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Incursion; Adam plot, the team returns to the Hub
Topic Started: Nov 24 2009, 10:37 AM (1,175 Views)
Andy Davidson
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Blames The Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Andy followed Owen down, more or less, though his attention was on the Hub. What seemed right? What didn't? Who didn't?

Ever since he'd joined Torchwood it seemed like every new disaster took him further and further from himself. Things about himself that would have been best left alone had been brought to light and he'd tried to use them. That's how he'd wound up this way, and how he'd broken Owen.

He gritted his teeth at the memory of Jack's anger at what he'd done, and the way the others had recoiled. He was almost grateful when a crisis made them forget. Like now. He shouldn't be glad. And he wasn't, except that he could be useful if the others forgot that he'd --

Andy stopped and took a measured breath. If everything he remembered could be wrong, it was possible that none of this was true. True things left evidence, and he could find all kinds of evidence without Mainframe if he kept focused. Ianto, bless him, looked like he'd already struck on a good lead with his diary. Everyday things. That's what he was after.

"Gwen, help me look through the workstations. I want to build a narrative of how regular habits could have changed suddenly. People working at different desks. Stuff in the wrong places. That kind of thing."
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Captain Jack Harkness
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Director, Torchwood-Three
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Jack took the book, leather warm under his fingers. "I like reading other people's mail," he said, fingering the worn edges of the pages. "When was your last entry? That can help pin down how long this might have been going on," Jack flipped towards the back.

"Gwen, help me look through the workstations. I want to build a narrative of how regular habits could have changed suddenly. People working at different desks. Stuff in the wrong places. That kind of thing."

Jack looked up sharply, then to Owen and Martha. "Yeah –" he tilted his head thoughtfully. "We've got all those blood samples just for this sort of thing – to make sure no one's been replaced. Find Adam's, we need to know what we're dealing with – Nostrovite or something worse."
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Owen Harper
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Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Owen nodded. "This is why I like paper records," he said, moving towards the Medbay. Everything was clean and tidy -- or as tidy as it ever got -- without a single sign of a fight, and Owen refused to take that as anything but a good sign.

He paused for a moment on the stairs. "What's Adam's blood type? I can't even remember that." And he should, something as simple as that. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had to patch Adam up. And no one was that good. Even Jack got injured. His mind flashed for a moment to an image of Jack, chained and blood-spattered, but he couldn't place it. He shivered and yanked open the door of the fridge.

There was a handful of canisters and containers of various sizes, projects in the works, but there were only two racks with phials of blood. One was new, and Owen looked at that first. A stationary, and as he skimmed his fingers over the labels, he realized they were all Tosh's. He hesitated for a moment, but left it. Later.

He grabbed the other one, spinning through it as he combed through it for Adam's samples. Nothing. "It's not here," he called up. "No room for it, either." The entire rotor was full.
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Rhys Williams
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Weevil Bait
[ * ]
Rhys had tried to keep himself out of the way, tucking himself into a corner, telling himself to just watch and see if he could make out what was going on. It was uncomfortable, accidentally eavesdropping on something that was obviously not a normal situation. He was starting to regret having pressed so heavily to come along, but there was no going back now. And he was thinking more and more about the possibility of Gwen not having escaped. Of her becoming a different person. It scared the hell out of him.

He tried to tune out the personal drama going on on the couch, and instead tried to concentrate on whatever cute piece of technology Jack had going on -- some sort of top-secret PDA or something, straight out of a sci-fi movie. The computers were pretty flash, too, spinning through images of two people -- Tosh and Adam, he supposed, the girl in frame a lot more often than the bloke. He wasn't sure what exactly was going on, still, but he was startled when the man's image flickered and washed away in a blur of static, while the rest of the room stayed crystal clear.

"What the hell is that?" he blurted. On the screen, the image blacked out, then repeated itself.
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Ianto Jones
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[ *  * ]
At Jack's question, Ianto took the diary back gently and flipped through to the end.

"The last entry was... two days ago." Ianto said, "'pick up post for Gwen and Rhys.' And there it is." He gestured towards the wire basket atop a filing cabinet in the corner. "You get a tonne of catalogues, Gwen. And apparently," Ianto paused, looking over a recent obliquely-coded entry, "you and I went to the cinema last weekend. Which I do not remember doing. At all."

He handed the diary back to Jack. "Takeaway this week - Tuesday. Chinese. All orders except one for Adam. Dry cleaning - nothing for him. Ever. Go on, take it."





OOC: Edited this a bit.
Edited by Ianto Jones, Dec 8 2009, 03:19 PM.
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Martha Jones
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Torchwood's Finest
[ *  *  * ]
Martha followed Owen down to the Medbay. When he paused on the stairs, she caught up with him. "What's Adam's blood type? I can't even remember that," he said, exasperated.

"For what it's worth, I don't remember either," she said. "But we should have it written down in the case notes. Let me check."

While Owen headed to the refrigerator, Martha headed towards the small table on the other side of the room. While most of their medical records were stored on Mainframe, both she and Owen kept brief paper notes on medical-related events, treatments, medications dispensed, and other details in a bound notebook. Such notes helped ensure continuity of care as they took over for each other, and they could be vital if either of them had to treat someone when Mainframe was down and their complete medical records were inaccessible. Eventually, the hand-written notes would be entered as case notes in Mainframe, but they both maintained the notebook even though it meant more work for them.

Martha flipped through the notebook until she came to the entries for the team's 6 month check-ups. She read the notes through twice just to be sure she hadn't missed anything, but no, there was no mention of Adam there.

"It's not here," Owen called up to Jack. "No room for it, either."

"I can't find Adam's 6 month check-up notes either. And no injuries, no record of standard jabs, nothing in our notes about him in the past several months. That's got to be wrong, no one goes more than two, three weeks at most without at least a minor injury."
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Owen Harper
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Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Owen leaned over towards Martha. "Does it have anything in there about my shoulder? I thought I injured it this morning, but it's got to be older. Hell, anything on there we don't remember can help us establish a timeline."
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Gwen Cooper
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Field Agent
[ *  * ]
"Gwen, help me look through the workstations. I want to build a narrative of how regular habits could have changed suddenly. People working at different desks. Stuff in the wrong places. That kind of thing,"

Gwen nodded. "Nothing looks too out of place to me so far, there won't have been time for there to have been that much change."

She was about to move over to help when Ianto started speaking.

""The last entry was... two days ago. Pick up post for Gwen and Rhys. And there it is. You get a tonne of catalogues, Gwen. And apparently, you and I went to the cinema last weekend. Which I do not remember doing. At all."

Gwen glanced over at the collection of post, amazed at seeing something so ordinary when everything around her seemed to sliding away. She laughed despite herself.

But Ianto's next words, his lack of recollection, made Gwen sink again.

"We do that about once a month, whenever the aliens let off," she said quietly, certain Ianto wouldn't remember any of it. "We go watch the latest trashy sci-fi flick, make fun of the bad science and naff dialogue, and gossip about our boyfriends. But -" she dropped off, glancing uneasily between Ianto and Jack, "Adam's changed that."
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Andy Davidson
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Blames The Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Andy rifled through everything at his station. Everything seemed more or less in place. It would have been nice if he'd been able to log into the computer to look through his e-mail and such, but with Mainframe failing, that wasn't an option. Still, that was hardly the only bit of electronics he typically worked with.

He reached for his PDA and pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket. After a minute he looked up. "Hey, check your mobiles. Does anyone even have a number for Adam?"

He'd hoped for an answer, but there was a flicker on screen. Rhys' exclamation prompted Andy to turn and look. "Is that -- ?"
Edited by Andy Davidson, Dec 8 2009, 04:54 PM.
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Martha Jones
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Torchwood's Finest
[ *  *  * ]
Martha flipped through the pages of the notebook, looking for mentions of Owen. It didn't take long to find a series of progress notes regarding Owen's shoulder. "Yeah, it looks serious, too, but I don't remember making these notes." She followed the trail of notes to the original entry, and her eyes widened with surprise.

"No wonder you still feel it," she said, showing him the notes. "That was a hell of an injury."

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Owen Harper
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Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Owen looked at the details of the entry and winced in sympathy, though he couldn't remember the events described. Probably for the best. He looked at the date. "That was when you lot were on the Valiant." He frowned. "But Andy and I stayed here, most we did was go out on Weevil patrols. There's no way I got an injury like that from anything I remember."

He bit his lip. "So assuming that's real, we're looking for some time after that. Bring the notes, we'll check with the others." He hurried back up the stairs.

He and Andy hadn't been allowed to go on the mission to the Valiant -- there was too great a chance of them being separated, and from what the others had reported back afterwards, it would have been deadly. What did that mean, then, if they had gone? He risked a quick glance at Andy, but the other man was looking at something on the monitor, and didn't see him.
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Martha Jones
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[ *  *  * ]
"That was when you lot were on the Valiant," Owen said, frowning. "But Andy and I stayed here, most we did was go out on Weevil patrols. There's no way I got an injury like that from anything I remember."

"Yeah. Which means you probably were there even though we don't remember that." She shook her head, trying to make sense of the jumble of memories from the Valiant that arose in her mind. She remembered Adam helping her find Jack and free him from the boiler room, but she also remembered going out for a late dinner with Andy after they all returned from the Valiant, not with Andy and Owen. It was odd that she hadn't recalled that until now.

"So assuming that's real, we're looking for some time after that. Bring the notes, we'll check with the others," Owen said as he ran up the stairs.

"Right," she replied, closing the notebook and bringing it with her to Tosh's workstation where the rest of them were now gathered.
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Captain Jack Harkness
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[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Of course Gwen would be friends with Ianto, but Ianto's confusion made it clear that had been erased as well and all of this ... the way they'd all be broken in the most intimate way made any lingering sympathy for Adam - whoever he was - die. Jack looked blankly at Ianto's journal, flipping through pages at random, fighting to swallow back the betrayal.

He snorted in faint amusement at one of the entries. "You have an active fantasy life." The look on Gwen's face, though, made him pause and he pointed from Ianto to himself and back. "Him and me?" he said disbeliving, shaking his head. "Woah, that's dysfunctional."

Rhys and Andy distracted him from any idle wonderings and he turned to catch the video loop on the monitor. "They're in Mainframe -" and broke off when Adam flickered like a bad special effect and ... dissapeared.

"He was never even, physical," Jack breathed. Which explained the lack of certian sense memories. And the bewilderment around him.

"You've found no physical trace of him, right?" he asked Owen and Martha. "Okay," and he pulled his gun out of his holster. Holding up an empty hand at the expressions around him, Jack shook his head. "Take it easy."

"Everyone disarm," he said. "Guns aren't going to help and we're too confused to have them around."
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Ianto Jones
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[ *  * ]
"You have an active fantasy life," Jack told him. "Him and me?" Jack said, with a head-shake. "Woah, that's dysfunctional."

Ianto had been staring at Gwen since she'd explained "cinema night". He leafed through some pages in his diary and saw film notes. "She's right, Jack," he added quietly, "that's in here." And apparently that wasn't the only thing in his diary that Gwen was aware of. Jack? With him? That wasn't... at all likely. Jack was impatient with him, didn't trust him. And besides, Ianto was still desperately obsessed with Lisa. And he didn't think of Jack that way. Had they? No.

But Ianto knew his own diary habits, and he most emphatically knew he did not make shit up to make the entries more interesting.

"He was never even, physical," Jack had added, remembering Adam.

"But he was, in a way," Ianto inserted, after Jack told them all to disarm. "Adam was physical. I remember you and Adam playing basketball, and he was a back-slapper, you know?" He searched his memories for visions of Adam. "I can recall Adam doing things in the Hub and being around for ages, but I don't have any memory of him with you at all, Gwen, not until today when you were leaving from the back exit."

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Andy Davidson
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Blames The Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Andy disarmed and locked his sidearm in his desk drawer. It wasn't ideal, but it was more secure than just leaving it out. The others were trying to make sense of the thing, or at least they were in various stages of realizing that just about every recent (or not so recent) memory and relationship was probably off. The question of him and Owen didn't come up. Maybe that was a good sign, and that whatever Adam had done, it hadn't affected them as much?

"Ianto's right. All of my memories of Adam seem to involve him touching us. I remember I gave him hell during firearms training because of it." After 1925, the touch had been less kind and more clinical, but it was still there. "Do you remember him touching you, Gwen? Anyone who was here remember touching Adam while Gwen got out?"
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Martha Jones
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[ *  *  * ]
Martha put the service revolver and stun gun safely away in her desk and returned to Tosh's workstation to join the others. Ianto and Andy were explaining about Adam's tendency to touch people.

"Yeah, I remember that too," she said. "I can't remember how many group hugs he's dragged me into. But now that I think about it, he hasn't touched me much this afternoon. Certainly not since Gwen came here earlier."
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Captain Jack Harkness
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Director, Torchwood-Three
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
Jack was watching the CCTV clip repeat itself on the screen, listening to the others. He'd always liked that about Adam – he was touchy-feely, like Jack. He understood best when he could feel someone. Even that had been a lie.

A lie, Jack thought and watched Adam roughly grab Tosh – and her immediate relaxation. A lie and an attack. And wasn't the best place to touch Mainframe in the access room? The one where he disappeared? What, exactly, would a computer look like if someone were trying to … possess it? Jack watched the error messages. It might look something just like that.

"There are such things as psychic parasites," he said slowly. "Naturally creatures or artificial … programs for sabotage or spying or mental health care. Adam could be one and if that's the case, his – its – existence depends on our awareness of him. Our memories, essentially, our knowing he exists. If he gets successfully implanted into Mainframe he'd have a permanent home in one of the most powerful proto-minds on the planet."

"Whatever else happens, we can't allow that – or allow Mainframe communication access to any other systems out there until we're sure he's gone." Jack looked at them all, something tired and grim in his face. "In order to get rid of Adam … we have to get rid of our memories, inside each of us – except Gwen – is a key memory where Adam has hooked his own existence to ours. As long as that key thought shape exists, so will he. That's what he's trying to do with Mainframe now and we have to stop it."
Edited by Captain Jack Harkness, Dec 11 2009, 01:44 PM.
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Andy Davidson
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Blames The Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
"So a few days of memory loss and we're sorted?" Andy asked. "Sounds simple enough, but how do we get him out of Mainframe?"

He looked over toward Martha. "Where's Tosh?"
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Owen Harper
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Jam
[ *  *  *  *  *  * ]
"So erasing our memories will make it go away, or just put it on hold?" Owen asked. "Obviously none of us knew Adam, so how'd he get in?"
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Gwen Cooper
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[ *  * ]
"If he's not physical," Gwen said, "could have been anything." She sighed. "I think Tosh is going to be a problem. Adam really got his claws into her, and we're going to need her help to get him out again."
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