Torchwood: Fanfic: Boxed up

[m_findlow]

Title: Boxed up
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Tosh, Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length:1,881 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Torchwood, Tosh, box" at fic_promptly
Summary: Tosh is unexpectedly trapped in the hub

It had sprung up so quickly none of them had time to react.

One moment, Tosh had been seated at her desk, the next she was imprisoned in a small glass cube that had apparated from nowhere, right there on the floor next to her desk, approximately four feet square.

Owen and Gwen immediately ran to her aid, and their shouts alerted Jack and Ianto who ran from Jack's office to join them.

Tosh was pressing against the glass walls, trying to find a way out, whilst the others tried to find a way in. The glass cube seemed to be one single piece, with even the corners and edges seamlessly fused. Tosh appeared to be yelling at them, as they were to her, but the sound didn't penetrate the transparent structure.

There was no telling what the cube might do. It could try to poison or suffocate her, or it could be about to transport her somewhere else, or blast her to atoms.

Gwen was frantically scrambling around Tosh's desk, looking for anything that had set it off that might reverse the process, whilst Owen and Jack examined the cube and the edges, looking for anything on the surface itself that might release her.

Even though she couldn't hear anything, she could see that Jack was trying to get her attention. She forced herself to look hard at him and concentrate on what he was trying to say.

'Keep calm,' were the words he repeated, and the look in his eyes provided the reassurance she needed to follow his instructions. It made sense, logically. If the cube was air tight, she was wasting precious oxygen in panicking.

In the meantime, Ianto had returned with the ever faithful hockey stick, and looked well placed to break her out with it, if only by the look of determination on his face.

She pressed herself up against the far wall and turned her head away as he poised to strike the glass. She waited for the inevitable crash, or at least the thud of the wall being hit, but there was nothing. She turned back to see why he hadn't hit it, only to see him standing there perplexed, hockey stick shattered into several pieces on the ground, the last piece hanging helplessly in his hand.

In the interim, the team had found nothing to break down the walls of the cube. She'd steadied her breathing and found it easy. In her head she'd run the calculations, just as the others had no doubt, and realised that if the cube was completely sealed, she'd have run out of air minutes ago. That was at least a relief. She might be trapped, but at least she wasn't going to suffocate.

Ianto returned once more, but this time armed with a very nasty looking sledgehammer. Jack took charge of it and thrust it hard against the glass, but still the sound of silence as she watched it impact uselessly. She watched as the force of the impact reverberated back up through the large tool and along Jack's arm, causing him to drop it in pain. Tosh pressed herself up against the glass, looking worried, but Jack waved her off, indicating that he would be okay,

Jack's look was one of perplexed confusion. He was running a hand across the glass and staring at it, almost studying it. Although it wasn't glass. It couldn't be. For one, it was unbreakable. Secondly, she was able to breathe.

Owen was trying to have a conversation with her on the other side, presumably asking her questions about her health, though she couldn't understand them, and not for the first time in her life, had wished she'd learned how to lip read. Owen however persisted until a small notepad was thrust directly in front of his face, and he looked over to see the eye rolling of Ianto stood there with the simple solution. At least from their side they could converse with her, even if she couldn't do the same.

Owen started interrogating here with a series of yes/no questions. Probably repeating what he'd asked earlier, whilst the rest of them huddled and tried to figure out what was going on. Tosh was still banking on the fact that if something bad was going to happen, it probably would have happened straight away.

They spent the rest of the morning and all of the afternoon trying various strategies for deactivating the cube. It would have helped if they knew what had set it off in the first place. They also took turns in sitting and keeping an eye on it. Since there was no sound capable of being transmitted through the walls, no one wanted to turn their back on it for a second in case something should happen to Tosh inside. Tosh wished she could help them, but there wasn't much assistance she could provide that could be done solely with yes and no answers. Instead she could only answer their questions. Was she hot or cold? No. Was she hungry or thirsty. No. Whatever this cube was, it seemed to be sustaining her.

Only Jack kept giving her odd looks, like he was trying to remember something he'd forgotten. Finally when it seemed nothing was going to fix the problem in the short term, and that Tosh was apparently very safe inside, Jack sent the others home for some rest so that they could tackle the problem afresh in the morning.

Ianto rejoined Tosh in the main area of the hub and sat down next to her on the opposite side of the cube's wall. He still had his trusty notepad with him and wrote out the words 'You okay?'

Tosh looked at him earnestly. Now she knew how one of Owen's lab rats felt. Her foot was cramping in the limited space, and she was tired of answering their questions with nods and shakes, yes and no. For all her lack of social prowess, all she really wanted to do right now was articulate herself in more than one word. She began tracing her finger on the transparent surface, invisibly writing out the word 'bored' backwards so that Ianto could read it. He smiled sympathetically. The others had gone home, but he felt guilty leaving Tosh here all alone, even if by all accounts the cube was not causing her any harm.

Tosh began tracing again. First the letter J, and then a question mark. He knew what she was asking. 'Where's Jack?'

Ianto began scribbling down his response. 'Tearing up my archives, looking for something that might help. I'd rather not bear witness. He'll be on decaf for a week if he's made a mess of things.'

Tosh smiled and was glad that she could still find the funny side in some small aspect of her situation.

Another letter and a question mark. 'You?'

'Keeping you company.'

Tosh's chastising expression said more than words. She was grateful but wanted him to go home regardless, or at least go to bed if he was living here on a permanent basis.

'Make me,' came the answer.

She resigned herself to her best friend's stubbornness. Ianto brought over a laptop and angled it on his lap so that Tosh could see it. On the screen was a re-run of Fawlty Towers. She didn't need to hear what was being said, she knew most of them by heart, and laughed at the physical comedy side of it. It took her mind off things until eventually she fell asleep, curled up against the corner of the cube. On the opposite side of the glass, right next to her, Ianto followed suit shortly after.

When Jack finally returned, hours later, he smiled at the pair of them. It was cute, and he should have taken a photo, but he was too excited by his discovery downstairs. Immediately he activated the device. The cube's walls disappeared as if they'd never been there and the pair of them went tumbling into one another, waking each other. Instinctively Ianto had put his hands out to brace against whatever he'd fallen into, only to end up grabbing Tosh instead.

'Ianto?'

'Tosh?' came the confused reply.

Both of them turned and looked up. 'Jack?' they said simultaneously.

'In the flesh.'

'You did it!' Tosh exclaimed.

He gave her one of his million dollar smiles. 'Was there ever any doubt?'

'But how?'

'You understand the concept of ionic binding right?'

She nodded.

'Imagine billions of tiny creatures knitting together to form the most impenetrable wall you can think of, yet tiny enough to allow oxygen to pass through, and able to produce complex chains of chemicals inside the body from the very elements in the air. All I did was disrupt their little party and send them packing.'

'Where are they now?'

'All around us. Seems they must have been attracted to something and thought maybe you were in danger. They've gone back to being individual units now, but I wouldn't mind finding them a new home before they decide to swarm again.'

'How did you figure it out?'

'I finally remembered something back when I was freelance decades ago. Only it was a tiny swarm, about the size of a matchbox. Harriet broke the box when she accidentally dropped a tuning fork on the workbench next to it. The sound waves caused by the fork were enough to disrupt the atoms around the box, causing the swarm to disburse. She was bitterly disappointed. She'd thought the box was made of solid diamond. Turns out it was just miniature aliens.'

'So you went and found a giant tuning fork?' Ianto asked.

'Something like that. Tosh, you remember this little baby, don't you?' he said, waggling the device at her.

'Is that my sonic disruptor?'

'Slightly modified by yours truly. I had a job of it finding the extra parts. This one doesn't rip your ear drums apart. Although it might upset any nearby canines in a big way,' he added as an afterthought.

'So how do we catch the swarm?' Ianto said, looking around the suspiciously, as if they might attack again at any moment.

'If I just tweak this, and reverse the signal,' Jack said, fiddling with the device. He thrust it quickly away from himself, watching it roll across the floor before a solid glass box sprung up around it.

'Like catnip, they can't resist it,' Jack stated, pleased with himself.

Tosh picked herself up off the floor and walked over to it, running a hand across the smooth surface, glad to no longer be on the inside. 'It'll stay like this?'

'For as long as that signal holds up. I'd hazard a guess and say, maybe the next two thousand years?'

'Really?' she said, shocked.

'Don't be so surprised. You built it. Seems appropriate that the device that got you locked up in the first place should eventually set you free, don't you think?'

'Or ironic,' Ianto offered.

'Either way, I think I have a new appreciation for wide, open spaces,' she confessed.

'In which case, I think tomorrow we should all go for a picnic,' Jack suggested. 'At least then the only kind of swarms we'll have to worry about will be ants.'

Comments

[bk_forever]

Such a cool idea! They'd make a great personal forcefield if you could just get them to do what ypu wanted.

Poor Tosh though, that must have been scary as well as boring.