The Assassins Network 3
It wasn’t 21st Century Cardiff that was for sure. Anthony knew that he wasn’t well versed in Earth culture, especially this far back, but he couldn’t sense the crackling power which would surely come with the infamous Cardiff Rift.
“Ok, so where are we?” he asked, turning from the high rise buildings and crowded streets to where Nik was standing a few feet away from him. “Because somehow I don’t think we’re where we’re supposed to be.”
Nik had a shifty look in his emerald green eyes, and after a few quick glances around himself he shrugged his slender shoulders: “Looks like London.”
“London?” demanded Anthony, walking over to him and lowering his voice so that the people surrounding couldn’t hear their conversation. “Is that far from Cardiff?”
“Relatively speaking? No,” answered Nik, he gave a vague wave of his left arm. “Its kind of in that direction.”
That didn’t seem so bad, he knew that the vortex technology was supposed to be almost 100% accurate but that didn’t mean that the occasional glitch didn’t happen, after all teleportation between times and planets was still relatively new to the human race.
“But we’re in the right year aren’t we?” he asked.
Flicking open his wrist strap, Nik glanced down at the readings and then nodded his head: “Yeah 2007, we just got stuck in the wrong city.”
“And how did that happen?” demanded Anthony, placing his hands on his hips and glaring at his lover.
“Hmm,” murmured Nik, holding his wrist out in front of him and swinging around to face the opposite direction. “Well according to my readings, this is the last place on Earth that experienced a large surge of vortex energy. I think we just kind of got sucked into the aftershocks.”
“You don’t think it had anything to do with Sandy do you?” he asked.
“No,” answered Nik. “This was a couple of months ago, four at the most, if it had been something to do with the paradox we would have noticed the cascade effect by now.”
“Maybe we should check it out,” said Anthony, following Nik who had started walking down the footpath his eyes still focused on his wrist strap. “And do you think you should just be waving that about?”
Nik didn’t even seem to hear him, instead he was following whatever readings were being displayed for him on the manipulator. He was much shorter than Anthony, and more agile it seemed as he zipped in and out of the afternoon commuters so quickly that he nearly lost him several times. In fact he wasn’t sure that he had been following the right blonde haired midget until he almost crashed into his back because the other man had stopped dead in the middle of the street.
“Now that is impressive,” he breathed, and Anthony followed his gaze to look up at the enormous building in front of them.
It was obviously derelict, with many of its outer windows smashed or boarded up and the white concrete of its outside walls blackened in many places. The huge glass doors that must have once been its main entrance had been barricaded off, and it was impossible to ignore the slightly rusty marks which had stained the bricks of the steps … Anthony had been in enough wars to recognize blood when he saw it.
“What the fuck happened here?” he hissed.
“One hell of a fight by the looks of it,” answered Nik. “Whatever it was involved a high level of vortex energy and …” He drew the word out. “… what looks like dark energy.”
That was enough to jolt Anthony from his silent contemplation of the skyscraper in front of him, there was only one place in all of existence that contained dark energy.
“The Void?” he whispered. “How in the universe did they open the Void?”
“Well how about we find out?” Nik’s voice was full of childish excitement, the way it always did when he was faced with a piece of technology he didn’t understand. “Come on.”
---
“Ah ha.” Owen’s cry of triumph nearly made Ianto jump out of his skin, causing him to turn from where he had been cleaning black goo from the autopsy bays wall.
“And what’s got you all excited?” he demanded, dropping his cloth back into the bucket and placing his hands on his hips. It wasn’t that he didn’t want Owen to succeed in whatever experiment he was doing, it was just that the medic was such a complete pompous prat.
“Do you know what this is?” Owen swung around from his temporary lab setup and held up a small vial of pink tinged liquid.
“Not a clue.” He kept his voice bland, and made sure that he met the other mans gaze straight on.
He had a feeling that whatever Owen had developed it wasn’t going to bode well for them, especially him because the medic had a habit of requesting Ianto to perform all his clinical tests on. During the time that they had decided it was necessary to change the composition of the Weevil tranquilizer he had been constantly knocked out only to reawaken many times in the most compromising of positions.
“This my friend is level 9 retcon,” he said, waggling the vial in Ianto’s face. “I managed to synthesize it from the molecular structure Tosh pulled out of decapitated future guy.”
Reaching out Ianto snatched the vial from Owen’s hand, holding it behind his back when the other man tried to take it back.
“You heard what Jack said, Torchwood doesn’t use level 9 retcon,” he hissed, leaping up two of the stairs when Owen lunged at him.
“That’s only because we’ve never had it in the past.” Owen gripped him around the waist and hauled him back into the autopsy bay, surprising Ianto at how strong the much smaller man was. “Do you really think Jack’s going to care? This is all in the name of science.”
Pushing the vial into his trouser pocket, Ianto slapped Owen’s hands away from where they were beginning to drift southwards and then stepped back.
“You’re not getting it back until Jack’s been consulted,” said Ianto, glaring in response to Owen’s speculative stare.
He knew that Jack wasn’t the only one in the hub who wanted to get him into bed, Owen used snark to flirt and had groped Ianto in dark corners almost as many times as the Captain. Even Suzie had propositioned him a few times when he had first been employed, but he was smart enough not to give in to any of their desires. Well except maybe Jack, but even that hadn’t developed further than a few lustful kisses in the kitchenette the night before.
“Oh and who died and put you in charge?” demanded Owen, plunging his hand into Ianto’s trouser pocket to try and grab the vial.
“Nobody … yet,” growled Ianto, wrapping his fingers tightly around the other mans wrist and pressing against the bones until Owen winced but not before his fingertips had stroked the inside of his thigh and attempted to feel him up.
“Hey, is this a private party or can anyone join in?” Jack’s voice echoed down into the bay, and Ianto shoved Owen away roughly to straighten his waistcoat and shutter his expression into one of stoic amusement. “Okay what’s going on?”
The Captain began his slow descent into the bay, eyes glancing from one of them to the other, always the concerned team leader.
“Owen decided it would be a good idea to create this,” Ianto pulled the vial out of his pocket and handed it to Jack.
“This had better not be what I think it is,” growled Jack, holding the vial between his thumb and forefinger and holding it up to the light.
“Do you have any idea how important this is?” demanded Owen. “We can completely wipe ourselves out of peoples minds.”
“No.” Jack’s voice was harsh as he lowered his hand and glared at the medic. “Level 9 retcon doesn’t just wipe certain events or people, it completely wipes everything! There’s nothing left you don’t even remember your own name, I want it destroyed Owen.”
Owen’s face scrunched up and Ianto could sense a tantrum coming on, watching Jack and Owen together was like watching some dysfunctional father-son routine on one of those family reality shows.
“Jack we could use this,” argued Owen.
“I’m sure we could.” Jack handed the vial back to Ianto and folded his arms across his chest. “But we’re not going to.”
“Jack …” whined Owen, but was cut off when Jack took a step forward to tower over the medic in a intimidating manner.
“No,” hissed Jack. “I don’t want you to even think about making any more of it.” He spun around to face Ianto. “Destroy that vial.”
“Yes sir,” he answered, beginning to climb the stairs back into the hub but was stopped when he heard Owen mutter something that sounded like ‘teachers pet’.
“Oh Owen, you’re in enough trouble as it is,” answered Jack. “I would stop now if I was you.”
Deciding that Jack was perfectly capable of dealing with Owen on his own, Ianto walked into the secured archives and placed the vial in autoclave. He knew that the medic would kill him for melting it down in his favourite new toy, but right now he couldn’t care less. When Ianto had first ran from Torchwood One and started working for Torchwood Three he had complained about Jack’s atrocious recruitment and training procedures, in fact Captain Harkness didn’t have any set training regime. Not that he would ever tell the man, but Ianto was sure that this was the reason why Owen and Gwen walked all over Jack and thought they could get away with anything. And honestly to say he wasn’t getting his dick sucked by either of them it was really quite pathetic.
---
Glaring down at the bullet hole in her coat, Sandy took a hold of the leather and wiped the blood smears off the blade of her cutlass. At least this one had been a bit of a challenge, well he had managed to get a single shot off before she had brought him down with a far more primitive weapon. Once upon a time it had been a massive stroke to her ego when she had been able to destroy an adversary with such ease, now she just found it hugely disappointed.
“Stupid bastard,” she whispered, walking the three steps across the alley to where the body was laid out.
His blood was splattered across the walls of the warehouses and the filthy floor of the alley, his eyes were blank as they stared up at the sky and the shocked look on his face was almost comical. She knelt in a blood free patch on the concrete and hurriedly removed the mans vortex manipulator, stuffing it in her pocket before going through his coat. When her fingers hit a small metal canister she dragged it out.
“Oh no you fucking bastards,” she muttered, running her fingers lightly over the aerosol delivery section of the canister.
---
“I think I know what this is.” Nik pressed his hand against the frosted glass of the main doors, trying to make his eyes adjust to the darkness inside the building.
“Me to,” answered Anthony from further down the building where he was lightly tracing some black lettering on the glass with his fingers. “Its Torchwood.”
Nik furrowed his brow and tried to remember where he had heard that name before, probably during his days at the Academy, if it was anything important to do with Earths history then he would have learnt it in culture class.
“What’s that when its at home?” called Nik, pushing against the door and growling when it refused to budge.
“Not sure,” answered Anthony. “That’s just what it says on the window.”
“Well whoever these people are …”
“Were,” interrupted Anthony, eyes glancing at the blood stains on the pavement.
“… they’ve been in the Void,” continued Nik, pushing on the door with more force. “They’re powerful, and that could be bad for us.”
“Oh come off it Nik, I think its pretty obvious they’re not even here anymore.” Anthony looked up at the building. “And whatever drove them away did a fucking good job.”
That’s when a memory came back to Nik, one that had terrified the hell out of him at the time and made him wonder how anyone on the planet had survived.
“Daleks!” he exclaimed.
He watched as Anthony reacted instinctively, reaching for his gun and half drawing it out of its holster before he realized they weren’t under attack.
“What about the Daleks?” he demanded, stalking towards Nik with a pained expression on his face. “Apart from the fact they’ve been chasing my people across the universe for the past thousand years?”
“They fought here against the cyberman.” Nik grabbed his wrists and shook him. “The Daleks and Cybermen were fighting each other for Earth, yet somehow they were stopped and Torchwood are the only ones who know how.”
“The battle.” Anthony turned away with a thoughtful look on his handsome face. “That’s the ancient battle with the twenty-seven survivors? Fuck if they managed to survive a fight between the Daleks and Cybermen they maybe they’ll be able to give the Tigers a run for their money.”