Fffc Bingo Card - Brazen theft

[m_findlow]

Title: Brazen theft
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 4 - Thief at fffc
Summary: Jack is incensed by the theft that has gone on right under his nose.

As much as Jack didn't want to come back down here, he knew he had to. He wanted this thing handled properly. His team had done this sort of cleanup before but he didn't want a single thing missed. 

Just coming back down here made him feel angry again. How could he have let this happen right under his nose? How the hell had Ianto even gotten her inside the hub without his knowledge? He supposed he already knew the answer to that. He'd been too laissez faire, thinking that Ianto was just some errand boy desperate to work for them. He'd given Ianto the keys to the castle just so long as it meant Jack hadn't had to think about trivial things like bringing in deliveries of supplies and whether they had fresh milk. He couldn't be bothered with any of that nonsense, and the more he thought about it, the more petty jobs he'd piled on Ianto's shoulders just so that he wouldn't have to do them. 

Jack stood and watched as Owen began slowly pulling the machinery apart, starting with the smaller detachable pieces of medical gear. Everything in that room had been powered down and the electricity supply cut off from their main hub system. It would have left the place in complete darkness were it not for the huge flood lights parked in each corner, filling the room with harsh white light revealing for that first time the horror in all its glory. 

Owen unclipped an IV machine, wrapping the power cords around it, trying to neatly pack it up. 

‘Don't bother,’ Jack said. ‘It's going with the rest of this.’ Anything that had been attached to that machine might have been tampered with and was now potentially dangerous. 

‘It's our kit,’ Owen replied. ‘He's knocked it off and brought it down here, strapping it up to this thing.’ 

‘Don't care. It goes.’ 

‘But…’ Owen began to protest. 

Jack felt his impatience and annoyance returning. ‘Look, I'll buy you another one. Anything you goddamn want. Just you make me a list of everything Ianto stole or cannibalised from us and I'll have it replaced’. He raised his voice and made eye contact with Tosh and Gwen who were assisting with the cleanup. ‘Nothing leaves this room unless it's being broken down and incinerated, am I clear?’ All three nodded without saying anything and went back to their duties. 

Jack pottered around the room, analysing it like a crime scene. He picked up a small cardboard box and opened it, finding two dozen glass vials inside. He pulled one out, studying that label which contained an inch long description with more vowels than consonants. ‘What does this do?’ he asked Owen, holding the bottle out so he could read it. 

‘Like morphine, but stronger.’ 

‘And this one?’ Jack asked, showing him a second vial. 

‘Sedative. Class four prohibited substance. You'd need a medical license to order it.’ 

‘Or Torchwood credentials,’ Jack replied. Owen nodded in agreement and went back to his task. 

Jack heaved out a breath as he supervised Tosh, breaking down the unit overhead screw by painstaking screw. It was the most dangerous part of the machine, so he wanted it gone as soon as possible. Just seeing it here, in his hub, was a chilling sight. 

‘We dismantled everything from Torchwood One,’ he said to no one in particular, thinking out loud. ‘Nothing left that site without our express permission.’ 

He remembered it like it was yesterday. All around the Canary Wharf precinct had been platoons of UNIT personnel and armored trucks, creating a perimeter around the site. Their orders were simple. No one goes in or out except for Torchwood personnel. 

He'd had plenty of assistance from UNIT to clear the building of corpses and to carry out equipment under his strict orders, but apart from that, no one else should have been in there. 

Jack now realised his one mistake. All you needed were Torchwood credentials and they'd let you come and go without question. Anyone seen removing equipment from the sight would be assumed to be Torchwood Three staff, and they'd been there for nearly two weeks. Plenty of time for someone to keep going back for everything they needed. 

He hadn't thought for a second that anyone had survived, let alone had the gumption to want to go back in there. He certainly couldn't picture Ianto being brazen enough to attempt it. The poor kid should have been so insensible seeing what they'd done to his girlfriend that they'd have to carry him out of here. Desperation did funny things to you. Whether he understood what he was doing or not, he'd gone in there and stolen whatever he needed, creating a life support system for the cyberman to help it survive long enough for him to weasel his way into Torchwood Cardiff where he could make further improvements. 

He'd well and truly underestimated Ianto Jones and was now paying the price for his error. He'd had help, of course. Ianto hadn't built this thing all on his own. The cyberman trying to pass itself off as his girlfriend must have given him instruction on what to do. Ianto wouldn't know how. Even Jack wouldn't know how, and he wasn't about to let any of his team study the device to figure out how. Jack had only just found the body of Doctor Tanazaki after reviewing their CCTV. The cybernetics expert should have been arrested or retconned. Without him, Ianto might never have gotten the cyberman strong enough to act on its own. In the end Jack supposed he got what he deserved, trying to help it survive. Unlike Ianto, he didn't have any high and noble excuses like love or devotion clouding his judgment. 

Nothing good could come from this, however well intentioned. It was a stark reminder of the dangers of complacency and how one single mistake could tip the delicate balance that was holding Torchwood together.