m_findlow | Torchwood: Fanfic: Invisible

Title: Invisible
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Kathy Swanson, Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,450 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for facetiousfutz's prompt "Any, any, Everyone keeps ignoring me" at fic_promptly
Summary: Detective Swanson is having a tough night on shift.

Kathy was almost at the end of her patience, watching her officers ineffectually trying to round up people just wandering around the otherwise quiet suburban street. How many arrests had there been already? The three patrol cars that had accompanied her were full of the street's residents, cuffed and seated in every available space. Or they were until they just decided to get out of the car and start wandering around again. They weren't violent by any stretch, but they were clearly under the influence of something. Someone had called in the strange wandering people to local police and she just happened to be the unlucky one on shift at the time, sent to coordinate. She'd tried radioing one of the squad cars that had been first on the scene, but no matter how many times she clicked her radio, requesting an update, there was no response. Surely they weren't that busy that they couldn't bother to reply to a more senior officer.

One of the escapees, a man not wearing any shoes came drifting through her line of sight and she interceded.

'Alright mate, back in the car,' she ordered, for what it was worth. He just continued to meander past her, hands cuffed in front of him, only stopping for a moment to stand and stare up at a tree planted in the nature strip, before carrying on.

'Oi!' she called out to one of her officers. 'Can you restrain that idiot and get him back in the car?' She expected the officer to snap to it, but even he seemed to be off with the fairies.

'D'you hear me, Wilkins? I want him down the station for processing tonight.' Why on earth she'd agreed to pull an extra shift was beyond her. Because it's Tuesday, she replied in her head, and nothing exciting ever happens on a Tuesday.

She frowned as he continued to ignore her commands. The more she looked, the more she started to see her other officers also coming to a standstill. They were drifting along aimlessly, or just standing around. One even looked like he was fascinated by a post box, opening and closing the large parcels flap over and over again.

'What the hell?' she muttered. She didn't have time to think on it further before the flash of blue lights and the big black SUV at the end of the street caught her eye. 'Bollocks,' she thought, marching up to meet it.

'Alright people,' she heard Jack say. 'Time to find out if we can contain this thing.' She watched curiously as they each got out of the car, the doctor, the ex-copper and the polite one all wearing masks over their faces. Jack and the Asian woman however weren't. Oh, yeah. It all made sense now. This was one of those Torchwood things.

'Detective, what a lovely night to be out and about,' Jack said, grinning from ear to ear. 'Don't you just love this balmy summer weather we've been having?'

'You wanna tell me what's going on here? Everyone keeps ignoring me. Even my own officers,' she added, with no small amount of embarrassment.

'Just a harmless little, slightly hallucinogenic, gas,' he replied. 'Kinda makes you go a bit, um...'

'Vague?' Ianto offered, voice muffled behind the breathing apparatus, before continuing past him, large backpack on his shoulder.

'Yeah. That pretty much covers it.'

'Why weren't we warned?' Kathy said, feeling her anger rise. 'This whole place should have been put into an immediate lock down.'

Jack shrugged. 'It was a nonviolent situation. Didn't expect the local constabulary would be asked to get involved.'

'Well, we were.' She paused. 'Hang on, am I infected too?' She was miffed that she hadn't at least been offered a mask, since the rest of them seemed to be taking precautions. The last thing she wanted was to end up going gaga like everyone else in front of this lot.

'You're black,' Owen replied, pushing past her and keeping on moving, scanning the area with some strange device.

'Excuse me?' she said, offended.

'What Owen was trying to say,' Jack interrupted, before she had Owen arrested as well, 'is that you're genetically predisposed to an immunity against the effects of the gas. It only seems to affect caucasian physiology as best we understand.'

Kathy scowled at him. 'What about you then? You look pretty white to me.'

'I'll try not to take offense to that,' he said, chuckling as the rest of his team set to work, dispersing in all directions. 'Technically speaking, I'm not from around these parts. Makes me just as immune as you are.'

'How nice for us,' she muttered. 'So, what am I supposed to do with a street full of zombies and half a squad room of useless officers?'

'Probably the same as you do every day,' Jack teased. He liked Kathy, but that love didn't extend to the rest of the police force.

'Very funny,' she said.

'Don't worry. We'll handle the general public. They'll be safely tucked back inside their homes, unaware that they went for a bit of a wander in the night.' He frowned for a second. 'I just hope we put them all back in the right beds. That'd be awkward, wouldn't it? Waking up next to your neighbour instead of your husband. Or not.' He laughed.

'You're sick sometimes, you know that?' she said.

'Twenty first century slang,' Jack mused. 'Sick means good, right?'

'So, what about this gas, then?' she said, changing the subject.

'Trying to locate a source as we speak. Then we either shut it off, neutralize it, or if it's already been and gone, we close off the street until it dissipates.'

'You mean you'll just left it waft over the city, sending people into some half moron state?'

He leaned in conspiratorially. 'Do you think anyone would even notice the difference?' He grinned, watching Gwen and Ianto trying to herd people around like sheep, checking their pockets for identification, or looking up addresses from their database and gently pushing them toward various doors. Owen and Tosh headed toward him with a large plastic crate carried between them.

'Found it,' Owen said. 'In a shed at the back of number twelve. Tosh managed to turn it off. Everyone down that end of the street has gone completely loopy. Could've been leaking for hours, or even days.'

'To be expected,' Jack replied. 'Pack that in the car and go help Gwen and Ianto. They look like they could use it,' he added, watching Ianto play tug of war with a woman in her forties, sitting in the gutter in her dressing gown. It was tough when no amount of politeness worked.

'Yeah,' Owen replied, 'shame the blues and twos can't manage it.'

'Without that mask on, you'd be just as useless,' Jack retorted.

'Yeah, and what are we supposed to do with them?' he asked, thumbing behind him. 'Can't exactly stick them back in bed.'

'Get them back in their patrol cars and cuff them to the steering wheel. That ought to keep them wandering off until the gas wears off.'

'And how long will that be?' Kathy said, putting her hands on her hips.

'They'll be good to go sometime tomorrow morning,' Jack replied. 'No worse than a hangover.'

'And what am I supposed to tell the brass when they ask me to explain how four patrol cars didn't report back at the end of shift and all ended up with their officers cuffed to the wheel?' Everyone knew about Torchwood but that didn't mean they had to put up with her using them as an excuse.

'I dunno,' Jack said, 'but I wouldn't worry too much. You said it yourself, everyone keeps ignoring you.'

'I don't think they're gonna ignore this,' she said spotting Sergeant Andrews lying in the middle of the road, making snow angels despite there being no snow.

'We could always doctor the shift logs,' Jack offered. 'It'd be as if you were never here. Then there'd be nothing to explain.'

'You'd seriously do that?' As wrong as it sounded, it still seemed a whole lot better than having to be held responsible for this palaver. Her career would likely take a turn south as a result.

'You'd owe me, of course,' Jack replied, a glint in his eye as he said it.

One final look around the street, seeing the ex-copper and the Asian woman handcuffing one of her own officers sealed it for her.

'I was never here,' she said. She knew she'd regret owing him one day, but not today.

Jack smiled. 'And neither were we. It's what we do best.'

Torchwood: Fanfic: Invisible

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