BTBD Challenge 50 - Hidden messages

[m_findlow]

Title: Hidden messages
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 3,916 words
Content notes: Written for Challenge 50 -  Message at beattheblackdog
Summary: Someone is sending the team a message

The box had been sitting on the floor for weeks now. He couldn't quite remember where it had come from, only that Owen had unceremoniously dumped it at his feet one day and told him that this was more his department than Owen's. He'd been meaning to get back to it for ages, but things were so busy with just the day to day to do list, let alone whatever else cropped up, that everything else took a back seat.

Finally with a quiet moment now, he leaned down to prise open the box and properly uncover it's contents. It was full of old books and other documents. If it had come through the rift, it must have been stolen from a yard sale, or some library, maybe even a university. Small wonder Owen had dropped it in his lap. If it wasn't an alien corpse, plant, or nifty gadget, Owen couldn't get excited about it.

He grabbed out the first handful of books encrusted with a thick layer of dust. He gave a sharp breath, blowing off a considerable amount of the dust, and receiving a series of sneezes as thanks for the effort. It was still better than trying to wipe away the dust with his hand, which would have left it black and filthy.

The title on the books wasn't English, so meant nothing to him initially. Perhaps this was why they'd given it to him. The job of translating the contents would be thoroughly time consuming, each of the old tomes brittle, the pages yellowed. Perhaps it would be worth taking them to a proper book binder to have them taken apart so that he could scan them in more easily, and then bound again.

Putting aside thoughts about the practicalities for the moment, he satisfied himself by typing the title into their translation program. Knowing what the book was about would have to do for the moment, his curiosity piqued by some of the diagrams illustrated within its pages.

The title didn't give a lot away. It was techno babble, something Tosh might be better placed to understand, which fit in with the illustrations he'd seen.

The second book he picked up was even more tattered than the first. He flipped a couple of tentative pages before an old weathered note fell out between then pages fluttering its way to the floor.

He picked it up and studied it, curious to discover the message written on it in clear English handprint.

"Revenge for the future", it read.

He frowned at it, perplexed. What was that supposed to mean? He studied it again and flipped through a few more pages, searching for other English text, or maybe some other notes from its last owner, but finding the whole book in some other language he wasn't familiar with. It puzzled him, and left him with a slightly nagging feeling in the back of his head, as if he should understand its significance. More likely, some other scholar had been perusing the contents, perhaps leaving a bookmark for themselves, or a note to come back to. Perhaps it meant nothing it all, just the first thing that was at hand that could be used as a place marker. Resolving that it probably meant nothing, he gently slipped it back inside the book, just inside the back cover, and closed it. There were a whole pile of books in the box yet, and they all had to be processed. Alien they definitely were, but whether they were entertaining fiction, or historical fact, or something else entirely, each bit of information would no doubt teach them something new about the various cultures, species and technologies that occupied their vast universe.

Several days later, Ianto was enjoying a brief respite in his day at a local cafe. He'd found a reputable book binder in the city and had left him with several volumes that needed repair after he'd carefully pulled them apart to scan the pages. Even doing that much had felt like a heinous crime. In his opinion, books should be respected, and he had no patience for page lickers, corner folders, or spine breakers. Still, had it not been for the quality of the work done by the binder, he would never have attempted it. If anything, they'd come back in better shape than before, and he only had to wait an hour for them to be done.

Slowly perusing the glistening cafe counter window, debating the large selection of pastries, which he'd have with the famously large pots of tea that they served, and which he'd take back for the rest of the team; not because they possibly deserved it, but because Jack was like a bloodhound when it came to anything sugary. Within seconds of returning he'd know if Ianto had been snacking, the aftertaste of pain au choc still on his lips.

Settling for a slice of cherry pie, he checked the messages on his phone as his fork hovered idly over the juicy red filling. He was going to have to set up some kind of alien library system back at the hub. How to sort the books would be another matter. He didn't think the Dewey decimal system was going to help him much.

There was an email from Tosh who was in raptures over some of the content that had come from one of the books he was having rebound, having been reading over the translations. Apparently it was all about the science of time space, and emphasizing a great deal on rifts and the technologies that could be ostensibly used to manipulate gaps in the continuum.

He glossed over half of what she said, finding her excitability devolving into even more technical terminology that left him for dead. At the very least, he could be pleased that someone was appreciating the lengths to which they went to preserve artifacts that fell through the rift, and if someone could get use out of them, so much the better.

Days later, Tosh was still pouring over the translated books, and begging Ianto to have more of them scanned into the system. Her enthusiasm was infectious as she shared some of what she'd learned with the team. Ianto knew that he'd landed on something special when even Owen could be seen conferring in excited but hushed tones with Tosh. They looked like two kids in a candy store.

'What are you two up to?'

They looked at him with equally enthused expressions.

'We think we can figure out a way to control the rift.'

'Uh, isn't that impossible?' Even the Doctor couldn't control time.

'Well, that was before we had these,' Tosh replied. 'There's so much stuff in these books, it's completely rewriting everything we know about the physics of time travel.'

The idea perplexed him. The books had looked so old that it seemed almost impossible to think they contained revolutionary new ideas and theorems. Not just theories, if Tosh's explanations were anything to go by, but actual practical application.

'Tosh has been developing some programs based on what she's discovered which can map out coordinates in space time. All we need is to be able to develop the right kind of power source and we'll finally be able to do our jobs right,' Owen added.

'Power source?'

'Well, yeah, if you want to be able to use the rift machine, you're going to need something to keep it going.' He made is sound so plainly obvious that Ianto said no more on the matter.

As the weeks wore on, not only did their enthusiasm not wane, if anything it grew in its fervor, as they spent every spare minute of their days trying out different variations, delving deeply into the technical detail of their new database. He'd never seen them so thoroughly absorbed in anything before. It was a little frightening.

Moreover, he was concerned by Jack's own acquiescence towards this new project. The first thing he'd drilled into all of them when they started life at Torchwood was that you never messed with the rift. Yet somehow, they'd worn him down with all of the various advantages that would come from being able to properly control the rift.

'Think of all the aliens that get dumped here, never able to return home. How much better would it be if we had the ability to send them back?' Gwen had added, getting caught up in all of the possibilities, the more Owen and Tosh talked about it.

Jack had to admit, it would be nice to be able to help them find their way back home rather than the ad-hoc hoping for the best that often came from trying to send beings back through the rift, or the complications that sometimes arose from having to resettle aliens here. Their funding could only afford to buy up a limited amount of local real estate for rent, because regular landlords might not like the idea that a family of Snarkles were living there.

Ianto couldn't believe his eyes the day he saw Jack standing in front of the secure archives safe one morning, pulling out a large metal crate, inside which were the blueprints for the rift machine. Placing it on his desk, the padlock unlocked with an ominous click that sent a chill down Ianto's spine as he watched on.

Jack caught the concerned look on his face. Those blueprints were locked away for a reason.

'They're going to be tinkering with the rift machine, no matter what. I'd feel better if they were at least armed with all the information we have. If anyone got hurt because I'd withheld critical information, I'd never forgive myself.'

Ianto could understand the logic, but was still a little surprised at Jack's own willingness to concede on the matter. Mulling it over whilst he tended to the act of making coffee, which always helped to ease his mind over troubling thoughts, Gwen must have noticed the tension in his stance, or maybe it was the way he'd been standing there doing nothing, the milk frothed to within an inch of its life.

'What's wrong?'

'Do you think we should be doing this? Trying to control the rift?'

She looked at him in earnest. 'You don't think we should?'

In all honesty, he didn't know what to think. It was all just so sudden. He knew he should have held a firm opinion one way or the other, but that everyone else seemed to be in heated agreement that this was the right thing, left him feeling out of sorts.

'We've managed okay without it so far,' he replied, his heart not in it to try and explain his unexplained ambivalence.

'We've picked up the pieces of whatever mess the rift sees fit to dump on us, you mean,' she replied, arms folded. 'If we could control it properly, maybe we could stop dangerous things from coming through. Don't you think that's worth it?'

He inclined his head non-committally. Less bad stuff would be good. He certainly wouldn't mind not being woken up in the middle of the night every time the rift decided it didn't feel like synchronizing watches.

'We might even be able to save those that get taken by the rift,' Gwen pleaded. 'No more missing people or people damaged by the rift.'

Suddenly Ianto understood why Jack had rolled over at their insistence. Any mention of the victims of the rift made his resove crumble into dust. He hated Flat Holm Island with a passion. Every trip out there ate away at his soul, because of the guilt he felt and his powerlessness to do anything about it. He didn't love it anymore than Jack did, but he stood by him each and every time, offering support, and being the strong one when Jack couldn't bear the pain of it anymore. Every time they had to drive out to find someone returned by the rift, it seemed harder to cope with. Perhaps they were right. To be able to end all the suffering that the rift caused was surely a good thing.

'You're right,' he said, shaking himself out of his own headspace. 'Maybe the rift gave us these tools as a way of correcting some of its wrongs.'

As the days continued to drift by, chasing weevils, making coffee and filing reports, the ongoing work with the rift machine persisted, though he felt much less ill at ease about it, even offering to help out if he could with anything. The others were right. Anything they could do to help those who got sucked in via the rift could only be a good thing. Why it had taken him so long to see what was plainly obvious was anyone's guess. He felt silly that he'd been so worried over nothing.

Some of the scanning and translation that the team were using in their endeavours was a little sketchy, the pages in the books old and worn, print faded in patches. Each time they came across a section that was unintelligible, someone would ask for the original pages to be scanned again, and the words manually input where the pages were too damaged. That was what he was in the process of working through when Jack came over for one of his procrastinating visits to Ianto's desk.

'How's it going?' he asked, leaning on the edge of the desk.

'Fine. Just wish some of these books had been in better condition. If I stare at the page any longer, my eyes are going to get cross-eyed from this weird alien language.'

Jack smiled at him, and picked up one of the books off the top of the short stack on the desk.

'They certainly look well aged,' he said, examining the cover, before flipping idly through the pages, not really looking at them, but rather at the attractive man in front of him.

'That's an understatement. Wonder who they belonged to? Suppose we'll probably never know.'

'S'pose,' Jack absently replied. He picked up the next book off the pile and opened the front cover. 'Didn't write their name on the inside cover,' he stated, before flipping to the back cover to check the same. When he did, he saw the slip of paper wedged in the back, pulling it out.

"Revenge for the future."

He nearly dropped it right out of his hand as a feeling of ice ran through his veins. A stream of memories came flooding back to him: worries of his friends slowly losing themselves in their quest to do good, but growing instead hungry on power and possibility. Things that he'd failed to see until it was too late; watching as the people he'd been so proud of, and cared so much for, betrayed him, corrupted by power.

He could still remember being trapped under the floor beneath the giant machine, his body poked full of wires and tubes, nothing more than a human battery, watching as the new Torchwood lorded over him and his naive foolishness. Sometimes in his nightmares, he could still feel the hot sticky blood of his lover as it dripped through the shattered cracks of his prison cell, the body torn to shreds by gunfire, murdered in his last noble act to save them all from themselves.

Ianto caught sight of the note in Jack's hand, remembering it from the first day he'd opened the book. 'Revenge for the future,' he repeated, in a vapid sort of way. 'Odd thing to have in a book, don't you think?'

Jack stared at him with a horrified confusion. He didn't remember. How could he not remember? Ianto remembered everything! Why not this?

Jack's mouth felt dry and parched as he tried to speak.

'Gather up every last one of these books and put them in a box. Then get everyone upstairs in the boardroom.'

'Why?'

'Just trust me.'

Twenty minutes later, Jack was down in one of the lower levels of the hub, in a room that housed a large industrial sized incinerator. It was mainly used for disposing of alien corpses, and occasionally other items. Today, Jack was standing so close to its gaping maw that he could feel the sweat breaking out over his chest as the heat poured outwards. He stood there watching the books burn until he was sure that every last page was turned to ash. As the heat continued, the sweat began to drip down his face. Reminded again of the feeling of Ianto's blood on his cheek, he quickly brushed it away and stormed out of the room.

Upstairs there was confusion. The computer files they had been working on had been mysteriously purged, and nothing Tosh tried would restore them from their servers. She was rightly annoyed that the books which had taken so long to be translated were now gone, as were all of her programs which had been weeks of hard work.

'At least we've still got the originals,' Owen added helpfully, trying to quell her mood.

Ianto sat in his chair and said nothing. He didn't want to be the bearer of even more bad news. He knew exactly what had happened to them. He still couldn't figure out why he couldn't remember the words. As soon as Jack mentioned the Tretarri Estate he could see it all in his mind, as if watching a film, recalling how the mime artist had dissolved into a million tiny drops of light at his touch. Yet he had no recollection of the words that caused so much fear in his lover's eyes. He'd pulled up his old mission report and found them right there in black and white. "Revenge for the future." Why the hell couldn't he remember? Had Bilis done something to change the past, erasing their memories? What this the whole reason he'd felt so unsettled about them being able to control the rif? It was like the past repeating itself, only it was the future, not the past. Now that he'd reread his own reports, he remembered it clear as day.

'Where's Jack? And why are we all sitting up here when we should be figuring out what happened to our files?' Tosh exclaimed. 'Someone could be hacking our systems and systematically deleting data.'

'Oh, I hadn't thought of that,' Gwen said, beginning to look equally worried.

'There's no hacker,' Jack said, appearing in the doorway, looking pale and tired.

'Jack, what's going on?'

'Bilis Manger,' he said.

Thee voices all clamored together with their various exclamations, demanding to know answers to questions that Jack himself didn't know. Now Ianto could see how shaken Jack looked.

'Shut up, all of you!' Ianto yelled, silencing them through shock more than the command itself.

Jack gripped the edge of the table and eased himself down into the chair at the head of the table.

'I destroyed the books. Deleted them from our systems, along with all our other research.'

Gwen looked confused and concerned. 'I don't understand what this has to do with Bilis. He's gone, isn't he?'

'So we thought. But for a guy that can travel time, who of us can be certain we've ever seen the last of him?'

'How did you manage to connect Bilis to this, though?' Tosh asked.

'I wouldn't have, except for the fact that he couldn't help but leave us a little message in one of the books.' Jack pulled the crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Tosh.

'Revenge for the future? How do you know this is from him?'

'It's what he said last time, only no one else seems to remember it.'

'Last time?' Owen asked, raising an eyebrow.

'Tretarri,' Ianto replied, saying no more.

The rest of them sat there in muted silence. Their memories were unusually clouded and vague, but they knew enough to know that anything involving Bilis was dangerous.

'So you think he planted these books in the hopes that we'd use them?' Tosh asked.

'Perhaps he thought we could open the rift and let something through,' Owen added. 'And we nearly bloody did. All we were lacking was a proper power source to get it working.'

Ianto exchanged a worried glance with Jack. That salient little detail hadn't been included in his report, but he had found it in his diary. Jack was the power source they'd been missing to get the technology working. Even now he was too scared to say so. It wasn't that he didn't trust his friends, but he'd thought he trusted them in the dream too.

Jack sucked in a heavy breath. 'It doesn't matter,' he said. 'What matters is that we stopped it before he could succeed in whatever he was planning.'

'What do you think he was planning?' Gwen asked.

'Who knows. But it won't have been good.'

'So what do we do now?' Owen asked. 'I'm assuming tampering with the rift machine is off the cards.'

He tried to sound casual about it, but the memories of letting another Abbadon through to their world filled him with dread. He'd been responsible for opening the rift and causing all of those deaths. He'd killed Jack, and then let Jack die again for them to save them all. Jack might have forgiven him, but he couldn't forgive himself.

'It seemed like a good idea at the time,' Tosh added, feeling equal parts complicit.

'We keep doing what we do,' Jack announced. 'We know Bilis is out there, hopping across time, orchestrating some game we don't know the rules to, so we stay vigilant. That's all we can do.'

Looking around the room, he saw nothing but despondent faces. The close shave had sobered them all.

'Come on,' he said. 'Let's call it a day and go out. Dinner and drinks. My shout. The world doesn't end today.'

He watched as they slowly shuffled out of the boardroom, their moods cheered somewhat, debating where they should go, since the boss was picking up the tab. Only Ianto still remained slumped in his chair, unable to partake in the distraction. Jack stepped over and stood behind his chair, letting his hands rest on Ianto's shoulders, giving them a gentle squeeze.

'It almost happened again,' Ianto said, voice wavering at the thought of Jack being imprisoned again.

'It never happened the first time,' he replied, squeezing reassuringly. 'All we saw was one future out of billions of possible futures.'

Ianto turned his head upwards to look at Jack. 'I'd do it all again. Next time I wouldn't fail you.'

Jack leaned down and kissed his head. It should have been him sacrificing his life for Ianto, not the other way around. Even so, he knew there was nothing he could say to change things.

'I know. Come on, let's go catch up with the others. Owen will be moaning otherwise.'

Ianto reluctantly stood and let Jack wrap an arm around him.

'I'd really rather just go home with you.'

'So would I,' Jack said,WAanting nothing more than to bundle Ianto up in his arms and never let go, 'but we're a team, and the way we stop Bilis is by sticking together. If we do that, then he can't ever get to us.'

Ianto couldn't disagree with him. He'd seen what happened when they turned on one another. If they were going to beat Bilis, they'd be much stronger together.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Eeep!

Twilight Streets was probably my favourite of the Torchwood novels, and this little tale makes a particularly chilling sequel. Can't blame Jack, and then Ianto, for their reactions on realising what those old books could mean. That was a close call.