Burning Cosmos {A Torchwood Story Three} [COMPLETED]

9. An Odd Day Out

My phone blares in the early hours, and my eyes slowly wrench open. I know without checking that it's Jack - who else calls at 6am other than Amber when she's had a few too many?
Groaning, I roll over and scrabble for my phone, flip it open, put it to my ear, and brace myself.
And, sure enough: "Evie, we need Owen."

Wait. Hold up. Owen?
"Do you need me?" I ask, offended, and there's a pause before he says slowly, "I thought you were still claiming your days off."
I roll my eyes. You can't really plan your days off at Torchwood. "If you need me, I can be there. What is it anyway?"
"Lorry tipped over on the motorway; the police say there's something fishy inside it. Some kind of meat."
"You sure it's not fish?" I joke, but from his sigh on the other end it's apparently not a very good one.
"Can you just wake Owen up? I called you because I know he doesn't wake up unless you scream in his ear. Tell him to get his arse down here ASAP. And Evie, seriously - we'll call if we need you. Enjoy your few days off."

The line goes dead and I groan again, rolling back over and slapping Owen's bare shoulder. "Get up, lazy - Torchwood beckons."
He moans indistinctly, moving his head further into his pillow. "No. Later. Sleepy time now."
I roll my eyes, and shift so I can take my pillow and smack him with it. That wakes him up.
"Hey!"

I point to the bedroom door. "Go! I'm on my day off, I can't cover for you - and you're not even hungover!"
Now it's his turn to roll his eyes, as he almost falls out of bed, takes out his retainers, and begins to walk naked very slowly to the bathroom, where I get a good view of his morning glory.
Before he leaves the doorway I shout his name and, when he looks back at me, say, "Remember to save that for me."
He reciprocates with a middle finger up and I snicker.

When Owen gets into the bathroom, I look around his room and think about what to do today. I haven't scheduled anything, and Amber is at work - what can I do?
"Owen?" I shout at him, and he shouts back.
"Yeah?"
"What should I do today?"
"Go back to sleep?"
I'm already awake; I'm too wired to go back to sleep. "Option two?"
"Uhh," he calls with a mouthful of toothbrush, "go oo Ingund?"
I furrow my brows. I have no idea what he just said. "Repeat that sans the toothpaste?"

After I hear a spit, Owen's voice rings through. "I said, why not go to England? I mean, do you ever remember going before? Ever since you crashed on Earth you've only ever been in Wales. Well, apart from Canary Wharf and that India trip a few months ago, when we went through Bristol airport."
No bother trying to tell him about the Year That Never Was, where we got kidnapped in England by a gang. "Good idea, Harper. I might just go do that. You think I should stop by Torchwood One as well; make sure nobody's gotten into the safe?" It was the only thing that was intact from the battle of Canary Wharf, and contains the last remnants of the base.

Owen agrees with me, and so after we both get dressed we part ways, him going to work and me going out on a trip to the Big City.

~∆~

Wow! London is so massive! In fact, it's so humongous that if I weren't trained in every kind of fighting technique possible, I'd be shit scared going anyway here. The only person who's dared go near me is that blonde woman in the purple jacket who gave me a shocked stare then ran on her way.
I walk on the road, giving up on the never-empty pavement long ago, towards Canary Wharf and the surrounding Torchwood One buildings to check on everything. You can take the girl out of Torchwood, but you can never take the Torchwood out of the girl.

I'm currently finding out how to use the Huon particles in the Manipulator to hone Jack's stuff to me, so I take my small yellow friends out of their little container and summon the London keys from my boss's desk to me. They materialise in my hand, and I smile smugly. You can't get any shit past me - I'm the best.

With a clunk, the lock mechanism undoes itself for the first storage locker in the basement of Canary Wharf, the only entrance to the room being the slim dark corridor that you can't get in without Torchwood-specific keys. God, this is heavy! I use all my force to lift the metal door and push it upwards, my biceps screaming at me the whole time. My hands are all over dust now, so I blow like I have a birthday cake before me and everything flurries up from the dust-caked boxes. Wow, we did not store everything properly. Did we even look at some of this stuff?

As soon as I think it, I hear a noise. A scuffle. In the corner. On reflex, I grab my torch with one hand and my gun with the other. Both point to the back of the storage locker.
"This is Torchwood: please state your name, and intention," I say firmly. No response apart from another scuffle, this time closer to me. It's expecting a fight. Well, then, I'll give it a fight, if that's what it wants. Whatever it is.

Suddenly, the whatever it is leaps into the centre of the room and opens its large hairy arms, and I shoot its leg as a warning. It doesn't even falter; just a slight limp towards as it runs toward me and jumps, and in the blink of an eye I'm on the floor, my gun across the room.

I roll until I'm out from under it and then leap up and get in a position ready to spring. Leg muscles coiled, my hidden sock knife gripped tightly in my right hand, my left hand stretched out ready to grab; I wait til the creature has its back turned. I push off and run toward it, then jab and twist the knife into one of its ankles.

It screams in agony and crouches down to tend to its wound, and I take the opportunity to jump and latch myself onto its back. Its hairs are thick and coarse so I clutch as close to the roots as I can, and begin to climb up to its head and shoulders. It feels me moving about and begins thrashing to throw me off again, but this time I hold on for dear life and grab each hair to keep moving. I finally get to the massive creature's head, and I hang onto its cheek so I can reach its plum-coloured ear.

"Look, I know we haven't got off on the right foot," I shout in its native language that's shown to me in my head, "but you have to listen to me! There are people living nearby; you could scare and hurt them, and I understand that you don't want to do that."

The creature stops thrashing about and stands still, listening to me.
I continue: "I know somewhere where you can stay until I figure out how to get you home. It's a bit of a journey, but if you let me guide you there, I can show you where to go so you won't be seen by anyone. What do you say?"
It pauses, and I hold my breath. Slowly the creature nods carefully. The movement causes me to lose my gripping a tiny bit and grab onto more hair to stay steady, but I smile at it nevertheless.

"Thank you. What's your name?"
It pauses again, then says in a low rumbling voice loud enough for entire houses to collapse, "Meilokinos."
I gulp. "That's a lovely name. Shall I show you where to go next?"

It nods again, slower than last time after using one of its eyes to see me hanging on for dear life. It can't possibly see me point, so I begin sharing directions in its ear, and it starts walking in the right place. After looking down and realising it's only narrowly missing small cottages and farms, I tell it to go down a specific line of fields I know are vacant, and we continue our journey to Cardiff.

I'm gonna get the bollocking of my life when I get to work.