In Losing What I Am, I Become Who We Are (Part 5)

[nothing_rhymes_with_ianto]

Title: In Losing What I Am, I Become Who We Are (Part 5)
Authors: qafkinnetic & solvingfor42
Characters/Pairings: The Torchwood Team, sans Jack.
Word Count: 43,192
Rating: R
Warnings/Spoilers: Warning for violence and major character death.
Beta: snarkymuch, Neil's parents, Tumblr user consultingmidgardian.
Summary: The discovery of a mechanical Weevil beneath Cardiff starts a chain of events that threatens to destroy Torchwood. Jack is still missing, Ianto seems to be going mad after an injury and Owen is forced to confront his worst fears. When the people of Cardiff start turning into clockwork automatons, things seem hopeless. And then, when Owen decides to investigate Ianto’s strange behaviour, they get worse.
Authors' Notes: SO MUCH LOVE for our betas: snarkymuch and Neil's parents, and our Brit-picker, consultingmidgardian. We'd also like to thank The SCP Foundation (http://www.scp-wiki.net/), where we found a key plot element.
This fic was supposed to be short -- we decided to aim for a thousand words, expecting it to expand to two or three times that. But Neil tends to write mostly novel-length fics, and Lex wanted an actual plot, and we found all these great ideas, and the next thing we knew it was over 40,000 words! As Neil said when we were trying to think of a title: 'Somehow I think “The Epic Fic that Would Not End Oh God” would convey the wrong mood.'




Ianto held Gwen's hand as Owen ran the scanner over her.

“I’m so sorry, Gwen,” Owen said, looking at the screen.

She swallowed. “I’m infected?”

He nodded. “Your skeleton and some of your internal organs have already begun to change.”

Ianto squeezed her hand and she took a shuddering breath. “I must’ve been careless when I went to see Rhys,” she said.
Ianto tried to reassure her. “It’s more likely you caught it from Tosh,” he said. “We’ve all been exposed.”

She started to cry, not the histrionic, angry wailing he was used to but with quiet, dry sobs. Ianto looked up at Owen, who met his gaze with a look of pure panic.

“We’ll find a cure,” Ianto said with optimism he couldn't believe. “We’ll save you and Tosh.”

“Yeah,” Owen echoed.

She shook her head, pulled her hand out of Ianto's and ran from the room.

Owen rubbed a hand over his face. “What are we going to do?”

Ianto tried to put his fear for Gwen out of his mind and think. He felt like the answer was right there, he just needed to figure out what it was. What did they know? If he could just put it all together, maybe he would see the solution. The Archive could only access fragments of data. It wasn't designed to be a separate entity. It hadn't been meant to stay in Ianto's skull and it had grown more than planned.

“Is it possible,” he asked slowly, “that because the Archive is so entwined with my brain, that some of the archive information has been stored in my memory banks?”

Owen sighed. “I have no idea how any of this works, mate. I'm way out of my depth.”

[THAT WOULD MAKE SENSE,] the Archive said. [THE DATA I CAN ACCESS IS PARTIAL STRINGS, AS IF IT'S BEEN SCATTERED AND I CAN ONLY RETRIEVE HALF OF IT. SOME OF IT CONSISTS OF SMALL BUT COMPLETE SECTIONS, BUT MOST OF THE STRINGS ARE TOO SHORT TO MAKE ANY SENSE WITHOUT THE MISSING PIECES.]

“So, wait.” Owen looked incredulous. “You need to be defragged?”

[ALL MEMORY, ORGANIC AND ELECTRONIC, IS STORED DIFFUSELY. NORMALLY THE RETRIEVAL PROCESS REINTEGRATES THE INFORMATION AUTOMATICALLY BEFORE PROCESSING IT.]

Ianto thought it was starting to make sense. "But you can't access the parts that are stored in my brain."

[NO. IF THE DATA IS STORED IN YOUR MEMORY, YOU WOULD NEED TO RETRIEVE IT. BUT SINCE NEITHER FRAGMENT MAKES SENSE WITHOUT THE OTHER, WE WOULD ACTUALLY NEED TO RETRIEVE THE INFORMATION SIMULTANEOUSLY AND REORDER IT TOGETHER.]

"But that's impossible!" Owen protested.

"Not necessarily," Ianto said. "Obviously, that's exactly what the Archive was designed to do."

[YES,] the Archive said, sounding like it was thinking it through as it spoke. [JUST NOT WITH A HUMAN BRAIN. THE ARTANDEX SHARE COGNITION WITH THE STEIGETS, AND THEY WOULD HAVE TO BE ABLE TO DRAW ON BOTH THEIR OWN MEMORIES AND THE MEMORIES OF THEIR HOSTS. AND I WAS MEANT TO LINK WITH THE MAINFRAME'S CENTRAL PROCESSOR.]

“So why hasn't it happened with us?” Ianto asked.

“I'll bet that human neuroanatomy is a bit different than Stieget,” Owen said. “And it's definitely different than a computer. I wonder...”

“What?”

“I'll bet if I look at your brain with the Bekaran scanner I'll get a clear enough picture I might be able to see the problem.”
“Okay.”

Owen grabbed it and started weaving it round Ianto's head. Ianto forced himself to hold still and not try to follow it with his eyes.

“Huh.”

“What now?”

“No one knows how memory really works,” Owen said. “There are a lot of theories, but most of it's still a mystery.”

“This is fascinating, but is there a point to this lecture on neuropsychology?”

“I'm getting there, tea boy. Keep your pants on. The point is, there is no physical CPU in the human brain. Cognition— and memory retrieval— happen all over. And, as far as I can tell, this thing in your head— we really need to give it a name; it sounds stupid to call it the Archive all the time— is pretty well interwoven with every part of your grey matter and your white matter. If it's missing one tiny little section that happens to be vital for memory, I don't know how we'll tell. How about Eugene?”

[I DON'T THINK SO.]

“Stop it,” Ianto said. “It's bad enough you bicker with me, I don't you need to start bickering with it, too.”

“Archibald? Wait.” Owen's voice lost its flippant tone. “Now this actually does make sense. There's a conduit that's snapped. It leads to your caudate nucleus, which we do know is related to memory retrieval and feedback processing. But why would it have broken?”

[INSUFFICIENT NUTRITION CAUSED SOME STRUCTURAL WEAKNESS.]

“Oh, that makes sense. Like a calcium deficiency. With the new implant, will you be able to reverse the damage?”

[I HOPE SO.]

“But you won’t be able to fix the broken conduit. Not in time.”

[NO.]

Ianto interrupted, annoyed at being left out of a conversation that involved his own head and his own mouth. “And that means what, exactly?”

Owen put down the scanner, mouth tight. “It means I'll have to physically repair it. With surgery.”
“And what will that do?”

[IDEALLY OUR CONSCIOUSNESSES WILL MERGE. WE WILL BECOME ONE BEING, WITH ACCESS TO ALL OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND MY DATA.]

§

Owen had met Ianto's eyes after the Archive's pronouncement and come up with a quick excuse about checking on Gwen. Ianto was glad enough for it— he needed some time alone to think. Not that they had much time, but he couldn't just rush blithely ahead into something like this. After the surgery, would he still be himself?

[YOU WILL BE US. I WILL BE US. WE WILL BE COMPLETE.]

Alone was a relative term now, Ianto realised bitterly. He ran a hand through his hair and got up. He was so sick of the autopsy bay. He wanted to get out of the Hub completely; he felt like he'd been stuck down here for a year instead of just most of a day— but there was no time for that. And considering the state of the city, it probably wasn't the smartest move he could make. He went up the steps and out into the main room. Tosh still sat at her terminal, unmoving now. Only her right eye and cheek, her throat and part of her left hand remained flesh.

[HUMANS MUST BE SO LONELY.]

[What?] The non sequitur threw him off balance.

[YOU TRULY SPEND YOUR WHOLE LIVES ALONE IN YOUR OWN MINDS?]

[Of course.]

[I CAN'T IMAGINE IT. I THOUGHT OUR INTEGRATION WAS A GOOD THING, BUT I SENSE YOUR FEAR.]

[You're not afraid of it?]

[WHY WOULD I BE?]

[Because...] Ianto tried to figure out how to explain it. [Because you— the real you, the individual—will be gone. It's like dying.]

[WE WILL STILL BE HERE.]

[We'll be something new. Something different. Not ourselves.]

[AND THAT'S BAD?]

He paused. [When you were dying, you were scared. Why?]

There was a long silence. Ianto could feel the Archive's uncertainty, the echo of its fear, the same kind of confused insignificance Ianto always felt when he thought about the big whys of life. It occurred to him how young it was. Only what, two years old? It was just a baby. Finally, it thought, sadly, [I DON'T KNOW.]

[Because you didn't want to disappear? Because there were still too many things you wanted to do and think and experience? Because you didn't know why you were alive, what purpose your life was supposed to have, but you were pretty sure you hadn't done it yet?]

[YES. ALL THOSE THINGS.]

[How is this different?]

Toshiko suddenly jerked in her seat. Ianto ran towards her, conversation forgotten, worried she was having another medical crisis of some sort. When he got there, though, she was looking round with a lost expression.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Ianto.” She looked at him, her human eye bright with tears in the metal of her face. “I'm losing myself.”

“I know,” he said. “We're going to fix this, Tosh. We're not going to let this happen to you. The Archive in my head, it can get the information we need for a cure. I just need to— Owen's going to do an operation. It'll make it so that the Archive and I merge, and then I'll know how to make you human again.”

“What? So you'll become a machine instead of me? No!”

“I'm not going to sit back and let you disappear,” he said stubbornly.

“Don't you dare do this for me,” she said.

“Not just you. Gwen's sick, now, too, and the city's burning—”

“No.” Tosh's gaze lost focus for a moment and he thought she'd gone away again, but she seemed to pull herself back by sheer force of will. “I don't have long, I can tell, but I have to say this. I don't care what's happening to the world. No one can make you do this. It has to be your choice, Ianto, do you understand? I'm speaking from personal experience, here. It's too much to ask of anyone. No one has the right to decide this for you.”

“But I can't just—”

“I mean it. Only do it if you want—” She cut off midsentence, her face going instantly blank and distant. “Emotion is an inefficient way of determining action,” she said in a monotone.

Ianto turned and walked away from her, feeling sick. A traitorous thought stole across his mind. Even if they accessed the file, even if they found a cure, what was to say it would reverse the effects of the virus? If Tosh were going to be stuck this way anyway, was it even worth it?

[THIS VIRUS. IT'S DOING THIS TO EVERYONE?]

[Yes.]

[I HADN'T REALISED...]

Ianto stopped in front of his workstation and watched Cardiff tear itself apart. He couldn't tell if the nauseous horror he felt was his or the Archive's.

Was Tosh right? Did he have any choice in this? Could he live with himself if he chose himself at the expense of everyone else?

[I UNDERSTAND WHY YOU'RE AFRAID NOW,] the Archive thought. He could feel its fear, and a pang of guilt assailed him. He hadn't meant to infect it with his own doubts, just explain his own. [I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE RESULT WOULD BE OF OUR INTEGRATION. WE COULD BOTH BE LOST.]

There was something else he wasn't considering, too. If no one had the right to make this decision for him, how did he have a right to make the decision for the Archive? It was . . . well, maybe not a 'person', but it was alive and aware. Didn't it deserve to decide its own fate?

[What do you want to do?] he asked it before he could lose his nerve.

[I WANT TO LIVE,] it said. [THIS COULD DESTROY US, OR IT COULD NOT. IT COULD UNDO THE DAMAGE THE VIRUS HAS CAUSED OR NOT. BUT IF IT GIVES US ANY CHANCE TO SAVE THE OTHERS, INCLUDING THOSE YOU LOVE, ISN'T IT WORTH THE RISK?]

From the mouths of babes, he thought. Half alien, half computer, practically just born, and it was already a better person than he was. He felt something expand warmly in his chest. He could think of much worse fates than to become part of someone like that. Maybe it would even improve him. [You're right,] he thought to it. [Thank you.]

---

He hadn’t really planned it. He’d gone up to comfort Gwen, but she’d waved him off, so he’d gone back to the lab and suddenly found himself sliding down the wall and sinking to the floor, chest tight, breath coming in heaving gasps. He hung his head down on his knees and tried to calm his racing breath and heart. Jesus. He wasn’t usually this panicky. He got his breathing under control and then just sat there, hands clenched around his shins, head on his knees, his eyes closed. Footsteps alerted him to Ianto’s presence, but he didn’t raise his head. He felt the archivist standing beside him.

“What’s wrong? Are you okay? Are you sick?”

“I’m fine,” Owen grumbled, defence mechanisms on autopilot.

Ianto slid his back down the wall to sit beside him. Owen felt a hand slide across the back of his neck, then across his forehead, checking for fever. Then there was a tug at his shoulder. “Come on, Owen, sit up. Don’t be an idiot. You’re not sick, but you’re obviously not fine.”

“It’s just everything.” Owen groaned. “You, Gwen. The whole fucking world.”

“I know. We have to do what we can, though, and hope for the best. I’ve decided to go ahead with the surgery. We’ve decided to go ahead with the surgery.”

Owen knew he meant the Archive, and it was odd to think of Ianto as two beings. And that he’d be operating on Ianto’s brain. “That’s just it,” he admitted. “Not to freak you out or anything, but I’ve never even done brain surgery before. Seen one performed, yeah. Years ago. Autopsied brains, sure. But I’ve never done one myself.”

Ianto prodded him until Owen looked at him. “I trust you. No matter what you think, you’re a great doctor. If I have to have somebody poking round in my head, I’d rather it be you than anyone else—no matter how experienced.”

Owen scoffed, and shrugged. It didn’t dislodge Ianto’s hand on his shoulder, but he didn’t try again. “Yeah, well it’s not on you if I make you brain-dead or destroy your ability to see or something. You’ve got a lot of trust for a bloke who doesn’t have a damn clue what he’s doing.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m trusting my friend. Besides, if I’m brain-dead, I’m hardly going to be in any position to blame you, am I?”

“I suppose not. And I won’t have much time to blame myself because we’ll all be mad carnival machines soon. Fuck. I guess we really do have to do this.”

Ianto shifted his weight and shrugged, giving a little snort. “Well, considering the alternative is to walk into A&E and ask them to patch up the alien growing inside my skull, I’d say you’re the most qualified person available.”

“I guess so. And there’s Mainframe, too.”

“Look, Owen. All joking aside, I know you can do this. I’m sorry you have to, but I know you’ll be brilliant. You’re a genius doctor. Trust yourself.”

Owen sighed. He had to do this surgery. There was no other choice, no alternate course of action. He had to push back his insecurities and worry for Ianto’s sake. “All right, I’ll try.”

Ianto pushed himself up and held out a hand to Owen, who took it. Ianto let out a breath and looked at Owen. “Well, there’s no time like the present, I suppose.”

“Right, yeah.” Owen walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a bundle of scrubs. “I know it’s terribly awkward, but you’ll probably want to put these on. I’m sure you don’t want to get your suit dirty.”

Ianto nodded and took the clothes, heading to the washroom to get dressed. Owen took the time to get ready, calling up the relevant information on the Mainframe and setting up all the tools and things he’d need.

Ianto came down and made himself comfortable on the table. He looked up at Owen. “I poked my head in and told Gwen not to come down here until you called her back.”

“Good thinking. She’d probably not want to see this.”

Owen pulled the ventilator over and put IV stand beside them. He slipped the IV needle into Ianto’s hand but didn’t open the valve.

“I’m going to sedate you so that you’ll be unconscious but able to respond to commands from me. It’s called twilight anaesthesia. Normally I wouldn’t have to intubate you, but because this is sudden and I didn’t make you starve yourself for no reason this past week, I’ll have to.”

“That’s fine. I just want to get this done.”

Owen opened the IV and let the sedative begin to enter Ianto’s bloodstream. Ianto’s eyelids fluttered and then closed. Quickly, Owen pressed his fingers to Ianto’s throat and slid the ventilation tube in, switched on the mechanical ventilator. Then he picked up a pair of clippers.

He sighed. Ianto was going to be so pissed. “Sorry, mate.”

The buzz of the razor felt too loud. It hurt Owen’s ears. Soon he had a patch of smooth skin where he was to open Ianto’s head. He disinfected the area and numbed it quickly. He turned away and gave himself a moment to tremble with nerves and hyperventilate. He really was terrified of messing this up.

Turning the laser scalpel onto its second-lowest setting, he cut a wide flap of skin, pulling it back from the skull. Another setting higher and he cut an ovoid piece from the bone of Ianto’s skull, placing the piece onto a clean dish.

There it was. The Archive. Strange, thin tendrils of iridescent greyish-black webbed across Ianto’s brain. Larger nodes that looked like tiny computer chips lay across some of the folds of the brain. It reminded him of an integrated circuit with Ianto’s brain as the circuit board. He could see where the tendrils had broken apart and separated, in the area where they dived down and attached to the caudate nucleus, another major part of memory. He knew there were other tendrils, probably also broken, ascending through the deeper parts of Ianto’s brain towards the area. It made sense. It unsettled him in a distant, thriller-movie sort of way. Humans should not be part-robot-thing, and yet this one, his friend, was. And, oh god, memories of Katie threatened to assault him with painful images but he shoved them violently away and went back to work.

With forceps, he carefully pulled the two broken tendrils toward each other, then reached for another instrument that looked similar to the laser scalpel. Running it along the tendrils, he watched as a filament of peculiar silvery colour ran from attached each pair of broken strands and bound them together, speeding up the reparation process. The silver was quickly covered in the same iridescent grey-black, like myelin or electrical insulation. Then he shifted the tendrils forward, so they slid deeper into the crevices of the brain they’d pulled out of.

He nodded in satisfaction as the tendrils seemed to grow stronger, settling down into the tissue. Then he readied a thin alien compound endoscope they had nicked from UNIT, sliding a bit of extra piping beside it to hold a sort of alien Swiss army knife of surgical tools.

It wasn’t too difficult for the oddly mercurial bit of alien technology to slide its way through the crevices of Ianto’s brain, through the lateral ventricle, and down to the caudate nucleus itself. He had been right. Black tendrils, their connections broken, could be seen by the tiny camera. Careful not to make a twitch, even with his nerves as shot as they were, Owen manipulated the tiny surgical tools with flicks of his fingers against the controls at the top of the endoscope. Slowly, all the tendrils were secured together again.

Owen was ready to remove the little camera when he noticed a strange mass. He’d missed a few tendrils, and they had somehow managed to tangle themselves together into a strange knot.

“Shit,” he muttered, a knot of tension clenching in his own stomach.

It was slow work to undo the snarl of black fibres. They all wanted to slide back to where they had been instead of where they needed to go. And Owen was trying so hard not to shake from the fear riding his belly. Twice, the endoscope and tools seemed to get stuck, and Owen was terrified of what that meant. But then the tension would loosen and he could work again. Eventually, all the little filaments of the archive were attached together into a fine black web once more. Owen slid the endoscope and tools out, still biting back on the nervousness he felt waiting inside.

He placed the round plate of bone back in place and switched the laser scalpel onto the reverse setting, sealing the bone back into place, then the flap of skin. Ah, the wonders of alien technology. No stitches to hassle with.

He closed the valve of the IV and slid it from Ianto’s hand. As he cleaned everything up, he hoped to whatever might exist out there for someone like him, who couldn't believe in a god, that this would work. That he wouldn't mess up and destroy some fundamental part of Ianto's brain. Removing the ventilation tube, he rolled the little table into a recovery room off the medbay and slid Ianto into the bed. He was lighter than he looked, the sod.

For a moment, he let himself freak out. He balled his fists and rocked himself, letting the shakes overtake him and the hyperventilation that had been threatening finally make itself known. Then he reined it all in with a few deep breaths and sat down in the chair beside Ianto’s bed, staring at nothing in the direction of the Welshman’s left eyebrow, only leaning forward when Ianto’s eyelids began flickering.

---

“How do you feel?”

Ianto blinked. He'd just lain down on the table, hadn't he? He tried to focus, but the world kept changing proportions around him.

“The dizziness should pass in just a few minutes.”

He was in a bed, sitting up, sort of. He coughed, and a band of pain tightened round his skull. “Are you done?” he asked.

“Yup. Look at me, I need to check your pupils. Bright light.”

That was all the warning Ianto got before he was blinded by the glare from Owen's penlight. “Ouch,” he said. “Thanks.”

“You're welcome,” Owen said absently. He switched to Ianto's other eye, then clicked the light off. “Everything looks fine there.”

Ianto blinked away afterimages. “How'd it go?”

“Nerve-wracking and complicated, but you seem to be alive and still moderately sentient, so I suppose that counts as a success. Do you have an overwhelming desire to cater to my every whim?”

The disorientation was fading faster than Ianto expected, but it wasn't being helped by Owen's manic, nonsensical commentary. “Not in the slightest,” he replied.

“Damn. That extra procedure I threw in didn't work, then. How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Your hand's behind your back, so I don't know. But I'd guess two, in a rude gesture.”

Owen sighed. “You know me too well. Move your right arm for me.”

It took Ianto a moment to remember which one was his right, but then he did as Owen said. Owen ran him through a series of tests, asking him the date and his name and location and favourite flavour of lube, and having him move various body parts on command. Ianto ended up with his tongue sticking out, his finger on his nose and his eyes crossed before he realised Owen had moved on from actual medical tests to taking the piss.

“Nope, the bonus treatment I did to make you my willing slave definitely did work,” Owen said.

“Tosser,” Ianto said with a very ill-advised laugh. He winced at the sudden ache in his head and put his hand up to his skull. “Oh, God, no,” he said as he felt the patchwork texture of his scalp.

Owen did look sympathetic at that. “Sorry, there's no way round the shaving,” he said. “Hopefully it'll grow back in a week or two.”

‘I'm bald!”

“Not entirely.”

Ianto groaned.

“What about the Archive?”

“It's been quiet.” With a frown, Ianto tried to tell if he could sense its presence or not. [Are you there?] he thought.

[I . . . THINK . . . SO . . .] It sounded even groggier than Ianto felt.

“I think it's still a bit out of it from the anaesthetic,” he told Owen.

“Well, considering its body mass, I'm not really surprised. I'll go get you something to drink while we wait for it to wake up.”
He must have drifted off some whilst Owen was gone, because the next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake and handed a glass of water with a straw. “How's Tosh?” he asked as he tried to make sure he didn't drop the glass.

Owen's mouth flattened. “About the same.”

“And Gwen?”

“Her fever's gone down, at least.”

Ianto nodded gingerly and sipped at the tepid water.

“Anything?” Owen asked a few minutes later.

“I still feel exactly the same.”

[SO DO I.]

Ianto felt his spirits lift. Maybe he'd been scared of nothing. There was no loss of self here, no merging of minds or being absorbed into an alien consciousness. [You're awake now?] he asked.

[MOSTLY.]

Owen looked like he'd been punched in the gut. “It didn't work, then?”

[SOMETHING IS STILL MISSING. I CAN SEE THE OTHER PARTS OF THE INFORMATION NOW, AND IANTO'S MEMORIES. BUT I STILL CAN'T INTERPRET THEM.]

That brought all of Ianto's hopes, so high just a moment ago, crashing down.

§

They'd broken out the good brandy, the stuff Jack kept hidden in the morgue in the drawer next to a woman named Alice. They were toasting the end of the world.

“The twenty-first century is when it all changes,” Gwen said morosely.

Owen clinked his glass against hers. “Too bad we won't be around to see it.”

“I just wish I knew why the integration didn't work,” Ianto said, frustrated.

“It's no mystery," Owen said. “Obviously, I screwed up.”

[NO, THE SURGERY WAS PERFECT. THERE'S NO PHYSICAL REASON INTEGRATION SHOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED.]

“Maybe the human brain just isn't compatible,” Ianto added.

With a shudder, Owen poured himself another finger of liquor. “I wish you'd stop doing that. It's really creepy.”

“Don't say that,” Ianto snapped. The surge of protective anger he felt surprised him, but as he thought about it he decided it was justified. “The Archive decided to risk everything to save us, did you know that? To let you open up my head and perform surgery on it, and to chance this integration without knowing if it would destroy it or erase its personality or what. For us. I think it's earned the right to speak. And I think it deserves something a bit better than 'creepy'.”

“Calm down, mate. I didn't mean it that way.”

Gwen stared at him with wide eyes. “It's just that it's getting harder to tell which one of you is talking.”

Owen smirked, then leant forward with an exaggerated expression of earnestness. “I'm sorry, Archibald,” he said. “I don't think you're creepy.”

Amazingly, Ianto felt a wave of amusement from the Archive. He shook his head. “I think it likes you. Even though you're a complete tosser.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Owen said proudly.

They drank in silence for a few minutes, and then Gwen said in a small voice, “I wish Rhys were here.”

Ianto shook his head and said, without looking at her, “I wish I'd been able to save everyone. I'm sorry I failed.”

“It's not your fault, Ianto.”

Owen tossed back the rest of his snifter. “No, it's all bloody Jack's fault. If he hadn't swanned off and left us, we wouldn't have been in this mess to start with.”

Ianto didn't want to think about Jack. If they were waiting out the short time until the end, Ianto didn't want to spend it being reminded that he was alone. Wondering why he hadn't even warranted a goodbye.

[YOU'RE NOT ALONE,] the Archive thought, sounding hesitant.

[No, you're right,] Ianto thought. The realisation was comforting, and he was suddenly glad the Archive was there. Having another mind alongside his own, a warm companionship unobstructed by the distance and miscommunication between people, made facing the darkness of the end more bearable. [Thank you.]

[IT'S NOT JUST TO YOUR BENEFIT. I'M LONELY, TOO.]

[I'm sort of sorry that the integration didn't work. For myself, I mean. It would have been an exceptional experience. And now that I'm going to die anyway the reasons I was scared of integrating seem a little ridiculous.]

[IT'S WHAT I WAS MADE TO DO. I REGRET THAT I'LL DIE WITHOUT FINDING OUT WHAT IT'S LIKE.]

It sounded so lost and forlorn, so like a child in need of comforting, that if it had been a separate person Ianto would have reached out and embraced it. Instead, he found the urge translated to a feeling of opening up, internally. It was similar to when he retreated from his body to let the Archive take over, but instead of moving away from it he moved towards it. He could see it suddenly— not its physical body, but its essence, a glittering matrix of the best of life's emotion and wisdom combined with the best of technology's logic and reach. It had far transcended Torchwood's myopic design. It was beautiful.

He felt the last of his resistance fall away, walls of fear and mistrust he hadn't even realised still stood. He continued to move towards the Archive, closer and closer, until he was moving through it. Within it. And then the boundaries of "him" and "it" became meaningless, and the universe exploded into a kaleidoscope of colour and light and knowledge.

§

Ianto/the Archive opened his eyes. He hadn't even realised he'd closed them. Gwen and Owen continued to talk, apparently unaware anything had changed. He paused a moment to take stock. He was still himself. He was still both his selves. He could sense the sarcasm and control that were distinctly Ianto, the empathy and unselfconsciousness that came from the Archive, and the desire to serve and the drive for competency that both of them shared. His memories overlapped without conflict, merely a slight echo round the immediate past where he remembered conversations from two perspectives. It wasn't what either of him had expected. It was better.

The knowledge of the archives, London and Cardiff, scrolled out in front of him, overlaying his vision of the conference room like a luminous hologram. He could see the file on his own creation: a diagram of the proposed growth pattern hovered over angled windows, the notes from the implantation procedure scrolled across the tabletop and his karyotype hung in midair, suspended in front of a normal Artandex karyotype. He raised a hand and both slid to the side.

He could sense the Mainframe, too. Hear it, almost, though it murmured in machine code. And it could hear him. He called up the current status of the Hub and displayed it on the overhead screen. Owen and Gwen started as the screen came on by itself.

Ianto scrolled through the information, flipped past the various CCTV feeds with a flick of his wrist. Grabbed an external connection and checked the situation in Cardiff— news channels, trending internet discussions, emergency radio broadcasts, military communications. He absorbed it quicker than a normal human could hope to follow, then made a gesture with his hand and cleared the screen.

“Ianto?” Gwen asked, voice awed and more than a little afraid.

“WE ARE THE TORCHWOOD ONE ARCHIVE,” he said, just to see the expression on Owen's face.

It was everything he could have hoped for. Watching all the colour drain out of his face as his jaw fell open, Ianto couldn't keep from grinning any longer.

“Ianto?” Owen asked, hovering between relief, disbelief and exasperation.

“Well,” Ianto said, “I'd prefer it to Archibald.”

“Oh, my God!” Gwen yelled, jumping to her feet and throwing her arms round him.

“It worked?” Owen asked. “What happened? Why was it delayed?”

Ianto chuckled and patted Gwen's shoulder. She was crying into the joint of his neck. “We had to want it. The only thing keeping us apart was ourselves.”

Gwen grabbed Owen and pulled him into the hug. He came with a minimum of protest and a poorly hidden smile. “Fine thing to do to your doctor,” he grumbled into Ianto's ear. When they finally separated, Owen cleared his throat and asked, “And you have access to the databases?” Ianto pretended not to notice his eyes were damp.

“Yes. All of it. It's brilliant.” He flicked his fingers and file two-seventeen appeared on the screen. “I believe this is the information we need.”

---

They stared up at the screen. Ianto flipped through the information, making sure to go slowly so that Owen and Gwen could read it as well.

“It looks like this virus thing is something from the Xarvic system. It was created accidentally by a scientist looking to make self-repairing cyborg technology for medical purposes. Instead he made this thing. It’s called Engrenaxe. At least, that’s what it says here. It came to Earth in 1987, but only infected two individuals, and they were locked away by Torchwood and destroyed. Then there was Ashton-under-Lyne in 1998. Torchwood took that investigation over and killed the overseeing professor.

“Torchwood specialists took samples from the deceased and infected to study, but eventually were infected themselves and had to be executed. Despite the fact that the studies were indefinitely suspended, the research paid off and—oh—”

Gwen made a small noise of horror and disbelief. Beside him, Owen’s body slumped, a terrified whisper of “No!” falling from his lips. Ianto was afraid to look at either of his friends, to see the despondency in their eyes.

“And, apparently,” The words came out slowly, jerkily, unwilling. “No cure was found.”

“Oh god!” Gwen choked out, shoving her chair back and running from the room. Dazedly, Owen and Ianto watched her go.
Owen covered his eyes with his hands. “So we’re useless. Earth is being taken over by some alien epidemic and Torchwood is useless.” Moments later, he groaned and looked up at Ianto. “What’s going to happen to us?”

The information flicked across Ianto’s vision. It wasn’t pretty. “We’ll get… converted, I suppose.”

We went to all this trouble for nothing, Ianto thought as dawn lightened in the sky on all the news feeds. All this integrating and surgery and now I get to die only a few hours later.

He wondered how the archive, the actual physical machine, would be affected by the conversion. The information slid into his field of vision with a simple thought. The anatomy and physiology of the archive was mapped out in front of him, information scrolling down his vision.

With the flick of a finger, the files on the archive were replaced with the files on the virus. Ianto scanned through its effects, the alien compounds of it, the structure of the virus itself. The structure. It caught his eye and he stopped, examining it. The symmetry of its structure was strange, its elements skewed, and, as he pulled the file on the archive up beside it, it seemed as though the virus itself would flatten or uncoil as it met the alien bio-metal of the archive. The archive was impervious to the virus. Instantly, he called up the information regarding the archive’s effect on its host. The host was protected by a sort of “radar” that called unwanted substances to the physical archive for destruction.

The virus couldn’t affect him. Even if he somehow became unable to access files, or if he lost connection with the archive, the physical architecture of the archive would still be working. It would still be protecting him from any sort of illness or infection. He could never be infected.

“Ianto,” Owen’s voice interrupted his research. The medic was doubled over in his chair. His voice was tight with pain and dread. “Ianto, I need you to scan me.”

Ianto leapt up and ran from the room. As he passed into the lab, he could see Gwen on the gantry to the greenhouse, twitching. Her left arm no longer had flesh. Her eyes were blank black lenses. He ran back into the meeting room. Owen was sitting up straighter, panting.

“Fuck, this hurts.”

Ianto ran the scanner over the medic, breath trembling. As the Bekaran scanner beeped, he held his breath and hoped, hoped. A triple beep and the results showed on the screen.

“Infected.”

Owen sat back in his seat. “I thought so. Fuck, it hurts. How did Tosh hide it so well?”

“I don’t know.” He tried to quell the rising panic. He couldn’t take this. It was all too much. He wanted to curl into a ball and hope this was all some incredibly vivid nightmare he’d wake up from.

“What about you? How come you’re not infected?”

No. No, god, no. Owen couldn’t know. He couldn’t tell him. He wanted to scream just thinking about the unfairness of it all.

“Ianto?”

“I…can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Can’t get infected. Because of the archive. I can’t.”

“A cure?”

“No. Just… like a block. A shield. The physical archive kills any foreign elements in my body. It just destroys the virus.”

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t.”

“No, I don’t. I just hate that you get to live.” Owen coughed, stuck a finger in his mouth and poked around. “Shit. All metal.”

Ianto grabbed Owen’s hand, gripping it tightly. He could feel gears shift beneath the skin. Terror clawed at his gut.
Owen stared at their joined hands, a mixture of fear and worry and tired acceptance warring on his face. Neither spoke. There was nothing left to say.

It seemed that time had ceased to exist, that Ianto could hear every minute tick and creak in the silence of the hours as Owen’s body converted itself. He thought their hands were going to break when Owen thrashed through his heart converting. He had no sense of time. It had been hours. Maybe days. All he knew was that he was watching his friend slowly dying and had no way to stop it.

“Owen.” Ianto grabbed Owen’s hand with both of his, as if it could make his point stronger, make his plea be heard. “I don’t want to live. I don’t want to be the only one left alive. The only person on earth. I can’t be.”

Owen coughed, and gritted his teeth in pain as his eye socket seemed to melt and stretch, a cold camera lens developing as a poor substitute. “I’m really sorry, Ianto,” he croaked. “Really, I am.”

“It’s all right, Owen.” Ianto couldn’t help the tears stinging his eyes at the thought of being alone on a planet of automatons with no one to call for help, and his friends gone.

He gripped Owen’s hand tighter, as if it could stop the conversion. But he stared, and watched, unable to tear his eyes away as Owen’s body changed, killing itself into a machine. Owen flashed a smile and weakly flipped him the V before he stilled in his seat, blank camera eyes forward.

Ianto had nearly bitten his tongue off guiding what remained of his three best friends into the lower levels. He locked them into a secure cell. They sat on the benches, staring blankly at each other, unmoving, unresponsive, inhuman. He sealed the door to the cells shut and trudged back up the stairs. He turned off the CCTV feed of the streets outside, full of fires and destruction and wandering automatons.

He flicked on the CCTV of the cells. The shells of his friends stared at each other in blank nothingness. For a moment, he let the sobs wrack his body, the fear that had settled deep into his bones, the awful truth, the resignation. Then he inhaled a deep, shaking breath, and sat down to wait for Jack.



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