(PARODY AMONG US): 7.6 Uncle
Torchwood Parody Among Us
7.6 Uncle
Starring Natalia Cordova Buckley, Ian Alexander and Cher
Warning: Heavy Shit
Previously On Torchwood...
Anastasia Rodriquez has had her life changed, and all of what she believes her sins to be removed from her consciousness by a wicked machine. As the team reels from this, they have a name, and they're on a quest to find whoever has been responsible for the bombings and killings around Cardiff. But something else is going on with Anastasia... Her lost uncle, transformed by ...something into a Weevil - What could possibly have caused it?
The Hub
"Mr. Colchester is missing." Yvonne said, fiercely. "He has been kidnapped by the Anarchists that have sweeped over Cardiff as of late, and I need all of your help to stop them." She pointed at a blackboard with a stick. (Torchwood had wasted much of the budget on floating corridors and cloaking devices)
"Our main lead is a codename. Anarchy. Leader of Anarchists." She sighed. "No, I could not make this up. Our other lead, is a note from Anarchy, and our third is the Photographer we met at the Cardiff public Library."
"What happened to him anyway?" Tania asked.
"He died," Yvonne said flatly.
"So we don't have much to go on." Hunter said, having a knack for repeating the obvious.
"Only a name - and the promise that these Anarchists are going to do more. I will not let them. I will not let this city fall because of Torchwood." Yvonne said determinedly. "Is that understood?"
They all nodded.
Anastasia stood nearby in the corner. And for some reason she didn't realize, slowly, she began to cry.
Anastasia had not felt right for quite some time now. Whatever had happened to her, her personal view of her sins being expelled - or whatever it was, she had not felt right. She had gone to Ash and to Stacy, and she had talked, but she could not verbalize these feelings, whatever they were, she only knew now what was good or bad.
She did not know what Yvonne was. She tended to know what everyone was. Stacy was good, Ash was good if irritable, Hunter was rubbish but well-meaning, and she had certainly heard things from Stacy about Richardson recently. She had been screaming her head off to her when they went out to lunch on how Richardson cheated on her with SOME RANDO DUDE THAT HE JUST PLUCKED OFF THE STREET and how WHY WOULD RICHARDSON WANT TO CHEAT, THE GUY DOESN'T EVEN LIKE SEX, HE'S ASEXUAL, JUST A ROMANTIC GUY, WHY WOULD HE DO THAT but honestly, for some reason, Anastasia did not seem to care. She usually did - well, she used to, but now, she did not. Black and White. Caring and Not Caring.
She still did not know how she felt about Yvonne though. Yvonne liked results, she liked efficiency, and she believed everything she did was For Queen And Country and was magnificent, but if you caught her at the right moment, she would laugh and joke like a normal person. Yvonne could trick you.
But she thought whatever she did was right. That had been literally proven. What sort of thing would she do next? Anastasia didn't really know.
Anastasia didn't go back to her flat as much anymore - the flat next to hers usually had a couple making noises every night, and the flat had thin walls. Usually, lately, she'd been sleeping at Torchwood - which Ash said wasn't exactly healthy. "Get out there, live your life- hook up with some shady guy online that you know nothing about and make out with him senseless in a public bathroom at 3AM-" They said, excitably (and perhaps disconcertingly). They were right though, Anastasia should be doing new things, going out in the world, and having a life outside of Torchwood.
But it just ate you up. She rarely left the office anymore, and she slept down in the ruins of the old hub where the original Torchwood team had once worked - not up above the city in the sky where Yvonne operated, but below it in the rubble and the dark, and she watched the Weevils in the cells until late at night, not sleeping.
"How do you do it?" Anastasia asked Stacy one night. "How does it not just take you over? Why isn't it all you think about?"
Stacy had sighed at that and refilled the Expresso maker. "Because I've seen what it does when you go down the rabbit hole. And I just make the coffee."
Anastasia did not find this helpful. She was deep in it. Down in the hub. Every night. Watching the Weevils. Watching her Uncle.
* * *
It was weeks before Anastasia first read about Object One. She had been researching the Weevils in the files, and there wasn't much about the information - differing accounts on where the Weevils came from and what they did. She was surfing the Torchwood files one night (not sleeping, as usual. When you read the Torchwood files to try and get yourself to bed, they had the habit of keeping you wide awake with a good old shot of nightmare fuel) and she came across an account from Norton Folgate
Weevils. Nasty Lot. Like an american trucker that's a deformed mindless sociopath, eats people and has the strength of an Orangutan. So basically an American trucker. There are theories on the old apes' origins, but only one that's crossed my brain has made a dot of sense. Object One has many names, the Bad Penny, the Red Key, The Erebus Obsidian, Your Mum. It's a device that holds the entirety of the Committee, an alien race inside it. It's bigger on the inside, see. Object One is made of so much stuff - that it displaces the very fabric of causality around it. Makes you unluckier than a boyfriend with a broken bed spring.
Some say that the Rift can turn people into Weevils, but the first documented Weevils ever - they arrived on Earth with Object One. Looks like these folks were rather unlucky indeed. Corks! The source of the Weevil species is human, yes, but it's corrupted human DNA, not from an alternate future, or a rift displacement virus, but Object One. They call it the Red Key, and it's the Key to everything. I daren't say more on record, but there's only one thing you need to know - If you value your life, leave the Red Key alone.
Anastasia closed the document, and clicked next - an update from Toshiko Sato - the Red Key could be altered. Given enough technological resource, the Red Key could be reversed, the luck reversed. It was a matter of simple formulae.
Questions sprung across her head. Object One. If the effects of Object One could be reversed, What if the Weevil transformation could be reversed as well?
What if she could turn her Uncle back?
* * *
"No, no, no, no, nopesies." Ash blubbered. "You - you read about the Red Key? That's - there's no bloody way. Absolutely none, I'm sorry, Anastasia, that is the most dangerous item Torchwood has ever come into contact with."
"But Toshiko Sato says that the signal can be reversed!"
"You don't get it, Anastasia. Two days after Yvonne Hartman found the Red Key in a collapsed Soho factory, Torchwood One was destroyed by the Cybermen. When Alex Hopkins found the Red Key, he suddenly saw a vision of the future that made him so suicidal he killed all of his friends because he thought that it was the BEST OPTION. The Red Key is not to be touched. We don't even know where it is."
"But if I can save my Uncle -"
Ash looked at her, utterly petrified. "Anastasia, you're focusing on 1 out of 10000000000000000. Tosh herself had her files covered in red tape for a reason. Her mathmatical formulas to even get the Red Key to reverse polarity are redacted so heavily no one has been able to decrypt them since she died, about 10 years ago. I'm telling you. As your superior officer, and as your friend. You really, really, don't wanna look into this."
Anastasia nodded.
She decided to look into it.
* * *
Flat Holm.
In the 1800s, Queen Victoria was the only survivor of a scientific experiment there - one of the first testing grounds of Torchwood. Captain Jack Harkness had a base there too, where workers took care of those deformed by the spacial effects of the rift. It was also the last known location of the Red Key.
Anastasia hitched a boat. There was only two public boat rides to Flat Holm in a day. One there, early in the morning. One back, hours after the end of work shift. As Anastasia settled down in her seat in the boat, A middle aged woman with flowy blonde hair sat next to her. "Going to Flat Holm?" She asked, even though this was literally the only possible reason anyone would be on this boat.
Anastasia did not respond, but she nodded.
The woman laughed. "There's not much to see there. Lots of grass. Old Queen Vic liked it, heaven knows why. There's a nice lighthouse, if you're into that sort of thing." Anastasia smirked. That lighthouse was Torchwood property.
Anastasia looked out on the horizon. Seagulls flocked overhead.
The sun was only beginning to come up over the water, the orange light of the rising sun setting the sea aglow with fiery brilliance.
Looking at it, Anastasia felt all the more determined.
"You could say that." She said.
* * *
The Lighthouse on Flatholm was old and unassuming. Anastasia got off of the boat and walked towards the building. By it there stood a positively ancient old wooden shack, the wood warped from age and the spray of the sea over the rocks. The construction of these buildings were simplistic - simply stone and wood, but Anastasia felt a sense of wonder walking closer to them. A brand of determination. What if Object One was on this island?
"Why are you doing this, dear?"
Anastasia jumped. The woman from the boat had crept up behind her. Ever Since her weapons training, no one had been able to do that.
The Woman gazed at her in an empty fashion. "Why do you feel you owe your uncle so much?"
"How do you-" Anastasia turned to point at her angrily, but she was gone.
Shit.
* * *
The inside of the lighthouse was as ancient as the outside. Dark, and the only light poured in from cracks and gaps in the stone above her. Anastasia bit her lip. Whatever was going on here - she couldn't call the rest of the team. She guessed that unauthorized missions didn't go down well with them.
She climbed onto the splintered wooden spiral staircase and began the ascent upwards.
As she stepped from creaky plank to cracked log she felt more determined.
Good and Evil. Since the accident, Anastasia only saw in those terms. Black and White. No room for anything else.
She felt her heart beat with every step. Good and Evil. Good and Evil. Her brain was saying with every step, she was doing something good. She was helping her uncle. She was going to fix the hundreds of people that had been transformed. Good. Good, that was Good.
As she reached a platform halfway, she stepped out onto the balcony that led outside - a metal grate, and ahead she could see the sparkling early morning lights of Cardiff.
"Look at all those chickens." The Woman said, and - how did she beat her up here? Anastasia reached for her gun subconsciously, but she stopped herself.
"No, really, look. All those lights, each light is a family, or a car, or, alright, a billboard. But every light represents a person, or a family. Look at them shine." The Woman smiled, but she was melancholy.
"What are you?" Anastasia grumbled. "What are you doing here?"
"Call me a person of interest. I like to think I am one. Have you really thought about all that out there, Anastasia? Cardiff's population is roughly 478,000 people. Have you really thought about holding all of those lives in your hands? I know I have."
"You're strange." Anastasia said, bluntly. She didn't know what else to say.
"Ah. I suppose I am." Her bleached blonde hair didn't blow in the wind at all - even though Anastasia's was a mess out in the open like this. "Can you tell me why though, Anastasia, out of those 478,000, you're focusing on the one?"
Anastasia angrily turned back into the lighthouse. She climbed upwards to the top.
Now the walls were more solid, and even a few had old gas lamps on the walls- helpfully already lit for her.
As she grew closer, it became hotter - the effect of the lighthouse's tip, and Anastasia threw open the wooden trapdoor and climbed up to see the woman, already ahead of her once more.
"How do you do that?" Anastasia grumbled.
"I was already here," she said, tapping a wooden table near the lens. Upon it lay a silver medallion.
"I am Object One." She said.
Anastasia did not know how to react. Surprised, certainly, but - she did not feel in danger - she didn't feel much at all, really. Which was not what she was expecting.
"Do you like this form I've taken for you?" Object One said. "I can look like whatever you want me to look like. Whatever makes you feel most comfortable."
"So you look like..." Anastasia strained, trying to recognize her - "...so you look like Cher?"
"I like Cher." Object One said.
"Not what I was expecting, but fine." Anastasia reached for the medallion. "You're a holographic projection?"
"A solid holographic projection." Object One replied. "And you must not touch me."
As Anastasia reached for the medallion, a force pushed her back and she fell onto the ground.
"I cannot do what you want of me." Object One said. "I must stay here."
"And why is that?" Anastasia muttered back.
"I am inherently unlucky. I am a...Bad Penny. I hurt those around me, and so I am here. Alone. Where None shall find me."
"You can reverse the Weevil transformation though! You can save my uncle!"
"Nothing can save your Uncle. I can only help him."
Anastasia felt betrayed. "What can you do?"
"When a creature is made from a human, the entire body is distorted. The face. The arms, the legs, the chest - the brain most of all. Your Uncle is already in a state that he can not recover from. Your Uncle is...never going to come back. He exists in a state of constant agony. A fate worse than death. Even if I reversed his body - put him back into a human shape, he would be in such a state he is not able to think, and the pain would persist."
"I must help him!" Anastasia insisted. "When I was young, he and my Papas were the only people kind to me. The only people that I knew, I grew up, not with children, I grew up with them. They are family. He is family."
"Then you know what you must do." Object One said sadly.
* * *
Anastasia returned from the island empty handed.
"Hey, Ana-" Stacy cheered happily, as Anastasia walked in, but Anastasia strolled past her.
"Hello, Anasta-" Ash tried, when she passed their station.
Back to the Hub.
* * *
He exists in a constant state of agony. A fate worse than death.
The words echoed though Anastasia's head.
Constant State of Agony. Worse Than Death.
She looked at the glass cage where her Uncle lay.
Anastasia swore. Her chest felt empty. She accomplished nothing. She could not save him, she could only do one thing.
Good and Evil. Anastasia saw the world now in Good and Evil, and she sighed, because now she was going to do something wrong that was good.
"Uncle, I am so sorry. I do not know If You Can Hear Me. Object One says you cannot, but I believe you can. You were my sunlight as a child. You made the days when I came back from school bullied and beaten alright. You made my life good for those days, or at least, you tried harder than anyone I ever knew."
Anastasia's lip trembled.
He exists in a constant state of agony. A fate worse than death.
Anastasia picked up the gun from the table, and she aimed it at the Weevil...no, her Uncle.
She fired.
Good and Evil.
And as soon as she did it, she felt like she was eviller than the bullies in her childhood and the monsters that she had faced today.
She curled up onto the floor.
"I'm sorry."
Her uncle stopped breathing.
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