m_findlow

Title: Paying the price
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairings: Gwen, Jack, Ianto, Rhiannon, Johnny, Rhys, Andy
Author: m_findlow
Word Count: 23,181 words
Rating: M (language)
Notes: Written for spook_me 2021 Challenge - Cyborg
Summary: Something strange is occurring at Cardiff's largest discount furniture retailer.

Being back out on the beat wasn't as bad as Jack expected it to be. It wasn't that he didn't get out anymore. He just got out less when he had a team of youthful and exuberant young recruits, happy to do some of the legwork. It was all part of what Ianto had titled "workforce delegation". He wanted Jack spending more time behind a desk, making sure Cardiff operations were running as smoothly as they could be. Jack just saw it as more paperwork. That sort of thing was Ianto's meat and drink, not his. How much harder could it be to coordinate the Cardiff base then it was to coordinate two dozen others? Albeit it had only been a few months since they'd made that little discovery, but still. Jack was at his best when he was out and about, looking dashing and making a difference. Working on big investigations and saving the world.

Chasing up one of Bernie's no hope mates? Not so much. Sure, the kid was missing, but lots of kids went AWOL and most of them came back. No rift activity, or more specifically, no negative rift activity had Jack thinking this was just Gwen giving him something to do.

The high street was lined with dime a dozen with stores just like the one behind which Jack was now investigating. Boring back office storerooms, drab concrete loading docks, and well worn metal railings to stop people falling into them by accident.

He easily spotted the abandoned bike at fifty paces, attached to that same said railing. What he also noticed, and which possibly shouldn't have surprised him, was seeing Bernie Harris. He was older now, mid-twenties, but still looked as shifty as troublesome as always.

'What do you think you're doing?' Jack asked, sidling up to the loading bay behind the large discount department store.

Bernie might have been older, but he was still no brighter. 'Bike's worth a few quid.'

'Robbing Peter to pay Paul?' Jack shook his head. 'Some friend you are.'

Bernie fidgeted with the lock, but without the combination or a key he might as well have hoped for a pair of bolt cutters. 'Look, what d'you want? I ain't done nothing, like, weird. Not for ages.'

Jack lifted a boot and rested it on the lower railing whilst he leaned his arms on the upper one, hovering over the local grifter and Torchwood regular pain in the backside. 'Oh, well there's some reassurance! Your pal came up on our missing persons list. Figure given your history you might know why.' Jack clocked his head to one side, waiting to hear Bernie's latest hairbrained scheme for making a fast quid.

'Nothing to do with me, alright? He just done up and left.'

'You tried calling him?'

Bernie looked at him in askance. 'What do you reckon? Gummy probably lost his phone, or nicked an upgrade with a different number.'

Jack raised an eyebrow. 'Gummy?'

'You seen his teeth? Proper minging. All rotted and falling out and like.'

Jack felt fortunate he hadn't gotten that clear a mugshot. Welsh teeth were usually bad enough by all accounts. If Bernie thought they were bad then that must have really been something. 'Does Gummy usually park his bike here?'

'Course. CCTV up there,' Bernie said, pointing at the camera in the loading bay'. Someone goes to knick it, least the cops have got the video of whodunnit.'

Jack couldn't help but smirk. 'Like they'll have you on film right now?'

Bernie's fingers froze over the lock, a panicked look flashing over his face. 'You wouldn't.'

'Tell me more about Gummy and what he was up to the day he went missing and maybe I'll even help you pick than lock and wipe the CCTV afterwards.'

'Johnny Davies you'd better not be sitting on your arse down there!' Riannon yelled as she plodded down the narrow staircase, laden with an armful of bedsheets and soiled clothing so large she couldn't see in front of her. Yet somehow she also seemed to have x-ray vision, and Johnny toyed with the idea of getting up off the sofa before she could clock him doing the thing he'd been accused of. Bloody slaved driver woman, she was sometimes. Not that he didn't love her to bits, but nag nag nag! He bet she and Tina spent their afternoon tea breaks discussing and compiling a long list of things their husbands should have done and hadn't - or had done and shouldn't have - just so there was enough ammunition to last through the weekend.

'It's the Six Nations,' he called back, refusing to move from the sofa now on principle.

'Yeah, and it doesn't start for another six hours, either, you lump.' Apparently watching the street parade and the lead up commentary and team selection analysis didn't count.

Johnny rolled his eyes, set the television on mute rather than off and begrudgingly pushed himself up off the sofa. Finally had the kids out of the house, palmed off on someone else for the day and he still couldn't get any peace.

'Make yourself useful and start getting the boxes of Christmas stuff out of the garage.'

'Christmas? It's bloody November, Rhi.'

'Yeah, well I want to get rid of a bunch of it before then. Tired of the same rubbish every year.'

Johnny sighed. This would all be because Ianto had poo-poohed plastic ornaments over.dinner last week and insisted that glass was the only proper way of doing things. Just because he was on a decent wicket didn't mean the rest of them were rolling in dosh - even if he had bought their new house for them, much to Rhiannon's fury. Nice bloke his brother-in-law, loved him to bits, but buying someone a house was just mental.

'We could get some new stuff,' Rhiannon continued to prattle on, having unloaded her behemoth pile of manchester into their washing machine. 'It's all on the cheap these days. We're not hosting Christmas this year looking like we're still living from a pound shop.'

She wanted to impress, was what she meant. Ianto's comments had been like a weather warning. Shape up or ship out. They were having to keep up with the Joneses now. Literally.

'Fine,' Johnny said. 'Knock yourself out.' Just so long as she wasn't planning on dragging him out to the shops with her to buy all that sparkly tat.

'And you promised you were going to sort us out a new fridge,' she reminded him, coming to stand between him and the television screen.

'Nothing wrong with the old one,' he lied, trying to put off the argument for another few weeks.

'Bollocks, there isn't. Seals are rotting, door gets stuck, and have you tried defrosting it? Not to mention the racket it makes.'

God. She was getting more like her brother by the day. 'We're not made of money, love.'

She slapped the catalogues in his lap. 'They've got a sale on. Just don't come back empty-handed or you'll be missing out on more than just the Six Nations tonight.'

'Waste of time!' Jack yelled as he entered the hub.

Gwen didn't even look up from the email she was tapping out. 'Did you check the CCTV?'

'Of course I did.' He tugged off his coat and tossed it haphazardly over the railing. 'Kid rolls up, parks his bike, helps a lady unload a couple of whitegoods into their warehouse for a few quid and then disappears. Probably went out the front doors. No CCTV out front to prove it, but that's the last of him. Oh, and ran into Bernie.'

Gwen's eyes glittered with amusement. 'Oh, must've made your day.'

'Yeah, he didn't know anything either, but it wasn't the first time one of his mates has gone AWOL for a few days then turned up hungover in Holyhead after a mad few days on the ferry in Ireland.' He sighed. Gwen Cooper, if I didn't know better I'd say you sent me on that wild goose chase just to take my mind off Ianto not being here.'

She kept her expression coy. 'Who me? Now why would I do a thing like that when you've been so sullen and moody for days?'

Jack's eyes narrowed at her. 'I have not been sullen. Or moody.'

'Yeah, sure you haven't. Most married couples get over this sort of thing. There's a reason they call it the honeymoon period.'

'We're not most married couples,' he reminded her.

She broke away from her computer screen to look at him. 'So, just a kid bound to turn up in a few days, then?'

'If he does, he won't be happy to know that by then Bernie will have flipped his bike on ebay for fifty quid.' He took a few steps and then turned back to her. 'Oh, and tell your husband to get his act together. Nearly got run over by one of his Harwood lorries whilst I was standing in the loading bay hacking into their CCTV.'

'Well, maybe you shouldn't have been standing there.'

Jack scowled at her again. 'Kick this back to your pals in the police and then find me a real case.'

Maude was due to start her shift at noon. Only there was a slight problem. Maude was starting to not look like Maude.

She looked at herself in the mirror. Maude hadn't been young but she'd been unremarkable. She was not unremarkable anymore. Part of the flesh from her lower jaw had fallen away, revealing the mechanised workings hidden underneath. Fallen away was probably also incorrect. It was a mistake, as much as keeping oneself alive was a mistake. It seemed human bodies were useful in that they regenerated themselves, but it was a slow process. Slower than she had hoped. She had to be careful which bits she gave away. She realised that she had given too much of herself to the core last night. The core needed the flesh more than she did, however. She was just a servant; just a worker bee to service her queen. She would do anything to preserve the core.

She studied herself in the mirror again. There was no use in preserving this form any longer. Others would notice that she was flawed. Maude would simply call in sick today. She'd done every late afternoon and night shift for the past month. No one would begrudge poor, hard-working Maude one day off.

And she had worked hard, but not for the sake of the store's profit margin. Her value would be given over to the core completely tonight once it was safe to return unseen. It didn't need so much metal anymore. It was capable of replicating some of that, and supplementing it with the vehicles that arrived. It was flesh that it desperately still needed more of. Her own flesh would be but just enough to sustain the core. She could always find a new form if the core needed it. Every form would ultimately serve the core, but she had needed one of her own until the core could sustain itself. A flesh entity would be easier to source if it looked like one of them. They were so trusting of one another. They hadn't yet learned what a mistake that was.

But they would.

After three department stores, Johnny Davies was thoroughly done with shopping. He hated it at the best of times, being hassled by overzealous sales people trying to convince him that he needed to buy the most expensive thing they had, and that it mattered a great deal whether it came with extra adjustable shelves and an ice cube tray.

Being given his marching orders and a command not to come home without what he'd been sent to buy was even worse. It was one of those times he wished he could just call up his brother-in-law and have him come down and sort it. This sort of thing was right up Ianto's alley. He'd have had the make model and price researched before even stepping out his front door.

'Bollocks to this,' Johnny muttered, exiting the double doors of the store and spilling back out onto the street with the rest of the Saturday afternoon shoppers and the crowds decked out in their Welsh flags and scarves ahead of tonight's big game. The pubs would already be heaving and he sorely wanted to be in there joining them.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, distracting him from his despair. 'Hiya, Bute! What's occurring?'

'Got a few if the lads over for tonight. You coming or what?'

Johnny cringed at the invitation, reminded once again of what he was missing out on. The lads from the old estate had once been no more than a few houses away. Now they were a few suburbs away. Nipping around for a sneaky fag and a beer was becoming ancient history.

'Can't mate. Wish I could but.'

'Oh, aye?'

Johnny sighed theatrically. 'The boss had got me on fridge buying orders,' he explained. Everyone sympathised when it came to orders from the missus. They all made out that they were tough blokes but every last one of them was squarely under the thumb of the woman of the house.

'You should do that online thing, mate. Few clicks, job's done.'

'That's not a bad idea, that is.'

'Full of 'em, mate.'

'Full of something,' Johnny laughed. 'See you next weekend at the game.'

'Going to give those Ponty bastards what for, we are. Then we'll drink their pub dry.'

Johnny grinned at the visual. Those Ponty boys had been their rivals for as long as anyone could remember. He might not be allowed to sit and watch telly all night, but Rhi wouldn't dare stop him playing the game himself, even if they were the beer gut professionals rather than the real deal.

He looked across the road at the store which had been his next target, and instead Googled their website. With a bit of scrolling he managed to find a fridge within their budget, and bonus, if he picked it up himself, he'd save another fifty quid. 'Smashing,' he said to himself, walking back to his car. He plonked himself in the driver's seat, removing his credit card from his wallet and finalising the purchase. An email pinged on his phone telling him that the goods would be available by seven pm for collection. He could be home by seven thirty just in time for the first scrum. Things were looking up.

He got back out of the car and popped the boot, rifled through the mess of contents and found the octopus straps he knew were there. Strap it to that roof of the car and away we go. Rhi would be absolutely bloody chuffed.

'I'm off,' Gwen called out, wrapping a thin scarf around her neck and flipping her hair out from under it. 'Rhys has us booked for dinner before the game. Bound to be mental out there anyway booking or no.' She paused in the doorway of Jack's office where he was staring blankly through the screen. 'You going to be okay here on your own?'

'Who, me? Why wouldn't I be? It's a busy night in Cardiff and everyone will be at the rugby.'

Gwen grinned at him. 'Can't say we didn't offer for you to come with us.'

'Someone has to stay here and keep an eye on things. And you know how much I love rugby.' He in fact found it an exceedingly strange game that made no sense - a mixture of thuggery and complicated rules that held up the actual playing of the game more often than not. Gwen had tried explaining it to him on the odd occasion she had managed to drag him along with Rhys and the others, but there was just nothing about it that inspired him. Even Ianto's attempts to get him interested in football had shown more promise. He understood most of the rules in that game and the system for scoring. Plus Ianto had told him he didn't need to understand the offside rule because no one did.

'I'll be just fine, Gwen. I promise I won't be sitting here crying my eyes out, listening to my back catalogue of Mariah Carey and stuffing my face with Quality Streets and letting myself completely go.'

Gwen leaned across and pecked him on the cheek as a consolation for the kisses he was missing out on. 'He'll be back in a week and a bit. It'll fly.'

'Yes, it's been super fast already,' Jack said, his voice laden with sarcasm. 'Janet and I have been trading gossip when I feed her and trade our favourite Ianto moments.'

Gwen shook her head and rolled her eyes. 'You're just a lovesick idiot.

'Best kind of idiot there is,' he replied, giving her a salute as she scampered out the door.

He leaned back in his chair and gazed past the office door and into the unoccupied office next to his where Ianto should have been working. 'It's only ever a quiet night when you're not here, isn't it?'

Maude pulled up outside the empty building in her car. She got out, unlocked the roller door and then got back in the car, driving it all the way inside. Since tonight was the last night she'd be returning here there was no point in abandoning the car. It might as well be used for parts. A pity she couldn't have brought one last load of goods here. Sales were continuing to come through the false website she'd set up, and that meant more humans as well. Business was literally booming, just as Darren from electrical had promised.

The tyres from the van the married couple had borrowed were still lying in a pile by the door. The core didn't have any use for the semi-organic rubber substance. Most things had been useful, but not those. They just added to a growing pile of discarded rubber. The married couple themselves had been essential to keep the core above minimum operational levels. They'd screamed of course, but the screaming hadn't lasted long. Human lung tissue was extremely dense and went a long way. Intestinal tracts were equally good, and the more skin the better. Both had been on the chubby, yet still physically fit side and that was just a bonus.

Leaving the van where it was she got out and stopped to admire what she'd helped to create. It was such a thing of beauty, her master and creator. Without it, she never would have existed, and yet for so long now it had relied on her for survival. Tonight the tables would finally turn back to the way things should be.

Maude pressed a hand to the cool metal. She could feel the power beginning to thrum under her fingertips and a spark of electricity arc from one hybrid form to the other. Not long now until two were one once ore.

'You have served well,' the core told her, giving voice to itself for the first time since they'd arrived. It didn't need to. Maude could have heard it simply by sharing their hive mind communication network, but it pleased her to hear it strong enough to take that next step. Patience had paid off.

It reached past her with a long, clawed arm and pulled the bonnet from the car. It tossed the piece of metal over itself, caught by several more mechanical arms which began to tear it apart with a screeching of metal on metal. Like a child at Christmas, it tore away at the vehicle like wrapping on a gift, eager to take whatever it could find - doors, engine, fuel lines - and amalgamating each piece into itself. More units sparked into life, their hot welding tips fusing the new parts where they were needed most.

'More flesh,' it hummed.

Maude rested her hand on the core's surface, feeding it the latest information from her data banks. More would be arriving soon. Tonight hopefully. And there was some to be had right now. She had done her duty. More humans would arrive, no longer needing her to facilitate their arrival, and then it would finally be strong enough to leave this place. Once it could, it would take whatever it needed to keep building itself up, bigger and stronger. There would be no stopping it.

Maude reached up to her face where her inner mechanics were already showing. She slipped her hand underneath the flap of flesh at her jaw and tore the entire cheek away. The nose remained attached to the flesh and didn't break away from the rest of her face until half the scalp had come away with it, revealing the alloy skeleton beneath. A pincer arm took it from her gratefully and patched it into itself like it had always belonged there.

Maude used her hands to pull away more skin, undressing herself for her master as it took each piece gratefully. Once it was all stripped away, she sat down and helped the mechanical arms to remove her legs, and then it took her arms as well. Welding arcs spat and sparked bright blue as each component was absorbed.

As her torso lay on the ground, two arms pulled apart the metal ribcage. Inside was a beating human heart, the only thing keeping the drone alive. It was plucked out, giving a few last desperate flutters as it pumped bloodlessly before it was given a new life to beat for. Maude's heart had stopped once already when it had been drained of its life giving blood. She'd been dead a long time now, yet her heart had kept going, performing a function that no human doctor would be able to comprehend. A heart with no blood simply shouldn't beat. Yet it did. Now inside the core it beat in time with the other human hearts it had procured.

The last of Maude's neural networks quivered with joy as they were pulled apart and reintegrated. It was like being reborn, emerging from from the chrysalis and turning into a beauthfi butterfly as parts of her were reformed into the masterpiece that was the core. For a brief moment, the last she had whilst she still had some independent thought, she wondered if the humans felt this same elation at giving themselves over. If they did, they would flock in their thousands, desperate to experience such greatness and purpose.

Enjoy this Maude, for this is what it truly means to live.

'Where are we going?' Gwen asked, frowning as Rhys made a wrong turn once they were through the Millennium Stadium turnstiles. 'It's this way.' God knew they should know their way around the place by now. They'd been here often enough, from their first date and all through the next fifteen years together.

'Not tonight, love,' Rhys replied, beaming at her. 'Tonight, we've got corporate box tickets.' He waggled them in front of her face. 'All thanks to that new contract we won.'

'What, the furniture people?'

Rhys looked ridiculously pleased with himself. 'Oh, yeah. Little thank you present for two weeks and not a single piece of stock gone missing. Apparently that's a big deal.' He puffed out his chest a little bit. 'All our paperwork has been immaculate.'

'Careful,' Gwen warned. 'You say that too loudly around the wrong people and Ianto will be throwing himself at you. He'd find your paperwork very sexy.'

'What, and you don't?'

She toyed with the buttons on the front of his shirt. No wonder he'd dressed up a bit nicer this evening. 'It's not your paperwork that gets me going, Rhys Williams.'

He let an arm snake around her hips. 'Aye, it's my sexy corporate box tickets, then.'

Gwen gave a little shrug of her head. 'Something like that.'

'Yeah, well you can have them on one condition. No phone and no bloody Torchwood.'

'That's two conditions.'

His expression turned serious. 'They're the same. I mean it, Gwen. Any alien thinks of coming here tonight is going to have a million angry Welshmen chasing it down the M4 and all the way over the border into England. And you are not leading the charge, do you hear me?'

Gwen tugged her phone from its spot, tightly wedged in her back jeans pocket, and made a show of flicking it onto silent mode. 'How's that?'

Rhys pressed the button on the lift, grinning. 'Your chariot awaits, Lady Wales.'

'Bloody late shift,' Andy muttered, leaning a tired elbow on the desk. How come everyone else got the good shifts - the ones as additional security at the rugby - and he was stuck here at the station, manning the phones? Exemplary record, never shirked a double shift if they were short, and always got his duty logs in on time. And this was the thanks he got for it. This was not a job for a Sergeant.

The desk phone began to ring, only adding to Andy's misery. Probably PC Declan calling to tell him Wales had just been awarded the first penalty of the evening and what a cracker it had been. Reluctantly, Andy picked up the receiver and kept his greeting polite.

'Cardiff Metropolitan Police, how can I help you?'

'I'd like to report my daughter and her husband as missing,' came the nasally voice of an older woman.

Andy pulled a notepad towards him, searching for a pen. 'Right. And what makes you believe they've gone missing?'

'They were meant to be round for tea tonight and they've not shown up.'

Oh, great. Not only was it going to be a woefully boring night at the station, but he was going to get calls like this. 'Maybe they're just running late.'

'No. I rang their home, I rang their mobiles…'

Yes, well done you and your excellent policing skills, Andy thought, making sure he didn't accidentally verbalise the thought. 'Have you been round their house?'

'I sent my husband round. He said their car was gone. No one home.'

'So, maybe they broke down on the way over.'

'Listen young man, I know my daughter and she would have rung.'

Andy sighed. He hated being lectured about how to do his job by those least qualified. He clicked the pen and had it poised over the blank page. 'Okay. So let's start with names and the last time you saw them…'

'It's Melanie and Ifan Morgan. 72 Picketts Road, Splott. Last time I heard from her was last week Tuesday. They were out shopping for a new fridge, a dishwasher, microwave… they just got married, see. New home and all. Didn't want any fancy wedding presents, just money. Cheeky buggers, asking for money. In my day you were just grateful for whatever people bought you. Didn't matter if you ended up with two kettles.'

Andy pinched the bridge of his nose. It didn't sound so much as if they'd gone missing and run a million bloody miles. Majorca was probably lovely this time of year. Or Siberia, if this woman happened to be your mother-in-law.

'Are you writing all this down, young man?' came the accusation.

'Yes, yes,' Andy said. Every last bloody word.

'Probably all on the computer these days, I suppose. Nobody ever writes anything anymore. Can even spell their own names and make it legible. It's technology, see… why, when I was their age…'

Andy let his head drop onto the notepad, wondering just how long a night this was actually going to be.

Part three...