Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"Ianto? No luck at the hospital," Jack's voice came through the phone between crackles; wind hitting the mic. Ianto lowered the volume. "Rupesh promised he'd try to get us in but the parents are keeping a close eye on their kids."

"No progress here either. Gwen's arranging for custody of 'Timothy White', real name Clement MacDonald. We'll have him in the Hub by tomorrow."

"That's a start but it won't tell us why only he and kids are affected. Keep looking for a child. I'll be home soon."

"Frobisher, if you don't tell us what you know, we can't do our jobs," Jack snapped into the phone. "What happened to Clem and his friends in 1965?"

Gwen caught Ianto's eyes as she handed Clem a cup of tea and pointed to the ceiling of the Hub. "Myfanwy?" she mouthed. Ianto shook his head.

"Out," he said quietly. Gwen nodded and patted Clem's shoulder. He was still eyeing everything suspiciously; a pterodactyl would have been too much.

"I don't care what's classified," Jack growled. "Kids are in danger. You've got kids, don't you?" He whirled a finger at Ianto and hurried over; Ianto quickly brought something up on his screen and pointed. Jack peered at it. "Do you want Holly and Lilly to go through what happened to Clem?"

Clem twitched sharply and nearly dropped the teacup, but Jack, listening to the reply, grinned. "That'd be a good idea, Mr Secretary." He winked at Gwen. "I'm all ears."

Gwen gave him a thumbs up and went back to patting Clem's shoulder. He twitched – "Isn't it? Isn't it?" – and Gwen steadied the teacup. Ianto peered at him, brow furrowed, then swung back to his screen and started typing.

It took a minute, but as Jack listened to Frobisher, his smile faded into doubt, then suspicion. "And that's all," he said flatly. "Everything that happened." Frobisher said something and Jack snorted. "Of course you are. I hope Holly and Lilly believe you," he added, and hung up.

"Bad?" Ianto asked. Jack shook his head.

"According to Frobisher, in 1965 these aliens kidnapped twelve orphans, including Clem, and left behind a cure for influenza because they considered that a fair trade."

"Bull," said Gwen. Jack saluted her.

"So they didn't know Clem wasn't taken until we found him," said Ianto, still typing, "but they know who the aliens are and sold a dozen kids to them."

"Sounds like."

Ianto frowned. "So what do they want now?"

Jack shook his head and leaned on the back of Ianto's chair. "I don't think Frobisher knows. The only useful thing he said is they're calling this species '456' because they communicated on that radio frequency. See if you can find anything on it." Ianto nodded. "And here's a weird new thing: We've got orders." He looked ready to laugh. "We're to find out how the children are being controlled and stop it."

Gwen narrowed her eyes. "Sounds like they're going for containment. Avoid panic and all that."

"Yeah. But let's do it anyway; might give us a clue how to stop these '456'. Clem," Jack said, stepping down in front of the chairs, "we're going to need your help. Are you up for that?"

He nodded shakily, clinging to Gwen's hand and looking at her imploringly. "Is it safe for the baby?" he asked.

Gwen squeezed his hand. "Yes, I'll be right there with you the whole time. It'll be fine."

"The test can't hurt our baby," Jack added, just because he could. When Gwen glared at him he grinned and asked, "What did Rhys say? Does he think he's got to punch me?"

"None of your damn business, Jack Harkness. And no."

A day and a half of tests didn't turn up much; Clem described a clearer memory of the woman who'd driven him and the other children to the light, but nothing that could identify her, and all of Owen's usual equipment found nothing helpful. UNIT's tests in Washington found nothing helpful. No one worldwide had found anything helpful. Jack was starting to haul the weirder alien-origin scanners upstairs when Ianto stopped by the storage room. "Anything?"

"I'm recording the 456 radio frequency and I've hacked the mobiles of Frobisher, the Prime Minister and their staff. They're being careful not to discuss the details electronically but they're building something in Thames House."

Jack sat back against a crate, one knee hitched and spreading his legs. "Not that I'm not always ready to be impressed by you, Ianto, but how'd you manage that?"

Ianto gave a sad little smile. "Tosh had backdoor programmes written for just about everything."

Oh Tosh. Always prepared. Jack nodded and stood up. "Any idea what?"

"From the tools and materials they're requisitioning it looks like a small controlled atmosphere, highly toxic to humans." His lips thinned. "And we know they have teleporters."

"Any cameras in the area?"

"Not yet, but the Prime Minister appointed Frobisher to be 'our representative', so he'll have to report back." Jack shook his head.

"Green's a control freak. He'll have a live feed right in there with them. See if you can get into that."

"I can."

Jack smiled. "Didn't doubt it."

Ianto hesitated. "And I, ah, found the car," he said. "Well, the police found it, it's mostly all right. PC Davies had it towed here. I'll have it ready to go soon. Sorry for the inconvenience," he said brightly. Jack frowned.

"'Mostly'?"

"They didn't break into our software, all the encryption is intact and none of the hard drives are missing or copied," he reported. Jack raised an eyebrow and Ianto shuffled his feet. "There was some physical damage. I'll get it fixed up."

Jack waited. Ianto shifted his weight again, practically squirming. Jack kept waiting, face blank.

"They took the screens, keyboards, tyres, road flares, snow chains and most of the seats." He wouldn't meet Jack's eyes. "And they may have taken the engine."

He frowned. "And you let this happen."

"Triple deadlocked, Jack," he wailed, and Jack cracked a grin. He tried a few seconds longer to hide it but Ianto's miserable face was too much; he chuckled.

"It's not funny," Ianto muttered. Ears burning, he stepped down and gestured to the small crate Jack had been shifting. "Need a hand?"

"Depends what you do with it," said Jack, waggling his eyebrows. Ianto gave him a look that was more relieved than anything and crouched to help lift it. "One, two three – lift."

It wasn't quite as heavy as it looked, but it was wider than the door and had a large "THIS WAY UP" stamped on the top. Backing up till his heels hit the doorframe, Ianto considered it. "Think it's important?"

"Nah."

They tilted the crate till it fit and made their way upstairs.

"Rupesh texted," Jack said a while later. He sat back against Ianto's desk and frowned. "Again. Still no children they can legally release to us or let us in to run tests on, even with retcon."

Ianto glanced up. "Should we start looking at illegally?" Gwen's head snapped round. Jack's mouth tightened.

"No," he said after a minute. "Not yet. But put together a list of children who are wards of the state. Maybe we can pressure Frobisher into pulling some strings."

Gwen was frowning. "Jack–"

"We're getting nowhere, Gwen," he said irritably, pushing off the desk. "If we can't stop the kids chanting then God knows what else the 456 can do to them. How's Clem?"

She sighed but allowed the change of subject. "Sleeping. Hasn't remembered anything else."

"Keep pushing him," Jack ordered, heading to his office. "The kids said the 456 are coming today but we don't know when so hurry it up."

His office door didn't slam, but only because it swung. Ianto looked awkwardly over the top of his screen, hesitated, opened his mouth–

"Don't you dare apologise for him, that's not your job," Gwen said sternly. Then a smile twitched across her face. "Bit of relationship advice: don't ever get in the habit of being his mother."

Ianto looked pleased and like he was trying hard not to look pleased, ducked back behind his screen and cleared his throat. "Frobisher's on his way to Thames House with his staff; looks like he's transferring his base of operations."

"Any clue why?"

"Best guess, they're waiting for the 456 to arrive, same as us."

Gwen groaned. "I can't push Clem any further and there's nothing more to test right now. He's hooked up to all the machines; if the aliens speak through them again we'll get all the readings we need. Until then..." she tossed her hands up.

Ianto's phone buzzed; he glanced down. Curious, Gwen craned her neck round and eyed him. "Fourth time today, Ianto."

"My sister," he answered, texting back. "She's watching half the kids on their estate and I managed to give her the idea that I know what's going on."

"Dear God, how'd you manage that?"

"Might've let something slip when I tried to borrow my nephew."

When finally something happened, when Clem went suddenly silent and pointed towards a wall, no one noticed.

"Right, so, roughly seventy thousand children in the UK in the care of local authorities, approximately three hundred of those in the Cardiff area," Ianto reported, spreading papers on the boardroom table. "Just under forty have no extended family or connections outside the orphanages."

"No one to notice when we take them," Gwen translated, jaw tight.

Jack ignored her. "Frobisher's finally made himself useful and is arranging for us to take custody of any children we need in order to figure this out."

"Plural?"

"Only if we need to. They're all affected the same way so there shouldn't be any need to compare them. Gwen, anything new?"

She shook her head and tossed down her own stack of printouts. "No child under about four is affected and the oldest reported cases are about thirteen, fourteen; it seems to be tied to bodily development but there's nothing concrete. No reports from anywhere the world of any child not being affected except those in comas or unconscious for medical reasons. American children don't remember waking up in the middle of the night and don't stay awake after; UNIT says they don't even open their eyes. Children in surgery don't start talking through their breathing tubes either, thank God."

"That's interesting," murmured Ianto, leafing through papers. "That suggests–"

"The 456 are taking control of their voices through the brain, not directly controlling their motor functions," Gwen finished tiredly. "That's what UNIT concluded. After talking for hours."

"So what's different about a child's brain?"

"So many things," said Gwen, "too technical for me to understand. And none of it would explain Clem."

Jack sighed and leaned on the table. "We really need a doctor on the team."

"Any word from Rupesh?"

"Busy in A&E and no experience with aliens yet. I want Martha," Jack complained.

"She's back with UNIT, who do you think I've been talking to?" Gwen snapped.

Ianto was about to step between them – remind them how short on sleep they all were and maybe a nice cup of tea? – when the telly at the end of the room, left muted on the news, caught his eye. He scrambled for the remote.

"Yet again, every child has stopped. Every single child in the world. There seems to be no reports of speech, only that they seem to be indicating something in the sky."

Gwen shot out of her seat. "Clem!"

Their footsteps clanged on the metal walkway as the three of them scrambled round and down the stairs, but Clem was sitting where they'd left him, on a chair in the autopsy room, attached to a dozen monitors and pointing blindly at a wall. "–are here."

He slumped. Gwen hurriedly knelt in front of him and took his hands, checking his pulse while Jack and Ianto checked all the monitors. "Nothing obvious on this one. How long ago did it start?"

"I'm comparing the last minute's readings to five minutes ago, ten minutes ago..." Ianto pushed aside one screen and went to the next. "Nothing yet. This might take a while."

"It's them," said Clem, breathing fast and clinging to Gwen. "They're back."

"It's all right, we're getting all the data now, it'll help us stop them," she promised, rubbing his hand. "Jack, you've got your readings, we're going to take all these wires off him now, aren't we?"

He sighed, looked through another set of results, and nodded. "Get some sleep, Clem. We'll let you know when we find something."

Turned out, there were a lot of 'somethings', all of them tiny and insignificant on their own. "Everything you've got matches what we've found with the children here," Martha summed up, looking tiredly down at them through the screen on the boardroom wall. "For some reason, Clem McDonald's mind is reacting exactly the same way to these 456 wavelengths as the children's minds are, but how they're making or maintaining that connection, I just have no idea."

Jack sat back and rubbed his eyes for the third time since the video call had started; Ianto reminded himself to make some more coffee. Again. Maybe he should just move the coffee things in here permanently. "So we still have no idea how to disconnect them," said Jack.

"No," said Martha. "But I just got some good news in: We've been sending narrow targeted 456 wavelengths to children in and out of chambers with electromagnetic shielding. The control group show the same signs of altered brain activity, but the children inside seem to be unaffected. We'll know for sure next time the aliens talk through them."

She was trying hard to be positive about it, forced smile and chipper tone, but Jack didn't bother. "Even if it does the 456 are smart enough to know we can't shield the entire planet and kids can't live in metal boxes forever. Forget blocking the transmission; we need to find a way to make a weapon out of it, force them to stop."

"How, Jack?" Martha replied, slumping on her desk, exhausted and dropping the optimism. "We can't even find their ship. All we've got is this wavelength and half the world is working on a way to weaponise it, with no luck. A constructive wave is our best working theory but no one can figure out how to transmit it, let alone what to send that wouldn't be just noise."

"We know the children are on the right frequency; we've just got to find something that resonates on the same frequency they do."

"Right," Martha drawled. "That'll be easy."

A smile ghosted over Jack's face. "Get to work," he said. "We'll go through all our alien tech, see if we've got anything. Call us back 8am tomorrow morning."

"You realise that's 3am over here, right?" asked Martha.

"Yeah."

She narrowed her eyes. "You know, you're not making that job offer any more tempting."

He grinned. "Come work over here and there won't be a time difference, Mrs Smith."

"That's Doctor Jones to you." Martha grinned and shook her head. "Later, Jack."

The screen blanked out to a logo and Ianto raised the remote to click it off. Jack turned and blinked at him. "Didn't know you were still here."

"Thanks, ever so flattering," he replied, getting up. "Coffee? You've been in here for hours."

"Yeah, please," said Jack, rubbing his eyes. "Anything happening out there?"

"They've set a meeting for 7pm to open formal negotiations with the 456. Gwen and Clem are getting some sleep in the meantime. You should too."

"I don't sleep, Ianto."

"No, you snore deliberately and wrap your arm round my face all night for laughs," he replied mildly and stepped out the door, keeping his back to Jack and fighting down a smile as he added, "Like a teddy bear."

The indignant (embarrassed) "Hey!" was more than worth it.

By 7:15pm laughter felt like a lifetime ago. Watching the hacked feed meant for the Prime Minister was like living through a bad horror movie and Clem needed constant reassurance that no, it couldn't see him, didn't know he was there, it'd be all right.

When Ianto realised, "He's got that thing to lie. They're on the same side," he looked to Gwen and Jack and the glance they shared said, Shit.

When the 456 said "We want a gift" Jack whispered, "Oh no. No."

When it said "We will take your children" Clem broke down: "They want to take them, like they did before. Like before, like before, like before, like before, like before, like before..."

When it said "Ten percent", they stopped breathing. Even Clem went still.

Gwen blinked once, twice, then over and over as she shook her head. "They wouldn't."

"Somehow I doubt the 456 will take no for an answer," said Jack, eyes still fixed on the screen and gripping the back of Ianto's chair. "If we can't give them another option..."

Ianto breath shook in his lungs and a cold dread seeped into his stomach. "Last time they chose orphans. But... ten percent." He looked up, horror creeping up his throat. "Who will they choose, Jack?"

Jack jerked back, blinked. "Fuck."

Then he burst into action, scrabbling in his pocket and sprinting for the other desk. "Ianto, call your sister. Get them out of there. Anywhere." He jammed his mobile under his ear and started typing. "Gwen, get Martha back on the line, we are not resting until we find something we can use. Alice?" He said into the phone. "Alice, get Stephen and run. Get off the grid and stay low, right now."

Gwen and Ianto shared a glance; a dozen questions and old frustrations and no, not now, not now, not now. Ianto set his jaw and turned to his own phone. Work to do: Rhiannon and Johnny wouldn't have a clue how to hide from the government. They'd need false documents, new names, a safe house–

"No, not here, we're going to keep working on it here, we could be a target," Jack told 'Alice'. "Call me if you can, burner phones only. Don't believe anything the government says. Don't believe it's safe until you hear it from me."

They'd need to smuggle the kids in without being seen. Couldn't risk giving David or Mica new aliases; if they were discovered they'd be taken first. A vehicle with ample space for kids to hide in the boot, then. An SUV? Johnny would love it. They'd need new phones and he'd have to set them up himself, deliver them to Rhi face-to-face, explain how and when to use them. And he'd have to convince her that he knew what he was talking about in the first place. Aliens, still not real to most people. Bring them to the Hub? Mica would love Myfanwy.

"I know," Jack said. "I love you."

Ianto closed his eyes, breathed, and kept working.