Timelord!Ianto: Trapped 6
May. 25th, 2011 11:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galadriel1010Title: Trials of a Timelord
Chapter Title: Trapped by Torchwood part 6
Challenge/Fest: LongliveIanto cliché bingo
Prompt: Tentacles
Rating: G
Dedication:
Summary: A young Timelord crosses paths with Torchwood, and his life is forever changed.
Characters: Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness and OCs. Mentions of the Doctor
Contains:
Disclaimer: Torchwood and its environs, occurrences and persons belong to the BBC. The original characters have disowned me.
Ianto stared at the wall. He could feel time drifting past him, as slowly as it had ever since Torchwood had captured him. That time was over, but he wasn't free yet. Louis had created him a new identity and put him into the payroll files – three years of work performance reports and pay had been dumped on his newly created identity in under an hour, and all of the cases he'd worked in that period were assigned to him. It looked like he'd been busy and conscientious, mostly because he had. It had stood up to scrutiny, apparently, because Harkness hadn't shown any inclination to look more closely or ask more dangerous questions.
So he was in at Torchwood Cardiff, the renegade dangerous branch where people rarely lived long enough to draw their pensions, apart from the one name that kept recurring year after year.
Harkness.
Time moved around the man in strange ways, and the bright power of the vortex shone in him. He'd been touched by a TARDIS, and he made Ianto's head ache, albeit in a good way. It was like there was too much information trying to cram into his head all at once. Either way, he could very easily get attached to picking apart the mystery – they'd always been his weakness.
A knock at the door distracted him from his fixed contemplation of the wall and he padded over to answer it without thinking. The Torchwood Institute were accommodating everyone who was working on the site at a nearby luxury hotel, and Ianto's room was on the top floor. For once he could go outside freely, eat what he wanted and talk to who he wanted. He wasn't used to it, which, he thought, was probably why he went to get the door obediently, and without even stopping to pull trousers on.
Harkness looked him over with open appreciation, and Ianto slammed the door shut. He worried for a moment, but he heard Harkness laugh. “Sorry, Sir,” he called as he hurried to grab a pair of trousers and a shirt. “I wasn't expecting anyone at this time of night.” He fastened the shirt quickly and opened the door again, flushed and embarrassed. “You knocked, Sir?”
“If I'd known I'd get that welcome I would have done it a week ago,” Harkness teased. “Um, sorry, I have to ask, was that Tintin on your boxers?”
He scowled and folded his arms across his chest. “My team had a twisted sense of humour, and I haven't...” He stopped himself and looked away, following the line of the carpet down the corridor. “Anyway, did you want something apart from my boxers?”
“Yes, sorry, we're going to Cardiff.” Harkness stepped back as if expecting him to leave the room right that instant. “The team have got a situation and they need our help?”
“Our help?” Ianto checked, even as he hurried into the room to collect the suits he'd acquired over the last couple of weeks. He'd bought a new one every day after work, which had filled his wardrobe out and gave him the appearance of a prior life. Harkness had a bag slung over his shoulder, so he assumed that they were going back for some time. “Why do you need me?”
Harkness shrugged. “Because there's five of us and an extra pair of hands is always welcome. You need to start somewhere, and it might as well be here.”
Ianto folded his favourite suits over his arm with a selection of shirts and left the rest on the bed. “I'll need to come back for the rest,” he pointed out. “Unless we can get it sent across.”
“I'll get Brendan to send it over.” Harkness led the way down the corridor to the lift and stabbed the button sharply. “You can sleep in the car, as long as you'll be on the ball when we get there. Torchwood is a sort of... sleep when we're dead, kind of place.”
“Do you have accommodation at your base there?” Ianto checked. “Or should I book a hotel?”
“Erm...” The lift arrived and Harkness stepped in, looking thoughtful at his reflection. “We have accommodation, but if you'd rather sleep...” He waved Ianto away from his phone. “I'll sort it when we get there. We have a standing account with a hotel in the area, but it's not under the Torchwood name...”
“Naturally,” Ianto murmured, slipping his phone back into his pocket.
Harkness grunted. “You'd think. So why does the bar closest to one of my employees having a tab under our name?” He sighed and turned around to leave the lift as the doors slid open. “Not your problem... yet.”
“You fill me with confidence, sir.”
“That's my job, Ianto.” Harkness strode through the empty foyer and Ianto, with a sigh, shifted his grip on his suits and followed him. A concierge had already brought Harkness's car, a surprisingly cute two-seater ragtop, around to the entrance, and Harkness had the boot open for their bags. “At least at this time of night we shouldn't hit traffic.”
Ianto chuckled obediently, stashed his bag and got into the car. It had been updated with modern safety features, as far as he could tell, but there was no music player. A worn paperback was stashed in the door pocket by his seat. He rested his hands in his lap and drew on what he'd read of cars, trying not to let the Captain notice that he hadn't ever been in a car before. “It's a Jaguar, isn't it?” he guessed.
“Yeah, she's a Jaguar,” Harkness confirmed. He sounded amused, with a touch of exasperation, and patted the dashboard before he started the engine up. “She serves me well. I take it you're not a car man, Ianto?”
“No, sir...”
“Ianto, please call me Jack?” The glare that accompanied the request wasn't overly annoyed, but it was stern and put Ianto in his place – one he was distinctly unused to. “You're part of the team now, and we don't keep a strict hierarchy.”
Ianto swallowed hard and twisted his fingers together. The other man had asked him a few times since that time in the archives, but they'd always been at Torchwood One, and the same system was still in place. This was different. “It'll be a lot to get used to... Jack.”
“I know, but I'm sure you'll get used to it.” Jack flashed him a gentler smile and patted his leg in a startlingly affectionate action. “The others won't let you keep doing it, anyway. Things you need to know...” He rested his palm against the steering wheel and raised his fingers to count off the information. “You, Tosh and half of Suzie form one team. I get the other half of Suzie and half of Owen. The other half of Owen is a team all by itself. On paper you'll be the second in command and the administrative director, in reality you all do what I say.” He smiled wryly and curled his fingers around the steering wheel again, amending, “Mostly. Any questions?”
Ianto blinked slowly and tilted his head back against the headrest, watching streetlights flashing by. “What, exactly, will my duties be once we've finished integrating the archives?”
“Well, first you'll have to sort the archives out,” Jack warned him. “Our head archivist for the last few years has been Tosh...”
“Tosh?” Ianto checked darkly. “Your head of research is your head archivist?”
“Well, we don't really have heads of department...” Jack tried to look innocent, but his eyes creased at the edges with the laughter he was suppressing. “But yes, essentially.”
Ianto closed his eyes and sighed. “Please tell me she's not like the researchers at One, who got items out of the archives, then got something else that they thought would help and forgot about the first... and so on?”
“Um...” Jack patted his leg again. “She does put things back. Mostly.”
“So my duties will be keeping Tosh happy and making sure that everything goes back where it belongs?” he checked.
“For starters.” Jack shrugged one shoulder and glanced at Ianto briefly. “We all pitch in on the paperwork and things – Suzie's doing the accounts at the moment, Owen, obviously, keeps our medical records up to date. If you could take over some of the clerical duties as well as the archiving it would free the others up to spend more time doing what they're paid for.” He sighed and gestured out of the windscreen. “And then we need someone to do Hub-based back-up for cases like tonight.”
“Tonight being...” he trailed off, inviting Jack to explain what was going on now they were in private.
“Tonight the Rift was active on the far side of Cardiff from our base.” Jack glanced at him again. “You know about the Rift?”
“A rent in the fabric of space and time that connects different parts of the universe?” Ianto sighed in as put-upon a manner as he could manage. It was the layman's version, but Jack was only human and couldn't be expected to understand the full version. “Understanding things is my job. Was my job,” he amended.
“It still is your job, but yes, basically.” Jack made a vague hand gesture, apparently to himself. “Something came through, and the guys weren't there to catch it – not their fault; it's an hour's journey even at night. But they need an extra pair of hands, and I didn't want you to leave you in London.”
“I would have been alright,” Ianto murmured, but he appreciated the concern he could head underlying Jack's words, even if he didn't feel it necessary. “But one more pair of hands is always useful.”
Jack nodded. “You can shadow Tosh today to see what she does. Keep her stocked with your fantastic coffee and we'll be fine.”
“And there we go.” Ianto smiled. “I'm clearly going to become an essential component of the team if only for my coffee making skills.”
They arrived in Cardiff Bay at just after four in the morning and Jack parked in a secure carpark around the back of the Senedd building. He greeted the security guard in passing and let them into the back of the building, then led Ianto down a twist of corridors into and below the building, into a lift. “I would have liked to take you in through the front door on your first time here, but that'll have to wait. It'll still leave an impression, I promise.”
“Of course,” Ianto agreed. “I wouldn't expect anything less.”
Jack chuckled and leaned in close to whisper, “I'm starting to suspect that you're extremely insubordinate under that suit, Jones.”
He stared dead ahead at the wall and kept his hands still. “I knew you'd figure me out eventually, sir.”
“Are you going to be trouble?” Jack asked with another laugh, but he patted Ianto's arse and moved to the opening doors. “Work first.”
Ianto blinked at Jack's back, but hurried to catch up. He slowed as they entered the cavernous space and stared up at the ceiling, far, far above them. “Wow. This is...” He dragged his gaze down to the level they'd entered on. “Subtle,” he settled for at last. “It suits you.”
“Cheeky again,” Jack tutted. “Toshiko, you remember Ianto?”
“Of course.” She span her chair around and smiled at him distractedly. “Suzie and Owen are out in Llandaff, Jack. It's in the woods below the cathedral.”
Jack swore creatively and jogged back towards the door. “Ianto, I'll give you the full tour when we start again in the morning. Tosh can teach you what you need to know tonight. I need directions out there, Tosh.”
She had already turned back to her computer and her fingers were flying over the keyboard. “I'll bring up the directions and Ianto can talk you through them. Drive carefully, Jack!”
Ianto settled down gingerly at a bare desk and ran his fingers along the edge of the keyboard. “So what is it you need me to do, Toshiko?”
“I'm going to open up that computer station with directions to Suzie and Owen's location,” she explained distractedly. “You need to get an earpiece from the top drawer of that desk and set it to channel four, so you don't disturb the others. I'll let Jack know what channel you're on, and you can direct him.”
He did as he was told and found the earpiece in the drawer. Tosh returned to communicating with her team-mates, apparently trying to soothe frazzled moods. The last thing Ianto wanted to deal with was Owen using him as a target for all his irritation again, so Ianto switched to the closed channel to wait for Jack.
“Ianto,” Jack greeted him over the comms. “You're the man with the map.”
Ianto shook himself and focussed on the map. “I need to know where you are, sir.” He slipped back into the formal address to keep his mind on work. Jack didn't actually need help until he got out to Llandaff, so whilst he hit the bypass and hared out there Ianto turned back to Tosh. “Toshiko,” he called softly. “Have you got a visual on the alien?”
“No.” She sounded frustrated. “I had one for a while when it was by the cathedral, but there's no CCTV in the woods.”
His hands twitched for his TARDIS, even after so many years without her and finally losing her, and he balled them into fists in his lap. “Can you send me what you had, then? I'll see if there's anything in the Archives.”
“Okay...” Her fingers flew over her keyboard to send him the information, but she paused part-way through. “Owen, Suzie, it's changed direction,” she announced with frustration. “It's going down the path towards the bypass.”
Ianto activated his comm again and checked the map. “Sir, change of location. You don't want to leave the bypass to go to Llandaff. It's changed direction and it's heading towards the college. You'll be best picking it up there.”
“Got that.”
The footage of the alien appeared on his screen, and he raised a hand in thanks to Toshiko and opened the archival software. It was immediately obvious that the system overhaul that he's spent two years working on in London hadn't touched Cardiff, as there were half a dozen updates waiting to be done. He let them install themselves and set the photo analysis software to cleaning up the photo, grabbing a pen and paper to jot down everything of note about the alien.
It was below average human height – its body was only about a metre tall, and it was keeping itself low to the ground. Long tentacles spread out ahead of it, and its pale green colour was mottled with dead leaves and mud. It had a surging gait, as if it was feeling its way forwards with the foremost tentacles and rushing to keep up with them. Probably sightless, then, with a sticky coating to its skin. The updates finished and he brought the software back up, putting in everything he'd noted and deduced, then sat back and waited for it to bring up a result whilst he watched the map and racked his memory for a similar encounter.
“Ahyp,” he breathed at last, as the first result flashed up on his screen over the map. He fumbled with the earpiece until he found the open channel. “It's an ahyp. Semi sentient species. Sort of like gorillas.”
“Oh great. Thanks for that Attenborough,” Owen snapped. He was out of breath and angry. “Just how does that help us?”
He gritted his teeth for a moment and opened the data Torchwood one had collected, rather than the record of experiments they'd conducted. “It needs salt. If you stop chasing it it will stop trying to escape you. Lure it in with salt.”
“And where are we going to get salt?” Suzie asked, also out of breath and sarcastic. “I don't carry it as a matter of course.”
“I do,” Jack answered her. “I have a bag of rock salt in my boot from winter still. Will that do, Ianto?”
“That'll do perfectly,” he confirmed. “They can't cope with water, so if you herd it towards the river you'll trap it.”
Tosh looked over at him with new respect and threw him a chocolate from the pot on her desk. “Jack, we'll keep him.”
They heard Jack chuckle down the line and Ianto flushed with pride when he said, “Definitely welcome to Torchwood, Ianto. Suzie, Owen, I'll be with you in ten.”
He popped the chocolate in his mouth and opened up a fresh incident report in the archive file. If this was what Torchwood Three needed, Ianto Jones was the man to oblige.
Next story
Chapter Title: Trapped by Torchwood part 6
Challenge/Fest: LongliveIanto cliché bingo
Prompt: Tentacles
Rating: G
Dedication:
Summary: A young Timelord crosses paths with Torchwood, and his life is forever changed.
Characters: Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness and OCs. Mentions of the Doctor
Contains:
Disclaimer: Torchwood and its environs, occurrences and persons belong to the BBC. The original characters have disowned me.
Ianto stared at the wall. He could feel time drifting past him, as slowly as it had ever since Torchwood had captured him. That time was over, but he wasn't free yet. Louis had created him a new identity and put him into the payroll files – three years of work performance reports and pay had been dumped on his newly created identity in under an hour, and all of the cases he'd worked in that period were assigned to him. It looked like he'd been busy and conscientious, mostly because he had. It had stood up to scrutiny, apparently, because Harkness hadn't shown any inclination to look more closely or ask more dangerous questions.
So he was in at Torchwood Cardiff, the renegade dangerous branch where people rarely lived long enough to draw their pensions, apart from the one name that kept recurring year after year.
Harkness.
Time moved around the man in strange ways, and the bright power of the vortex shone in him. He'd been touched by a TARDIS, and he made Ianto's head ache, albeit in a good way. It was like there was too much information trying to cram into his head all at once. Either way, he could very easily get attached to picking apart the mystery – they'd always been his weakness.
A knock at the door distracted him from his fixed contemplation of the wall and he padded over to answer it without thinking. The Torchwood Institute were accommodating everyone who was working on the site at a nearby luxury hotel, and Ianto's room was on the top floor. For once he could go outside freely, eat what he wanted and talk to who he wanted. He wasn't used to it, which, he thought, was probably why he went to get the door obediently, and without even stopping to pull trousers on.
Harkness looked him over with open appreciation, and Ianto slammed the door shut. He worried for a moment, but he heard Harkness laugh. “Sorry, Sir,” he called as he hurried to grab a pair of trousers and a shirt. “I wasn't expecting anyone at this time of night.” He fastened the shirt quickly and opened the door again, flushed and embarrassed. “You knocked, Sir?”
“If I'd known I'd get that welcome I would have done it a week ago,” Harkness teased. “Um, sorry, I have to ask, was that Tintin on your boxers?”
He scowled and folded his arms across his chest. “My team had a twisted sense of humour, and I haven't...” He stopped himself and looked away, following the line of the carpet down the corridor. “Anyway, did you want something apart from my boxers?”
“Yes, sorry, we're going to Cardiff.” Harkness stepped back as if expecting him to leave the room right that instant. “The team have got a situation and they need our help?”
“Our help?” Ianto checked, even as he hurried into the room to collect the suits he'd acquired over the last couple of weeks. He'd bought a new one every day after work, which had filled his wardrobe out and gave him the appearance of a prior life. Harkness had a bag slung over his shoulder, so he assumed that they were going back for some time. “Why do you need me?”
Harkness shrugged. “Because there's five of us and an extra pair of hands is always welcome. You need to start somewhere, and it might as well be here.”
Ianto folded his favourite suits over his arm with a selection of shirts and left the rest on the bed. “I'll need to come back for the rest,” he pointed out. “Unless we can get it sent across.”
“I'll get Brendan to send it over.” Harkness led the way down the corridor to the lift and stabbed the button sharply. “You can sleep in the car, as long as you'll be on the ball when we get there. Torchwood is a sort of... sleep when we're dead, kind of place.”
“Do you have accommodation at your base there?” Ianto checked. “Or should I book a hotel?”
“Erm...” The lift arrived and Harkness stepped in, looking thoughtful at his reflection. “We have accommodation, but if you'd rather sleep...” He waved Ianto away from his phone. “I'll sort it when we get there. We have a standing account with a hotel in the area, but it's not under the Torchwood name...”
“Naturally,” Ianto murmured, slipping his phone back into his pocket.
Harkness grunted. “You'd think. So why does the bar closest to one of my employees having a tab under our name?” He sighed and turned around to leave the lift as the doors slid open. “Not your problem... yet.”
“You fill me with confidence, sir.”
“That's my job, Ianto.” Harkness strode through the empty foyer and Ianto, with a sigh, shifted his grip on his suits and followed him. A concierge had already brought Harkness's car, a surprisingly cute two-seater ragtop, around to the entrance, and Harkness had the boot open for their bags. “At least at this time of night we shouldn't hit traffic.”
Ianto chuckled obediently, stashed his bag and got into the car. It had been updated with modern safety features, as far as he could tell, but there was no music player. A worn paperback was stashed in the door pocket by his seat. He rested his hands in his lap and drew on what he'd read of cars, trying not to let the Captain notice that he hadn't ever been in a car before. “It's a Jaguar, isn't it?” he guessed.
“Yeah, she's a Jaguar,” Harkness confirmed. He sounded amused, with a touch of exasperation, and patted the dashboard before he started the engine up. “She serves me well. I take it you're not a car man, Ianto?”
“No, sir...”
“Ianto, please call me Jack?” The glare that accompanied the request wasn't overly annoyed, but it was stern and put Ianto in his place – one he was distinctly unused to. “You're part of the team now, and we don't keep a strict hierarchy.”
Ianto swallowed hard and twisted his fingers together. The other man had asked him a few times since that time in the archives, but they'd always been at Torchwood One, and the same system was still in place. This was different. “It'll be a lot to get used to... Jack.”
“I know, but I'm sure you'll get used to it.” Jack flashed him a gentler smile and patted his leg in a startlingly affectionate action. “The others won't let you keep doing it, anyway. Things you need to know...” He rested his palm against the steering wheel and raised his fingers to count off the information. “You, Tosh and half of Suzie form one team. I get the other half of Suzie and half of Owen. The other half of Owen is a team all by itself. On paper you'll be the second in command and the administrative director, in reality you all do what I say.” He smiled wryly and curled his fingers around the steering wheel again, amending, “Mostly. Any questions?”
Ianto blinked slowly and tilted his head back against the headrest, watching streetlights flashing by. “What, exactly, will my duties be once we've finished integrating the archives?”
“Well, first you'll have to sort the archives out,” Jack warned him. “Our head archivist for the last few years has been Tosh...”
“Tosh?” Ianto checked darkly. “Your head of research is your head archivist?”
“Well, we don't really have heads of department...” Jack tried to look innocent, but his eyes creased at the edges with the laughter he was suppressing. “But yes, essentially.”
Ianto closed his eyes and sighed. “Please tell me she's not like the researchers at One, who got items out of the archives, then got something else that they thought would help and forgot about the first... and so on?”
“Um...” Jack patted his leg again. “She does put things back. Mostly.”
“So my duties will be keeping Tosh happy and making sure that everything goes back where it belongs?” he checked.
“For starters.” Jack shrugged one shoulder and glanced at Ianto briefly. “We all pitch in on the paperwork and things – Suzie's doing the accounts at the moment, Owen, obviously, keeps our medical records up to date. If you could take over some of the clerical duties as well as the archiving it would free the others up to spend more time doing what they're paid for.” He sighed and gestured out of the windscreen. “And then we need someone to do Hub-based back-up for cases like tonight.”
“Tonight being...” he trailed off, inviting Jack to explain what was going on now they were in private.
“Tonight the Rift was active on the far side of Cardiff from our base.” Jack glanced at him again. “You know about the Rift?”
“A rent in the fabric of space and time that connects different parts of the universe?” Ianto sighed in as put-upon a manner as he could manage. It was the layman's version, but Jack was only human and couldn't be expected to understand the full version. “Understanding things is my job. Was my job,” he amended.
“It still is your job, but yes, basically.” Jack made a vague hand gesture, apparently to himself. “Something came through, and the guys weren't there to catch it – not their fault; it's an hour's journey even at night. But they need an extra pair of hands, and I didn't want you to leave you in London.”
“I would have been alright,” Ianto murmured, but he appreciated the concern he could head underlying Jack's words, even if he didn't feel it necessary. “But one more pair of hands is always useful.”
Jack nodded. “You can shadow Tosh today to see what she does. Keep her stocked with your fantastic coffee and we'll be fine.”
“And there we go.” Ianto smiled. “I'm clearly going to become an essential component of the team if only for my coffee making skills.”
They arrived in Cardiff Bay at just after four in the morning and Jack parked in a secure carpark around the back of the Senedd building. He greeted the security guard in passing and let them into the back of the building, then led Ianto down a twist of corridors into and below the building, into a lift. “I would have liked to take you in through the front door on your first time here, but that'll have to wait. It'll still leave an impression, I promise.”
“Of course,” Ianto agreed. “I wouldn't expect anything less.”
Jack chuckled and leaned in close to whisper, “I'm starting to suspect that you're extremely insubordinate under that suit, Jones.”
He stared dead ahead at the wall and kept his hands still. “I knew you'd figure me out eventually, sir.”
“Are you going to be trouble?” Jack asked with another laugh, but he patted Ianto's arse and moved to the opening doors. “Work first.”
Ianto blinked at Jack's back, but hurried to catch up. He slowed as they entered the cavernous space and stared up at the ceiling, far, far above them. “Wow. This is...” He dragged his gaze down to the level they'd entered on. “Subtle,” he settled for at last. “It suits you.”
“Cheeky again,” Jack tutted. “Toshiko, you remember Ianto?”
“Of course.” She span her chair around and smiled at him distractedly. “Suzie and Owen are out in Llandaff, Jack. It's in the woods below the cathedral.”
Jack swore creatively and jogged back towards the door. “Ianto, I'll give you the full tour when we start again in the morning. Tosh can teach you what you need to know tonight. I need directions out there, Tosh.”
She had already turned back to her computer and her fingers were flying over the keyboard. “I'll bring up the directions and Ianto can talk you through them. Drive carefully, Jack!”
Ianto settled down gingerly at a bare desk and ran his fingers along the edge of the keyboard. “So what is it you need me to do, Toshiko?”
“I'm going to open up that computer station with directions to Suzie and Owen's location,” she explained distractedly. “You need to get an earpiece from the top drawer of that desk and set it to channel four, so you don't disturb the others. I'll let Jack know what channel you're on, and you can direct him.”
He did as he was told and found the earpiece in the drawer. Tosh returned to communicating with her team-mates, apparently trying to soothe frazzled moods. The last thing Ianto wanted to deal with was Owen using him as a target for all his irritation again, so Ianto switched to the closed channel to wait for Jack.
“Ianto,” Jack greeted him over the comms. “You're the man with the map.”
Ianto shook himself and focussed on the map. “I need to know where you are, sir.” He slipped back into the formal address to keep his mind on work. Jack didn't actually need help until he got out to Llandaff, so whilst he hit the bypass and hared out there Ianto turned back to Tosh. “Toshiko,” he called softly. “Have you got a visual on the alien?”
“No.” She sounded frustrated. “I had one for a while when it was by the cathedral, but there's no CCTV in the woods.”
His hands twitched for his TARDIS, even after so many years without her and finally losing her, and he balled them into fists in his lap. “Can you send me what you had, then? I'll see if there's anything in the Archives.”
“Okay...” Her fingers flew over her keyboard to send him the information, but she paused part-way through. “Owen, Suzie, it's changed direction,” she announced with frustration. “It's going down the path towards the bypass.”
Ianto activated his comm again and checked the map. “Sir, change of location. You don't want to leave the bypass to go to Llandaff. It's changed direction and it's heading towards the college. You'll be best picking it up there.”
“Got that.”
The footage of the alien appeared on his screen, and he raised a hand in thanks to Toshiko and opened the archival software. It was immediately obvious that the system overhaul that he's spent two years working on in London hadn't touched Cardiff, as there were half a dozen updates waiting to be done. He let them install themselves and set the photo analysis software to cleaning up the photo, grabbing a pen and paper to jot down everything of note about the alien.
It was below average human height – its body was only about a metre tall, and it was keeping itself low to the ground. Long tentacles spread out ahead of it, and its pale green colour was mottled with dead leaves and mud. It had a surging gait, as if it was feeling its way forwards with the foremost tentacles and rushing to keep up with them. Probably sightless, then, with a sticky coating to its skin. The updates finished and he brought the software back up, putting in everything he'd noted and deduced, then sat back and waited for it to bring up a result whilst he watched the map and racked his memory for a similar encounter.
“Ahyp,” he breathed at last, as the first result flashed up on his screen over the map. He fumbled with the earpiece until he found the open channel. “It's an ahyp. Semi sentient species. Sort of like gorillas.”
“Oh great. Thanks for that Attenborough,” Owen snapped. He was out of breath and angry. “Just how does that help us?”
He gritted his teeth for a moment and opened the data Torchwood one had collected, rather than the record of experiments they'd conducted. “It needs salt. If you stop chasing it it will stop trying to escape you. Lure it in with salt.”
“And where are we going to get salt?” Suzie asked, also out of breath and sarcastic. “I don't carry it as a matter of course.”
“I do,” Jack answered her. “I have a bag of rock salt in my boot from winter still. Will that do, Ianto?”
“That'll do perfectly,” he confirmed. “They can't cope with water, so if you herd it towards the river you'll trap it.”
Tosh looked over at him with new respect and threw him a chocolate from the pot on her desk. “Jack, we'll keep him.”
They heard Jack chuckle down the line and Ianto flushed with pride when he said, “Definitely welcome to Torchwood, Ianto. Suzie, Owen, I'll be with you in ten.”
He popped the chocolate in his mouth and opened up a fresh incident report in the archive file. If this was what Torchwood Three needed, Ianto Jones was the man to oblige.
Next story
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Date: 2011-06-03 10:08 am (UTC)Rxxx