Out of the Rift: Chapter 6

[theatre_girl79]

Title: Out of the Rift

Rating: R (for some violence and some eventual nudity and innuendo... hell, it is Torchwood)

Synopsis: A disturbance in the Rift, and the aftereffects are not exactly what they team figured it would be.

Disclaimers: If you recognize them, then they belong to BBC, RTD, and all those wonderful people. I'm just letting them play for a couple of days.

Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Carole led the way as she sped along the private driveway at O’Hare. The two cars pulled up in front of the main doors and Carole hopped out. Omni parked her car behind them. Mary Jo stepped out and Carole watched with amusement as Gwen and then Ianto and Jack crawled out from the back seat.

“How did you guys fit,” Carole asked.

“Ianto sat on Jack’s lap with Naomi and Gwen on either side of them,” Mary Jo supplied, a grin on her face.

Carole held her hand up to her mouth to cover her giggles imagining that bumpy ride over and through the Chicago potholes. She then turned back to the main doors, but they did not open. She looked at them quizzically and then stepped back and moved forward again, but yet the automatic doors did not open. Carole walked up to the doors and peered in. She could see her father’s workbag, a stack of the day’s newspapers, and an overturned cup of coffee in the main vestibule.

She peered through the second set of glass doors across from her and jumped back as a creature in a grey jumpsuit loped past.

“What?” Mary Jo moved next to Carole and looked into the lobby. The creature had already disappeared.

Carole looked at Mary Jo, alarm on her face, as she realized what she had seen. “SHIT!” Carole turned and popped her trunk open and reached in, grabbing up one of the claymores.

“What’s going on,” Owen said as he climbed out of her backseat. Tosh and Naomi had gotten out of their cars also.

“Trouble,” Carole said as she unsheathed the five-foot long, thick sword. She ran up to the main door and put the edge against the edge of the set of automatic doors. She began to wedge it in-between the adjoining doors.

Jack ran over and put his hands over hers. “What are you doing?”

“Trying to get in,” Carole said as she removed Jack’s hand from hers. “Sorry, I didn’t have a crowbar to pry open the door with!” She began to edge the sword in the doors again, but was met with resistance. “Crap!” She held the butt of the hilt against the glass door. “It’s fucking locked from the inside. They locked themselves in.”

Tosh and Gwen looked scared, and so did Mary Jo and John, who had now gotten out of the car. Jack put his hands on the blade’s hilt and wrenched it out of Carole’s grasp.

“What is happening,” Jack asked, his voice very calm.

Carole looked through the glass doors and found herself staring into the dark eyes of a Weevil. It apparently had stopped to stare and gape at them. Jack and the others followed her gaze, and jumped back a step. John ducked back into the car, while Naomi and Mary Jo moved behind their car, but still staring. Jack, Gwen and Owen pulled their weapons while Ianto pulled out a can of Weevil Spray.

“Bloody hell! What are they doing here?” Owen stepped forward, his gun in his outstretched hands.

Tosh ran some quick figures on her PDA. “They may have come through too. I am picking up a similar signature in this area.”

“What do we do Jack,” Gwen asked as she moved next to him.

“Good question,” Jack replied.

Suddenly Carole seemed to snap out of whatever trance she was in. She slowly moved her head to the left, seeing the back door in her peripheral vision. Quickly, she moved and ran next to Tosh. “I need the pass key.”

Tosh looked at her like she didn’t know what Carole was asking for.

Carole held out her hand. “The alien device you used back at the Edgewater, I need it, I need it now.”

Tosh looked at her a moment and then withdrew the device from her pants pocket. Jack seemed to shoot them a look of surprise. Carole grabbed the device and ran towards the far end of the building.

“Stop her,” Jack shouted.

Owen and Ianto both broke into sprints, chasing Carole down. Owen ran in front of the other door, holding up his hands, trying to stop her. Carole came to a halt, Ianto right behind her.

“Whoa, whoa. You can’t go in there.” Owen grabbed the device from her hand.

“Yes I am.” Carole snatched the device back.

“Do you have a death wish?” Owen grasped the device again.

“No!” Carole seized the device once again. “Did you see the blood on the floor? The discarded ‘pile’ of clothes where there should be none? The Weevils? I have to get them out!” She emphasized these last words by holding her hands up.

Ianto quickly procured the device out of her hands and stepped back. “That is precisely why you cannot go in there.”

Carole quickly turned on him, rage in her eyes. “That is precisely WHY I must go in there! I am going in there.” Carole lunged for Ianto and Owen quickly grabbed her arms behind her back. “LET GO OF ME!”

Before she knew it, Jack was upon the trio and had grabbed her by the shoulders also. He looked her in the eyes. “You cannot go in there. I will not let you go in there.”

“I have to.”

“You are not going in there and that is it.”

Carole tried to pull away, but the two men held her. “I have to. I know the people in there.” A couple of tears began to fall down her face. “My father is in there.” She stopped struggling and Owen let her go. “I already lost my mother. My father is in there somewhere.”

Jack paused and then let her go. Mary Jo came up to her, carrying the other broadsword.

“You can’t go in unarmed,” Mary Jo said.

Carole took the sword and held it out in front of her. She then looked at Jack. “We have to go in there. There are places they could have hidden. What if they are injured or secluded? Who else around here knows how to even attempt to handle a Weevil?”

“I’m going in Jack,” Owen said.

Carole turned on him, a thought of realization hitting her. “You can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because you can’t.”

“You just said there are probably injured in there, they would need a doctor,” Jack said.

“You can’t go into a small unknown space against Weevils. You might be the King of the Weevils, but you can’t let yourself get hurt.” Carole placed the point of the sword on the ground, emphasizing her point.

Owen looked at her. “King of the Fucking Weevils? Was a proclamation sent out?”

“No.” Carole could feel a cold sweat start.

Ianto stepped up to her. “What do you mean he can’t let himself get hurt?”

Carole looked around at the three men and then at Mary Jo. She then turned back to the men. “He is the only legitimate doctor we have with us. It would not make any sense to willingly send him into battle all willy-nilly like. What if he injures his other hand, or gets wounded? How does that help the rest of us?” She could feel her heart beating extremely fast. She hoped they believed her story.

“All right, we need to sweep the place, find any survivors and see how many Weevils we’re dealing with,” Jack said as he began to head back to the others. “You can go with since you know the building, but you will stay out of trouble. Tosh will monitor from the outside. Owen will not go. Gwen and Ianto are with me.”

“And me,” Mary Jo piped up.

“No.”

“I am helping find her father,” Mary Jo said coming around Jack and accidentally pointing the sword at him. When Mary Jo realized what she was doing, she moved it away. “This should make the odds more even.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Absolutely not.”

“What are you going to do? Kill me, resurrect me, and then kill me again? I am going in there.”

“I let a woman start talking and see what happens.” Jack just shook his head. “Fine.”

A throbbing pain ran across the top of Carole’s head as she began to come to. She tried to get up, but was held back. She slowly opened her eyes, and blinked away the sweat. Refocusing she looked again at who was holding her arms back.

“Welcome back,” Owen said, and then he stood up. He reached down his hand, which she gladly took.

Carole stood up, and promptly fell forward into Owen’s arms. Her right arm was stiff from where it had been jammed against the wall. Something fell out of her lap and clattered to the floor. She looked down and saw a Glock 17. She bent down to pick it up and as she stood up, a blinding pain shot through her head and made her wince.

“What happened,” Carole asked as Owen held her steady. She recognized the beige and white walls of one of Signature’s hallways.

“You got the shit knocked out of you, but not before taking out a couple of ugly buggers.” Owen nodded his head at the gun.

Suddenly it all came rushing back to Carole. She remembered how they had entered Signature through the back door, found way more Weevils than they thought would be there, had tried to elude a fight between them and the Weevils, how she had found the discarded cop’s gun, and had had to defend herself against a fast encroaching group of Weevils. She also remembered being overpowered as she headed into a secluded hallway, and her head bashing into the wall. The pain from their claws also remained more than a memory as she looked down at her left arm.

“You were staying outside.” She leaned up against Owen for a moment.

“You weren’t supposed to get hurt. We subdued the Weevils with a spray bomb, got the survivors out and now are getting you out.” Owen led her out another side door and Mary Jo nearly tackled the two of them.

“OH my God! Are you okay? What happened? How did this happen? I thought you were staying back?” Mary Jo hovered over her.

Carole raised her head and glared at Mary Jo. “Shut it or I will show you my scars and the blood.”

“Ewww… no.” Mary Jo ran back by the cars and watched as Ianto, Tosh, and Omni finished sealing the doors electronically and physically by placing garbage cans, metal sheets and anything else they could find in front of them.

Carole quickly looked up at Owen and Jack who had joined them. “My dad,” she asked.

“He’s fine. We got him out and taken to a hospital.” Jack stood there surveying the scene around him.

“The hospital?”

“He was fine, but a couple of his coworkers were injured, so he went with them for now,” Owen said as he released Carole and she sat down on the edge of her bumper. “Now what?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said, shoving his hands inside his pants pockets.

“We need a home base Jack,” Owen stated. “And if this keeps up, we’re going to need more medical supplies.”

“Every building has a back door. It’s required on every building now,” Carole said. “It’s become automatic to add in certain codes. This one should. Plus, any military or organizational stronghold should have a secondary access. Even castles had tunnels at least.”

“That’s true Jack. Even Torchwood has a back door,” Gwen added, coming up on the group.

“I think we should scan for one,” Tosh said, joining the coffee clatch. “There is definitely something bunker-like underground, but something is interfering with it, so I can’t scan that big of an area.”

“What if we drove around, allowing Tosh to scan and find the back door?”

“Agreed.” Jack stepped back. “All right, back to the cars. We’re finding the back door.”

Carole stood up and climbed into the driver’s seat.

“Are you okay,” John asked from next to her. His eyes betrayed his aloof tone, showing her how much he cared.

“I’ll be fine,” she said as she started up the car.

“Good, because I don’t drive automatic,” Owen said.

Carole pulled away from the Signature building, leaving that hellish part of the night behind them. A deep blanket of darkness had settled over the city and it seemed to evoke peace. She began to drive up the main road, towards the FAA building.

“What made you think there were buildings underground,” Owen asked from the backseat.

Carole pointed out the left-side window at a yellow vent rising up from the ground. “Does that explain it?”

“That explains the thought, but it doesn’t explain a lot of things.”

Carole smiled at the quip and braked the car at the stop sign, Omni’s car stopped right behind her. “Anything yet,” she asked Tosh, but Tosh just kept quiet.

All of a sudden the air seemed to shift. Carole opened her window and could hear something on the wind. Unexpectedly a very unique warping sound seemed to come out of the darkness and surround them. Carole exchanged an incredulous look with John and then threw the car into park, and turned off the ignition. She opened the door, stepping out, automatically pocketing the car keys. John, too, got out and leaned against the car door. Mary Jo, Naomi and Jack had each climbed out of the Saab behind them.

The five of them looked at each other and then their eyes drifted to the base of the water tower in front of them. The air seemed to bend and twist before their eyes, melding with the wind as the sound got louder.

“It can’t be,” several of them muttered under their breaths.

Before them materialized a blue British police call box. They held their breaths as the door opened and a young looking man in a brown suit and white trainers stepped out, his long brown coat over his arm. He pulled out a pair of black spectacles and put them on, peering at the group before him.

“Well now, this is interesting.”

An older red-headed woman popped out of the police call box right behind him, her fiery red-hair glistened in the moonlight as she ran her hands through it.

“Now where did we land,” she asked.

Suddenly Jack, Mary Jo, and Naomi ran towards the Doctor. They stopped right next to him and Jack engulfed him in a hug. Carole walked towards the group as John climbed back into the car muttering a string of curses in English, Spanish and somehow German.

“I wasn’t expecting that kind of greeting,” the Doctor said as Jack pulled back. “Quite interesting things going on here. The Tardis just pulled us here with no warning at all whatsoever. This was not the course we had started on. Massive energy signatures and all that stuff.”

“Is this a normal greeting,” the redhead asked from behind the Doctor. “What day is it?”

“Well, well, well, I’m not quite sure.” The Doctor regarded Jack with a look.

“It’s a Sunday,” Naomi chimed in.

“I was looking for a date,” the redhead snapped back.

“Well, now, I guess I did land on a Sunday,” the Doctor stated as he looked around. “Guess I can’t say ‘nothing’ ever happens on a Sunday.”

Without a warning, an alarm seemed to go off, and the group at once turned towards the Tardis.

“What?” The Doctor took a step forward. “What!?”

With nary a pop, it suddenly took off, its warping sound chilling them all to the bone. It flashed once, then twice and disappeared.

“What? What?” The Doctor ran over to where the Tardis had been and looked up at the water tower. “What?” He looked back at the group. “What?”

“That is definitely not good, not good at all,” Naomi said.

The Doctor advanced back on the group, ripping off his brainy-looking specs. He came face-to-face with Jack. “Explain.”