Among the Rubble

Chapter Three

Despite the fact she kept asking everyone who entered her room, no one seemed to be able to give Madi any information about her husband and kids. She couldn't even get anyone to tell her what sort of incident had happened, or if her family was alright.

She was told she needed to wait for Captain Harkness.

It was getting old. She was in the middle of yelling at one of the nurses, who had resorted to just pretending Madi wasn't even talking, when a man and woman walked into her room.

The man jerked his head towards the door, and the nurse scurried from the room, almost looking thankful for the chance to escape the room.

This must be Captain Harkness, Madi thought. He wasn't anything like either of the images she had in her head, yet some niggling feeling in the back of her mind told her that wasn't quite true.

"Mrs. Mason?" the woman next to him asked. "My name is Gwen Cooper, and this is Jack Harkness. Is it alright if we come in for a few moments and have a chat?" The smile on the woman's face didn't quite reach her eyes, and Madi wondered for the hundredth time what the hell was going on.

"Why am I handcuffed to a hospital bed?" Madi demanded to know.

"For your own safety, and everyone else's," Jack replied, giving her a sideways glance as he picked up her chart to see what the doctors had to say about her condition.

"My safety?" Madi scoffed. "You tell me how the hell being handcuffed to a bed is for my safety!" Madi exclaimed. "Just who the hell are you and what do you want from me?" Her voice started to break with the last word, and Gwen felt sympathetic for the woman.

"Tell us who you're working for," Jack demanded, taking the seat next to the bed, and leaving Gwen to lean against the wall.

"Working for? What do you mean? I mean..." she paused, scrambling for words. "I work for myself, as a photographer."

"That's not what he means," Gwen piped up, earning a look of what could only be described as approval, from Jack. But she wasn't looking to get a gold star from the teacher, she just wanted to get to the bottom of a tragedy.

"Then, I'm not sure what you mean," Madi told them.

Sighing, Jack leaned over the bed, and stared into Madi's eyes. "I mean, I want you to tell me who your co-conspirators were. There's no way you could have pulled that off yourself."

Madi's face wrinkled up, perplexed. "Co-conspirators? I have no idea what the hell you're talking about."

Fear rose though Madi like a burning fire. The line of questioning suddenly made things seem very serious indeed, and it scared her.

"Where's my family?" she asked in a quiet whisper. "What's going on?"

Jack shook his head. "We're the ones asking the questions here, Mrs. Mason," he told her, perhaps a bit more forcefully than necessary.

"Then ask me a question I have the answer to!" Madi spat back at him, fighting to keep the tears at bay. She had no idea what was going on, but whatever it was, it wasn't good.

The woman, Gwen, piped up, "We need to get as much information as we can from you, Mrs. Mason, so that we can get everything sorted out. So I'm just going to take this little recorder here, and record our conversation. This way, we have a record of everything that you said. Then  we can reference it against what data we've already collected and any future information that we get. Alright?" She gave a sad smile to the woman in the bed, she knew it was difficult to be on the other side of Jack's questioning. And he wasn't going to make it easy for her.

Pressing the button, Gwen continued, "Let's start with your full name, yeah?"

Taking in a deep breath, Madi replied, "Madison Mason, but everyone just calls me Madi."

"You're an American?" When Madi nodded, Cooper asked what she was doing with her family in Wales.

"We're just on vacation," she said softly, unable to stop a tear from rolling down her cheek. "David and I never really had a honeymoon, you see. So now that the kids were a bit older, we thought maybe a few days in London and a few days in Cardiff."

"Why Cardiff?" Jack interjected.

Madi looked over at him, as he stared out the window of her hospital room, and she seemed confused. "What do you mean?"

Slowly, Jack turned to face her. Gwen could see him trying to work something out in that very old brain of his, but she had no idea what it was. "You said you were coming to London and Cardiff, each for a few days," Jack started, to which Madi nodded in confirmation. Cocking his head, he continued, "Why Cardiff? I can understand London. Everyone visits London when coming to the UK. But Cardiff, well, it's just Cardiff."

"Oi!" exclaimed Gwen, as she just stared at him, wondering if he was mad. It might not be London, but Cardiff had a fair amount of tourists come through every year.

But Jack just ignored her, waiting for Madi to answer.

She just shrugged, "I don't know. It wasn't too far from London, with nice hotels in our price range. There were a lot of museums, shops, and tours we could visit."

"Whose idea was it to come and stay in Cardiff, Mrs. Mason? Was it yours or your husband's?" Gwen asked suddenly, needing to break the tension – and the staring contest Jack seemed to be having with their suspect.

Sighing, she said, "Honestly, I don't know. It was just one of those things that I guess we were both just like let's go to Cardiff. It's the capital, and there was lots to do, for us and the kids." Her voice cracked when she mentioned her kids.

Looking down, Gwen asked softly, "Mrs. Mason, what do you remember from before you woke up here?"

"Not much," she replied with a shake of her head. "It's all a big blur. I don't really remember much of the trip. Though the doctors said to expect things to be fuzzy."

Madi looked back and forth between the pair in front of her. Gwen could hardly look at her, and Captain Harkness couldn't take his eyes off her, though his looks were more suspicious and he as though he were working very hard to figure out a complicated math problem.

"Just tell me, please," her voice was barely audible as she whispered her plea.