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Gwen had the flu.
When they warned Gwen about freshers’ flu, she had thought it was just another way of saying ‘hungover’.
Gwen had a stomach of iron and could usually shake off the worst hangovers with an bacon sandwich swimming in ketchup and grease. So when she set off for uni, ready to throw herself into a pit of hedonism that would rival Sodom and Gomorrah, she had no fear for any measly freshers’ flu.
It turned out that fresher’s flu was the result of gathering young adults from every corner of the country (and England) and chucking them together. Every germ, every bug, had been stewing in the halls, lecture rooms and student bars. It was a melting pot of sickness, made worse by the sheer amount of young men who never seemed to wash their hands.
Freshers’ flu was hell on Earth. Her nose was streaming, her eyes itched, and her throat felt like she had been gargling fire ants.
This was one hardship a bacon sandwich couldn’t vanquish.
Still, it was worth a shot. And if she was thinking about bacon, she wasn’t thinking about the burning in her throat. She could smell it. Some god, some hero, was making bacon sandwiches.
She rolled herself up in her duvet, and shuffled into the community kitchen. She grimaced as she caught sight of herself in the mirror.
“What a state,” she muttered. There would be no seducing a bacon sandwich out of the unknown breakfast cook, but if she looked pitiful enough, maybe they would feel sorry for her and give her one nonetheless.
And she certainly looked pitiful.
If not, she could try and see if there was any of those pot brownies Trina had made last night left. She had never tried pot before, but it turned out she liked them in brownies.
Thought it might have just been the brownies she liked.
“Hiyah!” The cook turned and smiled at her.
It was the cute guy who lived down the hall. Nice brown eyes, broad shoulders, bit of a belly but in a cute, teddy bear kind of way. Gwen had been on his side in the impromptu fresher’s rugby match a couple of days ago. He had sent two of the opposing team flying into the mud and kept on playing even after his nose started bleeding from an illegal tackle.
Gwen knew his name, somewhere, but now wasn’t a time for names. Now was a time for
“Bacon,” Gwen said, sitting with a thud at one of the mismatched chair by the counter.
The guy grinned, waving his spatula. “Coming right up!”
“Did I hear bacon?” Trina came in, her vesty pyjama top barely containing her breasts. “I’m famished. Hi Gwen, you alright?”
Gwen shook her head, and sunk deeper into her duvet cocoon.
“Dying,” she said.
“But you got back safe?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I?”
“There was that creepy guy staring at you in the bar, remember?”
“Creepy guy?” Mr Bacon said, his forehead creased in concern.
Gwen frowned, trying to remember. “Yeah, just some weirdo who kept looking at me. Didn’t come up to me or follow me or nothing.”
“You want to join up with me and the lads next time you go out?” Mr Bacon said as he put the life giving butty down in front of her. “Just to be safe?”
Gwen had just been about to say no, it was ok, but then she caught sight of Mr Bacon-Rugby-Star’s bicep, and smiled feebly. “Sure,” she said. “Just to be safe, thanks.”
Gwen was not having a good day.
She had slept in, stepped in a puddle, her log in details weren’t working, and she felt like she was coming down with the flu. Nothing serious just yet, but her eyes were scratching and her throat was feeling dry.
More concerning right now was her log in details. Every time she tried to access her accounts, it kept coming up with details not recognised.
“Tosh!” Gwen called over her shoulder, “have you updated my account details, or switched up the security?”
“No,” Tosh said, coming to stand by Gwen’s chair, “why? What’s wrong?”
“The bastarding computer isn’t recognising me,”
“Don’t blame the computer,” Tosh said, ever protective of her electronical babies. “Are you sure you typed them in right?”
“Double sure.”
“Hang on, let me try mine. Maybe it’s a system error.” Tosh tapped the keyboard. “Well it’s letting me in. Shall I try resetting your details?”
“Could you?”
“Yeah, just give me twenty minutes.” She sipped her coffee.
“Thanks Tosh, I owe you.”
Ten minutes later (Tosh always did surpass expectations) Tosh told Gwen to try logging in again, with her new details.
“No, it’s still not working.” Gwen frowned.
“Try another computer.”
Still no luck.”
“The computer just aren’t liking me today.”
“I wonder if there’s something wrong with your account,” Tosh said. “I’ll call Jack, ask him to check them out from his account.”
They headed up to Jack’s office. The blinds were drawn and they could hear Ianto’s voice, so they knocked loudly and waited thirty seconds before Jack shouted out “Come in.”
“Hey girls, what’s up?” Jack asked, the buttons of his shirt slightly mismatched. Ianto, straightening his tie, ducked out, smelling of an aftershave that wasn’t his own.
Tosh explained the situation, and Jack gave a little sigh.
“Travel through time and space, become the boss of your own alien hunting squad, and still get lumbered with admin troubles.”
Still, he brought up Gwen’s files.
It was small, the slightest twinge of his cheek, then his face went carefully blank.
“Jack?” Gwen asked cautiously. “What’s wrong.”
Jack’s eyes flickered up to meet Gwen’s, then back at the computer. With a thinning of the lips, he stood, and gently brought Gwen around to look at his screen.
“You should probably take a look at this,” he said softly.
Gwen took the offered seat, and read her profile. Birth date, education dates, recruitment date.
Death date: 26th September, 1996.
Recruitment date: 22nd October, 2006.
“What?” she whispered, her eyes growing wide, and her skin turning grey so that her freckles stood out stark. “That makes no sense.”
A shudder ran up her spine, and she began to tremble. Somebody was walking over her grave, as her gran used to say.
She was going into shock, she thought. Her vision was going blurry.
But no. Not her vision. Just the screen. The words and the pixels began to dance around, and considering the look of concentration on Jack’s face, he saw it too. At last the screen froze once more, the pixels rearranged to make the face of a smirking, smiling man, with long pointed nose, and a jester’s hat with a bell on the end.
“What?” Gwen whispered.
Jack clasped his hand on Gwen’s shoulder, warm and sturdy. Gwen’s own hands were very cold.
“The Trickster's Brigade,” he said in a low voice.
Tosh looked between Jack, Gwen and the computer. “Jack, what does this mean?”
“Trouble,” Jack said. “It means trouble.”
Ianto’s voice came crackling in over the comms, causing Gwen to start. “Jack, there’s an alarm going off in the archives, one of the time locks is active.”
The mood in the boardroom was not cheerful, to say the least.
“So,” Gwen said, passing round newspaper printouts, “on the 26th of September, I was stabbed. To death, apparently. ‘University student, Gwen Elizabeth Cooper, died this morning following a knife attack on Morgan Street. So far, no culprit has been identified, and the police urge caution from the public until the killer was brought to justice.’ And yet, here I am, very much not stabbed or death.”
“Was the murderer ever found?” Owen asked, grimacing at the crime scene photos. He had seen Gwen bloody and beat up enough times, but the hollow look in her eyes, the open gape to her mouth, made him shudder.
“No,” Gwen said. “No DNA traces, no one seen leaving the scene of the crime, no footprints, CCTV footage, or witnesses.”
“Which makes sense, seeing as we’re dealing with the Tricksters,” Jack said.
“How do you know about?” Tosh asked, eyes fixed on her laptop screen, rubbing her chin.
“They're mischief makers, playing games with time, this is their idea of fun.”
“So they go back into someone’s history, off them early, and then watch the chaos unfold?” Owen said.
“But why me?” Gwen asked. “Not to sound petulant, but it does seem bloody unfair. Can’t help feeling a bit picked on.”
Jack leaned forward, resting on his elbows. “Because of the Rift.”
“Huh?”
“You’ve lived over the Rift your entire life, your family has lived over the Rift for generations. The Rift has been fed into you, into your blood-”
“What, like an infection?” Gwen said bitterly. “Am I going to end up with space sepsis, on top everything else?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Owen scoffed. “If you had space sepsis, you’d know. You’ve haven’t turned turquoise, for one.”
Gwen managed a weak laugh. “Oh, well that’s a relief, at least.”
“It’s not an infection,” Jack said. “It’s just part of you, the Rift is a part of you, and vice versa.”
“And this has got to do with the tricksters… how?”
“The Tricksters thrive of causing mayhem with time. The Rift is a doorway to time and space, all of time, the past, the present, the future, seeps through-”
“And into me?”
“Well, bits of it. And parts of you have flooded into the Rift, become entangled with time itself-”
“And because of these bits, the funniest aliens in the universe figured offing me at uni would make the biggest splash.”
Ianto pulled a face. “I like a trick as much as anyone, but that’s going a bit far.”
“A bit,” Gwen said.
“Whatever happened to whoopie cushions? I loved them. Used to get my nan every time.”
“But the new timeline hasn’t kicked in yet, right?” Toshiko said, looking at Jack. “There are records of Gwen’s death, but also of her life afterwards. Her graduation, her exam results, her induction to the police, joining us, it’s all still there.”
“But the computers didn’t acknowledge me as an active member when I tried to sign in,” Gwen pointed, her fists clenched so tight that the skin was pulled taut against her knuckles.
“Right now, the two timelines are battling for dominance,” Jack said. “Gwen wasn’t meant to die that day, and the correct timeline is trying to assert itself. But left unchecked, the new timeline will steadily start to take over, removing more and more traces of her life-”
“Oh my God,” Gwen snapped. “It’s like fucking Back to the Future, isn’t it? I’m just going to start fading away, turning fainter and fainter-”
“You’re already looking pretty pasty,” Ianto said, shoving a hot chocolate towards her. Gwen gulped it down in three chugs, the hot liquid scorching her throat. She wrapped her fingers around the burning mug, digging her elbows into the sharp corners of the wooden table.
She shut her eyes, focussed on her toes burying into her favourite leather boots, her hair tickling her neck. She was still there, she was still here. She still was, she still was.
“So at what point does your mother try to snog you?” she could hear Owen say. He yelped, and when Gwen opened her eyes, he was glaring at a very innocent looking Tosh.
“The fact you’re still here gives us breathing time. We can fix this,” Jack said gently. He grabbed the time-lock, and stuck in his hand. “And this, is how.”
He brought out a silver watch, on a white leather band.
The others looked at it blankly, but Gwen gasped.
“That’s my gran’s watch!” she said. “She gave it to me when I left home for uni. I got into so much shit when I lost it on a night out. Had a few too much, and woke up in halls fully dressed, and my watch gone. I skipped three lectures running all over campus trying to find it.”
“But it’s not just your watch,” Jack said. “Look here.” He turned it around. Clamped around the back of the watch, was a red blinking light.
“It’s a sort of beacon,” he explained. “When activated, it can send you through the timeline of whoever is giving off a signal. It’s a two way trip only, back and forward, like a tennis rally.”
“So it gets activated,” Tosh said slowly. “Sends up back to Gwen-”
“On the night she died,” Jack said.
“And then we stop the murder,” Owen guessed. “Save time and space, yada yada, yada-”
“Then we get past Gwen to give us her watch. We get it to the Hub, hook up with my old team to help us put the beacon on, shove it into a time lock for safe keeping, and then the signal from this watch will send us back home.”
“OK, well, great news is, Gwen’s still here, and so’s the watch. So it already worked, right?” Owen said.
Jack looked at Gwen apologetically.
“It means we’re currently in a timeline where the planned worked,” said Jack. “Timelines can be changed.”
Gwen was just staring at the watch. “I thought I lost it forever.” She shook her head. “Alright, so, we have got a plan. A plan we know has worked before, which means it can work for us. So, what next?”
Gwen was tempted to find a phone box and get Trina, or Megan, or even Bruce, even if he was the word’s biggest wanker. Heck, she would have rung up the guy who made the bacon butties, if she knew his number.
She was being watched again. Worse than that, she was being followed.
It was the same guy as before. He was easy to remember, seeing as he looked as though he should have been at a World War Two themed costume party. It looked like he was in the same group before as last time, all of them following her.
Gwen turned a random corner, trying to shake them off, but still they followed her. It was a long, quiet stretch of road, the nearest shop (Tesco’s) nearly ten minutes away. Four if she ran for it.
She twisted her watch. If she ran, they might give chase. She was a fast runner, but these guys could have been record holding sprinters for all she knew. And so far they seemed happy just to follow. There was a girl with them as well, which once upon a time would have comforted her, before she read her criminology textbooks. Women could be fucked up too, and sickos sometimes used the presence of women or children to lure targets into their trap.
Bugger it, she was going to run.
She broke into a sprint, her fight flying across the pavement. She didn’t look back to see if they were following. She ran at full pelt, her toes barely touching the ground. She twisted a corner, the Tesco’s was in sight.
And then she saw the knife.
Gwen hadn’t been thrilled to be left behind, and made no bones about hiding it. She was already in an arsey mood, and the orders to stay back hadn’t helped.
“So I’m meant to hang around and wait until I start fading from existence?” she asked. “Great.”
“Your timeline’s already been screwed with,” Jack said. “You running into yourself, maybe even witnessing your own past murder, will create a paradox so toxic that the Tricksters will be the least of our worries.”
Owen, for once, took the sympathetic approach.
“Got a stash of beer in the med bay,” he said. “Behind where I keep the spare scalpels. So is the pot.”
“Excuse me?” Jack said, raising his eyebrow as Ianto slipped his coat over his arms.
“Medicinal,” Owen said. He watched Gwen, who was suddenly caring a whole lot less about the whole “being grounded and stabbed” situation, stride purposefully to the med-bay. “And it looks like I’ll be all out by the time we get back,” he said, a little mournfully.
Shuttling through time turned out to be an experience. Ianto actually vomited a bit. It seemed being thrown back through time, being sent back via the time travel equivalent of a slingshot, could make anyone with a more sensitive stomach feel a bit queasy. Tosh also looked green, but held it in. Owen just swore.
“Fuck that was…jarring?” He looked around. “Right, we’re in the past. Great. Now what?”
“Now we find Gwen,” Jack said.
“And then?”
“We wait.”
Finding Gwen was easy enough, even though; as Owen put it, it felt a bit ‘pervy’ hanging around, watching an unsuspecting eighteen year old.
It felt even worse when they had to start chasing her.
Still, it was worth a little invasiveness, to be close by when the heard the scream.
They darted round the corner, to see Gwen in a headlock, held in place a shadowy figure, their form hidden in a black suit and hat, while a second drifted forward, dagger held aloft. Gwen was struggling, but the Trickster held firm. She caught sight of Jack and the others, and opened her mouth to scream out for help. She got as far as “Hel-” before the sound of bullet fire cut her off.
The bodies fell to the ground with a thud. Two dead, the other in shock. Gwen kneeled between the two bodies of the tricksters, listless and pale, looking exactly as she had done the day Suzie died.
Owen was the first to reach her, putting his fingers on her pulse.
“It’s alright,” he said when she started, “I’m a doctor.”
Gwen jerked back, her eyes flickering wildly from their faces, to the bodies. “What are-Who are they? Who are you?”
Ianto smiled wryly, as he helped Jack and Tosh drag the bodies into some bushes, as to keep them hidden until Jack could get the current Torchwood team to pop along and sort them out.
“Well, that’s a bit of a spoiler,” he said. “And kind of a long story.”
Toshiko grinned at Gwen, sympathetic and sheepish. “The sort of story that is better told over a pint, really.”
Gwen nodded, and stumbled to her feet. “That’s the best suggestion I’ve heard all day.”
Jack thought that it would be the aliens that would be the stopping point, or the time travel bit, or the general madness of being saved by her best friends/co-alien hunters from the future.
They hit their first roadblock a bit earlier, with Gwen obsessing over Tosh’s camera phone. She had only pulled it out to show Gwen pictures of the team together, to prove they were friends, but Gwen was obsessed with the phone, and kept asking what else it could do.
The actual debrief turned out to be even harder to through. And even after all that was finished off, along with about three pints of beer, Gwen, feeling a little discombobulated, got stubborn over handing over the watch.
“It literally saved your life,” Ianto said.
“Yeah, but it’s my Gran’s,” Gwen countered. “And I’ll get such a bollocking when I go home without it. Mum’ll probably refuse to do my laundry, and I’ve got masses of it already.”
“You will die,” Tosh said.
“If I lose this watch, I’ll be dead meat anyway.”
“You can get it back in eleven years,” Owen said brusquely. “Hand it over.”
Gwen reluctantly undid the watch, and pressed it into Owen’s hands.
“Sorry Gran,” she muttered.
Jack put a hand over shoulder, and squeezed. He nodded at the others. “Go outside and wait for the old team to pick you up,” he said. “For timey-wimey reasons, I probably shouldn’t go with you.”
They watched the others leave, before Jack turned back to Gwen.
“So, how are you doing?”
Gwen laughed, shaking her head. “It’s all a bit mad, to be honest.”
“And it only gets madder from here.”
“I-I actually become an alien hunter?”
“That’s right.”
“You hired me to catch aliens?”
“Yep!”
“What happened. Were all the other alien hunters on strike or something?”
Jack laughed. “Not exactly.”
Gwen gave him a sheepish, gap-toothed grin. She looked at her hands, clasped around her pint lass, and peaked up at him through her fringe.
“So, am I any good?”
Jack put his hand next to hers.
“You’re the best.”
“Aliens,” Gwen breathed. “Actual fucking aliens.” She put a hand over her mouth, giggling. “I hunt fucking aliens. Shit, that’s-well, that’s-”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Wow. Well, that’s something to look forward to.”
The smile slid off Jack’s face. Gwen frowned.
“What?”
“I’m afraid you can’t remember any of this.”
“I-”
“The timeline has been disrupted enough as it is. You need to forget this ever happened.”
Gwen shook her head. “Easier said than done. This sort of thing tends to stick in your memory.”
“Which is why I gave you a little bit of help.”
Gwen sat rigid in her seat, her eyes fixed on Jack. Jack nodded at her drink.
“Just a little pill,” he said comfortingly, “that will wipe away the last few hours. As though it never happened.”
Gwen lurched back, shaking her head.
“I don’t want to forget. You bastard,” she spat. “You can’t make me forget, not this. You can’t.”
“I already did.”
“Please.” The events of the day were catching up with her, rising in her throat and burning behind her eyes. Tracks of tears began running down Gwen’s cheeks, her thick black eyeliner and mascara giving her panda eyes, dark and stark against her red and white skin. “Please, I want to remember.”
Her lids grew heavy, and her neck didn’t seem to work. Jack caught her head before she even realised she was falling.
“I need to remember,” she sobbed.
Jack kissed her on the crown of her head.
“You will,” he promised, “when you’re ready. And when you are, I’m going to need you to remember to do something for me, ok?” He combed back a lock of hair from her face, and leaned in to whisper into her ear. “Remember;” he smiled, “to try the car park roof.”
And then he was gone.
Gwen was glad to see them back, although that could have been the beer as much as anything else. They found her in front of Tosh’s computer screen, a movie playing at top volume, her chair surrounded by empty beer cans.
“Hey! So I’m still not dead. Mission complete?”
“Yeah, mission complete,” Jack said. “How much beer have you had?”
“Enough, or nearly.”
Owen gave a sniff.
“You haven’t tried the pot?”
Gwen shook her head. “I only like it in brownies.”
“Fucking princess.” Owen swiped a beer, and dragged a chair over. The others followed suit. “So, what are we watching?”
The rain was pouring, the night was cold, and Rhys was waiting back home. With the order to clear out, Gwen could have taken an early night. Join Andy for a quick drink at the Fox and Badger, and then spend the night warm and cosy in front of the sofa.
But Torchwood was right in front of her, and instead of walking away from them, she wanted nothing more than to get closer.
Two women, two men, the tallest of whom wore a vintage woollen greatcoat. While the others went about opening up boxes, the contents of which shielded from view by their backs, he stood and scanned the crowd, the rain running down his ridiculously chiselled jaw, and making his dark hair go slick and spiky.
She followed his eyes, and saw them linger on the car park. He turned his gaze back to the crowd and then, by chance, his eyes met hers.
He turned his back, but Gwen kept on watching him. Her eyes flickered back to the car park roof.
“Try the car park roof.”
Try the car park roof?
Gwen bit her lip. It would give her a better view than standing down here.
Try the car park roof. Why not?
What was the worst that could happen?