Torchwood: Fanfic: Wrongful arrest - Chapter Two

[m_findlow]

Title: Wrongful arrest
Fandom: Torchwood
Prompt: Arrest at hc_bingo
Wordcount: 24,947 words
Rating: M
Warnings: N/A
Summary: UNIT are on the warpath, and they've got Jack in their sights.

Jack disappearing for several hours on tasks unknown was nothing unusual. What annoyed Ianto was when Jack went off the reservation without answering his comms or his phone. Even more annoying was how Jack knew him well enough to know how long he could be out of contact and still get away with it.

Under two hours and Ianto wouldn't even blink an eye. Between two and four hours, Ianto would be reasonably annoyed if Jack returned without some semblance of an explanation. After five hours, Ianto migrated from mad and annoyed to worried. Jack knew that also, which is why so very often he waltzed in after Ianto had moved into fretful territory. It was slightly callous and manipulative on his part, but history had shown that Ianto's relief at his return would outweigh any ire, and usually lead to fewer questions and better reunion sex.

Jack had been gone since mid morning, touching base with a few of their registered alien residents to garner information on a smuggling ring operating in and around Cardiff. It shouldn't have taken more than an hour or two, and he'd been busying himself in the archives for hours and hadn't noticed the time flying by. It had been just the two of them this week while Gwen was away enjoying a proper honeymoon in Spain for three weeks. It by was all they could do to get her out of the hub with only the barest promise to call if things got really bad.

But Ianto's watch was edging towards six o'clock now and he hadn't heard a word from Jack all day.

He tried calling but Jack's phone went to voice-mail. He checked the computer logs but Jack hadn't checked back in at any time while he'd been downstairs. Things didn't start to get worrying until he'd tried to ping Jack's phone for a location only to discover that the phone was off the grid, which meant he must have removed the Sim card. What would Jack have been doing that would necessitate removing the card?

Before he could ponder his next move, his phone began to ring. Finally, he thought, not bothering to check the caller ID.

'Where the hell have you been?' Ianto declared.

'Ianto?'

'Martha?' Ianto furrowed his brow in confusion, quickly pulling the phone from his ear to confirm the number on screen. 'Sorry,' he apologised, 'I was expecting it to be Jack.'

'Ianto, Jack's been arrested by UNIT.'

'What? I mean, how?' No, that wasn't the right question either, his brain protested, trying to keep pace with his mouth. 'Why?' Yes, why was the question that needed an answer.

'They're claiming he committed treason. He was caught on CCTV last night breaking into a secure UNIT facility and stealing some equipment. They also claim he killed three guards. They came to Cardiff this morning and picked him up.'

'Wait, what? That's impossible.' It didn't matter that it was impossible, as his fingers flashed across his keyboard,  seeking the cell tower that registered Jack's last known phone location and then hacking the CCTV nearby, watching in horror as Jack was tackled to the ground, drugged, and hauled away in their van.

'I only just found out myself. I've been trying to get as much information as I can, but so far it's all very hush hush. They look like they're going to try and keep him here without trial.'

Martha paused for a moment, her tone becoming serious.

'I need you to level with me Ianto. Is there anything going on that I need to know about?'

'What, no! There's nothing. Torchwood would never, I mean, Jack would never...' This was crazy, yet Ianto had to force himself to sound convinced of Jack's innocence. He wasn't above stealing, occasionally, but murder?

He watched the vision in front of him. The black uniforms and red berets left no question in his mind that they were UNIT and they meant business.

'You're sure?'

'Of course I'm sure! This is Jack we're talking about!' My Jack, he felt like adding.

'I know, I'm sorry. Look, I'm doing all I can but my credentials only get me so far.'

'I'm guessing given that it's the leader of Torchwood they've got in custody, they're not going to be particularly happy taking my call?'

'What about the Home Office? Could they help you get a foot in the door? Put in a good word?'

Ianto cringed at that thought. Frobisher didn't like Jack at the best of times. He wasn't about to stick his neck out for him now. Not on a murder charge.

'I'll try,' was the response he gave Martha.

'Okay,' Martha breathed out, 'keep me posted with anything you find out. We need to be able to prove without doubt that whoever it was that broke in, it wasn't Jack.'

'Right, or he's going to spend a very long time locked up,' Ianto repeated, more to consolidate the idea in his own head than anything else. 'Can you send me a copy of the CCTV? Maybe there's something on there they missed.' Like the fact that it wasn't Jack, he wanted to say.

'Will do.'

'Thanks Martha. For everything.'

'Ianto?' Martha began, 'if they keep him here, being locked up will be the least of his problems.'

Meaning they would experiment on him, Ianto thought. He closed his eyes, trying not to think about it.

'I know. Just do what you can, please.'

'I will, I promise. Speak soon.'

 

 

Jack awoke in much the same position as he'd remembered being in before. The ground beneath him still felt cold and concrete, but darker. His restraints were gone, as was his coat, his webley, and his vortex manipulator. He still had his watch, belt and braces. At least they hadn't bothered to take everything, probably knowing full well that he couldn't use them to kill himself even if he tried. Well, not permanently anyway.

He got to his feet albeit a little shakily. Whatever they'd given him had been pretty potent stuff, and the last remnants were still working their way through his system. He had to have been out cold for at least three hours, having made the trip from Cardiff to where he was now, somewhere in England. He cracked his cramped neck from side to side and felt better for it, taking in his surroundings. Four walls, five foot by ten, stale air, no light, security camera in the far corner. It didn't take a genius to figure out he was in a UNIT detention facility, and not one of their nicer ones. No, this was where they kept the people they really didn't like.  

The more pressing question was why he was here in the first place. Treason? What was that all about? He needed some answers and he got the feeling that he wouldn't have to wait too long.

 

 

Ianto had been running on fumes for hours, reviewing, analysing, and re-reviewing the CCTV footage from UNIT. There was no mistaking that it was Jack, or at least his identical twin. He'd run the footage through every program they had and there was no denying that it was original and undoctored.

He refused to believe that this was Jack. It had to be a shape-shifter or something. The incident report that accompanied the footage stated that one of the guards had gotten off a good punch before being killed, and there was trace blood on his hand. Surely a DNA test of the blood would have shown it wasn't Jack, but it had come back positive. Not just a probable match, a complete DNA profile panel that matched as identical to his. UNIT weren't taking any chances in pinning this on him. Ianto didn't know of any kind of shape-shifter that could replicate DNA.

Ianto tried to think back to the night before. For all intents and purposes, he was the only alibi Jack had. They'd gone to bed at a reasonable hour and Ianto had slept through until morning.

He'd become accustomed to Jack's nightly wanderings, which though less frequent, still happened every now and again. He'd simply learned to ignore them.

Ianto began drawing up his own timeline. If he'd been asleep before midnight and woken at seven, and Jack had been in bed when he'd woken, that gave him a window of seven hours. It was theoretically possible for Jack to have driven there and back in that time frame.

He immediately called up their own internal CCTV to check if Jack had indeed gone walkabout, only to discover that there was none. Bugger, he thought, we turned it off last night for naked hide and seek and didn't turn it back on! He thumped the desk in frustration. It was madness that he was even entertaining the thought of Jack's involvement.

He started checking external cameras around the Millennium Centre carpark. The SUV hadn't moved all night. He checked the surrounding streets, looking for any indication that Jack might have made a move some other way, but still nothing. He began running a facial recognition program across cameras city wide but it would take hours for a result, assuming the picture quality was good enough to make a match.

With his own eyes, tired as they were, he couldn’t find any evidence that Jack had left their bed last night. He leaned his arms on the desk as his eyes gazed blankly at the screen in front of him. He was barely aware that outside the sun was beginning to rise as his head drooped forward onto his arms and exhaustion claimed him.

Chapter three...

Comments

[bk_forever]

It must have been faked in some way, Jack is innocent! Someone has set him up and I wouldn't put it past UNIT to have something to do with it, manipulating events to get Jack out of the way, especially now Torchwood is short-staffed. It would be the ideal time to try to get rid of the Torchwood Institute for good and take over policing the Rift so they can get all the interesting alien tech that Torchwood won't let them get their hands on.