TW Casefiles: Brand Loyalty (5)

The pain was almost unbearable, forcing me to my knees as my legs gave way under the strain. My fingers, bent into claws by muscle spasms, tore ineffectually at the sides of my head as I tried in desperation to remove the source of my agony. I felt it spread inwards, starting as a sharp piercing, burrowing sensation, before spreading out, tendril like, both across and deeper into my head. The pain travelled like spilled ink, pouring into the recesses of my brain, filling the gaps within my skull, dominating my every thought until my very consciousness was sidelined and I no longer thought. I was simply pain, nothing else. The last thing I remembered before passing out was Ash, reaching out towards the Tech Specs, trying to remove them from my face. The pain didn't stop as she pulled the glasses from away from me, then I was overwhelmed by my torment.

The next thing I remembered was softness. Touch was the first sense to return, and I felt myself suspended as if I were lying on a cotton cloud. Slowly, experimentally, I opened my eyes, half expecting to see a vision of pearly gates and angelic hosts. As my bleary eyes adjusted to to the light, my surroundings slowly swam into focus. I was lying on a bed, in what seemed like the medical examination room of the Hub. Across the room, two blurry figures were hunched over a computer screen in apparent concentration. I let out a feeble groan as I tried to sit upright. As I flumped unsuccessfully backwards, the two figures turned around sharply and rushed to my side.

"Ash. . . What.... Dave?" I uttered, semi coherently.

"Don't move." Ash replied, laced with concern. "We don't know what exactly happened yet, so you have to be careful."

"I'm just glad you're awake. You've been comatose for a good seven hours lad." Dave added.

"Don't worry about me." I said, with an unconvincing air of defiance. "I've felt worse after a night on the lash." I tried to sit up again but my determination was betrayed by my stiff and unresponsive limbs. Instead I flashed a smug grin, as if lying there was what I had intended all along. "Yep, a good fry and a black coffee. That's what I need."

"This is why you never win at poker." Ash murmured to herself, before explaining further. "We've taken a few scans of your head, along with a biopsy or two, and... well... there's no easy way of putting this..."

"Your head is filled with plastic." Dave added, bluntly. "Seems those specs injected you with a dose of malleable, fluid plastic. It's weird stuff, acts almost like it's alive."

"It's formed a latticework around your brain, but we don't know why, or what it means for you."

"And, there's no chance of removing it, I suppose?" I asked, hopefully.

"Well, yes and no." Dave replied. "We can't destroy the plastic without risking your brain... but the plastic is bio-degradable. Should dissolve in about three days."

"Assuming it hasn't killed you by then." Ash added, sternly. I could tell she blamed me for recklessly trying on the glasses, and herself for not stopping me. I thought of saying something, of explaining myself, but it wasn't the time. So I kept quiet, for now. Instead, I posed a question.

"So, have you run a check in the archives for living plastic?"

"Of course. We're not helpless without you." Ash responded. "Best and only concrete match is a race called the Autons. Living plastic soldiers, controlled via hive mind by a creature called a Nestene Consciousness. They've tried to invade Earth a few times, usually by taking control of plastic objects, devices and shop mannequins."

"There's no real evidence of them injecting people with plastic before, but it's not unreasonable to assume it's an attempt at mind control of some form." Dave added.

I thought about my situation for a moment before replying. Was it possible that the Nestene could control me via this lattice? If not, then what else was its purpose. And if it could, then would I be compelled to aid in its conquest? How could my friends trust me in the battle to come? How could I trust my own thoughts? Would I even know if my thoughts were not my own?

Unaware of my internal grief, Ash continued with her uncovered information.
"Last reported Auton incursion was only a few years ago. UNIT defeated a potential invasion threatening the UK. Something centred around a new tech start-up supplying 3D printers to offices around the UK, which began to mass produce plastic warriors."

"And guess the name of said company?" Dave continued, giddily. "DevlinTech."

"What, the same as our local Tech Specs guy?" I asked incredulously. "That's not a coincidence. Not possible."

"Exactly. Best guess, some part of the Nestene survived, and is trying again, here instead. Posing as an Irish tech genius." Ash added.

"And the specs, this plastic? It's to turn humanity into soldiers loyal to the Nestene." I finished, finally getting what my teammates had worked out while I'd be asleep. The Tech Specs were to launch in Cork in just 36 hours. We had a daunting task ahead, and little idea if how to proceed. And I was likely a saboteur controlled remotely by our enemy. So, business as usual, I suppose.

TW Casefiles: Brand Loyalty (4)

The air filtered throughout the autopsy examination room was chilly, and laced with the stale tang of recirculated air. Before me on the gurney lay the body of the murdered Weevil, looking almost peaceful cloaked in the veil of death. I pulled on a pair of rubber gloves with an echoing snap, the sound uncomfortably loud against the hushed silence that tends to follow corpses in repose. We were all new to the game back then and still retained a certain subconscious attitude towards death. Murder, autopsy, eventually all this would become second nature to us, we would grow to see corpses as part of the job. Like fleshy vessels of information, rather than ex living creatures. Frankly this sounds more callous than I intended. Merely, we had not yet grown accustomed to witnessing death, we had yet to lose our innocence, I suppose.

"I'm sorry about this." I whispered to the corpse, as I picked up one of the alien scanners Torchwood has repurposed into a medical tool. I ran it over the gunshot wound on the Weevil's chest, as the screen began to pulse and bleep. Interpreting the display, I realized that the bullet was still inside the wound. With a grimace and  a sigh, I picked up a surgical pliers and probed the chest hole gingerly, half trying to look away as I dug deeper into the mangled flesh. I tried to imagine myself playing a game of some kind, trying to distract from the disgusting nature of my actions. I was always a dab hand at Operation as a child. My attempts were foiled by my brain, which at this point was practically screaming:
"Oh Jesus! Your hand is in an alien. Literally inside. Was that a lung? Does it have lungs? Of course it does, it can breathe, and anyway, YOU ARE TOUCHING THE LUNG! You're poking around in a wound and there's bits of bone everywhere. You know, this has the consistency of raw mince..."

I raised the back of my gloved wrist to my mouth as I fought to control a gag reflex, which was mostly successful. Swallowing my failure (mostly figurative, partially literal) I returned to probing the gunshot wound. Eventually, I located a small metal object and managed to free it from its meat prison.

"Here's where it gets interesting." I mused aloud to myself. The bullet was a cube, not a pointed cylinder like you'd expect. Which was odd. Bullets are so shaped to help them pierce flesh, while allowing the rifling of a gun barrel to impart a spin for added stability on the trajectory. How does a cube make sense, I wondered? It's not aerodynamic, not efficient, and harder to aim. Yet, the severity of the wound suggested it had traveled faster than the typical speed of a bullet from such a rifle.

I continued examining the Weevil, but found nothing else of interest on the body. People have done all sorts of things with Weevils in the past. Torchwood records mention fight clubs, drug testing, freak-shows, even sex trafficking. (That last one was supposedly defanged. But it was added to the database by Jack. I still don't know if that makes it more likely to be a wind up or the truth). However, the body showed no signs of recent trauma, nor any form of tag or tracer. It seemed a perfectly ordinary specimen, who happened to forage in the wrong place at the wrong time. If anything about a Weevil can be said to be ordinary, of course.

Once I had finished in the autopsy room, and cleaned myself up, I returned to the central section of the Hub where Ash was busy running several searches on the computer bank. She looked up from her dual monitors as I entered, and prepared to make some wry comment. Before she could however, she must have seen something in my eyes, and instead a soft, warm expression blossomed on her face.

"How are you coping?" She asked, gently.

"About as well as I can, given what I've been doing. It's still hard to come to terms with some aspects of the job." I sighed, as I embraced her. After a tender moment, Ash pushed herself away to arms length lightly.

"You mean like squelching around in an alien's innards?"

"Hey, at least I didn't vomit. Mostly." I said with quickly deflating bravado.

"Well, next time you can do the tedious computer stuff, and I'll get my hands dirty." Ash replied.

"No, it's fine, really. I'll get used to it."

"Don't lie to me, Arven. Not again. We're here to support each other, so if you need to talk, I'm here. Always."

She gave me a quick kiss, before continuing.

"So what did you find out from the Weevil?"

"Not much. Except, she was killed by a bizarre cube shaped bullet."

I handed the (cleaned) bullet to her, and waited for her to examine it.

"Hmm." She pondered. "This makes sense. You see, I've been researching the modifications on the man's rifle. It's hard to be sure from only the visuals, but I think it was a rail-gun."

"A-ha!" I exclaimed. A rail-gun would explain the shape of the bullet, after all. Angled projectiles would better tear the flesh of a target, and rail-guns can fire any shape of ammunition depending on design. It's a device which uses intense magnetic fields to rapidly impart kinetic energy upon an object. The projectile is accelerated rapidly along rails by electromagnetic energy, creating a gun that doesn't use any kind of explosive charge. I knew that certain militaries were trialing such weapons for use on naval carriers, but I'd never heard of a handheld version. Except for the ones in our databases of course.

"If it is, then it's alien tech. That's not good." I said, concerned.

"At least only one of them was armed. Suggests they're operating on limited resources." Ash added.

"But why a Weevil? We know they were ordered to kill the alien, so they weren't there to steal the Tech Specs."

"Maybe, they're employed by DevlinTech? Keep the stock safe from intruders? I did think that the Tech Specs seemed a little too good to be true. What if they're powered by salvaged alien technology?"

I considered Ash's point for a while. It was certainly plausible. I reached into my pocket and withdrew a pair of the glasses I'd borrowed from the warehouse.

"Well, we could always find out." I said, smirking. Ash looked like she wasn't sure whether to slap me or kiss me. Instead she remained silent. I felt like she was silently willing me not to do something. But now I was curious.

"Let's see if they live up to the hype." I smiled, as I placed them on my face.

"Oh no." Ash said to herself. I gave a cry of pain, as a sharp ringing echoed inside my head, and I felt as if something was drilling into my brain via my ears.

TW Casefiles: Brand Loyalty (3)

I reached the nearest doors of the warehouse slightly ahead of Ashley, and wrenched it open while both its rusty hinges and my rusty muscles creaked in protest. The shriek of swinging steel was hardly subtle, though stealth was hardly an option now that someone was shooting. Together, Ash and I rushed into the building, each of us sweeping our respective corners with a glance before turning our attentions to the centre of the room. Or rather, the barrier separating us from the centre of the room. The warehouse floor was a maze of packing crates and pallets, stacked haphazardly in crude rows, reaching up about twenty feet and spanning the length of the building. We had entered facing the foremost row, which blocked our view further in and provided altogether too many potential ambush sites.

With a few silent gestures, Ash and I split up, taking opposing sides of the rows and progressed deeper into the warehouse, checking each row as we passed. We had only cleared the first two rows before we heard the voices, speaking in Cork accents so dense that words could hardly escape its gravitational field. The kind of voice that seems mostly to comprise of disjointed syllables masked in a lilting brogue. What follows is the closest interpretation of what I could discern.

"It's definitely dead Jim."
"Course he is. I'm a dead eye when it comes to marksmanship."
"Pure fluke, twas. Only dead eye you're accustomed to is the black one you got when you fell onto the corner of your barstool."
"Still a better dead eye than the look your wife gives ya when you're late home."
"Shut up, will ya?"
"It's only a joke lad. Lighten up ta Jaysus."
"No, shut up! I think I heard something."
"Rats probably."
"I don't know many rats that can open steel doors. Save your brother, that is."
"Oi!"
"Anyway, we'd best be off before someone finds us."
"But what about this thing? Can't leave it here to be seen now, can we."
"We don't got a choice. Boss man paid us to kill it,it's dead. That's all that's important. It'll all be written off as a drunk hobo, probably."

I could sense the moment already slipping away. If we had any hopes of interrogating those two, we had to act before they made their escape. With a yell, I tore down towards them. Ashley, momentarily stunned by my reckless reaction froze before continuing after me. Ahead, I could see the two men now, though they were obscured by the weak and halfhearted lights overhead. One appeared short and fat, while the other was tall and thin. This was only in relation to each other however, neither was far removed from the average male in absolute terms. The slightly taller man was the one holding the gun, which appeared to be similar to a standard, old fashioned bolt action rifle, if you ignored the flashing lights and strange metal adorning its surface. Already, the pair was beginning to turn and run for the exit nearest them. I increased my pace, frowning. Not to sound ungrateful, but I wondered why neither of the men were shooting at us. Was it because the rifle really only held a single shot? And even if that was the case, surely the little man would be carrying a weapon of their own? I decided that my questions would be best answered if and when the two were in custody.

On the floor near the spot where I had first spotted the men, I could now see was slumped a Weevil. Obviously dead, the poor creature had been shot through the heart. Sure, I've had to put down a fair few Weevils in my time, usually as a last resort, but something about this seemed wrong. It was too clinical and precise. The work of a professional hunter, not a desperate survivor. It hadn't been killed because it posed a threat, merely because it was different, alien. I looked into its eyes, (her eyes, I decided), and saw the barest flicker of life. Something the two men wouldn't have understood or cared about.  She was dying, nothing could save her now, but she was determined to cling on to life as long as she could manage. I saw that glint in her eye, the glare of hatred and revenge. She wouldn't rest until the pair who had done this had paid.

"Hush, hush now." I said, crouching down before the Weevil. I laid a hand on her shoulder gently. Feebly, she tried to pull away before giving up due to the pain of her chest wound. Ash ran past in pursuit of the men, barely paying me any attention.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for what they've done." I pleaded with the Weevil. "But mark my words. I'm going to make them pay."

I couldn't tell if she was smart enough to hear me, to comprehend me, not to mention if she was lucid enough. Although, I could have sworn her lip curled in a vindictive grin, or maybe it was just a grimace of pain. I continued to hold her as the last of her life ebbed away and she collapsed with a final shuddering gasp. I sat alone in silence then, the sudden deafening silence that's left, void-like, when a living being imperceptibly nothing but a mass of decaying meat. Life is such a fickle thing, something we can't truly grasp until someone is ripped from us. We are all of us constantly rotting and degrading, life is merely the chemical process that balances entropy and keeps us muddling on, and yet it is so much more, as felt by the intense absence left in the wake of a death. In my time with Torchwood, I've seen so much death, of friends, enemies, and the innocents in between. But it's always the same. Every death leaves a mark, invisible yet indelible upon you. And I know that nobody should have to face it alone.

Ashley's voice buzzed in my ear, via my Bluetooth headset.

"Damn. Bastards had a vehicle stashed away just outside. I lost them and there's no way we'll catch them tonight." She sighed, breathing heavily.

"Did you get the reg?" I asked, as I stood up from the deceased Weevil.

"Missing a digit, but enough to establish a trace, assuming they aren't fakes or anything. At least it's a start though."

"And, if that doesn't shake out, I think I've found a lead of my own. Bring the car around, I want this Weevil collected for autopsy. Maybe we can find out what kind of weapon our new friends favoured."

"Got it. Best be quick though, in case either of them tries to call the Guards down on us."

"Got it. But that's not my lead. No, I'm more interested in these crates. They're all Devlin Tech branded. The entire shipment is full of Tech Specs. Something is fishy here."