Chapter Text
Scrape-thump; scrape-thump; scrape-thump. The SUV’s windscreen wipers beat out a steady tempo. The rain drummed against the roof and the headlights caught the glistening hedgerow as the car came to a sudden, jerking halt at a junction that appeared unexpectedly out of the dusk come too early. The front fender jutted a foot over the give-way lines.
“Left or right?” Jack asked.
“Erm…” Owen frowned and twisted the map in his hands, orientating himself. He turned it through 180 degrees, elbow jabbing Jack in the cheek, map obscuring his vision. “Left.” His tone was far from certain. “I think.”
“If we keep turning left,” Ianto piped up from the backseat. “We’ll just go round in a circle.” Tosh, behind Owen, and Gwen, sandwiched between Tosh and Ianto, stayed wisely silent.
“We’re not going round in a circle, alright?” Owen snapped, turning the map even further round, twisting his arms into what would have been a painful knot if he could feel it. “It’s left.”
Jack pointedly pushed the map back over onto the passenger side and swung the SUV left into a lane that was barely wide enough for it. “You know, if you can’t read a map, you might have to give up shotgun rights,” he told Owen.
“I was fine with the SatNav,” he shot back, crumpling the map in a heap on his lap. “’Til we got this heap of junk.” He jabbed irritably at the device suckered to the windscreen.
“I kinda like Swedish, it’s got an interesting lilt to it,” Jack shrugged. “And if you will buy cut price electronics on eBay.”
“Seemed like a bargain at the time,” Owen grumbled. “I’m reporting that seller.”
Jack shook his head in amusement as he accelerated, sliding the SUV into fourth gear, overhanging branches and rambling brambles thwacking at the wing mirrors as they roared down the narrow lane. “How we doing back there Gwen?” he called.
“Uh.” Gwen tilted her head and checked the device on her lap. It was a small black box, no bigger than a matchbox, mounted on four angled legs which allowed it to be free-standing. On top of the box was a beacon, around two inches in length, which intermittently pulsed with a yellow light. The box itself was giving out a weak, infrequent pip. “Still beeping and flashing,” she confirmed.
Tosh clattered fingertips over the keyboard in front of her. “Signal is increasing in strength though,” she added. “Seems to be coming from a North Westerly direction.”
“Which direction are we headed?” Jack asked Owen.
“How should I know?” Owen fruitlessly attempted to refold the map and pinpoint their location. “I’ve got a map, not a compass.”
“South East,” Ianto announced, cheerfully waving a Silva Compass. Jack grinned at him in the rear-view mirror. “Be prepared. Learnt that in the Scouts.”
Owen twisted in his seat and scowled at him. “I was never in the Scouts.”
“Shame - we should have gone right at that junction,” Ianto added helpfully.
“Oh, you have the bloody map, Baden Powell.” Owen screwed up the map and lobbed it over his shoulder at Ianto, to protestations from Gwen who was treated to a face full of map.
Jack slammed on the brakes, crunched the SUV into reverse and backed up along the lane at a similar speed to that which he’d driven down it. Ianto calmly took control of the map, folded it to a manageable size and located their position. They arrived back at the junction where Jack swung round and raced off in the opposite direction.
Ianto traced the winding yellow lane with his finger. “Should be another right hand turn just after this next bend.”
“We’re getting closer,” Tosh announced, without looking up from her screen. The device did, indeed, seem to be flashing with more intensity.
Jack rammed the SUV into fifth gear and shot down a sudden, steep incline in the road. The device was going beserk now, the light flashing madly and the beeping stuttering frantically.
“Here!” Tosh shouted.
They were all thrown forward, thankful for their seatbelts, as Jack performed an exemplary emergency stop. The SUV skidded a few feet on the wet tarmac and came to a halt.
If nowhere had a middle, it seemed that the Torchwood team were in it. Five pairs of eyes peered out of the rain-streaked windows at the darkening night. Ianto rubbed clear a patch of condensation on his window with the cuff of his jacket and pressed his forehead against the glass. Stone walls lurked in the darkness and a small coppice of fir trees swayed ominously back and forth.
Tosh consulted her computer again. “A few metres off to our left,” she explained.
Owen tapped his own window sceptically. “In that field?”
Tosh nodded and smiled brightly. “Yes, I’d say so.”
There was a pause and silence as they considered the issue and the persistent hammering of the rain on the SUV’s roof.
Ianto coughed quietly. “Did anyone else bring wellies?” he enquired smugly.
Owen laughed triumphantly. “Ha! Dropped yourself in it there, didn’t you, Mr ‘Be Prepared’? You can hop out in the rain whilst we wait here.”
“And for that Owen,” Jack informed him. “You can go too.”
“What?” Owen protested. “Why me? What about the others?”
“We need Tosh on the computer and Gwen…” Jack considered this. “Gwen didn’t laugh at Ianto.”
Gwen snorted and Owen swore, but he knew when he was beaten. He tentatively opened the passenger door only to have it whipped from his hand by the wind. Sighing heavily, he stepped out of the car where his shoes sank instantly into the soft mud of the verge.
“Shitting bollocks,” he swore again and slammed the car door shut, zipping his jacket up to his chin and thanking the deities that he couldn’t feel the cold any more.
“Come on Owen, where’s your spirit of adventure?” Ianto asked cheerfully, appearing from behind the SUV in his wellies and practical-looking waterproofs.
“How come it’s always pissing down with rain when I end up traipsing around the Welsh countryside with you?” Owen grumbled as they began to climb the gate into the field.
“Just lucky I guess,” Ianto responded chirpily.
They landed in the field and Owen’s feet sank even further into the mud. “Ugh.” He lifted each foot with some great effort and squelched after Ianto.
“Ok Tosh,” Ianto yelled into his comm over the sounds of the storm. The rain was driving horizontally in under the protection of his hood. “We’re in. Which way?”
“The monitor seems to suggest it’s within a few metres of where you’re standing,” Tosh responded. “Not sure what we’re looking for though.”
Ianto withdrew a long, heavy torch from his pocket and shone it over the wet grass. The grass was short and pockmarked with puddles of thick, oozing mud and other telltale darker patches which revealed that the field had had recent bovine occupants.
The beam of torchlight came to rest on a patch of juncus, jutting verdantly up from the otherwise flat field. “Could be over there,” Ianto suggested.
Owen took a step towards it, found one foot sliding out away from his body and, unable to maintain his balance, landed face down on the ground. His nose was millimetres from something that didn’t smell like mud. Pride wounded, he batted away Ianto’s proffered hand and attempted to push himself to his feet. His hands slid too and he found himself splayed further across the sodden ground. With renewed resolve, Owen levered himself onto all fours and then gingerly to his feet.
“I fucking hate mud,” he cursed bitterly.
“Opinion noted,” Ianto confirmed, voice muffled as he bent over the patch of reeds, hunting through each frond systematically. “Nothing here anyway.”
Owen was midway through a fruitless attempt to wipe his muddy hands on his even muddier jacket when he spotted the enormous shape looming towards them out of the darkness.
“Holy shit,” Owen spat. “Ianto!”
Ianto looked up and had the good grace to leap backwards when he saw the rapidly approaching creature. “Now might be a good time to run,” Ianto suggested, already on his way past Owen.
“What the fuck is that?” Owen asked as he caught up with Ianto by the gate.
Ianto flung himself over the gate with Owen right behind him. The beast came to angry, bellowing halt against the metal bars. “A bull,” Ianto explained patiently.
Jack’s head popped out from the car. “Everything alright?”
“Owen’s covered in mud and we’ve been chased by a bull,” Ianto called back. “No sign of anything alien.”
Back in the car, Jack raised an eyebrow when he saw the state of Owen but one look at the doctor’s unimpressed expression was enough to keep him silent. Even Ianto bit his tongue, despite having palpitations at the mess Owen was making of the SUV’s interiors.
“Can we go back to Cardiff now?” Owen asked.
“Not until we’ve found the source of the signal,” Jack told him. “Seems like we’re staying the night. We’d better find somewhere to hole up.”
“Don’t worry,” Ianto announced. “I’ve booked us in somewhere.”
Owen turned in his seat and glared at him. “I am not fucking camping.”
“Oh no,” Ianto assured him with a grin. “It’s a hotel this time.”