Fic: "Midday Midweek Midsummer"
May. 24th, 2010 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyusTitle: Midday Midweek Midsummer
Characters: original character, Jack, Ianto, Gwen
Rating: PG
Length: 5300 words
Summary: Nothing ever happens in Bridgend.
Bridgend was a small enough place that Danii knew Mrs Roberts went out for milk every second of the month. She came back with one jug of milk. Danii didn't know if she lasted all month with one jug of milk, but then, milk went bad, didn't it? Her mum kept on yelling about the milk being off and Danii or her brother going down to the shops to fetch some more.
Bored in Bridgend, Danii wrote for a status message on her Facebook page. Her laptop stood open on the desk underneath the window. The sun came in through the big trees outside. It was summer in Bridgend and school was out and Danii would go to college in the fall.
Mrs Roberts left the house opposite and went to get her milk. Danii sat back in her chair and stared at the status message window, then doodled an abstract flower on a small notepad, not even looking at what she was doing.
"Danii! Need you to go down to the shops for potatoes!" Danii's mum.
Danii rolled her eyes ceiling-ward, staring straight back at a poster of N-Dubz and gave him a grin before she spun around in her desk chair and walked out of her room, clattering down the stairs. She slipped on her Converse by the door. Converse had been big a year ago but she didn't want to spend money on new shoes out of Cardiff when these still did it until fall maybe. She pulled on her hoodie.
"Just get us a bag." Danii's mum kissed her forehead and gave her a tenner. "Thanks!" she shouted, already turned back to the kitchen. She was making roast and it had smelled like lunch since 9 am. "We're fetching Grandpa later. You coming with?" Danii shrugged and walked out of the door into the sunshine.
She turned left from the house and made for the shops. Mrs Roberts was just turning the corner in front of her. Danii thought that maybe she should ask about the milk because it was curious, but she slowed her walk instead, not really wanting the conversation. Her Converse kicked up a bit of dust from the pavement. A few kids from two streets over rode past her on their bicycles, shouting stupid shit. Danii flipped them off.
Bridgend was dead boring with her friends off on summer holidays in Europe or Florida, and she'd begged off the camping trips because she'd been stupid and in a strop those days. She pulled a face at herself in the window of the house she was passing, stuck out her tongue. Mrs Roberts in front of her made to cross the road where the pavement ended on that side. The empty milk jug was heavy in her tote bag, swinging back and forth. Danii slowed again, not wanting to catch up and be questioned about school and college and The Future.
Mrs Roberts was half across the road, when a car came roaring around the corner at the top of the road and screeched its brakes immediately. Mrs Roberts froze, staring at it, and Danii froze, staring at both her and the car. Like the movies, this was, as the cars' wheels locked and the car slid on the dry sandy street, careening half sideways. In the movies, though, people would throw themselves there and save Mrs Roberts and her milk jug, but Danii just stood there and had half a mind to pull out her mobile and film it for youtube. The car slid, slowing, but still pushing up a cloud of dust and the smell of burned rubber, and Mrs Roberts did nothing, only stared at it. Blue lights lined the side of the black car and they were flickering.
The car stopped, half a metre in front of Mrs Roberts, standing sideways in the road. The dust enveloped her to the waist. She gasped, coughing.
Danii relaxed her fingers around the tenner, hadn't realised she'd had been all tense and clenched.
The dust cloud began to float away, then the doors on the car opened.
"I told you to slow down." A man in a suit strode to the back of the car to take in the burned rubber stretch the car had left and then came around to the driver's side.
"Stealing all my fun," the driver replied, American accent, as he got out of the car. "Are you okay, ma'am?" he called to Mrs Roberts and walked forward, reaching out to shake her hand. Mrs Roberts offered him the tote bag with the empty milk jug. The American handed it off to the bloke in the suit who looked inside, frowning.
The American lowered his voice as he talked to Mrs Roberts, something about her wanting a glass of water maybe, but Danii couldn't really make it out. Danii strained to hear more, then glanced at the bloke in the suit, and found that the bloke was looking back at her.
Looking good, she thought, like an idiot.
The American was tutting over Mrs Roberts still, then the suited bloke looked away from Danii and back to them, handed the tote bag back to Mrs Roberts. "Jack, time. The beach, yeah?" he said. He turned to Mrs Roberts. "Sorry for that, honest, I'll make sure he's more careful. You're fine, surely?"
Mrs Roberts nodded, looking dazed.
"Don't tell Gwen," the American said to the bloke in the suit. The bloke rolled his eyes again, then stopped, tilting his head. "Not Southerndown then? I thought you'd checked it before? Just other side of the dunes then?" He waited then, "Pain in the arse." The American didn't seem fazed, and the one in the suit got back into the car. Mrs Roberts tottered across the road to the other side.
Danii wanted to say something about calling the police, but what about, nothing had happened, had it? The blue lights revved again as the American shut the driver's door and maneuvered to the kerb where Mrs Roberts still stood and back again until the car stood facing the right way on the road. Then the car pulled away at leisurely pace and turned the corner onto Main Street until it was out of sight, leaving a bit of dust and the track marks on the road. Mrs Roberts looked after the car, then turned and walked on, probably getting her milk from Tesco's.
Danii crumpled the tenner in her hand and went on too, but she kept turning it over in her head, the two strange blokes and the one in the suit had said something about the beach. What was on the beach that was so urgent then? Danii overtook Mrs Roberts on the way to the Tesco's and only went in for the potatoes and back out again, giving a wave to Anna who was working there in the summer. She made it back quick to their house and her mum was on the phone talking to one of her friends.
"That's what I told him. Doesn't matter if it's not a law, you'd think that being a neighbour he'd see that..."
Danii held up the bag of potatoes and put them on the counter with the change. "Going out again," she said.
Her mum waved her on, phone cradled between shoulder and cheek as she poked at the roast. "I did plant them on my side and granted I..."
Danii walked out the back of the kitchen and got her bike from the shed. She rang the bell for a laugh, then stopped when no one was there to laugh with her, leaned against the bike and got out her mobile, going on Facebook. Still bored, going down to the beach.
She glanced at Dav's wall. Ace party in Miami. WHOO. That was that, then. She snapped the mobile shut and led her bike out past the house, then swung herself on it and rode down the street. A gull flew overhead, croaking.
The black car had been the most interesting thing in town since the kids getting caught stealing gum from Mr Daniels' corner shop, maybe since the Paul Potts thing. That had been big with all of them squeezing in front of the telly when the ITV cameras came by to film.
Danii passed Mrs Roberts on the way. Her tote bag was weighed down with the milk. Danii nodded at her because the old lady was looking up just then. Mrs Roberts waved. She looked a bit freaked still, even if nothing had really happened. No one had died, yeah?
Bridgend was dead midday midweek midsummer. Everyone was off to work or gone. There were no cars, really, or anyone out. Danii was alone on the road even as Bridgend ended and she cut through the fields on smaller paths, coming out back on the mainroad to Ogmore-by-Sea, trying not to cuss as a car overtook her and swerved a little too close for comfort.
"Wanker," Danii muttered. She kept an eye on the beach as the road curved around. Just as she rolled around the soft bend, she glimpsed two figures on the sand, one of them gesticulating wildly. Danii rolled to a stop at the side of the road and shaded her eyes with her hand to see better. Further along the road, the hint of the black car, parked.
Danii got off her bike and led it down the small incline the short way. Her mobile rang, Danii answered, keeping her bike steady with the other hand.
"Where are you off to then?" Her mum clanked pots in the background and yelled for her brother. "We're leaving to fetch Grandpa."
"Fine." Danii leaned her bike against the dam and walked the grassy hill down to the sand. The two men stood on the beach looking around in a circle before they walked on.
"You haven't come with the last few times either." Her mum yelled for her brother again.
"I'll see him when he's here," Danii replied. She kept to the grassy dunes weaving along the beach line. Grandpa had been crazy for as long as she remembered, and monthly visits with him going "Agnes, beautiful" at her had left her creeped out enough.
She hadn't liked the smell of Providence Park or the people there, ever since the woman had thrown up at her feet when she was five and then raved about something crazy.
"Well, we're leaving then," her mum said, "be sure to be here tonight." She hung up.
Where else would she be, in dead end Bridgend. Danii flipped the phone shut and slid it into her pocket, then she rounded the small hill. On the other side of the hill, a few hundred metres away, the two men stood around a long box. A coffin, Danii immediately thought.
She snuck closer, burrowing behind the hill. The American, now wearing a long coat in high summer, stalked around the coffin, pointing an instrument at it. Danii walked around the other side of the hill and ducked behind a bush, crouching low.
"Residual rift activity, then," the bloke in the suit said, arms crossed in front of his chest.
"A ting of residual rift activity," the American corrected. "Ting," he said and grinned.
"That a technical term? Why am I even asking," the bloke in the suit said. "Anything else?"
"That!" The American crouched, his coat dragging in the sand as he held his scanner or whatever to the bottom of the coffin. "No, nevermind. Spacecrab, I think."
"Jack." Long suffering sigh from the bloke in the suit.
"Joking. Earth animal, completely terraristic and sufficiently mutated for the twenty-first century."
"What is it then, this... box?" The bloke in the suit walked around it, knocking on it, then drew his fingertips along the side as if to look for a way in.
Jack shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. Treasure chest? Coffin? Invasion capsule? Who knows."
"Comforting," the bloke in the suit bit out sharply, clipped.
"That's Torchwood for you." They both stopped and looked at each other over the coffin. Danii was too far away to see their faces but after a moment they both slumped enough to make Danii think the coffin was exerting some kind of influence, but then they straightened and sighed and stood back.
Danii took her mobile out of her pocket and activated the camera function. She leaned forward between the brances, angling her hand with the phone out to try for a clear picture. There was something weird about these ones and what was Torchwood anyway?
Danii pushed the button to take the photo, and her phone emitted the fake camera shutter sound that she'd always wanted to get rid of.
Danii went still, when both men immediately focused away from the coffin and looked around themselves. Her hand holding the phone was shaking. Smooth.
"Bird," the American, Jack, said.
"On your kind of planets maybe," the one in the suit said.
"Cyberbi- … anyway, coffin, no way in, no way out, comes through the rift all by itself." Jack turned in a circle. "All alone." He tapped his fingers to the coffin. "So where do you come from, what are you doing here and what's inside?"
Danii slowly pulled back her hand and switched the setting on her camera to video and pressed the button, filming. That'd beat parties in Miami on Facebook. It also beat having a roast with Grandpa.
"We could pry it open."
"Invasion capsule."
"That would bring the news channels here at least. Give them something to talk about after Paul Potts. He was good though, nothing beats him."
Danii snorted in her bush. The mobile shook a little, shaking up her picture.
"Potts?" Jack got on his hands and knees next to the coffin and pushed sand to the side.
"On the telly. Gwen, are you getting any readings?" He put his hand to his ear, some kind of communicator, Danii figured. "Bridgend, flies and stinking sand. I'll be happy to swap you for the desk next time."
Jack, meanwhile, was digging underneath the coffin with his hands and pushed his hand underneath. The bloke in the suit walked around the back of him, swatting at the air.
"We're not getting anything here. Jack's... doing something." He opened his suit jacket and folded up his sleeves. "He nearly ran over an old lady earlier because he was showing off."
Jack said something from underneath the coffin.
"No, he's not listening. Anyway, no radiation, nothing on your end? It's dead on ours, too. I vote we just open it."
Jack pulled out from underneath the coffin.
"Gwen agrees." The bloke in the suit smiled.
"It doesn't matter." Jack's voice had turned a notch harder. "We're not opening something we can't identify. Final word."
The bloke in the suit huffed. "It was a joke. Bloody hell. What then? We leave it here and wait for it to identify itself. 'Hello, my name is Pingbyu and I have the X-factor!'"
"We can't leave it here. Invasion capsule. Anyone could stumble across it here."
"Can't get it in the SUV either. And anyway, sand."
"Yes." Jack stalked around the coffin again, then leaned against it. "Bury it here, maybe? No one would know, but who knows what's leaking that we can't identify."
Danii thumbed the video to off. With Jack leaning like that and the other one with his arms crossed and the rolled up suit, she took another photo, trying to time it to the croak of a sea gull, but both of them whipped around and stared at the flimsy bush she was hiding behind, Jack looking right at her.
Danii pulled her camera back, then turned and ran.
"Dammit," Jack cursed and she heard his feet in the sand. He shouted something back at the other one.
She didn't even really know why she was running, but if she didn't, she had no idea who they were, only that they had strange scanners and god knows what an attitude to people lurking in the bushes. If she made it to the bike she'd be good. They wouldn't make it to their car fast enough.
"Hey," Jack shouted from behind her.
Danii was pushing it. PE had never been her strong suit, always hated the wading around in the heat and being a metre short on long jumps from everyone else. She saw her bike where she'd left it, knew she only had to get it up the hill. Danii grabbed it at full sprint and it slowed her down as she forced it up the incline.
"Hey girl," Jack shouted and he was seven, eight metres behind her when she was on the road. She pushed herself, got on her bike and pedaled. Her foot slid off the pedal for a moment before she caught it again and made it down the road. Jack was shouting after her but he stopped trying to run. She just knew they were getting the car, so took the first path that took her off the main road and through the woods back to Bridgend.
What was the rift? And what kind of invasion had he talked about? Invasion of whom and how? Who were they?
Danii pedaled as fast as she could, heart pounding and muscles burning in her legs. She kept looking over her shoulder, even if their car would have never fit on the path. The sun was still beating down hard, and the forest turned the air damp and sticky. She took the long way home, didn't want to end back on the main road and have them wait there. Them and the coffin and god knows what.
She halfway expected them to be waiting at the house when she turned onto the street, but there was only her mum's car pulling up and her brother opening the door for Grandpa who was already raving.
"There you are. I thought you'd have been home before," her mum said.
Danii ignored her and pushed her bike past the side of the house, still looking over her shoulder when she closed the gate to the back garden behind her. She dragged the bike into the shed, and only then, when she leaned against the door, trying to stop freaking out, she realized that she didn't have her mobile. She patted herself down, smoothed her hand over the right jeans pocket where she always had it but it wasn't there.
Bugger.
"Danii!" her mum call from the kitchen door. Danii turned out all her pockets but the mobile wasn't there. Had she dropped it when they'd discovered her? Or running? Maybe she'd only lost it in the woods? "Danii!"
Danii pushed open the shed door and locked it, made her way to the house. If they had her mobile they'd find her. She wondered when it had seemed like a good idea to follow them down to the beach after they'd nearly killed Mrs Roberts.
"At least say hello to Grandpa, will you?" Danii's mum said as Danii pushed past her into the house.
Danii was trying to figure out where she'd lost the bloody mobile even as she went into the sitting room and kissed Grandpa on the cheek, taking in the Providence Park smell.
The thought stayed with her while setting the table, and during supper as they all sat through Grandpa slurping his way through the soup and roast, and her brother was making stupid faces across the table from her. And it still stayed when washing up and while she snuck upstairs after, closing the door to her room.
Her laptop was still on. Danii sat down at her desk. The lights were on in Mrs Roberts' house and she wondered if Mrs Roberts still thought about earlier today. Her screensaver deactivated when she moved her mouse and her screen glared to Facebook life.
No one had commented on her status message from earlier that day. She surfed the internet for a while, turning over the blokes in her head and the black car and that coffin on the beach and where she could have lost her mobile. She turned off her computer and threw herself on her bed, staring at the ceiling. N-Dubz was giving her a winning grin, but she didn't feel it in her to grin back.
The next morning started out with her mum banging on her door and it took Danii a few minutes until she was awake. Checking Facebook only proved that everyone was having a better time. Breakfast across from Grandpa and his muttering and mumbling while her brother was off to camp with friends was easy to cut short, and Danii got her bike from the shed and eased it out into the road. There was no black car, maybe it all had been a big misunderstanding.
She wondered what they'd done with the coffin, and what she'd do if they'd found her mobile. Never get it back, probably. The day was overcast, almost chilly with a breeze coming in from the channel as she rode through the woods and came out at the small incline. She should have told her mum about the missing mobile so she wouldn't try calling it but she'd forgot about that.
Danii stretched her neck, but the black car wasn't parked where it had been yesterday. She got off her bike and leaned it against the dam like she had the day before, then walked to the spot behind the bush where she'd crouched. Her heart was racing, and she kept looking over her shoulder to see if anyone had followed her but there was no one.
No mobile in the sand behind the bush, and no coffin. Danii looked over her shoulder again, then she walked where it had stood. The sand was pushed into groves and humps, still a little wet when it should be dry here. It couldn't have been long, but there was no sign of the coffin or the blokes with the scanners. Danii reached for her mobile, like she always did to reassure herself that it was there, but it wasn't. She walked in a small circle, rubbed the sand between her fingers as if she knew what she was doing.
No way it would have just disappeared by itself. She looked around for tracks but there were none that would lead up or down the beach to give an indication of where the thing had gone to, until, almost not noticable in the sand, an uprooted bushel of grass, roots sticking out every which way.
Danii followed the trail, trying to keep in the safety of some kind of cover but the woods were all further back and all she had were a few dunes and more sand than she could count. Bloody freezing in Bridgend, she thought to herself in Facebook status message. The track curved around to the mouth of the Ogmore, and then stopped. The tide was going out, it had probably been up to there when the coffin had been moved.
The breeze dusted up sand and Danii had to protect her eyes as she looked out at sea. She thought she could see something bopping there, but that was her imagination probably, surely they wouldn't just have shoved it out there.
"I believe this is yours."
Danii swivelled around at the voice and stared right at the bloke with the suit who was holding her mobile between thumb and fingers. The sparse sun reflected off the display. Danii wanted to turn to run, but a woman cut off the direct path to her bike. Her hair fluttered across her face and she smiled tightly at Danii like she knew what was coming and was wishing her good luck.
"You dropped it," the bloke said. "Danii Williams, seventeen, Pen-y-Cwrdd Clos nineteen, Bridgend. You like chips from the shop on the corner, and you and Dav used to go out but he's in Florida and hasn't commented on your Facebook wall even once." He paused, then added. "Your grandpa's in Providence Park. You don't visit often."
"How do you..." Danii took a step back, but the woman cleared her throat, and gave Danii that same smile again, the one that said not to try anything and things were what they were.
"My mum knows I'm here," Danii said. "And my grandpa even if..." she trailed off.
The bloke raised an eyebrow and shrugged. "You weren't supposed to see what you saw here yesterday," he said.
"That your friend nearly killed Mrs Roberts?"
"Bloody Jack," the woman muttered and the bloke pulled a face.
"I don't know what you're doing or what the rift is or if you're drug trafficking down to Swansea, but honest, I won't say, I only want my mobile and by the way, Dav's only busy at the moment."
She missed Dav now. She even missed Grandpa and his Providence Park smell, anything familiar really. The breeze tugged at her clothes and Danii hugged her arms around herself.
The bloke waggled the phone back and forth at her, but didn't say anything, just nodded meaningfully at the woman behind Danii. The woman cleared her throat. "Yes, about that, there's pictures on there and you've seen things so it'd be..." She trailed off and gestured at the bloke. The bloke shrugged in reply and muttered, "Jack's usually doing this."
"Was it a coffin then? That thing? Did it fall off a ship with a body inside and all that?" Danii asked, looking between them who were having a whole conversation without words but much frustration.
"Can't say. It's secret, really," the woman said and walked closer. "You shouldn't have been here to see that, that's all."
"Shouldn't be all fancy with your car then," Danii muttered, kicking her Converse at the sand. "Things don't happen in Bridgend. I don't know who you are but it's probably you making some kind of Channel 4 drama and can't say when it's Skins because it'd be all over. Just, sorry yeah? And your friend nearly killed someone."
"Channel 4 drama," the bloke in the suit nodded, but looked like he'd never heard of Channel 4 before.
"Bit chilly, you want some tea before we send you on your way?" The woman waggled a thermos back and forth.
Danii shook her head. She only wanted her mobile and be out of there, and if they bought her story about television drama, even better. It wasn't right, whatever had gone on there wasn't right because they wouldn't be all secretive about it, and she didn't want to get caught in that.
The bloke shrugged. "I had to delete the photos, and, keep mum. Uh, spoilers, yeah? Don't need that on twitter."
Danii rolled her eyes and snatched the mobile out of the bloke's hand. "No one's on twitter."
She walked away from them, slowly, not daring to look around.
"How does he do it? They always drink his tea," the woman said, probably not meaning Danii to hear.
Danii's steps quickened until she was running out of there. This time they didn't come after.
Bridgend returned to being the same dead boring town after that. They were caught in the height of a warm summer and nothing happened except for the Ashes in Cardiff that brought a few people sleeping in the B&B's around town.
Danii spent a lot of time looking out the window and watching Mrs Roberts, but she seemed unchanged. Danii even came with to Providence Park for Grandpa and spent two hours staring out the window at the park, and her brother was being his usual dickhead self.
Dav commented on her Facebook status about her night out in Cardiff one weekend, and that Florida was so much better. She was dreading college, only because she'd be seeing the same wankers for the next two years.
She took her bike out that day because her mum had nothing to do for her and that was one way to make sure she wouldn't find something for her to do. She rode down to that beach again. She hadn't told anyone, what's to tell without photos, only sounded like a lame movie she'd downloaded off the net, but she'd gone a lot, maybe waiting for more coffins.
This time, when all she'd seen at the best of times was people walking dogs, the black car from before was parked on the beach itself. The American with the coat stood there, and the bloke and the woman, and someone else. Danii leaned her bike by the dam and walked across to where they were standing, sticking to her path winding behind the dunes and trying to get as close as possible without being detected.
The American in the coat looked decidedly contrite while the woman in the strange get-up and dress had the command over everything, talking down to him. The bloke in the suit had disppeared, probably back to the car. Danii wasn't close enough to understand what they were saying. She'd just got out her mobile when it was plucked from her fingers. She turned around, and the bloke in the suit put his finger to her lips.
"You shouldn't be here," he said in low tone, then laughed. "Really, you shouldn't be here again."
"Still making a movie?" Danii gave back and reached for her mobile, but he held it out of reach.
"This is dangerous. Not in the we climb across fences and it's all a joke. This is dangerous," he said, and he looked more serious than last time.
"Doesn't look it."
"When does it ever look it before someone dies? Jolly good day on the road and WHAM dead."
Danii waited but he didn't add anything. "You're not making sense." She reached for the phone again. "I'll go back home and I'll be good and put nothing on twitter and-"
The bloke grabbed her wrist and pulled her close. Danii's heart jumped into her throat and she tried to tear herself away.
"I'm doing it for people like you, you know, keeping things safe."
"Whatever," Danii replied and pulled her arm free. "It's not a movie then."
"I can't tell you." The bloke shrugged. "I can't tell you or I'd have to make you drink shit tea after."
"Joy," Danii muttered. "Look, can I go then? Your friend didn't seem too happy, and—" she stopped, then, "it's not drug trafficking, is it?"
He shook his head. "Hope not. Can't say anything. Should you believe me though if I said either way?"
Danii shrugged and took her mobile from him, turning it between her fingers. "It's different stuff, isn't it? With those scanners you had and the stuff you were saying..."
The bloke shrugged. "The woman, from that day, she's okay, yeah?"
Danii tilted her head and punched buttons on her phone just to have something to do. "Guess so. But... it's not a movie?"
"What's with you and the movies?" The bloke shook his head.
"Don't know. But all the cool stuff is on the telly. Nothing ever happens around here."
The bloke put his head back and laughed. Danii figured he was a bit cracked in the head, but he only gave her another meaningful look and then walked away, leaving her standing there with her mobile, watching the lady in strange dress talk about the rows after rows of coffins.
Danii kind of wanted to look inside just to see who'd died, but the bloke in a suit looked back at her while she was still standing there and nodded at her to move on.
So she did.
The thing with the children happened a few months later, and she was on Facebook and tracking things on pirate stations. She figured it might be something to do with those coffins, and that she'd ask the bloke if she saw him again, but she never did.
--
Note: The story is based on events in the Torchwood tie-in novel Risk Assessment by James Goss.
Characters: original character, Jack, Ianto, Gwen
Rating: PG
Length: 5300 words
Summary: Nothing ever happens in Bridgend.
Bridgend was a small enough place that Danii knew Mrs Roberts went out for milk every second of the month. She came back with one jug of milk. Danii didn't know if she lasted all month with one jug of milk, but then, milk went bad, didn't it? Her mum kept on yelling about the milk being off and Danii or her brother going down to the shops to fetch some more.
Bored in Bridgend, Danii wrote for a status message on her Facebook page. Her laptop stood open on the desk underneath the window. The sun came in through the big trees outside. It was summer in Bridgend and school was out and Danii would go to college in the fall.
Mrs Roberts left the house opposite and went to get her milk. Danii sat back in her chair and stared at the status message window, then doodled an abstract flower on a small notepad, not even looking at what she was doing.
"Danii! Need you to go down to the shops for potatoes!" Danii's mum.
Danii rolled her eyes ceiling-ward, staring straight back at a poster of N-Dubz and gave him a grin before she spun around in her desk chair and walked out of her room, clattering down the stairs. She slipped on her Converse by the door. Converse had been big a year ago but she didn't want to spend money on new shoes out of Cardiff when these still did it until fall maybe. She pulled on her hoodie.
"Just get us a bag." Danii's mum kissed her forehead and gave her a tenner. "Thanks!" she shouted, already turned back to the kitchen. She was making roast and it had smelled like lunch since 9 am. "We're fetching Grandpa later. You coming with?" Danii shrugged and walked out of the door into the sunshine.
She turned left from the house and made for the shops. Mrs Roberts was just turning the corner in front of her. Danii thought that maybe she should ask about the milk because it was curious, but she slowed her walk instead, not really wanting the conversation. Her Converse kicked up a bit of dust from the pavement. A few kids from two streets over rode past her on their bicycles, shouting stupid shit. Danii flipped them off.
Bridgend was dead boring with her friends off on summer holidays in Europe or Florida, and she'd begged off the camping trips because she'd been stupid and in a strop those days. She pulled a face at herself in the window of the house she was passing, stuck out her tongue. Mrs Roberts in front of her made to cross the road where the pavement ended on that side. The empty milk jug was heavy in her tote bag, swinging back and forth. Danii slowed again, not wanting to catch up and be questioned about school and college and The Future.
Mrs Roberts was half across the road, when a car came roaring around the corner at the top of the road and screeched its brakes immediately. Mrs Roberts froze, staring at it, and Danii froze, staring at both her and the car. Like the movies, this was, as the cars' wheels locked and the car slid on the dry sandy street, careening half sideways. In the movies, though, people would throw themselves there and save Mrs Roberts and her milk jug, but Danii just stood there and had half a mind to pull out her mobile and film it for youtube. The car slid, slowing, but still pushing up a cloud of dust and the smell of burned rubber, and Mrs Roberts did nothing, only stared at it. Blue lights lined the side of the black car and they were flickering.
The car stopped, half a metre in front of Mrs Roberts, standing sideways in the road. The dust enveloped her to the waist. She gasped, coughing.
Danii relaxed her fingers around the tenner, hadn't realised she'd had been all tense and clenched.
The dust cloud began to float away, then the doors on the car opened.
"I told you to slow down." A man in a suit strode to the back of the car to take in the burned rubber stretch the car had left and then came around to the driver's side.
"Stealing all my fun," the driver replied, American accent, as he got out of the car. "Are you okay, ma'am?" he called to Mrs Roberts and walked forward, reaching out to shake her hand. Mrs Roberts offered him the tote bag with the empty milk jug. The American handed it off to the bloke in the suit who looked inside, frowning.
The American lowered his voice as he talked to Mrs Roberts, something about her wanting a glass of water maybe, but Danii couldn't really make it out. Danii strained to hear more, then glanced at the bloke in the suit, and found that the bloke was looking back at her.
Looking good, she thought, like an idiot.
The American was tutting over Mrs Roberts still, then the suited bloke looked away from Danii and back to them, handed the tote bag back to Mrs Roberts. "Jack, time. The beach, yeah?" he said. He turned to Mrs Roberts. "Sorry for that, honest, I'll make sure he's more careful. You're fine, surely?"
Mrs Roberts nodded, looking dazed.
"Don't tell Gwen," the American said to the bloke in the suit. The bloke rolled his eyes again, then stopped, tilting his head. "Not Southerndown then? I thought you'd checked it before? Just other side of the dunes then?" He waited then, "Pain in the arse." The American didn't seem fazed, and the one in the suit got back into the car. Mrs Roberts tottered across the road to the other side.
Danii wanted to say something about calling the police, but what about, nothing had happened, had it? The blue lights revved again as the American shut the driver's door and maneuvered to the kerb where Mrs Roberts still stood and back again until the car stood facing the right way on the road. Then the car pulled away at leisurely pace and turned the corner onto Main Street until it was out of sight, leaving a bit of dust and the track marks on the road. Mrs Roberts looked after the car, then turned and walked on, probably getting her milk from Tesco's.
Danii crumpled the tenner in her hand and went on too, but she kept turning it over in her head, the two strange blokes and the one in the suit had said something about the beach. What was on the beach that was so urgent then? Danii overtook Mrs Roberts on the way to the Tesco's and only went in for the potatoes and back out again, giving a wave to Anna who was working there in the summer. She made it back quick to their house and her mum was on the phone talking to one of her friends.
"That's what I told him. Doesn't matter if it's not a law, you'd think that being a neighbour he'd see that..."
Danii held up the bag of potatoes and put them on the counter with the change. "Going out again," she said.
Her mum waved her on, phone cradled between shoulder and cheek as she poked at the roast. "I did plant them on my side and granted I..."
Danii walked out the back of the kitchen and got her bike from the shed. She rang the bell for a laugh, then stopped when no one was there to laugh with her, leaned against the bike and got out her mobile, going on Facebook. Still bored, going down to the beach.
She glanced at Dav's wall. Ace party in Miami. WHOO. That was that, then. She snapped the mobile shut and led her bike out past the house, then swung herself on it and rode down the street. A gull flew overhead, croaking.
The black car had been the most interesting thing in town since the kids getting caught stealing gum from Mr Daniels' corner shop, maybe since the Paul Potts thing. That had been big with all of them squeezing in front of the telly when the ITV cameras came by to film.
Danii passed Mrs Roberts on the way. Her tote bag was weighed down with the milk. Danii nodded at her because the old lady was looking up just then. Mrs Roberts waved. She looked a bit freaked still, even if nothing had really happened. No one had died, yeah?
Bridgend was dead midday midweek midsummer. Everyone was off to work or gone. There were no cars, really, or anyone out. Danii was alone on the road even as Bridgend ended and she cut through the fields on smaller paths, coming out back on the mainroad to Ogmore-by-Sea, trying not to cuss as a car overtook her and swerved a little too close for comfort.
"Wanker," Danii muttered. She kept an eye on the beach as the road curved around. Just as she rolled around the soft bend, she glimpsed two figures on the sand, one of them gesticulating wildly. Danii rolled to a stop at the side of the road and shaded her eyes with her hand to see better. Further along the road, the hint of the black car, parked.
Danii got off her bike and led it down the small incline the short way. Her mobile rang, Danii answered, keeping her bike steady with the other hand.
"Where are you off to then?" Her mum clanked pots in the background and yelled for her brother. "We're leaving to fetch Grandpa."
"Fine." Danii leaned her bike against the dam and walked the grassy hill down to the sand. The two men stood on the beach looking around in a circle before they walked on.
"You haven't come with the last few times either." Her mum yelled for her brother again.
"I'll see him when he's here," Danii replied. She kept to the grassy dunes weaving along the beach line. Grandpa had been crazy for as long as she remembered, and monthly visits with him going "Agnes, beautiful" at her had left her creeped out enough.
She hadn't liked the smell of Providence Park or the people there, ever since the woman had thrown up at her feet when she was five and then raved about something crazy.
"Well, we're leaving then," her mum said, "be sure to be here tonight." She hung up.
Where else would she be, in dead end Bridgend. Danii flipped the phone shut and slid it into her pocket, then she rounded the small hill. On the other side of the hill, a few hundred metres away, the two men stood around a long box. A coffin, Danii immediately thought.
She snuck closer, burrowing behind the hill. The American, now wearing a long coat in high summer, stalked around the coffin, pointing an instrument at it. Danii walked around the other side of the hill and ducked behind a bush, crouching low.
"Residual rift activity, then," the bloke in the suit said, arms crossed in front of his chest.
"A ting of residual rift activity," the American corrected. "Ting," he said and grinned.
"That a technical term? Why am I even asking," the bloke in the suit said. "Anything else?"
"That!" The American crouched, his coat dragging in the sand as he held his scanner or whatever to the bottom of the coffin. "No, nevermind. Spacecrab, I think."
"Jack." Long suffering sigh from the bloke in the suit.
"Joking. Earth animal, completely terraristic and sufficiently mutated for the twenty-first century."
"What is it then, this... box?" The bloke in the suit walked around it, knocking on it, then drew his fingertips along the side as if to look for a way in.
Jack shrugged. "Your guess is as good as mine. Treasure chest? Coffin? Invasion capsule? Who knows."
"Comforting," the bloke in the suit bit out sharply, clipped.
"That's Torchwood for you." They both stopped and looked at each other over the coffin. Danii was too far away to see their faces but after a moment they both slumped enough to make Danii think the coffin was exerting some kind of influence, but then they straightened and sighed and stood back.
Danii took her mobile out of her pocket and activated the camera function. She leaned forward between the brances, angling her hand with the phone out to try for a clear picture. There was something weird about these ones and what was Torchwood anyway?
Danii pushed the button to take the photo, and her phone emitted the fake camera shutter sound that she'd always wanted to get rid of.
Danii went still, when both men immediately focused away from the coffin and looked around themselves. Her hand holding the phone was shaking. Smooth.
"Bird," the American, Jack, said.
"On your kind of planets maybe," the one in the suit said.
"Cyberbi- … anyway, coffin, no way in, no way out, comes through the rift all by itself." Jack turned in a circle. "All alone." He tapped his fingers to the coffin. "So where do you come from, what are you doing here and what's inside?"
Danii slowly pulled back her hand and switched the setting on her camera to video and pressed the button, filming. That'd beat parties in Miami on Facebook. It also beat having a roast with Grandpa.
"We could pry it open."
"Invasion capsule."
"That would bring the news channels here at least. Give them something to talk about after Paul Potts. He was good though, nothing beats him."
Danii snorted in her bush. The mobile shook a little, shaking up her picture.
"Potts?" Jack got on his hands and knees next to the coffin and pushed sand to the side.
"On the telly. Gwen, are you getting any readings?" He put his hand to his ear, some kind of communicator, Danii figured. "Bridgend, flies and stinking sand. I'll be happy to swap you for the desk next time."
Jack, meanwhile, was digging underneath the coffin with his hands and pushed his hand underneath. The bloke in the suit walked around the back of him, swatting at the air.
"We're not getting anything here. Jack's... doing something." He opened his suit jacket and folded up his sleeves. "He nearly ran over an old lady earlier because he was showing off."
Jack said something from underneath the coffin.
"No, he's not listening. Anyway, no radiation, nothing on your end? It's dead on ours, too. I vote we just open it."
Jack pulled out from underneath the coffin.
"Gwen agrees." The bloke in the suit smiled.
"It doesn't matter." Jack's voice had turned a notch harder. "We're not opening something we can't identify. Final word."
The bloke in the suit huffed. "It was a joke. Bloody hell. What then? We leave it here and wait for it to identify itself. 'Hello, my name is Pingbyu and I have the X-factor!'"
"We can't leave it here. Invasion capsule. Anyone could stumble across it here."
"Can't get it in the SUV either. And anyway, sand."
"Yes." Jack stalked around the coffin again, then leaned against it. "Bury it here, maybe? No one would know, but who knows what's leaking that we can't identify."
Danii thumbed the video to off. With Jack leaning like that and the other one with his arms crossed and the rolled up suit, she took another photo, trying to time it to the croak of a sea gull, but both of them whipped around and stared at the flimsy bush she was hiding behind, Jack looking right at her.
Danii pulled her camera back, then turned and ran.
"Dammit," Jack cursed and she heard his feet in the sand. He shouted something back at the other one.
She didn't even really know why she was running, but if she didn't, she had no idea who they were, only that they had strange scanners and god knows what an attitude to people lurking in the bushes. If she made it to the bike she'd be good. They wouldn't make it to their car fast enough.
"Hey," Jack shouted from behind her.
Danii was pushing it. PE had never been her strong suit, always hated the wading around in the heat and being a metre short on long jumps from everyone else. She saw her bike where she'd left it, knew she only had to get it up the hill. Danii grabbed it at full sprint and it slowed her down as she forced it up the incline.
"Hey girl," Jack shouted and he was seven, eight metres behind her when she was on the road. She pushed herself, got on her bike and pedaled. Her foot slid off the pedal for a moment before she caught it again and made it down the road. Jack was shouting after her but he stopped trying to run. She just knew they were getting the car, so took the first path that took her off the main road and through the woods back to Bridgend.
What was the rift? And what kind of invasion had he talked about? Invasion of whom and how? Who were they?
Danii pedaled as fast as she could, heart pounding and muscles burning in her legs. She kept looking over her shoulder, even if their car would have never fit on the path. The sun was still beating down hard, and the forest turned the air damp and sticky. She took the long way home, didn't want to end back on the main road and have them wait there. Them and the coffin and god knows what.
She halfway expected them to be waiting at the house when she turned onto the street, but there was only her mum's car pulling up and her brother opening the door for Grandpa who was already raving.
"There you are. I thought you'd have been home before," her mum said.
Danii ignored her and pushed her bike past the side of the house, still looking over her shoulder when she closed the gate to the back garden behind her. She dragged the bike into the shed, and only then, when she leaned against the door, trying to stop freaking out, she realized that she didn't have her mobile. She patted herself down, smoothed her hand over the right jeans pocket where she always had it but it wasn't there.
Bugger.
"Danii!" her mum call from the kitchen door. Danii turned out all her pockets but the mobile wasn't there. Had she dropped it when they'd discovered her? Or running? Maybe she'd only lost it in the woods? "Danii!"
Danii pushed open the shed door and locked it, made her way to the house. If they had her mobile they'd find her. She wondered when it had seemed like a good idea to follow them down to the beach after they'd nearly killed Mrs Roberts.
"At least say hello to Grandpa, will you?" Danii's mum said as Danii pushed past her into the house.
Danii was trying to figure out where she'd lost the bloody mobile even as she went into the sitting room and kissed Grandpa on the cheek, taking in the Providence Park smell.
The thought stayed with her while setting the table, and during supper as they all sat through Grandpa slurping his way through the soup and roast, and her brother was making stupid faces across the table from her. And it still stayed when washing up and while she snuck upstairs after, closing the door to her room.
Her laptop was still on. Danii sat down at her desk. The lights were on in Mrs Roberts' house and she wondered if Mrs Roberts still thought about earlier today. Her screensaver deactivated when she moved her mouse and her screen glared to Facebook life.
No one had commented on her status message from earlier that day. She surfed the internet for a while, turning over the blokes in her head and the black car and that coffin on the beach and where she could have lost her mobile. She turned off her computer and threw herself on her bed, staring at the ceiling. N-Dubz was giving her a winning grin, but she didn't feel it in her to grin back.
The next morning started out with her mum banging on her door and it took Danii a few minutes until she was awake. Checking Facebook only proved that everyone was having a better time. Breakfast across from Grandpa and his muttering and mumbling while her brother was off to camp with friends was easy to cut short, and Danii got her bike from the shed and eased it out into the road. There was no black car, maybe it all had been a big misunderstanding.
She wondered what they'd done with the coffin, and what she'd do if they'd found her mobile. Never get it back, probably. The day was overcast, almost chilly with a breeze coming in from the channel as she rode through the woods and came out at the small incline. She should have told her mum about the missing mobile so she wouldn't try calling it but she'd forgot about that.
Danii stretched her neck, but the black car wasn't parked where it had been yesterday. She got off her bike and leaned it against the dam like she had the day before, then walked to the spot behind the bush where she'd crouched. Her heart was racing, and she kept looking over her shoulder to see if anyone had followed her but there was no one.
No mobile in the sand behind the bush, and no coffin. Danii looked over her shoulder again, then she walked where it had stood. The sand was pushed into groves and humps, still a little wet when it should be dry here. It couldn't have been long, but there was no sign of the coffin or the blokes with the scanners. Danii reached for her mobile, like she always did to reassure herself that it was there, but it wasn't. She walked in a small circle, rubbed the sand between her fingers as if she knew what she was doing.
No way it would have just disappeared by itself. She looked around for tracks but there were none that would lead up or down the beach to give an indication of where the thing had gone to, until, almost not noticable in the sand, an uprooted bushel of grass, roots sticking out every which way.
Danii followed the trail, trying to keep in the safety of some kind of cover but the woods were all further back and all she had were a few dunes and more sand than she could count. Bloody freezing in Bridgend, she thought to herself in Facebook status message. The track curved around to the mouth of the Ogmore, and then stopped. The tide was going out, it had probably been up to there when the coffin had been moved.
The breeze dusted up sand and Danii had to protect her eyes as she looked out at sea. She thought she could see something bopping there, but that was her imagination probably, surely they wouldn't just have shoved it out there.
"I believe this is yours."
Danii swivelled around at the voice and stared right at the bloke with the suit who was holding her mobile between thumb and fingers. The sparse sun reflected off the display. Danii wanted to turn to run, but a woman cut off the direct path to her bike. Her hair fluttered across her face and she smiled tightly at Danii like she knew what was coming and was wishing her good luck.
"You dropped it," the bloke said. "Danii Williams, seventeen, Pen-y-Cwrdd Clos nineteen, Bridgend. You like chips from the shop on the corner, and you and Dav used to go out but he's in Florida and hasn't commented on your Facebook wall even once." He paused, then added. "Your grandpa's in Providence Park. You don't visit often."
"How do you..." Danii took a step back, but the woman cleared her throat, and gave Danii that same smile again, the one that said not to try anything and things were what they were.
"My mum knows I'm here," Danii said. "And my grandpa even if..." she trailed off.
The bloke raised an eyebrow and shrugged. "You weren't supposed to see what you saw here yesterday," he said.
"That your friend nearly killed Mrs Roberts?"
"Bloody Jack," the woman muttered and the bloke pulled a face.
"I don't know what you're doing or what the rift is or if you're drug trafficking down to Swansea, but honest, I won't say, I only want my mobile and by the way, Dav's only busy at the moment."
She missed Dav now. She even missed Grandpa and his Providence Park smell, anything familiar really. The breeze tugged at her clothes and Danii hugged her arms around herself.
The bloke waggled the phone back and forth at her, but didn't say anything, just nodded meaningfully at the woman behind Danii. The woman cleared her throat. "Yes, about that, there's pictures on there and you've seen things so it'd be..." She trailed off and gestured at the bloke. The bloke shrugged in reply and muttered, "Jack's usually doing this."
"Was it a coffin then? That thing? Did it fall off a ship with a body inside and all that?" Danii asked, looking between them who were having a whole conversation without words but much frustration.
"Can't say. It's secret, really," the woman said and walked closer. "You shouldn't have been here to see that, that's all."
"Shouldn't be all fancy with your car then," Danii muttered, kicking her Converse at the sand. "Things don't happen in Bridgend. I don't know who you are but it's probably you making some kind of Channel 4 drama and can't say when it's Skins because it'd be all over. Just, sorry yeah? And your friend nearly killed someone."
"Channel 4 drama," the bloke in the suit nodded, but looked like he'd never heard of Channel 4 before.
"Bit chilly, you want some tea before we send you on your way?" The woman waggled a thermos back and forth.
Danii shook her head. She only wanted her mobile and be out of there, and if they bought her story about television drama, even better. It wasn't right, whatever had gone on there wasn't right because they wouldn't be all secretive about it, and she didn't want to get caught in that.
The bloke shrugged. "I had to delete the photos, and, keep mum. Uh, spoilers, yeah? Don't need that on twitter."
Danii rolled her eyes and snatched the mobile out of the bloke's hand. "No one's on twitter."
She walked away from them, slowly, not daring to look around.
"How does he do it? They always drink his tea," the woman said, probably not meaning Danii to hear.
Danii's steps quickened until she was running out of there. This time they didn't come after.
Bridgend returned to being the same dead boring town after that. They were caught in the height of a warm summer and nothing happened except for the Ashes in Cardiff that brought a few people sleeping in the B&B's around town.
Danii spent a lot of time looking out the window and watching Mrs Roberts, but she seemed unchanged. Danii even came with to Providence Park for Grandpa and spent two hours staring out the window at the park, and her brother was being his usual dickhead self.
Dav commented on her Facebook status about her night out in Cardiff one weekend, and that Florida was so much better. She was dreading college, only because she'd be seeing the same wankers for the next two years.
She took her bike out that day because her mum had nothing to do for her and that was one way to make sure she wouldn't find something for her to do. She rode down to that beach again. She hadn't told anyone, what's to tell without photos, only sounded like a lame movie she'd downloaded off the net, but she'd gone a lot, maybe waiting for more coffins.
This time, when all she'd seen at the best of times was people walking dogs, the black car from before was parked on the beach itself. The American with the coat stood there, and the bloke and the woman, and someone else. Danii leaned her bike by the dam and walked across to where they were standing, sticking to her path winding behind the dunes and trying to get as close as possible without being detected.
The American in the coat looked decidedly contrite while the woman in the strange get-up and dress had the command over everything, talking down to him. The bloke in the suit had disppeared, probably back to the car. Danii wasn't close enough to understand what they were saying. She'd just got out her mobile when it was plucked from her fingers. She turned around, and the bloke in the suit put his finger to her lips.
"You shouldn't be here," he said in low tone, then laughed. "Really, you shouldn't be here again."
"Still making a movie?" Danii gave back and reached for her mobile, but he held it out of reach.
"This is dangerous. Not in the we climb across fences and it's all a joke. This is dangerous," he said, and he looked more serious than last time.
"Doesn't look it."
"When does it ever look it before someone dies? Jolly good day on the road and WHAM dead."
Danii waited but he didn't add anything. "You're not making sense." She reached for the phone again. "I'll go back home and I'll be good and put nothing on twitter and-"
The bloke grabbed her wrist and pulled her close. Danii's heart jumped into her throat and she tried to tear herself away.
"I'm doing it for people like you, you know, keeping things safe."
"Whatever," Danii replied and pulled her arm free. "It's not a movie then."
"I can't tell you." The bloke shrugged. "I can't tell you or I'd have to make you drink shit tea after."
"Joy," Danii muttered. "Look, can I go then? Your friend didn't seem too happy, and—" she stopped, then, "it's not drug trafficking, is it?"
He shook his head. "Hope not. Can't say anything. Should you believe me though if I said either way?"
Danii shrugged and took her mobile from him, turning it between her fingers. "It's different stuff, isn't it? With those scanners you had and the stuff you were saying..."
The bloke shrugged. "The woman, from that day, she's okay, yeah?"
Danii tilted her head and punched buttons on her phone just to have something to do. "Guess so. But... it's not a movie?"
"What's with you and the movies?" The bloke shook his head.
"Don't know. But all the cool stuff is on the telly. Nothing ever happens around here."
The bloke put his head back and laughed. Danii figured he was a bit cracked in the head, but he only gave her another meaningful look and then walked away, leaving her standing there with her mobile, watching the lady in strange dress talk about the rows after rows of coffins.
Danii kind of wanted to look inside just to see who'd died, but the bloke in a suit looked back at her while she was still standing there and nodded at her to move on.
So she did.
The thing with the children happened a few months later, and she was on Facebook and tracking things on pirate stations. She figured it might be something to do with those coffins, and that she'd ask the bloke if she saw him again, but she never did.
--
Note: The story is based on events in the Torchwood tie-in novel Risk Assessment by James Goss.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 08:32 pm (UTC)I LOL'ed at that, I'll have you know.
Really good, Nick. I really enjoy stories with the outsider perspective, and I'm loving your OCs lately. HARD.
Tiny thing in that I think she'd say "Mum" not "Mom" in there.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-24 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-25 08:02 am (UTC)I definitely have a thing for OCs lately, so haha, glad you like it. There's likely going to be more of it in the future