VS3:06 -- "Gordian Knot", Part Three

[code_4268656637]

Gordian Knot -- Part Three

Standing in the tourist information centre, Ianto took a brief moment to straighten himself, tugging at his waistcoat, righting the shoulders of his jacket, adjusting his trousers. He was covered in dusty filth, and his knees were soaked with muck. Cardiff may have been the hostage of a mad Rift-escapee, but Ianto would be damned if he would allow his angles to sit out of place, especially outdoors.

He'd left JJ frantically thumbing through the hefty manual to the Hub's systems which, despite the introduction on his first day, he hadn't bothered with yet. Eventually, Ianto was almost positive he would manage to hook the other necessary systems into the lift's source of power.

The pillar lights of the Plass blinked off and on a few times, barely noticeable in the daylight.

Traffic was terrible, snarled by cars that had just turned to paperweights and then pile-ups in the middle of the roads. Somehow, Ianto made it through. A friendly casual chat with a clerk, a boat ride, and several wads of bills later, Ianto stepped onto the Flat Holm dock. He checked his watch. Only two hours had passed since his goodbye to JJ, not nearly as bad as he had feared. Trudging up the path from the beach, he aimed a smug smile at the lighthouse, and at the top of the first hill, consumed the sky in a breath. Flat Holm was its own small hell underground, but the view on top was bright green and blue, a beautiful landscape of erosion. He would bring as much of it as he could down with him.

Descending mossy stairs, stepping around bits of flaked, pebbled concrete, Ianto rotated his arms at his sides, stretching his neck, feeling larger than this place, unbothered by this place, what with the twin holsters pulling at his shoulders. Stun gun left, automatic pistol right. He didn't plan to need either, but one never knew. He tested his earpiece one more time, and pulled open the whining iron door to reception.

Geri-Lynn was on shift today. Ianto recited his clearance codes into the speaker box even as Miss Perpetually Friendly spoke right over him, like she usually did, 'Oh, come, dear, we've got three regulars and none but you's a Welsh bloke.' Her eyes saucered at the sight of him when she opened the inner door, reminding him that he had been so focused, he hadn't even bothered to check a mirror.

"The hell happened to you?" Geri-Lynn asked, jolly and plump, yet still smaller than her personality. The light from inside framed her starkly in the doorway, and she stepped to the side to allow Ianto to pass as soon as he ducked his head.

Instead of accepting the physical invitation, Ianto took a deep breath of the dank - none of the surface had come along with him, it never did - and forced a smile, hushing himself to a whisper which hung below the distant, constant wailing that had started as soon as Geri-Lynn appeared. "Any break-ins?" he asked, not in the mood to pause for politeness and, thankfully, because it was Geri-Lynn, not needing to. "Break-outs?"

"No," she replied, backing up further to invite Ianto to pass. "Has something gone wrong? New resident? I'll get the for-"

"Won't be necessary," Ianto said, sliding past her, feeling grimy and not just from the dirt. "Are you sure no one's left?"

Geri-Lynn smacked him in the arm, like an adopted family member he wished he didn't have but couldn't do without. "Come on, you know I'm good with my rounds. Nothing to do but wander around saying 'Hello' half the time. I do it." She coasted around to the second-reception desk, her steps swift and her shoulders flowing levelly across the room. "Every day." Rather than take the chair, she leaned back on the front of the desk. "More often than needed, most days. They're beautiful, this lot. They tell stories." She softened for her next line, pleading, guilting, Ianto could already tell it was coming. "You could stick around for the stories, some time." Her eyes flashed a moment. "Even the terrible ones have their own special brilliance."

God, Ianto hated it here. Flat Holm was a bomb shelter with the explosions on the inside. Blindingly brilliant, sure. Deafening, too. Even had its own shrapnel. "Is Derryl still practicing his knife-throwing?"

Geri-Lynn laughed, seeming thankful for the opportunity. "He's using up three decks a week, now. I had to pull a ten of clubs out of my collar just this morning."

"And Sioned?" Ianto asked. "Has she come out of her room at all?"

Geri-Lynn regarded Ianto with playful suspicion through the corners of her eyes, leaning back on her hands. "So many questions. You've never asked about her before."

To be honest, Ianto hadn't even noticed her before, but he wasn't in the mood for honesty today, either. "We've found her last name, and her family. I've come to update the records and confirm her identity. May I see her?" Or her room, more accurately.

The woman's face brightened with compassionate glee, and she leapt up, striding down the hall, waving Ianto after her. A few ringlets of gold-red hair, escaping her bun, bobbed at the back of her neck as she walked, and yet still, she was the sort who seemed to float along on a friendly cloud. It was likely all falsehood, her own miniature bomb shelter, set up to keep the brilliance she so adored at arm's length. Ianto was familiar with the fine crafting required to maintain psychological walls, and although he would never want to build any quite like Geri-Lynn's, he admired her handiwork.

Geri-Lynn punched a few keypad buttons and rattled at a door, throwing a warning glance over her shoulder. "She may throw a fit," she warned, "but it's worth a try, and you're so charming you might make a difference."

She pushed the door open, and Ianto nearly regretted that he would only find silence, perhaps an unscrewed window cage or broken glass. Ianto looked into a room empty but for a caged hanging television, a rumpled bed, and a blonde girl standing in a far corner. The blank mask Ianto had put on before entering the facility dissolved into blank shock.

Sioned Artisinat, in striped pyjamas as pale as her stringy hair, aimed wet, red-rimmed eyes at Ianto and informed him with eerily self-assured sanity, "I've lost my mind."

Gwen watched the red spots in the street, her forehead resting on the window. Jack was gone, the Rift had turned one of its victims into a space-and-time traveller, and some part of the process was murder on the electrical grid. Down below, UNIT swarmed, at the ready. Arms crossed, Gwen forced herself to keep the window closed, to keep from yelling down.

"You're going to bring them in, aren't you," Dr. Muli softly wondered, a surprise at Gwen's right.

Gwen looked over her shoulder, checking up on the other ladies. Siana napped in her chair, her arms crossed on the mattress with her head lying on them. Margaret had silently taken up her macramé again, fully focused on the twisting and knotting of her fingers. Gwen turned back to the swarm. "Might do," she said. "I don't..."

This was just too big. A space-and-time traveller. You couldn't put one of those in a cell, portable or otherwise. Siana broke all the rules. As did her other self, the one apparently with Jack. What, her future self, or her past self? How would they ever tell?

"What good do you think it will do," Dr. Muli said slowly, "to point an AK in a patient's face?"

Gwen whipped her gaze over - this was too big, which meant she didn't have room for a civilian's input. But Dr. Muli's expression was kind and concerned, and more than that, confident, her stance unthreatening. "There's more to UNIT than red hats and AK-47s," Gwen argued. "They..." She smiled at her silly self. "They follow orders. Perform complex tasks."

"Would they follow your orders?"

Gwen shook her head. No, if they called UNIT in, St. Jude's would be drowned in regulatory bureaucracy. Nothing would get done for hours. And when Jack got back, if he ever got back - you never really knew, with him - Gwen could look forward to a name-dropping, eye-popping struggle for dominance, between herself and Jack, between Erin and Jack, and where would Gwen stand in that mess? She just plain didn't feel up to it.

She tried her earpiece again, and this time, called for Ianto. No luck, of course. Dr. Muli put a reassuring hand on Gwen's elbow and said, "Take a few minutes. You'll think of something. You're Torchwood." Gwen smiled her thanks for the gesture - as hokey as it sounded, she loved the phrase - and then the comm crackled, whistled, and came to life.

The sun jumped up, and Jack returned to his now in a seated position, a few inches above the hospital roof. He bumped his tailbone and leaned back on the roof's rim wall, head falling back to dry his face in the sunlight. Sian sat down across from him, in front of him, and stared at him. "You're no fun anymore," she said disparagingly. "Fucking cry-baby."

Jack dismissed her with a hand-wave, raised that hand to his ear, and stopped. "Sian," he said seriously, "let me talk to them, okay?" The others would probably hear the hopelessness in his voice, and when that happened, the key was to infuse it with humour. "No grabby-grabby?"

Sian huffed, pouting, and glared over his shoulder. "No fun anymore," she mumbled.

Jack hit the button. He didn't have enough brains for this. He needed, needed their brains. "I'm back," he said, and immediately, Gwen and Ianto were talking over one another.

"Jack, she's still here, where have you-"

"Her name is Sioned, she's in Flat-"

"-been, she's using the energy to-"

"-Holm, has been for the last-"

"-transport herself, and she took me but-"

"-two years. She's standing right in-"

"-I'm okay. She's so lost. Tell me you-"

"-front of me, right now."

"-know how to help her."

"I should really upgrade to stereo," Jack said, untwisting his face in their pause. Sian covered her mouth, but her eyes were giggling at him.

"She's already a patient?" Gwen asked, an expert at talking and listening at the same time.

"I've come to Flat Holm," Ianto said more slowly than before, his syllables timed with his usual pacing steps. "To visit a patient named Sioned Artisinat, who looks exactly like our traveller. I've tried to talk to her, but..." Ianto stuttered on a breath. He'd always hated going there alone, and Jack smiled, because the man had volunteered to do it all on his own. "She says two things: 'I've lost my mind,' and 'Can you find my mind?' Repeating. She's a broken record. She seems to know what she means, but I don't."

"Has she touched you?" Jack didn't know how much time Sian would give him. He could question with his gut and sort it out later, if he had to.

"She hugged me," Ianto replied. "Geri-Lynn is impressed."

Jack let his head fall back again as they shared a quiet, knowing laugh. Geri-Lynn had a huge crush on Ianto. Ianto may not have been aware of that part, on second thought. "She didn't take you anywhere?"

"No."

"Jack, is the other one still with you?" Gwen was worried. It was sweet, but Jack didn't want to hear worried right now. He was carrying enough of that for both of them. Give or take the rest of Cardiff's population.

"Yeah." Jack eyed Sian, who eyed him back, tilting her head on her shoulders with an overabundance of attitude. "I think we're coming to an understanding." Sian stuck her tongue out at him. Jack returned it.

"So..." Ianto invited.

"Plan?" Gwen clarified, unnecessarily.

Sian remained mostly relaxed, so Jack closed his eyes, opting to take some mulling time. "Gimme a minute." What was it Sian liked to call him? Longstring Funnyface. Long string. What was a long string?

"UNIT. Why don't we correspond with UNIT? See if they've got anything for us? I'll call..."

Ianto cleared his throat quite loudly, and Gwen didn't bother finishing her sentence.

"Gwen. The one you're with, what has she told you?"

Gwen hmmed. "She has limited control of her situation," she said carefully. "Her language is abstract, but it sounds like she can... choose where she goes when she transports, but not the timing of it. She said... she said something like, 'A big hand pulls me whenever it wants, but I can swing and land where I want.' Does that make any sense to you? She said there's a rope."

Jack narrowed his eyes at Sian, who mirrored him. "Huh. Would you classify a rope as a kind of string?"

"Um, sure?"

"Ianto?"

"Sir?"

"Tell Sioned we've found her mind. See where it takes you." At mention of Sioned, Sian got to her feet, and her downward stare was menacing, disgruntled, snarling. "But don't touch!" Jack said to both Sian and Ianto, waving a pointless shielding arm. "That's not what I meant!"

"Sir," Ianto said, followed swiftly by a soft click.

"You. Are no. Fucking fun. Anymore," Sian hissed. "Pew pew pew!" She turned and ran - travelling the long way; that was interesting -and Jack followed her, his clothing cracking, dried and filthy.

"Gwen, what do you know about string theory?" Jack asked, wishing he hadn't sent Ianto off quite yet.

"I know... um. I know what it's called. Does that help?"

"It's a start." Jack huffed, pushing through the door to the stairs just as it closed. Sian's soft, quick steps spun, slapping down the coils of the stairway, a floor below. Jack kept up, thumping along. "Sian's on the move, by the way. I don't know where she's going, but-" he swung around a rail "-keep her away from your copy if you can, until we know what we're dealing with."

"Sounds a bit like a potential collapse of space-time, to me," Gwen sighed. Oh, great, she had to go and say the words, didn't she? "Once again. String theory, Jack, speak."

"I've been toying with my own interpretation," Jack said, then qualified, self-conscious, "which is totally okay, because everybody's doing it."

"Always." There it was, the smile-voice.

"So we've always figured the Rift is like a two-way hose, right? One end anchored here, other end wiggling around the universe, picking stuff up out there, dropping it here, vice versa." Thump-thump-thump went Jack's feet, and his coat should have been billowing, but it was too weighed down with Nasty.

"With you so far."

The earpiece clicked softly. Ianto was probably back, but he wouldn't interrupt until Jack was finished. The next door Jack came upon - twelfth floor - fell back into its frame. That girl was fast. Jack yanked on the handle and was through. "But, if it's a rift in space and time, it isn't wiggling. A wiggling thing needs time to wiggle in, but the Rift isn't in time, it's through time. It's eternal. So..."

Jack ran straight into a mental wall, stopping in place.

"I may be following," Gwen said, "but that doesn't mean I can take the lead. So, what?"

Intensive care. Sian had run right to the ICU. "So." Jack walked along quickly instead of running, slowed by an air of reverence he couldn't quite shake. "So pull back your viewpoint a dimension's worth, and you don't have a wiggly hose anymore, you have stationary branches growing out of Cardiff. Like a tree, like a living thing, like coral."

"Lights are going again," Gwen informed him, just as a few did the same over Jack's head. "Do you want me to help you look for her?"

"No, stay." Jack checked room after room, catching himself on one doorframe, launching to the next, a monkey swinging branch to branch. "Guard the door. And think of the branches as strings. Or ropes. Just... generally... long things." The next room Jack came upon was eerily quiet. No beeping of monitors, no machines that went ping, no whoosh of a ventilator, and the man in the bed looked, well, dead.

Jack checked his wriststrap - still working, Sian hadn't been able to touch it, not her flavour of juice - and sprinted to the man's side, then hooked in. Ping, went the machine. An aide met him at the doorway. He motioned her into the room with his head and asked her, "You see a blonde running through here?"

The aide shook her head, focusing almost entirely on her patient, and Jack continued to the next room. "So, say," he continued to Gwen, hooking another. "Say-"

"Sioned says she's split in two. Relevant?" Ianto's voice interrupted over the comms.

"Very," Jack said. "You and the excellent timing. Sioned is still in the Rift. Has been for years."

"I'm getting a headache," Gwen said.

"She's standing right here, Jack," Ianto countered, argumentative. "Right in front of me."

"Don't think of the Rift as a place." Jack attached the strap to a pallid teenage boy with two black eyes, fussing with controls to reach the next page on his display's list of 'Hub mode' attachments. He'd always found that amusing, 'Hub mode.' "Think of it as a process. Sioned is caught in a process. Probably stuck in the Y where two of the branches separate. She's being projected to the ends of them."

"And the energy part. It's on the tip of my mind, I'm telling you. I'm almost there." Gwen was chewing her lip, the pull of it marring her pronunciation. Probably chewing it red, big and pouty and pretty. Jack loved making her think. "Okay, I give up."

Aw, damn. "Rift energy," Jack said, opting for concision, because he needed time to concentrate on, y'know, saving all these people's lives, "is a waste product. It's what's left over from what the branches absorb across the universe." Like, for example, stars. "And Sioned led a couple of the branches all the way back to Cardiff. They've been doing what they always do, only now, they're bent back here."

Jack waited for a crack about the Rift crapping all over them, coding another patient onto his arm. Instead, Ianto asked him, "And the branches are timelines?"

"Kind of. Not exactly, but the effect is similar." Damn it, Sian was fast, too fast, and as cool and gadgety as his wriststrap was - Jack rounded a hallway corner - it didn't hold a limitless store of power. "She's all wound up with her projections. They're tangling around her original timeline - which also happens to be our timeline - tied around it, weaving in and out of it. And doing really, really bad things to it."

Gwen's mouth fell open, the pain in her lip distant. She had been pacing at Margaret's bedside for some time. Margaret, drugged up on mild painkillers and concentrating on her project, flipped strings in a flurry around her hands. "Like macramé?" Gwen asked. "Is that what you mean, Jack?"

"Uh." Jack sounded taken aback. "Yeah," he said. "Kind of exactly like that. Where'd that come from?"

"Oh, you know." Gwen smiled, and perhaps inspired by the softness new to Gwen's voice, Siana reached up from her chair and took Gwen's hand. "Same way you thought up the coral simile, I bet." Gwen gave Siana a squeeze and a wink, and this time the optimism wasn't manufactured.

"And I think I know what to do about it. How about you?"

Of course he did. And he was pausing to let Gwen figure out the answer, which was a relief, meant the situation was perhaps not so grave anymore. If Jack was playing tutor, they were surely coasting home.

"I don't like these colours," Margaret decided woefully, her first words in ages.

"Oh, I think it's nice," Gwen said.

"What's wrong with them, Gran?" Siana asked. "I think they're pretty." She lifted her decorated wrist to show it off. "I'd wear them."

"No, no," Margaret replied, without lifting her eyes, and held out her hand. "Scissors, please."

Siana rummaged around below the edge of the bed, pulled out an orange-handled pair, and handed it to Margaret. Margaret cut the knot off the starting end, took the two shorter strands of her project's wool, the base strings, around which the others wound, and yanked.

The entire piece fell apart.

Gwen's "No," was perfectly silent.

The trouble with being on the right side of the law was that it often involved chasing people. It wasn't like Jack had a moral objection to this, but it did tend to leave you in the fundamentally desperate position of playing the game by someone else's rules and on someone else's court. They were in the lead, and you were following along behind. Jack vastly preferred being on the other side of that equation, and right now, he was beginning to feel really fed up.

Through the double-doors ahead of him, through which Sian had just disappeared, Jack could see the lights in the hallway flickering. Jack looked up at the sign over the doors, which read: Operative Suite: No Access Without Authorisation.

Shit. Would they still be operating now? Jack thought maybe, but he wasn't sure. If they'd been in the middle of an hours-long procedure when all hell started breaking loose, there were probably some things that couldn't be interrupted. Except they were about to be. God, she was fast. And clever. What could they do?

He looked at his wriststrap - it was tapped out. The hallway went dark, and Jack heard piercing screams. Someone was probably dead on the table in there now, and there was nothing he could do about it. Then a flash of white moved past him. He spun round to follow and heard the door to the stairs slam. He raced after her, but even at his top speed, the door swung back and almost hit him in the face. "Gwen," he barked. "She's going down toward the eighth floor. What's there?"

There was a pause. Some muffled chatter. Then, "Dr. Muli says it's the SCBU."

"The what?"

"Special Care Baby Unit."

"Aw, hell." Intensive care for babies. On ventilators. Heart-lung machines. Jack felt his stomach begin to churn, as he sped after her. Because he was about to have to make some choices. And none of the options looked good. At all.

"Sioned." It seemed likely to Ianto that this was the real person, whoever that might be. This one, after all, was the one who'd been physically spit back through the Rift. And the one who didn't move. Who was clearly aware to some degree of her other two parts or selves. She knew something was missing, anyway, and that was, at the very least, a start. "We need your help."

She stopped dead-still at once. Looked at him, but didn't say anything, just stared, her head tilted to one side, her eyes seeming colder now, appraising.

"Just listen, all right? Please," he went on, trying to find the words that would work like a key. "You're in trouble. You know that, don't you? Of course you do. You were just trying to tell us that, weren't you? That you've been... fragmented. Right?"

Sioned didn't respond, but Ianto thought he could see comprehension written on her face. He hoped anyway. "Your other two selves are at St. Jude's right now."

"They'll be fixed then," Sioned said hoarsely, as if the new, unaccustomed words were jagged and sharp in her throat. Ianto wondered how long it'd been since she'd said anything else aside from her two phrases. "Out there. In hospital."

She waved upwards, indicating the whole wide world outside, from which she'd been locked away. He spared a thought for Jack and Gwen, and what they might be doing to 'fix' the situation. He had to work quickly. "Maybe. But maybe you can help yourself. Can you feel them? Connected to you?" If, as he suspected, the other two were lower hierarchical versions of herself, then perhaps Sioned could control them. If he could just make her understand.

She nodded.

"Can you bring them back?" Ianto asked as calmly as possible. "Just tug on the connecti-"

"No," she said. "No no no no!" Her voice got louder and louder with each iteration until she was almost shrieking, and Ianto stepped back.

"Okay, calm down," he said. Stupid, stupid, he castigated himself. If she could do that so easily, why would she have been trying to tell people ever since she came back? Trying to get them to find her missing pieces? To no avail, because they simply hadn't bothered to find out why she was saying the same thing over and over again. Just another crazy person being mental.

She was rocking back and forth with increasing agitation, and Ianto looked up at the lights, just starting to flicker. Shit. He stepped out of her room, and looked at Geri-Lynn, who'd been waiting for him outside. "What happens when you have an outage here?" he asked her abruptly.

"Nothing much, except the lights go out and the electronic doors disengage. But that's not a trouble. When we saw what was happening, the Captain fixed the outer door up so it bolts automatically when the power goes. Last thing we need is anyone making a run for it. Not that they would. Except it upsets them, the light going like that," she said cheerily, gesturing to indicate the other inmates. "Her especially," she added, nodding towards Sioned's door. "But we get things running again pretty quick, usually. All we've to do is switch on the generator, and then we can use the power to key open the bolt, and get our essentials running again."

Ianto tilted his head upwards to gaze consideringly at the lights, which now looked to be on their last legs. He absolutely could not get stuck in here. And if Sioned triggered an outage, however she was doing it - electro-magnetic pulse, maybe? - and then somehow triggered another one, when the generator was running, then they'd be well and truly fucked. And if he'd learned anything in his time at Torchwood, it was to expect the worst at all possible times.

"Geri-Lynn," he said, "I need you to do me a favour."

Jack followed the trail of power outages and death down the hallway, trying to sort through his available options. He could shoot Sian. That might get rid of one problem. Or would it? Even when he cornered Sian, which he would, damn it, he could all too easily picture her vanishing and his bullet burying itself harmlessly in the wall. He could do it with his hands, but risked getting stranded wherever she popped out. And even if he didn't finish her off, after he tried it, he didn't think she'd exactly be inclined to bring him back.

All the parts were tied to each other, though. Maybe it didn't matter where he snipped, the whole knot might unravel.

"Gwen," he said softly into the comm. Surely she'd figured out the answer by now. "Is Siana there with you?"

"Yes", came the answer, short and clipped. She knew, all right.

"She trusts you," Jack said. "I think it's worth a shot. She might be less jumpy than the copy up here."

"I'm not doing it," Gwen snapped.

"Gwen," he said firmly. "There are a whole lot of parents up here who'll be devastated when their kids all drop dead. Think what you're saying."

"I won't. Have you tried talking to her? Maybe she'll listen to you."

"She's insane. Crazy. Lost the plot. We have to think of the numbers here. She's broken. We can't fix her. We can save these kids, though. She's already killed several people. When does it stop?"

"It's not her fault," Gwen said through her teeth. He could hear the frustrated agony in her voice and he crushed down his sympathy.

"No, it's not. It's not gonna be anyone's fault but ours, if those babies die. Want that on your conscience?"

"I won't do it, Jack. There has to be another way."

Gwen clicked off the connection, and looked helplessly around the room, searching for inspiration.

Dr. Muli looked at her levelly. "There's a problem in SCBU?" She pronounced it 'Skiboo', and one part of Gwen's mind noted how calm and authoritative she sounded. Not rattled at all.

She nodded. "Yeah. Looks like that's where it's headed."

"We're running out of time," the doctor remarked. "Where can I be of most use? Here? I can keep watch, if you want. Or up there? They'll need help to keep those babies alive without electricity. And even then..."

Gwen looked at Siana, who was still clutching her Gran's hand. "Babies. Brilliant!"

"Oh?" Dr. Muli said, looking confused.

Gwen ignored her. "Siana," she said, as she approached, "do you remember where you took me before?"

Siana nodded.

"D'you know, there are other babies in this hospital? Not Maternity, where we were before, but someplace else."

"In cages," Siana said. "Rolled up like pigs in a blanket, sickly foetal pigs. Like in biology. With tubes and things. I liked biology. I think. Before. It's all fuzzy. Like Gran's tatting, all crumbly round the edges." Her voice trailed off.

"Right, let's try to stay on track here," Gwen said. "Do you ever visit them? Those babies?"

"No," she said, her voice lilting up as if it were a question. Then she keeled over, clutching at her stomach.

"What is it?" Gwen jumped up, looking around for an attacker. "What's wrong?"

Siana moaned. "I'm getting squashed. Inside. It's pulling me." She leaned over and was promptly sick all over the floor. As Gwen tried to approach her, she skittered back, retching and moaning, until she was against the wall, almost as if she were going to climb up it like a spider. "I have to go!"

Gwen leapt forward and caught at the bottom of her shirt.

POP.

They materialised in a hallway. Siana collapsed against the wall, fingers scrabbling into it, as if looking for something to hang on to. Gwen's eyes automatically glanced up to the sign and saw the eight written there.

"Jack," she hissed into the comm. "We're on your floor."

"Shit!"

"Where is the other one?"

"I'm still following. We're not at the neonatal unit yet, but we will be soon, and she's taking everything out along the way. Gwen, we have to keep these two apart, and you have to end her before they come together."

"Why? She says she's being pulled."

"Look, it's like plate tectonics. The Rift went through her, and broke her into bits. This is what happens when rifting turns into spreading. She's like a triple junction, a San Andreas Fault in space and time. That's why there are three of them. If we slam the parts together, they'll join, but we don't want to see the resulting earthquake, you get me?"

"No, this is good!" Gwen exclaimed hurriedly. "Listen to me, Jack."

"Gwen, would you, for once, do what I tell you without a song and dance?"

"You're not listening. You said they'd join if they got together!"

"Yeah, so?"

"So? Siana doesn't want to hurt anyone. She told me so. If they're together, she can control it. Stop the quakes. She's a person, Jack. A continental plate has no volition. It can't stop itself. She can."

"Gwen," Jack hissed, and she could hear his patience wearing dangerously thin, "who says Siana'd be the one in control. Maybe it'd be Sian, huh? And then we'd have no way of stopping her, like you do right now!"

Siana was moving along the wall now, at a quicker and quicker speed. Gwen picked up the pace as she followed. "I won't do it," she said firmly. "And I'm not going to let you. We're supposed to save her. Not kill her. Think of something else."

There was a pause as Jack digested this. Then he said, "Triple junction. There's a third."

As Ianto came up the stairs, out of the underground facility, he pulled Sioned along behind him. She followed, stumbling a little, and panting. She probably hadn't moved so fast in a long time, he reminded himself.

"I'm sorry," he said, still pulling her along. "It's just, we need to move quickly. You don't seem in control of this thing that you do, and we don't want to get trapped down there." He swallowed, remembering that she was, well, always trapped down there, and wanted to take it back. But, he decided, that would only be confusing.

They ran down the side of the hill towards the water. Geri-Lynn had said that there was a little motorised sailboat that they sometimes used docked there. If he got Sioned out far enough, and cut the motor, she'd be about as safe as one could be. Nothing within a significant radius to shut down. Then he could think what to do next.

He bundled her into the boat somehow. She wasn't rocking now, nor agitated, but she seemed distracted, looking up into the wide expanse of sky. Ianto was suddenly pierced by an agonising stab of pity.

"It'll be all right," he tried to say reassuringly. Sioned just stared at him, the blank look in her eyes seeming like an accusation. Who was he kidding? It was hardly ever all right. He started the motor, and the boat began chugging away from the dock. Sioned twisted her head to look back at the island, and then up again at the sky.

There was a crackle in his ear. "Jack?" he said.

"No, it's JJ."

"What is it?"

"I got the computer working again. One of them, anyway."

"That's fantastic," Ianto said, and meant it.

He heard a strange grinding noise, and then a little intake of breath. "Hang on." A few more odd noises, and then, "I'm back. 'Mostly working' might be a better way of putting it. Who wrote this bloody manual anyway?"

"It was a group effort."

"There was only one tiny little explosion," JJ said gleefully. "Nothing important, I don't think. Although… you didn't really need your 15 gauge Allen key did you? Because it's sort of, um, melted. Ow."

"Those don't grow on trees, you know," Ianto admonished him.

"I can't believe all this alien tech uses Allen keys anyway."

"Where do you think we got them?"

"Um… yeah, so anyway, I got this one up and running. And it seems to be beeping, kind of energetically. Is that important?"

"What kind of beeping?" Ianto asked, looking at Sioned who still seemed to be fascinated by the open sky, water and wind.

"Sort of... you know... there's a graph on the screen, and it's flashing over a three-d grid, and it's kind of pinkish?"

Pink: Tosh's answer to the combination of mauve and red. Human emergency, alien emergency. They'd all laughed. "Oh, that. It's our Rift spike prediction program. There's a map underneath it, yeah? On the x-y axis?"

"Yeah."

"Are the graph lines below zero on the z axis? Or above?"

"Below."

"Okay, it's a negative. That's a Rift spike that takes things away, rather than leaving them here. Where is it? We'll want to clear it of people if we can."

"It's... Looks like it's on the water. Should be all right, then. Somewhere near Steep Holm, on the Weston Super Mare side."

"Of course it is," Ianto said bitterly. "I'll steer well clear of that, then."

"Where are you? Did you find out anything?"

"I found her," Ianto said.

"So, not at the hospital then?" JJ said. "That's good. I was afraid-"

"At the hospital, too, I'm afraid."

"Is that even poss-"

Ianto cut him off, "Yes."

"Oh. You're going to help her, right?"

Looking at Sioned, who was rubbing at her face now, as if trying to dig for answers inside it, Ianto shook his head. "We'll have to see, JJ."

"What does that even mean-"

JJ was cut off by Jack's voice coming in. "Ianto? You there?"

"I'm here, Jack."

"Have you got her in your sights?"

"We're in a boat. I thought if she went off again, it would be saf-"

"Great," Jack interrupted. "She doesn't jump around, does she?"

"Not so far as I can tell."

"Shoot her," Jack ordered.

"WHAT?" JJ shouted in his ear, just as Gwen's voice came through, low and commanding, "Don't you dare, Ianto. Don't you dare."

"This isn't a committee meeting," Jack snapped. "Do what I tell you, Ianto. She's almost in a room full of newborns on vents, and she's about to pull the plug."

"If they join together, Ianto, the two parts," Gwen said earnestly, "maybe Siana can stop all this. Look at Sioned, does she seem evil to you? Siana doesn't."

"No," Ianto said. "She doesn't. She tried to tell us. Just... no one was listening."

Sioned looked at him, that same strange far-away look. "No one was listening," she repeated dreamily.

"That's two thirds," Gwen said rapidly. "Surely they can control this other aberration. That's probably not even the real her."

"What do you mean, 'the real her'?" Jack sputtered. "You think Sian's a figment of our imagination? Ianto, she took me into the future. I saw it. I saw what happens. It's bad. In the whole city, no sound but death. All the life choked out of it. Everything crashing to a halt. Pileups. Aeroplanes falling out of the sky like stones. And then nothing. Silence. Nothing but Sian laughing. And I can't shoot her because she's just gonna vanish before my bullet makes contact. Can we let this happen? CAN WE?"

Ianto cut the motor, kept one hand on the wheel. He could feel the weight of his gun, hanging heavy from his shoulder holster. He should reach for it. Jack had told him to, and Gwen's wishes, his own and JJ's were just that, they were wishes. They couldn't know for certain what would happen, and they should cut their losses. She was a killer. Purposeful, cold-blooded, and completely mental. It was like putting down a rabid dog. No one's fault, but it needed to be done. What kind of life could she have, anyway? In Flat Holm? Locked up, if they could even figure out how to do that? How did you imprison someone who could teleport?

"It can't be inevitable," Gwen argued, "because if it were, it'd happen anyway, and nothing we do will work." He could hear her murmuring something in the background, probably trying to say something to Siana. Ianto felt ill.

Then JJ said hesitantly, "Guys, you can't be serious. We can't just shoot her… it's not… we're supposed to help people."

"JJ, shut up," Jack ordered. "Ianto, are you going to do what I tell you or-"

"Ianto, you can't, you-"

Ianto reached up to his ear and thumbed down the volume until he could no longer distinguish what they were saying, just the ups and downs of their voices. It felt odd, the sound like faint, white noise, only uneven and disjointed. His whole life, his whole world, Jack, Gwen, Torchwood, even JJ, everything that mattered to him, reduced to a dull background roar. Except not really. They were a part of him, those voices. It wasn't like he needed to hear them to know what they would say, who they were. They lived in his head. We can't play the numbers game, said his internal Gwen. We don't kill one person to save thousands. What would that make of us? The ends don't justify the means. And then there was Jack: One life, against a city. Wouldn't you choose to give yours? I would. We make the hard choices. That's who we are. There was no way to shut them out, even if he'd wanted to. Which he didn't. He looked at Sioned.

"Look," he said. "This is the situation. You've trifurcated. There're two of you right now, at St. Jude's. One is holding the hospital hostage. You can feel her, right? She's killed already. She's going to kill again. Another one was with your Gran. And then there's you, right here in this boat with me. You're all tied together, the three of you, and we don't know what to do."

Sioned stared off into the clouds. "Why don't you kill her with your big guns?" she asked, without expression.

"She's too quick," Ianto admitted. "And besides, we think that might kill you, too. You're linked, you see. What should we do? We can't decide for you. You have to tell us."

She didn't say anything.

"What should we do, Sioned?" he tried again. "If we let your two parts join, which will be stronger? The one who's angry and upset and beyond help? The murderer? Or the one who's scared and wants to stay with her Gran? Which one will we get?" His voice got more and more urgent. He wanted to take her by her nonresponsive shoulders and shake the answer out of her. "I don't want to shoot you, but I will. You have to tell me."

"I thought you were supposed to help people," she spat at him. "That's what they all say. HELP PEOPLE."

Ianto took a deep breath. "Yes. We are. Unfortunately, some of the time that means shooting." Loads of times, he thought bitterly.

"Doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense. Doesn't make sense."

He shook his head. "You have to tell me what will happen. We don't have much time." He could hear the voices getting louder in his ear, even muted as they were. Clearly things were getting to a boiling point. "You can't leave it to Jack or Gwen or even me. Because they're you," he said to Sioned. "They're both you. Only you know the answer. You have to know what they're going to do. You have to pick one. We can't just guess. I don't think you're evil. Not deep down. Not really. Please, you have to tell me. Which one's the real you?"

"Why did you turn around?" she asked, irrelevantly.

"What?"

"WHY DID YOU TURN AROUND?" she yelled, stamping on the floor of the boat. "WHY?"

"There was a Rift spike."

Sioned shook her head furiously, as if she were trying to dislodge something. Right, she probably didn't even know what the Rift was. "The thing that took you. That made you like this. There was a bright flash, right? And then you were someplace else? Until you came back here? That thing. Another one of those. We didn't want to get caught up in it."

A shudder ran through her body, and Ianto realised he didn't even know where the Rift had taken her when she was gone. Was it the journey there that had fractured her? Or the journey back? What horrors had she seen? He'd probably never know. Then all of a sudden, he felt a blinding pain in his shin, as his legs swept out from under him, and he hit the deck hard. She'd kicked him somehow, and she was a great deal stronger than she looked. He struggled to lift his head, pain radiating through him, and he realised that the motor was roaring again and that she'd grabbed the wheel of the boat and was turning it around.

"What are you doing?" he gasped.

She didn't look at him, but accelerated. He fumbled for his shoulder holster, trying to get his gun. She tossed her head back as if she was going to swallow the sky. Then she turned to him, and gave him a strange twisted smile with her chapped, bitten lips. She cut the motor with one hand, and used the other to lever her way up to the side of the boat. He reached out for her ankle, mindlessly, but it was much too far, and he couldn't reach.

"Stop," he panted. "Stop."

"My parts. My decision," she shouted down to him. Another shudder shook her thin frame, as she climbed up the side of the boat. "I can feel it," she called, and her voice cracked with fear. "I'm broken now. Broken things break easier. All my parts into smaller and smaller parts, 'til there's nothing left."

"God," Ianto cried, "just stop! Don't-"

"How long will it take? To dissolve? All my parts?"

"I don't know," Ianto said raggedly. The salt spray was hitting them, as the boat bobbed up and down, and he could taste it on his tongue like tears. He tried to struggle to his feet, but the boat was rocking too hard. "You don't have to. I can-"

"No. You said it was up to me. And," she said, "you know, they're both still me."

She reached up on tiptoes, and the moment was caught there in Ianto's mind, as if out of time, that strangely indomitable figure in pyjamas, thin as a scarecrow, hair waving in the wind, poised for that one endless second on the side of the boat. Then her arms came up over her head, her back arched, as she made a swan dive into the air, more forward then down, as if she was going to take off and fly.

She never hit the water. The air sparkled golden around her, like a flash of heat lighting, and she was gone.

Ianto's forehead came to rest on the deck with a painful thunk. He fumbled for his ear-bud, turned the volume back up. "It's over," he said. "Are they gone?"

"Just in time," Jack assured him, his voice warm with approval. "You did good."

"It wasn't me. She decided. Leapt into the Rift. Again. I couldn't stop her."

"It was her choice, then," Gwen said sadly, her voice breaking. "Was she afraid?"

Ianto lifted his head. Her voice, terrified, echoed in his mind. Broken things break easier. Till there's nothing left. How long will it take? "No," he said. "She was gallant." He heard Gwen let out a breath of relief. "Look, I'm a bit hurt, and floating in the Bristol Channel here. In a very tiny boat. Could you send someone to collect me?"

"Yes," JJ said, sounding relieved at something he felt he could handle. "We'll do that straight away."

Jack looked over the ward of babies in their little plastic cages, beyond the glass wall. Their monitors still beeped. She'd been right there, and then she'd dissolved like something being flushed down a toilet. Pulled into a single point and then she'd vanished like thread through a needle shaped wormhole. He felt as if his insides had somehow travelled with her, and been squeezed into some new configuration.

There was a doctor bustling around in the room, with the babies. She'd been trying to set up workarounds for the electrical stuff, turning off what could be turned off, while he and Gwen fought outside. Might've saved a few, if it came to that.

He hated this, running headfirst into the wall of what he was willing to do. For the greater good, sure. It was like looking through a glass wall that separated him from all the people around him, who weren't willing to write off the one for the sake of the many. Yet here he was, as ever, on the outside, looking in. It was the way it was, and there wasn't anything he could do to change it. But it hurt. His stomach was roiling, and for a second, he actually thought he might vomit. Keep it together, he told himself, wondering why this one was hitting him so terribly, viscerally hard.

He reached down and patted Gwen's shoulder. She'd slumped to the floor, where minutes ago, she'd been standing between him and Siana. She placed her hand on top of his. Forgiveness. Which he probably didn't deserve, but was going to take anyway. And then she clambered to her feet, knocked on the glass. The doctor came out and Gwen thanked her. Dr. Muli, right. He filed that information away carefully. She could be useful. It wasn't the time, but later. Since there was going to be a later, which earlier, he hadn't been sure of. But he didn't want to talk to her now, not with his stomach churning like it was. Still, there were conversations that couldn't be put off.

"Do you want me to talk to her-" No, he didn't want to erase her, as if she'd never been a person. "I mean, Sioned's grandmother?" he asked Gwen, who shook her head.

He followed her slowly down the stairs anyway, back to room 742. He stood outside the door, looking through the glass while Gwen told her the news as gently as possible, watched the tears slide down her crumpled-paper cheeks. He stayed there for as long as he could stand it, and then he put his hands in his pockets, turned and walked slowly down the hall.

Ianto had finally managed to roll himself over and had braced himself painfully against the side of the seat. He looked out at the sunset, tinting the edges of the clouds Rift-coloured.

"After Torchwood," he said to no one in particular, "even the sunsets come in different shades." The rest of the clouds looked like candy floss, bought at a fair and, against his will, he remembered the time he and his mates had bought loads of the stuff and chucked it into the river. It had exploded as it hit the water, all its little sugar fibres disintegrating instantly. He swallowed, said softly, "I hope it was quick."

There was no reply but the gentle lap of the waves against the side of the boat.

He looked out into the slowly darkening sky, almost savage in its barbarically brilliant colours, and waited for his friends to come.

END