aviv_b_artwork | Treachery part 17/?

TITLE:  A Roll of the Dice  (Part 17 of the Treachery Series)
RATING:  PG-13
WARNING:   None
CHARACTERS:  John (Ianto), Tosh, Owen
DISCLAIMER: Not mine; Aunty B's and RTD's
WORDS: ~ 1405
SUMMARY: Tosh and Owen attempt to stop John from carrying out his mission.

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

The door opened and Owen and Tosh froze as a man who looked quite different from their Ianto answered.

“Room service,” Owen finally said trying to enter the room.

This man showed no recognition of Owen or Tosh. John blocked their entrance until he had lifted the covers on the silver trays and verified the contents.

“Come in, but be quick about it.”

As they set up the small writing table for dinner, John moved to get something from his duffle bag. Tosh felt the hairs on the back of her neck raise. She pulled her stun gun, ran over to where John was and zapped him. John crumpled to the ground unconscious.

“What the hell did you do that for?” Owen growled out. He walked over to where Tosh was standing and cursed as he saw the gun in John’s hand.

“He recognized us. His eyes went even colder when he let us in.”

They rifled through his duffle finding dossiers and pictures on all of them. “He doesn’t know us from the past; otherwise all this background material wouldn’t be necessary. But he knew we were with Torchwood.”

Owen paced the room nervously. “How do we get him back to the Hub? I wasn’t thinking we’d have to move him in a state of total unconsciousness.”

They had originally thought to give him a mild stun and then administer Versed so he’d be in a state of ‘conscious sedation.’ Now that looked impossible. Owen worried that if he administered a stimulant to speed John’s return to consciousness, then injected Versed and later more anesthetic he might kill him.

“And if we don’t?” Tosh asked.

“Good point, let’s see if we can’t give him a small dose of stimulant and basically slap him awake.” It took the better part of an hour, but they did get John up and moving. They grabbed his duffle and began to walk John to the freight elevator. As they waited for the elevator to arrive, Owen ran back into John’s room, grabbed the tray of food and dumped it over in the hallway. He dragged the groggy waiter next to it and discarded his jacket nearby.

The freight elevator lead to a garage where Tosh had left her car. They pushed John into the back seat and made two phone calls. One for the clerk at the front desk of the Hilton Hotel and one to Mainframe.

“I just left my room on the seventh floor and there’s a waiter lying in the hallway. He was mugged, I think.” Owen disconnected the call and smiled as he held up the waiter’s wallet for Tosh to see. He’d toss it out the car window on the drive back.

Tosh sent a signal to Mainframe to initiate a program she had loaded the evening before. It would simulate a large rift spike two hours from the Hub in Herefordshire.

A few minutes into their drive back at the Hub, Tosh’s cell rang. It was Jack.

“Well that is unusual, but not unprecedented. Do you need…? Owen, Owen is… uh… indisposed. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. I’ll come into the Hub and guide you. I think Owen will be fine on his own. Yes, take Liz, don’t worry.”

They drove to a spot a few minutes from the Hub and waited. As soon as they saw the SUV tear down the street past them they made their way to the parking garage. John followed their orders as they helped him into the Hub. A quick check revealed that the whole team had gone on the wild goose chase.

Tosh made a quick contact with Jack to let him know that she was at the Hub and Owen was with her. “Figured it be easier to keep an eye on him here in case he gets sicker.”

Having dealt with the others, they quickly prepped Ianto for surgery. They had four hours to get the emotional controller out of him. Owen didn’t know if it could be done, let alone in four hours. But he couldn’t cut the connection until at least 8 PM or UNIT would know something had gone wrong.

He and Tosh worked carefully as they loosened the mesh net under the plate Unit had inserted into Ianto’s skull. They found the hardware easily enough but as Owen looked at the numerous tiny filaments running into various parts of the brain, he groaned in frustration. There was no way they could detach all the filaments in four hours without killing or seriously damaging the remainder of Ianto’s brain.

“Bollocks! I was afraid we’d find something like this.” Owen stabilized the skull so they could take a moment to figure out what to do.

Tosh and Owen looked at the schematics for the controller to see if they could disable it rather than remove it outright. Tosh knew she could figure out away if she just had enough time. But time was the one thing they didn’t have.

Tosh ran up to her computer and began to work probability calculations. Owen paced nervously behind her. “Go make us some coffee, Owen; your standing over me isn’t helping.” Owen nodded and headed over to the kitchenette. Less than an hour later she had narrowed down the possible ways to disable to controller to two. She’d need many more hours to refine the calculations to a point where she would be confident which method was better. And time was running out.

As she and Owen debated the merits of both solutions, her comm. crackled.

“Tosh do see any energy signal still coming from Herefordshire.”

“No, nothing at all. Let me scan the area.” Tosh waited a few seconds. “Not a thing, whatever came through must have burnt up in the atmosphere.” That had happened on a couple of other occasions and seemed the most reasonable explanation.

“I’d almost think our friend Mainframe was playing a joke on us,” Jack said sighing. “We’re heading back; see you in a couple of hours.”

Tosh looked at Owen. “We’re just going to have to choose one option and hope for the best.”

One route was to cut a few of the key secondary connections to the brain but leave the primary connection intact. They could probably save Ianto’s life that way, but he might end up an emotionless zombie. They both agreed that Ianto wouldn’t want to be himself again and find himself trapped in an emotionless, unresponsive brain.

The other choice was to sever the main connection, leave everything else in place and hope for the best. If it didn’t kill Ianto outright, he would be free of the emotional controller. Whether there would be anything left of Ianto was unknown. In the end they chose to, as Owen put it, shoot for the moon.

The minute they cut the main input from controller, Ianto’s vitals went wild. His blood pressure plummeted and the brain activity in his Cerebellum fluctuated wildly. Owen stabilized the blood pressure but there was nothing they could do to control the brain activity. They would just have to wait it out. A little more than an hour later, Ianto’s brain activity reverted to normal levels.

The readouts weren’t good. The Amygdala appeared to be the most severely affected part of the Cerebellum.

“Great, now he has damage to the parts of the brain that control memory, emotion and fear,” Owen said as he shook his head sadly. “We should have just killed him. It might have been kinder.”

“We did the best we could, Owen. We just have to hope for a reasonable outcome .”

Owen snorted. “He might still end up a zombie. How reasonable is that?” Tosh shot Owen a withering look.

They quickly closed the skull, securing the mesh net and then inserting the tiny plate back into place. “You know, the way this plate integrates into his skull makes me pretty sure that we’re not the only ones with access to future medical technology. I wonder what else UNIT has…”

“Owen, not now. We’ve very little time left,” Tosh gently chided.

Just as they finished the surgery, Tosh sent a decoy message out to herself stating that Captain Jack was dead. UNIT would surely pick up on it and assume that their mission had gone successfully.

The alarm sounded as the cog door rolled open. Jack, very much alive along with the Gwen and Liz entered the Hub.

Current Mood: worried

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

honey-felidae.livejournal.com

*gasp*

I think that my favourit place is under the bed.

So find Jack and the others Ianto/John now?
Were they quick enough to hid him?
Or do they only pull the sheet up and disguise him as a corpse?

Is John a Zombie? (What I find a very intresting idea..for a few chapters...)

Keep goin, Hon! You are great! *hugs and double chocolat muffins*
Feli

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Treachery part 17/?

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