aviv_b_artwork | Treachery

TITLE:   Layer Upon Layer (Part 14 of the Treachery Series)
RATING:  PG-13
WARNING:   None
CHARACTERS:  John (Ianto), Carlos, Tosh, Owen
DISCLAIMER: Not mine; Aunty B's and RTD's
WORDS: ~ 1460
SUMMARY: More secrets are revealed. Owen finds a particularly shocking one about John/Ianto.

Treachery (Part 1) here: http://aviv-b.livejournal.com/49816.html
All chapters are linked.

Carlos didn’t know everything UNIT was up to, but he knew enough to provide John an overview of what was going on, at least in regards to the cloning program. By the end of the afternoon, John had more questions than answers.

“How do you know you’re the ‘real’ Carlos? Couldn’t that be a memory they implanted in you?” he asked they wandered around the lake and over to the Bamboo Garden.

Carlos had never considered that possibility. “Anything’s possible, but all of us ‘originals’, as we’re called, are housed in the same section of the prison. They troop us into their hospital for medical examinations and cell samples several times a week. None of us has a tattoo.”

When John asked how many of them were being used for cloning, Carlos looked down. “There’s only three of us now, a redheaded woman from London in her thirties, a man in his fifties from Kenya and me. I think there were about fifteen of us to start. But some cell lines wouldn’t clone, some produced unusable clones, some of the clones got sick and died or rogue or something else.”

“Where are the other ‘originals?”

“I reckon they’re dead. We’re expendable, no one will miss us. I came off the streets of Rio. A child prostitute with no family. Got caught trying to nick a customer’s wallet. Unfortunately, that customer was a UNIT Brigadier.”

“Are you all used as comfort companions?”

“I think that was the original plan, but they realized early on that while you could turn a middle-aged white collar criminal into a good comfort companion that some clones would be more useful as informants or the like. Honestly, I don’t think there are any Carloses out there working on stealing state secrets. They would have to teach my clones everything about computers and files and passwords and all that kind of stuff, because I know nothing about it.”

John smiled; He silently agreed that Carlos’ potential as an industrial or government spy was pretty limited. Computer hacking was an art as much as a skill; you had to have some pretty sophisticated knowledge to defeat some of the newer security fire walls.

“I think the other two ‘originals’ have proved much more versatile. But I guess I still have value because they are going to be taking new cell samples from me next week. And its not like I have choice, is there?”

“And the assassins? How many of us are there?”

“I don’t know,” but I heard some of the guards talking about assassins going mad, something about old memories bleeding through.”

John pondered this for a moment, then asked, “I have strange dreams about people I don’t know, yet they seem familiar. Could that be what they were talking about?”

Carlos thought they could be until John told him about some of his more vivid dreams. “No way,” Carlos snarked, “are your dreams real. Flying dinosaurs and a human killing robot and a man who can’t die, you’ve been watching too much science fiction on the television, that’s what I think.”

John shrugged. It was a daft idea, but he was still glad he asked. As they headed back to the main gate, Carlos warned John to be careful. John nodded but wasn’t convinced he needed to worry. “Will I see you again after tonight?”

“I don’t know, but we’ll have to put on a good show for them back at your flat if I’m going to live past tomorrow.” And while John was uneasy about the whole idea, Carlos reassured him that he liked being with John and he wouldn’t have to fake enjoying it.

Back at the flat, John and Carlos put on a hell of a show, maybe for UNIT, maybe for themselves. Ianto was not surprised when he woke the next morning to find that Carlos was already gone.

Two days later John returned to the UNIT hospital for continuing therapy. His doctor seemed pleased with his progress and suggested they try some biofeedback to suppress the few nightmares he was still experiencing. He had just settled into a comfortable recliner and had a pulse monitor put on his finger and an electrode attached to his head when he felt a sharp prick at his neck. He tried to sit up but couldn’t. Then everything went black.

****

Tosh and Owen continued to dig through UNIT’s files not finding much more of interest. There were plenty of files that normally would have caught their attention; bribes, thefts, and other general criminal activities under UNIT’s direction as well as attempts to overthrow dictators and elected governments. But now they were interested in only one thing, how to locate Ianto and bring him safely home before UNIT killed him.

This time it was Owen who set them on the right track. Reading over the files from Ianto’s last disastrous mission, Owen noticed that there were references to treatment for medical and psychological problems.

“Oi, Tosh,” he shouted to her from her lounge, “did you every find any medical records for Ianto once he was altered?”

Tosh walked into the lounge having finished changing into some grey sweats and a black T-shirt. “No, just about the implantation surgery and follow up, nothing after that.” She stopped and thought for a moment. “That’s odd, isn’t it?”

They quickly located records for UNIT’s medical and rehabilitation facilities but there were no records on Ianto or anything related to the assassination or cloning programs. It took about a week for Tosh to find the records. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “I can’t believe they used the same key strokes to hide these files as they did in their main data base. Hold the Control and Alt keys down and then type UNIT. Very clever.”

Owen couldn’t understand how careless UNIT was being. “You don’t think they want us to find these files do you? Could they have set a trap, or be watching our progress?”

Tosh shrugged. “I haven’t seen any trace of us being tracked. I think they’ve gotten away with this for so long that they’ve become overly confident and careless. But that’s all to the good, isn’t it?”

Tosh and Owen scanned the first few pages of medical records together. Nothing terribly interesting there, some mentions of scrapes and bruises from Ianto’s flight from Oman and some standard therapy sessions for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Tosh yawned. It had been a long and tiring week and it was already just past midnight. “Well I’m going to bed. There doesn’t appear to be anything that interesting so I suggest we continue tomorrow night.”

Owen nodded. “Just give me a couple of minutes and I’ll join you.” Seeing the look of concern on Tosh’s face he added, “You’ve shown me a dozen times how to close out the programs; I’m not going to mess it up.”

Normally, Tosh would have stayed up as a precaution, but she was too tired to argue. “Ok, see you in a bit,” she replied as walked out of the lounge and toward the bedroom.

Owen continued to read Ianto’s files for another hour. Something about them was bothering him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it but… He noticed that one of the psychiatric reports had a link at the very end. He clicked on it.

“Shite, I don’t believe it.”

The final group of medical records detailed the attempted brain washing of Ianto after his mission to Oman. A man named Carlos was mentioned several times and it didn’t take Owen long to puzzle out that he was one of the clones. As he read on though, he became a little confused, was Carlos a clone or a ‘real’ person? And then there were records detailing how Carlos was killed, and then later how Carlos was alive, and finally now Carlos was back with John.

Owen muttered as he tried to understand what the records meant. Did the time sequence of the records get mixed up? He reread the notes through from the beginning. No, everything was in proper date order, but the whole section on Carlos and Ianto/John since he returned from Oman, didn’t make any sense. And now it looked like they’d turned off the implants. He’d have to show this to Tosh in the morning and see what she thought.

He scrolled to the page at the link and felt his blood run cold when he saw the title:

FINAL MISSION.

It was worse than he thought. While it seemed that UNIT was uncertain whether Ianto would be successful on this next assignment there was no doubt about one thing; UNIT had made certain that Ianto/John would not survive the mission.

Chapter 15 here: http://aviv-b.livejournal.com/98066.html