After I've finished my bath (gorgeous scents by the way - what flower was that, Bravene Gamma 7? Oh, where did that come from? Must be a side effect of this place), I wrap myself in a towel and peek outside to try and gain any semblance of what to do next when on the floor just outside the door I spot a pile of clean clothes folded neatly.
Checking down the dark hall that nobody else is here, I pick up the clothes and inspect them for any GPS devices or spy tags like I used to have thrown onto me. Nothing; just basic underwear, a pair of jeans a size too big that looks like they're from the sixties, and a modest pale blue top.
I close the bathroom door and change into them, transferring my pocketwatch from the chair nearby to the pocket, and get momentarily distracted by the soft cotton. So luxurious after years of the same stinky scratchy tat.
Once dressed I peek again outside the doors, and someone must have this entire place trip-wired or something because at the end of the hallway a door slides upwards and the man in the long coat appears again.
Ready for his mind-warping tricks again, I march right up to him and stick my finger in his face.
"Okay buddy, tell me what's going on! I've finished my bath, we've exchanged pleasantries, I haven't seriously injured you yet even though I have a feeling I should - I deserve to know where I am and who you are and what this all is!"
He pauses for a minute - a full minute, God, did this man go to drama school? - then says in his again charming voice, "Let's go to a pub."
I just stare at him in incredulance. "What? I've just confronted you about all this shady shit," I gesture to everything about me, "and you want a pint? What's wrong with you?!"
He smiles, his wide crocodile-toothed smile which chills me to the bone. "How long you got?"
He turns on the point of his boot and heads back to the white door at the end of the hall, and I guess I have no other choice but to follow him.
I walk behind him, trying not to get hit in the face with his period uniform coat. Geez, wearing that all the time, pretentious or what? Unless you were actually there, why wear it every breathing minute?
We reach the white door, get into the lift that it surprisingly turns into, and next thing I know we're back at Sewer Chic. I find the other two women on their computers, and the shorter Asian one glances at me and lowers her glasses to wave with another warm smile. She's a good egg. I like her. Not the other one though - her head seems way too stuck up her own ass.
"We're going out," he shouts to them, and the Suzie one asks curtly without looking away from her screen, "Have you remembered it?"
"Yes," he replies loudly, and begins to walk toward a large cog behind barred gates. I follow, confused yet on guard. What's it? And why the Hell is that giant cog moving from the ground to reveal another white door which is probably a lift?
The man swishes into the lift - what a bloody surprise - and beckons me into it. Looking back at the women and at the large metal underground, I walk forward into it. If worse comes to worse, I'd rather be out in the open where I can run.
The man and I walk and walk until we arrive at a pub. Instantly I am hit with a cacophony of noise from loud unknown music and loud unknown people talking and laughing and dancing. I even physically back away once we cross the threshold; I'm not used to this sort of noise.
He studies me reacting to the place, silent with a thoughtful look placed along his tight jaw. He puts a hand gently on my shoulder, freaking me out a little, and guides me slowly to the counter where he orders two pints of something I've never heard of. The bartender brings out two glasses of the stuff and I ask:
"Is it beer?"
My companion nods and I pick up the glass and start glugging it down thirstily. He laughs heartily as I finish and orders another one for me, and I put down the glass.
"Well, you would too if you were stuck drinking lukewarm tap water for ages! God, I used to go to pubs and get blackout drunk when I was a teen! At least, I think I did... stuff gets all blurry when you haven't lived for a while."
"I hear that," he laughs with me, and clinks his glass with my new one. At that I falter before I start drinking my second, and remember what I wanted to ask him.
"So... tell me."
He gulps the beer already in his mouth and says calmly but firmly, "Tell you what?"
"Everything!" I reply emphatically, "That place you took me to, why you were hanging round in a quarry, who were those two women there, why did you take me there, why have you taken me here... and who are you?"
He studies me again silently, then says coolly, "Look around you."
Stilled by the ice in his voice that now matches his eyes, I look away from the counter and survey the people in the area. They're happy, laughing, drinking, kissing.
"I protect them," I hear behind me, and there he is in the same stance he always is, leaning on the back of his chair with his hand on his chin like if he had a beard he'd be stroking it.
I lean toward him. "What do you mean, protect them? What against?"
"Me and those two women, we work secretly to protect the human race against aliens."
I stare at him for a long moment, then crack up. "Yeah, right. Aliens? In Cardiff? You think just because I was locked up in a drug ring for over five years I believe anything? I mean, yeah I believe in aliens, but that they live in Cardiff?"
"It's true," he breaks his pose and leans forward, and suddenly his cold blue eyes reign over me, forbidding me to move. As an act of defiance and to give me more courage cuz I'm actually kinda scared shitless of this man, I lean back and start drinking my pint whilst still staring into his eyes, daring him to go on.
He begins again. "There is a rift in time and space running through Cardiff - invisible to the naked eye, but a force that dumps aliens from outer space and other planets in the city. Me and these two women, we work as an organisation that monitors the rift and captures anything coming through it, so the public is protected. The twenty-first century is when everything changes, and here, now, in only 2004, we need to be ready more than ever."
I finish my drink, not realising I had drunk so much. I'm still trying to process it all.
Aliens in Cardiff? A rift in time and space? It's so science-fiction it has to be a joke, but looking into his eyes I just know that he's deadly serious. These three adults... they save the lives of everyone in Cardiff almost daily.
But... how does this man know about aliens? He seems to be the leader over the two women, so he must know the most, so...
I place the now empty glass on the counter and lean forward again. His almost frightening blue eyes are fixed on my colourful ones.
"Who are you?"
Without moving, he says, "Captain Jack Harkness."
"But that's just the name you said at the quarry. Who is the real you? How do you know so much? Are you an alien?"
"No," he says firmly, and I don't know what exactly he's saying no to. But then he clarifies.
"You don't get to know who I am. You don't get that privilege. There's so much you don't know about me, and so much you'll never know... and so much you'll never remember."
For the first time in a while I blink, as if I'd been transported somewhere.
"What do you mean?" I whisper, and as he opens his mouth I blink again, violently because my vision turns blurry.
The world seems to tip on its side and I'm suddenly in his arms, squinting up at him. I can just about make out his silhouette cut out around the bright yellow light of the... of the... the pub, yes, the pub, I'm at the pub.
...How did I get to a pub again?
"Don't worry," his voice whirls about me in that faceless charming voice of his, "it's just an amnesia pill. Hey, here, keep the change, she's had a bit too much, I'll take her home."
Home? Where's home?
"I don't know, I'll probably just book you a hotel in your name, okay?" the voice starts again, and I didn't know I'd said anything out loud.
He half drags me outside, lifting my body partly to put me into a car and get in next to me. He says something to the person in front of our seat, and we start moving. How am I moving?
The Harkness man is next to me. I drape my arms across his lap in an attempt to get him to tell me why the world is spinning and I don't know where I am.
"Well," he says, his bright blue eyes in their tanned American eyelids the only thing I can focus on, "I gave you an amnesia pill in your second pint, and by the morning you'll have forgotten all about me, and about Torchwood, and you'll think you're just hungover. That pretty much sums it up. Dash of sedative and a hint of Retcon, my special little homegrown compound."
It all goes through my brain and I try to make my hands into fists to hurt him, but they feel limp and soft. The car stops and the Harkness man helps me out of it and into another brightly lit room. I blink in the yellow artificial light and squint again as the man says my name: "Evelina Firestone, I'm her friend just helping her back from a night out, I'll be leaving shortly but make sure to charge it to the Torchwood account. You know Torchwood?"
Torchwood. Torchwood.
I repeat it in my head whilst he - Captain Jack Harkness - brings me up to another brightly lit place and lands me softly on a bouncy bed. The cosy sheets don't help in staying awake or remembering, and I blink constantly and try to slap myself to wake up.
Torchwood. Torchwood. Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood. Toshiko Sato, Torchwood. Suzie Costello, Torchwood. Torchwood, Torchwood, TORCHWOOD!
"Good night, Evelina," I hear from an American male somewhere around my fading vision, and I hear the click of a door before I land into complete darkness.