Torchwood fic: Trapped in the Village

[merryghoul]

AO3

Pairings: gen (Toshiko Sato, Suzie Costello, Jack Harkness, Milton, OCs)
Rating: R
Warning: graphic violence
Word Count: 15142
Summary: Was the memory of Tosh being imprisoned in "Fragments" a truth, or was it a fabrication? In 2009, after Torchwood Three's headquarters was blown up, a draft of a report written by Tosh stated she was kidnapped by a "Milton" and imprisoned in a Welsh village for over a year. The story of how she escaped this village and eventually joined Torchwood is as astonishing as Tosh's short life and career with Torchwood.
Author's Note: Although this story is AU, certain canonical facts of Toshiko's life before Torchwood differ between Torchwood episodes. (Show bible? What show bible?) For this story, the time Tosh is imprisoned and when she joined Torchwood is based on "Fragments" as opposed to the year given in Mary's account on Tosh's life in "Greeks Bearing Gifts" as well as the date the TARDIS Index File gives on Tosh's imprisonment (2004).



[Date unknown,] 2005.

[Accessed by the Ministry of Defence, 15 September 2009.]

NOTE #1: TOSHIKO SATO

You probably know the story of how I ended up working with Milton by now. I was blackmailed into making a flawed copy of a device known as a "sonic manipulator" to attempt to save my mother. Milton aimed the device at my mother and me, causing us to fall to the ground. And then people arrested Milton and me.

The official report was that I was arrested by UNIT and sent to an inhumane prison under UNIT's control. Jack spun it to Torchwood One (and maybe, today, in his own head) that I was living in a cell with no bed or toilet. I'm a human being with bodily functions, Jack. Why would I not have a toilet, and access to toiletries for that matter? Jumpsuits are not diapers. Occasionally I'd be let out to exercise. There was nothing about me eating or using a public shower in the report. Jack visited me in this prison, alone. No mention of Suzie—I don't blame him ever since she went postal on Torchwood. He told me if I worked for Torchwood, I'd be free from UNIT and their prison, and if I worked a certain amount of years, I could retire for Torchwood. This was before I learned about the death of Ben Barnes, who died after Suzie was hired. Oh, Jack. I accepted, and all of a sudden, I had limited contact with my mum, a flat in Cardiff, and a cushy job working with Jack and Suzie.

Torchwood One bought the report. I'm guessing they were more scared that the Doctor, of all aliens, would launch some full-scale attack on the UK. But the truth is stranger than Jack's fantasy.


NOTE #2: TOSHIKO SATO

So, by order of Yvonne Hartman at Torchwood One, I have to type out the details of my 14 month confinement with the woman known as "Milton" in a village made by the terrorist organization known as "The Village" in Northern Wales. This is in order to aid Torchwood (or at least the branches in London, Glasgow and Cardiff—no one still knows where Torchwood Four is, and apparently no one's looking) and UNIT on how to stop humans from taking alien technology and using it against humans as a form of terrorism. Jack would do it, but he's busy. Doing what, I have no idea.

I'm not sure what Miss Hartman is trying to prove. I know Suzie's taken home a few things from Torchwood Three to play with in her flat, and I have as well. I'm concerned about what Suzie's taken home—they either tend to be sharp things, things that throw projectiles, or things that explode. I've only taken home a device that scans books and transfers them to my computer for easy reading.

Okay, I've also taken home a few devices that work as marital aids. I hope Jack isn't missing them in our archives. But I guess if Suzie's careful with the things she takes home, I shouldn't worry too much.

Back to this report. I guess I should start drafting it now.

I also need to emphasize this in my final report. Miss Hartman: I still do not know whether Milton is her first or surname and what either her actual first or her actual surname is. Also, Jack, Suzie and I still don't know the name of her terrorist organization—for all I know, it could also be titled "Milton." Please stop asking me these two things.

OFFICIAL REPORT OF TERRORIST CONFINEMENT OF TOSHIKO SATO

By Toshiko Sato

Suzanne "Suzie" Costello: Contributing Reporter

The last time I left Lodmoor Research Facility was on 10 November 2003. I had stolen the plans for the sonic modulator and made it at my own flat, despite the plans being faulty.

Prior to me leaving Lodmoor, a woman named Milton found my work number. She told me she was a former Lodmoor employee, fired for theft. Now she was a member of a terrorist organization known as "The Village." "The Village," using the flawed logic of Torchwood One, was dedicated to finding ways to get the Doctor to come to Earth and learn techniques from him in an attempt to take over the world.

She proceeded to tell me how she learned about how I got the job at Lodmoor fresh out of Cambridge graduate school. She thought I was the only person in England who could not only steal the plans but make the modulator.

"And what if I don't make the modulator for you?" I asked Milton.

Milton turned the phone over to my mother. She was sobbing. I'll never forget what Milton told me next, the words that unnerved me enough to even consider stealing the modulator plans:

"I'll kill her."

That was enough for me to make the modulator.

I bought Milton the completed modulator in the hopes that she would release my mother and she and I could return to Dorset, where I was living at the time. Instead, Milton turned on the modulator. It was deafening. I remember falling to the ground along with my mother. I tried to reach for some headphones, but a henchman Milton brought along with her kicked them.

Then someone leaked a gas in the room. The modulator was turned off and I remember Milton and her henchman bolting the room. Then I blacked out.


INTERVIEW #1 WITH SUZIE COSTELLO

Suzie Costello is Torchwood Three's weapons expert.

SUZIE: What do you want?

ME: I need to talk to you.

SUZIE: Leave me alone.

ME: If it's not "leave me alone," it's always "nobody listens to me." I'm amazed your contradictions aren't aware of each other by now.

SUZIE: (sighs) All right, Toshiko, I'll talk to you.

ME: I have some questions about when Torchwood first arrived to the office Milton and her henchman held my mother and me hostage in. How did you find out, when did you get there—basically, what happened after I disappeared from the office?

SUZIE: At the time I was in charge of monitoring the Rift, since the rift manipulator you engineered wasn't in the Hub. We had a few covert satellite dishes around Cardiff, and I'd monitor any strange activity with the satellites. One satellite picked up a weird sound coming from Dorset, so Jack, Ben Barnes [former Torchwood Three operative and doctor; now deceased] and I hopped in the SUV and raced to the Dorset with special police permission.

Even with police permissions, it's about two, two and a half hours from Cardiff to Dorset by car, so by the time Torchwood arrived to the office where the sound came from, Milton, her henchman, your mother and you were long gone. We even had our guns cocked just in case there were people in the building, but there was nobody there.

I remember Jack saying "Fuck" as soon as we entered the office.

"We're too late, aren't we?" Ben said.

"We sure are, Ben. And if UNIT isn't here, they're definitely too late."

I sat down at a computer in the office and attempted to hack it, but she figured out ways to erase her whole life from those computers. I have to say, that is pretty clever. Maybe I should try it sometimes, pretend to be invisible. No, no, I like visibility.

"Suzie, are you getting anything about the whereabouts of either Milton or Toshiko Sato?"

"I've got nothing, Jack. Milton's scrubbed all records of her or Toshiko's existence on these drives. But I can keep hacking her computers if you'd like."

Jack groaned and kicked a wastebasket. "Thank you, Suzie, but we're not going to find any more clues here."

"Then how are we going to save Toshiko?"

"We'll just have to wait. Ben, Suzie, guns on safety. We're going back to the Hub and make sure nothing's gone through the Rift in our absence."

We went back to the Hub, hoping some of alien tech or a human saw you in Dorset, but no one called.

ME: Did Torchwood keep searching for me?

SUZIE: We did. We helped Dorset authorities put up signs in Dorset for your disappearance. We worked with Torchwood One, UNIT, the Lodmoor Research Facility, the Missing Persons charity, but no one sent in tips about your disappearance. Ben was in charge of your case. But in early 2004, before they popped back up in London a year later, the Nestene Consciousness appeared in Cardiff for the first time in Torchwood Three's history. Before we could get advice on how to defeat the Autons in Mermaid Quay, one of them killed Ben.

ME: And with that, the search for me went cold for a while.

SUZIE: Yeah. It's kinda hard running a facility that's built for four-five people with two people. Especially one that has a tendency to be grouchy whenever things aren't going his way.


Note to self: I need to take out all the curse words before I turn this into Miss Hartman. Compared to Torchwood One, we all swear like sailors here.

About a day later, I woke up in what I thought was my flat in Dorset. Everything looked the same as it did when I lived in Dorset. I thought I had a bad dream about my mother being tormented by Milton. I washed up and had breakfast.

Then I opened the window.

I didn't know Welsh towns more or less looked the same outside of Cardiff until Jack, Suzie and I investigated a haunted chemist's in Ystradgynlais. Until the haunted chemist's incident, the look of the town was interesting. The buildings were beige and grey in colour, and houses and flats looked the same on every street. I was on a street lined with greyish houses on one side and beige flat-like homes in front of me.

I turned on my laptop to check the date and time. I also opened Opera on my laptop to check out if I could access some sites. I wasn't surprised when I couldn't see the web pages for police departments in larger Wales cities. However, I was able to access that silly "End of Ze World" video. Milton had her priorities in order.

After checking my computer, I looked around my room and found some pounds and a house key. I left the house.

I spent about an hour or so walking around the village. I learned the name of it was simply "The Village" and that I was in Wales, far away from Dorset. And since the name of the village is "The Village," it doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry.

I eventually found a Banglorean restaurant in The Village. To my surprise, it was open. I went inside—at the time, I was grateful for anything I could nosh on.

I don't exactly remember what I ordered, but I do remember a lot of things on the menu were vegetarian dishes, and I ordered one of the vegetarian dishes.

After I had ordered my meal, the waiter, who was British Asian (and the reason why I didn't run out of the restaurant), asked me "Are you new here?" in a Welsh accent.

"Yes, I am."

"You from England?"

"Yes. I was born in London and bounced back and forth between Japan and England in my youth. I just...moved here from Dorset, for lack of a better word."

"Oh. I've been told not to tell you anything about this place."

"You know who I am?"

"Yeah. Last week this woman named Milton knocked on the doors of the Village and said not to disclose any information to a Toshiko Sato. And, if I'm not mistaken, you are Japanese, right?"

I nodded.

The man also nodded. "I can't tell you anything else except for one thing. I have a family to support, Miss Sato. I would like to see them grow up with a father."

"Okay. What else can you tell me about what Milton told you?"

"Call immediately if you go to the local post office or if we see you get on a bus in some getaway car not endorsed by Milton."

"Well, that's very helpful."

And so my life as a resident under forced disappearance in this Village began.

The waiter handed me my meal. I ate it. He called Milton. I waited outside for her. She picked me up in a BMW E67. Certainly there's nothing wrong with the car, but there's something wrong if you're driving a bulletproof car (the E67) in a village in Northern Wales. You'd think Milton was a driver for the Prime Minster instead of me.

"Hop in," Milton said with a frown. "We're going shopping for the week. Get any foodstuffs and personal hygiene items you need. You have a budget of £340."


In the car I asked Milton where my mother was.

"We left her alive. I don't know where she is right now, but she's alive. You won't find her."

"I bet I will."

"On Saint David's name, you'll never find her."

I made a mental note to remember Saint David when I had my router completed.


WEEKLY SHOPPING ROUTINE—BANGOR, WALES, TUESDAYS (11 NOVEMBER 2003—1 FEBRUARY 2005)

Every week Milton took me to Bangor, about nine miles from where I was forced to live in the Village. Bangor, on the Welsh mainland, is bigger than the place Milton sent me to live. You can see why Milton kept me in a town she possibly created where she could wave a gun in front of the locals and tell them not to tattle or their heads will be blown off.

We always went to a Tesco Extra there. I prefer not to shop at Tesco. I also prefer not buying my electronic goods at any Tesco.

Milton faithfully replicated the way my flat in Dorset looked. But what she didn't know was I was about to sell my VCR to a pawn shop. Around that time, the DVD was starting to eclipse the videocassette in sales. I bought a DVD player when they first came out in England, sometime around 1998. I kept the VCR around for a few years, but with rental shops providing more and more DVDs instead of videocassettes, there was no need for me to keep my VCR. My plan was this: make the bloody modulator, get Mum back home and then sell the DVD when I didn't have this crazy woman demanding I make a sonic device for torture purposes.
But I never did sell that VCR, and that's where Milton went wrong. If I sold the VCR, I wouldn't have been able to make a bootleg router. Combined with software from The Onion Router (TOR), I was able to tell authorities and Torchwood where I was, and I was rescued from the Village.

On my way to the Tesco Extra, I decided that I had to play on Milton's level, but in a stealthier way. Every week I'd palm a few things from the Tesco: screwdrivers, small electronic toys, computer wires. This wasn't an easy task. I doubt most everyone at Torchwood One, Two and Three has never had a woman go down every single aisle you get groceries and goods on and look at you. On top of that, there were security cameras and devices all over the store. So I had to go down an aisle, grab the device I was palming and grab something else before Milton could get there. The items had to be cheap and not in a protective security device. Then I had to find a place where I could face the camera and stuff the device in something else, like a bag of cereal or a box of tampons. This required a lot of fast walking, but I was able to palm the items without too much trouble. One time I did set off the alarms at Tesco, but the person at the door determined my purse had a security device sewn into it and advised me to cut it off. Other than that, for all her vigilance, Milton was not a very attentive person. She seemed more focused on trying to get the secrets of the sonic modulator out of me rather than anything else.

I figured that Milton would want to check my goods before I left the Tesco Extra. She went through our bags and put them in the BMW's trunk, not noticing anything out of place or suspicious. She didn't even ask me what the hell I, a 28 year old who has a graduate degree from Cambridge, would do with an electronic toy. Other than for nostalgia purposes, but I'm not fond of collecting toys from any era of my childhood. I'd quickly grow bored with them.

I had days in my prison-house to myself unless Milton wanted to torment me—I will write about that later—so, unless I wanted to walk back to a restaurant and face the humiliation of Milton driving me home after I ate, I stayed inside. Once I had a basic set of wires and other tools to "repair" a VCR, I went to work. It wasn't until about a year later that I got my router working and another two months before I was able to find Torchwood Three (or, rather, they found me). While I perfected my router, I was interrogated about how I put the modulator together.


I was told by Miss Hartman to provide notable instances of 1) Milton's torture methods as well as 2) the progress of the stealth router. Following are select moments of my life with Milton. Also attached to this report will be blueprints on how to make the router, which may be useful to Torchwood One's needs especially.


INTERROGATION—"ANTAGONIST," WALES, 19 NOVEMBER 2003
Being a prisoner in the Village was the only time I was arrested for anything (or, rather, nothing) in my life.

Milton loved to make a display of everything she wanted to do to me in the village. One of those displays was a squad car, all the way from a place known as "Antagonist." I'm going to assume "Antagonist" isn't the name of any actual village in Wales. [I did learn this "police officer's" name. For the purposes of this report, I won't identify his identity.] He politely knocked on my door and asked my name. He told me I was under arrest for theft.

I was terrified. I thought my stealing at Tesco Extra actually caught up with me.

"Do you have proof of me stealing?"

"You're hiding secrets from Milton," the officer said.

"What secrets?"

"The secrets of the...uh..sonic modulator."

I knew when the police officer said that, I knew neither he nor Milton knew about my petty Tesco Extra thefts. The router and I were safe for now.

The officer put handcuffs on me and drove me to "Antagonist." It's about 30 minutes from my place in the Village and it required me to be driven across the Menai Strait.

I relished the trip. North Wales is beautiful, and I really didn't mind travelling back and forth on the Menai and Britannica bridges. Also, I wasn't stuck reading novels from Project Gutenberg, watching repeats of Eastenders (and missing living in England) and working on the router.

I finally arrived in Antagonist. The police officer hustled me into the station, and from there, I was taken to an interrogation room. The officer, who had no idea what was going on, left me alone there with Milton.

Milton was dressed as a police officer. She had on her black and white outfit with the POLICE/HEDDLU badge on the right side of her chest.

"Hello, Toshiko," she said.

"If we're going to be doing this a long time—and I suspect we will—please, call me Tosh."

"I will call you whatever I like."

She slapped me in the face.

"Tell me about the modulator."

"What do you want to know about it?"

She slapped me again. "I want to mass market it. I'd like the plans, please."

I said nothing.

"Where'd you learn how to slap?"

"The Americans."

N.B.: I think it would be wise to contact the Americans and see if this is one of their torture methods. Milton would be the type to have contacts all over the world to help spring her out of UNIT's prisons.

Milton started punching me in the stomach. It was clear Milton and the Village owned Antagonist as well as this joke of a Welsh police station and painted me as an evil (foreign?) terrorist so she could arrest me.

"How can I even tell you about the plans? I'd need drafting paper and tools. It'll take forever, Milton. And you punching me in the—"

Milton punched me in the stomach again. The woman was persistent, I'll admit.

"Punching my stomach isn't going to help me draft your plans. And there are formulas involved."

"You can tell me those formulas."

"You're being irrational."

"I have deadlines, Toshiko. I can stand to be irrational!"

Real policemen from the Caernarfon police came into the interrogation room—I think someone outside of the Village found out about Milton and thought something was up—and restrained Milton. They put handcuffs on her.

I tried to put on a brave face while Milton was punching and hitting me. As soon as she was apprehended, I ended up collapsing on the interrogation table. I can still feel the cold steel of the table hitting my face. I couldn't breathe for a few minutes, and my face was stinging.

One of the officers called for an ambulance. Forty minutes later, I was in a hospital in Bangor (a real place in Wales for once). I stayed in that hospital for a day before I was released. In absence of Milton (who was still in jail in Caernarfon, awaiting bail by death threat), the henchman who was with Milton when she used the modulator on my mother and myself picked me up and took me back to the Village. He said nothing. I think he was afraid of me.


ROUTER PLANS ALMOST DISCOVERED—"THE VILLAGE," WALES, 15 FEBRUARY 2004

Milton had gotten out of prison in late January. Guess all her contacts failed her for about a few months. Her henchman took me shopping to Tesco Extra. He wasn't as attentive as Milton was when it came to my petty theft, so I was able to steal more things I needed for my router without anyone paying attention for a while.

By February Milton and I were shopping at Tesco Extra just like the year before. That day, though, Milton had bought a videocassette of Bruce Almighty and some microwave popcorn at Tesco Extra. I never pegged her to be a Jim Carrey fan. I thought she'd be more interested in books. Maybe a film adaptation of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged would be more of her forte.

I bought some goods as well as some after-Valentine's Day candies to nosh on at Tesco Extra, and we went home. Then, after I had gotten my goods into my prison home, Milton decided to come in my home.

"Why are you coming in my home, Milton?" I asked. "Aren't you supposed to go back to your residence next door and pretend like you're attempting to spy on me?"

Milton had the videocassette and the microwave popcorn in one bag. "We've never had some time to properly bond together, Toshiko."

"The punching in that sham Welsh village wasn't enough bonding for you?"

"No, silly. I thought we could get to know each other better today. I hope you like Jim Carrey."

I nodded. "Of course."

I lied. I hate Jim Carrey movies. It was bad enough I saw repeats of In Living Color at sleepovers (I didn't want to attend) and witness his hyperactive comedy firsthand. The thought of potentially seeing Bruce Almighty made me want to vomit. I never said in interrogation or when I was blackmailed over the phone that I hated Jim Carrey movies, so the potential of Bruce Almighty being torture material was a coincidence. That and I'm not the type to advertise that I hate certain types of movies.
Milton popped the popcorn in the microwave while I had to sit on the couch. I say "had" because she looked at me while the popcorn was popping with a hand near the sonic modulator I made for her. When the popcorn was done (leaving the smell of burnt kernels in my kitchen), Milton handed me the popcorn bag. She removed the shrink wrap from the videocassette and put the videocassette in the VCR.

The secret router has a security mechanism in case an actual videocassette is placed inside of the interior. The videocassette goes in the VCR like any other VCR. Then, as soon as the videocassette is inserted, the playback device starts burning the film inside the videocassette, rendering the video unwatchable. As an added measure, there's a bit of a pull when you take the videocassette out, stretching the film and making it even harder to fix the videocassette. The technology will most likely be outdated because of the prevalence of DVDs on the market, as I have mentioned before. In the future I may work on a DVD variant to be used for Torchwoods One, Two and Three as needed. For the time being, the VCR router is perfect whenever you have condemning evidence on a videocassette and need it to be disposed of quickly. Or if you don't want to see Bruce Almighty, not even if Morgan Freeman miraculously played all the roles in Milton's copy.

I wasn't sure if the security mechanism was going to work. I didn't have time to test it (because of my injuries taking away valuable work time from me) and ironically, if I did have time, I would've bought Bruce Almighty earlier. I was hoping it would work and I wouldn't have to see an Interpol warning within seconds of the videocassette being inserted in the VCR.

The router ate and destroyed Milton's videocassette. Milton took it out and looked at the destroyed tape.

"I'm not one to ask any questions for prisoners."

"I know."

"Do you know if I can get a refund or a replacement for this tape at Tesco?"

"I don't think so. Once it's out of the shrink wrap, you can't get a refund. You could get a replacement, but I really don't think the videocassette's at fault."

"This was my only day in months I could spend quality time with you. I have to go to Iceland tomorrow morning. An alien crash-landed there—we don't know who—and we need to steal its tech before it can repair its ship."

"Aww, how heartwarming."

Milton grabbed my popcorn and put the Bruce Almighty videocassette and left.


Between February and July Milton tried to break me. Sometimes she'd physically assault me in front of the villagers. One time she actually beat me up in front of schoolchildren within the vicinity of their school—very cruel for the children indeed. I did cry. Sometimes I did get sent back to Bangor to hospital. But I'm a tough woman. I managed to live through the physical abuse, although it does still haunt me while I'm working with cases with Torchwood Three. I've decided to put on a smile and chat with Jack and Suzie as if nothing has happened to me. It's better than frowning all the time like Suzie.

Sometimes Milton would try to brainwash me or hypnotise me into making the modulator plans for her. It didn't work. I'm quite surprised that, for a terrorist, Milton didn't study the ways of cult leaders—break the individual down, tell them their purpose in life is this one thing, and show me love and appreciation before forcing me to draft those plans. I think I would've been more likely to draft the modulator plans if Milton became my lover instead of my really bad kind of jailer.

There was one particular incident that almost caused me to surrender to Milton's whims.

Almost.


SURPRISE TRIP — "THE VILLAGE," WALES TO "SAFEKEEP," WALES, 14 JULY 2004

The fourteenth of July started out like any other day. I walked to the Banglorean restaurant again, expecting to get another vegetarian meal and an escorted trip back to the prison house.

Instead, a limousine driver was flagging me down at the nearby bus stop. Instead of stopping in the restaurant, I walked to the limousine.

"Miss Sato?" the driver said in a Welsh accent. "I'm to take you to our stronghold in Southern Wales, Safekeep."

I sighed. It was another one of Milton's mind games, I knew it. I sat in the limousine without a word and let the driver drive me south to Safekeep.

Inside the limousine was a catered lunch—lobster, oysters, caviar, champagne, fruits. Milton was taunting me to join her side so I could occasionally have those things as I travelled the world terrorizing others. As much as I didn't want to eat it, I had a feeling this trip would be long as the limousine passed the Britannica Bridge, so I started noshing on the lobster.


It was late afternoon when the limousine arrived in Safekeep. We pulled up to a house much bigger than my prison house in the Village. The driver and I stepped out of the limousine.
Inside the house I saw my mother. I began to cry. I wanted to go inside and hug her, but the driver stopped me.

"Sorry, Miss Sato. Milton's orders."

Also inside the house—I honestly shouldn't have been surprised at that point, but I was—was Milton. She slapped my mother in the face. I started crying, even though torture and torment are Milton's things. She slapped her again and put duct tape over her mouth. After that, Milton taped her wrists together, followed by her ankles against the chair and her back around the chair.

Milton walked outside. "Your mother stays in the chair until you give me the plans for the modulator."

I was crying. I couldn't stop. That always happens to me—if I feel something in my life I'm close to slip away from me, I can't control the crying. You should've seen me as a young child saying goodbye to this girl I met at the Narita International Airport while I was leaving for the UK. But anyway, I couldn't say anything to my mother.

"You have 48 hours, starting tomorrow. If you don't deliver the plans, I'll kill her."

Milton aimed a Sig Sigler to my mother. "Take her home."

The driver escorted me into the limousine. A nearly four hour trip to the south of Wales for 30 minutes of Milton clumsily putting tape around my mother, and then the four hour trip back. What a waste of my time.

I did manage to have some fruit and check out the Eastern Wales shore through the limousine's windows before I arrived back at my prison home. If I'm going to be shuffled to Safekeep just to see my mother slapped and bound, I may as well eat all the fruit I can and hope it's charged to whatever card Milton stole to charge it on.


Once I was home and I had gotten sleep, I stopped working on my router. I was so distraught. Milton had finally gotten into my head through harming my mother. I couldn't eat. I was so worried about my mother.

Unfortunately, I was also too distraught to work on the modulator. I turned on my TV and ended up watching educational programs on the BBC and ITV as well as their sister children's networks. No amount of Boohbah could erase seeing my mother getting slapped by Milton.
As noontime fell on my flat, I still didn't have any clue how to appease Milton without actually making the modulator plans. I was so close to drafting the plans when my eyes fell across one of the toys I bought to make the stealth router.

And then it hit me. Why not make plans to make a toy modulator? If people can make working replicas of laser pistols from Star Trek, why not something that worked like the modulator and sounded like the modulator, but didn't actually do anything? Milton most likely will take the time out to make the modulator and not realize that something is wrong with it until it was completely made. I mean, she did take the time to hunt me down and ask me to make the modulator. It's not like she knows how to actually make anything.

I recalled what the modulator looked like in my head. On draft paper Milton provided me with, I began drafting the pieces of the modulator from the outside. The modulator had to look Gallifreyan—that's the planet where the modulator comes from. I wasn't aware in the difference between Gallifreyan and Time Lord at the time, but I knew the weapon was originally from Gallifrey. (It's a Time Lord weapon, a relatively minor tool found in organic spaceships known as TARDISes, named after the spaceship of the Time Lord known as the Doctor.) Inside, though, it would look like a Star Trek phaser, and the sonic mechanisms inside the machine would be loud, but not loud enough to cause injury to anyone or have the potential to break anything.

I smiled. I knew I had the upper hand on Milton, and I wasn't even finished with her yet.


At the end of the second day, and after I had finally had a bite to eat, I handed Milton the plans for the toy modulator.

"I'll have the driver pick you up in the morning," she said.

She left my prison house. I had to cover my mouth to keep from laughing.


The next day I left for the Bangalore restaurant, as if I was going to eat there, to pick up the limousine that took me to Safekeep. Once again, I ate all the seafood and fruit I could stomach in the hopes that I was sending Milton's credit card bills sky high.

Four hours later, from the outside of my mother's prison home, I saw Milton free my mother.

After my mother was freed from the chair, Milton walked outside and shook my hand. "You did the right thing, Toshiko."

"I assume I still have to go back to the Village."

"Of course. You're my prisoner. I'm going to need you to work on some more things for the movement. Why would I let you go now, other than to kill you?"


INTERVIEW #2 WITH SUZIE COSTELLO

SUZIE: What do you want now, Toshiko?

ME: You know I have this report due in about a month to Yvonne Hartman and Torchwood One about my imprisonment.

SUZIE: Why didn't they ever ask me about how I was recruited to Torchwood? My boss actually downloaded an alien computer virus in his body and turned into a Kromon. A great big fucking bug. The virus was about to make him splatter all over the office like a squashed cockroach, too, if I hadn't taken the virus out of him. Think I should've let him die like a cockroach, the smug bastard. And you being held prisoner in North Wales and that place they're calling Safekeep is more important than me saving some fat bastard from being a Kromon. But that's enough about me.

ME: I'm sure Torchwood One might ask you to do a report about how you were recruited to Torchwood soon, Suzie.

SUZIE: Like hell they will. Hartman only cares about claiming everything that Torchwood does for herself. Once she has this report on the modulator and the router, she's going to claim it for herself. You won't get the credit. Like if Torchwood One ever gave me the opportunity to report about the Kromon computer virus. I won't be credited with removing it from a human; Hartman will. I'd love to see her stare death in the face. Maybe she won't be bragging about taking everything from the Torchwoods then.

ME: That's enough, Suzie. We need to get back to when Torchwood found out Milton was after Torchwood Three's archives.

SUZIE: Oh, that was a fun day. This was in...August? August. The thirteenth of August, 2004. Jack and I were supposed to head to Swansea. A Sontaran scout ship had landed in the area, and Jack and I were planning to recover whatever we could get from the ship for our archives, or until Hartman wanted it for herself, whatever happened first. As we were trying to get on Harbour Drive, there was a Range Rover, looked exactly like our SUV, except without the bloody annoying yellow "Torchwood" lettering on the side and top of the car. It was blocked across the road. Jack honked at the Range Rover. The Range Rover wouldn't get out of our way.

Two men with submarine guns and Milton stepped out of the car. We didn't know who Milton was at the time, and we certainly didn't connect her with your disappearance yet. The men pointed their guns at us and yelled at us to get out of the SUV. Jack turned off the SUV, and we got out.

Milton walked in front of us. "Ah, so you must be Torchwood," she said to us.

"I told you to get rid of the 'Torchwood' on the side of the SUV," I told Jack.

"I haven't had the time." Jack was irritated as usual. "If you hate the lettering so much, why don't you sand if off?"

"Jack Harkness and Suzie Costello, I presume. Both of you have been hard to track, but I've been able to find you.

"Harkness and Costello, the mystery duo." Jack smiled. Milton wasn't impressed.

"You may call me Milton. I'll let you two guess whether that's my first or last name."

"So you're kinda like Madonna or Prince, except you don't sing."

"Stop trying to get on the comedy circuit, Harkness. Drop your keys and your weapons."

We took off our guns and Jack dropped the keys. We placed both in front of our shoes.

"I have a proposition for you. You show me your secret base and I'll let you continue on your journey unharmed."

"And what if we don't listen to you?" Jack said.

"You'll listen to this." Milton pulled out the modulator. We thought it was the modulator you actually made for Milton. We didn't realise it was a replica version you drafted for her and she made. She's not the brightest bulb in the light bulb box and we'll leave it at that.

Milton turned on the modulator. Instead of that deafening noise your mother and you heard when you actually made the first modulator, the modulator emitted a whirring sound, like the sound of a really cheap laser pistol you'd get in a toy store. You also included instructions for a toy light at the front of this modulator. It was a green light, and it blinked. Jack and I laughed.

"You're going to threaten us with that?" I said.

Milton threw down the modulator and stepped on it, breaking it. "Toshiko's going to pay for this."

Jack's eyes widened. "Toshiko Sato!"

Jack grabbed his keys and we grabbed our guns from the ground. Milton and the two men (despite their submarine guns) went back in the car. They must take their orders from Milton, because certainly they would've killed Jack and I had they fired. Speaking of, can you ask Hartman to get us some bulletproof vests? I mean, it's not like we don't run into the occasional non-supernatural lunatic who wants to aim for our chests every once in a while.

ME: I'll ask her, Suzie.

SUZIE: Thank you. Anyway, Milton and her henchmen sped back on to Bute Place. Jack and I followed them. We chased them down onto the A4232, through the Queen's Pass and all that, but Jack lost Milton's Range Rover when they went down a traffic circle, separated themselves from us by a few cars, and headed towards Grangetown. We didn't see them go there until it was too late. But I assume they went back to the Village, angry that they were duped by you.

ME: But you did at least come out knowing that Milton was the woman who had taken me away from Dorset.

SUZIE: We did. Thanks to her bragging, we were able to chase down leads to where you two were. Of course, if you didn't make that router out of that VCR, we would've never been able to save your mother. Or you.


COMPLETION OF THE ROUTER – 4 NOVEMBER 2004
It was nearly a year before I finished the router. I would've finished it sooner, but with Milton's field trips, beatings and psychological trickery, I was delayed for months.

I went to the local school to see if they had computers. Despite being rural, they did have computers connected to the internet. I bought a flash drive from Tesco Extra and hid it in my shoe. I checked to make sure Milton nor I accidentally cracked the drive; it was still working when I stuck in the school computers. I downloaded Tor software on the flash drive and hurried away from the school, hoping not to be detained by a school official.

I turned on my laptop and the makeshift router. I made sure it wasn't connected to the internet. I uploaded and installed Tor and then reconnected onto the internet. Once I was on, I checked the ISP of the computer. It was a completed new web address, much different from the ISP under Milton's network. I was ready to contact the authorities. Thank goodness Hotmail accounts, although full of spam and ads, are free.


EMAILS BETWEEN TOSHIKO SATO TO VARIOUS ORGANIZATIONS, FROM SOUTH CARDIFF POLICE, TORCHWOOD, NOVEMBER 2004

To: Dorset Police, Winfrith Branch [email address withheld]

From: Toshiko Sato [email address withheld, non-operational]@hotmail.com

CC: Missing Persons [email address withheld], [name of my father and his email address here—both withheld]

Subject: Trapped in Northern Wales, Place Dubbed as "The Village"—Please Send Help

Sent: FRI 05/11/04

To whom it may concern:

My name is Toshiko Sato. If I'm not mistaken, I may have been listed as "missing" in Dorset since November 10, 2003. If anyone gets this message, I am currently in Northern Wales, being held by a group known as "The Village" in a village known as "The Village." [Address of residence withheld.] I've been kidnapped by a woman named Milton. I don't know whether that's her first or last name. She's a part of some terrorist organisation and she hasn't revealed the name of the organization to me. She may also be armed and/or have people that are armed near her side.

Milton has also kidnapped my mother, but she currently resides in another of the Village's strongholds, Safekeep, in Southern Wales.

I would call Dorset Police or even dial 999, but I am afraid she's wiretapped my phones in my house as well as a mobile phone she's given me. In fact, I'm sending this email from a router I built to circumvent a router Milton has placed in my home as well as through Tor software. Her internet has blocked several sites from my ISP on her router, including your police branch. Please send help whenever you can.

Sincerely,




Toshiko Sato


To: Toshiko Sato

From: Dorset Police, Winfrith Branch

CC: Missing Persons, [my father]

Subject: RE: Trapped in Northern Wales, Place Dubbed as "The Village"—Please Send Help


Miss Sato,

Unfortunately Wales is out of our jurisdiction. We have forwarded your email to South Wales Police. We at Winfrith know it is odd to forward an email to South Wales Police rather than to the North Wales Police or to the Welsh government, but there is a government agency there that is very interested in you and, so we are told, your work in engineering and technology. Because this agency is very secretive, but does work with police, South Wales Police will forward your email to this agency. Don't worry about Missing Persons and your father—they both know your mother and you are alive and they are grateful that you both are. The agency will contact you as soon as possible through email. Please keep your router and your Tor software operational—we'd love to see you back in Dorset someday.




[name withheld]

Dispatcher, Winfrith Branch, Dorset Police


To: Toshiko Sato

From: Suzanne Costello [suzannecostello@torchwood.three.uk]

Subject: "Trapped in the Village"


Miss Sato,

On behalf of my boss, Capt. Jack Harkness, I write this email to say we're going to rescue your mother and you from Wales (or at least the homes you live in). We've been looking for your mother and you since last year, and, like Milton, we too are interested in your talents. You'd be working for the government again and we promise not to use your talents to harm others. Also, we have no dress code like certain departments of UNIT, so you don't have to worry about a fitting or anything.

Just recently we ran into Milton. Apparently she also wants whatever we at Torchwood Three have so she can do her random terrorist activities. Had we not run into her, we probably wouldn't have had a lead on you. The email you sent to Dorset police is another huge breakthrough in this missing persons case.

It'll take a while to rescue both of you. One of our colleagues, Ben Barnes, died earlier this year, and it's been even harder for Jack and me to run our operations. If you don't mind, for everyone's safety, we're rescuing your mother first. We're arranging a safe house for her in the city as we speak, a place Milton won't find her until we can arrange for Milton to be arrested by UNIT. We'll let you know when we've gotten your mother to Cardiff. You're not the only case we're handling—we deal with paranormal and supernatural happenings across our jurisdiction, Wales. But we promise we will get to you as soon as we can. If you can, can you send us the address of where your mother and you live, or where at least you think your mother and you live? That way, we won't have to do a street-wide evacuation to try to find the two of you, and that can get pretty ugly.

Sincerely,




Suzanne Costello

Weapons Expert

Torchwood Three, Cardiff, Wales


INTERVIEW WITH SUZIE COSTELLO #3

SUZIE: Another interview.

ME: Right.

SUZIE: You want to know how we rescued your mother from Safekeep.

ME: Right.

SUZIE: Let me get a cup of tea. I can't wait until these interviews are over. I'm tired of being bothered by Torchwood One for information about you.

[Here, Suzie went to the break area in Torchwood Three and brewed a cup of earl grey tea. She returned five minutes later.]

SUZIE: You replied to my email with the addresses your mother and you were staying at. It was all a matter of finding the perfect time to snag you two from western Wales.

All right, when did we rescue your mother? [Pause.] Yeah, the 23rd of December. The cases were slowing down at all the Torchwoods. Torchwood One actually had a rare day off that day.

Jack and I came up with a scheme to rescue your mother. We decided to order pizza from Jubilee's to talk about how we'd handle Milton and her minions with the submarine guns. The delivery woman came to the tourist office and I met her there. As I was taking the pizzas down to the Hub, I looked at the logo on the pizza box. And then it hit me.

I told Jack my plan and what I wanted to do to rescue your mother, and he agreed. So we ate pizza and drank water, and we left Torchwood. I took an unmarked car from the Torchwood garage, and Jack took the SUV.

Before we left Cardiff, we stopped by a few places. We went to Jubilee's and picked up one of those detachable pizza lights for cars as well as a pizza box. We also stopped by the police station and begged for some hollow-spike tire deflation system devices and some physical road blocks Jack would be able to drive through. We made sure the hollow spikes could be remotely triggered and took a couple of them. Then we went to Safekeep. I drove my unmarked car in front of the SUV, and we arrived in Safekeep about three hours later.

There are three ways out of Safekeep. Two are on the A487. There's the way to Solva, which will eventually take you back to Cardiff, and there's the way to Carnhedryn, which will take you towards Northern Wales. The final road, the B4583, eventually loops back to the A487 towards Carnhedryn. While I hung out in the Safekeep town centre waiting for Jack's signal, Jack drove to one of the A487/B4583 intersections. He set up the road blocks to prevent others from going down the B4583 and returned to Safekeep.

Jack called me when he was on Main Street. I drove to Toshiko's mother's house, the pizza light on the car. I grabbed the pizza and knocked on the door.

"Hello?" Toshiko's mother said.

"I'm not actually a pizza woman. I'm Torchwood. If you want to leave Safekeep, come with me."

I dropped the pizzas in the front yard of the prison home and rushed Toshiko's mother to the car. We sped out of the neighbourhood. A couple of minutes later, a black car followed me.

I'm not sure why Milton didn't send more than one car after me. Maybe it was the size of the town, I don't know. But I know I drove the car as fast I could. Jack cut off the black car after I passed by him on Main Street. I was able to drive down the A487 without any trouble.

Jack drove through the road block, and the black car followed Jack. Jack told me once they were away from Safekeep, one of Milton's henchmen shot at the SUV with a submachine gun. Milton was at least smart to try and prevent deaths in her prisoner town over her crazy prison campaign.

Before we arrived in Safekeep Jack put one of the hollow spike devices near the SUV'S trunk. The SUV actually has a feature that allows the trunk door to be opened from the front of the vehicle. Jack pulled the lever and let the hollow spike device fall to the ground. Jack was able to close the SUV trunk door in time. I think. I'm not sure, but I did see some dried blood on the driver's seat of the car after we returned to Cardiff. Anyway, Jack closed the door. The car following him landed on the spikes and skid into a field until it stopped.

Once Jack was sure the minions were out of the way, he grabbed the hollow spike device, put it back in the SUV, and met me on A487. Jack and I weren't sure about whether Milton's people were in still in Safekeep, we went north on the A487.

ME: And from there, you went back to Cardiff.

SUZIE: Yeah, we did. We went back to Cardiff. We put your mother in a safe home, still in Cardiff but very close to Tongwynlais. Before we got your mother back, we bought her some food, basic change of clothes, paid for her utilities and all that for a few months—she was set, and Milton didn't bother her anymore.

We also told her we'd be getting you back to Cardiff, and we'd arrange a place for you in the city away from the Hub in case Milton wanted to ambush Torchwood Three or something. But we couldn't rescue you immediately. We had to take care of some other alien and paranormal things around Cardiff first, and, of course, we're always at the whim of Miss Hartman.

ME: Which she did.

SUZIE: Yeah, she did, and not in the way we expected. But we were prepared. I mean, that is kinda like our motto, isn't it. We're Torchwood. We're ready for anything.

ME: Before the end of this particular interview, I was wondering what happened to the car you used to take my mother away in. I assumed my mother had it after the Milton nightmare was over, but I visited her and it wasn't there.

SUZIE: Oh, it broke down near Solva. Something with the engine, I guess. I mean, it was a car from the 1980s. It wasn't meant for high speed chases in 2004. If I knew we even had a car down there and if we had time, I would've probably engineered the damn thing to go fast without falling apart, but I had no clue we had that car until we had to rescue your mother. I told Jack about the car dying and he picked us up and took us back to Cardiff. I did grab the Jubilee pizza light and anything else that could mark the car as Torchwood. I think the car's in car heaven now, resting in someone's junkyard or scrap heap. I know you'll miss it dearly.

ME: I will, Suzie.


DISCOVERY OF THE ROUTER—5 FEBRUARY 2005

While I was waiting for Torchwood Three to rescue me, I made a tracking device, complete with software. With the router in operation as well as word that my mother was safely out of harm's way in Cardiff, I figured my days with the pirate server were nearly over. I had to move to another project instead of going crazy reading books from Project Gutenberg and watching CBeebies and Eastenders.

I programmed the software completely online and forwarded it to Suzie, in large part because I had a feeling the software would be lost if I saved it on the laptop's hard drive. Suzie installed the tracking software on the Hub's mainframe. With a few modifications, it's the same tracking software we use in Torchwood Three today.

Using more parts I smuggled from Tesco Extra, I was able to insert my homemade tracking device in my shoe. Extra strong super glue is a blessing.

Milton didn't realize I was communicating on a pirate server until one day, she decided to check whether my IP was on her blocked Internet or not. She learned my IP wasn't on her network after months of the pirate router being in operation. Maybe she thought my pirate IP was my mother's IP. My mother did tell me after we were reunited that she didn't use the internet much in her prison house. She was too frightened to cut her computer on. She thought Milton would monitor her keystrokes and somehow watch her movements through the computer's camera.

Milton burst open the front door of my house.

"Where is it?" she said.

"Where is what?"

"You're not using my internet like a good little girl."

"I'm not a girl. And I'm not good."

"I know that. Where is it?"

Milton started looking at my electronic setup. She picked up my laptop and threw it to the ground, breaking the motherboard inside it. She smashed the laptop again, attempting to break the framework of the computer's monitor. She found nothing in the laptop. I laughed.

Milton grabbed an umbrella and smashed my television to pieces. Other than having to run away from the shards that came out of the television, I still laughed. Milton, on the other hand, was covered in shard cuts. She also lost her glasses at this point, flinging them inside the television and smashing them with the umbrella. Honestly, she should have surrendered then because of the possibility of glass getting trapped in her skin. But she was hellbent on attempting to find my signal, so she kept going.

Milton finally reached my pirate router, the modified VCR. She pulled the VCR out of the wall socket and threw it on the ground until the router split apart. All the extra pieces I put in the VCR spilled out of it.

"I knew you had something in here! I knew it!" She sounded frantic. With rage, frustration or something else—I'm not sure. But she was screaming. "How did you make it?"

"That? The router? You just destroyed the plans while you were searching for it."

"What?"

"I didn't write the plans down, Milton. I knew you'd probably want the blueprints, so I memorized what I was doing with the router with my head. And you won't get the plans unless you get me to talk. I'm not talking, Milton. And besides, you only asked for the plans for the modulator. You never mentioned anything about my side projects."

Milton kicked the router several times. She screamed. I laughed.

Then she grabbed me and tried to drag me out of my house. That's when all hell broke loose.

Few people in Torchwood Three know I can handle a fight every once in a while, as long as it's not some man chasing after me. When I was smacked around by Milton earlier, it wasn't the time to fight against her. I didn't want her to know I could fight or she'd torment me further. Maybe she would've found an alien device that resembled a rack to use against me. But now, with the possibility of rescue looming and Milton's glasses off her face, it was time to be bold.

I punched Milton in the face, then in the stomach. She fell into a ball in the ground.

After Milton was on the ground, two of her henchmen grabbed me and took me out the door into Milton's BMW. I pushed my way out of their grip. I ran to Milton's BMW. One of the minions was dumb enough to actually leave the keys in the BMW. I sat in the driver's seat and drove as fast as I could out of the Village.

To this day I haven't been to The Village ever again.

In Milton's car I knew to drive all the way past Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. From there, I'd take a right on the A55, and from there I drove until I reached the A487. I knew little about Wales other than to get to and from some cities in Northern Wales as well as Safekeep, but I knew that I needed to go south to go to Cardiff. There was an automotive tracking device in the car. I noticed it when Milton and I went shopping together, but I figured I wouldn't have any use for it. That was, until I ended up with her car. I used it to set the coordinates from The Village to Cardiff. And after I was able to escape Milton's minions, if I did, Torchwood would be there to pick me up. All I needed to do was to grab a bottle of water and stop at a few petrol stations if needed.


INTERVIEW WITH SUZIE COSTELLO #4

SUZIE: I know what you want now. How we found you in the BMW and took you back in our SUV.

ME: And then I can finish the story from my point of view from here on out.

SUZIE: Good. I just want to be left alone with this dagger, that's all.

ME: Does Jack care that you're starting not to be a team player with your mood swings at all?

SUZIE: I think he knows, but he doesn't care. As long as the work's done and the reports are turned into the right places so he can sleep in his bunker, he doesn't care.

Anyway, I noticed your tracker had gone past Bangor. It wasn't your usual shopping day, and you weren't heading to Safekeep, so we knew something was up.

"Jack," I said, "she's moving."

"Who's moving?"

"Toshiko."

"Toshiko?"

"You remember that tracker she made us install in our computers? She's gone off the grid. She's escaped Milton. We need to catch up with her and take her back to Cardiff now."

"Shit. Suzie, where is she now?"

"Still in the Snowdonia Mountains. She just passed Bethesda."

"Do you think she's in that BMV she described for us? Black, tinted windows, licence plate [redacted]?"

"I think so."

"You know what to get."

"Yes, Jack."

We loaded up the hollow spikes in the SUV. And, of course, we took our guns with us. For once we didn't have to take shit from Hartman, and we had an excuse not to.

Jack was in the driver's seat, I was in the back seat, ready to hop in the trunk area if needed, and we sped off, heading towards Snowdonia.


5 FEBRUARY 2005
As I was driving to Caersws, I saw a SUV parked at the gas station on the side of A470. The side of the SUV read TORCHWOOD. Before I could pass the SUV, I pulled the BMW into the gas station. I pocketed the keys. Just like Suzie's 1980s car she left in Solva, I left Milton's BMW in Caersws. I think UNIT took her car (as well as the keys I pocketed) as evidence proving Milton's tyranny. It's a shame, really. A black car with tint and no Torchwood markers would be great for runs where we didn't have to announce that Torchwood is on the case. The entire tech was up to date, and the seats are comfortable enough to sleep in for overnight stays and car breakdowns in one of Wales' mountain ranges. I bet a brigadier general in UNIT'S driving that car now.

Jack and Suzie stepped out of the SUV.

Jack walked to me and shook my hand. "Whoa, you look like you were in a fight."

"I was in a fight with Milton and some of her henchmen."

"Glad you got away."

"You can say that again."

"My name's Captain Jack Harkness. This is my second-in-command, Suzie."

I shook Suzie's hand. It seemed like she was flirting with me. She has this tendency to really stare at people when she meets them, like she's thinking of taking them out on a date or shagging them or something.

"We're Torchwood, and we've been looking for you for months."

"Toshiko Sato."

"We're here to take you to a safe house in Cardiff until Milton is arrested."

"I understand."

"You'll be in the back seat with Suzie. We're anticipating Milton to catch up with us and attempt to shoot the SUV down. We have hollow spikes to attempt to slow them down and we're armed. Have you ever shot a gun before?"

"No. UNIT doesn't show people who work in research facilities how to shoot guns."

"Suzie will show you how to shoot a gun."

"On the road?"

"We have to," Suzie said. "We don't have time to pick off rabbits in Snowdonia."

I froze.

"Oh, don't worry, Toshiko. It won't be that bad. It's not like I'm going to show you how to accidentally blow your brains out."

"Okay."

Jack sat back in the driver's seat and Suzie and I sat in the back seat. We drove away from Caersws.

I remember attempting to get Suzie to talk about her life, but she refused. She only told me she moved to Cardiff a couple of years ago and she was recruited by Jack and a man named Ben Barnes. She also emphasized I would never meet the guy because he was killed by the Nestene Consiousness and Autons. When I tried to ask about her personal life again, she shifted the topic from her life to our favourite poets. I remember telling her I didn't have a favourite poet, but she said she admired Emily Dickinson—she was a recluse who realized the world was going to hell, so she told me. I thought that was a strange answer, but I shrugged it off. We were looking for Milton's henchmen, anyway, not talking about poetry.


Milton's people met us after the SUV went to Builth Wells, in the Cambrian Mountains. One moment, there was hardly any suspicious-looking traffic behind us. The next, there's a black Range Rover following us past Bulith Wells.

"Jack," I said, "I think we're being followed by Milton's men."

"Milton's people found a shortcut to this town, I know it. Shit. Suzie, Tosh, deploy the hollow spikes."

Suzie and I climbed in the back seat of the SUV, opening the window. We hid behind the bottom panel of the SUV the best way we could. Milton's henchmen started shooting inside of the SUV, but they kept missing.

"You ready, Tosh?" Suzie asked me.

"Yes, Suzie."

"Let's drag this thing."

Technically, you're not supposed to deploy hollow spike (or solid spike) strips while a vehicle is in motion. But here Suzie and I grabbed a piece of the hollow spike strip, blindly feeling where it was in the trunk. Suzie, being Suzie, stroked my hand.

"Pull it, Tosh!"

Suzie and I attempted to get the spike strip out of the SUV without looking at the henchmen. One I heard the hollow spike strip smack against the back of the SUV, I knew that, even if the spike strip was pushed completely out the window. Suzie insisted on pushing the rest of the spike strip out the window, so I followed Suzie's lead.

After a few more pushes, the spike strip was out of the SUV, landing with a thud on A470. And just as I had predicted, the spike stripe didn't pop the Range Rover's tires. In fact, the Range Rover drove past the spike strips with ease. I hope no one popped their tires on the hollow spikes, even if the hollow spikes are supposed to prevent deadly crashes caused by popped tires.

"Jack, the SUV didn't go over the hollow spikes," Suzie said.

"Time to go to plan B."

Suzie pulled her gun from her side. She cocked her gun. She handed me another gun, similar to the gun she had cocked.

"Do you know how to shoot a gun?"

"No."

"I'll show you. You take the gun off safety. You cock the gun and then pull the trigger." She shot a bullet in the middle of the SUV's right side mirror. Like that.

In that moment, I knew I'd be at home with Torchwood. Oh, sure, we defend earth from alien threats and investigate all sorts of paranormal things, but these people were secretly as dark as twisted as I was. It was much more exciting than sitting in front of a computer helping UNIT research things. I made a mental note that, if Lodmoor asked me to return to Dorset, I would send them a resignation notice.

Following Suzie's example, I took the gun off its safety, cocked it, and shot another bullet in the right side mirror.

Suzie nodded. "Good. You're getting the hang of it. Jack'll give you a private lesson in the shooting range when we get back to Cardiff, but as long as you have the basics down, we can get these bastards."
I cocked my gun and set my aim on the Range Rover's front right tire. It would be more dangerous to shoot the tires out as opposed to the hollow spikes popping them, but it would still stop Milton's SUV in its tracks.

Suzie, on the other hand, aimed for the driver of the SUV. While I kept missing the front tire, Suzie kept missing the driver's head. The submachine guns were still trying to shoot us dead. Jack was doing an incredible job of driving and dodging the bullets coming in the car.
Suzie was the first girl to connect with her target. She had the biggest grin on her face when she put the bullet through the driver's head. I shrugged the smile off and put my gun on safety. She had more experience than me with a gun. Who am I to judge what she judges an acceptable target in a high speed chase in a Welsh mountain range?

With the Range Rover's driver dead, the other henchman dropped his submachine gun and tried to grab the wheel. The car drove into one of the few clearings (if you could call it a clearing) on the A470. Suzie and I shut our SUV's window, and Jack parked the Torchwood SUV in a rest area. Suzie and I crawled back in the back seat and got out the car. Jack stepped out and tucked the keys in his greatcoat.

We went after the Range Rover that skidded in the clearing. The Range Rover was on its side. The driver was still dead, but his passenger henchman was trying to get out of the car. He eventually did. He was also trying to grab his submachine gun, but in the crash, I assume it fell somewhere in the back. He was still armed with a handgun. He cocked it and shot at us. The three of us ducked as he shot all his rounds against the road. I hope the bullets didn't hit any cars on the road, if there were cars on the road at that time. The henchman dropped his handgun and the three of us started following him, guns cocked.

He ran all over the field beside the road, but the three of us were able to chase him and catch up to him. Finally the henchman ran out of breath. Suzie and I grabbed the henchman. But before we could arrest him and bring him back to the Torchwood SUV, the henchman grabbed my gun. He shot himself in the head, under the chin. The bullet did go through the henchman's head cleanly, but Suzie and I were covered in blood splatter and brain matter.

Jack, who was near us when the henchman committed suicide, was stunned. He couldn't move for a few seconds. He then cleared his throat and regained his composure.

The three of us walked back to the Torchwood SUV. "Just another day on the job in Torchwood," Jack said to me. "Don't let it haunt you too much."

"I won't, Jack."

Jack picked up a mobile phone in the Torchwood SUV and dialled 999.

"Hello? Police? This is Jack Harkness. Torchwood. I'd like to report the deaths of two people who may be affiliated with a terrorist known as Milton. We're outside Gwenddwr on the A470. One man was killed in self-defence, the other shot himself. We'd stay, but we need to get someone we're carrying to safety because Milton is still out there. Knowing her, she's trying to beat us to Cardiff. Keep an eye out for her."


Jack and Suzie had no problems taking me from the Cambrian Mountains to Cardiff. Suzie and I kept a watch on suspicious SUVs that would appear in the downs we were driving by. We saw none of the sort.

The ride back to Cardiff was pleasant. Jack turned on the radio, and the three of us were actually talking about trivial matters: pizza, music, television—anything, really. My rescue, the suicide, Suzie and I covered in blood and Suzie killing the driver in the SUV point blank was unnerving for all of us, although I think Jack and Suzie have seen people being shot and killed regularly before I arrived at Torchwood. I think we all quickly wanted to move on from that horrific sight. And the lack of minion made it easier to not focus on the pain.

Ninety minutes later, the Torchwood SUV was in Cardiff.

"We're going to swing by the Hub and rest before we get you to your safe house, okay, Toshiko?" Jack said.

"Okay, Jack."

We were turning on Harbour Drive when Jack hit the brakes on the Torchwood SUV.

"What happened, Jack?"

"What happened? There's a helicopter on Harbour Drive, Toshiko, and I have no clue how it landed on the road."

Suzie and I unrolled our windows. Sure enough, there was a helicopter on the drive, right in front of a building in construction at the time and, as of this writing, is still in construction. Now I know it's the Senedd building, but at the time, I thought the building was beautifully designed, and, at the same time, strange. I'm amazed the people working on the Senedd are even able to cope with Torchwood near their building.

I had my secrets, and Milton had hers. I had a secret router and build a tracking system out of small electronic pieces. Milton had a helicopter somewhere in Wales.

Milton and a henchman with a submachine gun stepped out of the helicopter. Another henchman stepped out of the helicopter, helping Milton out. She still didn't have her glasses on, and, in her rush to attempt to find me and attempt to control me like she thought she did in 2003 and early 2004, didn't have the time to get another pair of glasses.

"You," Milton said to the henchman that helped her out of the helicopter. "Get anything you can pull out of that damn SUV. Strip their weapons. If I can't control that little shit, I'm going to disable the people enabling her until they surrender."

The henchman couldn't physically take anything out of the SUV, but he did grab our guns. He threw them all in the quay.

"Where's Harkness?"

Jack stood in front of Milton. "Here I am."

"Well, then, Mister Captain Jack Harkness, I'm not going to be made a fool of any more. Your base is mine. Finally."

Milton pulled out a handgun and pointed it at Jack's head. "All of you, get in the car." She pointed to one of her minions. "Fly that bloody helicopter out of the road. I don't want the cops involved in this."

"It's not going to matter anyway," I said. "UNIT's going to find out and arrest you anyway."

"I've had enough of you. Shut up. Mister Captain Jack Harkness, lead me to the passenger seat." She attempted to look at her minions before she went in the SUV. "The two of you wait until I find an entrance for the Hub for the rest of you to come in."

I snickered as Milton and the rest of us climbed back in the SUV. From there, Jack drove all of us inside the Hub.

Milton still had a gun on Jack's head. Suzie and I were forced to follow them. As soon as we had left the garage area of the Hub, Suzie poked me on the shoulder. She stepped on a button. It reminded me of a silent alarm a teller would trip at the bank. Suzie grinned.

A door shut behind me as we were inside the Hub proper. I was in awe when I saw the work areas situated around the fountain in the Plass. However, the lights in the Hub were dimming because of Suzie's silent alarm device, so I wasn't able to take in the size of the work station yet.

"What's going on?"

Jack turned around and grabbed Milton's gun. "Our house, our rules."

He threw the gun in the water fountain. You know when the villains in movies lose something and they let out great long nos after they lose that something? Milton let out a no as the gun was thrown in the water fountain. Despite losing her glasses, she ran after the gun.

"Suzie?"

"Yes, Jack?"

"Grab the cell."

Suzie ran up the Hub to a room which I recognize now as Jack Harkness' office. She then ran into another room—the Archives.

I was puzzled. Sending Suzie to do errands? At a time like this? Was Jack throwing out an olive branch to Milton? I decided to stay quiet and observe.

Suzie came back with the "cell." I didn't see it at first. The cell fit in her hand. I honestly thought it was a mobile phone,

Milton stepped out of the water. Suzie threw the cell at Milton's feet.

"You're going to capture me with that? Nice try"—

The cell opened up and trapped Milton in a force field. The lights were turning on again. Suzie's security device was a temporary one, enough to disorient Milton and trap her before she attempted to kill all of us.

"There are three of us at Torchwood," Jack said.

"Are you confusing your Torchwood number with the number of members you have, Mister Captain Jack Harkness? It's only you and the Asian girl."

"No, there are three of us at Torchwood Three. Me, the 'Asian girl' you should call Suzie Costello...and Toshiko Sato. That is, if she'll accept our invitation right now. Now, usually I don't do this in the middle of a job, but we're down a few hands, and we'd like to get the rest of your henchmen in the Hub until the authorities come. So, Toshiko Sato...are you in?"

Well, we all know the answer to that question.

"Great. Everyone on the lift. We're about to capture some minions."

The three of us walked to this platform in the Hub. Jack touched a large wristband on his arm. A door opened up over our heads. The platform started rising. With the lights up and the view from this platform, I could see everything in the Hub. It looks like an abandoned train station, I remember thinking. It's been turned into a workplace. How awesome.

When I arrived in Cardiff and started working for Torchwood, this was before the Rift was made larger by the Doctor's TARDIS. The lift was there, but anyone and everyone in the Plass could see you come off the lift. Milton's henchmen were standing in the Plass.

"Suzie? Tosh? You take the unarmed man. I'll take the man in the submachine gun."

Running after the man who helped Milton out of the helicopter was easy. The guy wasn't really muscular, and apparently he wasn't very strong. Each of us grabbed an arm and dragged the guy onto the lift. The two of us went down the lift after Suzie hit a button that no longer works. I'm not sure if Suzie or Jack disabled the button, but you can't take the elevator down into the Hub. You can only go up in it.

As we were going down, we heard this shot. We couldn't see anything.

"Shouldn't we check on Jack?" I asked Suzie.

"Not now, Toshiko. We need to get this man into a cell, and we need to get Milton into a cell before the portable cell opens. We've got an hour. Shouldn't take that long."

Suzie led the way to the cells. We threw the man in one of the cells. Then we went back to Milton.

"Now, Toshiko, there's a button on the cell that'll release it and get it back down to its size before operation. I want you to grab the button. I'll grab Milton. On three."

Suzie counted to three. I stooped down and pressed the button. Suzie grabbed Milton by her neck.

"You bitch."

Suzie smiled. "Thanks."

Suzie drug Milton to the jail cell and locked her with the henchmen without arms. Milton flung herself to the bed in the cell and pounded it. That's it. She had given up.

Suzie and I went back onto the platform and elevated ourselves up into the plass. At first, we didn't see Jack or the minion with the submachine gun.

Then we saw a submachine gun broken near the Millennium Centre. We looked up.

Somehow Jack was on the roof of the Millennium Centre. The henchman was dangling from the side of the roof. Suzie and I looked at Jack in shock.

"What are you two waiting for? Call the police. Call UNIT. We're about to make a break in this case with Milton.


UNIT arrested Milton and her minions in the Hub. Eventually UNIT would find several of Milton's minions hiding out all over the Isle of Anglesey and along roads leading to Swansea and Cardiff. All of them were part of a terrorist front known as "The Village," so named because of their preferences of hiding potential prisoners in their secret villages in Wales, just like the fictional Village in the TV show The Prisoner. It all made sense to me now. Milton was my Number Two, and I was her Number Six. And Torchwood was the replica Number Six home that took me home. Not to Dorset, of course, but to Cardiff and to Torchwood Three.

But since Torchwood business is nothing like a television show, we had business to conduct before we closed this case. I had to do an exit interview with, of all people, Milton. If Milton saw me in UNIT jail, they figured she'd crack again and tell all about the Village (the organization and possibly the villages they owned).

UNIT as well as Torchwood One sent me to a secret jail outside of the Cardiff metro area. It doesn't really look like a jail—it has more of a factory look. There, I was shuffled off to a table in a clearing lit by sunlight. I waited, minidisc recorder in hand.

UNIT brought Milton in front of me, handcuffed. She was wearing glasses again as well as an orange jumpsuit. She wasn't as confident and calm as she was when she was first tormenting me, but she was calmer than she was after my mother had escaped from her. The following is the interview we had about the Village.


INTERVIEW WITH "MILTON"—5 MARCH 2005

ME: Hello, Milton.

MILTON: Toshiko.

ME: Care to tell me your real name?

MILTON: It's Milton.

ME: Milton what? Is it your first name, your last name?

MILTON: I know how to scrub my records. Someone taught me that a long time ago in uni. I bet you'll never find out who she is.

ME: Does she work for the Village?

MILTON: No. She keeps secrets very well. You'll never find her, and when you do it'll be too late.

ME: Who is she?

MILTON: I'm not telling.

ME: (sigh) Your terrorist group was called "The Village."

MILTON: Yes.

ME: Named after The Prisoner's Village.

MILTON: Yes.

ME: Your goal was to break down people from UNIT-affiliated research facilities to assimilate into the Village.

MILTON: Yes.

ME: What were you aiming to do by kidnapping people from research facilities and make them do your bidding? I know I'm not the other one. UNIT's rescued a few other people since

Torchwood found me.

(No answer.)

ME: Were you planning to kidnap the Doctor?

MILTON: Yes, but not for long.

ME: Were you planning to overthrow the government?

(No answer.)

ME: Something else? I won't leave you until you tell me why.

MILTON: Yes.

ME: What is it, then?

MILTON: I like seeing people suffer.

ME: That's it? You ruin peoples' lives because you get off on it?

MILTON: Yes.

ME: Jealous of the smartest people in the UK?

MILTON: I won't admit to that. But I will admit I'm a sadist. (Laughs.)


UNIT was satisfied with the answer Milton gave me, and they let me go. I have a sneaking suspicion she's lying to Torchwood, UNIT and I over everything, and that she most likely was planning a government takeover with alien tech. But I can't prove it.


EPILOGUE

THE VILLAGE (ORGANIZATION)

In all, 26 people were arrested for being officially connected with The Village. All of them are currently being held in UNIT-affiliated jails without trial or bail.

I've attempted to attempt to convince UNIT that jailing these people in facilities without bathrooms and beds in the cells is inhumane and may force the UNIT jails to be shut down by Amnesty International. What I went through is just as bad, if not worse, as what these people are going through now, even though I don't feel sorry for their actions. UNIT will not budge. I'm hoping that, with this proposal, Torchwood One will step in and convince UNIT to put these criminals in better facilities or, at the least, government-run facilities until UNIT can get better facilities for these criminals. I know government jails are a step above UNIT jails, but at least they don't violate prisoner rights.

I also want them to serve trial. Some of these people may have been forced to do their bidding for Milton like I was, but without a trial, we'll never know if some of these people are innocent.

For all UNIT and Torchwood Three knows, the Village has been disbanded, and there are no remaining chapters in Wales, the United Kingdom, or anywhere else in the world.

Torchwood Three sent their condolences to the family of the man Suzie killed during my escape from the group as well as the family of the man who committed suicide.


MILTON

Milton is still maintaining her silence. She still doesn't want to reveal who she is or the real aim of the Village was (if there was one). Like the rest of the Village, she is in a UNIT-run secret prison.


THE VILLAGE OF BRYNSIENCYN, ON BEHALF OF MILTON'S "VILLAGE"

Milton's village has been demolished. It was determined it was close to the actual village of Brynsiencyn.

Brynsiencyn has offered me an apology for my imprisonment. They've also sent me a key to their village and an offer to grab all the Banglorean food I can there. As I've said before, I haven't had any time to go back to where the Village once was or to Brynsiencyn. Maybe I'll go back there. Someday.

UNIT grabbed the new things I made in the prison house I lived in and brought them back to Cardiff so I could finish my report to you. The rest of the stuff in the flat has been sold.

THE TOWN OF CAERNARFON, WALES, ON BEHALF OF MILTON'S "ANTAGONIST"

Antagonist was determined to be close to Caernarfon.

Caernarfon has also apologized for Milton beating me up in the police station at Antagonist. The town agreed to pay off my hospital stay. I've also got a key from that town and an invitation to go back. I haven't had time yet.


TESCO EXTRA, BANGOR, WALES

UNIT has offered to pay for everything I looted from Tesco Extra. Tesco, on the other hand, has not banned me from its stores, to my surprise.

THE TOWN OF ST. DAVID, WALES, ON BEHALF OF SAFEKEEP, WALES

It was determined Safekeep was close to St. David, Wales.

St. David has offered an apology to my mother. Unlike me, she has had time to visit St. David. My mother says it's a really spiritual, moving place once you get to know it. She doesn't want to live there because she feels it's too far away from the city, but she likes St. David.


MY MOTHER

After The Village was captured, my mother was still not harmed by their people. Torchwood Three's safe house had hidden her well.

I was reunited with my mother after Milton and her henchmen were apprehended by UNIT. She had recovered from the injury she sustained after Milton used the original sonic modulator on us. She's now in good health.

My mother has moved back to Dorset after the whole Milton/The Village ordeal. It's not a long drive between Dorset and Cardiff. I can always drive to Dorset to see the rest of my family whenever I'm not busy.


ME

After all my obligations to the UNIT staff investigating the Village were complete, I returned to Dorset with Suzie.

In Dorset, I quit the Lodmoor job. The head of the research facility was upset that I was leaving, but they respected my decision and thought that I could still serve the government working with Torchwood. They were afraid I could possibly create some device that could destroy the UK, let alone the world, if I worked with Torchwood, but I reassured them that I would be responsible.

I rented a flat in Cardiff. Suzie and I rented a moving truck and drove my belongings from Dorset to Cardiff. (All except the VCR, which I pawned before leaving Dorset.) We drove past Bath. She said she was born there. She wouldn't reveal anything else, not even how old she is. I'm guessing she's younger than both Jack and I. I can't estimate how young she is in comparison to Jack—maybe ten, 15 years?—but I think she's about a couple of years younger than I am. She still looks like she's in her late 20s.  At least I know I'm nearing 30.

Today I'm Torchwood's official tech specialist. I'm working on updating Torchwood's technology. Suzie's done some work to the system, but it's a hard job bringing the Torchwood tech to the modern era by yourself, what with the things happening to Cardiff and the surrounding area and calls from Torchwood One and all. In a few months, our systems will be compatible with Torchwood One's computers. Eventually Torchwood won't need to rely on hidden satellites to monitor alien activity. We'll also easily be able to keep tabs on anyone in the city through a massive database. Suzie's worried that this is a huge breach of privacy, but I've reassured her that, if we are above the government, like Jack says, the government and its people won't have a problem with a database that could keep its people safe from supernatural threats.

In addition to maintaining the technology in the Hub, I have also taken over Suzie's post as the pretend tourist office guide so she can maintain the Torchwood Three archives. My duties are to dissuade people away from Torchwood. If that fails, I get to walk them to the Senedd Buliding and let them rest after they've been Retconned on the benches in front of that building. I also pick up pizza there.

I'm very happy with my new job at Torchwood Three, and if it wasn't for the Village, I would've never known a life of adventure. So I'm only going to thank the Village for one thing: my new life.

Enclosed in this report are the following:

• Plans to make a working sonic modulator;
• Plans to make a router out of a VCR console;
• Plans to make a tracker that can be hidden in a shoe;
• Software to track the tracker;
• Receipts from Tesco Extra and the hospital.

Please let me know if you need anything else from me, Miss Hartman.

Yours,

[signed]

Toshiko Sato

Technology Specialist

Torchwood Three

[date unknown], 2005