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.

Jack crossed the street at a diagonal, keeping a watchful eye for anyone else who might be around. He liked the leafy streets of suburbia for their ability to conceal a Torchwood agent, but out here there was nothing but wide open spaces and huge oblong buildings surrounded by a flat expanse of concrete and fake front lawns. It seemed strange that he and Johnny would be the only two people around. Industrial estates like this didn't sleep anymore. Manufacturing was a twenty four hour business these days. Machines ran all day and all night and the trucks that conveyed the finished product to stores and ports could be heard rumbling along the roads at all hours. This place though was eerily quiet in a way that even the biggest rugby game of the year couldn't explain.

As he neared the building with the glowing lights he checked his vortex manipulator again. Still no significant traces of alien technology, and now the lights were dimming, plunging the whole place back into darkness.

He moved down the long driveway, keeping against the shadowy fence line and straining his ears for sound. There was something - a grinding, squealing mechanical sound - but which could have been the sound of any large piece of heavy machinery in a factory. Only Altons didn't make furniture, they were just the on-seller.

There were a series of roller doors, each shut and padlocked until he reached one that was open just a few inches at the bottom, not entirely shut and definitely not locked. He pressed his back to the concrete wall and then slid down on his haunches before dropping onto his hands and knees to get a peek inside. He was about to bend all the way down and look under the gap when the sound of footfalls behind him made him freeze, then spin around with lightning pace, gun held two-handed against his assailant.

'Jesus, fuck, Jack!' Johnny hissed, stumbling back and falling on his arse. Jack was almost equally as shocked. He had the reflexes of a cat, and whilst his shooting from distance sometimes caught the mirth of the others for being a little wayward, at three feet he simply couldn't miss. Some sixth sense had stopped him from pulling hard on the trigger and loosing a bullet.

'Do I need to put a bell on you?' Jack said, exasperated as he holstered his webley, and more than a little annoyed that someone as untrained as Johnny had gotten so close up behind him before he'd even noticed. Even Ianto wasn't always that good at sneaking up on him. This desk jockeying was making him lose his touch.

'Sorry!' Johnny replied, with just that slight hint of annoyance himself that he'd had a gun pulled on him.

Jack huffed and then clenched his jaw. 'I thought I told you to stay in the car?' He didn't just think it, he knew it for certain.

Johnny seemed sheepish. 'I thought you might need backup, like. Y'know, in case it's another one of those snake things.'

Jack's eyebrows disappeared up into his fringe. 'Snake things?' It was hard not to say it without sounding totally disbelieving and dismissive.

'Like what Ianto did last time,' Johnny said, as if that explained it. 'Didn't he tell you?'

Jack clenched his teeth back together. 'No, he didn't.' But he was going to when he got back from Russia, that was for damn sure. So much for the "don't you dare bring my family into this, Jack."

'No offense,' Johnny went on before Jack could tell him exactly what he was going to say to Ianto, 'but I used to think he was a bit… you know, a bit of a pansy, but he really knew what he was doing. Proper special ops and stuff. That poor bugger of an alien didn't stand a chance. Real impressive, like, the way he handled it.'

'And you helped?' Jack couldn't hide the tone of skepticism in his voice. Partly because despite everything, Johnny still saw his brother in law as a bloke in a suit who wasn't a total badass, and partly because he couldn't imagine a beer drinking, rugby loving Welshman managing to have not only helped out, but also to have kept quiet about it until now. Perhaps Ianto had worded him up to keep mum about it, or perhaps the pair of them were terrified of what Ianto's sister might have to say about it.

'Well, I mean I helped carry the body out to the car. Couldn't have done that on his own. The thing must have weighed forty stone.'

A forty stone snake creature? Oh, Ianto had so much explaining to do when he got home.

Johnny's hands went up in a defensive motion at Jack's dark expression. 'Don't go crook at me. I'm only trying to help.'

'I don't need your help.' The words came out far more harshly than Jack intended them, and Johnny picked up on it immediately.

'What, because you're all high and mighty Torchwood and I'm not?'

'Because it's dangerous, that's why. It's not a game. Ianto shouldn't have gotten you involved. He knows better than that.' He sighed, running a hand down his face.

'What?'

'Just remembering something an old friend once said to me.'

'What's that?'

'You can save the world from aliens, but you can't save people from themselves.'

'What, is that like your roundabout way of saying you're not going to send me back to wait in the car?'

'I suppose.' He wasn't breaking the rules if Ianto had already broken them, right?

Johnny slapped his shoulder. 'Aye aye. Pontprennau's best tight head prop, championship team of 94…' For someone who had been freaked out enough to call Jack in to investigate, he had suddenly grown a backbone, or just an over-abundance of self belief.

Somehow, his sporting prowess didn't fill Jack with confidence. 'Just…

stay behind me, okay? That way I'm less likely to shoot you. And if I say run, you run. Got that?' He felt like he was training up a new recruit all over again, except this one wasn't someone he wanted on Torchwood's payroll. He was interrupted by another soft glow of blue white light passed by them under the edge of the unlocked roller door. He dropped to his knees and leaned over trying to sneak a peek at it before it disappeared again, but it was gone in an instant. Damn.

Slowly and without making the door squeal he pulled it up just enough that he'd be able to crawl under it. He took a quick look before he did, but it was dark inside as the light had moved on and the glint of metal off the remaining windows was only enough to suggest machinery of some kind. No people though. No guards or any signs of feet prowling the entrance, ready to shoot first and ask questions later. That was all he needed for now. 'Follow me and keep quiet,' he commanded, before dropping onto his stomach and rolling under the gap.

It was predictably dark inside, even as his eyes tried to adjust. The bay inside was smaller than he imagined it, and empty. To his left towards the back was a doorway that must have led further into the building and where the light had been filtering through. 'This way,' he said, darting towards the doorway with long, confident strides. Johnny was behind him, but sounded as if he'd tripped over something. He heard a quiet "bastard" cursed and looked back.

Johnny had reached down to pick up the thing he'd stumbled over in the dark. 'It's a tyre,' he said.

'Not just one,' Jack made the comment, now seeing the haphazard pile of them. They hadn't been stacked neatly, just dumped and forgotten, like tyres at the local tip. There must have been dozens of them.

'What does a furniture store need with a whole bunch of tyres?'

'I dunno. Maybe they were just here beforehand.'

'It's wet though,' Johnny said, still holding the one that had tripped him up. 'Like it's just been out there on the road.'

Jack pursed his lips. It had been damp out there, the product of some earlier afternoon drizzle. Enough to slick up a tyre that had done a few miles before arriving here. What did that mean? Nothing good, surely. His senses were tingling with foreboding. He plucked his phone from his pocket and dialled.

"Hi. You've reached Gwen Cooper. I can't talk right now. If you've got this number you can probably guess why. Leave a message."

Jack growled in frustration as he snapped the phone shut. He knew damn well why she wasn't answering. She couldn't hear it over the raucous crowd. 'Gwen's not answering her phone.'

'Oh, is she the brunette? Nice legs and a cracking arse, that one.'

Jack spun on him. 'Hey!'

Just saying. Wouldn't toss her out of bed.

'She's married. As are you,' Jack reminded him. 'Besides, she'd bust your kneecap with her gun if you made a pass at her.'

Johnny smirked. 'My kinda woman.'

Jack couldn't fight the grin on his own face. 'Mine too. Looks like it's just us.'

Jack poked his head around the doorway of the loading bay, but his view was obstructed by the desiccated shell of a small white delivery van. He was about to turn back and say something when a huge mechanical arm rose up over him and the van, nearly decapitating in the process. Only instinct made him duck down by the lower end of the chassis as the arm ripped the metal roof from the van's frame, causing an ear piercing shriek of metal as the whole thing juddered in protest at being torn apart. He felt an arm grab at him and pull him away as the chassis rocked back and forth, stumbling into Johnny who was doing the pulling.

'You alright? Thing nearly took your head off.'

Jack nodded feebly. 'I'm okay. Not the first time I've nearly lost my head.' He turned on his haunches and now that the top half of the van was gone, he saw what lay beyond it.

'Bloody hellfire,' Johnny muttered.

Jack's eyes remained transfixed on the sight in front of them. 'You can say that again.' The mechanical claw that had pulled apart the van was just one part of a much larger machine that stretched from one side of the huge space to the other and almost all the way to the roof. Jack could make out parts of old cars forming part of the bodywork, but the rest was now unrecognisable as anything other than totally alien. Tubes and pipes and cabling ran all across its body, providing whatever it was that the thing fuelled itself with, but there were other stranger parts where metal was fused with something like muscle. Eleven people that had gone missing, along with the cars, Jack assumed. Perhaps more, but those were just the ones known to have gone missing. Jack risked stepping closer to it whilst it appeared preoccupied, getting a better look at its exoskeleton.

'What the bloody hell is it?'

'It's a machine,' Jack replied. 'Or part of it is. More like a cyborg. These bits here are metal but there's organic matter too.' Jack didn't say out loud how he believed the organic parts had come about. This was why his scans hadn't revealed anything alien. It wasn't alien at all, but made up of regular Earth materials. The robotic arm was in the process of taking the van's roof and cutting it with some kind of laser before welding pieces of it into place, patching itself together like it was doing nothing more than attaching a sticking plaster to a wound.

'How'd it get here?' Johnny asked in hushed tones. 'Did it come through the rift?'

'Probably.'

'What's it doing now?'

Jack frowned. That was a good question. He reached out to touch the surface. It was warm and the slight buzz of electricity ran through it into his fingertips, making them tingle. Then it jolted him much harder, making him recoil and pull his hand away. 'Ow! Son of a…'

The whole thing lurched and the robotic arm disappeared as a huge supine head craned around on its equally long mechanical neck. Jack backed them both away as not two, but twenty eyes looked at him, gathered together horribly into two large clusters within that robotic head. They were human eyes, but they glowed with a pale blue light that came from somewhere deeper inside the cyborg.

'Jonathan Davies. Seventy eight Old Merthyr Road, Riverside,' it intoned in a deep gravelly voice, tilting its head at them.

'It knows me,' Johnny stuttered. 'It bloody knows me!'

Jack shook his head. 'It has your details from the website, that's all. It's been expecting you.' He turned back to the machine. 'You're the reason people have been going missing aren't you? That's the pile up of tyres just outside. Their cars, which you presumably recycled into yourself, along with them. Lure them here to pick up whitegoods and murder them instead.'

The cyborg remained silent at Jack's accusations.

'What are you?' he asked.

'Not relevant,' it hummed.

'Okay, then. Where are you from?'

'Our current location is here. I believe you call this planet Earth.'

Jack bit back his impatience at its reluctance to give him any useful information. 'Right, so you're the shy type. No name, no address. That's okay.' He gave it one of his trademark grins. 'Never met an alien I could charm after a few drinks. You are alien,' he said with more certainty. He flipped open his wrist strap and did some entirely different scans. 'There's not much of you, given how much is now made up of everything else you've stolen along the way, but just enough if I make my search sensitive enough to detect it.'

The huge mechanical head swung around slowly, as if assessing itself and what more needed to be done. 'We arrived here, weak, close to death. This place was our salvation. It had all the materials necessary. We cannibalised the machinery, took what we needed, built up worker drones to pull it apart and rebuild us. But it was only part of what we needed to survive.'

Jack nodded. 'Right. Your little cyborg equation needed balancing up. Human bodies to patch over the organic bits. It wasn't just the few people you conned into coming here, was it? It was the factory workers as well. You covered that up nicely. In my job we tend to notice people going missing like that.'

'The flesh was used to procure other things before it was given up in service to the core.'

'So, you converted them into little cyborg soldiers for you until they were no longer useful.' Jack could just picture it now, husband arriving home after a long day at the factory, victim number one until he subdued and converted the rest of the family. No one reported them missing because there was no one left to notice.

'They were essential to our vital systems.'

'Uh huh.' He toyed with his vortex manipulator trying to get to grip with just how it was holding together both mechanical and organic matter. 'And you thought murder was okay.'

'We did what we had to. To survive.'

'Only you're more than surviving now though, aren't you? You're growing. I can sympathise with just doing what you needed to survive but now you've crossed a line.'

'Yeah,' Johnny piped up. 'You don't just go round knocking off people and knicking their stuff.' Jack threw a sideways glance at him and he clamped his mouth back shut.

'How many have you converted? How many soldiers are out there right now, converting more?'

'We have taken them and used them. They were needed to sustain our increasing systems.'

Jack didn't know whether to be relieved or appalled. 'Why? Why keep going once you had enough strength simply to exist? There are people on this world that could have helped find you a way home or a safe place to live.'

The cyborg heaved up, towering over them, every part of it screeching and groaning as it did so. It might have been made up of bits of earth machinery but it sounded in need of a good oiling. 'We once ruled entire worlds. Then came the war. They devastated us. We were nearly wiped out to extinction. We barely escaped. They wanted to destroy us completely.'

Jack repressed a smirk. 'See, that's funny, because when there's a war there's two opposing forces, only you've been very careful not to mention who the enemy were and why they wanted to destroy you. In my experience, victims of war don't go and murder to survive.'

'They were filthy organics!' It boomed so loudly that the whole facade of the building shook. 'Purebreeds who would not join with us!'

'Ah, so they started a war to get rid of you before you decided to just use them for spare parts. Smart guys.'

'We are here now. This world will be our new home from which we will rebuild. So much organic and mechanical matter for us to consume. A bounty for the great race of the Echenstrech to once again restore its glory. And then we shall wreak destruction upon the world that sought to destroy us. They shall know what it is to become one with us and all the power that we bear.'

Jack tensed. 'Except you won't.' He always hated these power hungry threatening "take over your planet" speeches. They were just so cliché. 'You've murdered enough innocent people already. Time to decommission you.'

The core chuckled. It was a strangely human sound for a machine, even a partly organic one, to make. Jack had a long history of dealing with mechanical foes but their insatiable lust to multiply and destroy anything that wasn't them didn't change. 'You two pathetic organics are going to stop me?' it asked, mocking Jack's own threats. 'You will be useful additions.' There was more whirring and grinding and then from behind the great hulking beast emerged two metal drones, made in the image of humans but clearly machines, with one a singular eye socket in each of their heads. Just enough so they could see who they were meant to be attacking.

'Bollocks,' Johnny murmured, tensing beside Jack and looking pale in the light given off by the sparking fury of the great machine above them. It didn't help that the two drones were marching towards them in a menacing fashion.

Jack gave Johnny a sideways glance. 'Get out of here now,' he said quietly under his breath.

'What? Isn't this the part where we both run?'

Jack shook his head. He had a job to do. 'I need you to be safe.' He reached down and began undoing the leather strap on his left wrist. He handed it to Johnny. 'Take this,' he said. 'If anything happens to me, I want to make sure you have this. Give it to Gwen or Ianto. They'll understand. Now get out!' He roughly shoved the man. 'Go!'

Johnny looked to be in two minds, terrified and ready to bolt, but also wavering in his need to stay with Jack. 'Go!' Jack yelled again. This time he ran as quickly as his slight bot belly would carry him.

Whilst Jack was watching Johnny bolt for the other door, squeezing through it and no doubt forcing himself under the roller door and away to freedom, the two drones grabbed Jack from behind, pinioning his arms painfully behind him. They were incredibly strong and he stood no chance of breaking free from them.

'Get the other one,' the core commanded.

'Leave him,' Jack ordered. 'It's me you want.'

The core seemed curious at Jack's statement. 'Apart from the obvious, why would I want you, little organic?'

Jack relaxed into the grip of the two drones. 'Little something I haven't told you. I'm immortal. I can die but my flesh just keeps regenerating. Think about that. You can't kill me. But my flesh could keep you going. I'm just a never ending supply. You don't need the people of this world. You just need me. I can provide you everything you need.'

There was a pregnant pause as the core considered the news. 'Why would you allow this?'

'You said it yourself. Your race is great and powerful. Maybe I've decided I want in on the action.'

The core hummed in amusement. Stupid organic. It didn't realise that there would be nothing left of its consciousness once it was integrated. 'A partnership,' it replied, putting forth the option.

'Yeah.' Jack nodded and gave a smile. 'Always wondered what it'd be like to rule a planet or two. Have your two goons let me go and I'll come willingly on one condition: you leave the rest of the humans on this planet alone. Once you've got me, you won't need them anyway. I'd say that's a fair trade off, wouldn't you?' He didn't think it would take much convincing. The core needed flesh and he was flesh. Without so much as an audible command, Jack felt the drones loosen their grip and step away. That was the nice thing about drones. No minds of their own, just followed commands of their master.

'For an organic you possess a great intelligence,' the core told him. Jack could almost sense it beaming at him with fatherly pride. Your neural synapses will be of great benefit. The Echenstrech thank you for seeing that there is much to be gained from an alliance.'

'I like to think so.'

The two drones made their way back to the main core. As soon as they were within inches of it, they just kept moving forward, smoothly assimilating back into the machinery as if they'd never existed, like stepping through a waterfall.

Jack schucked his coat, tossing it aside where it fell into a discarded heap by the door. 'So, ruling the galaxy? Bring it on.' He stepped forward just as they had, waiting to be enveloped and just prayed that it would be quick and painless.

Johnny was far enough away that nothing came after him but it wasn't far enough away that he couldn't hear Jack's blood-curdling screams as the cyborg dismembered him and added his body parts to its ever growing form. He'd hidden in the bushes along the fence once he'd scrambled under the roller door, hoping that Jack had just been kidding and was only a few seconds behind him. Hearing Jack's screams of agony make his mouth go dry and his palms turn clammy. He felt sick just thinking about it, imagining every pop of joints being torn from their sockets, flesh scraped away by sharp metal arms, eyes bored out and blood… blood everywhere. Jesus. He'd done that; dragged Jack into this and now he was dead. It was what would have happened to Johnny if he'd gone in there on his own tonight. Just another sucker lured by the promise of cheap goods.

When the screaming finally came to a stop and silence descended once more, Johnny sucked in a breath, having forgotten to breathe through the entire brutal exchange. On shaky legs he forced himself out from behind the bushes and further away, lest they now decide to come looking for him after all. He stumbled a few times as his jelly legs refused to cooperate, criss-crossing in front of one another like a clumsy newborn foal, but eventually he spotted the safety and salvation of his car, fumbling the key in the lock and throwing himself inside, before locking himself in. The little light overhead flicked off as the door shut and he finally felt temporarily invisible and safe.

'Oh, fuck,' he said, feeling a panic rising inside him as the gravity of it all came crashing down on him. His hand shook as he extracted his mobile phone and hit the speed dial, ignoring the five missed calls from Rhiannon wondering where the bloody hell he was, and assuming he'd skived off to the pub with his mates. God, if only she knew.

"Hello, you've reached Ianto Jones. Sorry I can't take your call right now but if you leave your name, number and a brief message, I'll get back to you." There was something just so reassuring in that tone of voice, like Ianto could make everything right just by sheer will of his presence alone. He'd thought the same about Jack half an hour ago and now Jack was gone. Jack, who couldn't die, was gone. Fuck, fuck, fuck…

The voicemail pinged its tiny beep. In the darkness of his grotty sedan, Johnny began to lose it.

'Ianto, it's me Johnny. God, I've really ballsed things up. It was the fridges, see, and then there was this cyborg thing in the warehouse and Jack was there and then it… Well, I don't know what it did, but it was after human body parts and Jack was trying to get me to stay out of it. And, oh, fuck, I think it chopped him up and took all the bits and used them to build itself. I dunno what to do, Iant. I think he's…' he couldn't bring himself to say it. Ianto was family, and so was Jack. It just felt wrong to say he was dead. 'I'm sorry. Please, just… I need you to call me back. Oh, God. Fuck.'

He ended the call. He didn't know what else to say or if any of it had made any sense whatsoever. He just mentally willed the phone to ring back instantly, Ianto there on the other end of the line saying he was just around the corner and knew exactly what to do and that everything would be just fine.

He waited ten minutes then called again without leaving a message. Three more times he tried in the space of the next ten minutes but still there was no answer, just that polite voicemail message. Ianto wouldn't ignore his calls unless he was in the middle of something really important. He'd be worried something had happened to Rhiannon, or one of the kids. He wouldn't ever expect that Johnny would be calling to tell him it was Jack who was in dire straits. He didn't know how Ianto would react. He loved Jack in a way that Johnny sometimes struggled to comprehend, but he didn't once discount it. They had a real bond, those two.

Johnny remembered what Jack had given him and extracted it from his fleece jacket pocket. He toyed with the wrist strap, still warm from where it had sat on its owner's wrist and then from being in his pocket. Jack always wore it, like it was important. A gift maybe, or sentimental value at least. It was well worn, the leather darkened and the brass clips and buttons scuffed from years of wear and tear. Ianto joked that he didn't even take it off in the shower, and God knew how disgusting Jack's wrist must be underneath where it never got washed properly. Johnny felt awful that he was going to have to hand it to brother-in-law and apologise that this was all that was left of his husband and that his dying wish had been for Ianto to have it. What good was a sodding wristwatch? How could that be all that was left? He'd never forgive himself.

He sat back nervously in the driver's seat, still, desperately waiting for his phone to ring. Even if Ianto called him back, saying he was on his way, how long would that take? When he'd said he was off on business to Russia, Johnny assumed he meant Moscow, but what if it was some weird Torchwood thing in the middle of absolutely nowhere? It could take days for him to get back to Cardiff, even if he left right this instant. What was Johnny supposed to do in the meantime? He sure as hell couldn't go home and tell Rhi what had happened. She'd do her bloody nut at him apart from anything else. Not to mention there was a giant alien cyborg thing in the warehouse across the street that was no doubt getting ready to leave and start roaming the streets, picking people off one by one and integrating them into itself. It was like the kind of awful, B-grade movie story where the world ended and everybody died.

And then there was Jack. Jack who'd been so good to him and put up with his babbling nonsense and not listening to him when he'd told Johnny to stay behind and not get involved. Jack, who'd walked his brother-in-law down the aisle, married him and made him happier than Johnny had ever seen him. Jack who put up with all their madness, Rhiannon's hen pecking and nagging, and Ianto's fussy neat freak impulses. He doted on the kids and they were enough to drive anyone bloody mental some days. Jack didn't seem to care that he'd married into a whole bunch of Valleys drama. If anything, there were moments when Jack's crazy stories made their lives seem totally boring and normal. The reality of what they did for a living had never really sunk in, not even when Ianto had accidentally on purpose gotten Johnny involved in something he openly admitted he shouldn't have, to which they'd both agreed they wouldn't speak about ever again. God, what he wouldn't do for a bit of normal right now. This Torchwood business was terrible, awful stuff.

Half an hour went by - though it might as well have felt like a lifetime - and there was no word at all. What would Ianto do if he was here? That was the burning question. Surprisingly, it didn't take Johnny long at all to figure out the answer. He'd go and fuck up anyone who got between him and his family. He'd make the bastards pay. He'd seen Ianto drunk at the pub one Saturday night, throwing a fist at someone who started in on them. It didn't matter that Johnny had started the fight. Ianto was pissed - in both senses of the word - and right into the fray when it kicked off properly. All the suits and calm smiles and fussing over coffee and neatness was a load of bollocks. You just didn't mess with the Jones-Davies clan unless you wanted a fist and a few less teeth. They were Valleys lads through and through.

Johnny Davies, get off your sorry fat arse and go in there and kill that thing or at least die trying, he told himself rather harshly. He was surprised by his own sudden boldness. Ianto might not be happy about it, but he'd be damned if he was walking away having done nothing to save Jack, or at least stop the alien from killing someone else. He might not be Torchwood, but like a good pub brawl he was going to go down swinging.

Part five...