Torchwood Advent Challenge - 23rd December

[m_findlow]

Title: Back to school.
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 5,045 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for prompt "Fidget Spinners"
Summary: Something dangerous is finding its way into schools.

Ianto couldn't help but take notice of the frown on Johnson's face as he strode past her desk on his way to make coffee. She almost always wore a stern expression, but this one was somehow different.

'Something up?' he asked.

'I'm getting reports from three different hospitals in the Cardiff and Valleys area of kids being injured by fidget spinners.'

'Fidget spinners? How do you hurt yourself on a fidget spinner?' He'd seen them just about everywhere, in the supermarkets, newsagents, even little market stalls right out in the street. They were simply everywhere in every colour and style imaginable, though he couldn't understand the craze himself.

'What kind of injuries?'

'The reports are of serious cuts and burns. Oh my God,' she said, staring at a photograph of some of the injuries, stolen from a hospital case file shed hacked.

Ianto agreed with her sentiment on the severity of the injuries. 'It's a bit of plastic with a ball bearing in the middle. How could it possibly have done that?'

'My point exactly,' she said. 'And three reported cases in the past two hours? What are the odds of that?'

'What's three reports in the last two hours?' Jack said, striding in through the door, Jez following in his wake. He was tugging his coat off as he jogged up three short steps to meet them before he threw it over the railing, leaving it there for later. Jez dropped the box on his autopsy table, leaving the furry remnants of their latest discovery for inspection later.

Ianto studied the photos, cringing at the horrible burns. 'What makes you think this is a Torchwood case?' He didn't mean to be condescending or in any way disinterested; it was more curiosity that had him wanting to know how his agents thought. He wanted to challenge them to think outside the square, and to let them explore ideas on their own. There was nothing vanilla about this job, so conventional thinking was useless. They were all good at what they did, but all of them, including himself, could always be better with the right amount of questioning what they did and why.

'Three different schools, all claiming it was the toys that caused the injuries, but not one of them actually saw what happened,' she replied. 'All of them happened out in the playground rather than the classroom.'

'Where a teacher might have seen it and stopped it, or at least been there to help,' he surmised. He let out a sigh, seeing the red raw burns on the tiny hand in the photo. 'Another craze that leaves everyone with divided opinions,' he said. 'It was marbles when I was a kid.'

'Tazos,' Johnson replied.

'Nah,' Jez said. 'Tamagotchis. Now they were mad.'

'Oh, hey I had one of those,' Jack piped in. 'I couldn't figure out why it kept dying all the time. And there was poop everywhere.'

'Maybe because you're rubbish at looking after pets?' Ianto suggested. 'Which is why I'd never let you get a dog.'

'Hey, I look after Buddy just fine.'

Ianto might not have had a say in the adoption of their stray labrador, but neither could he turn the dog away after seeing how much Jack had fallen in love with the mischievous mutt. 'Which is how I end up being the one getting up at five thirty to walk him every day,' he replied.

'Getting back to the matter at hand,' Johnson said, knowing the pair of them could carry on like this for hours. 'All of the spinners that apparently caused the injuries? No one can find them.'

'What do you mean no one can find them?' Jack asked.

'They've gone missing, or perhaps were damaged when they caused the injuries.'

'What, like self detonating devices?'

'Or the detonation is what caused the problem in the first place. We've seen plenty of stuff come through the rift that looks everyday and turns out to be something else completely. What if these are the same?'

'Self detonating is a bit of a leap,' Ianto said. 'They could be broken, or the kids may have thought to hide them before anyone got there. Kids are good at that kind of thing.' He should know. He'd lost his car keys for three days after Tom had snaffled them from his drawer and buried them in the backyard with a little help from their four legged pet. 'So the question is, where did they come from, how many of them are out there, and how do find them?'

'Some schools have banned kids from bringing them in,' Johnson said. 'They claim that rather than helping kids fight distraction, that they're actually causing the distraction.'

'Well, it's not as if we can enforce the rest of them to follow suit,' Ianto said. 'Still, I don't like the idea that these things could be out there in the hands of innocent children.'

He was just glad their own children weren't old enough for any of this yet. They went to four-year old preschool four days a week, and spent another day with his sister, but preschool was a controlled environment. They didn't get to play with anything that wasn't there. There was no smuggling in other toys to play with. And the coordination required was more than most four-year olds could manage. Gwen had told him that everything changed when you had kids. He hadn't quite believed her. Everything? That was a very sweeping statement to make. Everything, she confirmed. She'd been right, too. Not a day went by that he didn't think about what repercussions his actions might have. Jack laughed at him. 'I thought you were fiercely protective when it came to kids, before. Now you're just scary.' He'd do anything for his kids, or anyone else's for that matter. Anwen was a few years older, but as much immediate family as anyone. It was her he thought of, playing at school with her friends, completely unaware that some child nearby could be harboring a deadly weapon.

'Okay, Jez, you head down to the hospital and find out what you can. Call Gwen and tell her to meet you there,' Jack said.

'No probs, boss. Wouldn't mind taking a look at these injuries first hand. Might be something else to it that we don't know about yet.'

'That was my thinking.' He cast a look across at Ianto for approval. There was no nod or even a blink. It was just a mutual agreement that was the right thing to do. Jack was still in charge of local Cardiff operations, and rarely did they ever jostle for position as head decision maker. They'd spent too many years together to ever argue about what was right and wrong when it came to dealing with Torchwood matters. Everything else trivial they argued about like any other couple, but not this.

'Okay, so that leaves us,' Ianto said. 'I wouldn't mind finding out a bit more around these schools. It might be an isolated area. Could we be looking at someone selling dodgy products? Show me a map of the areas with the reported injuries.'

Johnson tapped a few keys and brought up the schematic. 'Oh,' she said.

'Oh, what?'

'Four more cases just popped up, here, here and two here,' she said, pointing them out on the map.

'They're all miles apart,' Ianto said. 'There's no geographical connections whatsoever.'

'What about where they live?' Jack asked. Ianto turned to look at him and Jack shrugged. 'Could be they wanna send their kids to a nicer school, and not the local one.'

Ianto conceded the point, recalling the arguments they'd had over whether to enroll their own brood early into one of the private schools a few suburbs away. Ianto surprised him by arguing that there was nothing wrong with the local school, and that the only difference would be that the private school might let them colour in using better quality pencils. At an age where all they were doing was running around and having fun, he couldn't see the need to shove them in a class full of snotty nosed rich kids and their equally snooty parents who would probably only look down their noses at him and Jack anyway. They didn't want to have to keep up with the Joneses. It was hard enough keeping up with the Harkness-Joneses.

'Re-run the map based on home addresses,' he said, echoing Jack's thoughts.

'Ah, now that's interesting,' Jack said, reviewing the map again.

'All within a one mile radius,' Johnson said.

'So, chances are our epicenter is somewhere in the middle of that,' Ianto added.

'And look, it's almost a perfect circle. If I were a betting man, I'd say we should be door knocking the houses in this street here,' he said, pointing to it on the map.

'I can go one better,' Johnson said. 'There's only one house in that stretch that's been newly let out in the last month.'

'Suspiciously coincidental,' Ianto mused. 'Who's the new tenant?'

'One J. Smith,' she said, rolling her eyes. 'No national insurance number. Didn't exist until five minutes before the lease was signed. Three month lease only.'

'Curiouser and curiouser,' Jack said. 'If he's new to Cardiff, we should really head out there and give him a proper welcome.'

'Agreed,' Ianto said.

He and Jack headed back to their offices, as Jack and Johnson readied themselves to leave. Jack grabbed his coat from where he'd dumped it earlier and turned around to mention something to Ianto before he left, only to nearly stack right into the man, who was only a foot behind him.

'Woah, didn't expect you to be right behind me.'

'Well, we're going, aren't we?'

Jack raised a surprised eyebrow at him. 'We? You're coming, too?'

Ianto frowned. 'You don't want me there?'

'No, of course not. Wait, was that a double negative? I meant no, of course I do. Want you there, that is. I just,' Jack paused, trying to untangle his words. 'Well, you hardly ever come out with us anymore.'

Stuck behind his desk doing too much paperwork, Ianto thought. He was losing touch with what was going on out there, relying on the team to do the legwork. It was just like the old days, stuck at the hub whilst everyone else was out saving the world, only now he was at the top of the tree rather than stuck at the bottom of it. Global operations wouldn't run themselves, but Cardiff needed his attention too. If anything, it deserved it more. Here was where all of his family and friends lived. If he couldn't look after them, what use was it?

'I wouldn't mind seeing this one through, personally,' he replied.

Jack just smiled. He really missed having his best friend out there with him, watching his back. 'Happy to have you on the case, Director Jones,' he joked. 'I think we've got just  the job for you.'

Ianto rapped on the door loudly, as Jack and Johnson quietly slipped around the side gate and towards the back of the house.

'Who's there?' came the voice from behind the door.

'I'm from the estate agent. Just come round to do a dilapidation report on behalf on the landlord.' He'd rolled his eyes when Jack suggested it, saying he looked like an estate agent, dressed as he was in his traditional suit. He couldn't be sure if Jack was being serious, or just trying to keep him out of the way whilst they stormed the back of the property. Perhaps Jack was putting him on probationary duties given his recent lack of fieldwork.

'Now's not a good time,' the voice replied, sounding nervous. 'Come back later.'

'Our office did call ahead and confirm the scheduled appointment,' Ianto said.

'I never got that call.'

Ianto smiled. Of course he didn't. All Ianto was doing was stalling for time. By now Jack would have the back door unlocked, slipping inside like a professional cat burglar.

'It'll only take a ten minutes,' Ianto assured him. He was curious as to why the man hadn't yet opened the door to talk to him directly. Some kind of crazy recluse, maybe?

'I really must insist,' Ianto said.

'No. Come back another. Oi! Who the hell are you?'

The door opened and there was Jack. Johnson was behind him, trapping the man between them. Ianto did a double take as he saw the man properly for the first time. On the face if it, he looked human, but the longer he looked, the more he spotted features that were definitely not your average human, from the slightly webbed hands, to the row of gills on his neck, to the slightly scaly texture of his skin. He might have been dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, but he was unquestionably alien.

'You're not from the real estate agents, are you?' the man asked, knowing he was surrounded without any chance of escape.

'No chance,' Jack replied. 'We're Torchwood. And you're not registered around these parts so I think it's time we all sit down and have a good long chat.'

They corralled the man back into his living room, forcing him to sit on the sofa whilst the three of them remained standing. Jack gave Johnson a surreptitious nod and she disappeared, checking the rest of the house. There was every chance he wasn't alone, but if anyone was hiding in the house, Johnson would ferret them out.

'What's your name?' Ianto asked.

'Roland.'

'You wanna tell us what you're doing here, Roland?' Jack began.

'None of your business,' he replied.

'Oh, but it is.'

'As a rule, we don't mind aliens living here,' Ianto added. 'So long as we approve and they don't cause trouble for the locals. However, we have reason to believe you might be connected to something going on right now that concerns us.'

Roland remained tight-lipped. Jack stepped closer until he was stood just inches in front of him, towering over him with his broad frame and imposing height.

'We can do this the hard way or the easy way. The hard way is more fun for me,' Jack said. 'Don't get to torture many people these days.'

'He gets cranky when he hasn't broken any bones for a while, like when you don't feed a vicious animal for a few days,' Ianto added, always enjoying their good cop, bad cop routine. He really needed to get out in the field more. This was way more fun than conference calls and budgets.

Roland pressed back into the sofa as far as he could, waiting for Ianto to put an end to Jack's threats. Only Ianto didn't make a move and Jack looked about to reach out and do something to him. 'Alright, alright!' he said, throwing his hands up. 'I just needed somewhere to hide out, okay? Thought this would be a safe place.'

'Hiding from who?' Ianto asked, stepping forward.

'They would have killed me.'

'People don't just go around killing people,' Jack said. 'What did you do?'

'Nothing! Okay, not nothing,' he said seeing that fierce look cross Jack's face. 'I just stole some design plans, that's all. They were mine to start with. It's not really stealing if they're yours, is it?'

'And someone wants you dead for that?' Jack put two and two together. 'What do you know about these fidget spinners, assuming that's what they are?'

'About what? What's a fidget spinner?'

'Don't play dumb,' Jack said.

'I'm not. I've only been here a month. You think I'm up to speed on all of this planet's oddities? You're missing half the letters of the alphabet around here.'

Jack cut to the chase. 'These things have been causing severe injuries to kids. All of the sources of them emanate from this geographic location. We think you know something about it.'

The man squirmed, clearly holding back.

'Hey, look what I found,' Johnson said, standing in the doorway, holding up one of the small toys.

'Hey, put that down!' the man cried.

Jack took it from her hand and turned it over in his own. It looked harmless enough,

'He's got boxes and boxes of them up in the spare room.'

'Collector?' Jack asked.

'They're mine. My creations. You can't have them.'

'You created these?' He let out a groan. 'Don't tell me you're behind this craze?'

'What craze?'

Jack held it between his thumb and middle finger, spinning it with his other hand, somewhat mesmerised by the speed at which it spun.

Roland leapt off the sofa, nearly knocking Ianto over in the process as he tried to reach Jack. 'Don't do that! That's delicate machinery!'

Jack stopped it just as quickly. 'What? It's just a toy.'

Roland snatched it from his hand, carefully cradling it, and checking it for damage. 'It's not a toy, you idiot! It's a weaponised aerial vehicle.'

'What, like a drone?' Johnson asked.

'Not a drone. Those are just dumb machines, needing to be told what to do. Mine have been designed to have sentient intelligence. They're capable of operating all on their own, making tactical decisions in line with their ultimate directives.'

'The creation of sentient weaponry is strictly forbidden under Shadow Proclamation law,' Ianto said. 'In fact, serious breaches are punishable by death for anyone caught and prosecuted.'

These days he was well versed in the laws that governed the rest of the Unified Conglomerate, of which Earth was a signatory. You never wanted to be in contravention of any of their overarching laws. You'd very quickly find yourself surrounded by thousands of Judoon law enforcement platoons, filling city streets and imposing house arrest and martial law. The designated planetary representatives, of which he was one these days, would quickly be brought to their judicial tribunal to explain themselves. Harboring someone in contravention of Proclamation laws was almost as bad. Politically, they were in a tricky spot. 'You've got Judoon law enforcement looking for you,' Ianto said, filling in the blanks.

'Why the hell do you think I went into hiding?' Roland cried. 'Someone tipped them off to what I was doing.'

'I think we know who that someone might be,' Jack said, thinking back to the people Roland had shafted when he'd stolen back his design plans. 'They're pissed that you stole the designs for these drones.'

'Don't call them that. They're so much better. Besides, they're only prototypes. One one hundredth scale.'

'One one hundredth?' Johnson said, doing the math in her head. 'That's mechanized warfare on a massive scale. Who do you hate that much?'

'It's not me. I only plan on selling them to the highest bidder.'

'And probably not mentioning that you'll also happily sell them to the opposite side as well... For the right price,' Jack added.

'A bloke's got to make a living.'

'But they're not ready yet, are they?' Ianto asked. He couldn't imagine what kind of directive could result in attacking kids.

'I thought they were,' Roland confessed. 'Then a bunch of them went rogue. Flew off on their own. I never gave them directive programming. I have no idea what their intentions are.'

'Great,' he heard Johnson mutter under her breath.

'How many are we talking?'

'A hundred? They all come from the same batch.'

'Bloody hell,' Ianto muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose as he contemplated the repercussions. 'Do you have any idea how much danger you've put everyone in? Those things are capable of serious cuts and burns.'

'Oi, you think I don't know that,' he said, holding up a bandaged hand. 'Big deal.'

'Big deal?' Ianto repeated. 'They're falling into the hands of kids. They think they're just toys.'

'And that is a very big deal,' Jack said, cutting off his husband, sensing his growing bad temper. 'Are there any other batches? Could more of these things go rogue?'

'No. I checked the rest. They seem fine.'

'Okay,' Johnson said. 'So, how do we track them down?'

Roland slumped back down onto the sofa, leaning his elbows on his knees. 'Not easily. They're designed to be stealthy. You'd have to be within a few feet of one to pick up any trace signal, and then only if you knew what you were looking for. They've got scrambling technology to confuse most modern forms of detection.'

'But you could track them? You've got the capability?'

Roland looked cagey. 'I have the encryption key for the scrambler if that's what you mean.'

'It is,' Ianto said, sounding thoroughly displeased at the man's attitude.

'You want me to help you track them down?'

'That's the plan. Why? You don't agree?'

'What do I care? I'll just make more. No skin off my nose if a few go AWOL. I'm close to fixing the bug that made them glitch in the first place. They're just dead prototypes.'

'Apart from anything else, we're required to arrest you and hand you over to the Shadow Proclamation just for having created them in the first place,' Ianto said. The last thing he needed was an intergalactic incident on his watch. That made Roland change his tune very quickly.

'Please, no,' Roland begged. 'I'll do whatever you want. Just don't let them find me.'

Jack clapped him in the shoulder. 'Good to hear. Now you go get that encryption key. You're coming with us.'

Gwen and Jez were still at the hospital when the call came through from Jack, giving them an update.

'Okay, well there's not much more we can do here,' Gwen said, watching parents and children alike looking very sorry for themselves. It wasn't anyone's fault really. They'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jez had checked them over and confirmed that there was nothing that wouldn't heal given time and proper care. If anything, they were lucky.

'What do you want us to do?' Gwen asked, listening as Jack outlined the plan. It was going to be extremely labour intensive by all counts. A hundred deadly fidget spinners that needed to be found. Great.

'We can't just do a recall?' Jez asked, hearing the plan second hand from Gwen as they left the hospital, sliding into Gwen's Renault.

'Too hit and miss,' Gwen replied. 'Kids that found them could be hiding them from their parents, and a lot of parents will ignore the recall anyway.' Not her, or course, but there were plenty of bad parents out there. 'If they've got them, they'll take them to school to play with, so that's where we need to be.'

He let out a huge breath. 'That's a lot of schools,' he said, scanning the list. Every school attended by any child in a four mile radius, just to be safe.

'It's what we do,' she replied, turning out of the hospital car park, heading for Roland's address to meet up with the rest of them.

Within a few hours, Roland had managed to load the encryption key onto each of their PDA scanners, so that each of them had a way of checking the immediate area. Whilst he was doing it, Gwen set up a bulletin which was distributed to every school in the designated zone, advising them that defective toys had been manufactured, and that each school would be subject to a full check of their students possessions to locate and any offending objects.

The schools weren't happy about having their grounds taken over by these odd people claiming to be from some consumer protection group, and even less about having them paw through their students school bags and lockers, but it was hard to ignore the seal of approval that had been stamped on the inspection by the State Department for Education.

Students and teachers alike were herded into classrooms whilst the team split into two, scanning backpacks and lockers, classroom desks, lost property bins, and all around the grounds outside the school buildings themselves, focusing their efforts on playground equipment and any spots that looked like good places for kids to play.

'You'll still have to be close,' Roland warned them as they began the search, forced to tag along with Jack's team. 'And there's no telling what they might do once detected.'

'If you're suggesting they might go rogue again and retaliate, maybe we should let you do the honours,' Jack said.

'No way. You want them, you get to find them.'

'Are you sure we can't hurt him?' Johnson asked Ianto under her breath. 'Just a little?'

'Don't tempt me,' he said.

They manged to hit four schools in the first day of searching, collecting twenty one of the offending items. Back at the hub, Roland was taken down to their interrogation room and cuffed to the table. Johnson dumped the box of fidget spinners on the table in front of him and added one of their standard tool kits.

'What do you want me to do with that?' he asked.

'Make sure that you deactivate them completely. Anything else you require can be provided on request.'

'But that'll take me all night!'

'You got somewhere else you need to be?' she asked.

'Apparently not,' he grumbled, tugging at the hand which was cuffed to the table. 'Is this really necessary?'

'It's not that we don't trust you except... well, yeah, we don't trust you,' she said, leaving him to the task.

After four days of school audits, the team had managed to locate eighty-two devices, stockpiling them in a heavy duty crate so that they couldn't do any more harm, before dumping them on Roland's makeshift workbench to be properly decommissioned.

At the end of a week's worth of covering every square inch of local primary and secondary schools, tired from the manual and tedious nature of the task, they reconvened in the boardroom, treated to a round of coffee before deciding what more needed to be done.

'Jez, how many hospital reports did we get in the end?' Ianto asked, taking a grateful sip on his coffee. It was the last thing he'd felt like doing when he got back to the hub, but they all desperately needed it, himself included.

'Fourteen,' Jez replied. 'Only one was classed as serious second degree burns.'

'Okay, so we found eighty two, plus the ones we think were destroyed when they attacked, so that's ninety six spinners we can account for.' He pulled a face. 'We're still four short.'

'That's not bad,' Gwen said. 'A lot more than I thought we'd find.' Some of them had been tricky to locate, wedged in between pieces of play equipment, unable to be retrieved by the tiny hands that had dropped them there in the first place. Others were tucked ingeniously inside school bags hidden underneath sandwiches or concealed in pencil cases, and some forcefully removed from jacket and trouser pockets when a final sweep of the classroom full of children was done.

'That's still four we don't know about,' Ianto said. 'Four more than I'd like.'

'Maybe they haven't been found yet, or maybe some adults found them and just chucked them in the bin,' Johnson said.

'Could be miles away by now, then,' Gwen added. 'Stuck in some landfill.'

'Ianto, I think we have to accept were not gonna find them,' Jack said, knowing how much that would annoy him.

It did make Ianto angry. 'These things have been hurting kids.' He turned to Roland who had so far been keeping very quiet, offered a seat at the table out of courtesy more than anything. 'Tell me what more we can do to find them.'

'Nothing,' he replied.

'Not good enough.'

'It's not my fault.'

'You created them. I'm not seeing anyone else I'd like to blame more.'

'Jack's right,' Gwen said, trying to avoid a confrontation. 'I don't think we could have done better. If they haven't turned up by now...'

'Agreed,' Roland said. 'You've got what you wanted, now I'm done. I've worked my hands to the bone deactivating all those prototypes. I'll just pack up my stuff and be out of your hair. No need to organise a transport ship. I can put out a call to a few friends who can pick me up,' he said, pushing up from the seat, making to leave.

'Cuff him,' Ianto commanded, and Jack happily grabbed him by the arms, forcing them behind his back before tightening the plastic cables around his wrists.

'Hey! You promised that if I helped you, you wouldn't send me to prison.'

'I changed my mind. I think I'll let the Shadow Proclamation deal with you however they see fit.'

'You can't! We had a deal.'

Ianto stood up and stepped closer, his face thunderous. 'Right now, be grateful I don't put a bullet in you and throw you into a cell with a weevil to be mauled to death.'

'I have rights!'

'You think they'll worry if a I breach a little law that says you're protected by the covenants we signed? They'll be glad for me to take you off their hands. I'm not having it on my conscience that we let you go so you could go and sell a working prototype of these things to some planet who wants to wipe out innocent people. I've already made the call. A transport ship should be here in the next few hours to take you into custody.'

'You can't!'

'I just did.'

'Come on,' Jack said, handling him roughly. 'You've worn out your welcome around here. I've got a really nice cell mate you can chat with while we wait for a Proclamation vessel to come pick up your sorry arse.'

'No! Please!'

'What do you think, Ianto?' Jack asked. 'Twenty five to life breaking rocks on some colony world?'

'Only if he's lucky.'

'They promised me I'd be safe on this world!' Roland cried. 'That no one here knew about what went on out in the universe. They said you were primitive.'

'Well, you picked the wrong planet and the wrong people. Torchwood knows everything,' Jack said. 'The people here might seem primitive to you, but you don't ever mess with their kids.'

Comments

[jo02]

Yay, there needs to so many more of these T4 stories :)

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'll put it on my list. Apologies for all the typos that I annoyingly didn't find in the first three edits, now corrected. Grrr...