Burning Cosmos {A Torchwood Story Three} [COMPLETED]

10. Meat

As soon as I get into Torchwood with a successfully hidden monster from London, I come face to face with Rhys, Gwen's fiance who didn't know about our job. Til now.

Rhys is dumbfounded staring at me and Meilokinos - for a second, anyway. "Is that an alien?"
I nod, barely able to contain my deadpan. "Yes, Rhys. That's an alien."
He points at me, accusing. "And I thought you were in accounting?"
Toshiko's snickers are barely suppressed. I scrunch up my nose, and even the hairy beast looks incredulous. "How could you ever think I even look like an accountant? I feel like that's probably offensive to my race."
His eyes widen even more. "You're an alien too?"

I barely contain my derision as I turn to Gwen. "What's he doing here?"
"He's gonna help us with the meat situation," she replies tiredly, and they all explain the situation to me - apart from Jack, who's watching the hairy alien I'm holding onto. It's actually being quite well-behaved, considering.

Finally, everyone goes into the conference room, leaving me to smile reassuringly at Meilokinos and lead them slowly to the... Umm... Where do I put them? The autopsy room will freak it out, and if I put it in the cells then it's just locking them away. And the conference room is being used, so where?

Aha - lightbulb!

"Got an idea, Meilokinos; can you stay here a sec, please?" I ask them, and they agree and stand still whilst I ransack my desk. I come jogging back with a pile of papers and one of the doodads I've been working on, and give them a great smile. "Come on, we're going to the plant room!"
"What's in it?" they ask nervously, and I put on my best reassuring voice.
"Just a couple chairs and some tech, so I can help you get back to Glibafla; oh, and some plants," I say, referring to their home planet. At the mention they visibly relax, so I place a hand delicately on its back and propel it towards the stairs.

~∆~

As I finish up with Meilokinos, I feel pretty confident that I can help them get back. Glibafla technically isn't that far away, if you think about it in the grand scale of worlds, so I just need to root in Jack's stuff I've already gone through and find that galactic honing device he thinks he can hide from us in the secret drawer underneath his desk. You can't hide anything from the Firestone.

"Would you stay there please?" I ask, and it agrees, so I rush over to Jack's desk. The team have already left for their operation to rescue the space whale from meat production, and he's left his office in a mess: papers everywhere, the screen still beeping with Ianto's orders of fishfood; he's even forgotten to lock his desk drawers.

I retrieve the honing device, but something catches my eye on the screen. A tab of Owen's research on the space whale, next to another shrunken tab showing the warehouse it's captured inside.
Something isn't right here.

I sit down at Jack's desk and manoeuvre the tabs around til they appear side by side on the wide screen, then fiddle with the scales til they're exactly the same. And I stare.
The size of the whale, and the size of the warehouse... there's no way that they can save this creature.

My hand flies off the mouse, clutches the device, and I jump up and run. The metal floors of the Hub rattle as I sprint, and Meilokinos looks up from their inspection of my desk.
"What is it?" they ask, alarmed.
I can't reply with the full story, so I just shake my head and take their hand to pull them towards the door.

"Right, here's the plan," I tell them as the doors beep and move to life, "We're gonna go to Merthyr, we're going to get you home, and then I'm going to sort something out."
"Do you need any help?" it asks, and in the lift I stare at them in shock.
"You want to help us?"
"Yes. It's a helpless creature; I want to do whatever I can."
I bite my lip. "These men shoot first and ask questions later, from what I've heard. I don't want to jeopardize your safety."

"Too late!" the alien shouts as the lift opens and it runs down the hall, causing me to shout and chase after it.
"Get back here, the car is this way!" I call, and jump into my car, start it up, and pull them in on my way out the car park. It lands in the passenger seat of my two-seater and looks around in awe as I buckle both of our seatbelts and turn onto the main road out of the bay.

"What is this?" they ask in wonder. I smile with my eyes on the road, already loving this big hairy beast. They remind me of my first time in Cardiff.

We drive the speed limit for forty minutes straight, my knuckles gripping the wheel so tight they turn milky white, the alien pressing its body against the seat in fear of the car moving so fast. When I stop the car outside the docks, I run out and pull Meilokinos from the car, then set up the honing device.

"Just gonna need some of your- ah, thanks," I say as I use a syringe to extract some of its blood with a faint protest. The syringe tunnels into the device and I press the buttons to let it figure out Glibafla. Right. Just a few minutes until it connects to the teleport on their planet - in the meantime...

I look over to the warehouse and spy a side door that's been locked with a simple mechanism.
"Stay there, and when this device had gone red," I point to the spot for them, "turn it on and point it at yourself, and then you'll be home. I have to make sure my friends are okay."
And before they can say anything, I take off running to the door.

With a forceful kick the door falls open, and I start running, not knowing where anything is. A plethora of shouts echo from the other end of a corridor I turn onto, and the closer I get, the louder the most mournful wail I have ever heard. I pat myself down and realise I left my gun in the Hub - but the knife is still tucked away in my sock. With the bang of another door I jump and take out my knife, and leap into the room...

And come face to face with the space whale.

It screams in my head, my understanding of its language overwhelming me. My God, it's so afraid hurt upset confused terrified terrified TERRIFIED.
I double over. I erupt in a scream the same frequency as it, and people shout my name.
Footsteps run at the same time the creature wails, and I look up for a second before its flesh comes towards me.

I screw my eyes shut, waiting to be steamrollered - but I don't.
Instead, I feel coarse hair. Everywhere.
I open my eyes, and stare into Meilokinos's beady ones. I'm so shocked I don't even ask about the honing device.
"Evy!" I hear Tosh in the distance as more footsteps occur. My alien runs across the room and away from the other alien, and hides us behind a plastic drum as Owen draws from a massive syringe and stabs the whale.

"Owen, you're making it worse!" Jack calls, but whatever he's doing he keeps doing it, stabbing the whale over and over.
"It's... working, yeah it's working."
"What did you do?" asks Jack, but I can already tell by the way its eyes are glazing over.

The sedative wasn't strong enough. It's dying. And, as hard as it is, it was the only way to put it out of its misery.
Sometimes I hate knowing things.

Everyone crowds round the creature. After Owen attends to the wounds Rhys has sustained, he stands up, walks towards the whale, and places a hand on it.
Meilokinos loosens their grip and I run over to my flatmate, placing my hand on his shoulder. His guilt adds to the creature's pain, and it all adds in my head.

"Owen," I say quietly, "it's not your fault. I compared the measurements; it never would've been able to get out the warehouse."
He doesn't respond, his eyes looking down.
"Just tell me about the hairy alien. Please."

His husky whisper makes my heart ache, and I rub his hand. "Okay."