(MAIN RANGE): In Medias Res

 

(MAIN RANGE): In Medias Res

A Torchwood Story

Starring Scarlett Johansson as Cherry Classified 

For Cherry, this Adventure takes place during the time she was stuck with Gwen's Torchwood team in the 1920s, before she met the Doctor in the events of The Elder Thing

The 1920s

Mr. Hugh Lansbury sat down in his chair, relaxing. He drank his coffee. It had been a long day, and he sunk deep into his chair, and switched on the radio. 

He was just beginning to drop off when there was a sharp knocking on his front door. He wrapped his bathrobe around himself, trying not to be too revealing, and then he went to the door and opened it. Why, he wondered. Who could it be at this hour?

He opened the door to find a woman standing in the rain in a black catsuit. Her hair dripped, and she was thoroughly soaked. She didn't seem to care. 

"Hi," she said, holding up a badge, "I'm specialist Cherry Classified. You're Mr. Hugh Lansbury, isn't that right? Famous Surgeon?"

Hugh gulped, minorly surprised at this. "Um, yes." He sputtered. 

"Good." Cherry said, stepping inside and closing the door behind her. "I'm here to look at your basement." 

Hugh made strange undignified noises to himself as Cherry began to walk straight into her house.

"Excuse me! Um- I, um-" He squeaked britishly, as Cherry walked further, now into the kitchen. She opened several doors, evidently guessing at which one would be the basement, before finally reaching that one, and descending down into his basement. 

Hugh made numerous disturbed faces, as he began to descend after her. 

As he made his way into the granite and dark basement, Cherry had already placed some kind of cybernetic device on the floor. 

"What's that?- You, you can't be here, you, you need a warrant! You can't just bust in, like this, I, oh, this is highly irregular!" He gurgled. "And what's that you've placed on the floor???"

"Sorry to take Candy from a baby, but I didn't put this here." Cherry said.

"What?" Hugh asked, confused. "That's...that's not the right expression." 

"I'm sorry, not used to all these modern sayings," Cherry said absentmindedly, as she took a piece of blue gelatin out of her pocket and placed it on top of the device embedded in the floor

"Also, what, you didn't put this there, what, what what are you doing?"

"I need to place the gel on it for my scanner to give correct, readings. Whatever thing you have in your basement, it's ray shielded."

"It..It wasn't here yesterday." Hugh blubbered. "I have absolutely no clue what that glowing metal thing is. Why did you put it there?"

"Didn't." 

"Then what, it magically got in? I don't believe you. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Cherry stood up. "Sure." She said. "It is your civic right to kick me out, do that all you like. Of course, I'll leave, because I won't have removed this thing from your basement, and then we have no clue what it's going to do. Could turn you into a sheep in your sleep, or melt your eyes." 

"What? Stop threatening me?" 

"Let me do my work!" Cherry barked, and for once, Hugh didn't say a thing, as Cherry began to chip at the device embedded into the basement floor with a chisel. she eventually worked it out, leaving a small 2x2x2 hole in the basement floor. 

She picked up the device, a hefty metal thing with multiple blue and red lights on it, covered in tiny bits of granite, (the bottom half covered in dirt) and she began to carry it out of the basement.

"That's... mildly concerning." Hugh commented. "Do I have to pay for the hole in my basement?" 

"Bill Torchwood." Cherry said, taking the device up the stairs, and as Hugh followed her upstairs, she left the house and disappeared out into the rain. 

Hugh didn't sleep that night. 

Two Days Later

Hugh had gone into work as usual. He was a hospital surgeon, well, used to be, except he got too good at it, and instead of saving lives, he now was the official hospital something or other, and did stultifying paperwork and in-charge stuff, of which gave him a better paycheck, and a duller mood. It didn't make much sense, really.

He had gone in to work (Someone had to organize all the hospital stuff) and stepped into his (fairly nice office) when Cherry Classified was excavating another device from the floor. 

"It's tapped into the hospital electrical system." She said. "I don't understand that bit, I'm not a tech person!" 

"What? What? What are you doing here? Do you? Do you excavate boxes from floors for a living?" 

"Oh, yeah, as if that's likely." Cherry retorted, "No, I fight aliens for a living." 

Cherry finished, and she had torn the box out of the floor. This device was almost exactly similar, but had a somewhat ziggurat like structure of multiple metal boxes welded together. It flashed red and blue light, which reflected on the metal as before. 

And in the middle of his office was a hole where the box used to be, and where you could see straight down to the floor beneath him. Looked like the Maternity Ward.

Cherry turned and told him to stay here, before leaving his office, and walking out to somewhere unknown.

She came back in a few minutes later without the device.

"This is the third device I've found in proximity to you. This is the third device I've found, total. Whatever is happening, you are the center of it."

"What? I'm sorry, I- What Third Device?"

"The one in your bathroom. I got it half an hour ago. Don't go in there, the hole drops straight into intensive care. And anyway, that's irrelevant. I'm finding weird alien boxes near you, without any explanation. I work with this kind of thing on the daily, but I need to know if there's anything different in your life that you've been doing, I need context to figure this out." 

"I don't know..." Hugh said, overwhelmed. 

"Come on." Cherry said, nudging. 

"How do you know where they are?" Hugh asked.

Cherry made a self superior face, showing him her wrist. "Scanner." She said. "Don't know half of the things it does, but it's very nice, you should get one, if you have spare alien technology lying around.

Which I know you do!" 

"It's not mine, now you're just being unfair. You had to put Gel on the first one though to scan it, so what was with that?" 

"Close Range scan. I needed to find out where it was safest to excavate."

"Why?" 

"They're bombs." Cherry said, her eyes narrowing. "An alien is placing bombs, and specifically near you. You're on the Death list." 

"What do you mean?" Hugh asked. "Why would I- be- targeted- by ALIENS?"

Cherry shrugged. "I don't know. You seem remarkably decent about the alien bit."

"Oh god, no, I'm freaking out. But more about the bombs, we know about aliens! They invade every Christmas. It's just... why would they?"

"Feel free to breathe." Cherry said. "We'll get you through this."

She judged her wrist scanner for a moment. 

"We need to go to the morgue." Cherry said. 

"Why?" Hugh asked. 

"Because there's a massive rise in ambient static electricity, and even though I don't know what that means, it sounds really bad, come on!"

"What? Why do I need to-"

"I can't leave you when you're being bombed by aliens!" Cherry said. "Come on!" 

The Morgue

Cherry and Hugh entered the Morgue wing of the hospital. A few workers were rolling in a new corpse. 

"Oi, Fred." Hugh said to one of them. "Who's that?" 

Fred turned to Hugh. "This is Sally Lonjean, she's a victim of some kind of weird unnatural causes electrocution thing. I thought you were on the autopsy."

"Hardly do anything these days." Hugh commented, examining the body. "This looks weird, Cherry, look." 

Cherry came over to look. "Oh. What are those burns?"

Hugh examined them, closely. "I don't really know. They're electrical, certainly, but I don't get how they're in such a unique pattern."

Above them, a light flickered.

"Woah, what was that?" Fred muttered. 

"Fred, get back to work," Cherry said, reaching for her gun. 

And then an electronic voice was heard around them.

"Hiya, chaps." It grated like a 50s newscaster. "We are the Glul. Give us Mr. Hugh Lansbury or I'm sorry to inform you, no one in this hospital will survive!"

Cherry reached out, aiming her gun at the air around her. 

"What do you want from him?"

"Soon, Mister Hugh Lansbury will perform Surgery on a human. This human in itself is of no consequence, but their survival allows their children, grandchildren, and eventually great grandchildren to survive, one of whom wages war against the Glul empire, and will defeat us. Time Travel was the only option for our species' survival as a dominant warrior empire."

"So it's not about him in particular?"

"Haha, no, he's useless. You however, Cherry Classified, are very interesting indeed."

"That so?" 

"Oh, I must say so. You've disabled three of our splinter bombs with remarkable ease."

"Oh, that was nothing." Cherry chirped. "Colchester talked me through it over the phone." 

"Well, Congratulations, you've caused us to adapt. This hospital is rather primitive, as befitting the era. I'm surprised it even has electricity."

"Wait, yeah, why does this hospital have such good electricity, this is the 1920s!?" Cherry asked Hugh, suspicious.

"Um, well, it's experimental. And the electrical systems only cover small areas." Hugh sputtered.

"I'll accept that, although you're stretching the suspension of disbelief for the era." Cherry said.

"No, Lightbulbs were invented in 1879. What's interesting is the wiring. It runs right through the buildings core. Build it up with enough static electricity, and overload it and the entire hospital serves as it's own EMP. Most human buildings still have that problem until the 2050s."

"You don't say," said Cherry.

"You can't stop us, Cherry Classified. We're everywhere." 

"Yeah, well there's electrical access back there. That's why the morgue was spiking in energy." Cherry said. "I bet I can do something to stop that."

"Notice Ms. Sally Lonjean. Of course, she's long dead, but reflexes exist, and coupled with our technology, we can just send some tiny little signals to her brain."

There was a shatteringly loud zapping noise, and rigidly, her body being propelled by this alien electricity, stood itself up. With every zap of energy she got to the brain, a different body part moved, and the dead body shuffled forward, and took a scalpel from the table nearby, shuffling towards Hugh and Cherry like a horror movie. Moving on reflex. 

Cherry fired her gun straight through the animated corpse, but nothing happened. 

"Ah, Americans. Always thinking they can kill Zombies with guns."

Cherry growled. "Hugh! Fred! Run!" 

Hugh and the Fred guy who's very unimportant rushed around the corner, trying to get away from the Glul monstrocity moving forward. 

Cherry ran over to the electrical access panel, Sally's corpse swiping at her. 

"You can't possibly hope to figure that out. It's all buttons, and wiring. Face it, Cherry Classified, you're finished!" 

"I may not know how to work this." Cherry muttered. "But Americans are good at blowing things up."

She fired her gun into the electrical panel repeatedly.

"...You know, if we're talking stereotypically." 

An electrical wave burst out of the overloaded console, and Cherry collapsed.

Hours Later 

"Cherry, Cherry, wake up!" Hugh said, waking her. "The aliens! The bombings! They've stopped." 

"Yeah." Cherry muttered, sitting up. "I managed to send a message to Gwen and Colchester with this thing," she said, wrist device raised. "They probably took out the Glul mothership or something. Ugh, it's fried," she said taking off the device. "Here, a souvenir for you. Like most souvenirs, it's useless."

Hugh caught it. "Thanks. I think." He said. "Look, I don't understand most of that, but you like, saved my life and everything. Thank you." 

"Don't worry; Yaz or Yvonne will be down later with a cleanup team." Cherry said, dismissively. "The hospital will survive, though I'm afraid you'll never get electrical power in it again. Even if you install new wiring and lightbulbs. So, um. Actually, maybe it won't. Um. Bill Torchwood." 

"...Well, that's many hundreds of dollars of equipment wasted." Hugh shuddered. 

Cherry smiled. "I'm glad I'm not the cleanup team," She laughed to herself. "Be seeing you."

She began to walk off. 

"No! Stop," Hugh yelled. "I'm sorry! When am I ever going to see you again? I have so many questions, so many-" 

Cherry grinned back. "We have recruitment forms. Sign up." She said, teasingly. "I'll be on my watch."

And then as Hugh opened his mouth to ask again, to sputter or say 'What' one more time, Cherry was gone. 

The End

This Story (Hypothetically) Starred

Scarlett Johansson as Cherry Classified

Paul Chadbon as Hugh Lansbury

Simon Jones as Nurse Fred 

Deirdre Mullins as Sally Lonjean

Nicholas Burns as The Glul