Into Gethsemane (4/11)
Title: Into Gethsemane (4/11)
Author: nancybrown
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Lois, Johnson, Rupesh, Martha, Mickey, Tish, Rhys, John, Alice, Steven, OCs, many cameos
Pairings: mostly canon
Rating: R
Warnings: AUTHOR CHOOSES NOT TO WARN (but will answer PMs for any content questions)
Spoilers: up through COE
Words: 60,000 (4,100 this part)
Betas: eldarwannabe and fide_et_spe both performed major heavy lifting on this story, and have my deepest thanks for their efforts
Summary: A secret movement within the government successfully placed Lois Habiba as a spy inside Torchwood, and the trap is ready to be sprung. Meanwhile, Jack has received worrisome news, leading Gwen and Ianto from one danger into another. Loves, loyalties, and everyone's lives are on the line as the force behind the conspiracy finally comes to light.
A/N: Final fic in a fake third series where Lois, Johnson, and Rupesh have joined the team. Can be read as a stand-alone but will make more sense in context of the other stories.
Master Post
Chapter Three
***
Chapter Four
***
Gwen refused to think about what she'd seen, pushing away from her the thought that her friend was dead. This was here, this was now, and she had the job in front of her to do. She punched the man she struggled with, felt a satisfying crunch when her fist impacted his jaw. He went limp. She wrenched the huge gun from his hands, and tried to remember how to disarm the bloody thing.
The part of her brain that had paid attention to the fireball, the part that knew what it meant, whispered she didn't have to, that the worst was done already, but Gwen needed to use her hands, needed to ignore the stink of burning fuel and the screams around her.
The gun was pulled from her hands.
Turning her head, she saw booted feet. They'd come back for her, surrounded her.
Poor Rhys, frightened with her last message to him, not knowing she'd die with her mind on him, loving him. She focused on an image of her sweet lug of a man, the way his face lit up with a grin at just the sight of her. He would always love her first, always love her only. She needed to be wanted that way. Of all the possibilities she'd been given in her life, and all the choices she might have made, it was the singularity of his devotion that had won, and won again every time her thoughts drifted to other paths.
"Love you," she breathed, and Gwen kicked off from the pavement, fists drawn up ready to take down as many of her killers with her as she could. Her first blow landed solidly, the second was blocked, and her left cheek exploded in agony. Knees and elbows came up, bashing into a neck, turning to strike out at an unprotected groin.
All at once, her body seized with electric shock, and it took all her focus not to wee herself. The taser blasted through every nerve, sending her to her knees. She received a kick in the ribs for her trouble.
They'd shoot her now. Rhys, don't be angry with me.
"Get her up," said one of the coppers who wasn't a copper. Gwen was dragged to her feet, and her hands were roughly bound behind her. From a great distance, she heard someone tell the crowd they'd captured one of the terrorists responsible for the Cardiff bombing last year, and kindly move the fuck along. Someone else was shouting at the bloke on the ground.
"Bring her. Tally up the counts for resisting arrest. I for one would be happy to see her locked up another ten years for this little display."
Gwen's eyes focused long enough on the man in charge to see his disgusted face.
"Load her up. Put out that fire!" The stench of it assaulted her now, burning petrol and worse. God alone knew what would happen when the weirder alien-derived equipment in the back burned.
It was burning. She turned her head to watch the immolation of the van as they shoved her towards a car. The van was burning, and her friend was dead.
A moan, part sorrow, part rage, slipped past her lips, unheard amidst the shouts and screams and the oncoming sirens.
***
They almost made it.
The plane had touched down safely. Alice and Steven collected their belongings and began to disembark, when she saw the uniformed officers waiting at the end of the gangway. Her heart leaped into her mouth.
Without making a fuss, she turned around. The staff, saying their goodbyes to the passengers, blocked her way. "Forgot my handbag," said Alice. They had to wait until more passengers moved past before they could make their way to the back of the plane. With a quick check to ensure the crew wasn't watching, Alice ducked into the tiny toilet stall with Steven, and locked the door.
It was tight, too tight, and they could barely breathe.
"Mum?" he whispered.
Everything is a weapon, her mother had always taught her. "Your dad and I will show you how to fire a gun, but you won't have a gun most of the time. You'll have to use what you do have. Your teeth, your elbows, your ears."
"My ears?" she'd giggled, because she'd been seven years old and just starting to learn: how to protect herself, why her daddy was never around.
"Be very quiet," Alice whispered to her son. "If we have to run, run as far away as you can. Don't wait for me. I'll find you."
She had a biro. Alice breathed in through her nose, telling herself she could stab a man in the face with it, could slam it into his eye, could kill him if she had to protect Steven. The plastic bit into her hand.
She heard voices at the other end of the aeroplane. They would come checking. If it was the crew, she'd claim they'd had an emergency. If it was someone there to take them into custody, she'd fight.
"They will try to kill you," Mum had said. "You don't give them an opening."
The door to the loo stall rattled. "Is someone in there?" asked a woman's voice.
Alice held her breath.
The door rattled again. She heard the sound of a key. The airline hostess would be able to open the lock. A moment later, the door folded open. Alice made eye contact with the woman, registered the security uniform, and ploughed into her. "Go!" she said as Steven sobbed, climbing over the two of them.
She had her pen, but she'd pictured killing a man, and she hesitated.
Alice heard the click of a gun. "Mrs. Carter, please disengage. Now." She looked up, and there were five more uniformed guards, two beside her, three more entering the plane.
She let go, mentally cursing her father and all his ancestors. Mum had taught her that, too.
***
Mr. Gloucester came with the team sent to transport Perry and the Captain to a more permanent holding facility. Lois led him down to the Hub proper, giving him the basic tour of the facility.
"Agent Johnson, please take the team to the cells so they can ready Captain Harkness and Mr. Fletcher for transport."
"This way," she said, turning without watching to see if they followed.
"I have forms ready for the custody transfer," said Lois. "They're waiting for you in the Captain's office."
"Good. Good. We'll be transferring troops to your command later today."
Lois startled. "Mine? Sir, my assignment is complete." She'd been looking forward to going home.
"Yes, and now you have a new one. Before UNIT can come in to take over Torchwood operations formally, your team will train them." Mr. Gloucester continued to look past her, gazing at the arches and old stonework that made up the Hub, eyes settling on the Rift manipulator. "For example, you will show me how to operate this machine." He walked over. "They use it to play with the Cardiff Rift, yes?"
She scurried after him. "No, not really. They monitor it from here." She'd been given a basic understanding of what the manipulator did, but not much more. "I think it's more a passive device than an active one."
"But Torchwood has in the past opened the Rift intentionally with it?"
She'd read the reports. "Yes."
"Training will begin this afternoon. You will show me. Find an operations manual if you must."
"Yes, sir." The CCTV in the cells showed on one screen. Lois found her eyes drawn to the images: the Captain with his hands bound being escorted from his own building, Perry behind him almost in afterthought. As they passed under the camera, Jack looked up, straight at her.
"Doctor Patanjali will be kept on to assist you in the transition. We will allow him to stay on in his current capacity unless you have another recommendation."
"No. No, sir," she said, still watching Jack and Perry on the screen. "Will Agent Johnson also be staying on?"
"Negative. She's been compromised."
That got Lois's attention. "What?"
"When we brought in Harkness's daughter and grandson, Mrs. Carter told us Agent Johnson was the one to provide her with escape materials." He headed towards Jack's office. Lois followed. "When she has helped escort Harkness and Fletcher to the lorry, we will take her into custody as well."
"Sir, why were the Carters arrested? They have nothing to do with Torchwood." And why on Earth would anyone want to bring a child into custody? He didn't answer. "Sir?"
"Agent Johnson rightly guessed we will need to keep Harkness under tight control, given his unusual condition. The safety of his family will be a bargaining chip in gaining his cooperation."
Unease settled through her. Lois had undertaken this mission in order to bring Torchwood to justice. They believed themselves above the law and beyond the government. Using innocent civilians to leverage control against someone, no matter how unlawful their actions, was just as illegal as what Torchwood may have done.
"Sir," she said, putting on her most helpful underling persona. "I don't think that's a good idea. Instead, as you'll recall from my report, Captain Harkness has a relationship with Mr. Jones, who is also being taken into custody. Surely any cooperation you need from the Captain can be obtained by reminding him you have his partner."
Mr. Gloucester stepped into Jack's office, turning around and taking a long, deep breath. A quick smile touched his lips and was gone. Mission accomplished, Lois thought, and didn't know why.
"Your concerns are noted, Miss Habiba. However, we do need the Carters. Mr. Jones died evading capture an hour ago."
He closed the door with Lois outside.
***
Mr. Gloucester used the telephone on the Captain's desk to make the call, relishing the prospect of telling Harkness he'd done so. Would he be angry? Heartbroken? Or would he affect a flat, distant expression that would be delightful to break down? Gloucester couldn't wait to discover.
"You can tell the surveillance unit watching the Davies residence to stand down. We won't be needing their services."
He paused. Politeness had its purpose, and Rhiannon Davies would be seeing her brother's picture on the television soon. "Have one of them deliver our condolences to the family."
***
They'd been transported in the back of a lorry with no windows. Jack had heard a scuffle outside after the doors closed, but couldn't understand what had happened. He'd hoped it meant someone had come to rescue them, perhaps Ianto and Gwen arriving in the nick of time just as he'd envisioned when he'd sent them away. But the lorry's engine had started, and they'd driven about forty minutes by Jack's count, and now they were here.
These cells were fronted with steel doors, and a plastic-covered metal grille at the face plate. Jack watched the guards escort Gwen into the cell opposite. He caught a glimpse of Martha as the door swung open. If anyone else was trapped in there with them, he couldn't see.
There were no keyholes on this side of the door, no electronic lock to pick, nothing. Perry sat on one bunk, not looking at Jack, not looking at anything. Maybe he was praying. Jack wasn't asking.
"Gwen?"
A moment passed. Her fringe and her eyes appeared at the window opposite.
"Are you okay?" he asked her. "Did they hurt you?"
"No. Nothing bad."
"She's got bruises," Martha said from behind her. "Mild contusions. She could use an ice pack. Fancy getting us one?"
"I'll work on it," he said.
Gwen backed away from the door. "I'm fine. Bit proud to say the fellow who brought me in will need his testicles surgically repaired."
Jack winced. So did Perry. But Gwen didn't sound proud. Her voice kept catching in odd places, like she was telling jokes through a sucking chest wound. Martha would have said something, and would be treating Gwen right now if she was bad off. Nevertheless, alarm bells itched at his scalp, and he turned to his other worry.
"Did Ianto get away?"
Another strange pause. "No."
"Damn." The cells were built for two at a time. Would he be imprisoned next door? In another wing? A whole scenario spun out in front of Jack in the space of seconds: convicted and locked up in adjoining cells, the two of them would spend the next ten to fifteen years conducting their sex life via Morse code.
"Jack?"
"What?"
"I'm so sorry." He almost jumped to reassure her that getting captured wasn't her fault, that it was his, that he hadn't protected her as carefully as he should have. Then the sorrow in her words swept his own apology away unspoken. "They killed him. We were trying to run, so they wouldn't get the equipment in the van, and we split up, and they killed him."
From a long, long distance, she said again, "I'm so sorry." Gwen choked. He could picture tears welling in her pretty eyes.
Jack found that his knees weren't solid. He moved backward, landing roughly on his own bunk. Perry's head had jerked up, and he was watching Jack in dawning horror.
Clinically, Jack could observe what was going on in his own body. Presented with an overwhelming input, his nerves were firing in all directions, looking for bearing. Adrenalin and endorphins competed, flooding his body with a self-produced chemical overdose to deal with a threat the automatic systems knew must be deadly. His higher functions understood this was not Jack's own life ending, not again. He was merely staring at the end of everything he had stupidly allowed himself to hope for after years of holding back that last swell of emotion because it always, always, always ended in pain.
His hands were shaking, and he placed them on his knees, but that passed the trembling to the rest of his body. His vision settled to a small point on the opposite wall, painted an ugly sherbet green. Someone had been sitting there a moment ago. From a million miles away, Jack was aware of someone moving beside him, wrapping a threadbare grey blanket around his quaking shoulders.
He was fine. He was going to be fine. He would always be fine. Jack would lose everyone and everything that mattered to him, and he would be ... fine.
He turned to Perry. "We need to figure out how to get out of here. We need a plan, or we need someone on the outside." From some faraway planet, his own words were glacially steady, galactically calm.
Perry blinked at him. "We don't have anything to work with." Their captors had seized Jack's wrist strap when he was dead, as well as everyone's watches. For all Jack knew, their personal items were still back in Cardiff. They'd been lucky to keep their shoes.
"Figure something out. I won't let them hurt the rest of you, but I can't protect you in here." The words came out thinly, mocking him as he spoke. He couldn't protect anyone. He'd made that abundantly clear.
They hadn't even said goodbye this morning, and it was the least of what neither one had ever managed to say.
Jack tried to focus on the recent fights, give himself something to anchor to, but his memories instead picked out scenes from quiet mornings, the rare days they'd had a lie-in, waking with orange puddles of sunlight. He remembered sleep-mussed hair, and a distinct refusal of kisses until Jack had padded out of the warm nest of blankets into a cold bathroom to brush his teeth. Deep breaths moved into occasional snores as Ianto drifted back to sleep while Jack lay there and watched the rise and fall of individual hairs, tracing with his eyes the prickly unshaven morning beard. The utterly normal sounds of the building's other residents going about their days surrounded them: grandmothers with babies over for care, someone's Pekinese yapping for attention, cars outside. Their bedroom remained a safe zone where the sounds were not intrusions but reminders of the little, wonderful lives they protected with long hours and soul-crushing work. Just because both of them had seen their worlds crashing down around them, death wasn't the only thing. Despite all the worlds Jack had stood on, despite all the adventures he'd lived, late breakfasts filled with good coffee and burnt toast and terrible jokes, and time spent kissing or reading or arsing about online with someone's sock-covered feet in his lap were all adventures too.
Had been adventures.
He could have spent a lifetime of sleepy mornings, would have spent Ianto's lifetime with busy days interspersed with moments of perfection, and not been bored for a moment. One smile full of promise, one glance full of sin, and Jack would have been enamoured all over again, had been.
"I'll get you out of here," he said distantly. When their captors came, he'd give them what they asked, whatever they asked, in exchange for the others' lives. It was the only thing left that mattered.
***
The first Rift alert came through an hour after Perry and the Captain had been retrieved. "Deal with it," Mr. Gloucester said, barely glancing up from the computer. Mainframe was refusing to grant him access to view files.
Three of the UNIT soldiers had stayed on. More would arrive soon. Lois looked at Rupesh. "What now?"
He shrugged. "You've got me. Aren't you the one in charge?"
"I've never been in the field."
"Time to learn, then." He indicated the armoury. "We've got the SUV and the weapons. You know how to use the scanners." His tone was all nonchalance, but she read the fear on his face.
"All right, people," said Lois in what was not entirely an unconscious imitation of the Captain, "time to load up."
***
Mum had warned her about this sort of thing, meeting up with enigmatic men who told you crazy things and drove you to the cash point where you drained your account. Usually the lurid tales ended with some poor girl face down in a gutter, and Francine tutting about bad decisions, ignoring the loud sighs and rolling eyes from her daughters.
Tish wasn't sighing now. "Got it."
"Let's go." They'd hit a different station to drain Mickey's account, but his assets had already been frozen. Tish could only get two hundred pounds from this transaction. She had a copy of Martha's spare card -- "for emergencies only," Martha had said, and Tish had given her one in return -- but the machine took the card and wouldn't give it back, the same as Mickey's.
He'd acquired a mobile from someone's pocket, after they'd dropped theirs in his car and parked it. She phoned her mother as they walked, just two young people out together for a stroll in the brisk London air, nothing to see here. Her bare feet were freezing.
"It's me, Mum."
"Oh, thank God. Have you seen your sister?"
"No. The order was to get both of us, and all of Jack's people, too."
"Where are you? Wait, never mind. Get somewhere safe." You could have bent iron rods around Francine's voice. Tish wasn't the only one who still woke up with cold sweats over memories of being seized.
Tish looked at Mickey. They'd discussed it when they'd abandoned the car. "All right, Mum. I'm getting out of the city. Does that cousin of Dad's still live in Chelmsford?"
The light changed, and they crossed the street, Mickey keeping an eye out, Tish trying to control the trembling in her voice.
"Yes, I think so. Do you need the address?"
"That'd be helpful. Thanks."
She sent her love to Dad and Leo, and told Mum to take a quick holiday somewhere else, somewhere safe.
"Hardly. I haven't committed any crimes. I'm going to see who's holding your sister and make some noise about it. How dare they."
Tish smiled, picturing her mother taking her ire to Downing Street itself if need be. They wouldn't know what hit them. "Love you, Mum. I'll call when I can."
The next call was to her brother-in-law. Tom had spotty service at the best of times, and worse than that when he was halfway across the world. The call went to voicemail.
If this was about Lucy, Tom was in danger as well. Tish told him to go into hiding. Martha seemed to think he had a hero inside him somewhere, but for all that Tish liked the man, he was a bit of a wet blanket. "We'll handle it," she said, and rang off.
She closed the phone, and Mickey made a call of his own.
"Sarah Jane, it's Mickey Smith. Remember we met last summer?" He paused, and his mouth broke into a smile. "Yeah." Another pause. "Not so good. Someone's put out a call to bring in a lot of mutual friends. Companions. I don't think it's related to him, but I can't say for sure. You'd do good to lay low for the next couple weeks, go visit relatives in the country or something."
Tish tried not to eavesdrop. She didn't know the names of all Martha and Jack's weird friends. Mickey asked Sarah Jane to "have your excellently-surnamed computer send Donna on a surprise holiday somewhere."
When he ended the call, he dropped the mobile on a table outside a shi-shi little restaurant Tish had always meant to try. "There's a cybercafé not far from here," Tish said. "We'll find what we need there."
On their way, she stopped by a shop and bought herself shoes and them both large scarves, perfect to cover faces with on a blustery day. Mum would be happy to know she was covering up in the cold. Mum would be less happy to know Tish wasn't planning a trip to Chelmsford anytime soon and she'd be furious when she found out Tish was going to help Mickey steal a car.
Maybe some of Mum's stories did have a grain of truth in them.
***
On Lois's very first day working for Torchwood, a man named Dave O'Mara had died. He'd been on loan from the Home Office, just as Lois herself had been. She'd never had a chance to ask him if he was also working as a spy, if he had signed the Official Secrets Act that morning thinking he was headed off to a temp job, if he had a lover back home. Her first lesson, after where the coffeemaker was and why Gwen would be giving her the firearms lessons, was that Torchwood got people killed.
As the men under her temporary command took her temporary orders, and blasted a not-so-temporary hole in a shop in Butetown, she tried not to think about Dave. She sent two men in with a pincers manoeuvre against the tentacled beast terrorising the shoppers, and the rest of the team came in with their weapons.
Rupesh had already started spinning a cover story, but he wasn't experienced with this kind of fabrication. An escaped octopussy from the Bay didn't sound any better than what it really was.
They should have contained it, but they shot it instead, sending great splatters of alien calamari everywhere. Two civilians had been seriously injured by the rampage before their arrival; Lois saw Rupesh give them both a good dose of Retcon, calling it paracetamol, before treating their wounds.
No-one had died except the alien, bringing Lois's death count today to a healthy two.
"Pack up the large pieces," she told the closest UNIT man. They'd load the corpse into the SUV, take it back, and when they had time, they would scour the records to see what it had once been.
"Yes, ma'am." He turned to his fellows, who started picking up chunks of tentacle.
One of them said, "Can't wait to get back. I could murder a coffee right about now."
She watched them for a seemly ten more seconds before walking determinedly off as though to check the perimeter, but in reality looking for a secluded spot where she could vomit.
***
Death was peaceful. He remembered that Jack and Suzie and Owen talked about the darkness, the thing that moved in the darkness, but Ianto was reliving pleasant memories of his childhood. He knew not to hope for meeting people from his past, knew there was no Celestial Waiting Room where Lisa and his parents lingered for him, but he smiled anyway at the thought of seeing them one more time.
He smiled. He thought.
Dead people weren't supposed to do either.
Ianto felt the fog slip from his head, and a bright light beat upon his eyelids. He opened them slowly.
"Good morning, Eye Candy."
***
Chapter Five
Author: nancybrown
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Lois, Johnson, Rupesh, Martha, Mickey, Tish, Rhys, John, Alice, Steven, OCs, many cameos
Pairings: mostly canon
Rating: R
Warnings: AUTHOR CHOOSES NOT TO WARN (but will answer PMs for any content questions)
Spoilers: up through COE
Words: 60,000 (4,100 this part)
Betas: eldarwannabe and fide_et_spe both performed major heavy lifting on this story, and have my deepest thanks for their efforts
Summary: A secret movement within the government successfully placed Lois Habiba as a spy inside Torchwood, and the trap is ready to be sprung. Meanwhile, Jack has received worrisome news, leading Gwen and Ianto from one danger into another. Loves, loyalties, and everyone's lives are on the line as the force behind the conspiracy finally comes to light.
A/N: Final fic in a fake third series where Lois, Johnson, and Rupesh have joined the team. Can be read as a stand-alone but will make more sense in context of the other stories.
Master Post
Chapter Three
***
Chapter Four
***
Gwen refused to think about what she'd seen, pushing away from her the thought that her friend was dead. This was here, this was now, and she had the job in front of her to do. She punched the man she struggled with, felt a satisfying crunch when her fist impacted his jaw. He went limp. She wrenched the huge gun from his hands, and tried to remember how to disarm the bloody thing.
The part of her brain that had paid attention to the fireball, the part that knew what it meant, whispered she didn't have to, that the worst was done already, but Gwen needed to use her hands, needed to ignore the stink of burning fuel and the screams around her.
The gun was pulled from her hands.
Turning her head, she saw booted feet. They'd come back for her, surrounded her.
Poor Rhys, frightened with her last message to him, not knowing she'd die with her mind on him, loving him. She focused on an image of her sweet lug of a man, the way his face lit up with a grin at just the sight of her. He would always love her first, always love her only. She needed to be wanted that way. Of all the possibilities she'd been given in her life, and all the choices she might have made, it was the singularity of his devotion that had won, and won again every time her thoughts drifted to other paths.
"Love you," she breathed, and Gwen kicked off from the pavement, fists drawn up ready to take down as many of her killers with her as she could. Her first blow landed solidly, the second was blocked, and her left cheek exploded in agony. Knees and elbows came up, bashing into a neck, turning to strike out at an unprotected groin.
All at once, her body seized with electric shock, and it took all her focus not to wee herself. The taser blasted through every nerve, sending her to her knees. She received a kick in the ribs for her trouble.
They'd shoot her now. Rhys, don't be angry with me.
"Get her up," said one of the coppers who wasn't a copper. Gwen was dragged to her feet, and her hands were roughly bound behind her. From a great distance, she heard someone tell the crowd they'd captured one of the terrorists responsible for the Cardiff bombing last year, and kindly move the fuck along. Someone else was shouting at the bloke on the ground.
"Bring her. Tally up the counts for resisting arrest. I for one would be happy to see her locked up another ten years for this little display."
Gwen's eyes focused long enough on the man in charge to see his disgusted face.
"Load her up. Put out that fire!" The stench of it assaulted her now, burning petrol and worse. God alone knew what would happen when the weirder alien-derived equipment in the back burned.
It was burning. She turned her head to watch the immolation of the van as they shoved her towards a car. The van was burning, and her friend was dead.
A moan, part sorrow, part rage, slipped past her lips, unheard amidst the shouts and screams and the oncoming sirens.
***
They almost made it.
The plane had touched down safely. Alice and Steven collected their belongings and began to disembark, when she saw the uniformed officers waiting at the end of the gangway. Her heart leaped into her mouth.
Without making a fuss, she turned around. The staff, saying their goodbyes to the passengers, blocked her way. "Forgot my handbag," said Alice. They had to wait until more passengers moved past before they could make their way to the back of the plane. With a quick check to ensure the crew wasn't watching, Alice ducked into the tiny toilet stall with Steven, and locked the door.
It was tight, too tight, and they could barely breathe.
"Mum?" he whispered.
Everything is a weapon, her mother had always taught her. "Your dad and I will show you how to fire a gun, but you won't have a gun most of the time. You'll have to use what you do have. Your teeth, your elbows, your ears."
"My ears?" she'd giggled, because she'd been seven years old and just starting to learn: how to protect herself, why her daddy was never around.
"Be very quiet," Alice whispered to her son. "If we have to run, run as far away as you can. Don't wait for me. I'll find you."
She had a biro. Alice breathed in through her nose, telling herself she could stab a man in the face with it, could slam it into his eye, could kill him if she had to protect Steven. The plastic bit into her hand.
She heard voices at the other end of the aeroplane. They would come checking. If it was the crew, she'd claim they'd had an emergency. If it was someone there to take them into custody, she'd fight.
"They will try to kill you," Mum had said. "You don't give them an opening."
The door to the loo stall rattled. "Is someone in there?" asked a woman's voice.
Alice held her breath.
The door rattled again. She heard the sound of a key. The airline hostess would be able to open the lock. A moment later, the door folded open. Alice made eye contact with the woman, registered the security uniform, and ploughed into her. "Go!" she said as Steven sobbed, climbing over the two of them.
She had her pen, but she'd pictured killing a man, and she hesitated.
Alice heard the click of a gun. "Mrs. Carter, please disengage. Now." She looked up, and there were five more uniformed guards, two beside her, three more entering the plane.
She let go, mentally cursing her father and all his ancestors. Mum had taught her that, too.
***
Mr. Gloucester came with the team sent to transport Perry and the Captain to a more permanent holding facility. Lois led him down to the Hub proper, giving him the basic tour of the facility.
"Agent Johnson, please take the team to the cells so they can ready Captain Harkness and Mr. Fletcher for transport."
"This way," she said, turning without watching to see if they followed.
"I have forms ready for the custody transfer," said Lois. "They're waiting for you in the Captain's office."
"Good. Good. We'll be transferring troops to your command later today."
Lois startled. "Mine? Sir, my assignment is complete." She'd been looking forward to going home.
"Yes, and now you have a new one. Before UNIT can come in to take over Torchwood operations formally, your team will train them." Mr. Gloucester continued to look past her, gazing at the arches and old stonework that made up the Hub, eyes settling on the Rift manipulator. "For example, you will show me how to operate this machine." He walked over. "They use it to play with the Cardiff Rift, yes?"
She scurried after him. "No, not really. They monitor it from here." She'd been given a basic understanding of what the manipulator did, but not much more. "I think it's more a passive device than an active one."
"But Torchwood has in the past opened the Rift intentionally with it?"
She'd read the reports. "Yes."
"Training will begin this afternoon. You will show me. Find an operations manual if you must."
"Yes, sir." The CCTV in the cells showed on one screen. Lois found her eyes drawn to the images: the Captain with his hands bound being escorted from his own building, Perry behind him almost in afterthought. As they passed under the camera, Jack looked up, straight at her.
"Doctor Patanjali will be kept on to assist you in the transition. We will allow him to stay on in his current capacity unless you have another recommendation."
"No. No, sir," she said, still watching Jack and Perry on the screen. "Will Agent Johnson also be staying on?"
"Negative. She's been compromised."
That got Lois's attention. "What?"
"When we brought in Harkness's daughter and grandson, Mrs. Carter told us Agent Johnson was the one to provide her with escape materials." He headed towards Jack's office. Lois followed. "When she has helped escort Harkness and Fletcher to the lorry, we will take her into custody as well."
"Sir, why were the Carters arrested? They have nothing to do with Torchwood." And why on Earth would anyone want to bring a child into custody? He didn't answer. "Sir?"
"Agent Johnson rightly guessed we will need to keep Harkness under tight control, given his unusual condition. The safety of his family will be a bargaining chip in gaining his cooperation."
Unease settled through her. Lois had undertaken this mission in order to bring Torchwood to justice. They believed themselves above the law and beyond the government. Using innocent civilians to leverage control against someone, no matter how unlawful their actions, was just as illegal as what Torchwood may have done.
"Sir," she said, putting on her most helpful underling persona. "I don't think that's a good idea. Instead, as you'll recall from my report, Captain Harkness has a relationship with Mr. Jones, who is also being taken into custody. Surely any cooperation you need from the Captain can be obtained by reminding him you have his partner."
Mr. Gloucester stepped into Jack's office, turning around and taking a long, deep breath. A quick smile touched his lips and was gone. Mission accomplished, Lois thought, and didn't know why.
"Your concerns are noted, Miss Habiba. However, we do need the Carters. Mr. Jones died evading capture an hour ago."
He closed the door with Lois outside.
***
Mr. Gloucester used the telephone on the Captain's desk to make the call, relishing the prospect of telling Harkness he'd done so. Would he be angry? Heartbroken? Or would he affect a flat, distant expression that would be delightful to break down? Gloucester couldn't wait to discover.
"You can tell the surveillance unit watching the Davies residence to stand down. We won't be needing their services."
He paused. Politeness had its purpose, and Rhiannon Davies would be seeing her brother's picture on the television soon. "Have one of them deliver our condolences to the family."
***
They'd been transported in the back of a lorry with no windows. Jack had heard a scuffle outside after the doors closed, but couldn't understand what had happened. He'd hoped it meant someone had come to rescue them, perhaps Ianto and Gwen arriving in the nick of time just as he'd envisioned when he'd sent them away. But the lorry's engine had started, and they'd driven about forty minutes by Jack's count, and now they were here.
These cells were fronted with steel doors, and a plastic-covered metal grille at the face plate. Jack watched the guards escort Gwen into the cell opposite. He caught a glimpse of Martha as the door swung open. If anyone else was trapped in there with them, he couldn't see.
There were no keyholes on this side of the door, no electronic lock to pick, nothing. Perry sat on one bunk, not looking at Jack, not looking at anything. Maybe he was praying. Jack wasn't asking.
"Gwen?"
A moment passed. Her fringe and her eyes appeared at the window opposite.
"Are you okay?" he asked her. "Did they hurt you?"
"No. Nothing bad."
"She's got bruises," Martha said from behind her. "Mild contusions. She could use an ice pack. Fancy getting us one?"
"I'll work on it," he said.
Gwen backed away from the door. "I'm fine. Bit proud to say the fellow who brought me in will need his testicles surgically repaired."
Jack winced. So did Perry. But Gwen didn't sound proud. Her voice kept catching in odd places, like she was telling jokes through a sucking chest wound. Martha would have said something, and would be treating Gwen right now if she was bad off. Nevertheless, alarm bells itched at his scalp, and he turned to his other worry.
"Did Ianto get away?"
Another strange pause. "No."
"Damn." The cells were built for two at a time. Would he be imprisoned next door? In another wing? A whole scenario spun out in front of Jack in the space of seconds: convicted and locked up in adjoining cells, the two of them would spend the next ten to fifteen years conducting their sex life via Morse code.
"Jack?"
"What?"
"I'm so sorry." He almost jumped to reassure her that getting captured wasn't her fault, that it was his, that he hadn't protected her as carefully as he should have. Then the sorrow in her words swept his own apology away unspoken. "They killed him. We were trying to run, so they wouldn't get the equipment in the van, and we split up, and they killed him."
From a long, long distance, she said again, "I'm so sorry." Gwen choked. He could picture tears welling in her pretty eyes.
Jack found that his knees weren't solid. He moved backward, landing roughly on his own bunk. Perry's head had jerked up, and he was watching Jack in dawning horror.
Clinically, Jack could observe what was going on in his own body. Presented with an overwhelming input, his nerves were firing in all directions, looking for bearing. Adrenalin and endorphins competed, flooding his body with a self-produced chemical overdose to deal with a threat the automatic systems knew must be deadly. His higher functions understood this was not Jack's own life ending, not again. He was merely staring at the end of everything he had stupidly allowed himself to hope for after years of holding back that last swell of emotion because it always, always, always ended in pain.
His hands were shaking, and he placed them on his knees, but that passed the trembling to the rest of his body. His vision settled to a small point on the opposite wall, painted an ugly sherbet green. Someone had been sitting there a moment ago. From a million miles away, Jack was aware of someone moving beside him, wrapping a threadbare grey blanket around his quaking shoulders.
He was fine. He was going to be fine. He would always be fine. Jack would lose everyone and everything that mattered to him, and he would be ... fine.
He turned to Perry. "We need to figure out how to get out of here. We need a plan, or we need someone on the outside." From some faraway planet, his own words were glacially steady, galactically calm.
Perry blinked at him. "We don't have anything to work with." Their captors had seized Jack's wrist strap when he was dead, as well as everyone's watches. For all Jack knew, their personal items were still back in Cardiff. They'd been lucky to keep their shoes.
"Figure something out. I won't let them hurt the rest of you, but I can't protect you in here." The words came out thinly, mocking him as he spoke. He couldn't protect anyone. He'd made that abundantly clear.
They hadn't even said goodbye this morning, and it was the least of what neither one had ever managed to say.
Jack tried to focus on the recent fights, give himself something to anchor to, but his memories instead picked out scenes from quiet mornings, the rare days they'd had a lie-in, waking with orange puddles of sunlight. He remembered sleep-mussed hair, and a distinct refusal of kisses until Jack had padded out of the warm nest of blankets into a cold bathroom to brush his teeth. Deep breaths moved into occasional snores as Ianto drifted back to sleep while Jack lay there and watched the rise and fall of individual hairs, tracing with his eyes the prickly unshaven morning beard. The utterly normal sounds of the building's other residents going about their days surrounded them: grandmothers with babies over for care, someone's Pekinese yapping for attention, cars outside. Their bedroom remained a safe zone where the sounds were not intrusions but reminders of the little, wonderful lives they protected with long hours and soul-crushing work. Just because both of them had seen their worlds crashing down around them, death wasn't the only thing. Despite all the worlds Jack had stood on, despite all the adventures he'd lived, late breakfasts filled with good coffee and burnt toast and terrible jokes, and time spent kissing or reading or arsing about online with someone's sock-covered feet in his lap were all adventures too.
Had been adventures.
He could have spent a lifetime of sleepy mornings, would have spent Ianto's lifetime with busy days interspersed with moments of perfection, and not been bored for a moment. One smile full of promise, one glance full of sin, and Jack would have been enamoured all over again, had been.
"I'll get you out of here," he said distantly. When their captors came, he'd give them what they asked, whatever they asked, in exchange for the others' lives. It was the only thing left that mattered.
***
The first Rift alert came through an hour after Perry and the Captain had been retrieved. "Deal with it," Mr. Gloucester said, barely glancing up from the computer. Mainframe was refusing to grant him access to view files.
Three of the UNIT soldiers had stayed on. More would arrive soon. Lois looked at Rupesh. "What now?"
He shrugged. "You've got me. Aren't you the one in charge?"
"I've never been in the field."
"Time to learn, then." He indicated the armoury. "We've got the SUV and the weapons. You know how to use the scanners." His tone was all nonchalance, but she read the fear on his face.
"All right, people," said Lois in what was not entirely an unconscious imitation of the Captain, "time to load up."
***
Mum had warned her about this sort of thing, meeting up with enigmatic men who told you crazy things and drove you to the cash point where you drained your account. Usually the lurid tales ended with some poor girl face down in a gutter, and Francine tutting about bad decisions, ignoring the loud sighs and rolling eyes from her daughters.
Tish wasn't sighing now. "Got it."
"Let's go." They'd hit a different station to drain Mickey's account, but his assets had already been frozen. Tish could only get two hundred pounds from this transaction. She had a copy of Martha's spare card -- "for emergencies only," Martha had said, and Tish had given her one in return -- but the machine took the card and wouldn't give it back, the same as Mickey's.
He'd acquired a mobile from someone's pocket, after they'd dropped theirs in his car and parked it. She phoned her mother as they walked, just two young people out together for a stroll in the brisk London air, nothing to see here. Her bare feet were freezing.
"It's me, Mum."
"Oh, thank God. Have you seen your sister?"
"No. The order was to get both of us, and all of Jack's people, too."
"Where are you? Wait, never mind. Get somewhere safe." You could have bent iron rods around Francine's voice. Tish wasn't the only one who still woke up with cold sweats over memories of being seized.
Tish looked at Mickey. They'd discussed it when they'd abandoned the car. "All right, Mum. I'm getting out of the city. Does that cousin of Dad's still live in Chelmsford?"
The light changed, and they crossed the street, Mickey keeping an eye out, Tish trying to control the trembling in her voice.
"Yes, I think so. Do you need the address?"
"That'd be helpful. Thanks."
She sent her love to Dad and Leo, and told Mum to take a quick holiday somewhere else, somewhere safe.
"Hardly. I haven't committed any crimes. I'm going to see who's holding your sister and make some noise about it. How dare they."
Tish smiled, picturing her mother taking her ire to Downing Street itself if need be. They wouldn't know what hit them. "Love you, Mum. I'll call when I can."
The next call was to her brother-in-law. Tom had spotty service at the best of times, and worse than that when he was halfway across the world. The call went to voicemail.
If this was about Lucy, Tom was in danger as well. Tish told him to go into hiding. Martha seemed to think he had a hero inside him somewhere, but for all that Tish liked the man, he was a bit of a wet blanket. "We'll handle it," she said, and rang off.
She closed the phone, and Mickey made a call of his own.
"Sarah Jane, it's Mickey Smith. Remember we met last summer?" He paused, and his mouth broke into a smile. "Yeah." Another pause. "Not so good. Someone's put out a call to bring in a lot of mutual friends. Companions. I don't think it's related to him, but I can't say for sure. You'd do good to lay low for the next couple weeks, go visit relatives in the country or something."
Tish tried not to eavesdrop. She didn't know the names of all Martha and Jack's weird friends. Mickey asked Sarah Jane to "have your excellently-surnamed computer send Donna on a surprise holiday somewhere."
When he ended the call, he dropped the mobile on a table outside a shi-shi little restaurant Tish had always meant to try. "There's a cybercafé not far from here," Tish said. "We'll find what we need there."
On their way, she stopped by a shop and bought herself shoes and them both large scarves, perfect to cover faces with on a blustery day. Mum would be happy to know she was covering up in the cold. Mum would be less happy to know Tish wasn't planning a trip to Chelmsford anytime soon and she'd be furious when she found out Tish was going to help Mickey steal a car.
Maybe some of Mum's stories did have a grain of truth in them.
***
On Lois's very first day working for Torchwood, a man named Dave O'Mara had died. He'd been on loan from the Home Office, just as Lois herself had been. She'd never had a chance to ask him if he was also working as a spy, if he had signed the Official Secrets Act that morning thinking he was headed off to a temp job, if he had a lover back home. Her first lesson, after where the coffeemaker was and why Gwen would be giving her the firearms lessons, was that Torchwood got people killed.
As the men under her temporary command took her temporary orders, and blasted a not-so-temporary hole in a shop in Butetown, she tried not to think about Dave. She sent two men in with a pincers manoeuvre against the tentacled beast terrorising the shoppers, and the rest of the team came in with their weapons.
Rupesh had already started spinning a cover story, but he wasn't experienced with this kind of fabrication. An escaped octopussy from the Bay didn't sound any better than what it really was.
They should have contained it, but they shot it instead, sending great splatters of alien calamari everywhere. Two civilians had been seriously injured by the rampage before their arrival; Lois saw Rupesh give them both a good dose of Retcon, calling it paracetamol, before treating their wounds.
No-one had died except the alien, bringing Lois's death count today to a healthy two.
"Pack up the large pieces," she told the closest UNIT man. They'd load the corpse into the SUV, take it back, and when they had time, they would scour the records to see what it had once been.
"Yes, ma'am." He turned to his fellows, who started picking up chunks of tentacle.
One of them said, "Can't wait to get back. I could murder a coffee right about now."
She watched them for a seemly ten more seconds before walking determinedly off as though to check the perimeter, but in reality looking for a secluded spot where she could vomit.
***
Death was peaceful. He remembered that Jack and Suzie and Owen talked about the darkness, the thing that moved in the darkness, but Ianto was reliving pleasant memories of his childhood. He knew not to hope for meeting people from his past, knew there was no Celestial Waiting Room where Lisa and his parents lingered for him, but he smiled anyway at the thought of seeing them one more time.
He smiled. He thought.
Dead people weren't supposed to do either.
Ianto felt the fog slip from his head, and a bright light beat upon his eyelids. He opened them slowly.
"Good morning, Eye Candy."
***
Chapter Five