VS3:08 -- "Crash Course", Part Two
Crash Course -- Part Two
Ianto rested his head in his hands, closing his eyes against the unrelenting pain. His computer continued to return negative search results. Only one query remained and he had little doubt as to the outcome.
A hand on his shoulder squeezed gently. "Are you okay?" Jack's voice was full of concern.
Ianto lifted his head and rounded on Jack. "No, I am bloody well not okay!" he snapped, then sighed as he caught the surprised look in Jack's eyes. "Sorry, just, no."
"You're sick," Jack said, stating the obvious. He laid his hand on Ianto's forehead. Although his own temperature was elevated, Ianto felt hotter. "You're burning up."
"Can't be helped." The computer signalled the final query's conclusion. Ianto turned back to his workstation only to smack it with the flat of his palm. "Nothing! There's nothing useful in the digital archives about this species, Jack. Not the ship, not the alien, not the sickness. Nothing. We're going to die."
"No, you're not!" Jack's voice was firm. "The doctor is working on a cure. She'll find something, or I will."
Ianto spun around from the computer, staring at Jack suspiciously. "What are you thinking?"
Jack shrugged, his manner overly casual. He hooked a thumb in a brace and leaned against the workstation. "Maybe what she needs is a healthy assistant. One who isn't being compromised by symptoms."
Ianto staggered forward. "No, Jack." His voice was steely as he held out his hand, palm up. "Give me your gun."
"Just think about it," Jack replied.
"I am thinking about it." Ianto stood deliberately straighter, placed his hands on his hips, toe to toe with Jack. His already flushed cheeks grew even hotter with anger and frustration. "And I don't like it. I don't want my last act on earth to be cleaning your brains off the floor, thank you very much!"
"Stop saying that!" Jack shouted back, his own self-control crumbling. "No one else has to die." Without warning, he pitched over, hands going to his knees to steady himself. He fought for a breath but couldn't seem to get one.
Ianto stared for a second, unable to believe Jack would resort to cheap theatrics in the middle of an argument. Then a new, more sinister realisation crept over him. Jack wasn't merely proposing the idea. He'd already acted on it. "Did you poison yourself?" He waited a beat for an answer, feeling sick to his stomach. "Did you?" he demanded again. Jack continued to fight for breath. "Oh, that's just brilliant," he fumed. "You figured you'd spare me cleaning up after your suicide with a nice, neat cyanide pill. How considerate."
"Didn't poison," Jack rasped. "Can't breathe." He began to turn a violent shade of scarlet.
"God, Jack," Ianto said, instantly sorry. He dropped to Jack's side, pushed away his braces and tore open the pale blue outer shirt before tugging at the neckline of the undershirt to try to ease the passage of air. He couldn't think. He couldn't remember what to do if someone had a constricted airway. "I didn't mean... Dr. Muli!" Ianto yelled. "Out here, quickly! Jack's collapsed!"
Ianto cradled Jack in his arms, his own breath starting to come in sharp, shallow inhalations. His chest felt like iron bands were constricting it. He tried to suck in air through his mouth, but all he managed was an ineffective wheeze.
Dr. Muli rushed up beside them and dropped to her knees. She pulled Jack out of Ianto's arms, clipped on her stethoscope, and checked both their hearts. With a shake of her head, she sandwiched Ianto's face between her hands, staring directly into his eyes.
"Calm down," she snapped. "Good lord, man. Get a hold of yourself."
She let Ianto go, looked around the otherwise tidy workspace, and pulled an empty paper takeaway bag out of the bin. She pressed it into his hands. "You're hyperventilating. You and the captain, both." He nodded, trying to get the bag over his mouth while she hunted for a second one. Tossing aside an apple core, she helped Jack sit up, shoving the bag at him. "Breathe into that," she instructed. "Slowly."
Jack gasped into the bag. The brown paper rattled but didn't inflate. Muli looked irritated. "You can do better, Captain. I know you can. Look at Ianto. Breathe with him."
Ianto watched as Jack huffed, struggling to copy his pace. The constriction in his chest and the ache down his left arm began to ease as his breaths grew longer and less laboured. Over the top of his own sack, he locked eyes with Jack, offering a silent apology. Jack blinked an acknowledgement but said nothing, just watched as Dr. Muli lifted Ianto's arm and rolled up his sleeve.
JJ groaned and opened his eyes. Everything was too bright and it sent a searing pain through his skull that was followed by a wave of nausea. He clamped his lips shut over it, swallowed hard, and tried to remember where he was.
"Start small," he whispered to himself. "Manky couch. Industrial chic."
Right. He hadn't been over-celebrating at a party. He was at Torchwood, in the Hub. He tried to sit up, but his head felt weird. Weevils in the cells. He'd been composing a story, the dark side of Cardiff's secret alien hunters. Flashes of a fight. Ianto attacking. "He drugged me!"
JJ sank back against the sofa cushions and made himself hold very still. The employee orientation videos had been quite explicit about how agents who didn't measure up were to be handled. It was partly in the nature of full disclosure, but also a warning: you served Torchwood at their pleasure. Agents found wanting, for whatever reason, would be dealt with swiftly and without mercy. Undoubtedly, he'd failed his probation, and now they were preparing to clean up their mistake.
He heard an argument elsewhere in the Hub, two raised voices: Ianto and Jack. He didn't hear Gwen or the new doctor, but then JJ remembered. Gwen had been confined to the conference room. The doctor could be anywhere. As his head cleared, one other fact came back to him: they were in lockdown. And this time, it wasn't with a harmless terraforming thing that had triggered a few hypersensitive sensors. This time, it was an alien, sick with God only knew what, and they'd all been exposed. Failing probation was probably the least of his worries.
JJ swallowed his fear and opened his eyes. He looked around carefully, weighing his options. The orientation videos had mentioned something about fail-safes and overrides. He racked his brain, desperate to remember the details, but Instructor Smith kept popping up, cheerfully listing the ways Torchwood employees could be maimed or killed. Without his notes, all he had was common sense, and it dictated that Harkness would have the necessary codes somewhere in his desk or computer. JJ needed to get into the captain's office. And if he was wrong, if they had no way to get out, at least he could go down in a blaze of glory. He'd call Ben Cartland and tell all about Torchwood.
He made his break, rolling off the couch and dropping into a crouch on unsteady legs. He took a second to gather his strength before pushing off, bolting across the Hub.
The captain's office was in easy range. JJ was so light-headed it felt like he floated rather than ran the last two steps over the threshold. He slammed the doors shut behind him and turned the lock. For good measure, he shoved the guest chair against them, too. Satisfied, he started towards Jack's desk, only to have his vision tunnel to black, bringing him to his knees.
Dr. Muli dropped to the uncomfortable stool in the medical bay.
"Was the last guy a midget, or did he just never get to sit down?" She was beginning to think it was the latter. Things had been non-stop from the moment she'd joined the team, not that she couldn’t handle the pace. On the contrary, she thrived on it. She'd worked through outbreaks and full-blown epidemics; the lack of sleep was all that was getting to her. The WHO had always had more than one doctor assigned to a crisis so they could work in shifts. Here, she held sole responsibility.
Sighing, she put the blood samples on the metal work table and labelled them before forgetting which was which. Then she cringed. She should have labelled them as she drew them, but her hands had been shaking when she took the samples, and the last thing her team had needed was to see her experiencing the same symptoms.
"You've been through worse," she reminded herself. She touched the chunky amber beads at her throat, a gift from villagers she'd helped through a Marburg outbreak, and a vivid reminder not to give up hope. Setting her jaw, she reached for the Bekaran scanner. The captain had said something about it being able to scan blood samples better than any lab. Staring at the buttons, the alien language began to look excessively alien. In fact, it seemed as if the glyphs were moving. She blinked, and they stopped. Shuddering, she cast it aside.
"Nothing on Earth has beaten me yet," she continued, absently. "This may not have started here, but it's on my turf now."
She considered all the technology in the room around her. Access to alien technology had been part of what had driven her to accept Torchwood's job offer - so much she could learn - but she'd also had about a half-day's training, barely enough to scratch the surface. The only thing worse than an untrained physician was a half-trained one.
"There's got to be something basic around here." She worked methodically, opening cabinets and drawers, finding all kinds of alien devices, a complete pharmacy, even a box of condoms. Familiar, certainly, but not particularly useful under the circumstances. Nothing until she got to the last cabinet, the least accessible one, with the rusty hinges, and...
"Bob's your uncle!"
Despite its appearance, the cabinet opened without a creak, and the contents were exactly what she needed: a centrifuge, a blood coagulometer, a chemistry analyser, even a microscope. Better yet, the boxes of test strips and reagents hadn't expired. She pumped a fist in triumph.
"Okay, all you fancy gizmos, I'll learn to use you some other day. Right now I need something I can work even with alien alphabets dancing a samba in front of my eyes."
Jack was slumped in Ianto's chair, head pillowed on his arms in a half-hearted attempt to get it to stop throbbing. Despite the pounding pulse between his ears, he could still hear Ianto's shoes tapping an uneven rhythm down the spiral staircase, followed by a metallic creak as Ianto took a seat.
Voice muffled by his elbow, Jack spoke, "I haven't felt this bad in..."
"Need an abacus?" Ianto snorted.
"Yeah," he replied, his shoulders shaking with a feeble laugh.
He could picture the thoughtful furrow of Ianto's brow as he replied, "This doesn't make sense. You never get sick. Not even that time we all came down with Lamarian Measles."
Jack raised his head, finding a grin along with the memory. "Your first lockdown; I got to cover you in porridge."
Ianto chuckled, no doubt recalling Jack's cheerfully bullying bedside manner. "I've never looked at it the same way since."
"It does give new meaning to breakfast in bed. We could always-"
"Stop it," Ianto said. "You're changing the subject."
"What is the subject, exactly?" The banter had taken more out of him than he'd expected, so he propped his head on his arms, tilting it so he could see Ianto.
"The matter of your not getting sick."
"Cholera. I got cholera once. Long time ago. Didn't have immunity to it since it'd been wiped out by my day, and no one thought to develop a vaccine."
"Did it kill you?"
Jack forced himself to sit back up. "No. Why? What are you getting at?"
"What if this does?" His fever-roughened voice had a curious intensity that made gooseflesh crawl up Jack's spine. "What if it weakens you so badly that you can't heal, or regenerate, or whatever it is that you do?"
"Won't happen," he replied flatly.
"Why not? How do you know?"
Jack heaved himself out of the chair and grasped Ianto's forearms, partially for encouragement, but also to hold himself erect. "I know, because the Doctor told me. I trust him."
Ianto stiffened under Jack's touch. "You trust him," he said, the words uncharacteristically biting. "The Doctor said so, and that's good enough for you."
Jack shrugged, puzzled. "Well, yeah."
"Not good enough," Ianto replied, apparently unwilling to let the matter drop. "Why?"
Jack stared at him for several seconds, cocking his head and working his mouth around silent words, unable to produce an actual answer. "It just is." He let go of Ianto's arms and stumbled back to the chair.
Ianto leaned forward again, propping his elbows on his knees. "After all he's done to you, you still trust him. If he showed up right now, you'd leave us and go with him."
"If the Doctor shows up, it's because something awful is about to happen to the planet. What other choice would you expect me to make?"
"So, you'd leave us to die." Ianto sighed, scrubbing his face with his fists. "Look at me, Jack."
He really wasn't in the mood for a lecture. Instead of looking directly into Ianto's eyes, he focused on his dishevelled clothes, his flushed complexion.
"Do you love him?" Ianto asked.
Jack stared. They had an understanding about the Doctor. They didn't talk about him. Ever. Now Ianto wanted to know how he felt? It was too complex. Jack wasn't sure he even had the words. How could he begin to explain?
"I suppose that's an answer." Ianto nodded, pulled himself up from the step, and began climbing back up the staircase.
"Ianto, wait!" Jack struggled to his feet, but Ianto was already too far away.
"There's coffee," he replied, not looking back. "Pour a cup before it gets any colder. May as well get used to doing it for yourself again."
Jack groaned. After they got through this, he'd make things right. At least he would once he figured out what was wrong. Still, talking about the Doctor had reminded him of his duty. No matter how strangely Ianto was acting, the rest of his team also needed looking after.
With a lingering glance at the staircase, Jack hauled himself out of the chair one more time, slogging across the atrium to the tunnel entrance. He'd check in on Gwen, make sure she was okay, then try again to sort it out with Ianto.
As Jack rounded the corner, he was surprised to see the conference room was closed. That was odd, particularly since he hadn't been aware the room could be closed in the first place. He jerked on one of the pocket doors, attempting to slide it open, but it wouldn't budge.
He raised his hand to knock, but before he could, Gwen's voice rang out, "Go away, Jack. I'm trying to concentrate."
"And I'm here to make sure you're okay," he replied, a little concerned but not at all daunted.
"I'll be fine. Go away."
Oh, but that woman could be stubborn. Most of the time it was endearing and damned useful, but not today. "This won't take long."
"You're not getting anywhere near me with that thing."
He glanced between his empty hands, paused, eyes creeping down to his crotch for a moment, then dismissed the notion with a shrug. "Yeah, um, what thing is that, precisely?"
"The Singularity Scalpel."
He blinked at the door before resting his forehead against it with a dull thud. It didn't really help, but it felt good in a completely useless way.
"I know what you're planning, and you're wrong, Jack. So wrong."
"Gwen, just..." But she interrupted him, leaving him standing there with his mouth open like a distraught guppy.
"It's human, not a Nostrovite. It belongs to me and Rhys, and I won't let you hurt our baby!"
He stared blankly for a moment then took a slow step backward as realisation struck him. "It's affecting our minds," he said to himself. "It's... Well, of course, if it really is, how do I know that for sure?" He laughed weakly. "Okay," he continued, nodding, waving his hands around, reassuring himself. "Gwen's a big girl, she can take care of herself."
He started to walk away, but froze instead. "No. No, she can't. Well, she shouldn't. She's sick. She's sick and pregnant, and a part of my team, and I'm not failing two of them in a row." He pounded on the door again. "Let me in there, and that's an order!" When she didn't respond, he tried the other set of pocket doors with no luck. He kicked them, instead, growling for good measure.
"Quit it, or I'll shoot!"
"Your gun's on your desk!" Jack shouted back.
She stammered something unintelligible that ended in 'bugger' then seemed to pull herself together again. "It's not a disease. It's an allergic reaction."
Jack did a double take. "What?"
"My cousin Merrick used to have asthma attacks every time he got around Great Aunt Winifred's dog."
"What?" He didn't care that he sounded like a broken record, or that his surprised voice had gone up an octave.
"We're allergic to the alien, not sick. It was the breathing problems that helped me see it."
Shaking his head, he moved to the door again, attempting to convince the panel in lieu of the woman behind it. "You don't have all the facts."
"I've been watching you on the CCTV."
He noticed the camera to his left panning the corridor, no doubt her way of emphasising her point. Well, he could emphasise his own, too. He raised his hands, showing her they were empty as he pasted on his most sincere smile.
"Jack, I know everything I need to fix this. And I'll fix it. And we'll all feel good again. And my baby will be safe."
Recognising defeat, he slumped against the storage cage across from the conference room, folding his arms over his chest. "Are you having any breathing problems?"
"No. I told you, I'm fine. It's all about Merrick. I can fix this, Jack."
She was typing so furiously he could hear it in the hall. "And how do you think you're going to do that?"
"When the Hub goes into a biological lockdown, it shifts to internal air supply. All we have to do is clean the air."
"That could take days," he said to the camera.
"I diverted power from the lower levels to environmental controls. It'll turbo-charge the filtration system, and... aha!" He heard her slap the table in triumph. "It'll be better soon, you'll-"
Before she could finish her sentence, the Hub alarms went off again. Warning, oxygen supply disabled. began to cycle over the loudspeakers.
He swayed forward, bracing himself on the pocket doors with his forearms. "Gwen, whatever you just did, undo it!"
It was a moment before she responded. "I can't! I'm locked out until the script finishes executing."
"Let me in there so I can try-"
"Stay out!"
Jack spun around, ready to storm back to his desk and put a stop to her script from there. Unfortunately, his tingling feet had other ideas, leaving him in an ungainly heap on the floor.
"That does it." He scrabbled for his holster. It was empty.
"Ianto!" he growled, climbing to his knees. It was far more work than it should have been. He pulled up using one of the old pipes and steadied himself for a moment, almost too angry to think, but not quite. The Time Agency, the RAF (both times): it was moments like these they'd prepared him for, drilling him over and over under increasingly miserable circumstances, and that training kicked in. Basic survival. Priorities.
"Shut the damned alarm off," he groaned, dragging himself along the wall, pausing to catch his breath.
"Get the oxygen turned back on." He took another step.
"Eat a bullet." He chuckled darkly, making a mental note to do it in the shower or some other place that was easy to clean. He wasn't too proud to admit he could be house-trained, or Hub-trained, as the case may be.
Another step, this one easier as he found his stride and coordination seemed to be returning. "He still won't be happy, but he'll get over it. And he likes make-up sex."
Ianto spat out the tepid coffee and dumped the rest down the sink with a sigh.
"There's something here about pride and a fall, but I'm too tired to think of it," he said, tapping the used grounds into the bin. His hands shook far too much, and he entertained the idea of decaf, but only briefly. Gwen got milky tea, the rest of them needed everything they could get: double cream, real sugar, every gram of caffeine he could squeeze from the beans. The challenge facing him was how to get a fresh batch distributed once it was brewed. He didn't trust his shaking hands with the tray. He barely trusted himself with a single cup. They had an actual tea trolley somewhere, at least he thought they did. If nothing else, Dr. Muli had something in the medical bay he could make use of.
He picked his way across the Hub one slow step at a time. What he didn't expect was to have Myfanwy land next him before he could get to the upper level. Well, not so much land as drop. He slouched down next to her, his instinctive wariness completely sundered. She looked as bad as he felt, and if she posed any threat, it was purely the compelling urge to stretch out beside her and go to sleep.
"You, too, eh, girl?"
She squawked as if she understood him, and he laughed hoarsely, head propped against the railing. Moving slowly enough not to startle her, he placed a palm on her chest. She practically radiated heat, her naturally high body temperature amplified hugely.
He tapped his comm. "Dr. Muli, Myfanwy's got it, too."
"Mi-what?" she asked, sounding distracted again. It seemed to be her natural state.
"Our pet pteranodon," he reminded her.
"Merde! How is this crossing multiple species? I've never seen something so opportunistic. Do we have a blood sample from her from before this happened?"
"Wish we did. Owen wouldn't get near her, and I'm not exactly qualified to do a draw."
She sighed loudly at the inconvenience. "I'll be right there."
He nodded, as if she could hear that, and a few moments later the doctor was beside him. If she showed any signs of shock at needing to take blood from a living fossil, he didn't spot them. She calmly approached the pteranodon as she would any injured animal, examined her and, with Ianto's help, located a vein.
"Is that water clean?" she asked, pointing to the pool at the bottom of the Rift fountain.
"Why?" Ianto regarded the pool, uncomprehending. The water lapped slowly at the base of the fountain, vaguely mesmerising. He shook his head to clear it, wincing at the pain that caused. Dr. Muli was speaking. "Pardon?"
"Are you all right?" She stepped toward him, one hand outstretched. "How is your nose?"
Ianto reared backward. "I suspect that's the least of our problems. You were saying about Myfanwy?"
"I said," Dr. Muli repeated slowly, "unless you want to try to drag her down to the showers, I think the pool is the only place we can put her to help cool her down."
He nodded, hauling himself up. "We'll need a blanket or something. Her wings are more fragile than they look."
"Bird bones," she agreed, nodding. "Be right back."
She was directly beneath the 'Cold Storage' tiles when the alarms went off. Ianto felt the adrenaline kick in again and had reached Tosh's computer before the recorded voice began to issue over the speakers.
Warning, oxygen supply disabled. Warning, oxygen supply disabled.
"Jack!" he said, tapping his comm. No answer. "Gwen?" Also no answer. "JJ?" he asked, then stopped, realising he was still drugged. He spun around to check on JJ and froze. JJ was not on the sofa.
"Where the...?" From out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement in Jack's office. "How?" He shoved a hand into his waistcoat pocket where he kept the fob with the ancient Torchwood skeleton keys, only he wasn't wearing his waistcoat. It was in the hamper in Jack's bunker. He tangled his fingers into his hair, sighing. "Fine, right."
He sat down at the workstation, trying to think. What in the world was JJ playing at, turning off the oxygen? Well, whatever he thought he was doing, Ianto needed to stop it. He stumbled over the keyboard a few times, his fingertips not quite feeling connected, the letters shifting in and out of focus.
"Fuck," he hissed when he'd triggered intruder lockout detection at the computer. The only way past it was to enter the admin password, and he didn't trust himself to do it properly, wasn't going to risk locking out the whole machine. He switched to Gwen's computer and tried again, staring at the keys and deliberately striking one at a time rather than attempting to touch type as he had before. It worked, and his personal console loaded.
He moved slowly, forcing himself to think through each step. It was taking forever, but he knew he had to be methodical. Security menu. Alarms menu. A few clicks later, and he'd managed to shut down the audio portion of the alarm.
"Thank God for small favours," Dr. Muli said, rustling behind him. He glanced over his shoulder, noting how she matter-of-factly moved Myfanwy onto the draping sheet she'd brought up from the medical bay, gentle yet efficient, wings bundled carefully against the pteranodon's torso. "How long do we have before the oxygen runs out?"
"We're in more danger of dying from whatever's infected us than we are of asphyxiating," he said, slowly cascading back through the menus. "Looks like he turned off the air scrubbers, too, though, and that's going to stink. Literally."
She chuckled, and he started to get up to help her. "No, Ianto, I've got it. You figure out what JJ's done," she said, glancing toward Jack's office. "I don't want any more surprises."
He nodded, returning his attention to the computer, slipping into the special menus Tosh had created. She'd left some search routines along with her favourite hacking programs; they had only to enter a few parameters and turn them loose. Which he promptly did, substituting something he never expected to need to use: an internal IP address. A moment later, results started rolling back.
"He's tried to crack Jack's password, but stopped before locking out the workstation." He shrugged. At least the kid had paid attention during orientation. "Now he's using his own account, but..." He tabbed through the log, brows furrowing in concentration. "But neither his account nor the IP address at Jack's workstation has been accessing the environmental applications. Huh, so how did he...?" He set another one of Tosh's routines loose.
While that ran, he opened another window, launching a remote console session into Jack's machine: unlike JJ, he knew Jack's passwords. JJ was doing a web search in one session and searching Torchwood records in another. A moment later, Ianto saw his own Torchwood file and watched, horrified, as JJ attempted to recover deleted data from the system cache.
"How incompetent do you think we are?" he asked, jumping up. It was too fast; he staggered, almost falling. A pair of hands stabilised him. "Thank you, Doctor," he muttered, grabbing the edge of the workstation and taking his own weight back.
"We can play doctor later, but first, let's undo Gwen's little blunder with the oxygen."
"Jack?" Ianto wheeled around, overbalanced, and nearly toppled again.
"In the flesh," he replied, failing at a cheeky grin. "Mostly." He leaned against the workstation, exhausted by the walk back from the conference room.
"Wait. Gwen?" Ianto sounded baffled. "But..." He pointed to Jack's office.
Jack stared in utter disbelief. "What's JJ doing at my desk?"
Ianto returned his attention to the keyboard. He carefully typed another sequence into the command line. "Well, I thought he'd buggered the oxygen, but I guess he's only attempting to hack us."
Jack sighed, dropping his head into his palm. The shit just kept getting deeper.
JJ stared at Jack's monitor. He knew they'd given him some good drugs, but this was impressive. He could swear the mouse was moving by itself. Then he realised he wasn't hallucinating; it really was moving by itself. Someone was remoting into the computer, checking what he was up to. Before he could attempt to lock them out, an internal IM session opened.
IANTO: Wathever you think youre doing, stopit.
JJ looked out the window and saw Ianto and the captain standing side by side at Gwen's desk. Harkness was staring right at him, arms folded over his chest.
JEONG-JUN: ppl have a rite to no whats going on here
IANTO: No they don't.
JEONG-JUN: u can cut off the air, you can drug me, but this story will be told.
An error message popped up on screen: External Network Connection Not Available
"Bastards!" JJ shouted.
JEONG-JUN: I already sent e-mails
IANTO: Sned a thousand, firewall stops them
JJ already knew his mobile was useless, having checked that first thing, so he grabbed the phone on Jack's desk. As fast as he could, he dialled Ben Cartland's direct line at The Times. He waved the receiver in triumph before cradling it to his ear.
"Ben, JJ, listen carefully, I am not crazy. This is not a joke. I've gone to work for Torchwood. All that alien conspiracy stuff? It's true. There are aliens in Cardiff. They're being held prisoner under the fountain in Roald Dahl Plass."
He heard a tap on the window and looked back up. Jack stood outside the office, a frayed wire in his hand and an angry, exhausted expression barely masking the wildness behind his eyes. Only then did JJ realise the phone line was too quiet. He mashed the # button but nothing happened. Pressing buttons at random, the line remained persistently dead. He tossed the receiver across the room, grumbling in frustration before the blinking box on the computer screen recaptured his attention.
IANTO: yuo have three choices, you let Jack in or you let Dr. Muli in
JEONG-JUN: whats the thrid?
IANTO: look up
Slowly, dreading what he was going to see, JJ looked up. Jack had traded the wire for a gun.
Ianto's voice crackled into Megan's ear, "Dr. Muli?"
"Is there another doctor here that I'm unaware of?" she snapped.
"Cleanup in Jack's office."
"Say again?" Her frustration shifted to concern.
"Your assistance is needed, Dr. Muli. I wouldn't have interrupted you otherwise."
She relaxed a bit, but only a bit. "Understood."
Dr. Muli carefully placed the latest blood sample into the analyser. "I wish I had a fresh draw from Agent Cooper," she muttered as she started it processing. "Still I've got the others. And a dinosaur." She giggled a little then clamped her lips closed. "Get a hold of yourself, Megan."
She rose with a sigh. The climb up the curving stairs from the medical bay was a weary one. Her feet had stopped tingling, but that had been replaced by near-total numbness. Despite her caution, she missed a stair and went down hard onto her left knee. She stayed kneeling and focused inward, trying to recall a time when she felt fit and strong. It helped. A little. She drew herself erect and forced a confidence she didn't feel into her expression as she entered the atrium.
She saw Ianto first. He was standing, leaning really, at one of the workstations - though why he wasn't sitting in the chair a few feet away wasn't clear. He was typing frantically at the keyboard, so intent he hadn't heard her clumsy arrival. However, Jack had and he glanced between her and his office. The revolver he had aimed at the window shook in his hand alarmingly.
"Lower your gun, Captain," she said. "Please."
"There are things in my office," Jack replied. "In the wrong hands..." He indicated JJ with a wave of the gun. The former reporter was tearing the room to pieces as he searched it frantically - looking for what, exactly, only he knew.
Dr. Muli glanced at JJ and nodded. "I understand. Now, the gun. Please."
They exchanged a long look. It was difficult not to sigh with relief as he holstered the weapon. Slowly, she approached the office and knocked on the door. "JJ, I'm here to help. Let me in."
He looked up as if startled by her voice. His eyes narrowed suspiciously and he shook his head.
Behind her, Dr. Muli heard Jack take a heavy step forward. She waved him off with one hand. "You're very sick, JJ. We're all very sick. But I can help you. I can make you feel better."
"I'm not sick," JJ protested even as he pushed sweat-soaked hair off his forehead. "They drugged me. They're trying to keep me from exposing them."
Dr. Muli leaned against the office door, partially to make it easier to stay upright, but also to create a sense of intimacy between herself and the stricken young man. "What are you trying to expose? Maybe I can help," she said, forcing as much sincerity and compassion into her voice as she could muster.
Slowly, something eased in JJ's face. The distrust in his expression gave way to desperation. He fumbled the lock and opened the door enough to snake one hand through and grab her by the wrist, hauling her into the office before he relocked the door. "Will you help me stop them abusing the weevils?" JJ asked.
The question threw her. Enough so that, rather than use his momentum against him to take him down, she asked, "The what?"
"The weevils they're holding prisoner downstairs," JJ said in a hurried whisper. "We need to contact people, the... the RSPCA or... or Amnesty International or... Dr. Muli, they had no trial," he continued, all in one breath. "No due process. No one to speak on their behalf."
"That's horrible," she said, playing along.
"I know," he replied, eyes locked to hers, tears starting to well above his lower lids. "This whole place, it's horrible. I thought things like this only existed in movies or-"
"Shhhh." She gently pried his fingers off her wrist and guided him to Jack's chair. She pushed him down onto it and crouched at his side. "We'll help the weevils together," she promised. "I know people. Powerful people. But first I need to help you."
"Can you get us out of here?" JJ asked, the sentence winding up with desperate hope.
"Soon," she said. She touched his wrist, felt the rapid pulse underneath his too hot skin. "But I need to keep the captain occupied so he doesn't know I've gone over to your side."
At the mention of Jack, JJ's eyes narrowed in suspicion, and he pulled away from her. "How do I know you're not working with them now?" His eyes flicked to the window and the atrium beyond. He rolled the chair backward until it hit the desk. "You're Torchwood."
"I'm new here, too, JJ. I didn't know." She edged forward on her knees until she was leaning against the chair. "They never told me about prisoners. They never told me I'd be party to atrocities. But I worked for the World Health Organisation. I help people who need help the most. I'd never deliberately hurt anyone." She gave JJ a beseeching look. "I promise you, we'll get the weevils the justice they deserve. But first, you have to do something for me."
"What?" JJ replied, only partially convinced.
"In order to get us out of here, I have to convince the captain to lift the lockdown. And in order to do that, I need bloodwork from all of us showing that we're not contagious. He thinks we're all sick, remember?"
JJ nodded his head. "The lockdown!"
"That's right, the lockdown." Slowly, Megan removed a Vacutainer and a rubber tourniquet from her lab coat pocket. "Give me some blood, and I promise you, the sooner I can fake a cure, the sooner you can break your story. Deal?"
The stubborn look crawled back over his face, hardening his mouth into a harsh line. Megan played the last card in her deck.
"Jeong-Jun Namkung!" she said, launching into the hallowed voice of authority. His eyes dropped to the floor in an automatic display of respect. "If you want to save the weevils you must do this. Now, hold still so I can get some blood."
Numbly, he offered his arm. She slid the tourniquet up and cinched it down too hard. JJ winced as the needle slid home, looking away. That was just what she wanted. She withdrew the tube of blood, dropped it into her pocket, and immediately exchanged it for a needle full of sedative.
"Hey, what was that?" JJ struggled out of the chair, knocking Megan aside as he did. He stared down at her, his expression of betrayal cutting her to the quick, but only for a moment.
"I'm sorry," she said, "but it's for the best."
JJ's knees went out from under him, and he fell back into the chair, unconscious.
Using the chair as a prop, Megan pushed herself back to her feet. She leaned against the desk, letting her body reorient to being upright. Her gaze fell on the mess of scattered pens and papers, an overturned blue striped coffee mug and a piece of coral toppled from its display stand. She righted the mug and the coral, creating a tiny island of order in the chaos, then walked out into the atrium.
"Nicely done," Jack said from the sofa.
"I don't need a pat on the head," she snapped. "I need him on a stretcher and back in the med bay so I can get him under an ice wrap. His fever is dangerously high. Once you've managed that, get the oxygen back on. And, Captain?" She gave him a withering glance. "No more interruptions. If someone's dying, you can call me. Otherwise, leave me alone."
"Ma'am!" He snapped off a crisp salute, but his flippant expression belied any respect in the gesture.
Crash Course: Part Three