m_findlow

Title: Powerless
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Gwen, Owen, Tosh, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 4,763 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for prompt "Stairway to Hell"
Summary: The team are in over their heads as they hunt down The Committee

'Why do they call this place hell, anyway?' Owen said, trudging across the mud and bracken, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets against the cool breeze of the Welsh countryside.

'Because, when that locals found the entrance over a century ago,' Gwen explained, 'they thought the tunnels went so deep that they'd lead them to the very bowels of hell itself.'

'God, those Victorians were miserable gits.'

'They did have a penchant for the macabre,' Ianto commented, his voice scratchy in Owen's ear through his comms unit.

'Spose you're enjoying yourself, then,' Owen muttered, 'all tucked up nice and warm at the hub whilst we traipse around out here in the middle of nowhere.'

Ianto leaned back in the chair, absently massaging his thigh. In truth, being stuck there was driving him crazy. He would have given anything to be strolling through the Welsh outdoors, but his slowly healing leg was still troubling him. The lift in his apartment block had been broken for weeks, and the first attempt to climb the three flights of stairs had been agony. Since then he'd camped out at the hub, playing down to Owen just how much pain he was in. No one to blame but yourself, he kept reminding himself. That's what you get for smuggling yourself onto a prototype spaceship and crashing it into the third world country.

Owen however, wasn't fooled. 'Probably some underlying muscle tears,' he explained. 'That'll take a few weeks. No strenuous exercise. With Jack gone, that shouldn't be too hard for you.' Instead, he felt like an animal in captivity, licking his wounds and feeling sorry for himself.

'Oh, yes, I much prefer being stuck inside a musty old underground base with no natural daylight whatsoever.'

'Swap you,' Owen muttered.

'Gladly.'

'Hey, just be grateful I've got the I-Fives so you can see what's going on. I didn't have to bring them. It's just like being here, only without all the fresh air and hiking.'

'Oh, stop your whining, Owen.' Gwen said. 'A bit of fresh air won't kill you.'

'Oh yes, because we've got such a good track record out in the countryside. Who made you boss, anyway?'

'I did,' came the reply in Owen's ear. 'So that she could tell you to shut up and stop complaining.'

'Who'd have thought I'd miss Jack so much,' Owen grumbled, stopping where the undergrowth thickened, and the trees began to arch over the rocky outcrop.

'Bite me,' came Ianto's reply.

'Enough, both of you,' Gwen said, ending their tete a tete. 'What did the reports say again, Tosh?' she asked. She knew it was going over old ground, but she'd become accustomed to getting a fresh briefing on everything just before they arrived at a scene. It helped her to consolidate what they knew before they plunged headlong into it. It didn't help that the original briefing had been weeks ago, and that it was only with some new information today that it had been moved from a cold case to an immediate investigation case.

'Two geologists went missing over a month ago. They came down to explore the caves and never returned. Police and emergency services explored the immediate area but couldn't find any trace of them. They found their equipment, but not the bodies.'

'Probably fell into a ravine or something,' Owen said.

'Perhaps,' Ianto added, 'but when they checked the computer equipment left behind, the last notes on their electronic files were the words "I am the devil". It's not the first time that phrase has been linked to the cave system. Local police think it's just some drunken teenagers going down there to scare each other silly on a dare and leaving behind the messages, and other wild stories of strange things down there. Most of the locals give the place a wide berth, superstitious or otherwise.'

'Still seems like a load of bollocks,' Owen said.

'Until this morning when I found a case back in the thirties of a man who went down there and came back a psychological mess,' Ianto reported. 'He was committed to a mental institution. Doctors reports say he just sat there and repeated the words "I am the devil" over and over again. Wouldn't eat, never slept, just kept chanting all day, every day for over twenty years.'

'Probably what started off this whole thing with the creepy stories,' Owen mused. 'Bound to churn up a rumor mill in these sleepy little villages.'

'Except that the report was sealed until 2009. Patients from mental institutions had their records suppressed under the Mental Health Act until fifty years after their death to protect their privacy and that of their families. No one would have known.'

'Well, this is all very interesting, hundred year old superstitious haunted caves and all, but shouldn't we be focusing our efforts on finding Jack and getting to the bottom of this Committee business?'

'Except,' Tosh interrupted, 'at two fifteen PM yesterday, someone hacked the police databases and wiped out all the records pertaining to the investigation of the two missing geologists. The only copy that exists now is the duplicate on our redundancy server.'

Owen scoffed. 'We're stealing police files now?'

'We take a backup of their databases every night. No one could have known our copy existed.'

'So, give them back a copy and let them deal with it.'

'You're not the least bit curious why only those particular files were deleted?' Tosh asked.

Owen huffed loudly. 'Fine. Why delete the files? I'm curious.'

'Because,' Ianto said, 'the mental patient turned out to be the elder son of a prominent British MP of the day. His younger son followed in his footsteps as a member of the Conservatives, and whose great grandson also happens to now be a member of Whitehall.'

'You think there's a connection to The Committee, Ianto, or is this another wild conspiracy you've decided to chase?' Owen asked.

Ianto growled audibly. 'I've had a lot of spare time stuck here. These people going missing is a regular occurrence, but someone keeps removing any evidence of them. We know The Committee have people in every organisation, any of whom might be perfectly capable of gaining access to delete the files.'

'We all believe you, Ianto,' Gwen insisted, 'else we wouldn't be out here investigating.'

Owen started piecing it all together, wishing he'd listened properly the first time around. 'You think dear old dad was part of The Committee eighty years ago?'

'Why else delete the files? We know this goes back decades, perhaps longer. No one really knows where or when The Committee started, but perhaps something that far back might tell us why they're here and what they're planning. They might not have been nearly as good at wiping records back in those days. I think the son found something down there his father didn't want him to see. I also think that the grandson is connected to The Committee somehow. He might have been the catalyst for making sure those files were removed from the police databases.'

'They do like to have people in positions of power,' Tosh mused.

'Which means we need to see it, and find out what's down there,' Gwen said emphatically. 'How much further, Ianto?'

Ianto consulted the screen and their location, showing as three blinking dots overlaid on his aerial map, their comms acting as GPS beacons. 'Should be close now. Just a heads up, the entrance might be tricky to find.'

Owen came to a stop beside a sheer wall of rock, brushing away some overgrown foliage, revealing the words emblazoned in red paint. "I am the devil". 'Or not,' he said.

'Evidence?' Tosh asked.

'Or a warning.'

Gwen inspected the jagged entrance to the cavern they'd trekked half an hour to find. 'Come on, we've got a long climb down.'

'You don't think this is some kind of trap, do you?' Owen asked.

'It's like Ianto said,' Gwen replied. 'They don't know that we have a copy of the police report. They couldn't possibly know. For once we might be one step ahead of the game.'

Gwen took the lead, shining her torch in front of her, lighting the way. Tosh followed after her, one hand brushing against the wall as she worked her way down the rocky steps, the other with her PDA in hand, checking for unusual readings. Owen brought up the rear guard.

"Stop checking out Tosh's arse", the message read in front of Owen's vision.

'I wasn't,' Owen retorted.

'Wasn't what, Owen?' Tosh asked.

'Nothing,' he muttered, ignoring the winking emoji. Owen tugged his phone out of his pocket and typed out a message. "You'll get yours, Teaboy", making sure he saw it.

They must have been climbing downwards for at least twenty minutes in the dark when Owen broke the silence. 'How many of these bloody steps are there?' he moaned.

'All the way down to Hell, Owen,' Ianto teased.

'Yeah, well I've been dead mate and I can tell you that there's no such thing.'

'Because if there was they'd have rolled out the red carpet and been been waiting for you?'

'Something like that.'

'Someone must have carved these steps into the rock,' Tosh said. 'Look at them. They're too precise to be a natural formation.'

'It's getting hotter too,' Owen said. 'I thought caves were supposed to be cold and dank.'

'We're getting closer earth's core,' Tosh said. 'The further down you go, the more the bedrock is heated up by the underlying core of molten magma. Although,' she said, pausing, 'I would have thought we'd have to be a lot deeper than this for the heat to be that noticeable.'

Tosh nearly bumped straight into the back of Gwen, who had come to a halt at the bottom of the stairs 'What is it?'

Gwen shone the torch around the cavern. It was smaller than she expected, with lots of crevices and ledges all around. 'There's nothing here. It's empty.'

Tosh picked out her PDA again and began scanning the area. 'There's a disturbance in the air. Argh,' she groaned. 'It's messing around with the electronics. I can't get a proper reading.'

Gwen tapped her ear. 'Ianto, can you still hear us?'

'It's okay, but the vision from the I-Fives is a bit glitchy.'

Gwen turned in a slow circle, giving the place another thorough look. She squinted at a small cleft in the rock over to the far right. When she pointed her torch in just the right spot, it glinted back. 'What's that?' she said, slowly clambering closer to it. She held a hand out in front of her. 'It's warmer over here. In fact, I think there's a gap in the rock.' She knelt by the ledge, setting down the torch and shining it through. 'There's another cavern on the other side.' She began trying to squeeze herself head first through the narrow horizontal gap.

'Are you sure you should do that?' Owen asked. 'What if you get stuck?'

'We didn't come all the way down here for nothing. If I can fit through, I can get back, and so can you two.'

They watched as Gwen scrambled on her belly, using her knees and elbows to force herself through the gap, until she disappeared from view. 'I'm through,' she said, her voice echoing through the gap.

Owen reluctantly held up his torch, shining a light through for Tosh. 'Ladies first.'

'Always such a gentleman,' she said, sliding in. Once she was through, she called back to him. 'Okay, just watch the left hand side, it's a bit narrower.'

'I always hated caves,' he heard Ianto say.

'For once, I don't disagree with you,' Owen said, crawling onto the ledge. For Owen it was a lot tighter than expected. Once or twice he was convinced he was wedged in tight, a brief moment of panic at the thought of being stuck, but somehow managed to pull himself free, finally just about falling out the other side. Once he got to his feet, he grabbed his torch, flicking it back on and across the cavern walls.

This space was much, much bigger than the one they'd been in. From top to bottom it must have been twenty feet at least, his torchlight barely touching the roof. But that wasn't what caught his attention. Rather it was the large silvery machine in the middle of the cavern. It looked like a large mainframe - big and clunky, like something from the seventies, yet modern at the same time.

'It's a computer,' Tosh exclaimed.

'How the hell did it get down here?' Gwen said, staring at it in awe. 'And why? I mean, someone must have come down here and built it. There's no other explanation for it.'

'No wonder it's like a bloody sauna down here,' Owen said. 'A thing that size must be chewing through power like nobody's business.'

'But where's it getting all the power from?' Gwen said. 'We're out in the mididle of nowhere. There's no cables, no plugs. Nothing. We must be at least a mile underground.'

'It must have some kind of reserve power generator. Maybe a kinetic recycler,' Tosh suggested.

'I do not need power,' came a low droning voice.

'Woah, did that thing just talk?' Owen said.

Gwen took a hesitant step forward, keeping her torch trained on the computer. 'Hello. Who are you?'

'I am... the devil.'

'Great,' Owen said, 'a computer with a superiority complex.'

'The devil is a computer?' Gwen asked.

'That is a basic description of what your race would call me.'

Gwen frowned, keeping her torch fixed on the mainframe, just in case there was something hidden behind it that was actually doing the talking. 'I'm not sure you understand what it means to be the devil,' Gwen said.

'The supreme spirit of evil, often represented as the tempter of humankind, the leader of all apostate angels, and the ruler of hell,' the mainframe quoted. 'That is what I am.'

'This thing's a nut job,' Owen remarked.

'Okay,' Gwen said slowly. 'If you are the devil, what are you doing here?'

'I am waiting.'

'For who, or what?'

'For my master.'

'Oh yeah, and who's he when he's not at home?' Owen said.

'His name is not worthy to be spoken in the presence of such lesser creatures.'

'Well, that's helpful.'

'I speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me.'

'That's all a little bit "Hitchhiker's", isn't it?' Ianto quipped.

'Humans. Such simple creatures. Your processing functions are not even worthy of my consideration. I could reprogram you all in one millionth of a nanosecond.'

'We're not some robots you can just reprogram,' Gwen said.

'I can,' it droned. 'Your minds are nothing more than electrical signals. Even now I can feel them.'

'What's it on about?' Owen asked, feeling tense.

Tosh frowned. 'It's pulling electricity right from the air itself, breaking down atoms to get to the electrons inside them. That's how it's managed to keep itself powered all these years. I'd say it could very well be possible.'

'It is. Even your infantile intelligence should know that.'

'What is your purpose?' Gwen asked.

'To serve.'

'What about the people that came down here? What did you do to them?'

'They were... necessary... to serve.'

'Do you know anything about The Committee?'

'They serve.'

'Did they build you?'

'They do not have the intellect. I was brought here... to serve.'

'To serve as what?' Owen said, getting tired of playing twenty questions.

'Owen, it's a mainframe,' Tosh said. 'It's responsible for controlling data for any number of computers.'

'Tosh, they didn't have computers back in the thirties. What was it doing back then?'

'If The Committee brought computing technology with them from some other world, what's to say this was the only one?'

'They could be everywhere,' Gwen said. 'It's like Jack said, they're in every government, every boardroom. It's not just people though, is it? The computers are part of it; stealing information, storing it.'

'Not just stealing,' Tosh said, thinking out loud. 'Controlling it. Military installations, utility supply networks, financial and banking systems, the internet. My God.'

'I am the devil,' the machine intoned.

'Right, listen. I'm sick of being insulted by this tin can,' Owen huffed. 'I say we kill it now, and worry about what it's up to later.'

'You cannot destroy me.'

'I say we can.' Owen pulled out his gun and emptied the clip in its direction. The sound reverberating around the cavern was immense. Gwen and Tosh both ducked, waiting for the inevitable ricochet of bullets to strike them.

When he'd finished, Owen stared at the large metal contraption, light from his torch flickering across its surface, inspecting the damage. Hovering just millimeters from its surface were each of his bullets, all of which simultaneously clinked to the ground in a pile, spent but undamaged.

'What the hell?'

'Some kind of forcefield,' Tosh said, shining her own torch around. 'It's like it just reversed the magnetic polarity of its own surface.'

'Fine, so we get a bomb and blow the fucker up. Can't mess with dynamite. Bring down the whole cave if we have to.'

'I cannot be destroyed,' the mainframe repeated. 'I was brought here to serve. You have been brought here... to serve.'

'Nobody brought us here, mate. And we serve ourselves.'

'You have become....necessary.'

'I don't think so, pal. We're Torchwood. We wipe out threats like you every day of the week.'

'Torchwood is known to us. You have a purpose. You were deemed necessary.'

'What purpose?' Gwen demanded, feeling a chill run down her spine.

'To serve.'

'What's it talking about, Tosh?'

'I don't know,' she said, trying to get her PDA to tell her anything useful between the flickering images and corrupted data. 'Our systems aren't networked. It can't get access to them.'

'Not yet,' it replied, 'but soon.'

'How?' Tosh said, wishing her PDA would stop glitching.

'A virus.'

'What?'

'Oh, no,' Tosh said, realising what it meant. 'That computer the geologists left behind...'

'I am the devil?' Owen said skeptically

'The only copy left of the data from the computer...'

'Is on our redundancy servers,' Gwen finished. 'Ianto, shut down everything! Purge the files and partition it off!'

Ianto didn't respond.

'Ianto? Ianto, please respond.'

He couldn't, sat there staring blankly at the screen in front of him, mind overloaded by the code scrolling across its surface. "I am the devil. I am the devil. I am the devil..."

Gwen spun to face the mainframe. 'What have you done?'

'He has been... suspended. Your human minds have no firewalls. Access was simple.'

'Owen, the I-Fives,' Tosh said. Somehow the computer had used the transmission from the I-Fives to hack the interface between them. It was providing a direct neural connection for the computer to gain access. Owen quickly ripped them out, cutting off their power source.

'If you've hurt him, I swear,' Owen threatened.

'Your lives do not concern me. I must preserve the ultimate purpose. This world must serve its function.'

'This world already has a purpose,' Gwen said, 'and The Committee need to leave.'

'They can take you with them,' Owen added.

'I will outlive you all. And then I shall be replaced by an even greater power.'

Tosh lunged forward towards the computer whilst it was distracted, talking with Gwen and Owen, managing to grab hold of a control panel on its side. It was only for a brief moment however, before a jot of electricity shot out, sending her backwards to the ground.

'Tosh!' Owen yelled, seeing her crumple to the ground, her torch rolling away and leaving her in darkness. Gwen ran over to help her.

'Right, that's it,' Owen said striding forwards to belt to hell out of the thing with his own torch. Before he could raise his arm against it, he could feel his arm protesting against the movement. What the hell? Why wouldn't it do what he wanted it to do? Then it dawned on him that the mainframe was trying to override his mind.

'Gwen, stay back,' he warned, stepping back himself. 'It's trying to fuck with our brains.'

'You will serve,' the mainframe droned.

'Not today, mate,' Owen said, going over to Gwen. 'We've gotta go before this thing takes over our minds.' He hated admitting defeat, but what choice did they have? If they stayed here, that thing could take control and walk itself right into Torchwood, assuming it hadn't already.

'Help me get her up,' Gwen said, trying to get a hand under Tosh.

The air around them began to vibrate and small rocks shifted, tumbling down around them.

'What's it doing?' Gwen asked.

'Nothing good,' Owen said, feeling the heat increase as well. He hefted Tosh over his shoulder and carried her across to the narrow gap in the rock. 'I'll go first,' he said, 'and then I can pull her through.'

It was a struggle under normal circumstances, and even more so as the cavern began to shake, rocks coming loose. If they didn't hurry it up, they were going to get trapped inside.

As soon as Tosh was through, Gwen yelled at Owen. 'Go! I'll catch up.' The climb down had been hard and going back up with Tosh would be harder still. She'd catch him up.

She forced her arm through the gap which now shook even more violently, trying to pull herself through. The rock face shifted, catching her leg in a vice like grip and she panicked for a second, unable to dislodge it. She pulled and tugged in desperation and finally it came free. She threw herself headlong through the rest of the gap, crawling and falling out the other side. Her leg was in pain but not enough to stop her from taking the steps back up to the surface two at a time, barely looking at them in the torchlight, just trusting to instinct.

Halfway up, she found Owen and Tosh. Tosh had regained consciousness and was being helped up the steps by Owen.

'Come on!' Gwen shouted at them, quickening their pace as the cavern continued to rumble and shake.

They eventually saw the shafts of light from the outside, poking through the darkness and finally tumbled out into daylight. Moments later the entrance to the cavern crumbled in on itself. A few seconds more inside and they'd have been trapped there permanently.

'Is everyone okay?' Gwen asked.

'Fine,' Owen puffed.

'Yeah,' Tosh replied, looking a bit shaken. 'What just happened?'

'It nearly killed us,' Owen said.

'No,' Gwen replied. 'I think it meant to do this to seal itself inside.'

'Why?'

'It didn't like us getting too close. I think it was afraid of what we might do to it.'

'I tried to clap the thing out,' Owen said, 'but somehow it had scrambled my motor function. I don't think we'd have been able to stop it.'

'Maybe not, but I don't think it was going to take the chance.'

'We still have no idea what kind of damage it's done back at the hub,' Tosh said, leaning heavily against Owen's side, his arm clutched around her narrow waist. 'Or whether Ianto is okay.'

Ianto. Christ, Gwen kicked herself. She'd forgotten all about him. She tapped her comms, still crackling slightly. That thing was still interfering. She marched several forceful yards further away and called again. 'There's nothing,' she said, looking worriedly at her teammates. The mainframe said he'd been suspended, whatever that meant, but it couldn't be be good.

'So, what do we do now?' Owen asked.

Gwen looked back at the pile of rock and vines where the cavern entrance had once stood.

'I don't know.'

The walk back to the car was long and slow, despite their need, as was the drive back to Cardiff. Owen let Gwen drive whilst he checked over Tosh. She dozed most of the way back, which was to be expected for someone who'd received a large electric shock. Still, it didn't make Owen worry any less as she sat there peacefully. More concerning was that they still couldn't get in touch with Ianto back at the hub, which had Gwen pressing just that bit harder on the accelerator than was strictly safe.

When Gwen finally pulled into the underground car park, she was out of the door, gun in hand before the others could even undo their seat belts.

'Tosh, stay here. Owen and I will check the hub.'

'No, I'm coming with you,' she said watching as Owen slipped a fresh clip into his gun.

'Tosh, you're not a hundred percent,' Owen said.

'I don't care. If that thing has gotten into our systems, you'll need me.'

They slipped along the back passage and through to the main hub. Inside all was quiet. Owen hadn't been sure what to expect. There was every chance the virus had compromised their security systems, and that some incursionary force from The Committee was entering the hub right now. Instead there was nothing.

Ianto was lying on the floor by his desk. Owen immediately went over to check him.

'Is he okay?' Gwen asked.

'Just unconscious or sleeping. Probably got hit by the same thing as Tosh.' Owen shook him gently. 'Ianto, mate.'

Ianto groaned, slowly coming around. 'What happened?'

'Everything went to shit,' Owen replied.

'Oh.'

Owen made him answer a raft of questions, standard procedure for any head injury or lapse of consciousness. He still felt slightly guilty that he was partly responsible for Ianto's situation, even though there was no way he could have known. Here he was thinking he'd done the right thing, leaving his teammate safely back at the hub.

'Well, at least you didn't end up gaga like that other bloke. All your faculties seemed to be in place, all things considered,' he said, satisfied that Ianto would be okay,

'I don't even remember what happened,' he said, sitting back in his chair.

'Trust me, you didn't miss much, other than us getting our arses kicked.'

It was late by the time they'd checked over their systems, run diagnostics and been subjected to Owen patching up cuts and bruises. Ianto handed out the mugs of coffee to Gwen and Owen, before passing Tosh her own. She gripped it double handed as she huddled on the sofa, before he sat down next to her with his own. She sipped it gingerly before leaning against his shoulder as he sipped his own.

'What a mess,' he said, feeling lower than he had since the day Jack disappeared on them.

'So, did the virus effect all our systems?' Gwen asked.

'Everything,' Tosh reported glumly. 'I've rebooted all our servers. Diagnostics are coming up empty for any intrusion, and I can't find any traces of the virus.'

'So, it took whatever it wanted and rode off into the sunset?' Ianto asked.

'Looks like it,' she replied. 'There's no way of knowing how much of the data they managed to copy, or what specifically they might have been after.'

'Clearly they were after something,' Owen said.' This whole thing was a trap right from the get go, luring us out there.'

'It does seem to be The Committee's modus operandi,' Ianto replied. 'First Jack, now us.'

'It's like they knew exactly what would get our attention,' Gwen said, sipping gratefully at her coffee, feeling the ache in her muscles catching up with her, large purple bruises breaking out along her leg where it had been crushed.

'And they know everything we know, now,' Owen said, making them face facts.

'They don't know everything,' Ianto said. 'They don't know where Jack is.'

'Yeah, but neither do we.'

'Exactly. They don't now where he is, or what he knows. If they did, they wouldn't have needed us. We know he's been running down leads in them. He had that fake company in Turkey, and whatever information Ephraim Salt managed to collect. Who knows what other resources he's managed to pool.

'How does that help us, though?' Owen asked.

'It makes him the most valuable asset we have. We have to protect him at all costs. He's our only chance now of stopping them.'

Gwen looked at Ianto with no small amount of curiosity. 'What are you suggesting?'

Ianto gave them all a very serious look. 'We have to find him, before The Committee does. He has no idea just how much danger he's in.'