with his fingers, pausing when Rhodri winced and hissed in pain. There was swelling, and a bit of bruising was beginning to show, but it wasn't a bad sprain.
"I'm just going to get some supplies, you wait here, eh? And keep that leg up on the step, it'll feel better."
Rhodri nodded. "Elevation," he said, "and you're getting some ice?"
Owen raised his eyebrows and grinned. "You know first aid, then."
"I know lots of things," Rhodri replied, smiling shyly.
On his way to get the supplies, Owen checked the dog. Her breathing was good and the pulse was stronger. He was surprised at how much relief he felt.
Back on the stairs, Owen wrapped a cold pack around Rhodri's ankle and secured it temporarily with an elastic roll bandage. Then he joined Rhodri on the sixth step. The dog should start to wake up in a bit, and he didn't want to block Rhodri's view.
After a minute or so, Rhodri spoke. "How did you know my name?" he asked softly, stealing a quick, curious glance at Owen before looking back toward his dog.
Owen sighed slightly. "I've met you before," he said. "Don't know if you remember. You were younger. It was at the Big Weekend funfair, you were lost..."
"And you had a kitten. You hurt it." Rhodri didn't turn his head.
"Ah. You do remember."
The boy nodded, his eyes seemingly glued to a spot across the medical bay.
"Listen, Rhodri. It's hard to explain. Sometimes we have to do things to help, but it looks like we're hurting-"
"Like surgery. Torbalan hurt Gypsy with a knife, but you used a knife to fix her."
Damn. This kid was way too smart for his age. He could forget having an easy childhood, then, if such a thing had ever been a possibility. "Yeah," Owen agreed simply.
They were silent for a few moments more.
"Are you my real father?" Rhodri asked.
Again, the boy was concentrating hard on a spot across the room. Owen was so taken aback by the question, he laughed out loud, then mentally kicking himself, apologized and patted Rhodri awkwardly on the shoulder.
What to say to that? "Rhodri, your dad-"
"Was a bad man," Rhodri finished. "Ren didn't love us. He wouldn't do anything for us. But Mum gets money every month." He finally turned to Owen, animated now. "Someone is sending that money! And someone gave me my dog. I thought it must be a policeman, someone who could watch over us..."
Owen jumped in. "Rhodri, look, Ren is sending you that money. Sometimes you'd just rather not be related to some people. Believe me, I know. But I'm sorry mate, I'm not your dad. I'm just... a guy who's met you twice now."
Ren Powell had been a coward of the most loathsome kind. With the unique resources Torchwood had available, it had been almost disappointingly easy to convince him that something terrifying would happen if he didn't a) never touch his wife or son again and b) faithfully provide them with financial support for the rest of his life. Owen may have enjoyed the persuasion a little too much. Sue him, he was human.
Rhodri was looking down, and Owen saw his shoulders sag, just a little.
"But if your dad isn't proud of you, he's a-" Owen caught himself just in time to edit his language. "He's completely mad," he finished. "You're dead clever. And I saw you protect those girls. Here, look at me."
Rhodri obeyed, looking straight up into Owen's eyes.
"I'm sure your dad loves you. He probably just has to be other places. I'll bet he appreciates you being the man of the house."
Rhodri didn't look convinced, but he nodded anyway. He was too clever, Owen thought again, but at this point it felt like an obvious lie was kinder than a cruel truth.
Just then they heard a polite cough from the stairs above them.
"I made some drinks," Ianto announced. "Does anyone want hot chocolate?"
Rhodri had shifted on the step to see who was there. He looked interested.
Owen nodded to Ianto, sending him a silent thanks when he came down and handed a mug to Rhodri. There would be time later to tease him about... well, there was an opportunity there somewhere. Owen would think of something. He'd been falling behind in his quota lately.
"Tell me about the man who hurt Gypsy," Owen said when Ianto had gone. "I think you might know something that would help us."
Rhodri held his mug in two hands and sipped his drink. "Nelly thought he wasn't human," he said. "He followed them from their country."
Owen whistled. "He's even creepier than I thought."
Rhodri nodded. "But he was following the sheep. I know because when they left Zhivka with me and Gypsy, he came to our house."
"Do you know what his little box does?"
Rhodri's brow knitted, as if he were puzzled. "I thought maybe he used it to find what he was looking for. But in the park, I took Zhivka so he would follow me. And he didn't follow me, he went right to Sofie and Nelly."
Owen nodded slowly. "I think I need to talk to my boss. Will you be okay if Ianto stays with you? Tell you what, I think Gypsy might wake up soon. She'll want to see you."
Rhodri smiled for the first time.
~~~
While Owen was on his way toward the stairs to the interrogation room, Tosh caught up to him and stopped him. She had a strange look on her face. "Owen, there's something really unusual about this device. I've finished analysing the energy readings, and I just used one of your bioscanners on it. It's... I'm not sure I'm reading it correctly. Would you come and look? I need some major confirmation."
They headed back to Tosh's workstation.
~~~
Gwen had not stayed long after taking the girls home. Their father was there, a handsome man dressed like a building site manager and still holding his hard hat; he must have walked in just ahead of their arrival. Sofie hadn't stopped crying, so he had his hands full. Gwen explained that she was an off-duty officer who had happened to see the girls being harassed by a vagrant, and she was bringing them home as a favour. She made sure to mention that there would be no official report, and she noticed Mr. Gavrilovi relax at that. If her suspicions were correct, there would be a group of construction workers coming home soon who could fill in some details of the girls' adventure, if Nelly wasn't feeling up to it.
"We've arrested the-vagrant," she assured him, "he won't be able to bother your daughters again." She looked at Nelly as she said that; the girl nodded gratefully.
Now she had joined Jack in the interrogation room for a much less pleasant task.
"I steal souls." The man leered at Jack. He apparently hadn't stopped insisting on the "bringer of death" rubbish since he had entered the interrogation room. Apart from that, they hadn't been able to get anything else out of him-not a name, not where he had picked up the device, how it worked, or even exactly what it did. Certainly nothing about his connection to the Gavrilovi girls. He just sat there, hunched over the table, and repeated those few phrases in his raspy voice, coughing occasionally.
Gwen wasn't sure she could continue looking at him much longer. Except for his long, greasy hair, he wasn't particularly dirty, if she thought about it rationally. His clothes seemed clean and relatively neat. His face was unshaven but no more overgrown than George Clooney's was most of the time. He did smell, but she wasn't sure why. He just gave off a feeling of filth. She hadn't had a chance to wash her hands since bringing him in, and her skin was prickling as if it remembered its contact with his clothing. The thing that bothered her most was wondering what he might have done to those girls if he hadn't been stopped.
Jack hadn't sat down the whole time. He usually didn't. Now he had placed both hands on the table and was leaning over it, bringing his face close to to their prisoner's. Gwen could tell from the way one of his fingers was tapping that Jack was about to move to the Next Stage in the interrogation. She wasn't inclined to object.
But Gwen was relieved from her proximity to the greasy man for awhile when Toshiko appeared on the stairs and gestured to Gwen to come. Gwen joined her at the top of the stairs where they could talk.
Tosh's eyes were shining. "I've finished my preliminary analysis of the box," she said, "and it's some sort of energy storage device. It has incredible capacity! And yes, the metal is definitely alien. I haven't been able to open it-it might not be safe, anyway-but unless this man is just a courier or picked it up accidentally, whatever he's involved in is not small. The energy in the device could power Cardiff for six months. Or blow up half of England."
"Any clues on who this man is?" Gwen asked.
"Oh, right. I got his fingerprints off of the box-along with Owen's, Jack's, and yours, maybe you could use a hanky or gloves next time you recover an artefact from a suspicious character?"
"Right, sorry, heat of the moment." Gwen smiled apologetically.
"It's okay, I separated out his prints and I'm running them against international police databanks now."
"Thanks, Tosh. Anything else?"
"Owen has the box now, he's helping me with a few tests as well. I think there's even more to it."
Gwen sighed. "All right. Well, that gives us more to go on here. Let us know if you find anything else?"
"Of course," Tosh smiled, turned, and headed back up to the main level of the Hub and her enviable job being anywhere but here.
Gwen returned to where Jack and the greasy man seemed to be having a staring contest. She put her hand on Jack's shoulder and got him to move aside so she could sit down in the interrogator's chair. Her turn.
"Well, Mister... I really wish you would tell us your name," she said cheerfully, "it would make this so much more pleasant! Can I call you Dick, then? No objections?" When the man didn't twitch a muscle, she continued. "Well then, Dick, I'd like to talk about what you planned to do with the incredible amounts of energy stored in your little device. Free power for developing nations, perhaps? A donation to science to help solve global warming? Because I'm sure you had nothing nefarious in mind." She gave him a perky smile.
The man's steady expression broke for half a second, his brow furrowing almost imperceptibly, but he recovered quickly with an assured smile of his own.
"You will find you cannot open box. It is no use to you. You will return to me and I will go away."
Owen's voice broke in from the direction of the stairs. "Nice try with the Jedi mind tricks, but they won't work here, fella." He descended, briefly making eye contact with Jack, who nodded and stepped out of his way. He then strode directly to the table with such purpose that Gwen moved her chair back. It screeched on the concrete floor.
His body taut, like a carnivore ready to spring, Owen revealed the small device in his hand and set it slowly, carefully on the table just out of reach of the man's manacled hands. "Question one," he said so quietly that Gwen had to lean forward to hear. "Do you keep these creatures until they die, or does whatever you use them for kill them?"
The sudden increase in the tension that had already been present in the room made Gwen's stomach clench.
"Owen?" she queried gently.
He replied without taking his eyes off the man's face. "There are almost a billion separately conscious energy readings coming from inside this device. Almost identical to the one we tested earlier, just-smaller. I can't isolate their sensory readings but they're off the charts. When I say there's a world of pain here, I mean it literally. That box is a torture chamber."
The man sneered and leaned forward, meeting Owen's stare. "I tell you. I-am-Soul Stealer."
"So you must track these energy readings. I know that's why you were following the girls. All right, then, question two: how do you do it?"
He seemed to relax. Maybe he had nothing left to lose, Gwen thought. "The box show me," he said. "I find soul, box take soul. When box take soul, suddenly: it is million souls! So much energy. Everywhere, I take souls. Girl's sheep have soul, so I follow. This is all. You cannot keep me. No law against little box, I check."
Behind Owen, Jack nodded. "That's right, there's no law against 'little box.' The law doesn't even know things like this exist. Which is why you'll find that the law has very little to do with us."
The man began to look slightly uncomfortable again.
Owen leaned forward. "Question three." His voice was low, gravelly and threatening; Gwen almost shivered. "Why follow those girls all the way from Bulgaria?"
At that, Gwen looked back at Jack, who looked as surprised as she felt. "Hang on," she interrupted, "he knew Nelly and Sofie in Europe?"
"That's what Rhodri says," Owen replied.
"But he just said he finds them everywhere. There must be several of these creatures in Cardiff alone. We figured either they were here because of the Rift, or there's a similar concentration in any city."
"So why would he go that far to capture a particular one of them?" Jack concluded.
"Exactly," Owen said, his face dark. "And a related question, Mr.-do we know this creep's name?" He broke off and looked at Gwen.
"Dick," she answered with a bit of a smirk.
Owen shrugged and returned his attention to the man in black. "Okay then... Dick," he said, "final question. In the park today, those girls didn't have the sheep. The boy had it, and he wasn't near them. If you can locate the objects you're looking for using this box... why did you go after the girls anyway?"
"And for that matter, why did you follow them and leave the sheep on the pier?" Gwen added.
The man's eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth twitched. But he remained silent.
Jack stepped forward. "Those are very interesting questions. Now I'm curious." He hadn't looked at Owen or Gwen, instead staring at the man across the table.
The man leaned back in his chair and smiled-the kind of smile that gave Gwen nightmares. But he still said nothing.
Jack walked slowly around the table, bent down, and whispered in his ear. Fascinated, Gwen almost forgot to shudder at the thought of getting that close to that oily hair.
When Jack straightened up and stepped away, the man was glaring at Jack. He coughed, then spoke. "Girls are afraid," he said. "The more they see me, the more they are afraid. The souls in box, they get very excited when girls are afraid." Finally he smiled his disgusting smile again. "More souls are excited, more exciting feeling for me, and more money for box. This is good. All good. These girls," he looked at Gwen and curled up his lip in a sinister grin, "they are like a drug. You should try sometime. You have box. You will see."
Gwen couldn't tolerate it any more. Without a thought, she practically dove across the table; she was aware that she elbowed Owen in the face while he was pulling her off. Once she was settled back on her side of the table, Owen's approving, impertinent grin made her consider elbowing him again.
Jack was standing with his arms crossed in front of his chest. "Well," he addressed the man, who was still breathing hard, "I think you're aware of what we'd like to do to you. We can actually do anything we want. But since you mentioned the law, there are laws against stalking and harassment, and if I'm not mistaken, MI5 would be very interested in a device holding that much energy. They see terrorist threats everywhere..."
Now Tosh's voice came from the top of the stairs. "And they really don't like black market arms dealing, trust me," she called as she came down. "Ivan Bachev? That's one of his names, Jack. Also known as Torbalan, or the Bogeyman in some circles." When she reached Jack, she handed him a printout. "Interpol has a long and interesting file on Mr Bachev."
Jack grinned. For the first time, Gwen noted, their prisoner looked truly alarmed.
"You give me to them, you will never open box!" he said quickly. "I know how to use box. I have secret."
"If you're going to use that as a bargaining chip, you're going to have to admit to the authorities that you had the device. And we're not going to mention it. Are we, Gwen?" Gwen looked at Jack, then shook her head. "Owen? Tosh?"
Tosh shook her head as well, and Owen chuckled. "Not a word, Jack."
"Okay. Put him in the cell next to Janet. I'll talk to MI5 myself."
"Not with Janet then?" Owen asked.
"As tempting as that is... the spooks probably want him with a face he can talk out of. Pity."
~~~
When Owen returned to the medical bay, he found a much livelier scene than the one he had left. Rhodri was sitting on the table with Gypsy, gently pushing her down whenever she tried to sit up, which she did frequently in response to his giggles. Ianto, Rhodri told Owen, knew lots of funny stories.
"Most of them are about you," Ianto added, nodding to Owen without a change in his expression.
Owen rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored Ianto's comment. "Okay, mate, time to get you two home. What are we going to tell your mum? You know you can't talk about this place."
Rhodri shook his head solemnly. "I won't tell anybody about your secret base." The he rattled off an obviously rehearsed list: "Gypsy got hit by a car, and you're an animal doctor who saw the accident," he said brightly. He pushed himself off the table and hopped to the floor, landing on his good foot and stooping to pick up a pair of crutches. "And you gave me these because your son doesn't need them anymore."
Owen raised his eyebrows, impressed. "You've put some thought into that. Don't mind lying to your mum then?"
"She worries too much already."
Ianto looked at Owen. "We should recruit this one."
"Don't I know it," Owen agreed. "Ah... the crutches?"
"From the archives. Nineteen thirties, I think, but they have a couple of... special features. Relevant to our work."
"Torchwood used child labor in the thirties, then?"
"No, just an adult employee of very short stature. I think. That would be a question for Jack."
"I'll let you ask him." Owen turned back to Rhodri. "Can you make it up the stairs on those old things?"
Rhodri nodded. "They feel almost like they're lifting me off the ground! I'll be super fast on these at school."
Owen looked at the crutches again. They were made of wood and seemed normal for their era, except for the wrappings of fluorescent turquoise tape near the bottom. He glanced at Ianto, who shrugged.
"We're not the first team to have enhanced medical equipment," he said.
"Right then." Owen went over and gathered Gypsy carefully into his arms. She grunted, but her tail flopped several times against his arm. "Follow me, Mister Powell, and you can brief me on the rest of my cover story while we drive."
~~~
The next day, the Hub had the subdued atmosphere it seemed to get sometimes after a series of tense events-the adrenaline drained away and things felt almost hollow.
Jack and Gwen had handed off Bachev to the relevant authorities. According to Jack, Gwen had chatted up the MI5 agent, found out he had a young son and two nieces, then happened to let slip the fact that Bachev enjoyed torturing children. It was out of their hands what happened to him after that.
Owen and Tosh were still working on the device. Owen was determined to get the box open and release the creatures trapped inside, but it was proving difficult. Early on, Tosh had found what looked like a port hidden in a panel on the bottom of the device, and she was reasonably certain that was how the energy was accessed and converted. Despite the amounts of energy involved, she was now convinced that simply releasing the creatures would not be dangerous-if only they could figure out how.
There were no buttons anywhere, the lights, which were also made of an unknown material, didn't seem to do anything but provide information, and aside from the panel protecting the port, nothing opened. There weren't even any seams apparent in the metal. It appeared that the box had been moulded in one piece.
Owen worked on it for an entire day, assisted sometimes by Tosh, before Gwen convinced him to join the rest of them in the board room for pizza. Even then, he brought the device with him and set it down in the middle of the table while they ate. The conversation flowed around him while he sipped his beer and stared at the box.
"We're missing something." The others turned to him when he spoke. Gwen had been about to toss a crumpled napkin at Jack's head, but she put it down.
"I've put it through every type of scan and diagnostic we have-"
"Except for a couple that might have made it blow up Cardiff," Tosh interjected.
"Right. But we've hardly learned anything we didn't already know."
"Well, we did learn that one thing," Tosh reminded him.
Jack looked up encouragingly, his mouth still full of pepperoni. "Yeah?"
"When I came back from another room to where Owen was working on the box, I couldn't find him. But I knew he had just been there."
"I hadn't moved," Owen said.
"But I didn't see him until I called his name and he answered me."
Jack looked impressed. "Perception filter?"
"Something like it, anyway," Tosh nodded.
"That would make sense," Gwen said, "the way he escaped from the SUV. And Nelly told me she never knew where 'Torbalan' came from, he would just appear."
Owen grunted in thought. "Rhodri said Nelly thought he was a fairy tale monster. No wonder."
"That's interesting," Jack said, leaning back in his chair, "but it doesn't help us, does it?"
Owen shook his head. "It's got to be something simple."
"I figure it's a puzzle, you know?" Tosh said. "Just... not the kind we're used to. The only other thing we learned is that the material the box is made of has an opposite charge on the inside surface from the charge on the outside surface. It could be used to attract the creatures from the outside, and then keep them contained - because they're being repelled by the inner surface."
Jack nodded. "Opposite charges, though, isn't that kind of-"
"Dangerous?" Tosh finished for him. "Well, that might be the reason there are no seams; the structural integrity would be very delicate."
"But how do they get in?" Gwen wondered.
"Exactly," Owen agreed.
"And what did Bachev mean that each living creature becomes 'million'? Gwen continued. "What happens to them when they get trapped?"
"It sounds like they disintegrate into parts," Owen said. "Or reproduce." He shrugged. "Like a spider, she lays a thousand eggs and then dies."
"Spawning," Jack mused, leaning back in his chair. "Interesting theory. It's a good prison, regardless."
"Poor things," Gwen said, looking at the box sadly. "Billions of little souls..." She sighed. "And little Sofie said her sheep was dead. Burst into tears when she found it. She could tell the creature hadn't made it."
"Torchwood's earlier experiments indicated the readings were lost permanently after a period of separation from the owner," Ianto reminded them.
Everyone else looked up. Ianto hadn't joined them for lunch, but now he was standing in the doorway of the board room, holding a sheaf of papers in his arm.
"She wasn't separated for long, though," Gwen reasoned, "not nearly as much time or distance as before, when they left her on the pier."
"It's bloody strange," Owen agreed. "And Bachev didn't even 'catch' her. He was running away by the time Rhodri got there with the sheep."
Tosh shook her head. "We don't know how conscious these creatures are. Owen's tests indicate that they're sentient, but what if they're really... aware? Emotionally connected? It could have known if Sofie was in danger."
"And what? Died of fright?" Owen asked.
"Oh, no, I see," Gwen said, clucking her tongue. "Not run away... sacrificed herself, yeah?"
Ianto cleared his throat. "Well, I've found something that might shed some light. It's a diagram and some notes, but they weren't filed in the same year as the observations of the energy creatures. In fact, they're not in English." He walked over to the table and laid the papers out for everyone to see. "The notes I can read just say the object was found underwater and the container it was in was badly degraded. They only just managed to transcribe the writing on it before it was completely ruined. No clue what happened to the box."
"The diagram's good enough, though," Jack noted. "It's clearly the same as ours."
Tosh inspected the writing. "This is alien," she remarked, and her eyes began to shine. "I can translate this, I just need to scan it into one of my programs." She looked up at Jack.
"Please," he said, answering her unasked question.
When she was gone, Jack nodded at Ianto with a satisfied expression. "Good work," he said, and gestured to a chair. "Pizza?"
~~~
Still bothered by their lack of success with the box, and unable to concentrate on anything else, Owen went to Tosh to see if he could help with their latest clue. He knew she didn't actually need help-Tosh rarely did-but she seemed quite amenable to his presence.
"You can scan that last page while I run the translation program," Tosh told him, nodding toward the handheld device and the stack of yellowed papers.
While he carefully passed the device down the page of vertical text, Tosh scanned the screen in front of her, her eyes darting back and forth so quickly they were practically vibrating. After a moment, her face registered keen interest. "Owen! Look at this," she said, pointing at the screen.
Owen finished the last two inches of the page, put the scanner down, and went around to stand behind Tosh. Her screen was split into two columns, one showing the alien language they had scanned and the other with English letters that scrolled vertically, like the language they were interpreting, until they coalesced into recognizable words. Tosh was pointing at three lines in the middle.
"Here. 'Negative,' 'positive,' 'essential thoughts' - that could mean emotions or personality - and 'attract.' Then over here, 'pure,' 'decayed,' and 'release.' I've got some work to do on the grammar, obviously. But then look at the labels on the diagram." She scrolled down to a different page of the original text and pointed again.
"Those are the lights on the box," Owen said.
"And they're labelled 'conduit,' or it might be 'passage.' They're not just indicator lights!"
"They're how the creatures get sucked into the box." Owen nodded.
"Whatever energy powers the lights probably resonates with the creatures' energy as well."
"So, what, we pull the lights out of the box like pulling teeth with pliers?"
Tosh chuckled and shook her head. "Didn't you try that already, anyway?"
"Maybe."
"Well, I think I can at least say that the opposite charges in the surfaces of the box correspond to opposite... states of the people who might use the box. Emotional state, mental state, personality, I don't know."
"So if Bachev was able to use the box to trap the creatures, we need his opposite to let them out."
Tosh shrugged. "Maybe?"
"Well, we've all handled the box already, and nothing happened."
"Yeah." Tosh sighed, and they paused for a moment while that sank in.
"Pure, huh?" Owen mused.
Gwen's voice cut through his thoughts. "Oi, Jack? Owen, come look at this!" Owen left Tosh poring over the translation and went over to join Gwen, arriving just before Jack. Gwen had pulled up a CCTV feed on one of the spare computer monitors and was viewing the plas, tracking the progress of two figures toward the pier.
"That's them!" Jack exclaimed. "What are they doing back here?"
"Sofie's carrying her sheep," Owen noted. "I thought-"
"Yes, but look at how she's holding it," Gwen said. "Not cuddling or swinging it, like a child normally would."
Jack nodded in agreement. "Yeah, her posture's too formal. It's almost like she's carrying-"
"A body," Owen finished for him.
"I'm going to check on them," Gwen announced.
Jack sighed. "I don't think there's anything we can do, but all right."
Gwen grabbed her jacket and headed toward the back door lifts.
"I'll come with you," Owen called. Following her, he stopped for a moment at his desk, grabbed the box, and slipped it into his pocket.
~~~
Nelly held Sofie's hand to help her clamber up the tall step onto the bus. The doors shut behind them with a hydraulic sigh while she paid for two child fares, then she let Sofie choose a seat and get in next to the window. Nelly sat down beside her and stole thoughtful glances as they rode.
Sofie wasn't really tall enough to see out the window, but she was leaning her head back against the seat, watching the sky pass by. Neatly placed on her lap was a blue cloth bag containing her Zhivka, or what Nelly was coming to think of as the remains of Zhivka. Sofie kept insisting the sheep was dead, and she wouldn't let Nelly carry the bag. They were headed to the bay for a burial at sea. Nelly sighed softly.
Sofie wanted to "send Zhivka away in the water" so they could send messages to her. Nelly wasn't sure why Sofie didn't think she could give a message to her sheep right at home, since that was where the toy still resided. Maybe the ceremony she had created for them in the lake back in Bulgaria had confused her sister. First Nelly had told Sofie that they couldn't visit their mother in a plane, then they had sent messages across the water. What if Sofie had reasoned that if heaven wasn't in the sky, it must be in the lake?
Sometimes Nelly wished that no one had ever told her about heaven at all.
Well, there was probably no sense in trying to correct her impression now. If a sea funeral was what Sofie needed, they would do it.
When they got off the bus near the plas, Sofie marched over to the nearest litter bin, pulled the sheep out of the bag, and stood on her tiptoes to place the bag in the bin. Then she turned around, holding Zhivka ceremonially in her arms, and headed toward the water.
~~~
When Gwen and Owen emerged from the tourist information office, they scanned the area and finally spotted the girls standing on the pier, near a rail looking out over the water. They walked toward them, but as they got closer, Gwen grabbed the sleeve of Owen's jacket to stop him.
"Wait, Owen. I don't know, doesn't that look sort of... private?"
They stopped about twenty yards from the girls and watched quietly. Sofie had squatted down and was holding the sheep close to her face, as if she were speaking into its ear. Then she stood, handed it to her sister, and nodded.
Nelly appeared to sigh, then pivoted slightly, drew back her arm, and - eliciting a small gasp from Gwen - tossed the sheep. Its dull white form sailed out over the water and disappeared. The girls stood for a moment, then Nelly stooped and picked up Sofie in her arms, kissing her on the head as she turned away from the sea.
Now they could see Gwen and Owen, and it was clear on Sofie's face when she registered the sight of familiar people. She wriggled out of her sister's arms, hopped to the ground, and ran over, holding her arms up to Gwen. Gwen scooped her up with a smile.
"How are you, love?"
"Az sŭm tŭzhna, Gwennie," Sofie said, laying her head briefly on Gwen's shoulder.
Owen wanted to smirk at the name "Gwennie," but the little girl's fast trust and openness were rather touching, so help him.
Nelly had followed her sister and stood before them, looking a little embarrassed, but giving them a lopsided smile all the same. She looked at Gwen and then her face changed to concern. "Is still okay? You are here for police?"
"Oh, no, love, everything's fine! We just-" Gwen motioned in the general direction of the plas- "patrol in the area and we saw you. Just wanted to make sure you're doing all right. You are... we saw Sofie's..." Gwen faltered.
Realisation crossed Nelly's face, and she nodded. "Ah, we just... have a little ceremony. It is okay." And that seemed to be all there was to say.
Owen slipped a hand in his pocket and cleared his throat. "Say, Sofie," he said, stepping to the side a bit so that he could look directly at her face, "I wondered if you could help us with something." Sofie looked back at him, listening carefully but clearly not understanding. Owen looked to Nelly for help. The older girl translated, looking a bit puzzled.
Gwen put Sofie down, and Owen squatted so he could talk to her more easily. He pulled the box from his pocket and showed it to her. Sofie stared at it with interest. Nelly stepped back, clearly recognising it as being Torbalan's possession, but Gwen went over and touched her arm reassuringly.
"It's this box," Owen said to Sofie, "it has a secret, and we can't figure it out." Nelly translated, and Sofie's eyes got even wider.
"I was wondering if you could have a look at it. Can you figure out the secret?" He held the box out to her.
Sofie took it with two hands, fascinated. She touched several of the small lights around the edge and stroked the smooth surface of the metal. Suddenly, she looked worried. She looked up at Owen and spoke.
"She say the box is sad," Nelly translated.
Owen nodded. "I don't know how she can tell, but she's right about that."
Nelly spoke to Sofie, and the little girl looked at the box again. Owen noticed tears welling up in her eyes. She turned the box over twice, pouting with concentration, then brought it up to her lips and gave it a kiss. After that she held it upside down and pushed with both fat little thumbs on the sides.
With what appeared to be no resistance at all, the bottom of the box separated from the rest and slid forward, opening like a panel.
What occurred next was one of those things that seemed to happen quite often with Torchwood, an experience so completely alien that they had no context with which to interpret it while it was happening. It simply washed over them, to be analysed and understood later.
Something flooded from the opening. Sofie dropped the box and stumbled backward against Gwen's legs. Owen, who had been squatting with his face close to Sofie's and to the box, lost his balance and ended up on his bum watching...
Watching nothing, but it was only later that they realized, reviewing the CCTV with Tosh, that they hadn't actually been able to see anything. The sensations were so strong that they could feel everything that was going on. A flow of energy poured from the box, so bright it might as well have been sparkling as it separated into streamers and curly tendrils. The tendrils sought them out, curious, twisting around their shoulders and chests and minds.
The effect was a profound feeling of joy. Owen felt too stunned to know what to do, but Sofie began to giggle and couldn't stop. Soon, Gwen was laughing with her, and then Owen looked up to see even Nelly's normally worried face break into a broad smile. Unable to help himself, he chuckled. As he was picking himself up off the pavement, he realized that one of the voices he could hear laughing was Jack's. Beyond Gwen, Jack and Ianto were approaching from the direction of the tourist information office.
Just when Owen thought they were all going to burst if this feeling continued, there was a rush of energy, and the tendrils withdrew into a concentrated ball, hovering a few feet above the box. It floated there for a moment, pulsing. They stared at the spot where they knew it was, panting, and Sofie hopped up and down with excitement.
Then, just as Jack and Ianto arrived to stand next to Gwen, the ball of energy exploded. They felt it expand and shoot out in a million directions, and then it was a billion separate traces, drifting like dust motes around their heads, surely collecting on their eyelashes, in their hair and collars and cuffs. After a moment the drifting halted and the motes began to move under their own power. Soon the concentration had thinned. They were drifting away.
"Owen?" Tosh's voice was in his ear. "Owen, are you there?" He'd almost forgotten he had his bluetooth earpiece in.
"Here, Tosh." He puffed, still catching his breath from the experience. "What's up?"
"I've got more of the translation for you. Do you want it?"
"Oh yes, I think I do." He grinned, even though he knew she couldn't see him. Probably.
Gwen was talking to Sofie and Nelly, and Jack and Ianto were inspecting the box on the ground. Owen walked a few steps away from them.
"Well," Tosh said, "about getting the box open, it sounds like-"
Owen interrupted her. "We figured that out," he said, "or, rather, Sofie did."
"That makes sense," Tosh replied, "it has to be someone-cognitively pre-functional is the best literal translation. I think it probably means a particular stage in social and emotional development-"
"And...?" Owen prompted, not unkindly.
"Well, once it's open, this says that the 'swarm of larvae may disperse without a loss of vitality.' I'm pretty sure on that bit. Does that mean anything to you? Larvae of what, do you think?"
"Oh, I've got a good idea. We'll talk when we're back in the Hub, okay?"
"Okay. See you soon."
"Thanks, Tosh, I mean it."
"You know me, always ready for a good translation project!"
The communication line was disconnected, and Owen returned to the group still clustered around the box. Sofie was chattering in Bulgarian and Nelly was translating a few things for the others.
"So I think," Owen broke in, "we just had about a billion babies."
The others looked at him, clearly expecting more of an explanation.
"Whatever was in that box, the, ah, 'souls,' as someone said, were the young of the species. Trapped. Sofie set them free."
Nelly said something to Sofie, and the girl beamed.
Ianto stepped forward, bringing out a bundle he had had under his arm. "Ah, I wonder, Sofie...?" he said, looking at the little girl. He began undoing the bundle, which was wrapped in a green wool jumper, and finally revealed a plush toy: quite new, a floppy brown pony with a white muzzle and star on its head.
"He's been left alone for quite a long time. I thought Sofie might like to give him a home?" Ianto looked at Nelly, who spoke to Sofie.
Sofie held up her arms tentatively. Receiving the pony, she gave it an experimental hug. Looking up at Ianto, she said something to him.
"'She,'" Nelly said. "Sofie say the horse is a girl."
Ianto chuckled and nodded. "That's all right, then."
"Thank you," Sofie pronounced carefully, gazing at Ianto.
Owen bent down to retrieve the box and realized that although the swarm was gone, he could still sense a few of the creatures around them, like dust motes swimming through a shaft of sunlight.
It was a good day.
EPILOGUE
Sofie was in the living room visiting with the recuperating Gypsy. Rhodri could hear her chattering and cooing to the dog and the occasional tail-thumping on the wooden floor and a rustle as Sofie tried to keep her from getting up. Gypsy wasn't supposed to walk around much yet, but she really wanted to.
He was with Nelly in the kitchen again, making a pot of tea while they talked. He felt bad not telling Nelly how Gypsy had actually been saved, but he'd been sworn to secrecy, and he took that seriously. Anyway, it seemed almost moot alongside the story Nelly was telling him. There was a magical box holding a billion baby creatures, and somehow Owen and his co-workers were involved.
"You're sure they were... alive? It wasn't some... maybe a special kind of battery?" He thought of all the amazing looking machines he had seen inside Owen's base.
Nelly shrugged and scuffed her feet on the floor. Rhodri noticed how her knees were bent; when he sat in that chair, his toes didn't even touch the ground. He thought Nelly was probably taller than his mother. But she looked very unsure, not like a grown-up at all, right now.
"I think they were alive," she answered, finally. "I cannot explain why, but I think yes. Very much."
"And the box was related to Zhivka."
"Torbalan had it. Torbalan wanted Zhivka."
"Do you think that's why Zhivka was so special? Maybe it's why Sofie thought she was alive. Maybe she was."
"I don't know," Nelly said. She looked up at Rhodri, shy and serious. "I think souls are just fairy tale, like Torbalan."
"But you said all the grown-ups saw them too."
Nelly sighed. "Is true. And..." She paused, and it looked like she didn't know if she wanted to say the next thing she was thinking. It was something very important, Rhodri could tell.
He set a cup of tea in front of her and climbed into the other chair at the kitchen table. "Something else?" he asked softly.
Nelly shook her head. "Did Sofie tell you name for her new toy? She want to call it 'Zhivka.'" She laughed. "I tell her, this toy is horse, not sheep. But she say yes, it is horse, but it is Zhivka. She just know. Then she say, it is not exactly Zhivka, but maybe, eh... sister of Zhivka."
Rhodri considered this. "She was right before," he said.
Nelly nodded. "You know what else she say? I ask her what message she sends with Zhivka when we... bury her in the sea."
Rhodri leaned forward, waiting to hear.
"Her message is... 'Come back.'"
Nelly had tears in her eyes. Rhodri didn't want to make her uncomfortable, so he politely ignored them. "Maybe things can come back if you really want them," he said, uncertainly. He hoped some things would never come back, but Nelly probably felt differently.
Nelly shook her head. "Not always," she said firmly. "Not always." Just then they heard Gypsy bark. It wasn't an alarm bark, but Rhodri started to get up to check. Then the bark was followed by a peal of delighted laughter from Sofie. He relaxed.
Nelly grinned, reluctantly at first and then more happily. "But sometimes they come back. I am glad."
END
Additional notes
* Torbalan is a real Bulgarian folk character. Here are a couple of interesting artist interpretations of him: Torbalan 1 | Torbalan 2
* Zhivka is the feminine form of the name Zhivko, derived from zhiv, "living"
* SuperTed was a 1980s Welsh animated series about a superhero teddy bear.
* Wynne Street in Cardiff is fictional, based on the real Glynne Street.
Header and Part One | Part Two
art by _medley_
PART THREE
"You're right there," Tosh said in their earpieces, "the park, I can see him on the playground. Guys, he's right in front of the girls."
As the SUV came in view of the south side of the park, Owen could see the drama Tosh was describing from her CCTV view. Through some trees was some play equipment. Just as Jack pulled the SUV to a screeching halt, Owen saw the girls break into a run with the ugly man right behind them.
Owen had his door open before the SUV came to a stop, and sprinted toward the playground, Gwen pulled her car up and was out, right behind him, with Jack behind her. But the distance was too great: feet pounding the turf, Owen watched as the man snatched up the smaller girl, holding her menacingly with an arm around her waist and his other hand over her mouth. The little girl looked like she was throwing a fit as the man snarled at the older sister. Suddenly he dropped the girl, shaking his hand as if in pain, and turned to shuffle off in another direction. Owen was close enough to see now that he was looking at a device in his hand.
When they reached the girls, Gwen stopped to check on them while Owen and Jack kept on running toward the man. It was then that Owen noticed the boy limping toward them from another area of the park. It was Rhodri, and the man was headed toward him now.
Just as Owen and Jack got within range to tackle the man, something large and grey exploded in front of them with a roar. Owen pulled up as the dog easily knocked the man over and then the two were rolling on the ground, a tangle of wiry fur, black cloth, snarling, shouting, and finally a glint of metal.
The moment Owen spotted the knife, there was a yelp and the huge dog rolled to the side then curled up, biting at her flank. The man in black was up in a flash, no longer running toward the boy, but away from all of them.
Owen could have caught him easily, but once again there was no need. The Man in the Hat ran right into a wall of burly men in hard hats. Two of them threw him to the ground, one stepped on his neck, another pinned his arms, and a third, the smallest and wiriest of the group, picked up the knife and shouted at him in a foreign language.
Then Jack swept up in his impressive coat, gun drawn. "Hello!" he said in the disarming tone that served him so well and so often. "Torchwood, we appreciate the help, but we can take it from here." He took up a square stance over the Man-now deprived of his Hat-and aimed the gun at his head.
The construction workers/builders stepped back quickly, and Owen saw their faces shifting from controlled anger to wariness in an instant. But they seemed unwilling to just leave.
"Police?" the wiry one said, clearly the speaker for the group.
"Something like that," Jack replied with a charming smile, gun still pointed at the man on the ground.
The workers were shifting on their feet uneasily. "We not let him hurt little girls," the speaker said. "This is very bad man. You keep him?"
"We will see that he never hurts little girls again," Jack promised in a tone Owen recognized as the one that meant serious business.
"You are good men," added Gwen, who had just arrived with Sofie in her arms. The little girl's head was buried against Gwen's neck and Nelly was standing so close that she brushed Gwen's shoulder. "We'll make sure the girls are safe."
The short builder nodded, then glanced at Nelly. There was a moment of eye contact, Owen noticed, as if they knew one another, and Nelly nodded ever so slightly. The worker dropped the menacing man's knife in the grass, said something in his native language, and he and the other men left their prisoner, turned and walked back in the direction from which they had come. Across the street from the park, Owen could see a building with scaffolding up around it.
The man in black, who had been face down in the grass while his neck was being trodden on, was starting to roll over. Jack shouted at him and knelt to press his weapon against the back of the man's head.
Owen stepped forward to help Jack get the man in cuffs. Crouching, he pulled the left arm around and was reaching for the right when his knee knocked something hard inside the dirty black coat. After securing the cuffs, Owen patted the coat and fished around until he found the opening of a pocket. He slipped his hand in and withdrew the octagonal box Gwen had recovered, and lost, before.
"Owen?" Jack said sharply, sounding startled. Just then they heard a shout in the distance, a young boy's voice.
God. He'd forgotten Rhodri. Owen looked around and saw the boy back at the site of the first clash with Torbalan, kneeling over a large shape on the ground. Owen turned back; Jack was looking at him strangely, but nodded, held out his hand for the box, and told Owen, "Go." Owen handed Jack the box and ran.
~~~
The dog was bleeding from a wound in her side. Rhodri had put a cloth on the wound and was cradling the dog's head in his lap, his face looking very tense, on the verge of tears. When he looked up, Owen thought he saw puzzlement, then a shock of recognition pass over the boy's face. But they had other things to worry about for now.
Owen knelt next to the dog. "What's her name?" he asked.
"Gypsy," the boy said hoarsely.
"Okay, Rhodri, I'm going to help Gypsy, but I need you to help me."
Rhodri looked startled when he heard his name, but he nodded.
Owen adjusted the bloody cloth, which-was it a sock? He looked at Rhodri again and saw a discarded trainer on the ground next to him. One of his feet was bare and looked swollen. Well, they'd deal with that later.
"Press your hand down here and put pressure on the wound while I check how Gypsy's doing, okay?"
Rhodri nodded again and moved so that he could reach Gypsy's flank. The dog whined and thumped her tail. Owen was just getting a look at her eyes with his pen light when they were interrupted by a long, high pitched wail.
He looked up to see Sofie about twenty feet away, standing next to the stuffed sheep, which was face-down in the grass. Head thrown back, Sofie let out a scream that made Owen's skin crawl, and then continued to cry so hard, she seemed to be having trouble even drawing breath.
Owen looked around for help and saw Nelly and Gwen running toward Sofie. Nelly reached her first, knelt and wrapped her arms around her sister. But the little girl stiffened and squirmed out of her embrace, refusing to be consoled. Nelly began speaking to her in Bulgarian, asking her questions, Owen assumed. Rhodri looked over at Owen, his face more drawn and worried than ever.
Gwen reached the girls and knelt next to Sofie as well. "Was she hurt?" she asked Nelly. "Did the man hurt her? I know she was scared-"
"She say she is not hurt," Nelly said, shaking her head. "She say the sheep is gone." Nelly turned back to Sofie and spoke to her urgently, gesturing to the toy on the ground. To Gwen she reported, "She say Zhivka is die like mother. I do not understand."
Gwen leaned around Nelly to look to Owen, her face grimly questioning. He nodded in agreement: whatever entity they had detected in the sheep must have expired, and Sofie could feel it. Gwen sighed and turned back to Nelly.
"I'm so sorry, can you tell her?" Gwen asked. "I know it's a strange thing, but there was something... alive in her sheep, and it's gone now. Sofie is right." She reached out and took Sofie's small hand while Nelly spoke to her. Sofie had stopped crying to listen, but then her face crumpled again. She looked at Gwen for a moment and finally flung herself into Gwen's arms. Gwen gathered her up and got to her feet.
Just then Jack's voice came over their earpieces. "I've got our piece of filth locked in the SUV. Anytime one of you can join me would be great, I may need some help getting him to the Hub."
Gwen spoke first. "Jack, I really need to get these girls home. They've been traumatised-"
"Fine. Owen?"
"I'm there, Jack, but-ah... I'm bringing some extra passengers, okay?"
"What?"
"This dog is injured, and there are no vets open round here at the weekend. We can't just leave them."
"You want to bring the boy too?"
"I have a feeling he'll have some useful information for us."
"Great, I warn Gwen not to get involved with these kids, and it's you of all people-"
"Jack, I'm asking."
There was a moment's silence.
"Fine," Jack said finally, "but they're your responsibility. Until the matter is done."
Owen understood Jack's implication, but he was certain he could find a way to deal with the whole situation without resorting to retconning an eight-year-old kid.
"Can you walk to the side of the park?" Owen asked Rhodri. The boy nodded firmly. "Okay, we're taking Gypsy somewhere I can help her a lot better. You're going to love this." He gathered up the dog in his arms and heaved himself up. When he had chosen the puppy, he'd been told it would become a big dog, but he'd had no idea she would be this big.
Rhodri was standing beside him, holding his trainer in one hand and the blood-soaked sock in the other and balancing on his good foot. "Let's go," he said gamely. Owen grinned.
~~~
It never took much urging to convince Jack to drive fast. Owen sat in the back with a weapon discreetly trained on their captive, trying to keep the man quiet, while Rhodri crouched in the cargo area with his dog. It was a good thing the boy was small. If only he were temporarily deaf as well, Owen, thought. The disheveled man next to him kept muttering about "bringing death."
Normally Owen would have taken Rhodri into the Hub via the invisible lift; if a visitor wasn't going to remember it anyway, Jack's reasoning went, why not treat them to the full, spectacular experience? But it seemed risky to carry a huge, wounded dog across the plas, small boy with one bare foot in tow, and then just disappear. People were more likely to make reports when there were children or animals involved. Not that Torchwood cared about public calls to the police, but sometimes it really was easier to avoid the attention.
So they all trooped in through the staff entrance. Tosh met them and eagerly took the mysterious box for analysis. Jack escorted Torbalan, none too gently, down to a cell, and Owen rushed the dog to the medical bay, Rhodri limping at his heels. Owen noticed, when he turned back to check on him, that the boy was looking around at the Hub, but instead of the awed expression that was common to the Hub's infrequent visitors, Rhodri merely continued to look worried.
Owen laid Gypsy carefully out on one of the large steel tables. The dog thumped her tail and whined when Rhodri patted her head. Owen looked around. He knew nothing about how to anaesthetize animals, but he'd done a few species of aliens and was used to improvising. The problem was going to be adapting an oxygen mask for a dog's muzzle. He didn't want to intubate her.
Owen tapped his earpiece. "Ianto, you around? I could use some assistance with a medical procedure."
Ianto responded quickly. "Jack asked me to get something from the archives, I'm several levels down. Five minutes?" His reply crackled, as the bluetooth network sometimes did when one party was in certain parts of the Hub, near devices that caused interference.
"It is an emergency," Owen answered. "A little more urgent than some ancient paperwork, I'm thinking."
Owen set to work prepping the dog. He tried to send Rhodri upstairs to wait, or at least make him sit down to rest his injured ankle, but the boy wouldn't leave. In fact, he noticed Owen struggling with the mask and made a suggestion for adapting it with some synthetic sheeting and surgical tape. He didn't seem at all disturbed to be in a medical environment where razors and scalpels were about to be used. While he fetched the tape, Owen smiled slightly to himself. He wasn't surprised this kid was tough, in all the right ways.
In the end, Rhodri really wouldn't be sidelined, and assisted with the procedure more than Ianto. Owen had to suction clotted blood and use a device he called the "subdermal knitter" to repair mild injury to some internal tissues. The knife hadn't done as much damage as it could have. He closed her up with ordinary sutures, as much for deniability as anything. If Rhodri told his mum Gypsy had been stabbed and then seen to by a doctor, she would want to see stitches.
He thought about giving Gypsy some universal blood replacement fluid he'd been experimenting with, but he wasn't sure enough to risk it, so she got fluids only. When they were finished, Ianto went back to his research task, whatever it was, and Owen made Gypsy comfortable. Rhodri didn't want to leave her side; he remained there, stroking her head.
"Hey," Owen said gently, "it's gonna take a while for her to wake up. Why don't you sit down?"
Rhodri looked doubtful.
"Just... over here on the steps. You can watch her the whole time."
Rhodri nodded and hobbled to the stairs, sitting on the sixth step up where there was a good view of the surgery table. He put his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.
Owen really hoped the dog was going to make it. If she didn't... well, when it came down to it, it would be his fault. Another success laced with failure. It wasn't just coincidence that had got Rhodri and Gypsy involved in this situation; Owen had pulled them in.
He sat down two steps below Rhodri and tapped the boy's leg gently. "Let me see your ankle, mate," he said. Rhodri lifted his foot, and Owen stretched out the leg so that it could rest across his lap. He probed the ankle with his fingers, pausing when Rhodri winced and hissed in pain. There was swelling, and a bit of bruising was beginning to show, but it wasn't a bad sprain.
"I'm just going to get some supplies, you wait here, eh? And keep that leg up on the step, it'll feel better."
Rhodri nodded. "Elevation," he said, "and you're getting some ice?"
Owen raised his eyebrows and grinned. "You know first aid, then."
"I know lots of things," Rhodri replied, smiling shyly.
On his way to get the supplies, Owen checked the dog. Her breathing was good and the pulse was stronger. He was surprised at how much relief he felt.
Back on the stairs, Owen wrapped a cold pack around Rhodri's ankle and secured it temporarily with an elastic roll bandage. Then he joined Rhodri on the sixth step. The dog should start to wake up in a bit, and he didn't want to block Rhodri's view.
After a minute or so, Rhodri spoke. "How did you know my name?" he asked softly, stealing a quick, curious glance at Owen before looking back toward his dog.
Owen sighed slightly. "I've met you before," he said. "Don't know if you remember. You were younger. It was at the Big Weekend funfair, you were lost..."
"And you had a kitten. You hurt it." Rhodri didn't turn his head.
"Ah. You do remember."
The boy nodded, his eyes seemingly glued to a spot across the medical bay.
"Listen, Rhodri. It's hard to explain. Sometimes we have to do things to help, but it looks like we're hurting-"
"Like surgery. Torbalan hurt Gypsy with a knife, but you used a knife to fix her."
Damn. This kid was way too smart for his age. He could forget having an easy childhood, then, if such a thing had ever been a possibility. "Yeah," Owen agreed simply.
They were silent for a few moments more.
"Are you my real father?" Rhodri asked.
Again, the boy was concentrating hard on a spot across the room. Owen was so taken aback by the question, he laughed out loud, then mentally kicking himself, apologized and patted Rhodri awkwardly on the shoulder.
What to say to that? "Rhodri, your dad-"
"Was a bad man," Rhodri finished. "Ren didn't love us. He wouldn't do anything for us. But Mum gets money every month." He finally turned to Owen, animated now. "Someone is sending that money! And someone gave me my dog. I thought it must be a policeman, someone who could watch over us..."
Owen jumped in. "Rhodri, look, Ren is sending you that money. Sometimes you'd just rather not be related to some people. Believe me, I know. But I'm sorry mate, I'm not your dad. I'm just... a guy who's met you twice now."
Ren Powell had been a coward of the most loathsome kind. With the unique resources Torchwood had available, it had been almost disappointingly easy to convince him that something terrifying would happen if he didn't a) never touch his wife or son again and b) faithfully provide them with financial support for the rest of his life. Owen may have enjoyed the persuasion a little too much. Sue him, he was human.
Rhodri was looking down, and Owen saw his shoulders sag, just a little.
"But if your dad isn't proud of you, he's a-" Owen caught himself just in time to edit his language. "He's completely mad," he finished. "You're dead clever. And I saw you protect those girls. Here, look at me."
Rhodri obeyed, looking straight up into Owen's eyes.
"I'm sure your dad loves you. He probably just has to be other places. I'll bet he appreciates you being the man of the house."
Rhodri didn't look convinced, but he nodded anyway. He was too clever, Owen thought again, but at this point it felt like an obvious lie was kinder than a cruel truth.
Just then they heard a polite cough from the stairs above them.
"I made some drinks," Ianto announced. "Does anyone want hot chocolate?"
Rhodri had shifted on the step to see who was there. He looked interested.
Owen nodded to Ianto, sending him a silent thanks when he came down and handed a mug to Rhodri. There would be time later to tease him about... well, there was an opportunity there somewhere. Owen would think of something. He'd been falling behind in his quota lately.
"Tell me about the man who hurt Gypsy," Owen said when Ianto had gone. "I think you might know something that would help us."
Rhodri held his mug in two hands and sipped his drink. "Nelly thought he wasn't human," he said. "He followed them from their country."
Owen whistled. "He's even creepier than I thought."
Rhodri nodded. "But he was following the sheep. I know because when they left Zhivka with me and Gypsy, he came to our house."
"Do you know what his little box does?"
Rhodri's brow knitted, as if he were puzzled. "I thought maybe he used it to find what he was looking for. But in the park, I took Zhivka so he would follow me. And he didn't follow me, he went right to Sofie and Nelly."
Owen nodded slowly. "I think I need to talk to my boss. Will you be okay if Ianto stays with you? Tell you what, I think Gypsy might wake up soon. She'll want to see you."
Rhodri smiled for the first time.
~~~
While Owen was on his way toward the stairs to the interrogation room, Tosh caught up to him and stopped him. She had a strange look on her face. "Owen, there's something really unusual about this device. I've finished analysing the energy readings, and I just used one of your bioscanners on it. It's... I'm not sure I'm reading it correctly. Would you come and look? I need some major confirmation."
They headed back to Tosh's workstation.
~~~
Gwen had not stayed long after taking the girls home. Their father was there, a handsome man dressed like a building site manager and still holding his hard hat; he must have walked in just ahead of their arrival. Sofie hadn't stopped crying, so he had his hands full. Gwen explained that she was an off-duty officer who had happened to see the girls being harassed by a vagrant, and she was bringing them home as a favour. She made sure to mention that there would be no official report, and she noticed Mr. Gavrilovi relax at that. If her suspicions were correct, there would be a group of construction workers coming home soon who could fill in some details of the girls' adventure, if Nelly wasn't feeling up to it.
"We've arrested the-vagrant," she assured him, "he won't be able to bother your daughters again." She looked at Nelly as she said that; the girl nodded gratefully.
Now she had joined Jack in the interrogation room for a much less pleasant task.
"I steal souls." The man leered at Jack. He apparently hadn't stopped insisting on the "bringer of death" rubbish since he had entered the interrogation room. Apart from that, they hadn't been able to get anything else out of him-not a name, not where he had picked up the device, how it worked, or even exactly what it did. Certainly nothing about his connection to the Gavrilovi girls. He just sat there, hunched over the table, and repeated those few phrases in his raspy voice, coughing occasionally.
Gwen wasn't sure she could continue looking at him much longer. Except for his long, greasy hair, he wasn't particularly dirty, if she thought about it rationally. His clothes seemed clean and relatively neat. His face was unshaven but no more overgrown than George Clooney's was most of the time. He did smell, but she wasn't sure why. He just gave off a feeling of filth. She hadn't had a chance to wash her hands since bringing him in, and her skin was prickling as if it remembered its contact with his clothing. The thing that bothered her most was wondering what he might have done to those girls if he hadn't been stopped.
Jack hadn't sat down the whole time. He usually didn't. Now he had placed both hands on the table and was leaning over it, bringing his face close to to their prisoner's. Gwen could tell from the way one of his fingers was tapping that Jack was about to move to the Next Stage in the interrogation. She wasn't inclined to object.
But Gwen was relieved from her proximity to the greasy man for awhile when Toshiko appeared on the stairs and gestured to Gwen to come. Gwen joined her at the top of the stairs where they could talk.
Tosh's eyes were shining. "I've finished my preliminary analysis of the box," she said, "and it's some sort of energy storage device. It has incredible capacity! And yes, the metal is definitely alien. I haven't been able to open it-it might not be safe, anyway-but unless this man is just a courier or picked it up accidentally, whatever he's involved in is not small. The energy in the device could power Cardiff for six months. Or blow up half of England."
"Any clues on who this man is?" Gwen asked.
"Oh, right. I got his fingerprints off of the box-along with Owen's, Jack's, and yours, maybe you could use a hanky or gloves next time you recover an artefact from a suspicious character?"
"Right, sorry, heat of the moment." Gwen smiled apologetically.
"It's okay, I separated out his prints and I'm running them against international police databanks now."
"Thanks, Tosh. Anything else?"
"Owen has the box now, he's helping me with a few tests as well. I think there's even more to it."
Gwen sighed. "All right. Well, that gives us more to go on here. Let us know if you find anything else?"
"Of course," Tosh smiled, turned, and headed back up to the main level of the Hub and her enviable job being anywhere but here.
Gwen returned to where Jack and the greasy man seemed to be having a staring contest. She put her hand on Jack's shoulder and got him to move aside so she could sit down in the interrogator's chair. Her turn.
"Well, Mister... I really wish you would tell us your name," she said cheerfully, "it would make this so much more pleasant! Can I call you Dick, then? No objections?" When the man didn't twitch a muscle, she continued. "Well then, Dick, I'd like to talk about what you planned to do with the incredible amounts of energy stored in your little device. Free power for developing nations, perhaps? A donation to science to help solve global warming? Because I'm sure you had nothing nefarious in mind." She gave him a perky smile.
The man's steady expression broke for half a second, his brow furrowing almost imperceptibly, but he recovered quickly with an assured smile of his own.
"You will find you cannot open box. It is no use to you. You will return to me and I will go away."
Owen's voice broke in from the direction of the stairs. "Nice try with the Jedi mind tricks, but they won't work here, fella." He descended, briefly making eye contact with Jack, who nodded and stepped out of his way. He then strode directly to the table with such purpose that Gwen moved her chair back. It screeched on the concrete floor.
His body taut, like a carnivore ready to spring, Owen revealed the small device in his hand and set it slowly, carefully on the table just out of reach of the man's manacled hands. "Question one," he said so quietly that Gwen had to lean forward to hear. "Do you keep these creatures until they die, or does whatever you use them for kill them?"
The sudden increase in the tension that had already been present in the room made Gwen's stomach clench.
"Owen?" she queried gently.
He replied without taking his eyes off the man's face. "There are almost a billion separately conscious energy readings coming from inside this device. Almost identical to the one we tested earlier, just-smaller. I can't isolate their sensory readings but they're off the charts. When I say there's a world of pain here, I mean it literally. That box is a torture chamber."
The man sneered and leaned forward, meeting Owen's stare. "I tell you. I-am-Soul Stealer."
"So you must track these energy readings. I know that's why you were following the girls. All right, then, question two: how do you do it?"
He seemed to relax. Maybe he had nothing left to lose, Gwen thought. "The box show me," he said. "I find soul, box take soul. When box take soul, suddenly: it is million souls! So much energy. Everywhere, I take souls. Girl's sheep have soul, so I follow. This is all. You cannot keep me. No law against little box, I check."
Behind Owen, Jack nodded. "That's right, there's no law against 'little box.' The law doesn't even know things like this exist. Which is why you'll find that the law has very little to do with us."
The man began to look slightly uncomfortable again.
Owen leaned forward. "Question three." His voice was low, gravelly and threatening; Gwen almost shivered. "Why follow those girls all the way from Bulgaria?"
At that, Gwen looked back at Jack, who looked as surprised as she felt. "Hang on," she interrupted, "he knew Nelly and Sofie in Europe?"
"That's what Rhodri says," Owen replied.
"But he just said he finds them everywhere. There must be several of these creatures in Cardiff alone. We figured either they were here because of the Rift, or there's a similar concentration in any city."
"So why would he go that far to capture a particular one of them?" Jack concluded.
"Exactly," Owen said, his face dark. "And a related question, Mr.-do we know this creep's name?" He broke off and looked at Gwen.
"Dick," she answered with a bit of a smirk.
Owen shrugged and returned his attention to the man in black. "Okay then... Dick," he said, "final question. In the park today, those girls didn't have the sheep. The boy had it, and he wasn't near them. If you can locate the objects you're looking for using this box... why did you go after the girls anyway?"
"And for that matter, why did you follow them and leave the sheep on the pier?" Gwen added.
The man's eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth twitched. But he remained silent.
Jack stepped forward. "Those are very interesting questions. Now I'm curious." He hadn't looked at Owen or Gwen, instead staring at the man across the table.
The man leaned back in his chair and smiled-the kind of smile that gave Gwen nightmares. But he still said nothing.
Jack walked slowly around the table, bent down, and whispered in his ear. Fascinated, Gwen almost forgot to shudder at the thought of getting that close to that oily hair.
When Jack straightened up and stepped away, the man was glaring at Jack. He coughed, then spoke. "Girls are afraid," he said. "The more they see me, the more they are afraid. The souls in box, they get very excited when girls are afraid." Finally he smiled his disgusting smile again. "More souls are excited, more exciting feeling for me, and more money for box. This is good. All good. These girls," he looked at Gwen and curled up his lip in a sinister grin, "they are like a drug. You should try sometime. You have box. You will see."
Gwen couldn't tolerate it any more. Without a thought, she practically dove across the table; she was aware that she elbowed Owen in the face while he was pulling her off. Once she was settled back on her side of the table, Owen's approving, impertinent grin made her consider elbowing him again.
Jack was standing with his arms crossed in front of his chest. "Well," he addressed the man, who was still breathing hard, "I think you're aware of what we'd like to do to you. We can actually do anything we want. But since you mentioned the law, there are laws against stalking and harassment, and if I'm not mistaken, MI5 would be very interested in a device holding that much energy. They see terrorist threats everywhere..."
Now Tosh's voice came from the top of the stairs. "And they really don't like black market arms dealing, trust me," she called as she came down. "Ivan Bachev? That's one of his names, Jack. Also known as Torbalan, or the Bogeyman in some circles." When she reached Jack, she handed him a printout. "Interpol has a long and interesting file on Mr Bachev."
Jack grinned. For the first time, Gwen noted, their prisoner looked truly alarmed.
"You give me to them, you will never open box!" he said quickly. "I know how to use box. I have secret."
"If you're going to use that as a bargaining chip, you're going to have to admit to the authorities that you had the device. And we're not going to mention it. Are we, Gwen?" Gwen looked at Jack, then shook her head. "Owen? Tosh?"
Tosh shook her head as well, and Owen chuckled. "Not a word, Jack."
"Okay. Put him in the cell next to Janet. I'll talk to MI5 myself."
"Not with Janet then?" Owen asked.
"As tempting as that is... the spooks probably want him with a face he can talk out of. Pity."
~~~
When Owen returned to the medical bay, he found a much livelier scene than the one he had left. Rhodri was sitting on the table with Gypsy, gently pushing her down whenever she tried to sit up, which she did frequently in response to his giggles. Ianto, Rhodri told Owen, knew lots of funny stories.
"Most of them are about you," Ianto added, nodding to Owen without a change in his expression.
Owen rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored Ianto's comment. "Okay, mate, time to get you two home. What are we going to tell your mum? You know you can't talk about this place."
Rhodri shook his head solemnly. "I won't tell anybody about your secret base." The he rattled off an obviously rehearsed list: "Gypsy got hit by a car, and you're an animal doctor who saw the accident," he said brightly. He pushed himself off the table and hopped to the floor, landing on his good foot and stooping to pick up a pair of crutches. "And you gave me these because your son doesn't need them anymore."
Owen raised his eyebrows, impressed. "You've put some thought into that. Don't mind lying to your mum then?"
"She worries too much already."
Ianto looked at Owen. "We should recruit this one."
"Don't I know it," Owen agreed. "Ah... the crutches?"
"From the archives. Nineteen thirties, I think, but they have a couple of... special features. Relevant to our work."
"Torchwood used child labor in the thirties, then?"
"No, just an adult employee of very short stature. I think. That would be a question for Jack."
"I'll let you ask him." Owen turned back to Rhodri. "Can you make it up the stairs on those old things?"
Rhodri nodded. "They feel almost like they're lifting me off the ground! I'll be super fast on these at school."
Owen looked at the crutches again. They were made of wood and seemed normal for their era, except for the wrappings of fluorescent turquoise tape near the bottom. He glanced at Ianto, who shrugged.
"We're not the first team to have enhanced medical equipment," he said.
"Right then." Owen went over and gathered Gypsy carefully into his arms. She grunted, but her tail flopped several times against his arm. "Follow me, Mister Powell, and you can brief me on the rest of my cover story while we drive."
~~~
The next day, the Hub had the subdued atmosphere it seemed to get sometimes after a series of tense events-the adrenaline drained away and things felt almost hollow.
Jack and Gwen had handed off Bachev to the relevant authorities. According to Jack, Gwen had chatted up the MI5 agent, found out he had a young son and two nieces, then happened to let slip the fact that Bachev enjoyed torturing children. It was out of their hands what happened to him after that.
Owen and Tosh were still working on the device. Owen was determined to get the box open and release the creatures trapped inside, but it was proving difficult. Early on, Tosh had found what looked like a port hidden in a panel on the bottom of the device, and she was reasonably certain that was how the energy was accessed and converted. Despite the amounts of energy involved, she was now convinced that simply releasing the creatures would not be dangerous-if only they could figure out how.
There were no buttons anywhere, the lights, which were also made of an unknown material, didn't seem to do anything but provide information, and aside from the panel protecting the port, nothing opened. There weren't even any seams apparent in the metal. It appeared that the box had been moulded in one piece.
Owen worked on it for an entire day, assisted sometimes by Tosh, before Gwen convinced him to join the rest of them in the board room for pizza. Even then, he brought the device with him and set it down in the middle of the table while they ate. The conversation flowed around him while he sipped his beer and stared at the box.
"We're missing something." The others turned to him when he spoke. Gwen had been about to toss a crumpled napkin at Jack's head, but she put it down.
"I've put it through every type of scan and diagnostic we have-"
"Except for a couple that might have made it blow up Cardiff," Tosh interjected.
"Right. But we've hardly learned anything we didn't already know."
"Well, we did learn that one thing," Tosh reminded him.
Jack looked up encouragingly, his mouth still full of pepperoni. "Yeah?"
"When I came back from another room to where Owen was working on the box, I couldn't find him. But I knew he had just been there."
"I hadn't moved," Owen said.
"But I didn't see him until I called his name and he answered me."
Jack looked impressed. "Perception filter?"
"Something like it, anyway," Tosh nodded.
"That would make sense," Gwen said, "the way he escaped from the SUV. And Nelly told me she never knew where 'Torbalan' came from, he would just appear."
Owen grunted in thought. "Rhodri said Nelly thought he was a fairy tale monster. No wonder."
"That's interesting," Jack said, leaning back in his chair, "but it doesn't help us, does it?"
Owen shook his head. "It's got to be something simple."
"I figure it's a puzzle, you know?" Tosh said. "Just... not the kind we're used to. The only other thing we learned is that the material the box is made of has an opposite charge on the inside surface from the charge on the outside surface. It could be used to attract the creatures from the outside, and then keep them contained - because they're being repelled by the inner surface."
Jack nodded. "Opposite charges, though, isn't that kind of-"
"Dangerous?" Tosh finished for him. "Well, that might be the reason there are no seams; the structural integrity would be very delicate."
"But how do they get in?" Gwen wondered.
"Exactly," Owen agreed.
"And what did Bachev mean that each living creature becomes 'million'? Gwen continued. "What happens to them when they get trapped?"
"It sounds like they disintegrate into parts," Owen said. "Or reproduce." He shrugged. "Like a spider, she lays a thousand eggs and then dies."
"Spawning," Jack mused, leaning back in his chair. "Interesting theory. It's a good prison, regardless."
"Poor things," Gwen said, looking at the box sadly. "Billions of little souls..." She sighed. "And little Sofie said her sheep was dead. Burst into tears when she found it. She could tell the creature hadn't made it."
"Torchwood's earlier experiments indicated the readings were lost permanently after a period of separation from the owner," Ianto reminded them.
Everyone else looked up. Ianto hadn't joined them for lunch, but now he was standing in the doorway of the board room, holding a sheaf of papers in his arm.
"She wasn't separated for long, though," Gwen reasoned, "not nearly as much time or distance as before, when they left her on the pier."
"It's bloody strange," Owen agreed. "And Bachev didn't even 'catch' her. He was running away by the time Rhodri got there with the sheep."
Tosh shook her head. "We don't know how conscious these creatures are. Owen's tests indicate that they're sentient, but what if they're really... aware? Emotionally connected? It could have known if Sofie was in danger."
"And what? Died of fright?" Owen asked.
"Oh, no, I see," Gwen said, clucking her tongue. "Not run away... sacrificed herself, yeah?"
Ianto cleared his throat. "Well, I've found something that might shed some light. It's a diagram and some notes, but they weren't filed in the same year as the observations of the energy creatures. In fact, they're not in English." He walked over to the table and laid the papers out for everyone to see. "The notes I can read just say the object was found underwater and the container it was in was badly degraded. They only just managed to transcribe the writing on it before it was completely ruined. No clue what happened to the box."
"The diagram's good enough, though," Jack noted. "It's clearly the same as ours."
Tosh inspected the writing. "This is alien," she remarked, and her eyes began to shine. "I can translate this, I just need to scan it into one of my programs." She looked up at Jack.
"Please," he said, answering her unasked question.
When she was gone, Jack nodded at Ianto with a satisfied expression. "Good work," he said, and gestured to a chair. "Pizza?"
~~~
Still bothered by their lack of success with the box, and unable to concentrate on anything else, Owen went to Tosh to see if he could help with their latest clue. He knew she didn't actually need help-Tosh rarely did-but she seemed quite amenable to his presence.
"You can scan that last page while I run the translation program," Tosh told him, nodding toward the handheld device and the stack of yellowed papers.
While he carefully passed the device down the page of vertical text, Tosh scanned the screen in front of her, her eyes darting back and forth so quickly they were practically vibrating. After a moment, her face registered keen interest. "Owen! Look at this," she said, pointing at the screen.
Owen finished the last two inches of the page, put the scanner down, and went around to stand behind Tosh. Her screen was split into two columns, one showing the alien language they had scanned and the other with English letters that scrolled vertically, like the language they were interpreting, until they coalesced into recognizable words. Tosh was pointing at three lines in the middle.
"Here. 'Negative,' 'positive,' 'essential thoughts' - that could mean emotions or personality - and 'attract.' Then over here, 'pure,' 'decayed,' and 'release.' I've got some work to do on the grammar, obviously. But then look at the labels on the diagram." She scrolled down to a different page of the original text and pointed again.
"Those are the lights on the box," Owen said.
"And they're labelled 'conduit,' or it might be 'passage.' They're not just indicator lights!"
"They're how the creatures get sucked into the box." Owen nodded.
"Whatever energy powers the lights probably resonates with the creatures' energy as well."
"So, what, we pull the lights out of the box like pulling teeth with pliers?"
Tosh chuckled and shook her head. "Didn't you try that already, anyway?"
"Maybe."
"Well, I think I can at least say that the opposite charges in the surfaces of the box correspond to opposite... states of the people who might use the box. Emotional state, mental state, personality, I don't know."
"So if Bachev was able to use the box to trap the creatures, we need his opposite to let them out."
Tosh shrugged. "Maybe?"
"Well, we've all handled the box already, and nothing happened."
"Yeah." Tosh sighed, and they paused for a moment while that sank in.
"Pure, huh?" Owen mused.
Gwen's voice cut through his thoughts. "Oi, Jack? Owen, come look at this!" Owen left Tosh poring over the translation and went over to join Gwen, arriving just before Jack. Gwen had pulled up a CCTV feed on one of the spare computer monitors and was viewing the plas, tracking the progress of two figures toward the pier.
"That's them!" Jack exclaimed. "What are they doing back here?"
"Sofie's carrying her sheep," Owen noted. "I thought-"
"Yes, but look at how she's holding it," Gwen said. "Not cuddling or swinging it, like a child normally would."
Jack nodded in agreement. "Yeah, her posture's too formal. It's almost like she's carrying-"
"A body," Owen finished for him.
"I'm going to check on them," Gwen announced.
Jack sighed. "I don't think there's anything we can do, but all right."
Gwen grabbed her jacket and headed toward the back door lifts.
"I'll come with you," Owen called. Following her, he stopped for a moment at his desk, grabbed the box, and slipped it into his pocket.
~~~
Nelly held Sofie's hand to help her clamber up the tall step onto the bus. The doors shut behind them with a hydraulic sigh while she paid for two child fares, then she let Sofie choose a seat and get in next to the window. Nelly sat down beside her and stole thoughtful glances as they rode.
Sofie wasn't really tall enough to see out the window, but she was leaning her head back against the seat, watching the sky pass by. Neatly placed on her lap was a blue cloth bag containing her Zhivka, or what Nelly was coming to think of as the remains of Zhivka. Sofie kept insisting the sheep was dead, and she wouldn't let Nelly carry the bag. They were headed to the bay for a burial at sea. Nelly sighed softly.
Sofie wanted to "send Zhivka away in the water" so they could send messages to her. Nelly wasn't sure why Sofie didn't think she could give a message to her sheep right at home, since that was where the toy still resided. Maybe the ceremony she had created for them in the lake back in Bulgaria had confused her sister. First Nelly had told Sofie that they couldn't visit their mother in a plane, then they had sent messages across the water. What if Sofie had reasoned that if heaven wasn't in the sky, it must be in the lake?
Sometimes Nelly wished that no one had ever told her about heaven at all.
Well, there was probably no sense in trying to correct her impression now. If a sea funeral was what Sofie needed, they would do it.
When they got off the bus near the plas, Sofie marched over to the nearest litter bin, pulled the sheep out of the bag, and stood on her tiptoes to place the bag in the bin. Then she turned around, holding Zhivka ceremonially in her arms, and headed toward the water.
~~~
When Gwen and Owen emerged from the tourist information office, they scanned the area and finally spotted the girls standing on the pier, near a rail looking out over the water. They walked toward them, but as they got closer, Gwen grabbed the sleeve of Owen's jacket to stop him.
"Wait, Owen. I don't know, doesn't that look sort of... private?"
They stopped about twenty yards from the girls and watched quietly. Sofie had squatted down and was holding the sheep close to her face, as if she were speaking into its ear. Then she stood, handed it to her sister, and nodded.
Nelly appeared to sigh, then pivoted slightly, drew back her arm, and - eliciting a small gasp from Gwen - tossed the sheep. Its dull white form sailed out over the water and disappeared. The girls stood for a moment, then Nelly stooped and picked up Sofie in her arms, kissing her on the head as she turned away from the sea.
Now they could see Gwen and Owen, and it was clear on Sofie's face when she registered the sight of familiar people. She wriggled out of her sister's arms, hopped to the ground, and ran over, holding her arms up to Gwen. Gwen scooped her up with a smile.
"How are you, love?"
"Az sŭm tŭzhna, Gwennie," Sofie said, laying her head briefly on Gwen's shoulder.
Owen wanted to smirk at the name "Gwennie," but the little girl's fast trust and openness were rather touching, so help him.
Nelly had followed her sister and stood before them, looking a little embarrassed, but giving them a lopsided smile all the same. She looked at Gwen and then her face changed to concern. "Is still okay? You are here for police?"
"Oh, no, love, everything's fine! We just-" Gwen motioned in the general direction of the plas- "patrol in the area and we saw you. Just wanted to make sure you're doing all right. You are... we saw Sofie's..." Gwen faltered.
Realisation crossed Nelly's face, and she nodded. "Ah, we just... have a little ceremony. It is okay." And that seemed to be all there was to say.
Owen slipped a hand in his pocket and cleared his throat. "Say, Sofie," he said, stepping to the side a bit so that he could look directly at her face, "I wondered if you could help us with something." Sofie looked back at him, listening carefully but clearly not understanding. Owen looked to Nelly for help. The older girl translated, looking a bit puzzled.
Gwen put Sofie down, and Owen squatted so he could talk to her more easily. He pulled the box from his pocket and showed it to her. Sofie stared at it with interest. Nelly stepped back, clearly recognising it as being Torbalan's possession, but Gwen went over and touched her arm reassuringly.
"It's this box," Owen said to Sofie, "it has a secret, and we can't figure it out." Nelly translated, and Sofie's eyes got even wider.
"I was wondering if you could have a look at it. Can you figure out the secret?" He held the box out to her.
Sofie took it with two hands, fascinated. She touched several of the small lights around the edge and stroked the smooth surface of the metal. Suddenly, she looked worried. She looked up at Owen and spoke.
"She say the box is sad," Nelly translated.
Owen nodded. "I don't know how she can tell, but she's right about that."
Nelly spoke to Sofie, and the little girl looked at the box again. Owen noticed tears welling up in her eyes. She turned the box over twice, pouting with concentration, then brought it up to her lips and gave it a kiss. After that she held it upside down and pushed with both fat little thumbs on the sides.
With what appeared to be no resistance at all, the bottom of the box separated from the rest and slid forward, opening like a panel.
What occurred next was one of those things that seemed to happen quite often with Torchwood, an experience so completely alien that they had no context with which to interpret it while it was happening. It simply washed over them, to be analysed and understood later.
Something flooded from the opening. Sofie dropped the box and stumbled backward against Gwen's legs. Owen, who had been squatting with his face close to Sofie's and to the box, lost his balance and ended up on his bum watching...
Watching nothing, but it was only later that they realized, reviewing the CCTV with Tosh, that they hadn't actually been able to see anything. The sensations were so strong that they could feel everything that was going on. A flow of energy poured from the box, so bright it might as well have been sparkling as it separated into streamers and curly tendrils. The tendrils sought them out, curious, twisting around their shoulders and chests and minds.
The effect was a profound feeling of joy. Owen felt too stunned to know what to do, but Sofie began to giggle and couldn't stop. Soon, Gwen was laughing with her, and then Owen looked up to see even Nelly's normally worried face break into a broad smile. Unable to help himself, he chuckled. As he was picking himself up off the pavement, he realized that one of the voices he could hear laughing was Jack's. Beyond Gwen, Jack and Ianto were approaching from the direction of the tourist information office.
Just when Owen thought they were all going to burst if this feeling continued, there was a rush of energy, and the tendrils withdrew into a concentrated ball, hovering a few feet above the box. It floated there for a moment, pulsing. They stared at the spot where they knew it was, panting, and Sofie hopped up and down with excitement.
Then, just as Jack and Ianto arrived to stand next to Gwen, the ball of energy exploded. They felt it expand and shoot out in a million directions, and then it was a billion separate traces, drifting like dust motes around their heads, surely collecting on their eyelashes, in their hair and collars and cuffs. After a moment the drifting halted and the motes began to move under their own power. Soon the concentration had thinned. They were drifting away.
"Owen?" Tosh's voice was in his ear. "Owen, are you there?" He'd almost forgotten he had his bluetooth earpiece in.
"Here, Tosh." He puffed, still catching his breath from the experience. "What's up?"
"I've got more of the translation for you. Do you want it?"
"Oh yes, I think I do." He grinned, even though he knew she couldn't see him. Probably.
Gwen was talking to Sofie and Nelly, and Jack and Ianto were inspecting the box on the ground. Owen walked a few steps away from them.
"Well," Tosh said, "about getting the box open, it sounds like-"
Owen interrupted her. "We figured that out," he said, "or, rather, Sofie did."
"That makes sense," Tosh replied, "it has to be someone-cognitively pre-functional is the best literal translation. I think it probably means a particular stage in social and emotional development-"
"And...?" Owen prompted, not unkindly.
"Well, once it's open, this says that the 'swarm of larvae may disperse without a loss of vitality.' I'm pretty sure on that bit. Does that mean anything to you? Larvae of what, do you think?"
"Oh, I've got a good idea. We'll talk when we're back in the Hub, okay?"
"Okay. See you soon."
"Thanks, Tosh, I mean it."
"You know me, always ready for a good translation project!"
The communication line was disconnected, and Owen returned to the group still clustered around the box. Sofie was chattering in Bulgarian and Nelly was translating a few things for the others.
"So I think," Owen broke in, "we just had about a billion babies."
The others looked at him, clearly expecting more of an explanation.
"Whatever was in that box, the, ah, 'souls,' as someone said, were the young of the species. Trapped. Sofie set them free."
Nelly said something to Sofie, and the girl beamed.
Ianto stepped forward, bringing out a bundle he had had under his arm. "Ah, I wonder, Sofie...?" he said, looking at the little girl. He began undoing the bundle, which was wrapped in a green wool jumper, and finally revealed a plush toy: quite new, a floppy brown pony with a white muzzle and star on its head.
"He's been left alone for quite a long time. I thought Sofie might like to give him a home?" Ianto looked at Nelly, who spoke to Sofie.
Sofie held up her arms tentatively. Receiving the pony, she gave it an experimental hug. Looking up at Ianto, she said something to him.
"'She,'" Nelly said. "Sofie say the horse is a girl."
Ianto chuckled and nodded. "That's all right, then."
"Thank you," Sofie pronounced carefully, gazing at Ianto.
Owen bent down to retrieve the box and realized that although the swarm was gone, he could still sense a few of the creatures around them, like dust motes swimming through a shaft of sunlight.
It was a good day.
EPILOGUE
Sofie was in the living room visiting with the recuperating Gypsy. Rhodri could hear her chattering and cooing to the dog and the occasional tail-thumping on the wooden floor and a rustle as Sofie tried to keep her from getting up. Gypsy wasn't supposed to walk around much yet, but she really wanted to.
He was with Nelly in the kitchen again, making a pot of tea while they talked. He felt bad not telling Nelly how Gypsy had actually been saved, but he'd been sworn to secrecy, and he took that seriously. Anyway, it seemed almost moot alongside the story Nelly was telling him. There was a magical box holding a billion baby creatures, and somehow Owen and his co-workers were involved.
"You're sure they were... alive? It wasn't some... maybe a special kind of battery?" He thought of all the amazing looking machines he had seen inside Owen's base.
Nelly shrugged and scuffed her feet on the floor. Rhodri noticed how her knees were bent; when he sat in that chair, his toes didn't even touch the ground. He thought Nelly was probably taller than his mother. But she looked very unsure, not like a grown-up at all, right now.
"I think they were alive," she answered, finally. "I cannot explain why, but I think yes. Very much."
"And the box was related to Zhivka."
"Torbalan had it. Torbalan wanted Zhivka."
"Do you think that's why Zhivka was so special? Maybe it's why Sofie thought she was alive. Maybe she was."
"I don't know," Nelly said. She looked up at Rhodri, shy and serious. "I think souls are just fairy tale, like Torbalan."
"But you said all the grown-ups saw them too."
Nelly sighed. "Is true. And..." She paused, and it looked like she didn't know if she wanted to say the next thing she was thinking. It was something very important, Rhodri could tell.
He set a cup of tea in front of her and climbed into the other chair at the kitchen table. "Something else?" he asked softly.
Nelly shook her head. "Did Sofie tell you name for her new toy? She want to call it 'Zhivka.'" She laughed. "I tell her, this toy is horse, not sheep. But she say yes, it is horse, but it is Zhivka. She just know. Then she say, it is not exactly Zhivka, but maybe, eh... sister of Zhivka."
Rhodri considered this. "She was right before," he said.
Nelly nodded. "You know what else she say? I ask her what message she sends with Zhivka when we... bury her in the sea."
Rhodri leaned forward, waiting to hear.
"Her message is... 'Come back.'"
Nelly had tears in her eyes. Rhodri didn't want to make her uncomfortable, so he politely ignored them. "Maybe things can come back if you really want them," he said, uncertainly. He hoped some things would never come back, but Nelly probably felt differently.
Nelly shook her head. "Not always," she said firmly. "Not always." Just then they heard Gypsy bark. It wasn't an alarm bark, but Rhodri started to get up to check. Then the bark was followed by a peal of delighted laughter from Sofie. He relaxed.
Nelly grinned, reluctantly at first and then more happily. "But sometimes they come back. I am glad."
END
Additional notes
* Torbalan is a real Bulgarian folk character. Here are a couple of interesting artist interpretations of him: Torbalan 1 | Torbalan 2
* Zhivka is the feminine form of the name Zhivko, derived from zhiv, "living"
* SuperTed was a 1980s Welsh animated series about a superhero teddy bear.
* Wynne Street in Cardiff is fictional, based on the real Glynne Street.