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Special Unit 3 - Part 4 of 9
Title: SPECIAL UNIT 3
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Torchwood/Special Unit 2 x-over, with a guest appearance of the Tenth Doctor.
Category: Heavy-duty Gwen bashing and a great deal of silliness.
Rating: G, suitable for all, with the exception of die-hard Gwackers.
Genre: Crackfic, with gender bending, body swap, whatever – the whole nine miles.
Series: none
Timeframe: indefinite. Perhaps “Sleepers”, from Series 2 for Torchwood, but not necessarily.
Summary: Once again, Gwen fumbles around with something she was told not to touch. The consequences are…unusual.
Disclaimer: the usual: don’t own, don’t sue! Everything belongs to RTD and BBC - and UPN, respectively.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
PART THREE: WE ARE LEARNING WHO WE ARE
Author’s notes:
It turns out that things are a lot more complicated than our fearless heroes would have expected to be. But that’s Torchwood for you.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jack followed Ianto back to the storage room where Artefacts number one through five were still waiting to be taken to the Archives. Apparently, Ianto had begun to take them away backwards.
“So?” he asked, a little impatiently.
There was the canine skull in the jar; the Draconian holoprojector, showing the three-dimensional images of unknown stellar bodies; the alien soup tureen containing the forcefield of no visible purpose; the Alzarian tool with the whirling blades – and something that looked like a translucent stained glass Tiffany lamp, filled with blue and golden light. It was beautiful, but…
“Wait a minute!” Jack realized. “This isn’t what Artefact #2 is supposed to look like. Wasn’t that the metal arch of Chulan technology marks on it? The one with the winged pendant?”
“It was… in its inactive state,” Ianto pointed at the winged broche on top of the ‘lamp’. “And there is the pendant. We know some of this stuff changes its shape when activated… well, I have to say, this is quite the metamorphosis! Just like…”
“Just like with us,” Jack finished for him grimly. Ianto nodded.
“Exactly. Whatever this device is, and frankly, I haven’t got a clue, it has to do something with our problem.”
“But how the hell did Gwen manage to activate it?” Jack wondered. “The UNIT scientists have tried everything they could think of to make it do something; it never worked.”
“Well, scientists work methodically,” Ianto said. “The thought to start poking it like a bloody fool possible never occurred to them.”
“Fools jump in where angels fear to thread,” Jack murmured. “Sometimes it can be a great advantage. Most of the time, however, it leads to great disasters.”
Ianto nodded wordlessly, because really, what could he possibly have said to that?
“All right,” Jack said. “Can we switch it off? Perhaps the effects will be reversed when it’s no longer actively working, whatever it is it does.”
“I reckon it won’t be so easy,” Ianto said. “Besides, we need to ask how she’s switched the bloody thing on to begin with… and pray that the off switch is the same one as the on switch.”
“If she still remembers,” Jack wasn’t very optimistic about that. “Look at all this stuff; it seems she’s fumbled with every single artefact in this room.”
“Fortunately, the rest of them has turned out quite harmless,” Ianto replied, switching off the Draconian holoprojector with a mental instruction and touching a sensor field on the side of the ‘soup tureen’, at which the forcefield of unknown purpose promptly collapsed. Then he held up the jar with the skull again. It blubbered merrily at him, and the skull began jump and down.
“Jack, can I keep this in my office, down in the archives? It doesn’t do anything, and it’s kinda cute. I always wanted a dog when I was a kid but never got one.”
“Ianto,” Jack tried to stay patient,” it’s not a dog! It’s a frigging skull, and we don’t even know what kind of creature it used to be while it was still alive.”
“So?” Ianto tilted his head to the side and tried the puppy-eyed routine. “You keep a hand in a jar in your office, why can’t I have a skull? It’s friendly. I like the way it blubbers when touched; and the skull is much like a dog, jumping up and down happily to greet its master. It’s lonely down there, you know, and I do spend a lot of time in the Archives.”
Jack knew, of course, that he was being shamelessly manipulated, but it was hard to resist Ianto with the puppy eyes, no matter in which form. Besides, it was so rare that Ianto would ask anything for just himself; so if he wanted to keep the stupid skull, why shouldn’t he have it?
“All right, all right,” he said, all too aware that once again, he’d been out-charmed by his young lover, and not really minding it. “Keep the damn thing – but be careful with it.”
“I promise I won’t let Gwen anywhere near it,” Ianto replied solemnly. “We should go back to the others, though, and find out what she’s done with the Chulan artefact. I don’t dare to experiment with it. It might make everything worse.”
“A wise decision,” Jack nodded. “Chulan technology is tricky. I once had a little Chulan spaceship. She was a beauty, with particle transporter system and a semi-sentient board computer and stuff – I loved her. But she could have a will of her own sometimes, and it was better not to mess with her.”
“What happened to her?” Ianto asked, intrigued by the rare chance to learn something about Jack’s mysterious past. Jack sighed.
“I had to blow her up during the Blitz, to save London. That was how I met the Doctor and Rose for the first time.”
“And elike very story concerning them, I’m never gonna learn more about it, am I?” Ianto commented, somewhat bitterly. He didn’t mind Jack still having that special connection with the Doctor… well, not all too much. What really bothered him was Jack’s reluctance to share his past.
“Hey,” Jack said softly. “Enough of that. I’ll tell you the story when we get out of this mess, I promise. It’s not such a big secret. It’ just hard to speak about it; about the time when I was still mortal.”
“I understand,” Ianto replied quietly. “And I’m not sulking, really. It’s just…”
“It’s just hard to be left out, I know,” Jack finished for him. “I will tell you, honestly. You deserve to know how I’ve become the person who I am not. Just let us solve our current problem first, okay?”
Ianto nodded. “Okay. Back to the others, then?”
When they got back to the main Hub area, they found Gwen conscious again… and in complete hysterics. Her voice, not a pleasant-sounding one to begin with in this form, had acquired a particularly shrill quality that could have shattered glass. Tosh, running a search on her computer, was covering her ears, wincing in pain.
“For God’s sake, Owen, do something with her!”
“What am I supposed to do?” Owen snapped. “I’ve already tried to give her a sedative, and the needle fucking broke. I can’t sedate her; I can’t take any blood or tissue samples to check her DNA, nothing! And she’s not very cooperative, either, as you can see.”
“That’s not her way to deal with things; it never was,” Andy agreed. “Perhaps Captain Harkness can reason with her.”
“Yeah, because it worked so well before,” Owen muttered. Andy smiled at him fondly.
“Don’t be so negative, sweetheart. Let him try first.”
Owen looked like he’d hit him any moment; then he looked at Jack and made a sweeping gesture at Gwen. “All yours, Captain.”
Jack sighed. Dealing with Gwen’s all-too-frequent dramatics had become a real annoyance lately. Then he grabbed the stunted creature’s shoulders and forced it – her – to look at him.
“Gwen!” he said in an authoritative tone. “Look at me! Listen to me! Dammit, just this one fucking time, listen to me!”
There was something in his voice, something really harsh and threatening that got through to Gwen’s fogged mind. She stopped ranting and screeching and stared at him, open-mouthed and with bulging eyes.
“Okay,” Jack said, “that’s a beginning. “Now, tell me what you have done with that artefact. The metallic arch with the winged pendant. It has changed, totally. How have you got it to do that?”
Gwen started whining again. “I haven’t done anything! I just wanted to see if I could stop the pendant…”
“And?” Ianto pressed. “Could you?”
Gwen began to sob uncontrollably. “It stopped for a moment, but then… then it started changing… and I hurt so much…oh, God, I hurt so much…”
“Okay,” Jack said with forced patience. “Calm down, Gwen. Ianto, bring her a glass of water – from my office.”
Tosh and Owen stiffened, hearing the last words. They both knew what that particular instruction meant. The Retcon pills were kept in the safe in Jack’s office. And since Jack had already messed up the dosage with Gwen once, he was now leaving it to Ianto who had a lot of practice in administering the stuff.
“At once, sir,” Ianto replied, and returned with the glass of water, liberally laced with Retcon, in record time.
Jack took it from him and handed it to Gwen. “Here, drink this. You must replenish your fluids after all that crying.”
Which was a fairly stupid argument, but typically, Gwen fell for it. Being the focus of attention was all she needed, as always. She gulped down the whole glass in one go… and seemed to calm down gradually.
“Such a useless thing,” she muttered. “Did nothing, just swayed back and forth, back and forth…” her bulging, watery eyes slowly fell shut, and within a minute, she was out like a light, snoring softly.
Andy looked from one Torchwood member to another. “What have you done to her? Rhys is gonna kill me!”
“Nothing dramatic,” Jack answered. “I gave her a strong sedative, with a little amnesia pill. She will sleep through the next two or three days, and when she wakes up, she won’t remember anything.”
“For how far back?” Owen asked. Jack held his gaze unwaveringly.
“Two years. It’s the best for us all. If we find a way to reverse the effects, she can return to Rhys and live happily ever after.”
“And if we can’t?” Tosh asked quietly.
“Then we’ll have no other choice than to keep her in one of the cells until we can,” Jack replied bluntly. “We can’t allow her to run free like this. At least the rest of us stayed human; we won’t draw unwanted attention. But Gwen… who knows why she turned out so differently.”
“I’d be more interested to know why we’ve turned into exactly these persons that we are now,” Ianto said.
“Ummm…” Tosh coughed. “I might be able to answer that.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The others gathered around her workstation at once, eager to learn more.
“I’ve run a search on our current looks, and got this,” she said, calling up something that looked like a personal file on the screen. It showed the middle-aged black man whose looks Jack was currently having. However, the file didn’t wear the Torchwood logo; it was apparently set up by the Chicago Police.
“Captain Richard Page,” Tosh read out loud. “He supposedly retired five years ago from the police department, but is really working for Special Unit 2. His left hand is a prosthetic replacement for one he lost in Vietnam. Captain Page is a skilled tactician and administrator, with enough leadership abilities to keep his underlings in line despite their varied personalities.”
“Strange,” Ianto commented. “It doesn’t say what he actually does there, or what this Special Unit 2 is.”
“There’s more,” Tosh called up another file, clearly that of the lovely blonde woman Owen was now. “This is Detective Kate Benson, suspended from normal duty at the Chicago Police for reasons not further explained here. Recruited by Special Unit 2 for temporary assignment two years ago.”
“That can’t be a coincidence,” Owen said. “They both work for the same organization. What about the rest of us?”
“The same,” Tosh called up the file of Andy’s alter ego. “Detective Nicholas O’Malley, senior agent of Special Unit 2, affiliated with the Chicago Police. He and Kate are partners.”
“You see?” Andy grinned at Owen. “It’s meant to be, apparently.”
“Not that kind of partners,” Tosh corrected. “They work together, for God’s sake!”
“And you?” Ianto asked. “I mean, your counterpart?”
“Is obviously their resident nerd,” Tosh called up the file in question. “Gah, and he’s called Jonathan, too. He could have had every name in the calendar, but no, he just had to be called Jonathan!”
Jack ignored her rant. “What about Ianto?”
“He's cracked the jackpot, it seems,” Tosh showed the file of the gorgeous blonde woman. “Meet Alice Cramer, Damage Control Officer of Special Unit 2. She left for LA, two years ago, to become an actress. Apparently, she had quite a few shootings, mostly for ads; but after a year, she changed her mind and returned to the police,” Tosh smiled at Ianto. “Seems that she’s the public face of Special Unit 2; their clean-up girl who deals with the press and the police, and with witnesses who’ve seen things they wasn’t supposed to see. Sounds familiar?”
“Surprisingly so,” Ianto replied. “Just like with Jack and yourself. As if the device had looked for similarities when it changed us.”
“Why did it make me a copper instead of Gwen, then?” Owen asked.
Ianto looked at him in fake surprise. “What? Would you prefer to be the gnome?”
“Of course not!” Owen scowled. “I just don’t understand why it didn’t make me their medical officer. That would have been closer; and then perhaps I wouldn’t be a girl now.”
“Perhaps they don’t have one,” Ianto suggested. “Whatever top secret stuff they are dealing with, they’re still a police department. Those don’t have their own medics.”
“Speaking of gnomes,” Jack interrupted, “have you found a file about the one Gwen seems to be now?”
“Yup,” Tosh called up the file in question, “but it isn’t very helpful. It only says that he – well, she – is called Carl and is the snitch and the mascot of the unit. In exchange for information, they sometimes look the other way when he commits minor crimes.”
“What crimes?” Andy asked with a frown.
Tosh checked the file again. “He seems to be a busy little fellow. Kleptomania, petty theft, dealing with stolen items… the whole nine miles, up to armed robbery, actually, where he prefers to remain in the background and pull the strings.”
“Why on Earth would the device turn Gwen into a petty criminal?” Andy was baffled.
“Perhaps it’s psychic and takes orientation from one’s basic tendencies, rather from the actual work we are doing,” Ianto suggested.
“Gwen is not a criminal!” Andy protested. If nothing else, he was a loyal soul.
“No, but she seems to have no problems with pushing herself into the positions and relationships of other people,” Tosh said quietly. “She does have the tendency to take what she wants, regardless of everyone else’s feelings. If the device looked for a match for this Carl person, she’d have been the closest thing.”
“Now you’re exaggerating, Tosh!” Owen said. “We all have done things we aren’t proud of; none of us is any better than Gwen in that area. At least she never meant to cause all that chaos and destruction.”
“True, but the device didn’t have to find a match to a ruthless mafia boss,” Tosh pointed out. “It needed someone petty. Are you telling me she wouldn’t match those criteria?”
The answer to that was so obvious that Owen didn’t even bother with it. Even Andy had to admit that of all of them, Gwen was clearly the closest match. Jack, though, had something else on his mind.
“How did you get your hands on these files anyway?” he asked Tosh. “Special Unit 2 seems to be an eyes-only police organization. Even with your hacker skills, it should have been harder to get the personal data. It’s not as if they would advertise on the internet… do they?”
“Of course not,” Tosh replied grimly. “The thing is, Jack… these aren’t actually their files. They are ours.”
“What?!” the others cried in unison.
“Well, they used to be our files,” Tosh corrected herself. “They were stored in our own database recording Torchwood personnel. Our original files have been replaced with these here.”
“What about the original ones?” Jack asked.
“Gone,” Tosh replied. “These are the only ones we’ve got about ourselves.”
“And the files of previous Torchwood personnel?” Ianto asked.
“Those are unchanged,” Tosh said. “Save Suzie’s, that is. Hers has been replaced by that of the previous Special Unit tech advisor, a guy named Sean Redman, who left the unit a year ago. Apparently, the device thinks in terms of complete units.”
“Does this mean that there’s now a male corpse in Suzie’s drawer in the morgue?” Owen asked.
Tosh just shrugged. “No idea. Perhaps. You’ll have to check for yourself.”
“Wait a minute!” Andy said. “If it switches one team for the other, why have I been changed at all?”
Tosh coughed and looked at Ianto, who looked at Jack expectantly.
“Well,” Jack admitted, “I was considering hiring you as a field agent, should we manage to get rid of Gwen on the gentle way. So I had Ianto set up a file for you… just in case.”
“Oh!” that seemed to surprise Andy. He fell silent, digesting the unexpected piece of information and trying to decide whether he should feel flattered or escape as long as he had a chance.
“So,” Ianto said slowly. “If we are Special Unit 2 now, does it matter that they’re running around in our shape in Chicago?”
Part 05: Higher Powers
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Torchwood/Special Unit 2 x-over, with a guest appearance of the Tenth Doctor.
Category: Heavy-duty Gwen bashing and a great deal of silliness.
Rating: G, suitable for all, with the exception of die-hard Gwackers.
Genre: Crackfic, with gender bending, body swap, whatever – the whole nine miles.
Series: none
Timeframe: indefinite. Perhaps “Sleepers”, from Series 2 for Torchwood, but not necessarily.
Summary: Once again, Gwen fumbles around with something she was told not to touch. The consequences are…unusual.
Disclaimer: the usual: don’t own, don’t sue! Everything belongs to RTD and BBC - and UPN, respectively.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
PART THREE: WE ARE LEARNING WHO WE ARE
Author’s notes:
It turns out that things are a lot more complicated than our fearless heroes would have expected to be. But that’s Torchwood for you.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Jack followed Ianto back to the storage room where Artefacts number one through five were still waiting to be taken to the Archives. Apparently, Ianto had begun to take them away backwards.
“So?” he asked, a little impatiently.
There was the canine skull in the jar; the Draconian holoprojector, showing the three-dimensional images of unknown stellar bodies; the alien soup tureen containing the forcefield of no visible purpose; the Alzarian tool with the whirling blades – and something that looked like a translucent stained glass Tiffany lamp, filled with blue and golden light. It was beautiful, but…
“Wait a minute!” Jack realized. “This isn’t what Artefact #2 is supposed to look like. Wasn’t that the metal arch of Chulan technology marks on it? The one with the winged pendant?”
“It was… in its inactive state,” Ianto pointed at the winged broche on top of the ‘lamp’. “And there is the pendant. We know some of this stuff changes its shape when activated… well, I have to say, this is quite the metamorphosis! Just like…”
“Just like with us,” Jack finished for him grimly. Ianto nodded.
“Exactly. Whatever this device is, and frankly, I haven’t got a clue, it has to do something with our problem.”
“But how the hell did Gwen manage to activate it?” Jack wondered. “The UNIT scientists have tried everything they could think of to make it do something; it never worked.”
“Well, scientists work methodically,” Ianto said. “The thought to start poking it like a bloody fool possible never occurred to them.”
“Fools jump in where angels fear to thread,” Jack murmured. “Sometimes it can be a great advantage. Most of the time, however, it leads to great disasters.”
Ianto nodded wordlessly, because really, what could he possibly have said to that?
“All right,” Jack said. “Can we switch it off? Perhaps the effects will be reversed when it’s no longer actively working, whatever it is it does.”
“I reckon it won’t be so easy,” Ianto said. “Besides, we need to ask how she’s switched the bloody thing on to begin with… and pray that the off switch is the same one as the on switch.”
“If she still remembers,” Jack wasn’t very optimistic about that. “Look at all this stuff; it seems she’s fumbled with every single artefact in this room.”
“Fortunately, the rest of them has turned out quite harmless,” Ianto replied, switching off the Draconian holoprojector with a mental instruction and touching a sensor field on the side of the ‘soup tureen’, at which the forcefield of unknown purpose promptly collapsed. Then he held up the jar with the skull again. It blubbered merrily at him, and the skull began jump and down.
“Jack, can I keep this in my office, down in the archives? It doesn’t do anything, and it’s kinda cute. I always wanted a dog when I was a kid but never got one.”
“Ianto,” Jack tried to stay patient,” it’s not a dog! It’s a frigging skull, and we don’t even know what kind of creature it used to be while it was still alive.”
“So?” Ianto tilted his head to the side and tried the puppy-eyed routine. “You keep a hand in a jar in your office, why can’t I have a skull? It’s friendly. I like the way it blubbers when touched; and the skull is much like a dog, jumping up and down happily to greet its master. It’s lonely down there, you know, and I do spend a lot of time in the Archives.”
Jack knew, of course, that he was being shamelessly manipulated, but it was hard to resist Ianto with the puppy eyes, no matter in which form. Besides, it was so rare that Ianto would ask anything for just himself; so if he wanted to keep the stupid skull, why shouldn’t he have it?
“All right, all right,” he said, all too aware that once again, he’d been out-charmed by his young lover, and not really minding it. “Keep the damn thing – but be careful with it.”
“I promise I won’t let Gwen anywhere near it,” Ianto replied solemnly. “We should go back to the others, though, and find out what she’s done with the Chulan artefact. I don’t dare to experiment with it. It might make everything worse.”
“A wise decision,” Jack nodded. “Chulan technology is tricky. I once had a little Chulan spaceship. She was a beauty, with particle transporter system and a semi-sentient board computer and stuff – I loved her. But she could have a will of her own sometimes, and it was better not to mess with her.”
“What happened to her?” Ianto asked, intrigued by the rare chance to learn something about Jack’s mysterious past. Jack sighed.
“I had to blow her up during the Blitz, to save London. That was how I met the Doctor and Rose for the first time.”
“And elike very story concerning them, I’m never gonna learn more about it, am I?” Ianto commented, somewhat bitterly. He didn’t mind Jack still having that special connection with the Doctor… well, not all too much. What really bothered him was Jack’s reluctance to share his past.
“Hey,” Jack said softly. “Enough of that. I’ll tell you the story when we get out of this mess, I promise. It’s not such a big secret. It’ just hard to speak about it; about the time when I was still mortal.”
“I understand,” Ianto replied quietly. “And I’m not sulking, really. It’s just…”
“It’s just hard to be left out, I know,” Jack finished for him. “I will tell you, honestly. You deserve to know how I’ve become the person who I am not. Just let us solve our current problem first, okay?”
Ianto nodded. “Okay. Back to the others, then?”
When they got back to the main Hub area, they found Gwen conscious again… and in complete hysterics. Her voice, not a pleasant-sounding one to begin with in this form, had acquired a particularly shrill quality that could have shattered glass. Tosh, running a search on her computer, was covering her ears, wincing in pain.
“For God’s sake, Owen, do something with her!”
“What am I supposed to do?” Owen snapped. “I’ve already tried to give her a sedative, and the needle fucking broke. I can’t sedate her; I can’t take any blood or tissue samples to check her DNA, nothing! And she’s not very cooperative, either, as you can see.”
“That’s not her way to deal with things; it never was,” Andy agreed. “Perhaps Captain Harkness can reason with her.”
“Yeah, because it worked so well before,” Owen muttered. Andy smiled at him fondly.
“Don’t be so negative, sweetheart. Let him try first.”
Owen looked like he’d hit him any moment; then he looked at Jack and made a sweeping gesture at Gwen. “All yours, Captain.”
Jack sighed. Dealing with Gwen’s all-too-frequent dramatics had become a real annoyance lately. Then he grabbed the stunted creature’s shoulders and forced it – her – to look at him.
“Gwen!” he said in an authoritative tone. “Look at me! Listen to me! Dammit, just this one fucking time, listen to me!”
There was something in his voice, something really harsh and threatening that got through to Gwen’s fogged mind. She stopped ranting and screeching and stared at him, open-mouthed and with bulging eyes.
“Okay,” Jack said, “that’s a beginning. “Now, tell me what you have done with that artefact. The metallic arch with the winged pendant. It has changed, totally. How have you got it to do that?”
Gwen started whining again. “I haven’t done anything! I just wanted to see if I could stop the pendant…”
“And?” Ianto pressed. “Could you?”
Gwen began to sob uncontrollably. “It stopped for a moment, but then… then it started changing… and I hurt so much…oh, God, I hurt so much…”
“Okay,” Jack said with forced patience. “Calm down, Gwen. Ianto, bring her a glass of water – from my office.”
Tosh and Owen stiffened, hearing the last words. They both knew what that particular instruction meant. The Retcon pills were kept in the safe in Jack’s office. And since Jack had already messed up the dosage with Gwen once, he was now leaving it to Ianto who had a lot of practice in administering the stuff.
“At once, sir,” Ianto replied, and returned with the glass of water, liberally laced with Retcon, in record time.
Jack took it from him and handed it to Gwen. “Here, drink this. You must replenish your fluids after all that crying.”
Which was a fairly stupid argument, but typically, Gwen fell for it. Being the focus of attention was all she needed, as always. She gulped down the whole glass in one go… and seemed to calm down gradually.
“Such a useless thing,” she muttered. “Did nothing, just swayed back and forth, back and forth…” her bulging, watery eyes slowly fell shut, and within a minute, she was out like a light, snoring softly.
Andy looked from one Torchwood member to another. “What have you done to her? Rhys is gonna kill me!”
“Nothing dramatic,” Jack answered. “I gave her a strong sedative, with a little amnesia pill. She will sleep through the next two or three days, and when she wakes up, she won’t remember anything.”
“For how far back?” Owen asked. Jack held his gaze unwaveringly.
“Two years. It’s the best for us all. If we find a way to reverse the effects, she can return to Rhys and live happily ever after.”
“And if we can’t?” Tosh asked quietly.
“Then we’ll have no other choice than to keep her in one of the cells until we can,” Jack replied bluntly. “We can’t allow her to run free like this. At least the rest of us stayed human; we won’t draw unwanted attention. But Gwen… who knows why she turned out so differently.”
“I’d be more interested to know why we’ve turned into exactly these persons that we are now,” Ianto said.
“Ummm…” Tosh coughed. “I might be able to answer that.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The others gathered around her workstation at once, eager to learn more.
“I’ve run a search on our current looks, and got this,” she said, calling up something that looked like a personal file on the screen. It showed the middle-aged black man whose looks Jack was currently having. However, the file didn’t wear the Torchwood logo; it was apparently set up by the Chicago Police.
“Captain Richard Page,” Tosh read out loud. “He supposedly retired five years ago from the police department, but is really working for Special Unit 2. His left hand is a prosthetic replacement for one he lost in Vietnam. Captain Page is a skilled tactician and administrator, with enough leadership abilities to keep his underlings in line despite their varied personalities.”
“Strange,” Ianto commented. “It doesn’t say what he actually does there, or what this Special Unit 2 is.”
“There’s more,” Tosh called up another file, clearly that of the lovely blonde woman Owen was now. “This is Detective Kate Benson, suspended from normal duty at the Chicago Police for reasons not further explained here. Recruited by Special Unit 2 for temporary assignment two years ago.”
“That can’t be a coincidence,” Owen said. “They both work for the same organization. What about the rest of us?”
“The same,” Tosh called up the file of Andy’s alter ego. “Detective Nicholas O’Malley, senior agent of Special Unit 2, affiliated with the Chicago Police. He and Kate are partners.”
“You see?” Andy grinned at Owen. “It’s meant to be, apparently.”
“Not that kind of partners,” Tosh corrected. “They work together, for God’s sake!”
“And you?” Ianto asked. “I mean, your counterpart?”
“Is obviously their resident nerd,” Tosh called up the file in question. “Gah, and he’s called Jonathan, too. He could have had every name in the calendar, but no, he just had to be called Jonathan!”
Jack ignored her rant. “What about Ianto?”
“He's cracked the jackpot, it seems,” Tosh showed the file of the gorgeous blonde woman. “Meet Alice Cramer, Damage Control Officer of Special Unit 2. She left for LA, two years ago, to become an actress. Apparently, she had quite a few shootings, mostly for ads; but after a year, she changed her mind and returned to the police,” Tosh smiled at Ianto. “Seems that she’s the public face of Special Unit 2; their clean-up girl who deals with the press and the police, and with witnesses who’ve seen things they wasn’t supposed to see. Sounds familiar?”
“Surprisingly so,” Ianto replied. “Just like with Jack and yourself. As if the device had looked for similarities when it changed us.”
“Why did it make me a copper instead of Gwen, then?” Owen asked.
Ianto looked at him in fake surprise. “What? Would you prefer to be the gnome?”
“Of course not!” Owen scowled. “I just don’t understand why it didn’t make me their medical officer. That would have been closer; and then perhaps I wouldn’t be a girl now.”
“Perhaps they don’t have one,” Ianto suggested. “Whatever top secret stuff they are dealing with, they’re still a police department. Those don’t have their own medics.”
“Speaking of gnomes,” Jack interrupted, “have you found a file about the one Gwen seems to be now?”
“Yup,” Tosh called up the file in question, “but it isn’t very helpful. It only says that he – well, she – is called Carl and is the snitch and the mascot of the unit. In exchange for information, they sometimes look the other way when he commits minor crimes.”
“What crimes?” Andy asked with a frown.
Tosh checked the file again. “He seems to be a busy little fellow. Kleptomania, petty theft, dealing with stolen items… the whole nine miles, up to armed robbery, actually, where he prefers to remain in the background and pull the strings.”
“Why on Earth would the device turn Gwen into a petty criminal?” Andy was baffled.
“Perhaps it’s psychic and takes orientation from one’s basic tendencies, rather from the actual work we are doing,” Ianto suggested.
“Gwen is not a criminal!” Andy protested. If nothing else, he was a loyal soul.
“No, but she seems to have no problems with pushing herself into the positions and relationships of other people,” Tosh said quietly. “She does have the tendency to take what she wants, regardless of everyone else’s feelings. If the device looked for a match for this Carl person, she’d have been the closest thing.”
“Now you’re exaggerating, Tosh!” Owen said. “We all have done things we aren’t proud of; none of us is any better than Gwen in that area. At least she never meant to cause all that chaos and destruction.”
“True, but the device didn’t have to find a match to a ruthless mafia boss,” Tosh pointed out. “It needed someone petty. Are you telling me she wouldn’t match those criteria?”
The answer to that was so obvious that Owen didn’t even bother with it. Even Andy had to admit that of all of them, Gwen was clearly the closest match. Jack, though, had something else on his mind.
“How did you get your hands on these files anyway?” he asked Tosh. “Special Unit 2 seems to be an eyes-only police organization. Even with your hacker skills, it should have been harder to get the personal data. It’s not as if they would advertise on the internet… do they?”
“Of course not,” Tosh replied grimly. “The thing is, Jack… these aren’t actually their files. They are ours.”
“What?!” the others cried in unison.
“Well, they used to be our files,” Tosh corrected herself. “They were stored in our own database recording Torchwood personnel. Our original files have been replaced with these here.”
“What about the original ones?” Jack asked.
“Gone,” Tosh replied. “These are the only ones we’ve got about ourselves.”
“And the files of previous Torchwood personnel?” Ianto asked.
“Those are unchanged,” Tosh said. “Save Suzie’s, that is. Hers has been replaced by that of the previous Special Unit tech advisor, a guy named Sean Redman, who left the unit a year ago. Apparently, the device thinks in terms of complete units.”
“Does this mean that there’s now a male corpse in Suzie’s drawer in the morgue?” Owen asked.
Tosh just shrugged. “No idea. Perhaps. You’ll have to check for yourself.”
“Wait a minute!” Andy said. “If it switches one team for the other, why have I been changed at all?”
Tosh coughed and looked at Ianto, who looked at Jack expectantly.
“Well,” Jack admitted, “I was considering hiring you as a field agent, should we manage to get rid of Gwen on the gentle way. So I had Ianto set up a file for you… just in case.”
“Oh!” that seemed to surprise Andy. He fell silent, digesting the unexpected piece of information and trying to decide whether he should feel flattered or escape as long as he had a chance.
“So,” Ianto said slowly. “If we are Special Unit 2 now, does it matter that they’re running around in our shape in Chicago?”
Part 05: Higher Powers