Torchwood: Fanfic: Sucked in

[m_findlow]

Title: Sucked in
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team, Rhys
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 3,453 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Any, any, sucked in" at fic_promptly
Summary: Proof that too much TV is bad for you

Rhys sat back comfortably on the sofa in their flat and looked admiringly at their new television. It had taken him the better part of the afternoon to set it up, having to secure the mounting racks into the wall and make sure they were going to hold, but after that, the rest had been pretty straightforward. Red cable, red socket, yellow cable, yellow socket. Any monkey could have done it.

And the best part was that when he'd pulled it out of the box, there been none of that ridiculous packing and Styrofoam covering every square inch of the TV, cables, plugs and remote. If there was anything he hated, it was plastic packaging. And the bloke who'd delivered it right to their door had seemed a nice sort of chap, and even offered to help set it up.

He pointed the remote at the screen, first checking and pleased to find that the remote came with batteries pre loaded. The screen flicked on a bright blue and he began pressing buttons to run through the settings.

Then Rhys disappeared from his living room.

When Gwen came trundling in through the door, she was surprised not to find Rhys pottering about the flat. She called out his name, in case he was in the bedroom or bathroom, but there was no response.

Typical she thought, the one time I get off work early, looking forward to a night in together, and he's not even here. That in itself was odd. Rhys wasn't in the habit of just popping off to the pub with his mates from work, not without calling her first to let her know. She decided to dial his phone and find out whether he was planning on coming home anytime soon. If not, she might just take Tosh up on the that offer of a drink and some gossip. She didn't expect to hear Rhys's phone ringing in their own apartment. She found it wedged in between the sofa cushions and sighed, frustrated.

'Great. Lose your phone why don't you, Rhys?' she muttered.

She turned around the room, unsure what to do with herself now that she was on her own, with no way of contacting Rhys. Then she noticed the brand new television mounted on their wall.

She'd been skeptical at first when Rhys had suggested it. What did they need a new TV for? What was wrong with the one they had? It wasn't like they spent hours in front of it, not with the hours she kept. But still, looking at it now, she had to admit it looked quite impressive, much larger than their old one, complete with those surround sound speakers that made you feel like you were in the room with whatever what happening on the screen.

Since she didn't have anything else to do, she decided to perch on the edge of their sofa and flick it on, just to see how it looked. The screen came to life and right there, in high definition, was Rhys.

'Gwen, whatever you do, don't touch the remote! Don't press any buttons!'

Oh, very clever she thought. She'd heard about these fancy new TVs that had recorder capabilities. Rhys had obviously taken a video of himself on his phone and uploaded it to the TV for a bit of a lark. She already knew that she had no chance of getting him to change channels when the football was on, but this was almost too ridiculous.

'I'm serious Gwen, don't touch anything!'

Gwen lounged back on the sofa, mildly amused by Rhys's forethought. 'Oh, yes,' she said, talking back to the screen, as if it could hear her. 'And what are you going to do about it, sweetheart?'

'I'm serious Gwen, don't touch it. Call Jack.'

'What?' She sat up, somehow realizing that she wasn't watching a recording. This was the real thing.

'Rhys? Is that you?'

'Of course it's me! Now get me the bloody hell out of here!'

'But, but how did you get in there?'

'I don't know!'

'Okay, Rhys, just relax,' she said, fumbling for her own phone. 'I'm calling Jack right now.'

Twenty minutes later all four of them were standing on her doorstep, three looking concerned and one somewhat annoyed to have his afternoon off interrupted.

'What's Rhys doing on TV?' Jack asked.

'Not on TV, in TV!' Rhys complained, not appreciating the joke.

'Just when I thought daytime TV couldn't get any worse,' Ianto muttered.

'Tell us what happened, Rhys,' Jack said.

Rhys proceeded to tell them everything he could remember, which in all honesty, wasn't much. He set up the TV, switched it on, started flicking through the setup functions, and boom. That was it. Next thing he knew he was staring out at his own living room. That was of course, until the TV turned itself off, having been inactive for over four hours.

'It was off when I came in,' Gwen confirmed.

'And you switched it back on but nothing happened to you?'

'Luckily.'

'Never mind that,' Rhys said, butting in. 'How do we get me out?'

'Tosh? Any ideas?'

She lifted up the remote and inspected it. 'Looks normal,' she replied, being careful not to squeeze too hard.

'You telling me there's nothing in the instruction manual to troubleshoot getting your boyfriend out of the telly?' Owen smirked.

'Well,' Tosh said, 'it looks like a pretty fancy model.'

'Top of the range,' Rhys interrupted, looking pleased with himself. They all gave him a strange look.

'Yeah, I'll shut up now.'

Tosh continued on. 'I should be able to connect up to it with my laptop and see what's going on.'

After a few minutes she was able to activate Bluetooth functionality and sync the two devices.

'Hey what's that?' Rhys asked. 'It's like I can feel you connecting up. Hey, have I got Internet now?'

'You're hooked up to the Torchwood servers now.'

'Is that wise, Tosh?' Jack asked.

'Don't worry, I've put in a security partition. He can only view data on our main database, but can't actually make any changes.'

Jack crossed his arms and got down to business.

'Where exactly did you get this TV?' he said, frowning at Rhys.

'Listen mate,' Rhys said, pointing his finger authoritatively at Jack, but losing some of its impact on account of his two dimensional status. 'If you're suggesting I knocked it off the back of one of the vans, then you're wrong.'

'Thought never crossed my mind.'

'I got it from the local department store. On sale, good price, and free delivery. Bloke even offered to install it.'

'What bloke?'

'The delivery bloke.'

'Since when do delivery guys do installations?'

'I could track the delivery van,' Tosh suggested. 'There's a number on the side of the box with the consignment code.'

It turned out that the guy who'd delivered the TV, had been working for the company only a few months. That in itself wasn't strange, what was strange was the fact that the only thing he seemed to deliver was TVs. Not just TVs in general, but this particular TV. The same one as the number on Rhys's box.

'How can you deliver the same thing twice, let alone multiple times?' Owen asked.

'You don't suppose he knows that the TV is capable of sucking someone inside it. Do you?' Gwen said.

'I've run a cross reference on all the delivery addresses from the driver's manifest.' Ianto said, consulting his PDA. 'There's something even more curious about these deliveries.'

'What's that?' Jack asked.

'All the addresses he's delivered to in the last month have filed police reports for people having gone missing.'

'You're kidding!'

'It would seem that Rhys might just be one in a long chain of people to go missing.'

'So what are we saying? That they get sucked in and he comes back and picks up the TV afterwards?' Owen said, knowing how bizarre that sounded.

'That among other things,' Ianto replied. 'There's also reports of items missing from each of the houses that had people go missing. The police put it down to them doing a runner and taking valuables with them.'

'Do we have an address for our delivery guy?'

'Just hacking into the company's personnel records now. Martin Felshaw. 34 Lincoln Street, Canton.'

Jack looked determined. 'I think we ought to pay this guy a visit.'

When Jack and Owen pulled up out the front of the dilapidated apartment block, breaking in through the front door when there was no answer, the last thing they expected inside was a whole cache of valuable items. DVD players, jewelry, tablet devices, anything that could have been easily sold on eBay.

'Clearly being a delivery guy doesn't pay very well,' Jack said inspecting some of the merchandise that was stacked in untidy piles all over the flat.

They were still inside the flat when its occupant returned with a bags of groceries in one hand and his keys in the other.

'Oh, shit,' he said, seeing them inside, dropping the bags and taking off at a run. He didn't get far though before Owen had caught up with him and kicked out, sending the guy tripping over before he reached the emergency stairwell. Jack pulled him up by the collar and got his first proper look at the spindly, freckle-faced man.

'Don't hurt me,' he begged. 'Take anything you want, no charge.'

'We're not here for a new kettle. I would like to have a chat with you about a new TV, though.'

They dragged the guy back inside the flat and Owen tied his wrists together with a plastic cuff.

'Nice gear,' Jack said, picking up a shiny new tablet computer. 'Yours?' he asked.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' he replied, hoping it wasn't too late to dig himself back out of the hole he'd already dug.

'What do you know about a TV that sucks people into it?'

'Nothing.'

'You're lying.'

'Oi, Jack,' Owen called to him, indicating a very sophisticated looking laptop and external hard drive. It was the only equipment in the room that looked to be kept for personal use. It seemed to have some rather unusual software running on its screen.

'I'll want Tosh to take a look at that.'

'Right,' Owen said, packing it up along with the connceted server tower and hard drive, putting the whole lot into a spare cardboard box.

'I think you'll be more useful if you come with us,' Jack said, pushing the man towards the door. 'I have a friend who needs some help installing a TV. I hear you're good at that.'

Back at Gwen's flat, the rest of them were making very little headway in trying to ascertain how Rhys had gotten into the TV, and more importantly how to get him out. Tosh's tests on the remote control were limited, since Jack had told her specifically not to press any of the buttons.

When Jack and Owen returned, pulling the man in front of them, Gwen was immediately on her feet and marching towards him. She grabbed him and slammed him up against the wall.

'What the hell have you done to my husband?'

'I told you she'd be angry,' Jack said, having warned Martin that if he thought he was getting rough treatment now, it would be nothing compared to what Gwen was going to dish out when they got there.

'This is fascinating,' Tosh said, reviewing the equipment Owen had brought back, whilst Gwen was still busily threatening bodily harm. 'The software connects to the TV and somehow downloads the information.'

'Tell us how to get him back!' Gwen demanded.

'I dunno,' he said, quivering as hard as he could manage with Gwen's arm pressed underneath his chin, pinning him hard up against the wall. 'I only know how to remove them from the telly once they're in there.'

Jack grabbed him out from under Gwen's grip, throwing him across the room and pushing his face firmly in front of the man, forcing him backwards until he fell back onto the sofa behind him.

'What's say I grab this remote here, strap it to your hand, and see if I can make it suck you inside as well?'

'Please, no!' Martin begged. 'I didn't mean any harm.'

'Didn't mean any harm? There's at least a dozen people currently backed up on a hard drive that would disagree with you. Not to mention their very distressed families,' he growled.

'No, please,' he continued to beg.

'Owen, tape please,' he said, making good on his promise to strap the device to the man's hand.

'No, no, no, no, okay, okay. I'll tell you everything I know.'

'I'm so glad. It will save us a lot of time.'

On pain of being restrained in front of the TV, Martin began trying to explain how the software worked, and how'd he'd come across it on eBay. At first he'd thought it was just some kind of whizz bang new TV, and that the laptop that had come with it was just a freebie. When his flatmate had gotten sucked inside, he'd somehow figured out that they only way to fix the problem would be to download the data, or person, as Jack reminded him, using the software and loading the data onto the laptop.

After that, he'd realised that he could sell the TV to the next unsuspecting person, wait for them to get sucked into it, and then return a day later, pick up the TV and take anything else valuable with him to be fenced later. His position as a delivery guy was perfect, because he always had an excuse for being seen taking boxes of equipment out of people's houses, using the excuse that the item was being picked up and returned to the store because it was faulty. After the first few downloads though, he'd realised that the data storage requirements were far more than the laptop could handle, so he'd bought several servers to store the additional data.

'I didn't delete them, at least,' he said. 'I couldn't have done that.'

'How very noble of you. Such high ethical standards,' Owen muttered, disgusted.

It was true that he didn't know how to load the data back into the TV, or even if it could be, let alone how to get it from the TV back it into the real world. That was going to need Tosh's technical brilliance.

Tosh spent several hours fiddling with the software, analyzing it with her own laptop, and getting completely absorbed in the task. Ianto had called out for pizzas in the meantime, keeping the rest of the team from getting too restless. Without a working TV, there wasn't much else they could find to pass the time.

They'd already taken Martin back to the hub and locked him in one of the cells, until they could figure out what to do with him. For now, just having Janet as a neighbour would have to be punishment enough. It certainly seemed to be, if the screams were anything to go by.

Gwen was sat back on the sofa at their flat, watching the perplexed expression on Rhys's face, and suddenly wondering what it was he was up to.

'What are you doing?'

'Oh, er, I was bored, so I thought I might, you know, check things out a bit.'

'What do you mean check things out?'

'There's some cool stuff in here, Gwen. There's that thing with the seven legs to whose eyes spurt pina coladas, and something that looks like a big blob of electric orange jelly.'

'Are you going through our database?'

'Nothing else to do.' He paused for a moment. 'Oh, no. No, no, no, no!'

'What?' she said, sitting bolt upright. 'What's wrong?'

'Urgh, I think I just found Jack and Ianto's back catalog of greatest hits,' he said, covering his eyes, though it was probably not making any difference.

'Hey!' Jack called out, 'that's private. I had three levels of encryption on that. Even Tosh can't break that.'

'Well I wish I hadn't either! I'm never going to get rid of those images.'

Ianto flushed a deep red and proceeded to head into the kitchen, muttering something about coffee, but probably just looking for an excuse to leave the room.

'Okay,' Tosh announced after much waiting. 'I think I've got it figured out. Maybe.'

'Maybe?' Gwen said, looking worried.

'Well, I've figured out that the television, or what appears to be a television, can only store one person at time. That's why Martin had to download them each time. Now I think I know how to reverse the process to get the data back out of the TV and reconstitute it into a person. There's only one catch.'

'What's that?'

'Since Rhys is already in there, the only way to test it is to try and bring him back first. It'll either work, or the data will be disbursed into atoms.'

Gwen's body language spoke loudly enough on the subject that she was not happy about using Rhys as a guinea pig. Rhys looked equally worried.

'We trust you, Tosh,' Jack said, eyeing Gwen. She slowly nodded, giving Tosh the okay to proceed.

Tosh tapped a few keys on the laptop and then reached for the remote control, pressing a few buttons as she pointed at the screen. A flash of light burst around the room, forcing them all to look away and shield their eyes, but once it had died down, standing there in the middle of the living room, was Rhys. Three dimensional and looking very much alive.

Gwen leapt forward and wrapped her arms tightly around him, peppering him with kisses.

'Yeah, alright,' Rhys said, swatting off her attentions, embarrassed in front of the rest of the team.

'It worked!' Tosh exclaimed.

'Course it did. You're brilliant,' Owen said, paying her an unexpected compliment.

'Good work, Tosh,' Jack said. 'Now that we know it works, how about we try rescuing the others?'

'Hang on,' Rhys said, emboldened by his newfound physical presence in the room. 'If you bring them back here, aren't they going to find it a bit weird turning up in my living room? How do you plan on explaining that?'

'He's got a point,' Ianto conceded.

'Don't worry, I've got an idea,' said Jack.

It was ridiculously dark when they all finally trudged up the hillside, out in the middle of nowhere under the cover of night. They'd carted all of the equipment, including the TV, removed from its mounting on Gwen's living room wall, all the way out to the isolated spot. Tosh had plugged in a small generator to power the two devices, and had begun the process of uploading the first dataset into the television, ready to be reconstituted. After that, they'd all retreated to the SUV, which was parked nearby, but hidden in a thick patch of trees, whilst the TV set sat there on the top of the hill, all alone.

Moments later and a blinding flash of light erupted, spewing forth one of the missing people. A few minutes later, came the next one, and so on until their were fourteen people stood on the hillside, looking dazed and confused at their surroundings, and what had happened to them.

Then out of nowhere, Jack appeared carrying a torch, hailing to the group of confused souls.

'Hey y'all. Whatcha doin' out here?'

One of them piped up the courage to respond and tell him they actually had no idea. There'd been a bright flash of light, but they couldn't remember anything before that. The last thing any of them could recall was sitting in front of their televisions. Then they asked him where they were and what was he doing out here.

'Watchin' for UFOs,' he replied. 'Reckon I saw one just now.'

And after that, they all agreed that they must have been abducted, and that Jack had indeed seen a UFO.

'There's a town back a few miles that might be able to offer you folks shelter until the morning,' he said, pointing them in the right direction, and watching as they all helplessly wandered off, like a pack of lost sheep.

Once they were gone on their merry way back down the mountain to the township, the rest of the team reappeared from their hiding place.

'You know,' said Ianto, 'I think that's the first time we've ever gotten away with using the cover story that they actually were abducted by aliens.'

Jack just shrugged. 'Why lie when the truth works so well?'

Comments

[bk_forever]

HEEEE! Nice one, Jack!

Next time I buy a new TV, I'm going to be very careful indeed, I wouldn't want to be sucked inside it!