The Spirits Within 12/21 + epilogue

[madbottoms]

The Spirits Within

Chapter: 12/21 + epilogue

Characters: Jack, Ianto Owen, Tosh, Rhys, John Hart, the Doctor

Rating: PG

Warnings: Character death

Spoilers: Only if you’ve never seen Torchwood of Final Fantasy

Notes: See chapter 1 for notes and disclaimer.

Chapter 12

 

General Hart sat at his desk. The blinds over the window had been drawn and the room's anti-bugging equipment was turned on. In front of his desk were Major Smith and seven other soldiers. They were men he could trust completely. And soon would.

 

Major Smith snapped off a small communicator and looked at the general. "We have them, sir."

 

The general knew that Smith was expecting a positive response, but he didn't bother. There was no doubt that Captain Harkness and the Deep Eyes would be captured.

 

They wouldn't fight other soldiers. It wasn't in their nature. And in this city, there really wasn't any place to run or hide.

 

"Sir?" Major Smith said.

 

Hart looked at the major and the other soldiers and knew it was time to start. "My wife and daughter were killed by Phantoms when the Vancouver barrier city was attacked. Did I ever tell you that?"

 

Major Smith looked stunned. He shook his head no. The other soldiers seemed uneasy learning such personal information about him. But that was what he wanted. He needed them to feel as if he was just like them.

 

"I try to imagine," General Hart said, going on with his little speech, "what that must have been like, seeing everyone around you fall over dead for no apparent reason."

 

Now the major was really squirming.

 

"And then, at the end, feeling something next to you, invisible, touching you, reaching inside your body, pulling the life from you and your child." He stood and leaned over the desk right into Major Smith's face. "You've lost family, haven't you?"

 

"Yes, sir," Major Smith said.

 

The general looked at the other men. All of them were nodding.

 

He knew they would be. He knew more about each of them than they thought he knew. He wasn't going to trust this plan to anyone whose thinking wasn't completely with him.

 

"Good," he said. "That's why I trust all of you. You all know what must be done."

 

They all nodded, even though none of them had a clue what he was intending. But they soon would.

 

He moved around the desk and headed for the door with the men following. Time to put the last part of his plan into action. By the morning, the Council would listen to every word he said. And that would be the start of ending this war.

 

It took them just under twenty minutes to descend into the Barrier Generator facility. It was a massive complex of heavy machinery and glowing green ovo-energy pipes that lead to the very core of the place.

 

It was the Barrier Generator, as this complex was called, that kept the city protected from the Phantoms. And right now it was the exact place he needed to be to start what he knew would be the end for the Phantoms.

 

At the main security door Major Smith ran his security card through the scanner and punched in the correct code. Inside a nearby booth, the general knew two men were scanning them, seeing who he was.

 

A moment later the heavy security doors opened.

 

As his troop got through, he ordered, "Major, arrest these men."

 

It took a moment and some complaints from the dozen workers in the facility, but finally they were all rounded up and escorted out the door. Then the door was closed and secured. "No one through," he said to two of his men. "Period."

 

He turned his attention back to the main control room. A massive map of the entire city and all the barrier sectors covered one wall. At the moment everything was green, showing normal ovo-energy flow and activity. Good.

 

He had his remaining five soldiers take stations around the room. He pointed to the main control and command chair for Major Smith. He knew that Major Smith had done a stint of six months in this facility and knew how to operate it all. So did the other five men he had assigned stations.

 

"Okay," he said to Major Smith, "here's what I need you to do. Reduce power to Sector 31."

 

Major Smith snapped around in the chair and looked at him. "Sir, do you realise that the Phantoms will-"

 

"What I realise, Major, is that we must force the Council to take action against the enemy. And a little scare in a sparely populated sector will do the job just fine."

 

The major nodded and turned back to his panel, issuing orders as he went.

"Reduce flow of alpha pipe?"

 

"Twenty-five percent of alpha pipe energy flow redirected," one soldier said.

 

"Lower output to Sector 31," Major Smith ordered.

 

"Lowering output," a second soldier repeated.

 

On the big board a small sector turned bright red. An alarm sounded, filling the room with the whoops of the danger warning.

 

"Turn that damn thing off, "’ Hart ordered.

 

Major Smith did as he ordered, and silence again filled the room.

 

Another big board filling the second wall came to life. A moment before it had been clear. It was a map of the city as well, only this board showed Phantom activity. And there was activity starting in Sector 31.

 

Good. A few people would die tonight, but their sacrifice would be worth getting the Council to move and save all of humanity.

 

"They're coming through now, General," the major said.

 

"Oh, I think we can easily handle a few Phantoms in a contained section," he said. He had picked Sector 31 for the simple reason that the entire area was easily shut off from the rest of the city. And right now that was being done by the military.

 

The major glanced up at the big board showing the incursion of Phantoms, then back at the general.

 

"Relax, Major, when the night's over, you're going to be a hero."

 

General Hart watched as, on the big board, the opening in the Sector 31 barrier blinked a flashing red. And on the other wall, the Phantoms were spreading into the sector. His plan was working perfectly.

 

Now it was only a matter of time.

 

*~*

 

 The cell block was more comfortable than Ianto had imagined it would be. It had high ceilings, white corridors with bright lights chasing any chance of a shadow away, and no other inmates besides them in the cell block. The cells were open onto the corridor, with simple lines in the air. He had been told by Jack that those lines marked pulsonic lasers. There was no getting through them.

 

Each cell was large, about twenty feet across, with beds, a small desk, a toilet, and a sink, all built into the thick walls. Security cameras dotted the ceiling of the hallway, clearly able to see every inch of every cell.

 

Ianto had no doubt they were being very carefully watched by General Hart's men at that very moment. Jack, Ianto, and the Doctor had all been put together in one cell along the right side of the hallway, while the three members of Deep Eyes had the cell facing them on the left. Since there was no one else in the cell block at all, they could talk freely.

 

Since they had arrived and gotten settled, Ianto had been telling them about his dream, and about what he thought it meant. At the moment he was sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of his cell door. He could see Owen across the way, lying on his bunk. Toshiko leaned against one wall of her cell, and Rhys sat on the floor. They seemed relaxed and not at all upset about being thrown in jail.

 

Jack was leaning against the wall near Ianto, and the Doctor was sitting on the bed.

 

"Ianto," Jack said, "I'm not so sure you're calling it right."

 

"You were in my dream, Jack," he said, looking into his eyes. "You saw the same things I did."

 

"That's just it," Jack said, his voice echoing a little down the empty cell block toward the main door. "I'm not sure what I saw. How can you be?"

 

"Captain, please," the Doctor said, holding up his hand. "Let him continue."

 

Ianto smiled as Jack nodded. Then he went on. "All right, let's come at this a different way," he said. "Why do you think we've never been able to determine a relationship between the human-sized Phantoms and the giant Metas roaming the wasteland?"

 

"Excuse me," Owen said from across the corridor, "but what friggin' relationship?"

 

"He's right," Rhys said. "You have your human-sized Phantoms, your caterpillary Phantoms, and your flying snake-like Phantoms, not to forget my personal favourite, the big giant Metas."

 

"Down, boy," Toshiko said, laughing. "We know how you really love your job, but don't go getting excited in here."

 

Ianto laughed, as did the others. For six people jailed without cause, they were certainly an upbeat bunch.

 

"He's right, though," Owen said. "If you've spent as much time in the field as we have, you know there is no relationship between any of them. It's like a zoo out there." 

 

"All right, so tell us," Rhys said, "why would an invading army bring a bunch of whales and elephants along for the ride?"

 

"Some kind of crazy Noah's Ark?" Toshiko asked.

 

"You know," the Doctor said, breaking into the conversation from the opposite cell, "we have always assumed the meteor was intended as a form of transportation. Perhaps it wasn't."

 

 "The meteor is a chunk of their planet," Ianto said, remembering how at the end of his dream the planet was breaking apart, and one large chunk was shooting off into space.

 

"But how could they survive the trip across outer space on a hunk of rock?" Owen asked.

 

"They didn't," Ianto said.

 

There was silence in the cell block as everyone thought about his words.

 

"You know," Owen said, "you are starting to make a creepy kind of sense."

 

"I agree," Jack said, his voice soft and firm. "I think what you are saying explains why we never had a chance when fighting them. All our strategies are based on one assumption: that we were fighting alien invaders."

 

"Think of the dream, Jack," Ianto said. "Think of how all the aliens in the dream died. Since then all they have known is suffering. They're not an invading army. They're ghosts."

 

No one had anything at all to say to that.

 

Comments

[black59.livejournal.com]

ghosts?!
Wow!

Hart ... arghhhh!

[madbottoms.livejournal.com]

Yep! Surprise.