VS3:13 -- "It All Changes", Part Two
It All Changes - Part Two
Gwen quietly slipped out of the conference room, gently closing the door behind her. She leaned back against the wall, and rubbed at her throbbing temples. All the shouting and posturing had become overwhelming; she just needed a moment of quiet.
The sudden sound of clattering footsteps got louder until Ianto came into view. "Gwen? How's-"
She waved him off, shaking her head. The pounding intensified, and no amount of rubbing helped.
"Megan's still gathering info from the UNIT lab, trying to find out… anything, really. Hey," his voice gentled and she felt his fingertips on her elbow. "You all right? What's wrong? I mean, you know what I mean."
She smiled at him. "Nothing, just… you know. And I'm feeling a bit woozy."
Ianto frowned, forming long creases over his forehead. "You need to eat something. We all do. I'll see what I can scrape together in a bit, yeah?"
The door behind Gwen opened and Jack marched out, letting it slam shut behind him. "Bureaucrats!" he spat. "We'll never get anything done if we wait around for them to actually agree on something." He looked up then. "Ianto? What's the word?"
"More 999 calls; it's happening everywhere," he said. "The Mayor's office is… gone."
"Oh my God," Gwen said, all the breath leaving her body.
"Whitehall and Number Ten have both gone into lockdown," Ianto went on. "The Queen and the royal family, of course, have been moved to secure locations. They're taking hospitals and government buildings. This is strategic, Jack. I'm guessing they haven't come here simply because they haven't located us, yet. But people are starting to panic now."
"Right." Jack nodded, jaw clenching. "We need troops out there. I'll get Martha to coordinate with UNIT. Gwen-"
"Shouldn't we be out there, Jack?" she said. "It's our duty to protect the civilians."
"With what? Just the three of us? We need a large-scale plan, Gwen, which we don't have yet. Short-term plan is defence; UNIT's soldiers are equipped for that." Jack placed both of his large hands on her shoulders. "Don't fall apart on me now, Cooper."
Gwen stared into Jack's eyes. Confidence. They needed confidence now. "Yes, right. I'll get on the line with the police; tell them what to prepare for."
"Good girl," Jack said, patting her shoulders and smiling.
She shoved him off kindly, teasing. "Good girl? I'll show you good girl. You get back in there," she said, gesturing to the boardroom, "and bellow them into shape. You're good at that."
Jack reached for the door handle, paused. "Ianto, keep monitoring, and… I think we're going to need to bring out the big guns for this. Archives, anything useful you can find."
"I'm on it," Ianto said, and hurried away back down the corridor.
Jack disappeared back into the shouting conference, and Gwen made her way toward her work station. "Just need to make a phone call, first." The pounding in her head had decreased to a dull ache, but her heart was racing and her stomach was doing flip-flops, like being karate-kicked from the inside. "Hush, hush, little baby," she whispered, "we're going to make it, I swear."
"...and that is one big piece of cheese, Harry!"
"And a fascinating discourse on our society's obsession with the culture of fame. Thanks for that, Harry. Coming up next, we'll check in with Lucy Jones, on the ground in Splott. Lucy?"
Rhys popped the lid on his takeaway dinner of chicken curry and settled in for the rest of the newscast. Lucy Jones, imagine that! He'd gone to school with a Lucy Jones. 'Course, she had weighed two stone more than this Lucy, but maybe they were the same one? He speared a piece of saucy chicken and raised it to his mouth as Lucy Jones began talking about strange weather in Splott. He glanced out the window of the flat. Strange weather was hardly localized to Splott.
"...until about an hour ago, when residents of Splott began noticing that the clouds were actually swarms of insects."
Rhys looked down at his curry. 'Swarms of insects,' brilliant. He'd picked up this takeaway just a couple of streets over from the flat, but he still poked at it a bit. No bugs.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!"
Rhys's head jerked up at the scream from the telly. A gigantic bug was stalking the hapless Lucy Jones. A piece of curried chicken fell out of Rhys's gaping mouth and splattered the carpet.
"Mike, Gretchen! Over to you! This is Lucy Jones, reporting live from urrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!"
"What the bloody fuck?" Rhys breathed. "Lucy?"
The screen went to static as he fumbled in his pocket for his mobile. It began to ring before he managed to pull it out. Gwen.
"Oh my God, Gwen," he greeted her, pushing back his dinner tray and struggling to his feet. "Are you okay? What the hell is going on? This woman-"
"We're under attack. Listen, Rhys-"
"By bugs! They just ripped Lucy Jones's head open live on telly! WHERE ARE YOU?" He paced to the window and stared out at the street. No bugs. No Gwen, either.
"Dammit, really? Didn't you go to school with her?"
"Maybe. Are you anywhere near these bugs? Gwen-"
"Rhys. I need you to calm down and listen to me, love, okay?"
"I am extremely calm!" Rhys shouted. He was in the kitchen now, scrutinising the knife collection. He should've bought those special cut-anything knives Gordon Ramsay had been hawking on the telly, but he loathed Gordon Ramsay and couldn't bring himself to support the man. Damn Gordon Ramsay!
"Listen, Rhys, I need you to stay put, do you understand? Barricade yourself in the flat, will you do that?"
"Are you behind a barricade?" he asked quietly, glancing around the kitchen. They had a cast iron skillet. Maybe he could use it as a club?
"I am with all the resources of Torchwood and UNIT. I'll- we'll be fine. But I need to know you're safe. You'll stay safe, won't you?" Her voice trembled, just slightly. He took a breath.
"I'll be safe, Gwen. But-"
"No but's. And Rhys? I know you're probably assessing how to use the kitchen appliances as weapons right now-"
He started and put the egg beaters down on the counter as she continued.
"-but I have something there for you. Go into our bedroom, my closet, the paper bag in the back corner."
He pushed aside a few hanging trousers and the dress she'd worn to the Harwoods office party last Christmas until he spotted the bag. He reached for it, then drew his hand away like he'd been burned.
"Uh, Gwen? I don't think these things are going to be defeated by a box of... tampons," he finished in a whisper.
"The box doesn't have tampons in it, you plonker. I just put it there so you wouldn't go looking unless I told you what's inside."
"And what's inside?" Rhys asked, frowning.
"Laser gun, from the forty-third century."
"Really?!" He reached eagerly into the box. The gun was smaller than he thought a laser gun should be, but it still looked extremely cool. It was sleek, black, shiny, and the laser... cartridge... gave a faint green pulse. The grip conformed to the shape of his hand the moment he touched it. "Gwen, this beats the stuffing out of the free boxes we get from my job."
"It's also extremely dangerous. Now, you recall that firearm training I gave you?"
"I certainly recall what happened after." He pointed the gun at a framed picture of flowers and cavorting kittens his mother had insisted on giving them, and focussed on a big purple bloom.
"Mmmm, yes, well, same concept as a regular gun. Only there's less of a recoil when you fire. It's pretty powerful, so be mindful of destroying the furniture. If you can. These things have a hard exoskeleton, so aim for any vulnerable parts, like the eyes."
"Will do." It weighed next to nothing, too. He caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror and mimed holding the gun up to his face and blowing smoke off the barrel.
"Okay, I have to go now, love. Promise me you'll be safe."
"I promise I won't go looking for trouble," he said, sobering. "And Gwen? You promise me you'll come home in one piece?"
"That's the plan. I love you."
"I love you, too."
He walked back out into the living room after she hung up. Barricade, she had said. Well, no way the settee would fit to block the front door. He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the rest of their furniture. His mother-in-law had given them a planter to rival his own mother's flowers-and-kittens painting in gaudiness. That might do. He'd just seized a hold of it when his mobile went off again. It was one of his Harwoods drivers.
"Frankie?"
"Rhys! Holy fuck, do you see what's going on?!"
"Yeah, listen, Frankie, the best thing to do is to stay put and-"
"Not bloody likely! My kids' school is under attack! By bugs from outer space! Rhys, mate, I have to get there."
"Oh, bloody hell. What school is it?"
"All clear here," Andy shouted over the heads of two older women, their fingers tight around the IV stands they were pushing along over the worn linoleum. Andy kept looking at the dark stairwell behind the door, the lights all off again, and what he knew was waiting to attack. His heart jumped into his throat every single time he thought he saw something move.
Andy pulled Swanson aside as they passed in the corridor, her helping a young woman along. "I can't get through to the station." He forced his voice into a low whisper to avoid any rising panic among the people they were trying to save. That wouldn't do anyone any good. He smiled when the young woman turned and waved at her to go on. "Something is interfering with the signal. I tried the phone line, too, but it's down."
"Torchwood?" Swanson checked for her baton and glanced over Andy's shoulder at the doors to the stairwell.
Andy shook his head. Swanson nodded, then turned to smile at the woman, trying for reassurance in crisis. At the other end of the corridor, Amy and Preston led two older women into the lift and kept muttering about evacuation. The corridors were quiet, and Andy figured they might have a chance at this, whatever it was - something Torchwood, no doubt - if they didn't panic. He forced himself to walk past the doors to the stairwell again without flinching. He tried calling Gwen again, but the tellies in the patients' room had shown this... thing was in all of Britain, all of the world, before they'd cut off to emergency signal.
This, whatever this was, wasn't normal.
Andy knocked on the next door before entering. "Sir," he began.
"Not now." The man on the bed waved his fork at Andy. He had the remote control for his telly in the other hand and was pressing at the buttons, shoving food into his mouth every other second. "Would you believe this isn't working? Do you know how much I'm paying for all this, and would you believe it isn't working?"
"Sir, I have to urge you to-" He tried to keep his tone level even as he just wanted to grab the bloke.
"Ev-a-cu-a-te. Yes, yes, yes." The man punctured the air with his fork. "I already told your colleague that I'm not leaving my lunch to get cold for one of your silly little tests of procedures, timing us as we waddle down the stairs. I know all about this, young man."
"Sir," Andy said, and stepped closer to the bed, catching a look at the name on the chart at the foot of the bed frame. "Mr. Lloyd, I assure you this is no practice. PC Andy Davidson, Cardiff Police, I'm-"
"Yeah yeah yeah, tell me why this piece of shite telly doesn't work. NHS hospital, is this what this-"
"Sir," Andy interrupted. "I can't explain, but you need to leave right now-"
"Nonsense." Mr. Lloyd speared a carrot and brought it to his mouth, crunching down on it. "Is there a fire, PC Davidson?" he asked, mouth full with carrot.
"No, I-"
"Because I'm hearing no sirens. No fire. Jolly good, you won't mind me finishing my meal then, and I'll join your merry little practice run later." Lloyd waved Andy out with the fork, a shoo-shoo gesture, before he brought his fork to his meat ball and cut it in half, then slurped the speared half off the fork and chewed. "They promised me consultations for this afternoon," he said, turned to the telly. "I'd better be getting these consultations when nothing else is working. You'd think they'd fix the television..."
Mr. Lloyd droned on, but Andy wasn't listening anymore because outside the window feelers were sliding into view, and then, just above the rumble of Mr. Lloyd's voice, came the steady click click click of mandibles on the glass. The window was half-open to let in air.
"Sir," Andy tried, but Mr. Lloyd was busy pressing buttons on the remote again as the disrupted television broadcast of Loose Women turned into the emergency signal. As one of the mandibles slid through the gap of the window into the room, the head of the thing pushed into view just outside, big glassy eyes on a cocked head that studied Mr. Lloyd and Andy and the room. Andy took a step forward, made to just grab him and haul him out bodily, but then the thing turned its head and looked at him and he stopped in mid-movement, like a bloody shop window dummy.
"I'm saying that with the Trust, you would think they could sort this out. Yes, yes, you hear about the understaffed and overworked, but we all have to work for our money." Mr. Lloyd scraped the meatball over the plate, the fork jarringly loud on the cheap porcelain.
"Sir, you really-" Good Christ, they had to move now!
"What I'm saying," Mr. Lloyd turned to Andy, his back to the window where the giant thing was shifting itself further into view, obstructing the meagre sunshine and throwing a shadow across the bed and floor. "What I'm saying is that me, single-handedly, I'd only have to press a few buttons, and I could kill the complete energy grid of Wales. I know responsibility. You'd think that the NHS would-"
It happened too fast. One moment Mr. Lloyd was pausing for a breath and to shove the meatball into his mouth, the next his skull was caved in, blood everywhere and the thing's tongue, extended from the thing's mouth through the gap in the window, was slurping at his open head. Then another, and a third one of the things landed against the glass front of the room, their bellies pressed to the panes, darkening the room. Paralysed, Andy stared at Lloyd, slumped over, the remote dropped from his hand, telly still sirening over a rainbow of Please Stand By.
"Davidson! Now! Now!" Swanson's shout sounded along the corridor.
Andy fled the room, his face wet. When he reached up to wipe at it, he realized it was blood, and not his own. "He-" Andy stopped in front of Swanson, breath sharp. "He- they-"
"We don't have time for that right now, Davidson," Swanson said and pulled Andy up close by his uniform. Glass smashed and then, the sound of wings. "We need to get out of here now."
And then they ran for it, leaving behind the screams of those still trapped in the rooms.
They'd emptied the archives of anything remotely useful. Monlurvian firestarters (eighteen cases), twelve anti-Cybermen electro-rifles (Ianto had started collecting them); seven functional energy barriers had already been distributed to critical targets. They'd jury-rigged a neuro-stunner (originally reverse-engineered to make Ianto's stun gun) with a bit of distance-energy tech the Russians had been hoarding; a long shot, but their best bet for disrupting the Bugs' communication and neurofunctions.
They were losing. Ianto could tell from the shouting going on in the boardroom, which had become the Northeastern Quadrant Coordination Centre by the sheer virtue of the mainframe's processing prowess. Jack was yelling and - unexpectedly - Martha was yelling back. She'd rendezvoused with Major Hopps and his company to help coordinate the ground forces, but-
Ianto glanced at his monitors; his logistical nightmare was in a temporary lull, so he slid away from his workstation and headed over to the boardroom with a groan, stretching out his kinked shoulders.
Add one world-wide crisis, shake, and voilà: the boardroom had transformed into a military command nexus. All the monitors were active; real-time troop movements, talking heads in various uniforms, and states of panic flashed across the screens, while the two surviving satellites in orbit monitored the confetti of alien ships surrounding Earth. It still outraged Ianto, somewhere beneath the terror and the worry and the exhaustion, that humanity was going to fall in the face of some overgrown cockroaches and a fleet of rusted garbage scows.
"-this is what we have, Jack!" Martha, larger than life on the main monitor, slammed her palm against her table, scattering printouts. There were messy left-over take-away boxes on the sideboard next to Jack and an empty coffee cup under the table. Ianto wasn't about to pick anything up. He'd graduated from office boy about the time he'd had to refuse an urgent air support request and then listen to an outpost somewhere in Argentina get overrun.
"Two hundred different types of toilet paper and no one has a truly space-worthy craft." Jack hung his head and closed his eyes, looking terribly old for a moment.
"The shuttles-" Martha didn't sound convinced herself, and she looked exhausted.
Jack snorted. "Sure. We'll just throw 'em into space since the Swarm destroyed any launch pad big enough to handle the rockets."
"The Israelis have nearly finished the redesign of their nukes for space flight," Gwen said briefly, not even bothering to turn away from the array of monitors in the corner, where she focussed on coordinating the civilian rescue and evacuation efforts across Britain.
"We used to have a Judoon Sunglider," Ianto broke in. "And a Twi'leg evacuation pod and a Chula ambulance shell from World War II."
Jack glanced over sharply. "Not here."
"Torchwood One. We had all that... until the Cybermen came," Ianto said, glancing up at Martha hopefully. UNIT and Torchwood Three had crawled over the ruins of Canary Wharf, filling their pockets with anything valuable.
"If it didn't fit into the back of a lorry, we couldn't take it," Jack said. "And with everything that happened, we couldn't spare anyone away from the Rift for long."
After a brief glance off-screen, Martha shook her head. "UNIT doesn't have anything like that from Torchwood One. It must have been destroyed."
Ianto's mouth twisted briefly, sour with the memory of those days - the gnawing fear in his stomach, now, reminded him far too much of then. "I guess nothing good came out of that place, in the end."
Martha diplomatically broke the uncomfortable silence. "I've called, well, everyone I can-" She smiled wryly, then stopped trying to be coy. "The Doctor. I've called, but can't get hold of him. He's not answering Sarah Jane, either."
"Of course he's not," Ianto sighed.
"We can't win this way," Jack sounded half-strangled, eyes haunted. "They'll just keep coming - they'll call more of them out of the dark. There's always more."
"You don't know that," Martha said, and Jack's hand slammed with a crack on the tabletop, making them all jump.
"I know," he snarled and, god, Ianto remembered that face - bared teeth and wide, furious eyes - from the horrible night Lisa, what was left of her, had died. It was Jack at his most frightened and his most desperate. "Because I was there and they kept coming and everyone died."
"Then," Martha said crisply, "is not now. And we must survive because you are here. Now."
Ianto could hear the subtle snap in her voice, even over the comms - so far immune to Swarm interference thanks to the Americans and Mr. Smith - and Jack straightened up, face hard for a moment longer before it softened in a faint smile at her. She gave him a small nod back as Jack visibly pulled himself together. Martha had saved the world, Jack claimed, and in that moment, Ianto could see it. Now they just had to do it again.
"Jack isn't the only thing from... then," Ianto said suddenly. He hadn't exactly forgotten, but sometimes the habit of secrets lasted too long. He fished the leather band from his pocket and set it on the table. "Your vortex manipulator," he said, and waved a timey-wimey hand at Martha's curious look. "Jack's other one - uh - the other Jack."
"He wasn't Jack," Jack muttered as he scooped up the wriststrap eagerly. "Not then."
Gwen swung around then, chair squeaking, face marked with the long terrible hours they'd been facing and the silent worry Ianto shared - family and friends, all of them exposed to the battles raging across the world. "Can you go back and... and stop all this before it happens? Stop the signal?"
Jack shook his head immediately. "I can't cross my timeline like that - especially not me now and-" He held up his hand against Gwen's obvious solution. "The time travel function is bio-locked to one user - me, in this case."
"What about teleporting up there?" Ianto insisted, because it would make a wonderful, perfect sort of sense if Jack - Jack from now and 626 who'd lost everything here in Torchwood - could save the world through Torchwood. "A team moving from ship to ship via teleportation could do a lot of damage."
"These things carry one person only," Jack said gently. "Even I couldn't do much before I was caught. That sort of... risky mission..." He shook his head. "We'd need to find their tactical command."
Ianto wanted to snatch the wriststrap back now, because sending Jack up for some eternal suicide mission was the last thing he wanted.
"Then that's what we'll do," Martha said stubbornly. "We do have some useful equipment, twenty-first century or no. UNIT has done some ship identification and orbital analysis. There is a key ship up there, one that remains central to all the Wirrin's movements and safely out of range of any jury-rigged nukes we could come up with. It's not coming in to drop troops, either, so it's got to be doing something else. If we can get there, it might make the difference."
"Jack," Ianto prompted, "you're our expert. Do they even have a central command?"
Shrugging, Jack dropped his eyes to the table and shook his head. "I don't know. They're not a true hive mind but-"
The monitors behind Gwen beeped loudly, and dissolved into static. "Shit!" she said, whirling around in her chair. "I think I've lost communications, or-"
Martha blinked in and out on the large monitor, into blue screen, then a series of jumbled letters and symbols began scrolling.
"Oh God, something's in our systems!" Gwen said, frantically typing with no result.
"Gwen!" Jack lunged forward, staring at the screen. "Emergency data lock!"
"That'll shut down our entire system," Gwen said, wide-eyed but already calling up the core command terminal.
"No!" Ianto gripped Jack's sleeve. The jumble on the screen was a mixture of alien languages, binary code - Ianto recognised a star chart; this wasn't entirely unfamiliar. "Wait-"
"We can't let them access our information! Do it, now!"
"It's not them," Megan panted, rushing into the room. "It's Naz, like before. Ze's awake, Captain. Ianto, maybe you can speak with hir again; ze responded to you."
Ianto nodded and rose from his seat to follow Megan out the door. He heard the others get up, as well, but Megan turned back quickly.
"I'm not sure all of us marching down there will be… conducive to gaining information, Jack. We don't want to overwhelm hir."
Jack's jaw tightened, but he nodded in agreement. "Gwen, you stay here and get hold of Martha again before she thinks we've all been eaten, got it?"
"Right, Jack," Gwen said, dropping back into her chair.
The alien - Naz - was awake and even sitting up on hir trolley when Ianto came down to the med bay. He pulled up a chair and dropped into it, too tired to worry about some unlikely attack from their guest.
"I recall you," the Hub's speakers buzzed to life. "From my last waking period. You and the medic."
"Yes." Ianto wondered for a moment if he should do some 'me jane' sign language, but the alien's dark eyes were watching him alertly and it didn't seem necessary or polite. "We found you at a crash site-"
Naz's face shifted, the centre, where there should be a nose and wasn't, bunching strangely. "Did you stop them?" Even pre-recorded, the voice was urgent. "The Swarm."
Ianto shook his head and watched the strange expressions shift. "No. They're here. We've been under attack for awhile."
"I am sorry," Naz said. "We tried to stop them."
"You've seen them." Ianto leaned forward, staring into Naz's strange, dark eyes. "Can you tell us anything, anything at all, that will help us fight them?
Rhys poked his head around a corner and immediately drew back. Dammit, there were six of them! Maybe he shouldn't have ditched the car, but given how choked the roads were getting with abandoned cars and looters' debris, he'd come to a standstill about a mile back. Still, the car had offered a protective shield, he'd thought... until he had seen a UPS lorry getting batted around by three of the huge bugs. That was the first time he'd used the laser gun, and Gwen wasn't kidding about the collateral damage. He'd taken off half the lorry. He snorted. Not your standard delivery delay, that. Dear Valued UPS Customer: We're sorry to inform you that your package was vaporised in a battle betwixt man and alien. If you get this note, man won.
He felt bile rise in his throat again at the memory of the UPS driver's head. He hadn't been in time to save her. He'd got the bugs at least, the laser burning holes right through their exoskeletons. But six? He'd do better to go another way. He kept to the wall until he reached the doorway of a shop. He had to use the laser gun to get the door open, just a tiny pulse, not a full blast. He was getting to be quite the expert with that gun.
He ran at a half-crouch for the rest of the block before pausing at the next road junction, clutching his ribs. He shouldn't have skipped so many practices for Harwoods' Sunday league rugby team. The clacking of big bug legs on pavement made him freeze, chest constricting. A bug was eyeing him from the corner diagonal to his own. Three more bugs skittered and clicked up out of the foundations of the building. Rhys swallowed. That building was under construction; there could be a dozen more bugs in there. He raised the laser gun.
A whistling creak suddenly drew those horrible eyes upward, and Rhys's gaze followed. His jaw dropped in tandem with three huge paving slabs from a construction crane. Splat! Splat! Splat! went three of the bugs. Rhys crowed his relief as he took aim at the last bug and blasted it away with his laser.
"Thanks, mate!" he called to the worker in the crane as he took off running yet again. Two streets to go.
With no time to catch his breath, Rhys hurried on, but when he rounded the corner to the school he slammed to a halt. The building was crawling with bugs: giant beetles, cockroaches, something with wings, and a few stick figures interspersed amongst their bulkier companions. None of them had noticed him just yet, their attention fixed on the building and getting to the fertile young brains inside. Three bugs moved aside and Rhys swore under his breath. There was the Harwoods Haulage lorry, upright at least, but covered in dents and thin splashes of blood. The driver's door was open, and on the ground...
Rhys blinked against a sudden wetness in his eyes. He remembered Frankie's first day on the job and a botched delivery of weight-lifting apparatus to a nursing home. Frankie had one gold tooth, a stomach of steel and the loudest belches Rhys had ever heard. And now he was lying on the ground with half his head missing, leaving his kids without a father.
Rhys looked down at his laser gun. It was so small. Had he just been lucky to get this far? If he kept on, would he be depriving his own child of a father? He had told Gwen he would stay safe. He shifted his feet. And then he heard it.
It was coming from inside the school, just loud enough to be heard above the clicking and clacking of the bugs: 'Hymns & Arias,' just like at a match. Dozens of childish voices, and some adult, too, refusing to go without a fight. That decided him.
The school was set against a small hill, making the ground floor windows in the back of the school lower than the windows out front. He needed a way to get to the back, fast. And then get the humans on the inside to let him in through a window. He'd cross that bridge when he came to it. The bike rack was fairly close to his position. Unfortunately, the only bike left intact by the swarming bugs was one with training wheels. And a basket, pink streamers and a little bell. 'PRNCSS' declared the back number plate. He took his dignity by the balls and slunk forward. The bugs didn't glance his way. Rhys made it all the way to his pretty chariot before a gigantic dung beetle turned in his direction and opened its mouth, pincer-like teeth snapping.
"Holy shit!" he yelped, tossing aside any remaining hesitation and pedalling for all he was worth. He rounded the corner of the school, sending up a spray of tiny pebbles from the asphalt, and continued steering one-handed as he fumbled with the laser gun to fire over his shoulder. He craned his neck to see, and grinned fiercely at the destruction in his wake. He swivelled his head to the front just in time to run smack into a partition wall.
The handlebars crumpled as he went over them, and the laser gun flew from his grasp, spinning away and under a scraggly bush. He lay flat on his back for just two seconds before a skittering sound pulled him to his feet. No way was he getting squashed by a ladybird! The giant insect lumbered closer. Rhys grabbed the banged up bicycle in his hands, raised it over his head and threw it with a loud "ARGHHHHHHHH!"
The ladybird tumbled onto its back, shrieking madly, its legs waving uselessly in the air as Rhys dove for his laser gun. More bugs rounded the corner, and Rhys's heart pounded so loudly in his ears that he thought surely it was drowning out all other sounds in the entire world. His fingers closed around the laser gun and he straightened, his back against the wall as the bugs advanced, pincers extended menacingly.
Suddenly he was falling again, backwards this time, as hands gripped his shoulders and pulled him back through a window, and into the school.
"Hurry, mates! Put your backs into it! You lot, get that window closed! NOW!"
Rhys was dumped unceremoniously on his arse as his rescuers scrambled to lock the window and shove a whiteboard in front of it.
"Thanks," he managed to gasp out, struggling to his feet yet again. "I thought for sure those pincers were going to- Thanks."
"They're mandibles, silly," piped up a small boy, maybe around nine? Rhys couldn't tell, but he frowned, and stood to his full height.
"Shut it, you. No one likes a know-it-all," one of his adult rescuers said, cuffing the boy gently. "Johnny Davies," he said, extending his hand. "We heard your battle cry. Well, David here, who was supposed to be well away from the windows and is lucky his mother is in the gym and didn't see him, saw you coming. On a princess bike."
Rhys blushed. "Not much in the way of transportation available," he muttered.
"Is that real?" the boy - David - asked, pointing to the laser gun.
A horrific crunch sounded from the window, and the whiteboard fell flat to the floor as a bug's head appeared, pincers - mandibles - waving. Rhys raised his arm and calmly shot it with the laser gun.
"Wicked!" David breathed.
"Come on, that window's destroyed - back to the gym," Johnny said hurriedly, grabbing hold of David's hand and shooing Rhys's other rescuers, a man and two women, on ahead of them. Rhys ran right beside them.
"Where did you get that?" Johnny asked, keeping one eye behind them as they trotted down a corridor. "We've armed ourselves with cricket bats and roach spray."
"It's Torchwood. Standard issue," Rhys replied, and secrecy be damned. It was a laser gun. It wasn't like he'd picked it up at Tesco's.
"Torchwood!" Johnny exchanged a glance with David, and for the first time Rhys realised they must be father and son. They wore the exact same wide grins now. "About bloody time you showed up!"
Swanson, Andy, a few orderlies, and the doctors and nurses not afraid to raise their voices had corralled the majority of patients in the underground cafeteria. The immobile ones were still in their beds, parked in the corridors around it. Andy was trying to calm the patients and answer their questions while giving nothing away. Swanson relayed emergency orders, if only to avoid a mass, panicked flight. There was only one exit, and Andy figured it wasn't advisable to use it under any circumstances.
"But I don't understand," Ms. Jones, one of the patients, said, tugging on Andy's uniform. "Shouldn't there be some sort of army thing? Military?" She tapped the radio on Andy's shoulder. "Can't you use that thing for anything useful?"
For what felt like the millionth time, Andy began to explain that the radio wasn't picking anything up, that his signal was completely scrambled; then Swanson called his name and waved him over to a cluster of doctors and nurses on the other side of the room. He patted Ms. Jones on the shoulder and gave her some mumbling answer about stiff upper lips and all that, before joining the rest of the small group.
"Well, obviously we can't hold out forever," Swanson was saying as he approached. "And we need to let people know we're in here."
"On the way down I heard helicopters," one of the doctors (nametag reading 'Bashir, Julian') told them, pulling his white coat tighter about himself. "Doesn't that mean that the military is here? Or that other lot, the ones that deal with this kind of thing?"
"Torchwood," Swanson said, rolling her eyes.
Dr. Bashir blinked. "UNIT, I think they're called. What's a Torchwood?"
Andy tried not to smile. Tempers were already short as it was, and Swanson was in a bad mood, no matter how good she was under pressure. They were all starting to fray around the edges. It was the worst possible place to be, actually, the basement cafeteria with no other way out, and-
"If there are helicopters," he said slowly, "you don't suppose they're looking for places that need help? Places to set down?"
Swanson stared at him, but she wasn't really seeing him. The gears in her head, the ones that made her a Detective Inspector, were turning. "Is there a helipad up there?" she asked, turning to look at Bashir, who shrugged.
"Yeah," one of the nurses said around an unlit cigarette. She bit down on the filter so that it was a soggy mess hanging from her lip, and her fingers fiddled with a cheap plastic lighter. "The air ambulance pad is up there, big X and everything."
Swanson looked at him. "If we go up there, we could create a signal, maybe get them to land some troops or something. At least they'd know we're in here."
Bashir glanced back at the full cafeteria and the corridor that was visible through the mesh glass wall next to them. "We can't move these patients anymore. Some of my nurses are bagging patients as we speak." He waved a hand. "Some of them don't even have beds here. We'd have to blanket-drag them."
Andy stared out at the field of patients on benches and chairs and litters and realised that this was it. This was where they were going to end up. There was no other place to fall back to. He thought about that movie he'd seen, the one with the ring and the little people and the battles, and the way the men had retreated into the citadel in the mountain, knowing that there was no other way to go, no other escape to make.
Well then.
As they listened to Naz explain - the Wirrin, hir ship, hir crew, what happened - images splashed across the monitor projection on the wall of the med bay. Jack tried to pay attention to the words, to eke out any memories, but he wasn't getting anything more than he already knew. Ianto, however, was paying more attention to the screen.
"Oh. Oh!" Ianto said, turning quickly and sprinting up the steps.
"Ianto!" Jack started after him, nodding at Megan to stay put. He followed the sound of Ianto's running footsteps down the stairs and into the archives. He stuck his head around a row of shelving. "Bad time for hide and seek!"
"Ah- where is it..."
Jack followed the muttering to where Ianto was sitting cross-legged on the floor, tapping out a code on an electronic lock. It beeped open just as Jack came up next to him.
"I think I know what we can do, Jack." Ianto hauled the case out of the locked shelf and flipped it open. "This!"
Jack knelt down beside him and reached in to touch the smooth metal casing. "It looks like Tosh is going to save us again."
"I helped," Ianto said with a pleased grin.
"You and Tosh built a bomb?" Jack looked down at it again, taking a guess on how powerful it was by the neat equations Tosh had written on it in permanent marker. It made sense that the thing wasn't in one of the special bomb-proof rooms. If it ever went off, it would collapse half the bay. "This bomb?"
"Not a just a bomb," Ianto patted it affectionately then closed the lid. "A fail-safe. If anyone ever took over the Hub, got past us all-" He raised his head to meet Jack's eyes sombrely. "We couldn't let all this technology fall into the wrong hands."
Jack looked down at the case and began to feel something like hope. "Let's see if we can make this Tab A fit into the Slot B up there." He picked up the case and stood. Ianto fell in beside him, at his shoulder, as they went back upstairs.
The Nwaxan-chu looked pretty fit for a being whose insides had been on the outside not long ago. The random images that had been flashing by on the monitors were replaced by much more sensible schematics - ship schematics - and if Naz was right, that ship held the Swarm's central command, and their hope of victory. If only they could get to it. Jack flipped open his manipulator, using the all-call instead of broadcasting this conversation all over the Hub.
"Can you walk?" Jack asked bluntly. "Naz-h?" Ze was a soldier and deserved a modicum of respect. Especially since Jack was going to ask hir to possibly sacrifice hir life on a deadly mission.
The Nwaxan-chu turned to him, face bunching with resignation. "If I must, Commander. Your medic has provided adequate support." Jack's all-call gave hir a more neutral voice than the Hub's predesigned female tones. It was also better able to translate the subtle tones of weariness, grief and dull acceptance.
"Sounds like you know that ship and we'll need a technician up there," Jack nodded at the monitor, "so, yeah, needs must."
"Needs mustn't!" Megan interrupted sharply. "You can't just demand a wounded stranger leap out of bed to go on a life-or-death mission."
"You said yourself that Naz is healing remarkably fast," Jack said coolly, crossing his arms and watching Naz instead of Megan. He knew what Megan looked like, especially when she was irritated with him.
"Yes." Megan circled to face him, putting her body between Naz and Jack in silent - probably unconscious - defiance. "Meaning ze's not dead and that's a far cry from being able to fight. Ze is in the sort of pain that would have most people screaming, and trapped with aliens ze doesn't know - or have any reason to trust with hir life. How can ze make any sort of true, considered decision?"
"We need hir," Jack replied, stern. "If we're going to destroy that ship, I need someone who knows it besides myself. Simple."
Megan's eyes narrowed. "Find someone else, Naz is a refugee. We aren't the sort of people who use the wounded and the different as cannon fodder."
"Naz is-"
"I am a soldier," Naz interrupted, tipping hir head in gratitude to Megan. "I understand this. All soldiers are expendable."
"No one is just expendable!"
"Jack-" Ianto said, sitting on Owen's old chair with the failsafe at his side.
"Here and now?" Jack shot back, cutting Ianto off. "We're all expendable, Megan!"
"Jack."
"What?" he snapped.
"I know the ship," Ianto said. "I told you before. We've had a similar model on file for years - it's a Sebacean far traveller, front and aft mounted plasma cannons, inter-phaseal FTL type-two engines and probably a negative ionic energy shield." He gave them all a small smile. "Older model, you told me once. Naz thinks the Wirrin captured it just like they did hir ship, ate the crew, and learned how to fly it."
Jack pulled in a ragged breath, as if gut-punched. Ianto met his eyes and his expression gentled.
"And I can walk," he finished. "Simple."
"No," Jack and Megan chorused.
"Naz is better suited," Jack went on, ignoring the way the Nwaxan-chu dipped hir head at Jack's assessment of value.
The alien might be used to obedience without enthusiasm, but Ianto stood, lips pressed together. Still, he turned to the alien and held out a gentle hand. "Naz?"
Jack gritted his teeth; he knew what Ianto was trying to do, but he didn't stop him. He needed to know. Naz reached out, long grey fingers wrapping around Ianto's, and eased carefully off the trolley over Megan's protests. And doubled over, face flushing dark with pain and shame.
"I would need to adjust my xwel hormone to control the pain," Naz admitted. "But I would be able to function in two... hours for... a span of time."
Ianto met Jack's eyes over the alien's shoulder and shook his head slightly. Jack spun on his heel and strode out of the med bay.
He didn't go far; he didn't have anywhere to go. Instead, he holed up in his office, tempted for a moment to dig out his scotch, but the last thing he needed now was to make himself stupid or maudlin. He fumbled in the bottom drawer of his desk instead, pulling out the old box and smoothing his hands over the familiar shape of it. It was getting too full. Jack tapped his index finger on the box. Once. Twice. Three times. No. He wasn't going to add to his regrets, if he could help it. Not yet, anyway. He pulled out his mobile and dialled Mr. Smith, who routed him through two communication nodes before he reached-
"Mickey!"
"Not the best time now, Cupcake," Mickey said, panting in Jack's ear. Sharp explosions of gunfire sounded in the background. "Damn it!" There was a clatter, as if Mickey dropped the phone, and more gunshots, closer. Jack waited, keeping his fingers crossed.
A minute later, there was a scrape, and Mickey was back. "What's so important you call me in the middle of a war zone?" Mickey demanded. He sounded angry, but that was sort of the default setting where Mickey was concerned.
"Same thing as last time. How's it coming?"
Mickey sighed. "We've got a place all staked out. Half the team is there now, keeping an eye on things. I'm trying to get the rest of my guys there, but it's kinda hard to do when I'm on the phone!"
"Mickey..." Jack didn't know what to say. Thank you. I'm counting on you. Don't let me down. "Do your best. And... thanks."
There was a long pause, and the sound of something like a rocket in the distance. "Just get your job done, right? Trust me, my team can handle a few bugs. Count on it."
"I am," Jack said. Mickey may have been waiting for a punchline, but for once, Jack didn't have one. The door opened and Megan stepped in. "Gotta go. Good luck," Jack rang off.
"Isn't this what we need?" Megan asked. "We'll be able to defeat the Swarm if we can threaten or destroy their species memory."
"We've got everything except the wheels," Jack quipped, pocketing his mobile and flipping the lid closed on his box of memories.
"Well, the swarm has hundreds of ships," Megan pointed out a little impatiently. "Surely we can capture one of them and find someone to fly it."
"That's exactly right, Doc," Jack said with a tight grin. "We'll just pop out and pick one up. They won't mind."
"I didn't assume it would be easy," Megan shot back, looking insulted. "But it is reasonable. And a little karmic, if you ask me. But you can't take Ianto with you."
"Megan, don't start this."
"There's got to be someone else who has the knowledge or can learn it in time." She leaned on the desk, and Jack realised she was pleading for Ianto's life, as if he wanted to get him killed. "He's had no chance to rebuild a life, working here. Jack... he's not even thirty years old! Find someone else."
"There isn't anyone else-"
"I can't believe that." She paused then went on with a flash of anger in her eyes. "You may live forever, but we don't, and you need to stop treating us - him - as if he will. This mission is obviously high-risk, and hasn't he done enough?"
"I don't have a choice!" Jack stood up to glare right back at her. "There are no more choices left, Megan, and if the cavalry is going to ride out of the sunset, they haven't told me! You, me, Gwen, Ianto, a half-dead alien, and all the flesh and blood on Earth are what we have against the sort of monsters that have left star systems empty of life!"
"You're letting your own fear blind you!" Megan shouted back. "There are a dozen other agencies in the world that have people, equipment, skills... Torchwood isn't standing alone anymore."
"And we're not going to shy away, either," Ianto said quietly behind them, shutting the door as he stepped into the office. "I think you've seen the survival rates for Torchwood employees."
Jack flinched and Megan threw up her hands in frustration. "Forgive me for not being a gloomy fatalist. You're not a statistic."
"No," Ianto said, his mouth set stubbornly, and Jack suddenly wanted to take a picture of that, of every moment, and keep them all - as though enough of them would keep Ianto alive. "I'm not a statistic, nor a babe in the woods, nor a coward." His voice rose. "This is my life and this is the life I've built-"
Jack winced; clearly he'd heard everything.
"-because I've chosen it." Ianto was answering Megan, but his eyes were on Jack. "With my eyes open. I'm where I want to be. If Tosh were here, she'd be the one going instead of me, but right now I'm all we've got."
Megan had her arms crossed and was glaring stubbornly, in that moment much like Gwen, like Owen, like Lucia... Jack realized he didn't hate her - for her challenges and her stubbornness and her single-minded determination. He admired that in a woman. In a person. In a soldier.
"I understand war," Megan said painfully. "I've seen child soldiers and old men fighting and dying - for all kinds of bad and good reasons. I don't have to like it."
"Soldiers hate war, too," Jack said. "But don't deny us dignity in the choices we do have left."
Megan lowered her head, and closed her eyes. "I'm going to go check on Naz," she said tiredly.
Jack leaned back in his chair as Ianto settled on the desk while the door shut behind Megan. "You never talk much about why you're still here."
Ianto's mouth lifted in a small smile. "It isn't actually because I believe there's nothing left to live for."
"Well, that's good." Jack reached out and smoothed his hand up Ianto's thigh, managing a bit of a smile in return. "Because that would imply sad things about my sexual technique."
Ianto huffed a brief laugh. "So, how suicidal is this mission?"
Jack rolled his shoulders, neck cracking. "The Wirrin aren't stupid, unfortunately, and they protect their strategic thinkers with everything they have - the entire history of their species is sitting up in that ship; their geniuses, their scientists, their generals. When one of their ships goes missing, they'll be on the lookout for it."
"Oh, well, that's not certain death," Ianto said lightly. He cocked an eyebrow and leaned forward, wrapping a hand in Jack's braces to tug him close. The courage in his smile made Jack ache. "Besides, with a hero like me on the job, how can we lose?"
Jack pressed his face to Ianto's shoulder with an aching laugh.
It All Changes: Part Three