sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 03:30 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 03:30 pm
Entry tags:
Condition of Release, 1/5
Title: Condition of Release
Part: 1 of 5
Rating: PG-13; R in the final chapter
Summary: Jack has studied the Cybermen for forty years, and he's damned if he'll let one take any of his people away from him without a fight.
Beta Credit:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
51stcenturyfox, misswinterhill, neifile7, and spiderine are winnars! :D
Notes: This was inspired by Tomb Of The Cybermen and The Invasion, two Classic Who episodes which indicate that Cybermen have the power to control human minds. The mythology of the Cybermen is complicated and contradictory, but a remarkable constant remains their desire, their need, for a human collaborator to ready the way for them.
Warnings: I'm not sure how to warn for this one. There are strong themes and portrayals of mind control, including some dubcon (though of an interpersonal rather than explicitly sexual nature). If you are triggered by dubious consent or nonsexual external control, I would suggest having a trusted friend review this before reading.
First Posted 4.5.2010 - 4.9.2010
Also available at AO3.
CHAPTER ONE
The old 8mm film-recording is full of shadows.
There is a man in one of the shadows, hidden in the dark, not through any artifice but just because the camera can't pick him up where he sits on the edge of the light. A bare expanse of table separates him from a young woman, a beautiful young woman with long smooth hair and wide eyes. Impossible to tell on black-and-white tape what colour her eyes are, but they were blue. Or maybe green -- the memory plays tricks after forty years.
She looks innocent, but she isn't. If she were, she wouldn't be there in the room of shadows, with the lamp's light turning her face and the table and the man's hands bleached white, stripped of detail on the film.
"Tell me about Toberman, Victoria," the man says. His voice isn't unkind, but it brooks no disobedience. He spins a pencil once, briefly, in his right hand, then pulls a pad of paper a little closer. It's already half-full of notes, the used pages flipped over and tucked under.
"Do I have to?" she asks wearily. "It's horrible, and I'm so tired."
"Just this," the man promises, "and then you can rest before we continue."
Sad to see her eyes brighten just before he hits the part about continuing.
"Toberman was Kaftan's servant," she says, a little defiant. She knows they won't stop until they know everything, but they've promised they'll stop once they do. "He was the first one the Cybermen got hold of."
"Did they convert him?" the man asks.
Victoria frowns. "What do you mean?"
"Did they make him like them. Metallic," he clarifies. The pencil spins again before he puts it to paper.
"No," Victoria says, twisting her fingers together, head bowed, as if this is a punishment. The debriefing is just a necessity; they did try not to hurt her. The interrogator told them physical torture would be fruitless and cruel; fine, they said, you get the truth out of her without it. So he had. "The Cybermen -- they changed him. They made him do their bidding. It was like they controlled him with their minds. He would do...things, things they wanted him to do."
"How?" he asks.
"I don't know!"
"Did he have any implants?"
"Just one, on his arm."
The interrogator ticks a few words against the paper with his pencil -- she sees it, and knows eventually they'll come back to that implant, what size it was, what colour, what was it made of.
"Nothing else," she says, resigned. "He just...did things."
"What kinds of things?"
"He would...stop people who were threatening the Cybermen. It's awful; why can't you leave it alone?" she blurts, angrily.
"You know why I can't, Victoria," the man replies, and there is a hint of threat behind the supposedly gentle tone. "Torchwood needs to know these things. To protect ourselves if the Cybermen ever come here. Ever come back."
***
What stayed with Jack the longest, that night, wasn't blind fury or dying or even Ianto's punch that left him with a split lip for two weeks. It was the smell, after the shooting. Cordite in the air like a haze -- and blood, and just a tangy hint of Myfanwy's protein sauce. There was one pure moment of clarity when all his senses were so sharp, and he recalled the weight of his gun and Ianto's cries and Gwen's hiss of breath when the metal helmet fell from the Cyberwoman's head. But the smell was the only thing that seemed to belong to reality. The rest felt like a filmstrip, or something he'd read about once.
Then he fell back into his body, back into the situation that had almost cost his team their lives and would have destroyed humanity, if he'd let it. He had three frightened agents to reassure, two bodies to dispose of, a pterodactyl who probably needed stitches, and --
And Ianto. Ianto, who had gone so still and quiet, whose anger and grief was...oddly...absent.
"I think he's going into shock," Owen said, holstering his gun. "Jack -- "
"No, I don't think so," Jack answered. A different kind of clarity was settling in, driven less by adrenaline than by knowledge of what was happening, what he was witnessing.
"Jack, he's not moving," Tosh said.
"Nobody touch him," Jack ordered. He edged forward. Ianto didn't move, didn't react. Jack crouched on the other side of Lisa's body and reached out a hand. There was a brief electrical spark when he touched Ianto's skin, but nothing more. He tipped the young man's chin up, slowly.
Ianto's eyes were fixed like a dead man's, blind and unfocused. No sign of consciousness, no rage, no sadness, no fear. When Jack pulled his hand back, Ianto stayed in the pose he'd set him in. His breathing was shallow and even, no trace of the hitching sobs of a moment before.
"This is wrong," Gwen said, her voice cracking, panic bubbling through. "There's something wrong with him."
"Yeah, well, we just shot his girlfriend," Owen answered -- biting, but with that same about-to-lose-it tremble that Gwen had. "Jack, listen, you might want to kill him but -- "
"I'm not going to kill him," Jack said softly. Ianto didn't react. Jack took one of his arms and it bent, unresisting, so he stood up and pulled and Ianto stood too. The tilt of his chin hadn't changed. He looked almost defiant, standing there, except for the dead, cold eyes staring straight through Jack at some distant inner vista. Or at nothing at all.
"Catatonia?" Gwen suggested, looking at Owen. He shook his head. "Well, what then?"
"Something a time traveller told me about, once," Jack replied, before Owen could answer. He let go of Ianto's arm and it fell to hang loosely at his side.
"What's that got to do with Ianto?" Tosh asked. She sounded calmer than the other two; curious and worried, but not verging on breakdown like Gwen and Owen. Jack turned to them.
"I'll take care of it," he said. "Go home. Get some rest. We'll clean up later."
"Jack, you can't just leave two bodies -- " Gwen started, but she stopped abruptly when Jack glanced at her.
"We can help," Tosh offered.
"It's my mess, I'll handle it," Jack retorted. "Go home. That's not a suggestion. It's an order."
The three of them telegraphed little looks back and forth, quickly. Owen seemed uncertain, but Jack could see Gwen and Tosh weren't interested in being first to obey. Finally, Owen made his own decision and turned to leave with a shrug. Gwen saw him and frowned, but she didn't hesitate much longer before she followed. Tosh, still reluctant to go, took a step back before stopping again.
"I'm taking the remote Rift monitor with me," she said.
"Good. Do that," Jack answered, turning back to Ianto.
"You'll call if you need us."
"I'll call," Jack agreed. He had no intention of needing them until they were rested, and until he'd figured out what to do about the empty shell in front of him. He didn't move again until he'd heard the pneumatic growl of the rolldoor closing after her.
First things first.
"I'm sorry," he told Ianto, as he cuffed his hands behind his back. Ianto didn't answer or resist. Jack took him by the shoulders and walked him down the hall to the atrium, then pushed him down to sit, probably very uncomfortably, on the stairs.
That done, Jack turned back to the Hub. What a godawful mess. He tucked his fingers between his lips and whistled shrilly, one of the few commands Myfanwy had learned and was willing to obey. There was a birdlike whimper from the other side of the Hub, and then a rustle of wings.
Myfanwy was not tame, not in the least, and she didn't like to be touched by anyone. Still, when he found her hiding in the shadows she let him get close enough to see that the wounds the Cyberwoman had inflicted were superficial; she even let him run his hands carefully along her beak, to be certain nothing was fractured.
"You'll be fine," he told her. She responded by trying to nip off three of his fingers. He smacked her sharply on the tip of her beak and she shrieked in indignant protest, but she also gathered herself and leapt upwards, lean muscles bunching and stretching, far enough to lift off and retreat to her nest on the upper levels.
The bodies could wait, and so could the conversion unit he'd have to dismantle, but if he was going to leave Lisa Hallett's body in the Hub for any length of time he was going to make damn sure she wasn't getting up again.
He walked back to where they'd left the bodies and crouched next to hers, trying not to look at her face. He took out his boot-knife and pried the Cyberwoman's chest-seal off. Inside was a bundle of wires right where Torchwood's research files had said they would be -- right where her heart should have been. The Cybermen kept upgrading their tech, but they didn't have the imagination to vary the basic design much. He tugged the bundle free. A little white foam oozed up between the circuits. If she hadn't been dead before, she was now.
He glanced at Ianto but Ianto was checked out, nobody home, bluescreen of death. Jack considered that the most merciful thing he could possibly do would be a bullet through the head, but if his suspicions were right then Ianto should at least be given a chance.
"Up you come," he said, pulling Ianto back to his feet and up the stairs. With the Cyberwoman permanently out, Jack unlocked the handcuffs and pushed Ianto back into the couch near his office. He went to his own desk, got a tin first-aid box from the top drawer, and took a bottle of smelling salts out of the box. Sometimes the old ways were best.
He pulled Owen's chair around and sat in front of the couch, then reached into his pocket and took out a handkerchief, clearing away at least some of the grime and snot and half-dried tears on Ianto's face.
He got his first reaction when he waved the open bottle under Ianto's nose; an instant recoil, a shake of the head, and then the awful dead staring eyes finally focused on Jack's face. Emotion; confusion. Good enough to start with.
"Ianto Jones," Jack said, and Ianto blinked. "Do you know where you are?"
Another good sign; Ianto turned his head, looking around, then back confusedly at Jack.
"Do you know who I am?" Jack asked.
"Captain Jack Harkness," Ianto replied. Hard to tell if he was still in there; the flat reply could be nothing more than leftover conditioning.
"You know why you're here?" Jack asked. Another slow blink. Shit.
But then --
"No," Ianto answered, and there was real confusion and fear in his voice. "I don't -- I -- "
"It's okay, you're safe," Jack said. "Focus on me. Right here."
Ianto obediently looked at him, or at least at the finger Jack was holding up. He looked exhausted. Jack wasn't daisy-fresh himself, but he was willing to bet Ianto was much worse.
"I need you to answer some questions for me," Jack said. "Where do you work?"
"Torchwood," Ianto replied briefly.
"Torchwood One?"
"Yes -- no -- Torchwood -- Torchwood Three, in Cardiff," Ianto stammered. He looked around, then back at Jack. "Don't I?"
"Good," Jack said, ignoring the question. "Who am I, again?"
"Jack," Ianto replied, a little hush in his voice.
"What do you do at Torchwood?" Jack asked.
"General support. I get you everywhere on time," Ianto said, with almost a hint of humour in his voice. "I clean...I clean up...after you," he added, tone disappearing, flattening out, like a recitation. Like a catechism. "And I look good in a suit."
"Stay here, Ianto, right here," Jack said, wobbling his finger. Ianto nodded obediently. His eyes flicked to Jack's face, then back to Jack's hand. "Okay. Just a little more. Do you remember Owen?"
"Yes," Ianto said.
"Toshiko?"
"Yes," with a slight smile. Good.
"And Gwen? You remember Gwen?"
"Yes...why..." Ianto frowned. "What's -- I don't know why I -- "
"Nonono," Jack said hurriedly. "Here with me, remember?"
Ianto looked past his hand to his face. "Something's gone wrong, I can't -- hear -- "
"You can't hear?"
"It's gone, the -- "
"Ianto. Ianto!" Jack said, when Ianto tried to look past him. Ianto settled back again, a little, but he still seemed agitated. "Whatever's gone, it's not important, okay? It's not important right now. We'll deal with it later. We're safe here."
Ianto seemed to pull in on himself, either gathering his wits or withdrawing, Jack wasn't positive. Delicate business, this -- if Ianto went back in too far, the thin line connecting him to reality would snap. On the other hand, if he came all the way home too quickly, that could lead to a very different, much less pleasant form of madness.
"How do you feel?" Jack asked carefully.
Ianto looked baffled by the question, but he seemed to be giving it a fair try.
"Tired," he said finally. "I'm so tired, Jack."
"I know," Jack replied, relieved. "Anyone would be. So you're going to sleep, all right?"
Ianto nodded and his hands began fumbling against his thighs, as if he were feeling his pockets for his keys so he could drive home. He stopped suddenly and looked down. His hands were covered in dried blood -- some his own, some Jack's, mostly Lisa's.
Jack reached out quickly and covered the upturned palms with his own. They were still sticky.
"There's no way you're getting home tonight," he said. Ianto was staring at Jack's knuckles. "You can sleep here."
Ianto's lips curved upwards. "I can, can I?" he said, looking up at Jack slyly.
Oh, no. Oh, god, no.
"Not that way," Jack said, against the choking horror and the bile rising in his throat. For the first time it struck him just what the Cyberwoman had done -- just how much of whoever Ianto Jones actually was might have been violated by it, and what a hand he'd had in that. Not that he hadn't paid attention to Ianto, but it hadn't been the right kind. "You're going to sleep here," he said, pointing to the couch. Ianto looked down at it, considering.
"I'll get a blanket," he said, and was about to stand when Jack put a hand on his shoulder.
"No, stay there," Jack ordered. "Lie down, close your eyes."
He should take Ianto's tie off, at least, or have Ianto take it off himself, but at the moment the idea of forcing Ianto to undress at all appealed to him about as much as shooting him in the head had earlier. He felt a wave of relief when Ianto shrugged out of his coat without being asked, undid his tie and the top two buttons of his shirt, and bent to unlace his shoes. Jack took the opportunity to dart into his office and down into his little bolthole underneath, grabbing a spare military-surplus blanket from the locker at the foot of his cot. After a second's thought he picked up his own pillow from where it lay on the bed, stripped the case off it, and tucked it in with the blanket.
When he returned, Ianto was already asleep, collapsed across the couch. Jack lifted his head gently, sliding the pillow underneath it, then laid the blanket across Ianto's legs. He studied Ianto's bloody hands, fingers loose and half-curled, and after a minute's thought he fetched some alcohol wipes from the first-aid kit, cleaning the palms and each finger carefully. When he finally spread the blanket out over his shoulders, Ianto mumbled in his sleep and rolled over, curling inwards, his back to the world.
Jack watched to be sure he would stay asleep, and then went to dispose of the bodies. The logistics of getting one body to the incinerator and the second to a freezer drawer in the morgue for Owen to disassemble in the morning was something he could focus on. He could fix this, at least temporarily, and he could clean away some of the mess.
As he worked his mind naturally drifted, and after a night like tonight there weren't many places for it to go.
Ianto Jones. Ianto Jones in those sharp suits, with the delightful implication that Jack could, if he so chose, have Ianto Jones in no suit at all. Jack made a point of not fucking his employees unless they were really going to be worth it, and that combined with Ianto's own flirtatious reticence had kept them both firmly at arm's length, but it wasn't as though Jack hadn't been considering it. It wasn't as though he hadn't decided that Ianto would, in fact, be really worth it, if only he could push the flirtation over into something more.
So, another week or two, and maybe they would have. As it was, Jack had a lot of subtle but not apparently unwelcome touches to answer for, and more than a little innuendo if it came to that. Enough that the Cyberwoman had conditioned Ianto to look for it, to respond to it, and to initiate it. And that meant Ianto was still responding to some form of programming ghosting around in his head.
He wondered if he might have two Cyberbeings on his hands. Clever of her, really, to give her mobile half just enough autonomy to still seem human. Hell, most of Ianto's day-to-day behaviour was probably governed by a conscious mind. Most of what they'd seen, as his colleagues, was probably really him.
Probably, he thought, as he eased the Cyberwoman's body onto the slab. Probably wasn't good enough. He'd need to know for sure, when Ianto woke, and he'd need Owen for that.
And Owen would definitely need a medical bay that didn't look like a herd of cattle had stampeded through it. Which meant cleaning up in there, and then collecting all the damaged tech to dump on Tosh's desk, and then all the blown-around paperwork for his own desk, and then a structural inspection to make sure the Hub wasn't going to fall down around their ears because of anything the Cyberwoman had done, after which it would probably be good to wash the blood off the floor.
Well. A list. How very...how very Ianto Jones of him.
***
"What happened to Toberman?" the man asks, leaning forward, pencil at the ready. His face is still just barely in shadow, but the profile of it is clear enough, if one looks closely. He can't be doing it to avoid identification; anyone listening who knew him would know who he was anyway. "Did the Cybermen kill him?"
"No!" Victoria says, indignantly, as if she's on the ill-used Toberman's side -- and perhaps she is. "He seemed to sort of...break free. Like they couldn't quite hold onto him. He was very brave," she adds, loyally.
"He broke free from their control?" The man seems truly impressed for the first time. Victoria presses her advantage.
"That's right," she insists. "He attacked the Cybercontroller. He killed him, he threw him against a machine panel and electrocuted him."
"So Toberman survived," the man infers.
Victoria seems to shrink, losing the bravado of a moment before, all the hot indignation and defence of someone who must have been, in an odd way, a friend. It's too late, though -- he's seen the emotion she's capable of, and the strength she could use to defy him if she wants. He'll use it against her if he has to, at some other time, in some other story, and they both know it.
"No," Victoria says softly. "He died. While we were escaping, someone had to close the door, you see, and Toberman -- well, the door was electrified..."
The man is impassive, or at least seems to be; his profile doesn't shift, and if he's sympathetic to her pain it's not likely it shows.
"It was a terrible way to die," Victoria murmurs.
"I know you don't believe me, Victoria," the man says, "but I am sorry." He sounds like he means it, but then he always does sound that way, on the tape, in the shadow.
"You're right. I don't believe you," Victoria replies bitterly.
"You said you escaped..." the man begins, but she brings a hand down on the table (disappearing, white hand into white table on the overexposed film) and stops him.
"You said if I told you about Toberman I could rest," she insists, glaring at him, chin lifted defiantly. Victoria is small, the product of another time, when men and women were smaller. When the man rests his hand next to hers on the table, the size of it proves just what he could do to her if he wished. He is much larger than her, and what little can be seen of him is hard muscle. She looks down and seems to see the implicit threat, even if he didn't mean it, even if he wanted to calm her.
"I know I can't leave until I've told you everything," she says, voice lowering, eyes dropping like the good nineteenth-century girl she was raised as before she chose to step out of the time machine, to stay in the 20th century. Victoria the Victorian, in a frock that was all the rage in the mid-sixties. "But I'm tired, and I don't especially like to think about some of this."
"You're right," the man says, withdrawing, leaning back, not even a profile visible now. "I'm sorry, Victoria. We'll start here again tomorrow. I'll have them take you back to your room."
"And once I'm done -- "
"You can leave," the man promises her. He has no idea if it's true, but it sounds convincing. "We won't hurt you."
"Too late for that, I think, Captain Harkness," she replies, and the tape cuts out.
***
Ianto slept silently, unmoving, almost eerie in his stillness. Jack half-fancied that he would sleep until ordered to wake up. He'd slept through Jack crashing around the Hub, fixing what he could and setting aside what he couldn't. Jack's mobile was in his coat pocket, abandoned next to the sofa, and Ianto slept through that going off practically in his ear when Tosh rang later in the morning to see if she was needed. Jack called her back to ask if she'd drag Owen in, and she sighed and said yes. Perhaps he should have called Gwen, but he needed Tosh more than Gwen at the moment anyway.
What woke Ianto, Jack found, was the entry alarm going off. Perhaps it was just familiar noise, or perhaps more conditioning. It would have been useful to install a trigger like that -- some kind of alert that went off in Ianto's head when someone entered the Hub. That might be paranoia, though. The Cyberwoman's plan had depended an awful lot on luck, and Jack wasn't sure how clever she'd actually been.
"Right," Owen said, walking in ahead of Tosh and looking around at the Hub. "Looks almost livable in here again. How's he doing?"
Jack gestured to where Ianto was sitting up, yawning. Owen came up the steps cautiously, then pulled around the chair Jack had used the night before, blocking Ianto from standing.
"Coffee?" Ianto asked with a smile. Knowing what they all knew now, it was...eerie. Jack saw Tosh shudder and turn to her workstation, but she kept glancing over her shoulder even as she powered up what tech was left intact and began running diagnostics.
"No coffee-making for you this morning," Owen said briskly, taking out a penlight and shining it in Ianto's eyes. Ianto blinked, trying to avoid it. "Hold still. Follow my finger."
"I fell asleep on the sofa, I'm not mad," Ianto replied, annoyed. Owen glanced at Jack, who shrugged.
"You remember 'round three o'clock yesterday?" Owen said conversationally, moving his finger back and forth.
"I had to take the SUV for petrol," Ianto said.
"Right. Then you came back to the Hub."
Ianto nodded. "You were playing basketball."
Jack looked at Tosh, and saw his own guilty expression reflected in hers. Maybe Owen remembered Ianto coming in during the basketball game, but Jack hadn't even bothered to look him in the face on his way out the door with the others. Apparently Tosh hadn't either.
"And then?" Owen prompted. Ianto frowned.
"I called for -- I called -- because...something's missing," Ianto said suddenly. "I can't hear -- "
"Can't hear at all?" Owen asked.
"There's a sound...missing," Ianto answered. He looked frustrated.
"Well, can't have that," Owen remarked. "Medical. Give you a full scan and run some tests."
"I'm fine," Ianto said, craning his head to look around Owen. "Who trashed the Hub?"
"You might have a concussion," Owen said, ignoring him.
"Oh," Ianto replied. He let Owen pull him to his feet; he didn't seem to notice Jack and Tosh moving forward to the railing of the medical bay as he and Owen descended the stairs. He began to obediently strip off his shirt, but Owen stopped him.
"Torchwood, remember?" Owen said, with a deliberate light tone. He pulled the laser-scanner forward and was reaching out to touch-tap the projection screen on when Ianto inhaled sharply.
Jack looked from Ianto's fear-frozen face to the laser-scanner's refraction dish. In the right light, it did look very...cybernetic.
"It's just a scanner, Ianto," Tosh said. Ianto turned to look up at her. "Owen scanned me with it last week when I had that cough, remember?"
Bluescreen of death again. Ianto was still looking at her, but his expression had blanked out, and his eyes were empty once more. Jack put a hand on Tosh's arm. Her pulse under his fingers was racing. Owen didn't seem as fussed, and had already switched the scanner on.
"Jack, what am I looking for, exactly?" he asked, studying the model of Ianto's body that was rendering slowly on the projection.
"I'm not sure," Jack said. "Anything weird?"
Owen leaned in closer to the screen. "Hm. Need to check his files." He switched on a monitor and called up Ianto's medical history -- doctor's visits going back to childhood, Torchwood London's standard-required physicals, his minimal injury reports since arriving in Cardiff.
"Got a pin in his leg from a bad break, that's documented," Owen muttered. "Some standard physical irregularities -- everyone has them," he said to Jack, before Jack could even open his mouth to ask. Owen shifted Ianto's head slightly, like moving a mannequin, and the image on the projector changed to reflect it. "Aha, there we go."
"What is that?" Tosh asked, squinting at the screen. There was a thin glowing line in Ianto's head. Owen ran his fingers up into the short, fine hair above Ianto's neck, revealing a glint of metal in his scalp. Jack drew his gun.
"It's not connected to anything," Owen announced. "Doesn't even penetrate the skull."
"Can you remove it?" Tosh asked.
"Yeah, should be able to..." Owen's hand moved quickly, short blunt nails hooking into the wire. Before Jack could stop him, he tugged.
The wire came away in his hand, ends glistening unpleasantly, and Ianto heaved forward, almost falling off the table. Owen struggled to support his weight and Jack ran down to help, holstering his gun and clearing the last few stairs in a leap.
"Oh, Jesus," Ianto moaned, body lurching against their hands. Owen backed off and let Jack hold him steady, one arm securely around his waist, the other trying to catch his wrists as he struggled.
"Easy," Jack said, glancing at Owen, who shrugged. "Easy, deep breaths. Don't make Owen sedate you."
Ianto was shaking, but he'd stopped fighting, at least. Eventually the tremors subsided. Jack watched over Ianto's shoulder as Owen dropped the wire carefully into a tray Tosh was holding out; Tosh disappeared, back to her desk to hopefully find out what the hell the thing was.
"She's in the basement," Ianto gasped, choking on his own breath. "You have to -- corridor twelve, at the end, you have to kill her -- "
"We did," Owen said bluntly. Jack glared at him, but Ianto stiffened and looked at him.
"You -- did -- " he stammered, looking at Jack for confirmation. Jack nodded. "She's dead?"
"Last night," Jack said. "Remember?"
Ianto straightened slowly, and Jack released his wrists. He gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned white.
"You did," he said, more firm now in his conviction. "I saw that. There was a voice in my head. Then there wasn't."
Jack glanced up at the projection screen. Now he was a part of the image, a glowing network of lines, his gun a blue flare at his hip, his strap a red glow on his wrist. Ianto had a blue line in his right leg -- the pin Owen had mentioned -- and his belt-buckle was another blue splotch at his waist, but that was all.
"You're clean now," Owen told Ianto, not without sympathy. "They did a right number on you."
"It wasn't me," Ianto said to Jack, turning his head again.
"I'm getting that," Jack replied.
"I hit you," Ianto added, staring at Jack's bruised and split lip.
"I've had worse," Jack said lightly.
"Jack," Owen murmured. Jack turned to him. "Everything else checks out. Physically he's all right. A brain scan -- "
"No," Jack said. Ianto clutched his sleeve tightly. "No more digging around in anyone's brain just yet. Ianto -- Ianto listen to me," he said, as Ianto began to struggle away from them. Owen grabbed his right arm; Jack pinned his left arm across his body. "Stop! Listen to me!"
Ianto was breathing hard again, eyes darting back and forth between them, but he stopped moving.
"Nobody's going to hurt you," Jack told him, easing his grip a little. "We know what happened. You're scared, I get that. But we have to figure this out, and we can't do that if you're fighting us. Now we can sedate you -- "
"No!" Ianto tried to pull away again.
"Ianto, stop," Jack ordered. Ianto went still.
Still conditioned, then. Goddammit.
"Or we can put you in the cells until we know you're not a harm to anyone. Or," Jack said, as Ianto shook his head, "I can call Gwen and have her guard you while Tosh and Owen and I figure this out."
Ianto looked at him plaintively. "Gwen?" he asked uncertainly.
"Oh my god, he's forgotten her," Owen muttered.
"No, I know -- yes -- Gwen," Ianto said. He cast a quick, terrified look at the laser scanner. Jack leaned back a little and eased him off the table.
"Okay. Good. Let's get upstairs," he said, and let go of Ianto completely as Owen practically frogmarched him back up to the atrium and then into Jack's office. Tosh stopped Jack when he passed her desk.
"It's not a wire," she said softly. "It's a microtransmitter."
"Good to know -- "
"No, Jack, I don't think it is," she told him. Jack glanced at the office, where Owen was settling Ianto in a chair and giving him a glass of Jack's best whiskey.
"You think there might be an implant in his brain?" Jack asked.
Toshiko swallowed nervously. "No, but I think there are twenty-six other survivors," she said.
It took a second for Jack to realise what she meant, and when he did a rush of adrenaline hit his system so fast it made him dizzy.
"I want you to find them," he said. "Find all of them and get on every news report that looks even a little bit weird everywhere they are. Call UNIT -- no, don't do that, I'll call them," he said, when Tosh flinched at the mention of their name. "Just watch them. Watch them all. Check their power bills. Everything you can think of, you got that? First hint of suspicious activity, bring it to me."
She nodded, but she didn't go to work immediately; she leaned past him and glanced into his office.
"How is he?" she asked.
"I don't know," Jack answered. "Hey, first call Gwen and tell her I need her, okay?"
Tosh put in her earpiece. "On it."
"Thank you, Tosh," Jack said, mindful of the accusations -- however fabricated, however controlled by the machine -- that Ianto had leveled at him last night. "You okay?"
"Yeah, fine. Gwen, hi," Tosh said, turning away from him. "No, I'm at the Hub..."
Jack left her to it and went to his office. Owen was leaning against his desk, arms crossed; Ianto had the glass of alcohol in his hands but wasn't drinking. At least, he supposed, it was keeping Ianto's hands occupied. Which wasn't a bad idea, actually.
"Here," Jack said, picking up a pile of papers from his in-box. "Deal with this, would you?"
Ianto set the glass aside, took the papers and a pen from Jack's desk, and began looking them over. After a second he tried to start writing, but the pen was dry. He took another, tested it, and looked up at Jack with a smile on his lips.
"Top of the list," he said, pulling a notebook over, "order new biros."
Jack glanced over his head at Owen, who looked deeply creeped out.
"Go help Tosh," he said to Owen. "She'll fill you in. Send Gwen in when she gets here."
Ianto worked quietly, apparently content to be doing paperwork, neatly sifting through the documents and occasionally passing one to Jack for his signature. It was something they'd done before, when the Rift was slow, Jack working at the computer while Ianto took care of hardcopy reports, invoices, and the various memos that half a dozen other agencies thought Torchwood should be aware of. Jack had always thought of it as comfortably domestic, but now he found it troubling. Especially the idea that he had entrusted a good portion of his team's physical wellbeing to Ianto. Ianto bought their food, paid their bills, and told Jack what interagency communication was important and what wasn't.
When the entry alert finally rang, fifteen minutes later, Ianto looked up and smiled to see Gwen entering. He set down the paperwork neatly and put the pen back where he'd found it.
"Seems about time for coffee," he said, and started to stand. Jack reached across the desk and put a hand on his arm.
"Not today," he said. Ianto gave him a quizzical look, then a thoughtful one.
"No," he agreed. "I suppose not."
"Tosh said you wanted me?" Gwen asked, leaning in the doorway. She looked...wary. Worried. Jack stood and walked to the doorway.
"Jack wants you to guard me," Ianto said.
"Just let him do paperwork," Jack whispered to Gwen. "If he runs out, give him a book to read."
Gwen nodded and walked past him into the office. "Hi, sweetheart," she said, seating herself in Jack's chair. "Holding up all right?"
"Yes, thanks," Ianto said, returning to his paperwork. Jack gave her a shrug and went to talk to Tosh.
"Nothing so far," she said, when she saw him approaching. "If anyone's hiding a Cyberman -- or woman -- they're not hiding them in their homes. Checking their workplaces now but most of them don't work."
"High level of unemployment among deeply traumatised people," Owen said, a dark edge to his voice that Jack mistook at first for disdain, then realised was anger. "Can't imagine why it's hard to get or hold a job when everyone you know was killed in a fiery holocaust. Could it be the PTSD? The survivor's guilt? The missing limbs?"
"It might be a positive thing," Tosh said hesitantly. "Not for them, obviously, but Ianto...I mean, he did get a job, one you didn't even want to give him, and he kept it, because the...because it made him act like he wasn't traumatised at all. So I think maybe the people who can't...function very well, they might definitely be safe."
"Check them anyway," Jack said. "Unemployment is a good cover for having to wait on a Cyberman constantly."
"I always thought Ianto was fucking off to have a smoke," Owen said thoughtfully.
"He doesn't smoke," Jack replied, then considered it. "Does he?"
"Dunno, but it's what I'd do if I didn't mind eventual lung cancer," Owen said. "Gets you out in the air for a few minutes, gives you a reason to skive off. If he wasn't around, I assumed he was taking a break. Kept meaning to give him a pamphlet about it, actually," he said. "Never got round to it."
"Your Health And You: The Hazards Of Cyberman Mind Control," Tosh said, still staring at her screen. Owen snorted. Jack had to admit it was a little bit funny. He could always trust Tosh to bring the gallows humour. "Look, Jack, I think I've got as much information as I can. We can't really know unless we inspect every one of them individually. If the Cyberwoman managed to send any kind of signal to the others, we won't have the time. If there aren't any -- "
" -- it's a waste of time," Jack finished for her. "Got it. I think now we call UNIT. Conference room, we should all be in on the call. You up for this?"
Tosh nodded. Behind her, Gwen leaned around the office doorway.
"I'm ordering in," she announced. "Chinese okay with everyone?"
"Now's the time?" Jack asked.
"He hasn't eaten since yesterday," Gwen said pointedly. "Neither have you."
Jack thought back. It was true -- peanuts at the bar was the last time he'd had anything, right before everything went to shit. God knew when Ianto had eaten. "How do you know I haven't?"
"Ianto told me," Gwen said, biting her lip. Jack closed his eyes against the idea that Ianto was still...watching him. "Chinese?" Gwen prompted again.
"Yeah," Jack said, as Toshiko pulled a thumb drive out of her computer and Owen started up the stairs. "Don't leave him alone. Take him up with you when the delivery arrives."
Gwen gave a quick nod and went back into the office. Jack saw her picking up the phone as he passed on his way up the stairs.
In the conference room, Tosh already had a display set up and was linking the videoscreen to the UNIT secure server. Owen was sitting in his usual seat, drumming his fingers, decidedly not looking at the little wire he'd pulled out of Ianto's head where it sat in its tray near the speakerphone.
"Let me do the talking," Jack said. "I'll cue you if I need you to give information. This is probably going to be nasty. Owen, seriously, I mean it," he added.
Owen held up his hands. "I learned my lesson when you banned me last time."
"Keep it in mind," Jack said, and tapped his earpiece. "UNIT communications office."
There was a soft beep, and then a tone. After a second, a voice sounded in his ear.
"UNIT Communications, routing, how may I direct your call?"
"This is Captain Jack Harkness with Torchwood Cardiff, authorisation Juliet Alpha Two Three Three Hector," he said. "Command, please."
"Which officer?" the voice requested.
"The highest ranking one who's free," Jack said.
He detected a hint of amusement down the line as the voice said, "That would be Major General Carlson, Captain Harkness. One moment while I connect you."
"Major General," Jack said to Owen and Tosh. "Not bad for a shotgun approach."
The line clicked and a rough female voice said, "This is Carlson. Am I speaking with Torchwood?"
"Captain Harkness, Major General," Jack replied.
"H'm. What can UNIT do for Torchwood, Harkness?"
"We've discovered a security breach we need to notify UNIT about," Jack said. "I'm putting you on speaker."
"Oh, great," Carlson groaned, the last of it emerging from the speakers as Jack switched it over.
"Major General Carlson, you're on the call with my agents Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato, medic and technologist respectively," Jack said.
"What's this security breach all about?" Carlson asked. "If it's the Doctor, we have bigger fish to fry right now."
"Are you briefed on the Cybermen and the incident at Canary Wharf?" Jack asked.
"Course I am, what do you take me for?"
"My apologies, Major General," Jack said, rolling his eyes for Owen and Tosh's benefit. "Last night we discovered a Cyberman had survived. It's been neutralised, but there may be more."
"Neutralised? Do tell, Captain."
"Can you link into the secure video server? My technologist has some specs up," Jack said. "Last night, one of our agents admitted to smuggling a partially converted human into our base."
"What?" Carlson demanded.
"The threat was neutralised. We have the agent under guard. Apparently he was acting under the control of the Cyberman," Jack said. "Are you seeing the video feed?"
"What is that?" Carlson asked. Onscreen, a copy of the laser scan of Ianto's body was rotating endlessly, the little wire glowing brightly in his head.
Jack sighed. "My agent. The line you see is a transmitter that was implanted in his head to link him more firmly to his controller."
"Is there a reason this man hasn't been executed?" Carlson snapped.
"Aside from him being the victim, you mean?" Tosh demanded. Jack gave her a warning look.
"Doctor Harper removed the wire, and the agent in question is under guard," he repeated, before Carlson could object. "The situation is secure."
"You said there might be more of them. That hardly sounds secure, Harkness."
Jack nodded at Tosh, who switched the display over to a map of the UK.
"Our agent was a survivor of the Battle of Canary Wharf," Jack said. "We believe that during the battle he was implanted with the transmitter. Under orders from the Cyberman, he brought it and the conversion unit here and arranged for repairs to be made to its technology. We're concerned some of the other survivors may be in similar situations."
"Why wasn't this caught immediately?" Carlson asked.
Jack raised his eyebrows. "I was going to ask you the same question, Major General. UNIT should have processed the survivors as they were released."
"Not our job, Harkness. This was Torchwood's mess. If I recall correctly you made it very clear that the remains of Canary Wharf were Torchwood's property and responsibility."
Jack leaned on the conference table. "So who the hell took care of these people, then?"
He could hear the clack of a keyboard as she looked up UNIT's records of the event. "According to these reports, UNIT gave on-site medical attention and post-event psychological counseling if the survivors wanted it. We assumed, given they were Torchwood employees, Torchwood would track them. I see they were given disability pensions by Torchwood; paid them off, did you?"
"Major General, what I did to the survivors isn't material," Jack said.
"I think it is, Harkness. They were your responsibility."
"They're people, you know," Owen snapped. "They're not resources you just get to dump."
"That must be Dr. Harper," Carlson retorted. "Bleeding hearts. I don't hear much evidence Torchwood thought that way back before they were a security risk."
"O-kay," Jack said, interrupting what was sure to be a stream of profanity from Owen. "We can blame each other all we want for twenty-seven people slipping through the cracks, but the point is we now have twenty-six we need to investigate. I have three other agents and one very sick man to deal with, Carlson, I need UNIT's support for this."
"You want me to send my troops out to hunt Cybermen because you might have missed them?" Carlson asked. "Have you seen what Cybermen do?"
"Yes, I have," Jack said sharply. "And if I don't have help tracking these people down, so will you."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
"I'm not taking the blame for this," Carlson said.
"Blame whoever you want, I don't care," Jack replied. "Just get people on it. We're uploading the data we've gathered now."
"Receiving," Carlson said shortly.
"I want to be kept in the loop."
"I'm sure you do, Captain Harkness. I note there are two survivors in your area. Do you think you could handle those two on your own?"
Jack suppressed the urge to snarl. "We'll take care of them."
"You'd damn well better. I'm assigning you a liaison, because I don't want to talk to you," Carlson informed him. "He'll be in touch within the hour. Great work, Harkness," she added sarcastically, and there was a click as she hung up.
"Wow," Owen said.
"I really hate UNIT," Tosh added.
"Your loyalty is noted and appreciated," Jack sighed. "Okay. Tosh, find out if there's a way to detect Cyberman technology without getting overly intrusive. Owen, can you rig a portable scanner?"
"Probably," Owen said. "Can't we just check their heads?"
"I'd like to be a little more thorough," Jack said. "Come back to me in an hour with everything you have -- Tosh, that includes dossiers on our two locals."
Tosh collected the transmitter and her drive and left with what looked like as much hurry as she could manage without actually running. Owen lingered, looking pensively at the speakerphone.
"Objections?" Jack asked.
"She had a point," Owen said. "Why weren't we tracking them?"
Jack looked down at his hands. "Because I'm not as good as I should be. I didn't want to -- I knew someone who -- look, I didn't want to think about it, okay? Not more than I had to."
"Why'd you hire Ianto, then?" Owen asked.
Jack gave a bitter bark of laughter. "Because he was hot."
"I suppose I should be flattered you hired me for my brains," Owen said. "Jack, we can't just make Gwen babysit him forever. He needs neurological scans, a psych workup, probably some deprogramming. I'm your man for the neuro end, but I wouldn't know how to begin finding out whether he's actually dangerous. Until we do, he needs to be under supervision or in the cells. That puts us at least one man down, two if we mind him in shifts. And, frankly, locking him in the cells is a bit like putting someone in jail for getting the shit kicked out of them."
"I know," Jack ground out.
"So what do we do?"
"We protect the public. We get any other Cybermen that are out there, and then we worry about Ianto. That's the job," Jack said.
"Very UNIT," Owen remarked, and left Jack alone in the conference room.
Jack took a few minutes to get his thoughts together -- to pack the memories of Rose carefully away, to likewise partition off his worry for Ianto and his anger at UNIT and himself -- and then went downstairs. Owen and Tosh were hard at work, and Ianto was still doing paperwork while Gwen played Solitaire on his computer. It looked like Ianto might be doing Gwen's paperwork, actually. Jack cynically gave her points for imagination.
"I'm going to the archives," he announced. "I'll be back up soon."
"Did you need something?" Ianto asked, looking up from his paperwork, and then he --
It was an odd process, actually; Jack saw his face go blank, saw the bluescreen start, but then Ianto winced and shook his head and it cleared.
"No, of course not," Ianto murmured. Jack saw, in that second, real fear and grief -- and then it was gone as he turned back to the paperwork.
That was programming. Deep programming, and something else...but Ianto Jones, whoever he really was, was under there somewhere. Which made life harder, because if he was just a collection of macros then Jack could lock him up or execute him. But if he was really there, frightened and in pain, Jack was going to have to hurt him more before they could dig him out.
He lingered, watching as Gwen reached across to rub Ianto's arm gently. The young man looked up, smiled quickly -- automatically, almost mechanically -- and went back to his work. Jack sighed and took himself off to the archives.
Chapter Two
Part: 1 of 5
Rating: PG-13; R in the final chapter
Summary: Jack has studied the Cybermen for forty years, and he's damned if he'll let one take any of his people away from him without a fight.
Beta Credit:
51stcenturyfox, misswinterhill, neifile7, and spiderine are winnars! :DNotes: This was inspired by Tomb Of The Cybermen and The Invasion, two Classic Who episodes which indicate that Cybermen have the power to control human minds. The mythology of the Cybermen is complicated and contradictory, but a remarkable constant remains their desire, their need, for a human collaborator to ready the way for them.
Warnings: I'm not sure how to warn for this one. There are strong themes and portrayals of mind control, including some dubcon (though of an interpersonal rather than explicitly sexual nature). If you are triggered by dubious consent or nonsexual external control, I would suggest having a trusted friend review this before reading.
First Posted 4.5.2010 - 4.9.2010
Also available at AO3.
CHAPTER ONE
The old 8mm film-recording is full of shadows.
There is a man in one of the shadows, hidden in the dark, not through any artifice but just because the camera can't pick him up where he sits on the edge of the light. A bare expanse of table separates him from a young woman, a beautiful young woman with long smooth hair and wide eyes. Impossible to tell on black-and-white tape what colour her eyes are, but they were blue. Or maybe green -- the memory plays tricks after forty years.
She looks innocent, but she isn't. If she were, she wouldn't be there in the room of shadows, with the lamp's light turning her face and the table and the man's hands bleached white, stripped of detail on the film.
"Tell me about Toberman, Victoria," the man says. His voice isn't unkind, but it brooks no disobedience. He spins a pencil once, briefly, in his right hand, then pulls a pad of paper a little closer. It's already half-full of notes, the used pages flipped over and tucked under.
"Do I have to?" she asks wearily. "It's horrible, and I'm so tired."
"Just this," the man promises, "and then you can rest before we continue."
Sad to see her eyes brighten just before he hits the part about continuing.
"Toberman was Kaftan's servant," she says, a little defiant. She knows they won't stop until they know everything, but they've promised they'll stop once they do. "He was the first one the Cybermen got hold of."
"Did they convert him?" the man asks.
Victoria frowns. "What do you mean?"
"Did they make him like them. Metallic," he clarifies. The pencil spins again before he puts it to paper.
"No," Victoria says, twisting her fingers together, head bowed, as if this is a punishment. The debriefing is just a necessity; they did try not to hurt her. The interrogator told them physical torture would be fruitless and cruel; fine, they said, you get the truth out of her without it. So he had. "The Cybermen -- they changed him. They made him do their bidding. It was like they controlled him with their minds. He would do...things, things they wanted him to do."
"How?" he asks.
"I don't know!"
"Did he have any implants?"
"Just one, on his arm."
The interrogator ticks a few words against the paper with his pencil -- she sees it, and knows eventually they'll come back to that implant, what size it was, what colour, what was it made of.
"Nothing else," she says, resigned. "He just...did things."
"What kinds of things?"
"He would...stop people who were threatening the Cybermen. It's awful; why can't you leave it alone?" she blurts, angrily.
"You know why I can't, Victoria," the man replies, and there is a hint of threat behind the supposedly gentle tone. "Torchwood needs to know these things. To protect ourselves if the Cybermen ever come here. Ever come back."
***
What stayed with Jack the longest, that night, wasn't blind fury or dying or even Ianto's punch that left him with a split lip for two weeks. It was the smell, after the shooting. Cordite in the air like a haze -- and blood, and just a tangy hint of Myfanwy's protein sauce. There was one pure moment of clarity when all his senses were so sharp, and he recalled the weight of his gun and Ianto's cries and Gwen's hiss of breath when the metal helmet fell from the Cyberwoman's head. But the smell was the only thing that seemed to belong to reality. The rest felt like a filmstrip, or something he'd read about once.
Then he fell back into his body, back into the situation that had almost cost his team their lives and would have destroyed humanity, if he'd let it. He had three frightened agents to reassure, two bodies to dispose of, a pterodactyl who probably needed stitches, and --
And Ianto. Ianto, who had gone so still and quiet, whose anger and grief was...oddly...absent.
"I think he's going into shock," Owen said, holstering his gun. "Jack -- "
"No, I don't think so," Jack answered. A different kind of clarity was settling in, driven less by adrenaline than by knowledge of what was happening, what he was witnessing.
"Jack, he's not moving," Tosh said.
"Nobody touch him," Jack ordered. He edged forward. Ianto didn't move, didn't react. Jack crouched on the other side of Lisa's body and reached out a hand. There was a brief electrical spark when he touched Ianto's skin, but nothing more. He tipped the young man's chin up, slowly.
Ianto's eyes were fixed like a dead man's, blind and unfocused. No sign of consciousness, no rage, no sadness, no fear. When Jack pulled his hand back, Ianto stayed in the pose he'd set him in. His breathing was shallow and even, no trace of the hitching sobs of a moment before.
"This is wrong," Gwen said, her voice cracking, panic bubbling through. "There's something wrong with him."
"Yeah, well, we just shot his girlfriend," Owen answered -- biting, but with that same about-to-lose-it tremble that Gwen had. "Jack, listen, you might want to kill him but -- "
"I'm not going to kill him," Jack said softly. Ianto didn't react. Jack took one of his arms and it bent, unresisting, so he stood up and pulled and Ianto stood too. The tilt of his chin hadn't changed. He looked almost defiant, standing there, except for the dead, cold eyes staring straight through Jack at some distant inner vista. Or at nothing at all.
"Catatonia?" Gwen suggested, looking at Owen. He shook his head. "Well, what then?"
"Something a time traveller told me about, once," Jack replied, before Owen could answer. He let go of Ianto's arm and it fell to hang loosely at his side.
"What's that got to do with Ianto?" Tosh asked. She sounded calmer than the other two; curious and worried, but not verging on breakdown like Gwen and Owen. Jack turned to them.
"I'll take care of it," he said. "Go home. Get some rest. We'll clean up later."
"Jack, you can't just leave two bodies -- " Gwen started, but she stopped abruptly when Jack glanced at her.
"We can help," Tosh offered.
"It's my mess, I'll handle it," Jack retorted. "Go home. That's not a suggestion. It's an order."
The three of them telegraphed little looks back and forth, quickly. Owen seemed uncertain, but Jack could see Gwen and Tosh weren't interested in being first to obey. Finally, Owen made his own decision and turned to leave with a shrug. Gwen saw him and frowned, but she didn't hesitate much longer before she followed. Tosh, still reluctant to go, took a step back before stopping again.
"I'm taking the remote Rift monitor with me," she said.
"Good. Do that," Jack answered, turning back to Ianto.
"You'll call if you need us."
"I'll call," Jack agreed. He had no intention of needing them until they were rested, and until he'd figured out what to do about the empty shell in front of him. He didn't move again until he'd heard the pneumatic growl of the rolldoor closing after her.
First things first.
"I'm sorry," he told Ianto, as he cuffed his hands behind his back. Ianto didn't answer or resist. Jack took him by the shoulders and walked him down the hall to the atrium, then pushed him down to sit, probably very uncomfortably, on the stairs.
That done, Jack turned back to the Hub. What a godawful mess. He tucked his fingers between his lips and whistled shrilly, one of the few commands Myfanwy had learned and was willing to obey. There was a birdlike whimper from the other side of the Hub, and then a rustle of wings.
Myfanwy was not tame, not in the least, and she didn't like to be touched by anyone. Still, when he found her hiding in the shadows she let him get close enough to see that the wounds the Cyberwoman had inflicted were superficial; she even let him run his hands carefully along her beak, to be certain nothing was fractured.
"You'll be fine," he told her. She responded by trying to nip off three of his fingers. He smacked her sharply on the tip of her beak and she shrieked in indignant protest, but she also gathered herself and leapt upwards, lean muscles bunching and stretching, far enough to lift off and retreat to her nest on the upper levels.
The bodies could wait, and so could the conversion unit he'd have to dismantle, but if he was going to leave Lisa Hallett's body in the Hub for any length of time he was going to make damn sure she wasn't getting up again.
He walked back to where they'd left the bodies and crouched next to hers, trying not to look at her face. He took out his boot-knife and pried the Cyberwoman's chest-seal off. Inside was a bundle of wires right where Torchwood's research files had said they would be -- right where her heart should have been. The Cybermen kept upgrading their tech, but they didn't have the imagination to vary the basic design much. He tugged the bundle free. A little white foam oozed up between the circuits. If she hadn't been dead before, she was now.
He glanced at Ianto but Ianto was checked out, nobody home, bluescreen of death. Jack considered that the most merciful thing he could possibly do would be a bullet through the head, but if his suspicions were right then Ianto should at least be given a chance.
"Up you come," he said, pulling Ianto back to his feet and up the stairs. With the Cyberwoman permanently out, Jack unlocked the handcuffs and pushed Ianto back into the couch near his office. He went to his own desk, got a tin first-aid box from the top drawer, and took a bottle of smelling salts out of the box. Sometimes the old ways were best.
He pulled Owen's chair around and sat in front of the couch, then reached into his pocket and took out a handkerchief, clearing away at least some of the grime and snot and half-dried tears on Ianto's face.
He got his first reaction when he waved the open bottle under Ianto's nose; an instant recoil, a shake of the head, and then the awful dead staring eyes finally focused on Jack's face. Emotion; confusion. Good enough to start with.
"Ianto Jones," Jack said, and Ianto blinked. "Do you know where you are?"
Another good sign; Ianto turned his head, looking around, then back confusedly at Jack.
"Do you know who I am?" Jack asked.
"Captain Jack Harkness," Ianto replied. Hard to tell if he was still in there; the flat reply could be nothing more than leftover conditioning.
"You know why you're here?" Jack asked. Another slow blink. Shit.
But then --
"No," Ianto answered, and there was real confusion and fear in his voice. "I don't -- I -- "
"It's okay, you're safe," Jack said. "Focus on me. Right here."
Ianto obediently looked at him, or at least at the finger Jack was holding up. He looked exhausted. Jack wasn't daisy-fresh himself, but he was willing to bet Ianto was much worse.
"I need you to answer some questions for me," Jack said. "Where do you work?"
"Torchwood," Ianto replied briefly.
"Torchwood One?"
"Yes -- no -- Torchwood -- Torchwood Three, in Cardiff," Ianto stammered. He looked around, then back at Jack. "Don't I?"
"Good," Jack said, ignoring the question. "Who am I, again?"
"Jack," Ianto replied, a little hush in his voice.
"What do you do at Torchwood?" Jack asked.
"General support. I get you everywhere on time," Ianto said, with almost a hint of humour in his voice. "I clean...I clean up...after you," he added, tone disappearing, flattening out, like a recitation. Like a catechism. "And I look good in a suit."
"Stay here, Ianto, right here," Jack said, wobbling his finger. Ianto nodded obediently. His eyes flicked to Jack's face, then back to Jack's hand. "Okay. Just a little more. Do you remember Owen?"
"Yes," Ianto said.
"Toshiko?"
"Yes," with a slight smile. Good.
"And Gwen? You remember Gwen?"
"Yes...why..." Ianto frowned. "What's -- I don't know why I -- "
"Nonono," Jack said hurriedly. "Here with me, remember?"
Ianto looked past his hand to his face. "Something's gone wrong, I can't -- hear -- "
"You can't hear?"
"It's gone, the -- "
"Ianto. Ianto!" Jack said, when Ianto tried to look past him. Ianto settled back again, a little, but he still seemed agitated. "Whatever's gone, it's not important, okay? It's not important right now. We'll deal with it later. We're safe here."
Ianto seemed to pull in on himself, either gathering his wits or withdrawing, Jack wasn't positive. Delicate business, this -- if Ianto went back in too far, the thin line connecting him to reality would snap. On the other hand, if he came all the way home too quickly, that could lead to a very different, much less pleasant form of madness.
"How do you feel?" Jack asked carefully.
Ianto looked baffled by the question, but he seemed to be giving it a fair try.
"Tired," he said finally. "I'm so tired, Jack."
"I know," Jack replied, relieved. "Anyone would be. So you're going to sleep, all right?"
Ianto nodded and his hands began fumbling against his thighs, as if he were feeling his pockets for his keys so he could drive home. He stopped suddenly and looked down. His hands were covered in dried blood -- some his own, some Jack's, mostly Lisa's.
Jack reached out quickly and covered the upturned palms with his own. They were still sticky.
"There's no way you're getting home tonight," he said. Ianto was staring at Jack's knuckles. "You can sleep here."
Ianto's lips curved upwards. "I can, can I?" he said, looking up at Jack slyly.
Oh, no. Oh, god, no.
"Not that way," Jack said, against the choking horror and the bile rising in his throat. For the first time it struck him just what the Cyberwoman had done -- just how much of whoever Ianto Jones actually was might have been violated by it, and what a hand he'd had in that. Not that he hadn't paid attention to Ianto, but it hadn't been the right kind. "You're going to sleep here," he said, pointing to the couch. Ianto looked down at it, considering.
"I'll get a blanket," he said, and was about to stand when Jack put a hand on his shoulder.
"No, stay there," Jack ordered. "Lie down, close your eyes."
He should take Ianto's tie off, at least, or have Ianto take it off himself, but at the moment the idea of forcing Ianto to undress at all appealed to him about as much as shooting him in the head had earlier. He felt a wave of relief when Ianto shrugged out of his coat without being asked, undid his tie and the top two buttons of his shirt, and bent to unlace his shoes. Jack took the opportunity to dart into his office and down into his little bolthole underneath, grabbing a spare military-surplus blanket from the locker at the foot of his cot. After a second's thought he picked up his own pillow from where it lay on the bed, stripped the case off it, and tucked it in with the blanket.
When he returned, Ianto was already asleep, collapsed across the couch. Jack lifted his head gently, sliding the pillow underneath it, then laid the blanket across Ianto's legs. He studied Ianto's bloody hands, fingers loose and half-curled, and after a minute's thought he fetched some alcohol wipes from the first-aid kit, cleaning the palms and each finger carefully. When he finally spread the blanket out over his shoulders, Ianto mumbled in his sleep and rolled over, curling inwards, his back to the world.
Jack watched to be sure he would stay asleep, and then went to dispose of the bodies. The logistics of getting one body to the incinerator and the second to a freezer drawer in the morgue for Owen to disassemble in the morning was something he could focus on. He could fix this, at least temporarily, and he could clean away some of the mess.
As he worked his mind naturally drifted, and after a night like tonight there weren't many places for it to go.
Ianto Jones. Ianto Jones in those sharp suits, with the delightful implication that Jack could, if he so chose, have Ianto Jones in no suit at all. Jack made a point of not fucking his employees unless they were really going to be worth it, and that combined with Ianto's own flirtatious reticence had kept them both firmly at arm's length, but it wasn't as though Jack hadn't been considering it. It wasn't as though he hadn't decided that Ianto would, in fact, be really worth it, if only he could push the flirtation over into something more.
So, another week or two, and maybe they would have. As it was, Jack had a lot of subtle but not apparently unwelcome touches to answer for, and more than a little innuendo if it came to that. Enough that the Cyberwoman had conditioned Ianto to look for it, to respond to it, and to initiate it. And that meant Ianto was still responding to some form of programming ghosting around in his head.
He wondered if he might have two Cyberbeings on his hands. Clever of her, really, to give her mobile half just enough autonomy to still seem human. Hell, most of Ianto's day-to-day behaviour was probably governed by a conscious mind. Most of what they'd seen, as his colleagues, was probably really him.
Probably, he thought, as he eased the Cyberwoman's body onto the slab. Probably wasn't good enough. He'd need to know for sure, when Ianto woke, and he'd need Owen for that.
And Owen would definitely need a medical bay that didn't look like a herd of cattle had stampeded through it. Which meant cleaning up in there, and then collecting all the damaged tech to dump on Tosh's desk, and then all the blown-around paperwork for his own desk, and then a structural inspection to make sure the Hub wasn't going to fall down around their ears because of anything the Cyberwoman had done, after which it would probably be good to wash the blood off the floor.
Well. A list. How very...how very Ianto Jones of him.
***
"What happened to Toberman?" the man asks, leaning forward, pencil at the ready. His face is still just barely in shadow, but the profile of it is clear enough, if one looks closely. He can't be doing it to avoid identification; anyone listening who knew him would know who he was anyway. "Did the Cybermen kill him?"
"No!" Victoria says, indignantly, as if she's on the ill-used Toberman's side -- and perhaps she is. "He seemed to sort of...break free. Like they couldn't quite hold onto him. He was very brave," she adds, loyally.
"He broke free from their control?" The man seems truly impressed for the first time. Victoria presses her advantage.
"That's right," she insists. "He attacked the Cybercontroller. He killed him, he threw him against a machine panel and electrocuted him."
"So Toberman survived," the man infers.
Victoria seems to shrink, losing the bravado of a moment before, all the hot indignation and defence of someone who must have been, in an odd way, a friend. It's too late, though -- he's seen the emotion she's capable of, and the strength she could use to defy him if she wants. He'll use it against her if he has to, at some other time, in some other story, and they both know it.
"No," Victoria says softly. "He died. While we were escaping, someone had to close the door, you see, and Toberman -- well, the door was electrified..."
The man is impassive, or at least seems to be; his profile doesn't shift, and if he's sympathetic to her pain it's not likely it shows.
"It was a terrible way to die," Victoria murmurs.
"I know you don't believe me, Victoria," the man says, "but I am sorry." He sounds like he means it, but then he always does sound that way, on the tape, in the shadow.
"You're right. I don't believe you," Victoria replies bitterly.
"You said you escaped..." the man begins, but she brings a hand down on the table (disappearing, white hand into white table on the overexposed film) and stops him.
"You said if I told you about Toberman I could rest," she insists, glaring at him, chin lifted defiantly. Victoria is small, the product of another time, when men and women were smaller. When the man rests his hand next to hers on the table, the size of it proves just what he could do to her if he wished. He is much larger than her, and what little can be seen of him is hard muscle. She looks down and seems to see the implicit threat, even if he didn't mean it, even if he wanted to calm her.
"I know I can't leave until I've told you everything," she says, voice lowering, eyes dropping like the good nineteenth-century girl she was raised as before she chose to step out of the time machine, to stay in the 20th century. Victoria the Victorian, in a frock that was all the rage in the mid-sixties. "But I'm tired, and I don't especially like to think about some of this."
"You're right," the man says, withdrawing, leaning back, not even a profile visible now. "I'm sorry, Victoria. We'll start here again tomorrow. I'll have them take you back to your room."
"And once I'm done -- "
"You can leave," the man promises her. He has no idea if it's true, but it sounds convincing. "We won't hurt you."
"Too late for that, I think, Captain Harkness," she replies, and the tape cuts out.
***
Ianto slept silently, unmoving, almost eerie in his stillness. Jack half-fancied that he would sleep until ordered to wake up. He'd slept through Jack crashing around the Hub, fixing what he could and setting aside what he couldn't. Jack's mobile was in his coat pocket, abandoned next to the sofa, and Ianto slept through that going off practically in his ear when Tosh rang later in the morning to see if she was needed. Jack called her back to ask if she'd drag Owen in, and she sighed and said yes. Perhaps he should have called Gwen, but he needed Tosh more than Gwen at the moment anyway.
What woke Ianto, Jack found, was the entry alarm going off. Perhaps it was just familiar noise, or perhaps more conditioning. It would have been useful to install a trigger like that -- some kind of alert that went off in Ianto's head when someone entered the Hub. That might be paranoia, though. The Cyberwoman's plan had depended an awful lot on luck, and Jack wasn't sure how clever she'd actually been.
"Right," Owen said, walking in ahead of Tosh and looking around at the Hub. "Looks almost livable in here again. How's he doing?"
Jack gestured to where Ianto was sitting up, yawning. Owen came up the steps cautiously, then pulled around the chair Jack had used the night before, blocking Ianto from standing.
"Coffee?" Ianto asked with a smile. Knowing what they all knew now, it was...eerie. Jack saw Tosh shudder and turn to her workstation, but she kept glancing over her shoulder even as she powered up what tech was left intact and began running diagnostics.
"No coffee-making for you this morning," Owen said briskly, taking out a penlight and shining it in Ianto's eyes. Ianto blinked, trying to avoid it. "Hold still. Follow my finger."
"I fell asleep on the sofa, I'm not mad," Ianto replied, annoyed. Owen glanced at Jack, who shrugged.
"You remember 'round three o'clock yesterday?" Owen said conversationally, moving his finger back and forth.
"I had to take the SUV for petrol," Ianto said.
"Right. Then you came back to the Hub."
Ianto nodded. "You were playing basketball."
Jack looked at Tosh, and saw his own guilty expression reflected in hers. Maybe Owen remembered Ianto coming in during the basketball game, but Jack hadn't even bothered to look him in the face on his way out the door with the others. Apparently Tosh hadn't either.
"And then?" Owen prompted. Ianto frowned.
"I called for -- I called -- because...something's missing," Ianto said suddenly. "I can't hear -- "
"Can't hear at all?" Owen asked.
"There's a sound...missing," Ianto answered. He looked frustrated.
"Well, can't have that," Owen remarked. "Medical. Give you a full scan and run some tests."
"I'm fine," Ianto said, craning his head to look around Owen. "Who trashed the Hub?"
"You might have a concussion," Owen said, ignoring him.
"Oh," Ianto replied. He let Owen pull him to his feet; he didn't seem to notice Jack and Tosh moving forward to the railing of the medical bay as he and Owen descended the stairs. He began to obediently strip off his shirt, but Owen stopped him.
"Torchwood, remember?" Owen said, with a deliberate light tone. He pulled the laser-scanner forward and was reaching out to touch-tap the projection screen on when Ianto inhaled sharply.
Jack looked from Ianto's fear-frozen face to the laser-scanner's refraction dish. In the right light, it did look very...cybernetic.
"It's just a scanner, Ianto," Tosh said. Ianto turned to look up at her. "Owen scanned me with it last week when I had that cough, remember?"
Bluescreen of death again. Ianto was still looking at her, but his expression had blanked out, and his eyes were empty once more. Jack put a hand on Tosh's arm. Her pulse under his fingers was racing. Owen didn't seem as fussed, and had already switched the scanner on.
"Jack, what am I looking for, exactly?" he asked, studying the model of Ianto's body that was rendering slowly on the projection.
"I'm not sure," Jack said. "Anything weird?"
Owen leaned in closer to the screen. "Hm. Need to check his files." He switched on a monitor and called up Ianto's medical history -- doctor's visits going back to childhood, Torchwood London's standard-required physicals, his minimal injury reports since arriving in Cardiff.
"Got a pin in his leg from a bad break, that's documented," Owen muttered. "Some standard physical irregularities -- everyone has them," he said to Jack, before Jack could even open his mouth to ask. Owen shifted Ianto's head slightly, like moving a mannequin, and the image on the projector changed to reflect it. "Aha, there we go."
"What is that?" Tosh asked, squinting at the screen. There was a thin glowing line in Ianto's head. Owen ran his fingers up into the short, fine hair above Ianto's neck, revealing a glint of metal in his scalp. Jack drew his gun.
"It's not connected to anything," Owen announced. "Doesn't even penetrate the skull."
"Can you remove it?" Tosh asked.
"Yeah, should be able to..." Owen's hand moved quickly, short blunt nails hooking into the wire. Before Jack could stop him, he tugged.
The wire came away in his hand, ends glistening unpleasantly, and Ianto heaved forward, almost falling off the table. Owen struggled to support his weight and Jack ran down to help, holstering his gun and clearing the last few stairs in a leap.
"Oh, Jesus," Ianto moaned, body lurching against their hands. Owen backed off and let Jack hold him steady, one arm securely around his waist, the other trying to catch his wrists as he struggled.
"Easy," Jack said, glancing at Owen, who shrugged. "Easy, deep breaths. Don't make Owen sedate you."
Ianto was shaking, but he'd stopped fighting, at least. Eventually the tremors subsided. Jack watched over Ianto's shoulder as Owen dropped the wire carefully into a tray Tosh was holding out; Tosh disappeared, back to her desk to hopefully find out what the hell the thing was.
"She's in the basement," Ianto gasped, choking on his own breath. "You have to -- corridor twelve, at the end, you have to kill her -- "
"We did," Owen said bluntly. Jack glared at him, but Ianto stiffened and looked at him.
"You -- did -- " he stammered, looking at Jack for confirmation. Jack nodded. "She's dead?"
"Last night," Jack said. "Remember?"
Ianto straightened slowly, and Jack released his wrists. He gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned white.
"You did," he said, more firm now in his conviction. "I saw that. There was a voice in my head. Then there wasn't."
Jack glanced up at the projection screen. Now he was a part of the image, a glowing network of lines, his gun a blue flare at his hip, his strap a red glow on his wrist. Ianto had a blue line in his right leg -- the pin Owen had mentioned -- and his belt-buckle was another blue splotch at his waist, but that was all.
"You're clean now," Owen told Ianto, not without sympathy. "They did a right number on you."
"It wasn't me," Ianto said to Jack, turning his head again.
"I'm getting that," Jack replied.
"I hit you," Ianto added, staring at Jack's bruised and split lip.
"I've had worse," Jack said lightly.
"Jack," Owen murmured. Jack turned to him. "Everything else checks out. Physically he's all right. A brain scan -- "
"No," Jack said. Ianto clutched his sleeve tightly. "No more digging around in anyone's brain just yet. Ianto -- Ianto listen to me," he said, as Ianto began to struggle away from them. Owen grabbed his right arm; Jack pinned his left arm across his body. "Stop! Listen to me!"
Ianto was breathing hard again, eyes darting back and forth between them, but he stopped moving.
"Nobody's going to hurt you," Jack told him, easing his grip a little. "We know what happened. You're scared, I get that. But we have to figure this out, and we can't do that if you're fighting us. Now we can sedate you -- "
"No!" Ianto tried to pull away again.
"Ianto, stop," Jack ordered. Ianto went still.
Still conditioned, then. Goddammit.
"Or we can put you in the cells until we know you're not a harm to anyone. Or," Jack said, as Ianto shook his head, "I can call Gwen and have her guard you while Tosh and Owen and I figure this out."
Ianto looked at him plaintively. "Gwen?" he asked uncertainly.
"Oh my god, he's forgotten her," Owen muttered.
"No, I know -- yes -- Gwen," Ianto said. He cast a quick, terrified look at the laser scanner. Jack leaned back a little and eased him off the table.
"Okay. Good. Let's get upstairs," he said, and let go of Ianto completely as Owen practically frogmarched him back up to the atrium and then into Jack's office. Tosh stopped Jack when he passed her desk.
"It's not a wire," she said softly. "It's a microtransmitter."
"Good to know -- "
"No, Jack, I don't think it is," she told him. Jack glanced at the office, where Owen was settling Ianto in a chair and giving him a glass of Jack's best whiskey.
"You think there might be an implant in his brain?" Jack asked.
Toshiko swallowed nervously. "No, but I think there are twenty-six other survivors," she said.
It took a second for Jack to realise what she meant, and when he did a rush of adrenaline hit his system so fast it made him dizzy.
"I want you to find them," he said. "Find all of them and get on every news report that looks even a little bit weird everywhere they are. Call UNIT -- no, don't do that, I'll call them," he said, when Tosh flinched at the mention of their name. "Just watch them. Watch them all. Check their power bills. Everything you can think of, you got that? First hint of suspicious activity, bring it to me."
She nodded, but she didn't go to work immediately; she leaned past him and glanced into his office.
"How is he?" she asked.
"I don't know," Jack answered. "Hey, first call Gwen and tell her I need her, okay?"
Tosh put in her earpiece. "On it."
"Thank you, Tosh," Jack said, mindful of the accusations -- however fabricated, however controlled by the machine -- that Ianto had leveled at him last night. "You okay?"
"Yeah, fine. Gwen, hi," Tosh said, turning away from him. "No, I'm at the Hub..."
Jack left her to it and went to his office. Owen was leaning against his desk, arms crossed; Ianto had the glass of alcohol in his hands but wasn't drinking. At least, he supposed, it was keeping Ianto's hands occupied. Which wasn't a bad idea, actually.
"Here," Jack said, picking up a pile of papers from his in-box. "Deal with this, would you?"
Ianto set the glass aside, took the papers and a pen from Jack's desk, and began looking them over. After a second he tried to start writing, but the pen was dry. He took another, tested it, and looked up at Jack with a smile on his lips.
"Top of the list," he said, pulling a notebook over, "order new biros."
Jack glanced over his head at Owen, who looked deeply creeped out.
"Go help Tosh," he said to Owen. "She'll fill you in. Send Gwen in when she gets here."
Ianto worked quietly, apparently content to be doing paperwork, neatly sifting through the documents and occasionally passing one to Jack for his signature. It was something they'd done before, when the Rift was slow, Jack working at the computer while Ianto took care of hardcopy reports, invoices, and the various memos that half a dozen other agencies thought Torchwood should be aware of. Jack had always thought of it as comfortably domestic, but now he found it troubling. Especially the idea that he had entrusted a good portion of his team's physical wellbeing to Ianto. Ianto bought their food, paid their bills, and told Jack what interagency communication was important and what wasn't.
When the entry alert finally rang, fifteen minutes later, Ianto looked up and smiled to see Gwen entering. He set down the paperwork neatly and put the pen back where he'd found it.
"Seems about time for coffee," he said, and started to stand. Jack reached across the desk and put a hand on his arm.
"Not today," he said. Ianto gave him a quizzical look, then a thoughtful one.
"No," he agreed. "I suppose not."
"Tosh said you wanted me?" Gwen asked, leaning in the doorway. She looked...wary. Worried. Jack stood and walked to the doorway.
"Jack wants you to guard me," Ianto said.
"Just let him do paperwork," Jack whispered to Gwen. "If he runs out, give him a book to read."
Gwen nodded and walked past him into the office. "Hi, sweetheart," she said, seating herself in Jack's chair. "Holding up all right?"
"Yes, thanks," Ianto said, returning to his paperwork. Jack gave her a shrug and went to talk to Tosh.
"Nothing so far," she said, when she saw him approaching. "If anyone's hiding a Cyberman -- or woman -- they're not hiding them in their homes. Checking their workplaces now but most of them don't work."
"High level of unemployment among deeply traumatised people," Owen said, a dark edge to his voice that Jack mistook at first for disdain, then realised was anger. "Can't imagine why it's hard to get or hold a job when everyone you know was killed in a fiery holocaust. Could it be the PTSD? The survivor's guilt? The missing limbs?"
"It might be a positive thing," Tosh said hesitantly. "Not for them, obviously, but Ianto...I mean, he did get a job, one you didn't even want to give him, and he kept it, because the...because it made him act like he wasn't traumatised at all. So I think maybe the people who can't...function very well, they might definitely be safe."
"Check them anyway," Jack said. "Unemployment is a good cover for having to wait on a Cyberman constantly."
"I always thought Ianto was fucking off to have a smoke," Owen said thoughtfully.
"He doesn't smoke," Jack replied, then considered it. "Does he?"
"Dunno, but it's what I'd do if I didn't mind eventual lung cancer," Owen said. "Gets you out in the air for a few minutes, gives you a reason to skive off. If he wasn't around, I assumed he was taking a break. Kept meaning to give him a pamphlet about it, actually," he said. "Never got round to it."
"Your Health And You: The Hazards Of Cyberman Mind Control," Tosh said, still staring at her screen. Owen snorted. Jack had to admit it was a little bit funny. He could always trust Tosh to bring the gallows humour. "Look, Jack, I think I've got as much information as I can. We can't really know unless we inspect every one of them individually. If the Cyberwoman managed to send any kind of signal to the others, we won't have the time. If there aren't any -- "
" -- it's a waste of time," Jack finished for her. "Got it. I think now we call UNIT. Conference room, we should all be in on the call. You up for this?"
Tosh nodded. Behind her, Gwen leaned around the office doorway.
"I'm ordering in," she announced. "Chinese okay with everyone?"
"Now's the time?" Jack asked.
"He hasn't eaten since yesterday," Gwen said pointedly. "Neither have you."
Jack thought back. It was true -- peanuts at the bar was the last time he'd had anything, right before everything went to shit. God knew when Ianto had eaten. "How do you know I haven't?"
"Ianto told me," Gwen said, biting her lip. Jack closed his eyes against the idea that Ianto was still...watching him. "Chinese?" Gwen prompted again.
"Yeah," Jack said, as Toshiko pulled a thumb drive out of her computer and Owen started up the stairs. "Don't leave him alone. Take him up with you when the delivery arrives."
Gwen gave a quick nod and went back into the office. Jack saw her picking up the phone as he passed on his way up the stairs.
In the conference room, Tosh already had a display set up and was linking the videoscreen to the UNIT secure server. Owen was sitting in his usual seat, drumming his fingers, decidedly not looking at the little wire he'd pulled out of Ianto's head where it sat in its tray near the speakerphone.
"Let me do the talking," Jack said. "I'll cue you if I need you to give information. This is probably going to be nasty. Owen, seriously, I mean it," he added.
Owen held up his hands. "I learned my lesson when you banned me last time."
"Keep it in mind," Jack said, and tapped his earpiece. "UNIT communications office."
There was a soft beep, and then a tone. After a second, a voice sounded in his ear.
"UNIT Communications, routing, how may I direct your call?"
"This is Captain Jack Harkness with Torchwood Cardiff, authorisation Juliet Alpha Two Three Three Hector," he said. "Command, please."
"Which officer?" the voice requested.
"The highest ranking one who's free," Jack said.
He detected a hint of amusement down the line as the voice said, "That would be Major General Carlson, Captain Harkness. One moment while I connect you."
"Major General," Jack said to Owen and Tosh. "Not bad for a shotgun approach."
The line clicked and a rough female voice said, "This is Carlson. Am I speaking with Torchwood?"
"Captain Harkness, Major General," Jack replied.
"H'm. What can UNIT do for Torchwood, Harkness?"
"We've discovered a security breach we need to notify UNIT about," Jack said. "I'm putting you on speaker."
"Oh, great," Carlson groaned, the last of it emerging from the speakers as Jack switched it over.
"Major General Carlson, you're on the call with my agents Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato, medic and technologist respectively," Jack said.
"What's this security breach all about?" Carlson asked. "If it's the Doctor, we have bigger fish to fry right now."
"Are you briefed on the Cybermen and the incident at Canary Wharf?" Jack asked.
"Course I am, what do you take me for?"
"My apologies, Major General," Jack said, rolling his eyes for Owen and Tosh's benefit. "Last night we discovered a Cyberman had survived. It's been neutralised, but there may be more."
"Neutralised? Do tell, Captain."
"Can you link into the secure video server? My technologist has some specs up," Jack said. "Last night, one of our agents admitted to smuggling a partially converted human into our base."
"What?" Carlson demanded.
"The threat was neutralised. We have the agent under guard. Apparently he was acting under the control of the Cyberman," Jack said. "Are you seeing the video feed?"
"What is that?" Carlson asked. Onscreen, a copy of the laser scan of Ianto's body was rotating endlessly, the little wire glowing brightly in his head.
Jack sighed. "My agent. The line you see is a transmitter that was implanted in his head to link him more firmly to his controller."
"Is there a reason this man hasn't been executed?" Carlson snapped.
"Aside from him being the victim, you mean?" Tosh demanded. Jack gave her a warning look.
"Doctor Harper removed the wire, and the agent in question is under guard," he repeated, before Carlson could object. "The situation is secure."
"You said there might be more of them. That hardly sounds secure, Harkness."
Jack nodded at Tosh, who switched the display over to a map of the UK.
"Our agent was a survivor of the Battle of Canary Wharf," Jack said. "We believe that during the battle he was implanted with the transmitter. Under orders from the Cyberman, he brought it and the conversion unit here and arranged for repairs to be made to its technology. We're concerned some of the other survivors may be in similar situations."
"Why wasn't this caught immediately?" Carlson asked.
Jack raised his eyebrows. "I was going to ask you the same question, Major General. UNIT should have processed the survivors as they were released."
"Not our job, Harkness. This was Torchwood's mess. If I recall correctly you made it very clear that the remains of Canary Wharf were Torchwood's property and responsibility."
Jack leaned on the conference table. "So who the hell took care of these people, then?"
He could hear the clack of a keyboard as she looked up UNIT's records of the event. "According to these reports, UNIT gave on-site medical attention and post-event psychological counseling if the survivors wanted it. We assumed, given they were Torchwood employees, Torchwood would track them. I see they were given disability pensions by Torchwood; paid them off, did you?"
"Major General, what I did to the survivors isn't material," Jack said.
"I think it is, Harkness. They were your responsibility."
"They're people, you know," Owen snapped. "They're not resources you just get to dump."
"That must be Dr. Harper," Carlson retorted. "Bleeding hearts. I don't hear much evidence Torchwood thought that way back before they were a security risk."
"O-kay," Jack said, interrupting what was sure to be a stream of profanity from Owen. "We can blame each other all we want for twenty-seven people slipping through the cracks, but the point is we now have twenty-six we need to investigate. I have three other agents and one very sick man to deal with, Carlson, I need UNIT's support for this."
"You want me to send my troops out to hunt Cybermen because you might have missed them?" Carlson asked. "Have you seen what Cybermen do?"
"Yes, I have," Jack said sharply. "And if I don't have help tracking these people down, so will you."
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
"I'm not taking the blame for this," Carlson said.
"Blame whoever you want, I don't care," Jack replied. "Just get people on it. We're uploading the data we've gathered now."
"Receiving," Carlson said shortly.
"I want to be kept in the loop."
"I'm sure you do, Captain Harkness. I note there are two survivors in your area. Do you think you could handle those two on your own?"
Jack suppressed the urge to snarl. "We'll take care of them."
"You'd damn well better. I'm assigning you a liaison, because I don't want to talk to you," Carlson informed him. "He'll be in touch within the hour. Great work, Harkness," she added sarcastically, and there was a click as she hung up.
"Wow," Owen said.
"I really hate UNIT," Tosh added.
"Your loyalty is noted and appreciated," Jack sighed. "Okay. Tosh, find out if there's a way to detect Cyberman technology without getting overly intrusive. Owen, can you rig a portable scanner?"
"Probably," Owen said. "Can't we just check their heads?"
"I'd like to be a little more thorough," Jack said. "Come back to me in an hour with everything you have -- Tosh, that includes dossiers on our two locals."
Tosh collected the transmitter and her drive and left with what looked like as much hurry as she could manage without actually running. Owen lingered, looking pensively at the speakerphone.
"Objections?" Jack asked.
"She had a point," Owen said. "Why weren't we tracking them?"
Jack looked down at his hands. "Because I'm not as good as I should be. I didn't want to -- I knew someone who -- look, I didn't want to think about it, okay? Not more than I had to."
"Why'd you hire Ianto, then?" Owen asked.
Jack gave a bitter bark of laughter. "Because he was hot."
"I suppose I should be flattered you hired me for my brains," Owen said. "Jack, we can't just make Gwen babysit him forever. He needs neurological scans, a psych workup, probably some deprogramming. I'm your man for the neuro end, but I wouldn't know how to begin finding out whether he's actually dangerous. Until we do, he needs to be under supervision or in the cells. That puts us at least one man down, two if we mind him in shifts. And, frankly, locking him in the cells is a bit like putting someone in jail for getting the shit kicked out of them."
"I know," Jack ground out.
"So what do we do?"
"We protect the public. We get any other Cybermen that are out there, and then we worry about Ianto. That's the job," Jack said.
"Very UNIT," Owen remarked, and left Jack alone in the conference room.
Jack took a few minutes to get his thoughts together -- to pack the memories of Rose carefully away, to likewise partition off his worry for Ianto and his anger at UNIT and himself -- and then went downstairs. Owen and Tosh were hard at work, and Ianto was still doing paperwork while Gwen played Solitaire on his computer. It looked like Ianto might be doing Gwen's paperwork, actually. Jack cynically gave her points for imagination.
"I'm going to the archives," he announced. "I'll be back up soon."
"Did you need something?" Ianto asked, looking up from his paperwork, and then he --
It was an odd process, actually; Jack saw his face go blank, saw the bluescreen start, but then Ianto winced and shook his head and it cleared.
"No, of course not," Ianto murmured. Jack saw, in that second, real fear and grief -- and then it was gone as he turned back to the paperwork.
That was programming. Deep programming, and something else...but Ianto Jones, whoever he really was, was under there somewhere. Which made life harder, because if he was just a collection of macros then Jack could lock him up or execute him. But if he was really there, frightened and in pain, Jack was going to have to hurt him more before they could dig him out.
He lingered, watching as Gwen reached across to rub Ianto's arm gently. The young man looked up, smiled quickly -- automatically, almost mechanically -- and went back to his work. Jack sighed and took himself off to the archives.
Chapter Two
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Page 1 of 2