m-findlow.livejournal.com

Title: Shut out
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 2,370 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 170 - Station
Summary: Promotion comes at a cost

He'd never had a traditional office job, having scraped by packing shelves and serving coffee anywhere that would take him. And yet, just like a pair of old sneakers, he'd slipped comfortably and easily into the routine and process. Admin was easy, and he couldn't understand why other people struggled with keeping things organised and planned out. The weekly summary report was due by ten am on Monday morning. All the timesheets and data dumps should have been completed Friday afternoon, making the report one simple click away from being done. Well, perhaps it would be if Friday night drinks was less of a prerequisite, and paperwork more of a priority. Perhaps their bosses were less strict than his.

Even so, he was just one tiny cog in the massive machine that was the Torchwood One. Everyone and everything here was above his station, so he kept being reminded. Here he was a nobody. And that was just how he liked it. Nobodies were never hassled or harangued, never asked to do anything too difficult or complex, not that he thought for a second he couldn't manage it if he were asked. No, the only reason he was happy to remain where he'd been placed was because of the rumour mill.

He had quickly become accustomed to the day to day hum of the place, which he was sure was nothing short of extraordinary compared to most office jobs. There weren't too many places where you could expect to have armed soldiers wandering about the place, scientists in lab coats, and boring admin people in suits and skirts, all mixed in together. Somewhere around here they were keeping spaceships, or so he'd been told, even if all he could see was computers and filing cabinets for miles on end.

Alarms went off all the time, but unlike the usual panic, or perhaps joy for a break from the work day, people here simply didn't react to them at all. They were so commonplace that they might as well have not bothered. Alarms meant someone on another floor was having a bad day. If they were still going after an hour, someone might come along and tell them all to evacuate the building, but that was only occasionally, and even then, it was generally a non event. Days later there might be a memo filtered around on email that detailed a new policy or procedure arising from "our aim for continual business improvement" which was human resources speak for "somebody stuffed up and now we've put a new policy in place so that the next person doesn't have their leg zapped off".

Things like that didn't happen on Ianto's floor. The highlight of his day was getting to cart files from one floor to another, and it was about the only time he left his own desk. That and the lunch break, which was either spent in the massive canteen, listening to all the latest gossip on what they were really up to on level thirty six, or outside enjoying the cool sunshine when it chanced a break through the clouds, and speculating that whatever rumors were going around were probably far more interesting that the actual truth.  

Even the places he was usually shipped off to collect files from seemed equally boring and bland. Clearly the action was happening elsewhere. And it was, Lisa assured him. She'd heard all kinds of crazy things about people being sucked into black holes and little green men with eight legs. He'd scoff and tell her to stop exaggerating, and to not believe everything that was spread about as being fact, but then she'd remind him that they'd all signed the Official Secrets Act, and that no one was asked to sign that if all they were doing was pushing paper.

He knew that they dealt with alien stuff, but it was all just research. They weren't really keeping live aliens here. Apparently the branch back in his old hometown of Cardiff dealt with all that stuff, even if that could be believed. Here it was just space junk. He didn't need to concern himself with that; not according to his boss. Ianto was a level eight staffer. They didn't go lower than that. Even Lisa was only a level seven. It was a lack of curiosity that had kept him out of trouble so far, and a healthy respect for not sticking one's nose in where it didn't belong, which was going to keep things that way.

Today though, he was beginning to wonder if perhaps he should have kept his ear closer to the ground, instead of buried all the way under.

He'd been excited to be able to spend the whole day down in one of the basement levels, deep below the main level of the building, though how many floors exactly he wasn't sure. Torchwood had a numbering system that left him for dead as far as navigation was concerned.  He suspected that it was intentional. In any case, it was definitely under the Thames, he was sure. Still it was more interesting than analysing cash flow projections for departments he wasn't even sure existed.

No one else was down here. More to the point, no one else wanted to be down here. Sorting out decades of old administrative paperwork was a job not revered, and it fell to whomever was the poor sucker at the bottom of the chain who had no one further to delegate down to. That sucker was Ianto. He was the end of the line. The last station on the train line that was the Torchwood employment hierarchy.

It was dark, it was dusty, and it was, honestly, quite filthy. This was not somewhere for wearing a suit, that much was clear. On the plus side, it was quiet and cool. The whole floor was hermetically sealed to preserve the documents kept down here, which meant the air was exceptionally pure, if you didn't upset the dust,  and the scent of bad coffee, cheap perfume,  and two minute noodles, far, far away.

This was way better than financial models. He'd never been a fan of history at school, but these old files read more like fiction than fact. Queen Victoria, Emily Holroyd, Gerald Carter, Tilda Brennan, names he'd mainly never heard before, leapt out from the pages like characters in a book. He was sure they had no idea what was down here, otherwise they'd never have let him near the place. This was all surely way above his security clearance level, reading tales of alien incursions, plague like illnesses, deadly weapons and a dozen other outlandish tales. It was certainly more interesting than all that ghost machine business happening upstairs. He hadn't seen any ghosts, not that he believed they were real, and he didn't fancy he really wanted to see ghosts of his family in any case. That had been the whole reason he'd left home in the first place.

No, these files were much more interesting. The sorts of things he read about in those files just didn't happen around here anymore. It just wasn't possible. They'd been cowboys and pioneers back in their day. Oh, to imagine what it would have been like working for a place like that back then. As much as he kept his head down here, the boyish, adventurous side of him buzzed with excitement at their deeds.

And one name kept repeating itself over and over. Captain Jack Harkness. Dozens of reports spanning decades. He'd caught the name at lunch one day, when a couple of people at a nearby table began muttering about a visit from Cardiff, and how Jack Harkness had wound up Ms Hartman to the point where they could hear her yelling from the floor above.

Whoever he was, he'd gotten right under her skin, which was no small feat. She was intimidating, and he'd only met her just the once when she'd come to offer him the job. Though he couldn't imagine how anyone could upset her that much, and the man had to be in his nineties if the age of some of these reports were anything to go by. What harm could an old man do, and why was he still in charge of the Cardiff branch, anyway?

Lisa laughed when he said that. 'Are you kidding? Didn't you see him? He's gorgeous, like movie star gorgeous. Julie from accounts texted me to make sure I was out in the hall when he was coming past. Well worth it.'

Ianto felt affronted. They'd been dating a for nearly a year and he didn't like the idea of some bloke winning over his girl with a quick smile and some nice hair. Clearly whoever he was, he wasn't the same Jack Harkness from the reports. Maybe he was a son or a grandson. Maybe they were three generations of the same family. Maybe he'd have to have a closer look at some of those files. The ones he wasn't supposed to be reading; just sorting, dating and archiving.

No one questioned his new inefficiency in getting the job done, allowing him to work for hours on end alone, unsupervised, and completely absorbed in the content.

'Still working on that records management project, Jones?' his boss enquired.

'It's a big job, sir,' he replied.

'Hmph,' he muttered. 'Just make sure that you have those budget reports done by Thursday morning. And add some of those pie charts; they went down a treat last month. They were so enamored with them that they forgot all about asking me to explain the bean counter's adjustments for extraordinary expenses.'

He smiled inwardly. That was him, Ianto Jones, forward thinker, master of subterfuge, and a dab hand with excel spreadsheets. He wished his dad could see him now. Living and working in London for a secret government organisation. It was well above the station in life that this dad had told him he would ever achieve. Who was he to talk? He was nothing more than a shop assistant, who acted as if he was the head tailor of the bespoke men's clothing section in Harrods. It pleased him to prove his father wrong, even if it had all come too late.

He'd skipped lunch today, which Lisa had already texted him about, annoyed. He didn't mind, promising he'd make it up to her later. Right now, what he was reading was far more interesting. Did the Official Secrets Act still apply to sharing details with someone else who'd already signed it? Lisa wouldn't believe half of it.

Then the alarms had sounded. Again, he thought, though this had been the first time in weeks that he'd heard them sounding this far down. Up on the ninth floor he heard them all the time, but not down here. On and on they went, and the noise became thoroughly distracting. Maybe he should go back upstairs and find out what was happening. Perhaps they had evacuated, but no one had remembered to come down here and here and find him.

He swiped his security card in the door panel but it beeped sadly. He tried again, but it wouldn't register. He tried the intercom, but no one answered. He was locked in.

Great, now I'm stuck here, he thought, pulling out his phone to send a message to Lisa to tell his boss to tell someone to come down and let him out. Even thinking it sounded confusing, let alone typing it out.

He waited twenty minutes, but still no one came to let him out. He tried calling Lisa, but she didn't pick up. Surely she wasn't mad enough at him for skipping lunch to not send help. At least the alarms had finally stopped, though.

Just when he was about to give up and go back to reading some more files, waiting for his rescue, he heard voices on the intercom. They sounded panicked and scared.

'Let us in, please!' the voice begged. It sounded a little bit like Terry from procurement.

He hit the button and spoke back.

'Terry, is that you? I'm stuck in here. Must have been a power surge or something. Can you unlock the door or get maintenance to sort it out?'

'Let us in for Christ's sake! They're coming!'

'Who's coming?'

'Hurry!'

Ianto couldn't understand. He couldn't get out and for some reason people wanted desperately to get inside. Who was coming?

On the other end of the intercom, he heard screaming.

Exterminate! Exterminate!

He heard Terry's voice say "oh, shit," and then the robotic voice again, "all humans on sub level five have been exterminated". After that, everything went silent.

He backed away from the door, hoping to God that whatever had happened out there, they weren't coming in here next. He ran to the other end of the room, huddling down between two tightly packed shelves of document boxes, trying to hide. Aliens were here at Torchwood. He knew it shouldn't seem impossible, but it did.

He had no idea how long he sat there, unable to get out, and unwilling to. Lisa wasn't answering his calls. No one he knew was answering his calls. For all he knew, no one knew he was down here, and no one else was left.

He finally heard the door clunk as the locking mechanism deactivated, holding his breath as he waited for someone, or something to come through. When nothing did, he slowly got up, moving toward the door, slowly pulling it open. Outside there were bodies everywhere. They didn't look injured or bleeding, but there was no mistaking they were dead. Some of the faces he recognised as senior management, and others were lowly clerks like himself. Most were strangers, except for Terry. Oh God, he thought, hugging the wall, scared to pieces.

Right now it didn't matter how much about what was going on was supposedly above his station; it hadn't saved anyone here. They'd all ended up equally dead. He didn't need to know any more about what was going on.

All he needed was to find Lisa and get the hell out of here.