Yay! Next chapter here and things are starting to get interesting...
Beta'd once again by the lovely phoenix27
“Bad?” Jack grinned mirthlessly and cocked his head at the man beside him. “Obviously...”
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| Tenth Doctor, Torchwood | |
Never Say Never by Kimori1024 [Reviews - 58]  Chapter or Story Author's Notes: | |
Mickey and Jack just stared at the monitor speechless, for there were no words to describe what they saw on the screen. Well, there was actually one word — Bad, in oh so many ways.
“Jack... does it?” Mickey couldn’t form together enough words to make an actual sentence, but he was pretty sure Jack would understand. The image on the screen — a pack of wolves clearly spelling out the word ‘Bad’ was pretty hard to ignore.
“Oh yes,” Jack responded unable to pull his eyes away in disbelief.
“Is it...?” Mickey continued to stammer as his brain attempted to grasp the possibilities, almost none of which were incredibly good.
“Bad?” Jack grinned mirthlessly and cocked his head at the man beside him. “Obviously...” He turned to the roundish gentleman in the security uniform beside him. “This must be some sort of mistake.”
“Yeah, I mean are you sure it hasn’t been tampered with?” Mickey looked at the short man as well making him increasingly nervous.
“No...” the man dabbed his now sweating forehead with a cloth from his pocket as he spoke.” I wasn’t even on duty on Monday... Maybe I should call my superior...” The man moved to grab his walkie-talkie from the desk, but Jack pounded his fist into the table making the guard jump.
The Captain neatly mouthed ‘fuck’ under his breath before lifting his hand off the table and rubbing his face in earnest to calm himself. “No... No don’t bother... We’ve seen enough.”
A UNIT sergeant, red beret and all suddenly barged into the small security room they had been standing in. The soldier, clearly agitated, was breathing deeply as if he had been running. “You Torchwood.... Couldn’t have just waited for me then? The government official?”
Jack gave the flushed man a quick glance, only momentarily eyeing the beret and wondering why Martha hadn’t yet brought him one to play with. After all, the only thing of interest to him was that hat because UNIT needed not know a thing of what was happening; keeping them clueless was best for it was all they were capable of. Jack decided ‘shove off’ might not be tactile enough so he settled to be curt. “Well, as you can see we are in a bit of a rush. So, if you wouldn’t mind?” Jack gestured his hand for the man to move out of his way.
“Right, so you’re just going to leave then?” The man shifted the red beret on his head, clearly trying to regain composure and authority, though the two men from Torchwood just stared at him in response.
“Yeah, we were just about to.” Jack motioned to Mickey to follow and made to maneuver around the soldier blocking the doorway.
“So, the great and powerful Torchwood doesn’t know either?” Jack was right beside the soldier as he spoke. Jack grinned to himself, oh bad move.
Jack easily swerved to grip the soldier by the collar of his uniform. The shocked soldier catching his breath as he was mercilessly shoved to the wall, the blue eyes of the man holding him piercing right through his own. “Now you listen here, asshole. No, I know what the hell it could be, but that very same thing also happens to be what it can’t be.” He swallowed and tightened his grip on the terrified man. “It could be good, but it could also be very, VERY bad. Do you understand me?” The soldier nodded in response. “Good. So there, now if we can just get on our way...
“Jack... c’mon let’s go...” Mickey tried to reason with the Captain. The quivering security guard now hid behind the younger man.
“Alright Mousey boy,” Jack grinned as he looked at the sergeant and then in one swift hand movement he removed the red beret. “Call it a parting gift, love.” He let the man’s collar go and gently patted his cheek.
The Torchwood team turned to leave, both the sergeant and security guard left stunned in their wake.
“Jack... that was wolves back there,” Mickey was the first to speak as the two men made their way out of the zoo and back to the jeep. His only response was silence, so he continued on. “Spelling out BAD... Bad wolf... or well, wolves.” Still, only silence greeted his ears.
Mickey continued, “You don’t seriously think-?” This time he was cut off.
“Don’t you?!” Jack turned to his partner and yelled much louder than was strictly necessary, but he couldn’t help himself. “What the hell else can it be, huh?”
“You know as well as I do what the Doctor said he was going to do,” Mickey tried to stay calm despite the assault from the Captain. “It can’t be.”
“Yeah, but when have his wishes ever stopped her, eh? Look, you’re here.” Jack tapped the beret he held in his hand to Mickey’s chest in emphasis. “Hell, I’m here. Another bit of her handy work...”
“We came here to save the universes six months ago, with scientific backing. We had good reasons to jeopardize certain things in order to help save everyone,” Mickey spoke, staring his dark eyes directly into the other mans blue ones. “No one can cross now, she couldn’t. And even if she could she wouldn’t...”
“Maybe I’m not making myself clear Mickey.” It was now Jack’s turn to hold the other man’s gaze, the intensity daring him to look away.
“But, it can’t be...” Mickey asserted. Suddenly, a soft ringing sound began to drift through the air, breaking the tension awkwardly. Though Mickey couldn’t help but silently sigh in relief at the distraction from his mobile as he lifted it to his ear.
“Hello?”
A female voice came on the line. “Right, so about the wolves - It’s a low level psychic field controlling them.”
“What?” Jack looked concerned over at his partner, alarmed at the pitch of Mickey’s response.
“Yeah, I know, we didn’t think it could be either. The sonic couldn’t even pick it up; it was hidden so incredibly well,” the woman’s voice continued to rattle on, barely seeming to take a breath between sentences. “But if you’re clever and well, if you’re me meaning you are very, extremely, unbelievably clever, then you can hack into a signal as such. The little bugger definitely doesn’t want to be detected, possibly subconscious; it’s an extremely low level field. Can’t me more than Basic 3 or 4....” The woman’s voice continued, elaborating on various wave lengths and technobable that would frankly go straight over most people’s heads. For all Mickey had seen and done in the past few years and all he’d come to know; right now he fell into the category of ‘most people’.
“Martha? Is that you? What the hell are you talking about?” Mickey raised his voice a bit as he spoke into the phone, something was definitely not right. Jack rushed closer to his side, his blue eyes flashing with unease.
“Martha? Who’s Martha? Tony, you alright?” The voice on the other side sounded confused. “Tony?”
“This is Mickey! Who the hell is this?!” Mickey yelled louder now as Jack reached out and snatched the phone out of the younger man’s hand and thrusting it to his own ear.
“Who the hell is this?” Jack was trying to be calm, but this hadn’t been a good day and his jaw clenched with the effort.
“But I called the right number! Who the hell is this?” The woman sounded equally agitated.
“How the hell did you get this number?” Jack’s control was starting to slip. His fingers grasped the beret in his other hand, twisting it in a white knuckled grip.
The woman’s voice was suddenly very serious, a quiet fear in the tone. “How did you get on the Torchwood line?”
“This is Torchwood!” Jack screamed back into the speaker. Then with a click, the voice was gone followed by a sharp high pitched screech forcing jack to jerk away from the tiny device. In a few moments, the dead buzz of a lost signal was the only thing left.
“What or well, who was that?” Mickey asked though his voice barely registered to the Captain as he gaped, completely transfixed by the dead mobile.
“Jack?” he repeated.
“I dunno.... She knew about the wolves though, didn’t she?” Jack broke his gaze to look back at his partner.
“Low level psychic field she said.... But we checked that.... She went off at how clever she was...” Mickey shrugged as he spoke. “I don’t understand why that would be the big problem here. She knew a Torchwood line... That’s what I don’t get...” He fell deeper into thought, he couldn’t remember anyone making him feel so clueless without ever having met him; well, except for one person anyway.
“Redial, damn it!” Jack shocked Mickey out of his train of thought with his outburst.
A tiny hesitant beep came from the phone as Jack frantically pressed the button to retrieve the number. The screen merely flashed ‘this number does not exist, please redial’.
“Don’t give me that bullshit! Redial!” He jammed his finger repeatedly into the tiny button, every time getting the same response. Mickey had to rip the phone from his fingers to avoid the phone being broken under the onslaught. “Shit!” Jack screamed out in frustration. He sighed and rubbed his eyes in an attempt to calm himself.
The two men abruptly realized that all attentions in the zoo car park were now focused on them; Torchwood, big secret agency, doubling as a right spectacle. A quick escape would be very nice right about then.
Jack swallowed as he caught the eye of an old woman staring at him and shaking her head in disgust. He weakly smiled and attempted a half hearted wave as she gave him the finger.
“Hey, mousey boy, fancy going to London?” Jack turned to his companion with his thousand watt smile.
“What? Now? Shouldn’t we go back to Torchwood and sort this whole thing out?” Mickey stared at the Captain exasperatedly.
“Nah, if they’re gonna call back they’ll do it on your mobile. Plus, just in case they can track it, we wouldn’t want them finding the base, would we now?” Mickey had a funny feeling there was more to his reasoning than Jack was letting on. The Harkness charm was on full force, firing on all engines. “Nope, let’s go to London.”
There wasn’t any time for the younger man to protest as Jack jumped into the driver’s seat of the Torchwood jeep, starting the engine and allowing just enough time for Mickey to jump in shot-gun.
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