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fan_flashworks2021-01-31 02:13 pm
m_findlow) wrote in fan_flashworks2021-01-31 02:13 pm
Entry tags:
Torchwood: Fanfic: The agony of wealth
Title: The agony of wealth
‘Twenty quid says it's junk,’ Jack said, throwing the SUV into a slightly fast turn as the road bent round to match the curvature of the bay.
‘I've learned never to bet with you on stuff that comes through the rift,’ Ianto replied.
‘Gwen, what do you say? Twenty quid gets a decent amount of pizza and beers.v
‘And why,’ Jack Harkness, ‘would I want to bet on it being something not completely boring and ordinary? Life is a lot easier when we're not dealing with something that's trying to kill us.’
‘Killjoys,’ Jack muttered good naturedly. ‘What's life without a little bit of excitement, hey?’
‘We get plenty, thank you very much,’ Gwen replied.
‘More than our fair share, some would argue,’ Ianto added.
‘Owen would have laid down a twenty,’ Jack argued.
‘Yeah, and you know what they say. A fool and his money are soon parted.v
Jack laughed. It was so true. Owen just couldn't help himself. ‘Alright, we're almost there.’ Jack kept one eye on the road and his other on the small display in the centre console, tracking the rift energy signature against a standard street map. ‘Looks like we're headed underground,’ he remarked, taking note of the particular signal strength.
Gwen nodded from the back seat, working on the SUV’s computers. ‘Agreed. It's below street level.’
‘Stinky sewer retrieval?’ Ianto asked, already turning his nose up at the prospect.
‘No, looks like it's in the access pipes where they maintain local gas supplies. There's a manhole access point just up from number twenty four.v
Jack sped down the street, coming to a stop on a dime right in front of the manhole so that the back of their vehicle faced it. Even as they stepped out of the car, there was already a lady in her seventies popping out to lean over her short fence and stickybeak their arrival.
‘Are you here about the banging?’
Jack gave her one of his disarming smiles. ‘Vale of Glamorgan Gas Board, ma'am. Come to check on an incident report.’
‘I knew there was something wrong. Teddy has been moaning about the kettle on the stove all morning. Reckons the gas won't stay lit. I called the council but they said they couldn't help. Did they speak to you? Ethel Jenkins. I gave them my name for the report. It's not a leak, is it? Should we be worried?’
‘That's what we're here to find out.’
She nodded, pleased that someone at least came and fixed things when they were broken. ‘You just sing out if you need a cuppa then, dears.’
‘Will do,’ Jack replied, giving her another smile. He turned around to his two teammates. ‘We're not dealing with a broken gas pipe down there, are we?’
Gwen held a sensor device down towards the manhole cap. ‘No excessive traces.’ She lifted the cap slightly, getting a more accurate reading. ‘No leaks.’
‘That'd be all we need to blow up the whole bloody street,’ Ianto remarked, pulling out a series of witches hats and a small worker's ten that could be positioned over the hole so that no one would see whatever they pulled out.
Jack helped Gwen slide the cap across and onto the road. He flipped on his torch and shone it down into the dark hole. ‘Age before beauty.’
‘By which you of course mean youth before beauty,’ Gwen quipped, sitting down on the road and lowering herself legs first down the narrow ladder.
‘Beauty next,’ Jack said, grinning at Ianto, who followed after Gwen with a second heavy torch, before Jack entered last of all.
‘A lot bigger than I imagined,’ Gwen remarked, shining her light down the narrow yet lengthy tunnel.
‘Built just before the war,’ Jack replied. ‘Meant to double as means of transporting key officials beneath the city during bombing raids. They would have used the sewers but we talked them out of that on account of the weevil population at the time.’
‘Do weevils eat politicians?’ Ianto asked. ‘I thought even they had standards. Give you indigestion at the very least.’
Jack smiled at the humour, shining his torch around the slowly rusting gas pipes tethered to the walls. Over a hundred years old and in need of replacing before there really was a serious gas leak.
‘I think I've got something,’ Gwen called out, her voice echoing all around them.
The two men quickly caught up with her and spotted the metal box lying on its side, illuminated by her torch.
‘Containment box of some kind,’ Ianto murmured and Jack agreed. ‘Lucky dip?’
Jack lowered himself down on his haunches and studied it a bit closer. ‘Relatively standard design, though it looks high quality.’
‘Anything inside?’ Gwen asked.
‘Slightly damaged,’ Jack observed, spotting a corner crunched inwards from the sheer force of dropping through the rift, no doubt. ‘Doesn't look like it. The damage is minor and doesn't look to have pierced the inner shielding. Probably just a spare sitting on someone's ship waiting to be used. Patch it up and it'll come in handy. God knows we're always short on high quality containment units.’
‘So, not junk then,’ Ianto replied. ‘Something actually useful. Looks like you lost your bet, Captain. Lucky none of us laid out any money.’
Jack ignored the jibe. It was still basically junk. Just because they could recycle it didn't make it anymore exciting. It made for a dull morning.
Gwen cocked her head to the side. ‘How does a piece of alien ship end up in a gas pipe access tunnel?’
‘How does anything that comes through the rift end up anywhere? The rift is a law unto itself. Ours is just to pick up the pieces.’
‘Never were truer words spoken,’ Ianto agreed.
‘Alright so let's pack it up and head on back to the hub,’ Jack announced, tucking the box under his arm.
When they climbed back out from under the small tent over the access point, the old lady from across the street was waiting for them. Jack figured she must have already finished the crossword puzzle for trendy and that this was now the most exciting thing that had happened to her all week,
‘Did you find the problem?’ she asked.
‘Definitely some pipes that need replacing,’ Ianto smoothly reported. ‘We'll notify the technicians and place an order for some new ones to be installed.’
‘We're all showing our age, eh? Not like you young things. I'm sure it's hard to imagine being old like me one day.’
Jack turned his charm offensive back on. ‘You don't look a day over twenty five.’
Ethel flushed at the overt compliment. ‘I'm far too old for you young man, but if you'd like to come inside for tea the kettle has just boiled.’
Gwen gave her one of those police friendly smiles. ‘We'd love to. Come on, Ianto. Let's go have tea with Mrs Jenkins while Jack here secures our find.’
‘Hey, how come I don't get to have tea?’
Gwen leaned close whilst Ianto was already being ushered up the path, given a tour of the rose garden. ‘Because if she talks long enough you'll probably find out that you dated her about fifty years ago. D'you really think she'll buy all that "must have been my dad" bollocks?’ Gwen gave him a look that defied him to argue with her.
He groaned in resignation. ‘Fine. Just don't hang around too long. We have work to do.’
‘Did you lot stop for tea on your way back?’ Owen grumbled, when the three of them finally rolled back into the hub two hours later.
‘We did, actually,’ Gwen said.
‘Typical. We're here working and you're off having fun.’
Jack couldn't help but grin. ‘I don't think they had as much fun as you think, Owen.’ He was somewhat glad to have stayed with the SUV, returning a few phone calls whilst he waited. His two cohorts had been subjected to the Jenkins family spoon collection.
‘Four hundred and twenty eight spoons,’ Ianto said, frowning unhappily. ‘Fifty just from the Merthyr area alone. Someone in Sheffield must be making a small fortune in souvenir spoon manufacturing.’
‘So, fetch us some pizza for lunch and you won't have to worry about spoons,’ Owen said.
Jack left Owen and Ianto to argue about lunch whilst he dropped the containment unit in its clear plastic bag on Tosh's desk. ‘No urgency in this one, Tosh,’ he told her. ‘Just needs a quick check and a repair job on that bottom corner. The micro ion soldering laser ought to do the trick. After that, it can be stashed in our class five containment units section.’
‘Do you want me to write it up?’ she asked, already inspecting it.
‘Nah. Just just to fix it up.’ He wasn't in the mood today for reading and signing off on an official report for alien Tupperware.
Ianto brought back lunch an hour later and already the troops were swarming the coffee table as he set the boxes down, still needing to fetch plates and napkins. He floated past Jack on his way to the kitchen. ‘Pizza's here,’ Ianto reported.
‘Save me a piece for later,’ Jack said.
‘Later? Since when are you not hungry?’
‘I'm going out for a bit,’ Jack replied. ‘Be back later.’
Ianto thumbed over his shoulder. ‘You're going the wrong way. The car park is that way. Unless your cunning plan is to take a tour of that hub first. You want to tell me where you're really going?’
Jack rubbed the back of his neck. He only realised now what a terrible lie it had been. ‘Just a bit of a headache. Thought I'd go lie down for an hour.’
Ianto gave a little frown of concern. ‘Have you taken anything for it?’
‘Of course. It just hasn't kicked in yet.’ Truth be told, it hadn't done a damn thing.
‘Alright. Well, having a lie down probably isn't a bad idea then. Leave the lights off it that helps. I'll keep the troops quiet.’
If he hadn't been feeling so rubbish before might have kissed Ianto. ‘Thanks.’
Jack settled himself in one of the medical suites, taking Ianto's suggestion to leave the lights off as he downed two more painkillers and curled over on his side, pulling the pillow under his head. The lack of light and noise did help and he fell asleep just as the tablets were finally starting to kick in.
He woke later to find his head throbbing even worse than before. He could barely make out the time on his watch, but finally realised he'd been sleeping for at least three hours, and not the half hour nap he'd anticipated. He curled into his other side and tried to massage the ache from his head but it felt like it was crammed full of too much stuff and might explode. He never got headaches this bad.
He stayed there for another hour, tossing from one side to the other, trying to dispel the aching, when finally a gentle knock on the door let a shaft of light pierce through the room.
‘Just thought I'd check on you,’ came the low Welsh lilt. ‘You've been down here ages.’ The edge of the bed dipped and there was a warm hand running through his hair. ‘Still feeling rubbish?’
‘It won't stop pounding,’ Jack complained.
‘Alright,’ Ianto said, calm as could be. ‘Well, we'll get Owen to take a look at you and see if he's got something stronger he can give you.’
He didn't really want to get Owen involved but what choice did he have? As it was he could hardly be bothered moving from the bed without feeling dizzy and nauseous. He definitely wasn't in a good way and maybe Owen would have something he could give that would ease the pain.
Jack suffered through Owen's gamut of questions and tests, not believing Jack for one second when he said it was just the worst headache he'd ever had.
‘I want to take him upstairs for a full body scan,’ Owen said, when all of his standard blood work and tests came back negative.
He struggled up with a bit of help, not really feeling like going anywhere, and preferring just to lie on the bed in the hopes that it would sort itself out, but with that pair of them there fussing over him he didn't have a lot of say in the matter.
He was halfway down the hall when his head felt like it had swollen to twice its normal size. He stumbled, legs going out from under him even as Ianto caught him under his arms, arresting his ungracious drop to the floor. ‘Legs,’ he muttered. ‘Can't feel my legs.’
Ianto kept him upright whilst Owen checked them. He prodded one with the sharp tip of his pen and Jack hissed. ‘It's not that you can't feel them, just that you can't control them. You've still got pain receptors. That's good.’
Ianto voiced that question Jack had front of mind. ‘How is that better?’
‘Because paralysis is one thing. Lack of motor control suggests something neurological.’
The pair of them managed to carry him awkwardly back to the central hub where Owen would have access to the scanner. If there was anything wrong with him, the scanner should find it. Not that he could think of any reason why he was suddenly in such a state. The worried looks from Gwen and Tosh as he was hauled down the steps of Owen's medical bay were enough to tell him he was in trouble.
It wasn't long before the scanner was blinking out results from Jack's full scan. On the stained tile wall opposite them, there was an outline of Jack's body and some bright red light was pulsating in the area of his head. Surprise surprise, he might have said had his head not been pounding and hurting through the back of his eyes.
‘What is it?’Ianto asked, keeping a hand on Jack's arm as he lay on the hard metal table with one arm over his eyes to banish the harsh lighting.
‘He's got nanogenes in his system,’ Owen announced. ‘They've clustered inside his brain.’
Ianto looked pensive. ‘That containment unit we brought back this morning. They must have been inside it and escaped through the damaged hole.’
‘So, chances are you and Gwen could also have them.’
‘I don't have a headache.’
‘Me either,’ Gwen said.
Ianto shoved his hands in his pockets and studied Jack's image on the wall. ‘Don't nanogenes usually make you better?’
‘Normally, yeah. I'm going to need a sample to find out exactly what they're doing.’
‘And how do you propose to do that? Cut his brain open?’ Ianto sounded furious.
‘Please do,’ Jack said. Anything to stop it from hurting. Ianto shushed him with a stern word. Apparently he didn't get a say in the matter anymore.
‘Just trust me. I know what I'm doing,’ Owen said, retrieving a nasty looking syringe. ‘Gwen, get down here and give us a hand.’
‘Doing what?’ She said, reluctantly descending the steps.
‘Holding his head still.’
‘I can do it,’ Ianto insisted.
‘Back off, Teaboy,’ Owen warned. ‘You can't be trusted not to freak out.’
Ianto scowled but stepped away, leaning against the wall and sulking as Gwen squeezed past him, coming to stand at the head of that table and take Jack's head gently between both hands.
Owen snapped on a set of gloves and instructed Gwen to lean Jack's head to one side. ‘Don't move an inch,’ Jack, Owen warned them as he came over with the long needle. He positioned it at the back of Jack's neck and angled it steeply upward, sliding it under the skin and up alongside the spine, and then pushed it deeply into the tissue beyond it, all three while keeping one eye on the scanner image on the wall, making sure he got the angle just right. Satisfied that he had the needle where he wanted it, he pulled back on the plunger, filling the capsule with deep red blood. ‘Done,’ he announced, and Jack heard the collective sigh of at least three people nearby.
It took some effort, but Jack managed to angle his head back in the other direction to watch Owen as he put a few drops of blood on a plate and slide it under his microscope. Ianto had returned to pushing over him, sliding a blanket under his head for a pillow and getting a second one ready in case he got cold. Bless his thoughtfulness, but Jack was more interested in what was going on inside his head that was causing it to spin.
Owen leaned closer to the microscope, twiddling with the dials to increase the magnification. He frowned at it and abandoned it for a moment to place a second sample into his mass spectrometer. He went back to studying it whilst the mass spec completed its analysis.
‘Can you see them?’ Gwen asked.
‘Them and more,’ Owen said. The mass spec pinged and Owen reviewed the results and then peered back into the microscope. ‘Well, I'll be buggered.’
‘What is it?’
‘He's got gold in his blood. Tiny microns of it, and if you could see these nanogenes, you'd see them collecting it and merging the individual microns together to form larger clumps.’
Gwen blinked her surprise. ‘But that's insane. How would Jack have gold in his blood, and what does that have to do with his headaches?’
‘They're in the tiny blood vessels in the brain. Those are the narrowest of all blood vessels in the body. Even a tiny blockage can cause all kinds of neural side effects. In Jack's case, impeding the mobility in his legs, and the headaches.’
‘But… gold?’
Jack winced as the memories came back to him and he raised a hand to alert them to his presence. ‘Um…’
Gwen squeezed her eyes shut. ‘You're going to tell us you know exactly how that happened, aren't you?’
‘In my defense I thought it was all gone.’
Owen sighed. ‘Go on, then. Explain away. The sooner you explain yourself, the sooner I can figure out what the hell to do with you.’
Jack forced himself to sit up, which took some effort, even with help. His legs were still not quite in his control but at least the rest of him still seemed to be operational, grateful for the use of his arms and mouth. ‘It was back in my time agent days, when I was partnered up with John Hart.’
‘Of course it was, Ianto said, frowning and folding his arms petulantly as he leaned back against the wall. That was Jack's hopes of any sympathy dashed. He only had to speak the name and Ianto went cold on him. The green-eyed monster was a cruel mistress.
‘Anyway, we did this heist. It was stolen gold to begin with so it wasn't like we were really stealing it.’ That's what he told himself to justify it. He was merely liberating it from someone who didn't deserve to have it in the first place. Not that he and John were probably any more deserving, but they'd had fun spending it.
‘Okay,’ Gwen said, ‘but how does stolen gold get inside you?’
‘How do you think we got it out of there? We had this device that atomises solid matter. We put it in a transfuser and ran it into our bloodstream. At the other end we did the process in reverse to get it back out. I assumed we got all of it.’
‘How much?’
Jack grinned, thinking how beautiful it had been, watching that atomiser reconstitute bar after bar of solid gold, and how easy it had been, simply walking out of there to with several hundred thousand credits worth of gold just zipping around their bodies. Sure, he'd felt about a hundred pounds heavier walking out of there, but a little discomfort was worth it. Enough to make life comfortable for a good while. He winced and massaged his temples. At least he had been comfortable. Not now, though.
Owen smirked at him. ‘Karma’s a bitch, huh?’
‘I've been assessed by plenty of nanogenes. Never had this problem.’
‘Actually, I've been doing some research on the application of nanogenes,’ Tosh said, piping up from her spot leaning over the top railing. ‘They're not just used for medical purposes. Pretty much anything that relies on the relationship between organic and non-organic subatomic particles can use nanogenes. May I?’ she asked, pointing at Owen's microscope.
‘Be my guest.’
She came down and spent a few minutes studying the nanogenes. ‘Fascinating,’ she said.
‘Just tell me how to get them out of my head,’ Jack complained, feeling another wave of debilitating pounding coming on.
‘These are clearly programmed for a very specific function,’ Tosh said. ‘Probably not even anything to do with a medical application. Industrial, more like. They're literally collecting and consolidating the gold to a set atomic size, a couple of microns thick at most and then they carry it away. Presumably they have a set rendezvous point where they're dropping off what they've gathered.’
‘Like ants at a picnic,’ Ianto observed.
‘Precisely.’
‘None of you are helping!’ Jack cried, his frustration boiling over.
Gwen laid a placating hand on his shoulder. ‘I think what Tosh is trying to say is that once they've got what they want, they're not coming back.’
‘That's quite clever if you think about it.’ Jack scowled at Owen. ‘What?’ he said defensively. ‘It is. Think about it. If you stripped the land of all visible traces of gold you'd probably still miss a decent amount. If you could program robots to seek out and consolidate even minute particles, you could still make a profitable business. Probably get the land for a song, too, since everyone else considers it now worthless. You don't reckon we could reprogram them to drop off what they find here, do you, Tosh?’
‘Not before they've finished their task and gone.’
‘Bugger. Could've come in handy.’
Tosh gave Jack a sympathetic look. ‘I imagine once they've collected all the microns of gold from your neural pathways, they'll simply leave with their booty and you'll be fine.’
‘And how long will that take?’ Jack asked, directing his question at Owen.
‘I dunno. How much gold did you guys steal and how much if it was left when you got it back out?’
Jack slumped back on the table and groaned. It surely couldn't take more than a few hours.
Owen snorted. ‘Guess that means you'd better make yourself comfy for a while.’
The pain didn't go away, but neither did it get any worse. Now that he had an explanation for why his head was ready to split open, he could swear he could feel them burrowing away inside the tiny blood vessels, stealing what he had worked hard to steal in the first place. If he'd known that the extraction process he and John had been through wasn't exactly thorough, he might have had second thoughts about their plan to smuggle the gold out of there in the first place. Owen was right. Karma really was a bitch.
Ianto came by a few hours later with a cup of tea and a ham and cheese sandwich. He paused long enough to inspect Jack's latest scan which showed the presence of the nanogenes in Jack's cranium were reducing considerably now. It married up with Jack's headache now being no more than a dull nuisance.
Jack gratefully took the offered plate and cup, wishing it were coffee but happy just for something to eat and drink. ‘Lucky I haven't set off the alarms in airport security,’ he tried to tease as the headache was finally starting to ease. It was such a difference, but after all the pain he'd been in, even the tiniest reprieve was a godsend.
‘Well, they wouldn't have much luck pinpointing the problem, would they? Even our equipment took a whole to figure it out.’
Jack took a large bite. Ham and cheese had never tasted so good. ‘Still, I'd get a cavity search out of it.’
Ianto rolled his eyes. ‘Only you would see that as a benefit.’ He paused for a few minutes and then Jack noticed the tiny beginnings of a smirk pulling at the edge of his mouth.
‘What?’
‘I was just thinking about whether we could ever find the nanogenes afterwards and find out how much gold they collected from your brain. That way, when we say you're worth your weight in gold, we'll know exactly how much that is.’
Jack pulled a face, thinking it couldn't be more than about four pounds fifty.
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 4,151 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 324 - Gold
Summary: An innocent retrieval causes a real headache for Jack.
‘Twenty quid says it's junk,’ Jack said, throwing the SUV into a slightly fast turn as the road bent round to match the curvature of the bay.
‘I've learned never to bet with you on stuff that comes through the rift,’ Ianto replied.
‘Gwen, what do you say? Twenty quid gets a decent amount of pizza and beers.v
‘And why,’ Jack Harkness, ‘would I want to bet on it being something not completely boring and ordinary? Life is a lot easier when we're not dealing with something that's trying to kill us.’
‘Killjoys,’ Jack muttered good naturedly. ‘What's life without a little bit of excitement, hey?’
‘We get plenty, thank you very much,’ Gwen replied.
‘More than our fair share, some would argue,’ Ianto added.
‘Owen would have laid down a twenty,’ Jack argued.
‘Yeah, and you know what they say. A fool and his money are soon parted.v
Jack laughed. It was so true. Owen just couldn't help himself. ‘Alright, we're almost there.’ Jack kept one eye on the road and his other on the small display in the centre console, tracking the rift energy signature against a standard street map. ‘Looks like we're headed underground,’ he remarked, taking note of the particular signal strength.
Gwen nodded from the back seat, working on the SUV’s computers. ‘Agreed. It's below street level.’
‘Stinky sewer retrieval?’ Ianto asked, already turning his nose up at the prospect.
‘No, looks like it's in the access pipes where they maintain local gas supplies. There's a manhole access point just up from number twenty four.v
Jack sped down the street, coming to a stop on a dime right in front of the manhole so that the back of their vehicle faced it. Even as they stepped out of the car, there was already a lady in her seventies popping out to lean over her short fence and stickybeak their arrival.
‘Are you here about the banging?’
Jack gave her one of his disarming smiles. ‘Vale of Glamorgan Gas Board, ma'am. Come to check on an incident report.’
‘I knew there was something wrong. Teddy has been moaning about the kettle on the stove all morning. Reckons the gas won't stay lit. I called the council but they said they couldn't help. Did they speak to you? Ethel Jenkins. I gave them my name for the report. It's not a leak, is it? Should we be worried?’
‘That's what we're here to find out.’
She nodded, pleased that someone at least came and fixed things when they were broken. ‘You just sing out if you need a cuppa then, dears.’
‘Will do,’ Jack replied, giving her another smile. He turned around to his two teammates. ‘We're not dealing with a broken gas pipe down there, are we?’
Gwen held a sensor device down towards the manhole cap. ‘No excessive traces.’ She lifted the cap slightly, getting a more accurate reading. ‘No leaks.’
‘That'd be all we need to blow up the whole bloody street,’ Ianto remarked, pulling out a series of witches hats and a small worker's ten that could be positioned over the hole so that no one would see whatever they pulled out.
Jack helped Gwen slide the cap across and onto the road. He flipped on his torch and shone it down into the dark hole. ‘Age before beauty.’
‘By which you of course mean youth before beauty,’ Gwen quipped, sitting down on the road and lowering herself legs first down the narrow ladder.
‘Beauty next,’ Jack said, grinning at Ianto, who followed after Gwen with a second heavy torch, before Jack entered last of all.
‘A lot bigger than I imagined,’ Gwen remarked, shining her light down the narrow yet lengthy tunnel.
‘Built just before the war,’ Jack replied. ‘Meant to double as means of transporting key officials beneath the city during bombing raids. They would have used the sewers but we talked them out of that on account of the weevil population at the time.’
‘Do weevils eat politicians?’ Ianto asked. ‘I thought even they had standards. Give you indigestion at the very least.’
Jack smiled at the humour, shining his torch around the slowly rusting gas pipes tethered to the walls. Over a hundred years old and in need of replacing before there really was a serious gas leak.
‘I think I've got something,’ Gwen called out, her voice echoing all around them.
The two men quickly caught up with her and spotted the metal box lying on its side, illuminated by her torch.
‘Containment box of some kind,’ Ianto murmured and Jack agreed. ‘Lucky dip?’
Jack lowered himself down on his haunches and studied it a bit closer. ‘Relatively standard design, though it looks high quality.’
‘Anything inside?’ Gwen asked.
‘Slightly damaged,’ Jack observed, spotting a corner crunched inwards from the sheer force of dropping through the rift, no doubt. ‘Doesn't look like it. The damage is minor and doesn't look to have pierced the inner shielding. Probably just a spare sitting on someone's ship waiting to be used. Patch it up and it'll come in handy. God knows we're always short on high quality containment units.’
‘So, not junk then,’ Ianto replied. ‘Something actually useful. Looks like you lost your bet, Captain. Lucky none of us laid out any money.’
Jack ignored the jibe. It was still basically junk. Just because they could recycle it didn't make it anymore exciting. It made for a dull morning.
Gwen cocked her head to the side. ‘How does a piece of alien ship end up in a gas pipe access tunnel?’
‘How does anything that comes through the rift end up anywhere? The rift is a law unto itself. Ours is just to pick up the pieces.’
‘Never were truer words spoken,’ Ianto agreed.
‘Alright so let's pack it up and head on back to the hub,’ Jack announced, tucking the box under his arm.
When they climbed back out from under the small tent over the access point, the old lady from across the street was waiting for them. Jack figured she must have already finished the crossword puzzle for trendy and that this was now the most exciting thing that had happened to her all week,
‘Did you find the problem?’ she asked.
‘Definitely some pipes that need replacing,’ Ianto smoothly reported. ‘We'll notify the technicians and place an order for some new ones to be installed.’
‘We're all showing our age, eh? Not like you young things. I'm sure it's hard to imagine being old like me one day.’
Jack turned his charm offensive back on. ‘You don't look a day over twenty five.’
Ethel flushed at the overt compliment. ‘I'm far too old for you young man, but if you'd like to come inside for tea the kettle has just boiled.’
Gwen gave her one of those police friendly smiles. ‘We'd love to. Come on, Ianto. Let's go have tea with Mrs Jenkins while Jack here secures our find.’
‘Hey, how come I don't get to have tea?’
Gwen leaned close whilst Ianto was already being ushered up the path, given a tour of the rose garden. ‘Because if she talks long enough you'll probably find out that you dated her about fifty years ago. D'you really think she'll buy all that "must have been my dad" bollocks?’ Gwen gave him a look that defied him to argue with her.
He groaned in resignation. ‘Fine. Just don't hang around too long. We have work to do.’
‘Did you lot stop for tea on your way back?’ Owen grumbled, when the three of them finally rolled back into the hub two hours later.
‘We did, actually,’ Gwen said.
‘Typical. We're here working and you're off having fun.’
Jack couldn't help but grin. ‘I don't think they had as much fun as you think, Owen.’ He was somewhat glad to have stayed with the SUV, returning a few phone calls whilst he waited. His two cohorts had been subjected to the Jenkins family spoon collection.
‘Four hundred and twenty eight spoons,’ Ianto said, frowning unhappily. ‘Fifty just from the Merthyr area alone. Someone in Sheffield must be making a small fortune in souvenir spoon manufacturing.’
‘So, fetch us some pizza for lunch and you won't have to worry about spoons,’ Owen said.
Jack left Owen and Ianto to argue about lunch whilst he dropped the containment unit in its clear plastic bag on Tosh's desk. ‘No urgency in this one, Tosh,’ he told her. ‘Just needs a quick check and a repair job on that bottom corner. The micro ion soldering laser ought to do the trick. After that, it can be stashed in our class five containment units section.’
‘Do you want me to write it up?’ she asked, already inspecting it.
‘Nah. Just just to fix it up.’ He wasn't in the mood today for reading and signing off on an official report for alien Tupperware.
Ianto brought back lunch an hour later and already the troops were swarming the coffee table as he set the boxes down, still needing to fetch plates and napkins. He floated past Jack on his way to the kitchen. ‘Pizza's here,’ Ianto reported.
‘Save me a piece for later,’ Jack said.
‘Later? Since when are you not hungry?’
‘I'm going out for a bit,’ Jack replied. ‘Be back later.’
Ianto thumbed over his shoulder. ‘You're going the wrong way. The car park is that way. Unless your cunning plan is to take a tour of that hub first. You want to tell me where you're really going?’
Jack rubbed the back of his neck. He only realised now what a terrible lie it had been. ‘Just a bit of a headache. Thought I'd go lie down for an hour.’
Ianto gave a little frown of concern. ‘Have you taken anything for it?’
‘Of course. It just hasn't kicked in yet.’ Truth be told, it hadn't done a damn thing.
‘Alright. Well, having a lie down probably isn't a bad idea then. Leave the lights off it that helps. I'll keep the troops quiet.’
If he hadn't been feeling so rubbish before might have kissed Ianto. ‘Thanks.’
Jack settled himself in one of the medical suites, taking Ianto's suggestion to leave the lights off as he downed two more painkillers and curled over on his side, pulling the pillow under his head. The lack of light and noise did help and he fell asleep just as the tablets were finally starting to kick in.
He woke later to find his head throbbing even worse than before. He could barely make out the time on his watch, but finally realised he'd been sleeping for at least three hours, and not the half hour nap he'd anticipated. He curled into his other side and tried to massage the ache from his head but it felt like it was crammed full of too much stuff and might explode. He never got headaches this bad.
He stayed there for another hour, tossing from one side to the other, trying to dispel the aching, when finally a gentle knock on the door let a shaft of light pierce through the room.
‘Just thought I'd check on you,’ came the low Welsh lilt. ‘You've been down here ages.’ The edge of the bed dipped and there was a warm hand running through his hair. ‘Still feeling rubbish?’
‘It won't stop pounding,’ Jack complained.
‘Alright,’ Ianto said, calm as could be. ‘Well, we'll get Owen to take a look at you and see if he's got something stronger he can give you.’
He didn't really want to get Owen involved but what choice did he have? As it was he could hardly be bothered moving from the bed without feeling dizzy and nauseous. He definitely wasn't in a good way and maybe Owen would have something he could give that would ease the pain.
Jack suffered through Owen's gamut of questions and tests, not believing Jack for one second when he said it was just the worst headache he'd ever had.
‘I want to take him upstairs for a full body scan,’ Owen said, when all of his standard blood work and tests came back negative.
He struggled up with a bit of help, not really feeling like going anywhere, and preferring just to lie on the bed in the hopes that it would sort itself out, but with that pair of them there fussing over him he didn't have a lot of say in the matter.
He was halfway down the hall when his head felt like it had swollen to twice its normal size. He stumbled, legs going out from under him even as Ianto caught him under his arms, arresting his ungracious drop to the floor. ‘Legs,’ he muttered. ‘Can't feel my legs.’
Ianto kept him upright whilst Owen checked them. He prodded one with the sharp tip of his pen and Jack hissed. ‘It's not that you can't feel them, just that you can't control them. You've still got pain receptors. That's good.’
Ianto voiced that question Jack had front of mind. ‘How is that better?’
‘Because paralysis is one thing. Lack of motor control suggests something neurological.’
The pair of them managed to carry him awkwardly back to the central hub where Owen would have access to the scanner. If there was anything wrong with him, the scanner should find it. Not that he could think of any reason why he was suddenly in such a state. The worried looks from Gwen and Tosh as he was hauled down the steps of Owen's medical bay were enough to tell him he was in trouble.
It wasn't long before the scanner was blinking out results from Jack's full scan. On the stained tile wall opposite them, there was an outline of Jack's body and some bright red light was pulsating in the area of his head. Surprise surprise, he might have said had his head not been pounding and hurting through the back of his eyes.
‘What is it?’Ianto asked, keeping a hand on Jack's arm as he lay on the hard metal table with one arm over his eyes to banish the harsh lighting.
‘He's got nanogenes in his system,’ Owen announced. ‘They've clustered inside his brain.’
Ianto looked pensive. ‘That containment unit we brought back this morning. They must have been inside it and escaped through the damaged hole.’
‘So, chances are you and Gwen could also have them.’
‘I don't have a headache.’
‘Me either,’ Gwen said.
Ianto shoved his hands in his pockets and studied Jack's image on the wall. ‘Don't nanogenes usually make you better?’
‘Normally, yeah. I'm going to need a sample to find out exactly what they're doing.’
‘And how do you propose to do that? Cut his brain open?’ Ianto sounded furious.
‘Please do,’ Jack said. Anything to stop it from hurting. Ianto shushed him with a stern word. Apparently he didn't get a say in the matter anymore.
‘Just trust me. I know what I'm doing,’ Owen said, retrieving a nasty looking syringe. ‘Gwen, get down here and give us a hand.’
‘Doing what?’ She said, reluctantly descending the steps.
‘Holding his head still.’
‘I can do it,’ Ianto insisted.
‘Back off, Teaboy,’ Owen warned. ‘You can't be trusted not to freak out.’
Ianto scowled but stepped away, leaning against the wall and sulking as Gwen squeezed past him, coming to stand at the head of that table and take Jack's head gently between both hands.
Owen snapped on a set of gloves and instructed Gwen to lean Jack's head to one side. ‘Don't move an inch,’ Jack, Owen warned them as he came over with the long needle. He positioned it at the back of Jack's neck and angled it steeply upward, sliding it under the skin and up alongside the spine, and then pushed it deeply into the tissue beyond it, all three while keeping one eye on the scanner image on the wall, making sure he got the angle just right. Satisfied that he had the needle where he wanted it, he pulled back on the plunger, filling the capsule with deep red blood. ‘Done,’ he announced, and Jack heard the collective sigh of at least three people nearby.
It took some effort, but Jack managed to angle his head back in the other direction to watch Owen as he put a few drops of blood on a plate and slide it under his microscope. Ianto had returned to pushing over him, sliding a blanket under his head for a pillow and getting a second one ready in case he got cold. Bless his thoughtfulness, but Jack was more interested in what was going on inside his head that was causing it to spin.
Owen leaned closer to the microscope, twiddling with the dials to increase the magnification. He frowned at it and abandoned it for a moment to place a second sample into his mass spectrometer. He went back to studying it whilst the mass spec completed its analysis.
‘Can you see them?’ Gwen asked.
‘Them and more,’ Owen said. The mass spec pinged and Owen reviewed the results and then peered back into the microscope. ‘Well, I'll be buggered.’
‘What is it?’
‘He's got gold in his blood. Tiny microns of it, and if you could see these nanogenes, you'd see them collecting it and merging the individual microns together to form larger clumps.’
Gwen blinked her surprise. ‘But that's insane. How would Jack have gold in his blood, and what does that have to do with his headaches?’
‘They're in the tiny blood vessels in the brain. Those are the narrowest of all blood vessels in the body. Even a tiny blockage can cause all kinds of neural side effects. In Jack's case, impeding the mobility in his legs, and the headaches.’
‘But… gold?’
Jack winced as the memories came back to him and he raised a hand to alert them to his presence. ‘Um…’
Gwen squeezed her eyes shut. ‘You're going to tell us you know exactly how that happened, aren't you?’
‘In my defense I thought it was all gone.’
Owen sighed. ‘Go on, then. Explain away. The sooner you explain yourself, the sooner I can figure out what the hell to do with you.’
Jack forced himself to sit up, which took some effort, even with help. His legs were still not quite in his control but at least the rest of him still seemed to be operational, grateful for the use of his arms and mouth. ‘It was back in my time agent days, when I was partnered up with John Hart.’
‘Of course it was, Ianto said, frowning and folding his arms petulantly as he leaned back against the wall. That was Jack's hopes of any sympathy dashed. He only had to speak the name and Ianto went cold on him. The green-eyed monster was a cruel mistress.
‘Anyway, we did this heist. It was stolen gold to begin with so it wasn't like we were really stealing it.’ That's what he told himself to justify it. He was merely liberating it from someone who didn't deserve to have it in the first place. Not that he and John were probably any more deserving, but they'd had fun spending it.
‘Okay,’ Gwen said, ‘but how does stolen gold get inside you?’
‘How do you think we got it out of there? We had this device that atomises solid matter. We put it in a transfuser and ran it into our bloodstream. At the other end we did the process in reverse to get it back out. I assumed we got all of it.’
‘How much?’
Jack grinned, thinking how beautiful it had been, watching that atomiser reconstitute bar after bar of solid gold, and how easy it had been, simply walking out of there to with several hundred thousand credits worth of gold just zipping around their bodies. Sure, he'd felt about a hundred pounds heavier walking out of there, but a little discomfort was worth it. Enough to make life comfortable for a good while. He winced and massaged his temples. At least he had been comfortable. Not now, though.
Owen smirked at him. ‘Karma’s a bitch, huh?’
‘I've been assessed by plenty of nanogenes. Never had this problem.’
‘Actually, I've been doing some research on the application of nanogenes,’ Tosh said, piping up from her spot leaning over the top railing. ‘They're not just used for medical purposes. Pretty much anything that relies on the relationship between organic and non-organic subatomic particles can use nanogenes. May I?’ she asked, pointing at Owen's microscope.
‘Be my guest.’
She came down and spent a few minutes studying the nanogenes. ‘Fascinating,’ she said.
‘Just tell me how to get them out of my head,’ Jack complained, feeling another wave of debilitating pounding coming on.
‘These are clearly programmed for a very specific function,’ Tosh said. ‘Probably not even anything to do with a medical application. Industrial, more like. They're literally collecting and consolidating the gold to a set atomic size, a couple of microns thick at most and then they carry it away. Presumably they have a set rendezvous point where they're dropping off what they've gathered.’
‘Like ants at a picnic,’ Ianto observed.
‘Precisely.’
‘None of you are helping!’ Jack cried, his frustration boiling over.
Gwen laid a placating hand on his shoulder. ‘I think what Tosh is trying to say is that once they've got what they want, they're not coming back.’
‘That's quite clever if you think about it.’ Jack scowled at Owen. ‘What?’ he said defensively. ‘It is. Think about it. If you stripped the land of all visible traces of gold you'd probably still miss a decent amount. If you could program robots to seek out and consolidate even minute particles, you could still make a profitable business. Probably get the land for a song, too, since everyone else considers it now worthless. You don't reckon we could reprogram them to drop off what they find here, do you, Tosh?’
‘Not before they've finished their task and gone.’
‘Bugger. Could've come in handy.’
Tosh gave Jack a sympathetic look. ‘I imagine once they've collected all the microns of gold from your neural pathways, they'll simply leave with their booty and you'll be fine.’
‘And how long will that take?’ Jack asked, directing his question at Owen.
‘I dunno. How much gold did you guys steal and how much if it was left when you got it back out?’
Jack slumped back on the table and groaned. It surely couldn't take more than a few hours.
Owen snorted. ‘Guess that means you'd better make yourself comfy for a while.’
The pain didn't go away, but neither did it get any worse. Now that he had an explanation for why his head was ready to split open, he could swear he could feel them burrowing away inside the tiny blood vessels, stealing what he had worked hard to steal in the first place. If he'd known that the extraction process he and John had been through wasn't exactly thorough, he might have had second thoughts about their plan to smuggle the gold out of there in the first place. Owen was right. Karma really was a bitch.
Ianto came by a few hours later with a cup of tea and a ham and cheese sandwich. He paused long enough to inspect Jack's latest scan which showed the presence of the nanogenes in Jack's cranium were reducing considerably now. It married up with Jack's headache now being no more than a dull nuisance.
Jack gratefully took the offered plate and cup, wishing it were coffee but happy just for something to eat and drink. ‘Lucky I haven't set off the alarms in airport security,’ he tried to tease as the headache was finally starting to ease. It was such a difference, but after all the pain he'd been in, even the tiniest reprieve was a godsend.
‘Well, they wouldn't have much luck pinpointing the problem, would they? Even our equipment took a whole to figure it out.’
Jack took a large bite. Ham and cheese had never tasted so good. ‘Still, I'd get a cavity search out of it.’
Ianto rolled his eyes. ‘Only you would see that as a benefit.’ He paused for a few minutes and then Jack noticed the tiny beginnings of a smirk pulling at the edge of his mouth.
‘What?’
‘I was just thinking about whether we could ever find the nanogenes afterwards and find out how much gold they collected from your brain. That way, when we say you're worth your weight in gold, we'll know exactly how much that is.’
Jack pulled a face, thinking it couldn't be more than about four pounds fifty.
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