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Incursion; Adam plot, the team returns to the Hub
Topic Started: Nov 24 2009, 10:37 AM (1,174 Views)
Andy Davidson
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Blames The Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Andy scanned the main chamber of the Hub as best he could as the lift descended. The lift platform was crowded, though, and there were any number of shadowy nooks among the catwalks and weird construction of the place an intruder to hide in, especially under lockdown. What he'd do if he spotted someone he wasn't sure. As crowded as it was, firing a gun would be a risky proposition for everyone on the platform.

Myfanwy called out from her roost in the high struts. Andy wasn't sure if pteranodons were even capable noticing if things were off. Must have been the trouble lights and sounds that went with even a minor lockdown.

"Martha? Ianto?"

Hopeful, Andy glanced down in hopes of seeing a sign of his teammates.
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Martha Jones
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[ *  *  * ]
Martha heard the sound of the invisible lift descending, and Myfanwy's protest at the invasion of her air space. She knew it had to be Jack and the others coming back, but she had too many well-ingrained habits left over from the Year That Wasn't to come running out of hiding when she heard Jack call their names. Instead, she pressed the redial button on her mobile and activated her earpiece to reply to him.

"We're fine, Jack," she said. "But there's been no sign of Adam or Tosh, and we can't contact either of them."
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Captain Jack Harkness
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
The main level seemed clear enough and Martha's quick contact was hugely reassuring. Aside from anything else, if she was here, Jack was sure they'd not lost control of the Hub. So, he straightened up, but kept a wary eye out as he headed to the main level. "Get on the systems, Owen, and find Tosh." He frowned. "And Adam. Don't ... don't contact him though, and if Tosh is with him, not her either. But find them."

"Gwen, with me," Jack did a quick, professional circuit of the main level, shutting down access to the garage entrance and anything else he could secure. He set one of the SUVs heavy duty lights near the entrance to the archives where it would illuminate any approach but leave the rest of the main level in shadow for anyone coming up from there. The best he could do for now. The Hub was eerily silent, even with the water running and the more felt than heard thrum of the Rift manipulator - at least to his ears - and it took Jack a few moments to realize what it was.

"The ventilation system is off? That's not part of a level-1 lockdown." Jack crossed the runoff stream and joined everyone else at Andy's station. No one looked happy.

"Ianto," he said bruskly. "Come over here."

He watched Ianto carefully, the man was nearly impossible to read but Jack needed to know what he thought and maybe ignoring - Jack refused to believe he'd been avoiding Ianto - him after the Cyberman incident hadn't been the best idea. He'd never gotten to know him. None of them had.


ooc: I'm assuming everyone will end up at Tosh's station, wherever they start out.
Edited by Captain Jack Harkness, Dec 3 2009, 09:37 PM.
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Owen Harper
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Owen nodded shortly. "Right." He gestured for Rhys to keep behind him, and the three of them worked their way around to Andy's workstation. "Don't touch anything," he warned Rhys. "Just -- let us know if someone's coming." Andy's station didn't have quite as many displays as Tosh's, but they could still read through the information together, searching faster than just one person alone.

Mainframe's output display was wild, jerking around in a dizzying pattern Owen had never seen before. He tried a few of the basic commands, but nothing happened. "Computer's locked up," he called over to Jack. This was going to take some doing.
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Martha Jones
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[ *  *  * ]
Martha stayed in the shadows in Jack's office, but kept watching for the lift's descent. Once she saw that everyone else was accounted for on the lift (but what was Rhys doing here?), she motioned Ianto towards the narrow hallway to the back stairs. They'd meet the others downstairs without giving away their current location.

They slipped downstairs quietly and joined the others as they approached the workstations. Jack soon called Ianto over to him to confer with Gwen, so Martha moved to Andy's workstation with Andy and Owen. She looked at Mainframe's background display with concern. The violent swirling patterns she'd seen before had gotten worse.

"Keep trying to get a login session started," she suggested. "You might be able to get in if your timing's right, but Mainframe's been dodgy all afternoon."



OOC: I'm assuming that at some point soon after she signed on with TW3, Gwen invited Martha home for dinner, so she'd know Rhys on sight. Seems like a Gwen thing to do.
Edited by Martha Jones, Nov 28 2009, 12:47 PM.
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Rhys Williams
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[ * ]
Rhys was too floored by everything he was seeing to make any sort of protest, or even form a question as the lift descended. He managed a quick squeeze of Gwen's hand before Harper motioned him along, and he followed obediently.

"This is all under the Plass?" He hissed quietly. "What's all this for?" This wasn't secret police work.
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Andy Davidson
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
"Work," Andy answered Rhys. Whatever Jack had in mind, it was still probably best not to get into details.

He frowned at the Mainframe interface. It looked wrong. Really wrong."I'll try from Toshiko's station," he said as he split off from the group. "She's got a better set-up than any of us. Maybe I'll get lucky."

The sheer amount of hardware that Tosh's desk supported was intimidating. On impulse, he checked through the knick-knacks on the surface, poked through drawers for any kind of clue about what might be going on. If Adam was up to something, shouldn't she be in on it?

If she and Adam were dating, he thought, shouldn't she have a picture of him instead of a picture of Owen?
Edited by Andy Davidson, Nov 28 2009, 07:12 PM.
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Owen Harper
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Owen tried a few more queries, but Mainframe didn't respond at all, not even to the higher-priority commands. After a couple minutes, he gave up in frustration, and moved to join Andy by Tosh's terminal. "Any luck over here?"
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Ianto Jones
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[ *  * ]
Ianto could sense Jack's gaze on him as he waited for Gwen to answer. It made him feel uncomfortable. He could sense that Jack didn't exactly... trust him. It made him feel like some sort of unreliable witness at the Constabulary, or some poor sod who'd found a bit of space junk in his back garden. "You didn't see that fall from the sky, Mister so-and-so... it must have been a shooting star or a helicopter flying over. This thing's half-buried. You must have been half-asleep when you tripped over it." That's how it usually went. Right before the retcon went into the tea.

His mind flashed to memories of Adam and Jack, joking around and eating pizza in the breakroom, shooting hoops, and then, oddly, to Adam in Mainframe earlier. Ianto felt uneasy. He just wasn't sure why. It was as if there was an itch at the back of his brain, which Martha said was sort of...well, she'd tried to be reassuring, but maybe there was something wrong with him.

Ianto wasn't sure he trusted himself, either.


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Captain Jack Harkness
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"Gwen told me you helped her get away from Adam," he said, glancing between them. "Why?"

What was Adam doing that he made Gwen feel - and Ianto as well, that they needed to get away?
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Andy Davidson
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"Any luck over here?"

Andy startled and shoved Tosh's drawer shut. He never startled around Owen. "Fuck all, so far. Give us a minute, though." He brought up a login box. It might have been his imagination, but there was something faintly grudging in it on Mainframe's end.

"Come on," he murmured as he tapped in his user ID and passcode. The login box jerked on screen and flickered as he tried. Neither he nor Owen were exactly computer geniuses, but they were each competent, and Andy had years of Owen's experience with the system to draw upon. "I think there's something really wrong with Mainframe. It's like it doesn't want anyone even trying to get in."
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Owen Harper
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
"Why isn't Tosh here," Owen grumbled. He reached over Andy's shoulder to tap at the keyboard. "Let me see if my --"

He froze, fingers centimeters away from the keys. Command codes. He remembered logging into Mainframe, new information at his fingertips. Jack, secrets, medical codes. But when? The more he tried to pin it down, the fainter the memory became, and he couldn't keep hold of it.

He cursed, flexed his fingers, and tried again, trying not to think too hard about what he was doing. The log-in code was different, but he still couldn't place where it was from. Something to do with Jack being missing. But Adam had been in charge then.

Mainframe whirled sluggishly, and the login screen dissolved, but it wasn't replaced with the familiar interface. Just the whirling chaos that represented the core processor functions.
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Andy Davidson
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"Are we in?" Andy asked, uneasy. The screen was mostly just angry-looking filament and the occasional floating bit of information. "Can you bring anything up at all?"
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Ianto Jones
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[ *  * ]
"Gwen told me you helped her get away from Adam. "Why?" Jack asked.

Ianto looked at Gwen and was met with an encouraging nod. He took a deep breath.

"All right. This sounds... odd. And I only remember bits and pieces. Martha says I didn't take a knock to the head and just had scrapes and bruises when I turned up on the floor of the target range, but things are really hazy." Ianto paused and glanced at Gwen again, then trained his gaze on Jack.

"Jack. You know I haven't-- that I've had a hard time coming to grips with Canary Wharf. What I didn't do, what I couldn't do. It's... it's bad. It's getting worse." Ianto considered miserably that by admitting this, he was probably buying himself a one-way ticket to lose-your-job-town. "So, maybe that's affecting my memory. I don't know."

Ianto stopped, then patted his chest pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, looked at it. "Okay. I was down on the range level. Owen had over-ordered again and I was putting away the excess. I marked down the inventory list for med supplies and... the next thing I remember was being in the range, tidying up. Then Gwen was there, and Adam." He had a flash of Gwen's agitated and desperate face, earlier, but he couldn't recall what she'd told him.

Screams, the rasp of advancing machinery, people running. Ianto shook his head to clear the images. They were so vivid. Why were they so vivid when today was just a blur?

"Gwen was running for the exit, I remember her face. Adam said to stop her, but she looked... scared. She was scared of Adam. I - I can't think of why." Gwen squeezed his arm and he patted his chest pocket again. "I had my diary with me. I wrote an inventory note in there. Maybe that would help, but I don't know where it is."

Ianto tilted his head. "Jack. Adam was in mainframe. I remember him being there, and I think he was... angry at me because I'd interrupted him."

He sighed. "Sorry. This sounds mad, doesn't it? But I'm just getting random bits."
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Owen Harper
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Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
"Don't know," Owen said shortly. What was that? He wasn't even sure what he'd typed in. He tried the login command again, but nothing appeared, not even a dialogue box. There was no run sequence. "Fucking hell," he muttered. He had no idea how this damn thing worked, that was always Tosh's department, yammering away in his ear like he cared...

Except Tosh never talked to him like that. She could care less about whether Owen knew about the computer system. He shook his head. Trying again, he muttered "Just show me anything," and typed in the 'search all' command. If there was anything in the computer, this would bring it up.

To his surprise, Mainframe's response brightened, though it didn't grow less frenzied, and a spiral of information branched out, tendriling into fractured video files and reports, some of it obvious gibberish, but some halfway familiar looking.
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Captain Jack Harkness
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Jack hadn't known Ianto had been injured at all.

"Jack. You know I haven't-- that I've had a hard time coming to grips with Canary Wharf. What I didn't do, what I couldn't do. It's... it's bad. It's getting worse." Ianto's pinched expression made Jack shift uncomfortably. It was the sort of look he preferred to ignore. "So, maybe that's affecting my memory. I don't know."

Jack sighed. "It's all right, Ianto, just go on." It wasn't all right, really, but he'd try and figure out what to do with Ianto later. Jack should have retconned Ianto and built him a better life months ago. He had family, didn't he? He could start over.

"Okay. I was down on the range level. Owen had over-ordered again and I was putting away the excess. I marked down the inventory list for med supplies and... the next thing I remember was being in the range, tidying up. Then Gwen was there, and Adam." Ianto figited, patting at his suit pockets as if the answers were there. Jack wished. "Gwen was running for the exit, I remember her face. Adam said to stop her, but she looked... scared. She was scared of Adam. I - I can't think of why."

"And you didn't think that maybe Adam was trying to help Gwen – " Jack broke off abruptly, pinching the bridge of his nose. No, that wasn't right. "Nevermind."

There was something wrong, even if it was hard to remember and almost imossible to belive. Owen's flat, Adam's dissapearance – Jack looked over to where Owen and the others were crowded around a monitor, struggling to get the system active so they could get information. Jack desperatly wanted to just go – do something but … everything was so off kilter he didn't trust even his own instincts anymore. Times like these, Adam would be there for him, a sounding board and a steady mind. The thought that somehow, Adam was the problem, that all of Jack's trust and devotion had been betrayed made his pulse jump with thwarted anger. And fear.

"I had my diary with me. I wrote an inventory note in there. Maybe that would help, but I don't know where it is."

"Your diary," Jack repeated flatly, then glanced around as if it would appear on command. He gave Ianto a short, tight smile that didn't hide his own strain very well at all. "Okay, we'll find it."

"Listen, Ianto …" Jack trailed off for a moment, unsure about asking him for any sort of help. As Ianto had pointed out himself, he wasn't exactly reliable. "Gwen claims that Adam doesn't belong here, that he wasn't even here a few days ago. But you know –" everything. Which sounded like a joke and didn't sound like what he remembered of Ianto. But he remebered very clearly, Ianto yelling that he cleaned up their shit and no one noticed or cared. "You know what we eat, what we order, our clothes – with Mainframe affected, it's your papers that will hold clues, find me something," he paused, gripping Ianto's shoulder briefly. "Or not."
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Andy Davidson
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Andy peered at the jumble of random information Mainframe had offered up. It was irregular, much of it so compressed in this mode as to be indistinct. "What is that, CCTV footage?" he asked, and pointed at a moving blur. There were actually a few nodes like it, though he wasn't sure if they'd be recent, or even of the Hub. "See if you can bring any of it up."
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Owen Harper
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Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
The first couple nodes that Owen selected were dead, the links inactive or the files too corrupted to retrieve. There was one that showed Tosh moving furtively down the stairs towards the archives, but melted away into static before it showed them anything useful.

He tried another one, with more luck. It showed a wide shot of the Medbay, with Owen clearing up the last of an autopsy -- Weevil, by the look of it. He assumed it was old footage, junk, when Andy stepped into the frame, on the landing overlooking the working area.

"When was this?" Owen muttered to Andy, as the two of them conversed silently on the screen. "I don't remember this." He felt uneasy. That wasn't right.

The silent conversation grew more heated, and though the camera was too far away to pick up much detail on their faces, Owen knew both those bodies well enough to be able to see the tension between them. "Andy..." he said uneasily.

No sooner had he said that then his image lashed out at the recorded Andy, punching him, and they were down in a flurry of fists. Owen stepped back abruptly, feeling sick.
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Andy Davidson
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
"When was this? I don't remember this."

Andy shook his head and shrugged, but glanced back to the photo of Tosh and Owen clipped up by one of the monitors. There was something digging at the back of his head like a nail working it's way up to his heel through heavy boot tread. It made him tense, just like the two of them were tense on screen.

"Andy..."

On screen, Owen struck out. Beside him, Owen flinched away, but Andy remembered the taste of blood as he watched himself spit it out on the tile before striking back. It was a fast, ugly scrap before Jack swept in and yanked them apart. He held his place until the image collapsed into broken pixels before he turned away and started walking. It didn't matter where he went as long as it wasn't here.
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Ianto Jones
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"Gwen claims that Adam doesn't belong here, that he wasn't even here a few days ago. But you know –" everything. You know what we eat, what we order, our clothes – with Mainframe affected, it's your papers that will hold clues, find me something." "Or not."

Ianto stared at Jack.

"Wait a minute," he said, still thinking back. "Just wait. Papers. The targets." Gwen looked at him quizzically. "I was clearing up shells and was about to toss a roll of the team's labelled targets. Sorry, I know you're... sentimental, Jack." Ianto flashed a quick, apologetic grin at him and rushed ahead. "They go back years. Uh...digressing. At any rate, Adam's weren't there and I thought that was kind of strange."

He paused. "Look. I know I'm fuzzy right now. But I keep records, too." Ianto pulled back from the two of them and picked up a torch from a nearby desk. "Martha brought my diary up. I think it's in the med bay. I'll fetch it if you think it'll help."

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