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While Ianto was suspicious of the glove that Suzie was “studying”, he could find no information to persuade the Captain to take it away from her. Even his brothers and sister didn’t have a clue of what it was or what it did. All they could say was to watch and make sure it didn’t harm the others. Ianto thought that was easier said than done; Suzie was getting pretty possessive of that damn thing and was really pushing for use on dead bodies. Ianto offered the ones in the morgue (he really wanted to pull out Holroyd or Guppy for her to practice on for some sadistic reason). Suzie told him that she needed freshly dead bodies though and the more violent the better. That made shivers run down his back and privately he wondered how she knew that she needed to have fresh dead bodies let alone those who died violently. But no matter on how he tried to word it in memos for the Captain, it was ignored or thrown away if the smug looks from Suzie were any indication.
The first call about a dead body for them to borrow was an old woman who had been stabbed in the chest. Ianto was sickened by the idea of someone killing a person’s grandmother for no apparent reason, but Suzie was excited. Looking back, Ianto thought that she was too excited and almost seemed to be waiting for that “magical” phone call.
The second was a man who was stabbed in the back. The gleeful look that crossed Suzie’s face was enough to make Ianto suspicious. He was ready to start tracking Suzie to see just what she was up to with that damn glove until it came to his attention that an article from the archives was missing. At least according to the Captain it was missing. Ianto had to scour the whole mess to find some piece of tech that was more a child’s toy than a dangerous weapon, but it did make Ianto even more suspicious when he did the inventory and found that a knife of unusual design was also missing. Since he had gone over the whole archive from top to bottom looking for that toy, Ianto was very much aware that someone was trying to keep him from looking further into Suzie and the glove. Ianto thought he knew who it was. He was going to take his suspicions to the Captain until a phone call came. There was another dead body.
When they came back from the call, it was with tales of a constable watching what they were doing from the upper level of a parking garage. Ianto just sighed and rolled his eyes. So much for being a secret organization that the Captain liked to think it was. Funny how everyone knew about Torchwood and didn’t know a thing about what they did, but they all had the left over resentment from when Holroyd and Guppy were in charge. Ianto wondered what they were going to do about this particular person and was a bit disconcerted to find out that the Captain was going to see if she was going to pursue it any further.
“So we are going to do nothing with the police constable?” Ianto asked the Captain as he took the RAF coat to look it over for stains that needed treating.
“Nope. She’ll probably forget about us after a while.” He sat down to look over the stacks of paperwork that Ianto had been pointedly looking at and reminding the Captain for the past couple of days to finish.
Ianto just sighed and shrugged. He would talk to the Captain about the missing knife in the morning since the Captain was working on the infamous paperwork tonight. He was going to take the time to see just what Suzie was doing with the glove that she was surely taking home at night, even with the express moratorium about taking alien tech home. She just played with dead flies that night, but Ianto thought that the use of that glove was a lot like the highs that kids got when they smoked pot and some of the lighter junk during the late 60’s and early 70’s. It was satisfying her craving, but she wanted more. Ianto wondered if she had stepped up when she started using the dead bodies from police scenes. Ianto was going to take this to the Captain in the morning if it killed him.
Too bad there was a call from the hospital about a Weevil roaming in the corridors. Ianto had the area the Weevil was wandering all cordoned off, but some silly girl that Owen identified as the PC from last night still had to wander in and bring in an orderly who was killed by the Weevil right in front of her. Yeah, she was really going to forget them after that. Ianto figured that she was going to be trouble when she raced after them in her police car and totally ignored her partner at the hospital. Then she tried to park her car at the Plass; Ianto smirked as she was told to move it or the car would be towed. Ianto would almost have paid to have the car towed just to see her gone from the Plass and his life.
Just watching her stake out the water tower was enough to make his teeth grind. He had trouble with people like this before and it always annoyed him when they wouldn’t leave well enough alone. Ianto was all for directing her to some local head shop that needed a good raid for contraband, when she seemed to have disappeared. He hoped that she had given up; the Captain told him to let her in when she came back. Ianto privately hoped that she would take a hint and go on her merry way. Too bad she didn’t; Ianto still wanted to speak to the Captain about Suzie and that glove.
Having her pop up with their dinner was enough to make him not want to eat at Jubilee again; they were going to have a complaint from him for allowing her to take their order even if she did pay them for it. Ianto wondered if she really thought she was fooling him when she tried to put herself off as a pizza delivery girl. Again he wondered why the Captain was allowing her into the Hub. Ianto hoped it wasn’t a hiring trick.
After she went through the door, he went to check on the SUV before turning up for the introductions by the Captain. Ianto inwardly sighed over being designated as the “admin help” and “looking good in a suit”. If the Captain wanted to see good looking people, then may be Ianto should supply him with pictures of his family in their uniforms. Then they could collectively beat him to a pulp and Ianto wouldn’t get teased about his boss looking at him with more than altruism in his eye. Ianto inwardly sighed as he wondered once again how he could end up with such a person as Captain Jack Harkness as his Partner. Cosmic joke he supposed.
Ianto followed the Captain and his new friend around discreetly to make sure that he knew what to expect if he was to recreate her memories. In hindsight, that was probably the reason why he didn’t notice that Suzie had the missing knife at her desk, although he did suspect Suzie took the glove with her again when she left for the evening. Then the Captain left with his guest to have drinks, leaving Ianto alone in the Hub with his friend up in the aerie. (The Storm Master thought it was a stroke of genius to hide a great reptilian being of Wales as a Rift refugee.) Ianto used Tosh’s program to hack into the annoying PC’s home computer to make sure that she wouldn’t remember anything she had typed before the sedative from the Retcon took effect. Later he would have kicked himself for not checking her home using a breeze to make sure that she didn’t have a visual cue, but even then it was the rendering of Suzie’s knife that brought the PC back to them.
Ianto had the night off and was meandering with the breeze when he caught sight of one annoying female PC standing in front of the water tower again. But it was the sight of Suzie coming in behind her with that eerie smile on her face that really worried Ianto. He had seen smiles like that before on killers during the 1800’s London when he was helping H. G. Wells find artifacts for the Warehouse and also to keep an eye on what they were doing. Killers in those days seemed to be more up close and personal when it came to the quick throat slits or the knifings they liked to do. Jack the Ripper was more of a butcher who really annoyed Ianto since he could do nothing about him even if he could get the constables in the right direction.
Suzie had the look of Jack the Ripper. She was ready to kill for the sake of killing and, it seemed, for the sake of a glove that should never have seen the light of day. Ianto could see that Suzie’s soul was black with the killings she had done for that glove and any grey was wiped away with the takeover of the glove. Ianto let go of the breeze he was riding in a shadowed alley just as Suzie was about to shoot the PC while whining about the detritus that came through the Rift. Then the Captain came up. Ianto couldn’t see him for the perception filter on that stupid slab, but he could feel the wind break around him and his soul was bright enough to see shimmering yellow on the concrete slab.
Then Suzie shot the Captain.
Ianto was so sure that he was dead even as the PC stuttered out her command to drop the gun. Too bad she wasn’t even convincing enough to make Suzie take notice of the command. The Torchwood worker just swung the gun back in her direction and made to kill her next.
The shimmering of the Captain’s soul caught Ianto’s attention more than the drama between the two women. The yellow light glimmering around the Captain’s soul alerted Ianto that he had not passed into the other side of the Door. Him rising from the sidewalk with a hole in his head healing alerted Ianto to the fact that the Captain was much more that any of them suspected when they first caught glimpses of him throughout the years from the 1860’s and on.
Captain Jack Harkness wasn’t allowed to die any more than the Guardians were.
Ianto rolled his eyes and thought, “Just bloody wonderful. How am I going to explain this to the family or to him?”
Then Suzie shot herself; right in front of the soppy PC and the Captain.
Ianto faded himself from the shadows back to the light breeze blowing through the Plass so he could find a different place to believably be when the Captain called him for cleanup. Ianto was really getting tired of these jobs. And, from the sounds of the conversation, the Captain was thinking about giving the nosey PC a job as a Torchwood operative.
Great, just great. Now he had to deal with training this twit on the policies of Torchwood. At least he didn’t have to give the same lectures about who Torchwood was to find and capture, like the Doctor. It looked like teaching her the ropes with the paperwork was going to be enough. But Ianto was resigned to getting the paperwork ready to transfer a nosey PC from the Cardiff police force to Torchwood. He just hoped she was going to be worth the headache he felt coming on.
The expected call did come and the Captain specifically said to bring in any alien tech that he had at home. Ianto came in with only himself. At the Captain’s raised eyebrow, Ianto said, “I don’t need the extra trouble at home. Picking up after you lot is enough without bringing home something that could level my housing unit.”
Owen muttered “Kiss up” while he handed over the pheromones. Tosh just blushed as she handed over the book copying tech. The newbie just looked around with wide eyes, but Ianto thought he could see a hint of superiority gleaming in her eyes. This was going to be a battle. He just knew it. Ianto took the items that Tosh and Owen brought from home to be put back in the archives and thought about making sure that no one was allowed in without him supervising. And the damn place was going to need a filing system quicker than he thought if he missed the pheromones and the book copying tech that his coworkers took home. Yep, new rule for the archives: Ianto was to be present for the signing out and signing in of all alien tech from the archives.
“Sir, what are we going to do about the glove and the knife?” asked Ianto.
“They’re going into the secure archives. I don’t want them to be used again.”
“Then why don’t you just destroy them? They are too much of a temptation to leave around.” Ianto had a bad feeling about those pieces. He didn’t want them to be around to bite them in the butt again.
“Because they need to be studied,” argued the new girl. “May be someday they can be used to save lives. After all, you people did bring back a dead body. At least it can be used to help solve murders.”
“It is not coming out again. That is final,” said the Captain. “Now, this is Gwen. She will be replacing Suzie. Gwen, you’ve met everyone, but this time these are your new coworkers. Dr. Owen Harper is our medic. Dr. Toshiko Sato is our tech analyst. And Ianto Jones is our Admin. You will be starting out as a field officer since you were in patrol. You start in a couple of weeks.”
Again, Ianto thought he saw the gleam of triumph. What was this girl thinking? Was she under the impression that she was to be the next second in command? Ianto could only wait and see. He might have to break his cover with the Captain and the rest of the Torchwood workers soon.