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m_findlowTitle: It’s all just Good Thinking
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: Minor spoilers for Big Finish audioplay “Outbreak”
Author notes: Written for Challenge 208 - Parallels at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomweekly
Summary: : 1,000 words
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: Minor spoilers for Big Finish audioplay “Outbreak”
Author notes: Written for Challenge 208 - Parallels at
fandomweeklySummary: : 1,000 words
Summary: Jack comes to the realisation that he’s seen this before.
Jack stood back in the hall as the commotion around him in the police station lock-up carried on. He looked down at his hands and saw the blood on them where he'd grabbed the man's hands, trying to stop him from hurting himself.
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and attempted to clean them, leaving a smudge of red on the edge of his trouser pocket as he reached in. Ianto wouldn't be happy about that, he thought, minding drifting temporarily away from the immediate scene in front of him.
The police weren't doing much to help the man in the cell. They were making a somewhat half-hearted attempt to restrain him but no one wanted to get too close on account of the blood. Police knew all too well their chances of contracting something nasty from arrestees was about thirty times higher than the average when it came to bleeding wounds. Never mind that he was also resisting any attempts to help. Nobody even knew his name. He was just another nutter who'd been picked up, knife wielding, covered in blood that wasn't his and demanding to speak to someone from Torchwood. So, given the propensity for things to go wrong wherever Torchwood was concerned, the police had simply called Jack, hoping he'd take the man off their hands. Now instead they were being told to get him into some kind of medical isolation. That couldn't be a good thing, not if even Torchwood wouldn't take him.
And that wasn't a good thing. Not if Jack's hunch was right.
The John Doe wasn't making much sense, and that was saying something. Jack was an expert on gibberish but this was a challenge even for him. There was enough to make him worry though, and worry hard. Nothing specific, mind, but it was the collective of certain words he used: Stage One, Stage Two, love them, kill them. Covered in blood, and scratching his arm enough to break the skin, revealing what was burrowing down there underneath the flesh – red and blue wires, writhing in between ligaments and veins – and then the worst possible words Jack could hear. Good Thinking. John Doe muttered the words again. “It's all just Good Thinking.”
Jack's blood ran cold. It couldn't be a coincidence. Too many parallels between what the John was saying and a distant memory of something that should have been dead and buried. Fifty years and yet he still remembered it as clearly as if it had been yesterday. A virus, man made, augmented with alien technology, and with terrible consequences for anyone who became infected.
He and Norton Folgate had come across this before. Of course, he could never trust Norton. Norton was supposed to be on the same team as him, but that was scarcely ever true. Norton was always scheming, always serving some other master. Jack could just never prove it. Too many times Norton had double crossed Jack to believe anything different.
But Norton was gone now. Dead, hopefully, though Jack had never bothered to find out if that was the case. Given the threat Norton posed, perhaps he should have kept a better track of him. With luck, even if he was still alive, he'd be a doddering old mess in some nursing home, unable to eat soup without someone holding the spoon for him.
No chance of them facing this thing together, though he had no doubt that its resurgence now was connected to what Norton had done back in 1953. The last time Jack had ever seen Norton, Jack had been in a hospital bed in a secure facility, recovering from being burned alive. After that, Norton had disappeared, leaving Jack to his long, protracted recovery.
At least he would recover. Those men in the warehouse that had been locked in with him hadn't been nearly so lucky. They'd burned and screamed and burned. Someone somewhere had realised that the Good Thinking virus wasn't working the way it was supposed to. The only solution was to scrap the project and dispose of the evidence. Petrol and fire were good ways to ensure nobody survived to speak of it. Test subjects became sacrifices and Jack was caught in the middle of it, burning along with them.
The big question now, as Jack was watching them finally get the John Doe on the floor long enough to bandage up his arm, was who had found the old Good Thinking files and started up the experiments again. There was no doubt in his mind now as the John kept screaming at the officers "I love you! I love you! Kill you!" He was Stage Three, or close to it now. The killing stage, and after that there was only Stage Four: Death. There was nothing to do to help the guy now. Jack's priority had to be stopping this thing and figuring out just how far it could have spread already. Every test subject on the loose could already have infected dozens of innocent people. Earlier reports of people hallucinating suddenly made sense. It was connected, all of it, and his team were out there in the thick of it, exposing themselves unwittingly to something deadly.
Jack caught his reflection in the two way glass of the interrogation room, staring back into those same eyes that had first witnessed those horrors fifty years ago. 'We’re not so different,' he muttered to his countenance. 'We couldn't stop it then, chances are we’re not going to be able to stop it now. Doesn't mean we won't try though.'
Jack chewed his lip as he exited the police station, abandoning them to their fate. There was someone from the old days – an informer for the CIA – who might know something. He needed information or what happened in 1953 would pale in comparison to the carnage that would spill onto the streets of Cardiff. A replica of the outcomes fifty years ago might be the best Jack could hope for.
Jack stood back in the hall as the commotion around him in the police station lock-up carried on. He looked down at his hands and saw the blood on them where he'd grabbed the man's hands, trying to stop him from hurting himself.
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and attempted to clean them, leaving a smudge of red on the edge of his trouser pocket as he reached in. Ianto wouldn't be happy about that, he thought, minding drifting temporarily away from the immediate scene in front of him.
The police weren't doing much to help the man in the cell. They were making a somewhat half-hearted attempt to restrain him but no one wanted to get too close on account of the blood. Police knew all too well their chances of contracting something nasty from arrestees was about thirty times higher than the average when it came to bleeding wounds. Never mind that he was also resisting any attempts to help. Nobody even knew his name. He was just another nutter who'd been picked up, knife wielding, covered in blood that wasn't his and demanding to speak to someone from Torchwood. So, given the propensity for things to go wrong wherever Torchwood was concerned, the police had simply called Jack, hoping he'd take the man off their hands. Now instead they were being told to get him into some kind of medical isolation. That couldn't be a good thing, not if even Torchwood wouldn't take him.
And that wasn't a good thing. Not if Jack's hunch was right.
The John Doe wasn't making much sense, and that was saying something. Jack was an expert on gibberish but this was a challenge even for him. There was enough to make him worry though, and worry hard. Nothing specific, mind, but it was the collective of certain words he used: Stage One, Stage Two, love them, kill them. Covered in blood, and scratching his arm enough to break the skin, revealing what was burrowing down there underneath the flesh – red and blue wires, writhing in between ligaments and veins – and then the worst possible words Jack could hear. Good Thinking. John Doe muttered the words again. “It's all just Good Thinking.”
Jack's blood ran cold. It couldn't be a coincidence. Too many parallels between what the John was saying and a distant memory of something that should have been dead and buried. Fifty years and yet he still remembered it as clearly as if it had been yesterday. A virus, man made, augmented with alien technology, and with terrible consequences for anyone who became infected.
He and Norton Folgate had come across this before. Of course, he could never trust Norton. Norton was supposed to be on the same team as him, but that was scarcely ever true. Norton was always scheming, always serving some other master. Jack could just never prove it. Too many times Norton had double crossed Jack to believe anything different.
But Norton was gone now. Dead, hopefully, though Jack had never bothered to find out if that was the case. Given the threat Norton posed, perhaps he should have kept a better track of him. With luck, even if he was still alive, he'd be a doddering old mess in some nursing home, unable to eat soup without someone holding the spoon for him.
No chance of them facing this thing together, though he had no doubt that its resurgence now was connected to what Norton had done back in 1953. The last time Jack had ever seen Norton, Jack had been in a hospital bed in a secure facility, recovering from being burned alive. After that, Norton had disappeared, leaving Jack to his long, protracted recovery.
At least he would recover. Those men in the warehouse that had been locked in with him hadn't been nearly so lucky. They'd burned and screamed and burned. Someone somewhere had realised that the Good Thinking virus wasn't working the way it was supposed to. The only solution was to scrap the project and dispose of the evidence. Petrol and fire were good ways to ensure nobody survived to speak of it. Test subjects became sacrifices and Jack was caught in the middle of it, burning along with them.
The big question now, as Jack was watching them finally get the John Doe on the floor long enough to bandage up his arm, was who had found the old Good Thinking files and started up the experiments again. There was no doubt in his mind now as the John kept screaming at the officers "I love you! I love you! Kill you!" He was Stage Three, or close to it now. The killing stage, and after that there was only Stage Four: Death. There was nothing to do to help the guy now. Jack's priority had to be stopping this thing and figuring out just how far it could have spread already. Every test subject on the loose could already have infected dozens of innocent people. Earlier reports of people hallucinating suddenly made sense. It was connected, all of it, and his team were out there in the thick of it, exposing themselves unwittingly to something deadly.
Jack caught his reflection in the two way glass of the interrogation room, staring back into those same eyes that had first witnessed those horrors fifty years ago. 'We’re not so different,' he muttered to his countenance. 'We couldn't stop it then, chances are we’re not going to be able to stop it now. Doesn't mean we won't try though.'
Jack chewed his lip as he exited the police station, abandoning them to their fate. There was someone from the old days – an informer for the CIA – who might know something. He needed information or what happened in 1953 would pale in comparison to the carnage that would spill onto the streets of Cardiff. A replica of the outcomes fifty years ago might be the best Jack could hope for.
