Abstract Psychopaths by Nemo Baker (Chapter 3)
Title: Abstract Psychopaths
Summary: How do you fight a killer that’s only alive when you can’t see it? The answer: Don’t turn your back, don’t look away, and don’t blink.
Characters/Pairings: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper, The Doctor, Martha Jones
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Blink, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
James Wright (18, photographer, recently graduated) was the next to be reported missing. Last seen near a graveyard a couple of miles from Bute Park, Wright seemed to have vanished from the face of the Earth in a similar fashion to Donovan. And the graveyard happened to be the location of the first abnormal Rift spike.
Gwen, Jack, and Ianto drove out to the site with Tosh’s portable scanner. Ianto hoped that they would finally be able to make a connection after visiting the place. This morning, it had begun to feel as though they were running around in circles instead of solving a case.
The graveyard was small, and located in front of a wall of trees. It was obvious that the place was well kept. The grass was freshly mowed, and there were no wilting flowers or clumps of dirt around the stones. Strands of ivy wound their way through the iron fence surrounding the plot. The wind shook its leaves.
“Residual energy from the spike is still registering,” Ianto said as he walked through the entry gate. “But it’s fading.”
“Yeah, that’s what I expected,” Jack replied. “We’ll just go over the grounds, see if there’s any clues. Watch the scanner and see if anything pops up.”
Ianto nodded. He turned left while Jack and Gwen went right. There was no real need to split up, as there was hardly a lot of ground to cover, but he really didn’t want to hang about. There was a feeling in the air again, like he’d experienced back at the warehouse. A prickle at the base of his neck that told him something wasn’t quite right.
The readings remained steady as he walked among the stones. He glanced at the names and dates as he passed. At the end of one of the rows, he found who their victim had been visiting.
“He has a relative buried here,” he called out.
Someone (most likely James) had placed a yellow rose on Amelia Wright’s marker. A couple of the petals had come loose in the wind and blown over to the grave of an Eve Pritchard.
“Well, at least we know why he came,” Gwen replied.
“Yeah. I don’t see any evidence of what actually happened, though,” Jack said, approaching him. “You?”
“No.”
His phone beeped, and he handed the scanner to Jack while he pulled it from his pocket. “Tosh just messaged me. She found records of a James Wright in the eighteen hundreds. He was an early experimental photographer, but his greatest claim to fame was his treatise on the existence of time travel, which he published shortly before his death in eighteen-sixty.”
“Sounds like our guy.”
“It does.”
“Maybe we should get back to the Hub?” Gwen suggested. “I don’t think there’s anything left to see here. We can look over all of the evidence again and see what we have.”
Jack shrugged. “Guess so.”
They fell into step and briskly cleared the distance between them and the SUV. A light drizzle had started to fall, and the drops were startlingly cold on their exposed skin. Just as Ianto was about to reach the car, something caught his eye amongst the trees. He stopped in his tracks, eyes narrowing. It was half obscured by the trunk of an oak.
A pale, grey figure.
He blinked, and it was gone.
“Ianto? What is it?” He turned to see Jack looking at him in concern. He shook his head.
“Just a trick of the light, I think.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
He wasn’t.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They traveled back in near silence. Each of them was consumed by their own theories, he supposed. Grey clouds gradually coated the sky as they drove through the increasing rain, and Ianto found his energy fading with the sunlight. He stared out of the passenger window, and allowed his attention to drift. Whatever it was he’d seen back at the graveyard still bounced around in the back of his mind. It had looked almost familiar. But he was at a loss as to why.
He didn’t realized his eyes were drifting closed until the car jerked to a stop, and he opened them.
“We’re at my flat.”
“We are indeed,” Jack said.
“Why-”
“You were in the Hub for almost forty-eight hours straight. You should get some rest.”
“I did,” Ianto pointed out.
“Okay, more rest.”
“Just go home for a few hours,” Gwen encouraged from the backseat. “You look dead on your feet.”
“I’m sitting.”
“Ianto. You know what I mean.”
He looked at her sympathetic expression, and Jack’s determined one. He knew he couldn’t really offer a good argument against this, as he’d been falling asleep against the window. And the lingering worry on Jack’s brow told him that he wouldn’t be allowed to come in, no matter how alert he pretended to be.
“Alright.”
“We’ll let you know if we find anything new,” Jack said.
“Mm.”
He slid out of the car, and watched as Jack and Gwen drove away. He walked up the front steps, then unlocked his door. All the lights were out, which meant the power must have gone down in the storm. Other than that, the flat was exactly as he’d left it: immaculately clean and glaringly impersonal.
He dropped his keys onto the counter in the kitchen, then trudged down the hallway to his bedroom. He discovered he’d left the window open, and cursed as he stepped across the wet carpet to close it. The howling wind grew muted, and the damp curtains fell lifeless. Turning away with a sigh, he collapsed onto his bed.
He fell asleep before even taking off his shoes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A particularly loud clap of thunder woke him some hours later, and he realized the power had come back on. His alarm clock flashed, waiting for him to reset the time, and the ceiling light was glaringly bright to his tired eyes. He sat up, the last vestiges of a dream falling away. He couldn’t remember precisely what his subconscious had shown him, but the connection it had helped him to make still rang clearly through his mind.
The thing he’d seen in the graveyard had been familiar. It reminded him of the angel statue he’d seen in the warehouse earlier in the week. Although it seemed like quite the odd connection, the coinciding Rift spikes and disappearances told him that this shouldn’t be ignored. What if it was their culprit’s calling card? Maybe it could be traced back to its owner, and the team could put an end to what was becoming a wild goosechase.
Deciding a cup of coffee was in order, he pulled his laptop from the bedside table and made his way towards the kitchen. He looked out the living room window as he passed, and saw the rain had eased off. Clouds still rolled across the sky, and he could see the grass swaying with a powerful gale.
He set up the coffee pot, then turned to his computer. On a whim, he opened Google and typed ‘weeping angel statues’ into the search bar. He rolled his eyes, then eliminated anything relating to garden decor from the search results. After scrolling through a couple of pages, he came across an odd entry. A forum entitled ‘Easter Egg Investigators.’
He clicked on the link, and discovered that the ‘Easter Egg’ was in fact a mysterious DVD extra of a man having a one-sided conversation. There was no link to a video, or to a transcript of the conversation, located on the page. Just hundreds of comments speculating about who the man was, and who the message was meant for.
He was about to close the window when a post by ‘larry88’ caught his eye. The timestamp said it had been posted two months ago, and that the user had since left the group.
Just had one of the most terrifying experiences in my life. But I finally found out what the egg was about. I’m not gonna say anything more about it. Too dangerous. But I want to thank The Doctor for saving me, and my friend.
-larry88
The Doctor...
He remembered what Jack had said about his time away from Torchwood.
“I found my Doctor.”
Ianto wondered if he had just found him, too.
There was a list of seventeen DVD’s with the easter egg hidden on them. He scanned it, and found that he owned one of them.
---
After an increasingly frustrating hunt through the menu screen, a young, skinny-looking man with floppy brown hair appeared on his television. He was sporting a pinstripe and rectangular glasses. Ianto sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the image.
So. This was The Doctor.
“Yep, that’s me.”
Okay, that was weird. Ianto shook his head. There was no way the other man could hear his thoughts. He must always say that.
“Yes, I do.”
And that.
“Yup. And this.”
Fuck.
He should really call Jack. Find a copy of the transcript and bring it to him.
“Are you gonna read out the whole thing?”
Or just bring in the DVD-bloody hell.
Who was this guy?
“I’m a time traveler. Or, I was. I’m stuck, in 1969.”
Another person came into the shot.
“We’re stuck! All of time and space he promised me. Now I’ve got a job in a shop, I’ve got to support him!”
“Martha!” The Doctor reprimanded.
She looked sheepish. “Sorry,” and then was gone from view.
Ianto was pretty sure at this point that he’d gone mad.
“Quite possibly,” The Doctor confirmed.
There was a man on his television, reading his thoughts.
“‘Fraid so.”
Forty years before he thought them.
“Thirty-eight.”
“But how?” Ianto blurted out.
The Doctor seemed to consider his words. “People don’t understand time. It’s not what you think it is.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me what it is, then?”
“Complicated.”
“Yeah, trust me. I know.”
“Very complicated.”
“I live a complicated life. And I’m talking to my telly. Please indulge me.”
“People assume that time is a straight progression of cause to effect. But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a great big ball of wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… stuff.”
“Had that thought out, didn’t you?”
“It… got away from me, yeah.”
“Wow. It’s like you can actually hear me.”
“Well I can hear you.”
“Oh my god.”
“Well, not hear you exactly. But I know everything you’re going to say.”
“Oh yes. That makes much more sense.”
“Look to your left.”
He whipped his head around, but all he could see was his empty armchair.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve got a copy of the finished transcript. It’s on my autocue.”
“But there’s no transcript being written.”
“I told you, I’m a time traveler. I got it in the future.”
“What the hell. Wait… this message isn’t actually meant for me. Someone else wrote the transcript. In the future. And you got it somehow.
“Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“What matters is we can communicate. We’ve got big problems now. They’ve taken the blue box, haven’t they? The angels have the phone box?”
“Again, I don’t think this applies to me. But the angels… what are they?”
“Creatures from another world.”
“Brilliant,” Ianto sighed. “But, they’re just stone.”
“Only when you see them.”
“Explain.”
“The Lonely Assassins, they used to be called. No one quite knows where they came from but they're as old as the universe, or very nearly. And they have survived this long because they have the most perfect defense system ever evolved. They are quantum-locked. They don't exist when they're being observed. The moment they are seen by any other living creature, they freeze into rock. No choice, it's a fact of their biology. In the sight of any living thing they literally turn to stone, and you can’t kill a stone. 'Course, a stone can’t kill you either, but then you turn your head away. Then you blink. And oh yes it can.”
Ianto’s throat suddenly felt dry, and he swallowed nervously. He’d been inches away from one of them just a few days ago.
“That’s why they cover their eyes. They’re not weeping, they can’t risk looking at each other. Their greatest asset is their greatest curse. They can never be seen. Loneliest creatures in the universe. And I'm sorry, I'm very, very sorry. It’s up to you now.”
He really did seem regretful.
“What is?” Ianto said hoarsely.
“The blue box, that's my time machine. There's a world of time energy in there they could feast on forever, but the damage they could do could switch off the sun. You have got to send it back to me.”
“They don’t have your phone box, Doctor. They’re taking people. And messing with the Rift.”
What could they possibly… oh.
Maybe they were trying to feed off of the potential energy in the Rift.
“How do I stop them?”
“And... that's it I'm afraid. There's no more from you on the transcript, that's the last I've got. I don't know what stopped you talking, but I can guess. They're coming. The angels are coming for you, but listen; your life could depend on this. Don't blink, don't even blink. Blink, and you're dead. They're fast, faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink. Good Luck.”
The video ended. His mind reeled.
Now, it was time to call Jack.
He reached to his right to grab his phone from the coffee table, and his heart stopped.
There was a Weeping Angel staring at him through the living room window.
Beginning, Previous, Next
Summary: How do you fight a killer that’s only alive when you can’t see it? The answer: Don’t turn your back, don’t look away, and don’t blink.
Characters/Pairings: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Gwen Cooper, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper, The Doctor, Martha Jones
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Blink, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
James Wright (18, photographer, recently graduated) was the next to be reported missing. Last seen near a graveyard a couple of miles from Bute Park, Wright seemed to have vanished from the face of the Earth in a similar fashion to Donovan. And the graveyard happened to be the location of the first abnormal Rift spike.
Gwen, Jack, and Ianto drove out to the site with Tosh’s portable scanner. Ianto hoped that they would finally be able to make a connection after visiting the place. This morning, it had begun to feel as though they were running around in circles instead of solving a case.
The graveyard was small, and located in front of a wall of trees. It was obvious that the place was well kept. The grass was freshly mowed, and there were no wilting flowers or clumps of dirt around the stones. Strands of ivy wound their way through the iron fence surrounding the plot. The wind shook its leaves.
“Residual energy from the spike is still registering,” Ianto said as he walked through the entry gate. “But it’s fading.”
“Yeah, that’s what I expected,” Jack replied. “We’ll just go over the grounds, see if there’s any clues. Watch the scanner and see if anything pops up.”
Ianto nodded. He turned left while Jack and Gwen went right. There was no real need to split up, as there was hardly a lot of ground to cover, but he really didn’t want to hang about. There was a feeling in the air again, like he’d experienced back at the warehouse. A prickle at the base of his neck that told him something wasn’t quite right.
The readings remained steady as he walked among the stones. He glanced at the names and dates as he passed. At the end of one of the rows, he found who their victim had been visiting.
“He has a relative buried here,” he called out.
Someone (most likely James) had placed a yellow rose on Amelia Wright’s marker. A couple of the petals had come loose in the wind and blown over to the grave of an Eve Pritchard.
“Well, at least we know why he came,” Gwen replied.
“Yeah. I don’t see any evidence of what actually happened, though,” Jack said, approaching him. “You?”
“No.”
His phone beeped, and he handed the scanner to Jack while he pulled it from his pocket. “Tosh just messaged me. She found records of a James Wright in the eighteen hundreds. He was an early experimental photographer, but his greatest claim to fame was his treatise on the existence of time travel, which he published shortly before his death in eighteen-sixty.”
“Sounds like our guy.”
“It does.”
“Maybe we should get back to the Hub?” Gwen suggested. “I don’t think there’s anything left to see here. We can look over all of the evidence again and see what we have.”
Jack shrugged. “Guess so.”
They fell into step and briskly cleared the distance between them and the SUV. A light drizzle had started to fall, and the drops were startlingly cold on their exposed skin. Just as Ianto was about to reach the car, something caught his eye amongst the trees. He stopped in his tracks, eyes narrowing. It was half obscured by the trunk of an oak.
A pale, grey figure.
He blinked, and it was gone.
“Ianto? What is it?” He turned to see Jack looking at him in concern. He shook his head.
“Just a trick of the light, I think.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
He wasn’t.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They traveled back in near silence. Each of them was consumed by their own theories, he supposed. Grey clouds gradually coated the sky as they drove through the increasing rain, and Ianto found his energy fading with the sunlight. He stared out of the passenger window, and allowed his attention to drift. Whatever it was he’d seen back at the graveyard still bounced around in the back of his mind. It had looked almost familiar. But he was at a loss as to why.
He didn’t realized his eyes were drifting closed until the car jerked to a stop, and he opened them.
“We’re at my flat.”
“We are indeed,” Jack said.
“Why-”
“You were in the Hub for almost forty-eight hours straight. You should get some rest.”
“I did,” Ianto pointed out.
“Okay, more rest.”
“Just go home for a few hours,” Gwen encouraged from the backseat. “You look dead on your feet.”
“I’m sitting.”
“Ianto. You know what I mean.”
He looked at her sympathetic expression, and Jack’s determined one. He knew he couldn’t really offer a good argument against this, as he’d been falling asleep against the window. And the lingering worry on Jack’s brow told him that he wouldn’t be allowed to come in, no matter how alert he pretended to be.
“Alright.”
“We’ll let you know if we find anything new,” Jack said.
“Mm.”
He slid out of the car, and watched as Jack and Gwen drove away. He walked up the front steps, then unlocked his door. All the lights were out, which meant the power must have gone down in the storm. Other than that, the flat was exactly as he’d left it: immaculately clean and glaringly impersonal.
He dropped his keys onto the counter in the kitchen, then trudged down the hallway to his bedroom. He discovered he’d left the window open, and cursed as he stepped across the wet carpet to close it. The howling wind grew muted, and the damp curtains fell lifeless. Turning away with a sigh, he collapsed onto his bed.
He fell asleep before even taking off his shoes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A particularly loud clap of thunder woke him some hours later, and he realized the power had come back on. His alarm clock flashed, waiting for him to reset the time, and the ceiling light was glaringly bright to his tired eyes. He sat up, the last vestiges of a dream falling away. He couldn’t remember precisely what his subconscious had shown him, but the connection it had helped him to make still rang clearly through his mind.
The thing he’d seen in the graveyard had been familiar. It reminded him of the angel statue he’d seen in the warehouse earlier in the week. Although it seemed like quite the odd connection, the coinciding Rift spikes and disappearances told him that this shouldn’t be ignored. What if it was their culprit’s calling card? Maybe it could be traced back to its owner, and the team could put an end to what was becoming a wild goosechase.
Deciding a cup of coffee was in order, he pulled his laptop from the bedside table and made his way towards the kitchen. He looked out the living room window as he passed, and saw the rain had eased off. Clouds still rolled across the sky, and he could see the grass swaying with a powerful gale.
He set up the coffee pot, then turned to his computer. On a whim, he opened Google and typed ‘weeping angel statues’ into the search bar. He rolled his eyes, then eliminated anything relating to garden decor from the search results. After scrolling through a couple of pages, he came across an odd entry. A forum entitled ‘Easter Egg Investigators.’
He clicked on the link, and discovered that the ‘Easter Egg’ was in fact a mysterious DVD extra of a man having a one-sided conversation. There was no link to a video, or to a transcript of the conversation, located on the page. Just hundreds of comments speculating about who the man was, and who the message was meant for.
He was about to close the window when a post by ‘larry88’ caught his eye. The timestamp said it had been posted two months ago, and that the user had since left the group.
Just had one of the most terrifying experiences in my life. But I finally found out what the egg was about. I’m not gonna say anything more about it. Too dangerous. But I want to thank The Doctor for saving me, and my friend.
-larry88
The Doctor...
He remembered what Jack had said about his time away from Torchwood.
“I found my Doctor.”
Ianto wondered if he had just found him, too.
There was a list of seventeen DVD’s with the easter egg hidden on them. He scanned it, and found that he owned one of them.
---
After an increasingly frustrating hunt through the menu screen, a young, skinny-looking man with floppy brown hair appeared on his television. He was sporting a pinstripe and rectangular glasses. Ianto sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the image.
So. This was The Doctor.
“Yep, that’s me.”
Okay, that was weird. Ianto shook his head. There was no way the other man could hear his thoughts. He must always say that.
“Yes, I do.”
And that.
“Yup. And this.”
Fuck.
He should really call Jack. Find a copy of the transcript and bring it to him.
“Are you gonna read out the whole thing?”
Or just bring in the DVD-bloody hell.
Who was this guy?
“I’m a time traveler. Or, I was. I’m stuck, in 1969.”
Another person came into the shot.
“We’re stuck! All of time and space he promised me. Now I’ve got a job in a shop, I’ve got to support him!”
“Martha!” The Doctor reprimanded.
She looked sheepish. “Sorry,” and then was gone from view.
Ianto was pretty sure at this point that he’d gone mad.
“Quite possibly,” The Doctor confirmed.
There was a man on his television, reading his thoughts.
“‘Fraid so.”
Forty years before he thought them.
“Thirty-eight.”
“But how?” Ianto blurted out.
The Doctor seemed to consider his words. “People don’t understand time. It’s not what you think it is.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me what it is, then?”
“Complicated.”
“Yeah, trust me. I know.”
“Very complicated.”
“I live a complicated life. And I’m talking to my telly. Please indulge me.”
“People assume that time is a straight progression of cause to effect. But actually, from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a great big ball of wibbly-wobbly… timey-wimey… stuff.”
“Had that thought out, didn’t you?”
“It… got away from me, yeah.”
“Wow. It’s like you can actually hear me.”
“Well I can hear you.”
“Oh my god.”
“Well, not hear you exactly. But I know everything you’re going to say.”
“Oh yes. That makes much more sense.”
“Look to your left.”
He whipped his head around, but all he could see was his empty armchair.
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve got a copy of the finished transcript. It’s on my autocue.”
“But there’s no transcript being written.”
“I told you, I’m a time traveler. I got it in the future.”
“What the hell. Wait… this message isn’t actually meant for me. Someone else wrote the transcript. In the future. And you got it somehow.
“Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“What matters is we can communicate. We’ve got big problems now. They’ve taken the blue box, haven’t they? The angels have the phone box?”
“Again, I don’t think this applies to me. But the angels… what are they?”
“Creatures from another world.”
“Brilliant,” Ianto sighed. “But, they’re just stone.”
“Only when you see them.”
“Explain.”
“The Lonely Assassins, they used to be called. No one quite knows where they came from but they're as old as the universe, or very nearly. And they have survived this long because they have the most perfect defense system ever evolved. They are quantum-locked. They don't exist when they're being observed. The moment they are seen by any other living creature, they freeze into rock. No choice, it's a fact of their biology. In the sight of any living thing they literally turn to stone, and you can’t kill a stone. 'Course, a stone can’t kill you either, but then you turn your head away. Then you blink. And oh yes it can.”
Ianto’s throat suddenly felt dry, and he swallowed nervously. He’d been inches away from one of them just a few days ago.
“That’s why they cover their eyes. They’re not weeping, they can’t risk looking at each other. Their greatest asset is their greatest curse. They can never be seen. Loneliest creatures in the universe. And I'm sorry, I'm very, very sorry. It’s up to you now.”
He really did seem regretful.
“What is?” Ianto said hoarsely.
“The blue box, that's my time machine. There's a world of time energy in there they could feast on forever, but the damage they could do could switch off the sun. You have got to send it back to me.”
“They don’t have your phone box, Doctor. They’re taking people. And messing with the Rift.”
What could they possibly… oh.
Maybe they were trying to feed off of the potential energy in the Rift.
“How do I stop them?”
“And... that's it I'm afraid. There's no more from you on the transcript, that's the last I've got. I don't know what stopped you talking, but I can guess. They're coming. The angels are coming for you, but listen; your life could depend on this. Don't blink, don't even blink. Blink, and you're dead. They're fast, faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink. Good Luck.”
The video ended. His mind reeled.
Now, it was time to call Jack.
He reached to his right to grab his phone from the coffee table, and his heart stopped.
There was a Weeping Angel staring at him through the living room window.
Beginning, Previous, Next