Torchwood: Fanfic: Refuge

[m_findlow]

Title: Refuge
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,515 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, handle with care" at fic_promptly
Summary: Jack has a difficult decision to make about the people he's found locked up down in the cells.

Jack stood in the middle of the room and set his hands on his hips. It was dark, bleak and not at all inviting in here, but there was something about the place that made it just perfect for what he needed. That and it felt like it was a million miles away from the hub, and it would spare him the agonising cries that currently greeted him morning and night.

What they hell had they been doing at Torchwood, Jack wondered. He'd been working for them on and off for a hundred years, and more regularly of late than he had for many a year, but he'd had no idea what they were really keeping locked up down in the depths of the hub. It appalled him and made him feel sick right down to the very pits of his stomach. People. Not aliens. Ordinary, everyday people.

Only they were anything but ordinary. Once he'd managed to start digging around in the Torchwood databases, using his own credentials since he hadn't managed to hack into Alex's much higher clearance just yet - the boffins at Torchwood One would be able to give him new credentials when they finally deigned to accept he was in charge now - he had uncovered the true horror of the rift. It didn't just dump stuff in the city. It took stuff too, and people seemed to be high on its wishlist. Worse though was that when it tired of playing with them, it sometimes sent them back. Those two souls he'd found down in the cells; even now he shuddered involuntarily at the memory - those hollow eyes, the visceral fear in them, the way their hands pressed so desperately against the glass, crying and begging him for help. How could any of the team he'd known have left them down there and done nothing to help them? Perhaps they hadn't known, anymore than Jack had. Perhaps this was Alex's little secret. Whatever the case, they couldn't stay there, if only because Jack couldn't bear to have them there.

He'd considered taking them to a hospital, leaving them in A and E in the hopes someone would take them in and care for them, but that could raise too many questions. If they'd gone missing, where had they gone, what would they remember of the time in between, and would the doctors think them mad or mentally disturbed? What would happen when they finally came to their senses? It was too big a risk. Retcon could only do so much. They could have had years trapped elsewhere in the universe and there was no dose of retcon that could erase all of that. He couldn't have doctors or the police uncovering the fact that they were from a time years in the past.

He couldn't send them to a hospital, but they had to go somewhere. Someone had to look after them and it wasn't Jack. He was okay at looking after himself, in the most fundamental sense of the concept, but he wasn't a doctor or a carer. These people needed full time care and a sympathetic ear, but they also needed to be kept away from people who would ask questions, threatening the very secrecy of the organisation that had protected the city for over a century.

For once, Jack's long life and even longer memories served him well. He needed a place where he could hide this awful secret away. Somewhere that had been abandoned and was well out of public view. A few phone calls to some old war buddies, now enjoying their sunsets in cosy retirement homes, had confirmed what he wanted to know. Had they ever done anything with those old World War Two bunkers out on Flat Holm Island? Were they still there? Was any military installation still operating out there?

The answers came back that it had been abandoned for decades. Only a handful of bird conservationists went out to the island these days, and they never stayed more than a week or two, residing in some of the old above ground huts. Most of them wouldn't even know there was an old bunker system out there if it weren't for the occasional slab of concrete jutting out in amongst the tall grasses. A few more calls and he'd been granted the right to have Torchwood claim the facility for their own, ostensibly to be used for conducting research - or at least that's what the paperwork would say if anyone with a high enough security clearance went snooping. That list was short enough as it was. The Secretary for the Home Office, the PM, and Her Majesty were probably the only ones. Even so, that was more people than he needed to know about it. If they asked questions, he was likely to lie in any case.

Jack wandered the impossibly dark corridor, letting his torchlight bounce off the walls. He pushed open a door to another room, and the heavy metal creaked and protested against the movement. Inside the room was plain, about twelve feet wide and maybe twenty long. There were dozens like it along this part of the facility. More than he hoped he'd ever need. A few contractors could be sent out here to make the place liveable again, fix the lighting and electrical systems, make sure they had rainwater plumbing that worked, scrub the walls and floors and seal them with a coat of lacquer. It didn't need to be a five star hotel, it just had to be habitable.

The next step would be trickier. How to hire people to care for these poor souls. It took a certain type of person to empathise with someone so broken, and to be forced to live out here on a virtually inaccessible rock in the middle of the Bristol Channel was a huge imposition.

How could he even begin to describe what he was asking them to do? How did you try and explain what had happened to these people? He chewed the inside of his lip as he studied the bleak room, before pulling the door back shut, listening to it clang and echo around the halls.

"I work for a branch of military intelligence doing cutting edge research on human physiology and psychology. Some of their research is highly questionable and all of it is highly classified. These people are the result of failed experiments. They signed up for it; they were aware of the risks at the time."

Yvonne would have said they'd done it for Queen and country, but Jack couldn't bring himself to utter the words. His job was to make sure that these people were cared for, to thank them for their sacrifice to their country. Like veterans from a war, they had earned the right to have the state ensure they received whatever it was they required.

In his head, it didn't sound so bad. It certainly sounded a lot better than admitting that there was an alien tear in the fabric of reality that hung over the city, and through which people sometimes were taken. Where it had taken them, he couldn't say - some war torn alien world perhaps - and then it had brought them back, injured, damaged, permanently broken.

There were people out there who could keep their mouths shut for the right price, Jack knew. He'd pay them whatever they wanted just so long as they would be prepared to move out here and care for the victims of the rift. He didn't doubt that where Torchwood had found two of them, more would eventually appear. The rift was like that, unforgiving in its methods and ways. This was more than just a temporary sticking plaster for an immediate problem on Jack's plate. It needed to be a larger project, a permanent fixture as part of Torchwood's infrastructure. It also had to be top secret. London couldn't know about this. He could only imagine the kinds of things they might put these people through, all for the sake of research. Perhaps that was why Alex had them hidden down in the cells. His bigger problem of course would be keeping it secret from the rest of the world. If he brought people in, money would keep them quiet to an extent, but they were still human. He hadn't intended on bringing anyone else into the fold after what had happened with Alex and his team, but now it seemed like he didn't have a choice. He either took responsibility for the ongoing care of these people, or he brought in someone else to do it.

He let his torch revolve around in a slow arc, casting equal amounts of shadow and light across the angular concrete walls. It was still weeks worth of work ahead to get this place up and running, yet he had a feeling that it would work. Nothing could be worse that what these people had already suffered. It was bleak and it was isolated, but it was well-intentioned. That had to count for something.

Comments

[bk_forever]

It counts for a lot. Jack's doing everything he can to help the victims of the Rift. He can't fix them but he can ensure they're protected and cared for.