ashes ➝ Doctor Who²

V

Captain Jack Harkness was on the brink of being late.

He knew it without even looking at his watch. The fear creeping up from his feet as they smacked the pavement gave it away.

Owen had been late once, just last week.

But that one time was all she needed.

They all admired Penelope.

They loved her, really.

But she was terrifying. They all knew that now, after she had taken to verbally - no, violently - berating Owen in front of everyone. Causing the man to refuse to even look at her for the remainder of the day.

She was an excellent boss, and a terrifying person. Jack had vowed to never love another woman, no other could ever compare.

To him she was a challenge.

But not a challenge he wanted to face today.

Clearly the universe had different plans when he spotted Penelope getting into the lift of the building through the tall glass windows.

Swearing profusely, Jack basically fell into the building in the hope to beat Penelope to their floor. It was only five floors down, give or take. He hadn't ever felt the need to count them before - nor had he ever been sober when using the stairs.

Although it was a great comfort, counting the steps as he took them in twos and sometimes threes. He only fell down once, he learnt after that - no more taking stairs four at a time.

Making it down, he was left sprinting through greyscale corridors, slamming past doors that seemed to cling to him and slow him down. He could only hope that the lift got stuck, or by some grace of God, the wires snapped and she plummeted to the end of the lift shaft.

Harsh, he realised, but he was desperate to avoid her rage.

Coming to a final stop on the main floor outside the lifts, his vision was a little blurry from taking the stairs so fast, and he couldn't quite make out where the lift was. Guessing that she was already there, he hung his head and trudged slowly into their offices.

"Jack?" He turned as she stepped out the lift, her smile blinding, "glad you're on time, let's get started shall we." She strode past him and he gave a silent cheer of joy, watched amusedly by his coworkers.

Though he didn't want any other reason for her to get irritated at him, so he followed quickly.

"What are we doing today, anyway? You didn't send us a case file." Penelope smiled softly, she hated to admit that she got along well with Jack, she didn't want the others to feel like they weren't wanted as much.

But she really did prefer him and Jasper. Perhaps it was Jack's accent, but she'll never really know how the universe chooses to send her the men in her life, and to be truly honest she doesn't want to know.

Taking control of the board clicker, images flashed onto the screen of seemingly normal looking people. Although they had learnt not to trust what they think they see.

"Sorry that you had no warning for today. That's because this isn't technically an official case." A few more pictures turned up, they were almost certainly human from a first glance. "Jasper got a call from a Hungarian contact for a little help with these." Gwen frowned, not sure what she was looking at.

"What exactly are they? I'm guessing it's not human if you were contacted." Penelope nodded at her, gesturing with the clicker before continuing.

"Correct. They're being called Testlopók by our Hungarian counterparts, which roughly translates to body thieves. And honestly they're not wrong." More pictures flew onto the screen of a shadowy substance spilling from a subject's mouth, but from the picture you couldn't tell if it was going in or out. Gwen continued to frown, flipping through the file.

"Why wasn't this brought up sooner? There are so many cases."

"They were inhabiting dead bodies and within 15 hours all the subjects were dead again. The entity was as well so it was assumed they were dying out. No interference needed. They weren't killing anyone and they were seemingly dying. Until it was reported that a living subject was.. infected. They died after 7 hours, the entity unable to adapt quickly but they have evolved and can now last around 29 hours and it's increasing. The first case was reported around 7 months ago."

The scene on the board was harsh. The pictures seemed to show that the deceased subjects had the black mass of gas and whatever it surrounded leaking from them. Even from the pores on the skin. As if it had grown too much for the bodies to contain and they just imploded.

Owen this time, still a little wary of Penelope, wondered why they had been called now after all this time.

"Because cases have popped up in other countries. The Netherlands have reported Lijfrovers which usually means robbers but is now being coined for body snatchers. Turkey had a single case with a Vücut Tutucu, but they contained it after getting warned by the Amsterdam airport. But we recently had our own case and the responders decided to call them Borrowers."

"Borrowers?"

"Yes, Jack, makes no sense because it's not like they give the bodies back, but this is what happens when the locals get hold of the case first." She turned the screen off and closed her case file, eager to just warn her team and then be able to move on. She truly hoped this wouldn't become too bad. "Please remember this is not an official Torchwood case, we cannot get involved as of yet as there is no reason we should know about this. It's being kept strictly confidential in the UK, I just happen to have eyes and ears anywhere. This is just to warn you and to keep yourselves safe when out on cases."

"But how do we even keep ourselves safe from this, how do we even identify it."

"Black gas thinly surrounds the subject, may look like smoke, but don't take any chances. They can be taken down like any other human, they are susceptible to paralytic agents and the use of any tranquilliser is permitted. They go down like any of us would. Please be safe, now that it's here, it could be anyone."