Part One

"Oi, teaboy! I need a new battery!"

Ianto rolled his eyes even though Owen couldn't see him; hopefully the doctor would still feel the emotion behind the gesture, though it was a good thing he couldn't read the inappropriate verbal response in Ianto's mind. "Tesco is right up the street," he called back instead.

"They don't have the right kind," Owen said, striding into the small office that lead to the archives. "I need an alien battery."

"And what do you need an alien battery for?" Ianto turned around in his chair, eyebrow raised, and gave in to his vulgar impulses. "Another alien sex toy, perhaps?"

"Singularity scalpel, you plonker." Owen held up the device he'd be working on for weeks. "It's not as bright as it used to be."

"Maybe you should set it down once in a while," Ianto suggested. "Try doing something else—paperwork, cleaning, that autopsy from last week. You know, the rest of your job." He turned back to his computer, determined to ignore the doctor. He'd already spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to track down any information he could about the device, including the bloody operating manual Owen insisted must exist somewhere.

"I'm trying to understand something that could be a potentially life-saving device," Owen said. "What if it's your life? You want to die because the battery ran out?"

"How do you know it runs on batteries?" Ianto asked, ignoring the hypothetical question. It was never wise to theorize about death by Torchwood. "Maybe there's another energy source."

"I'm not putting it out in the sun, if that's what you're thinking," Owen said. He held up the device and showed Ianto the bottom, where a metal latch appeared to hold it together. He flicked it and a panel slid open. "There's a small canister in here—awfully similar to a battery—and my guess is it can be replaced when it's run down. You know, like a battery."

"Doesn't seem very high tech," Ianto remarked. "You'd think futuristic medical equipment would run on psychic energy, micro-fusion, or a black hole drive at the very least."

"Great, where can I find some of those?"

"I'd suggest starting with the B section, for batteries."

"Hilarious," Owen said, walking past him and through the metal doorway into the stacks. "That's the one that comes after A, right?"

"Some runic systems place it after T," Ianto replied. He turned back to his desk to continue his work. "Try not to blow yourself up if you find anything. I cleaned in there last week."

"Thanks," Owen called. "Good to know where I rank around here."

Ianto didn't bother to reply and continued transferring files, pausing only to talk to Jack on the comms about a rift alert. He'd scanned a year's worth of old paper records and was now tagging them by keyword so they could find information quicker when they needed it. It was tedious, but it was something he'd needed to do for so long that he was looking forward to finishing and crossing it off his list. Assuming Owen didn't bellow for help at any moment. Ianto heard a crash, followed by a particularly virulent curse, some muttering, and silence. Then—

"Ianto!" And there it was. Ianto leaned back and stretched.

"Did you forget the alphabet?" he called. "Or are you lost? Shall I send in a rescue party?"

"No, send yourself," Owen said. "I think I saw something odd."

"It's the Torchwood archives, define odd."

"Vague shadowy figure?" Owen replied, standing in the doorway. "White. Floating."

Ianto turned around again and made sure Owen saw him roll his eyes this time. "Ah, ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties."

"Sod off, I saw something."

"Did it moan and groan? Reach out for you with long, spindly fingers?"

Owen opened his mouth to reply, but there was a strange sound from behind him, rather like a moan, followed by scraping footsteps. He stepped back into the office area and closed the door halfway. "There's something alive in there," he said.

"It's the archives, not a garbage compactor," Ianto pointed out. He stood up and walked over to the doorway, looking into the main archives. "And I've never archived a space snake."

"I did an autopsy on one," Owen said.

"Well, aliens are real, ghosts are not," Ianto stage-whispered. "Need me to protect you from your over-active imagination?"

There was a loud crashing sound from somewhere amongst the shelves, and then a rustling noise. Ianto frowned, wondering what was going on. While he did not for one minute believe there was a ghost in the archives, it was entirely possible that any number of technological devices could be malfunctioning. He tried to be careful whilst working, but every so often he tangled with something he hadn't meant to tangle with. Or, as was more often the case, Owen got them both tangled: there was the language incident, and the thing with the rings, and that time they'd felt each other's every move and Ianto had almost died.

Owen flipped him a two-fingered salute. "Why don't you go check it out, if you're so brave?"

"Never said I was," Ianto murmured, listening for more noises and not to the beating of his heart. He thought he heard a chittering sound and imagined tiny feet scrambling across the stone floors. "Probably rats. I've seen some the size of small cats."

"Rats don't float in the air," Owen told him. "I know what I saw."

"Maybe it was—" Without warning a cold breeze blew through the door, and all the lights in the stacks went out.

Owen instantly tapped his earpiece. "Tosh, are you getting any funny readings up there?"

It took a moment for her to answer. "Sorry Owen, we're in the SUV. Rift alert out in Morganstown."

"Seriously? Thanks for letting us know," Owen told her.

"They called while you were ghostbusting," Ianto told him. "Well, Jack called me, anyway."

"I bet he did," Owen muttered. "Look, Tosh, we've got a major power loss in the archives."

"What?" asked Jack over the comms. "Everything okay down there?"

"The lights went out," Ianto told them through his own comm. "Probably a bad lightbulb."

"Or twenty. That all make a lot of funny noises at the same time," Owen added.

"We'll figure it out," Ianto said. "See you back here soon."

"Call us if you need anything," said Jack. "We shouldn't be too long."

There was another sound from the archives. Staring into the dark, Ianto almost imagined that there was a white light bobbing in the air down the main aisle along the wall; when he blinked his eyes a few times, it was gone.

"We have two choices here," he told Owen. "Grab a torch and look around, or head upstairs and check the readings first."

"I say we let the computer check it out," said Owen. "I don't want to walk through a ghost. That's creepy."

"There's no such thing as ghosts," Ianto said. He shut the door, just in case something had gone wrong inside, and started upstairs, Owen right behind him. "You know that as well as I do. If there's something there, it'll have a more rational explanation."

"You really don't believe in ghosts?" Owen asked, sounding skeptical. "Thought you Welsh grew up on ghosts stories, spirits haunting the moors and all that."

"That's the Bronte sisters, not the Welsh."

They walked over to Tosh's station, where Ianto started to look at various readings on the Hub, while Owen stood behind him with arms crossed, right foot tapping.

"Did you believe in them as a kid? Scared of the dark, monsters under your bed and all that?"

"Of course I did," Ianto said, half listening. "And then I grew up and started working for Torchwood. Now I believe in aliens."

"So what about all the stories out there—haunted hotels, ghostly hitchhikers, those sorts of things?"

Ianto started a new scan, to make sure their regular monitoring systems hadn't picked something up and dismissed it. He turned toward Owen while it ran. "A lot of those things can be explained by other phenomena—magnetic fields, carbon monoxide poisoning, infrasound. Even hoaxes. And we live on a rift in space-time. Think about St. Teilo's and the time shifts that they thought were ghosts. Or sometimes the residual psychic energy in an area can create echoes that are misinterpreted as ghosts, like those you picked up with the quantum transducer."

"So there's always a scientific explanation?"

"It may appear fantastical, but yes—still a rational explanation. I don't think the spirits of the dead stick around to moan and groan at us, Owen. Seems a waste of time."

"I don't know," Owen said. "I'd consider hanging around to haunt you."

"I'm both flattered and terrified," Ianto offered in his driest voice possible. He turned back to the computers. "And I'm also not picking up anything. According to this, the lights should be on, and there's nothing down there."

"I definitely saw something, and you heard it." Owen frowned. "So do we check it out to be sure, or—"

There was a loud squawk as Myfanwy circled high above them. She seemed agitated and flew lower than unusual, hissing at them as she passed. Ianto frowned and checked the monitors again; still nothing, but something was clearly bothering her.

"If you saw something, we should probably go look around. Could be something that the scanners can't pick up."

"Great," Owen muttered. "That'll make it easy to find." He walked toward the armory. "I'm bringing a weapon, just to be safe."

"What are you going to take, a proton pack?" Ianto let the sarcasm drip to the floor, but Owen stopped and cocked his head.

"Do we have one, Dr. Spengler?"

Ianto huffed, and the doctor grinned. "Come on, we've got to have something that can disrupt your so-called residual psychic energy."

They both took stun guns and went downstairs. The lights in the archives were back on, but the office felt cold, and Ianto could see his breath. It was eerily quiet as well: normally he felt the pulsing of the Rift Manipulator, heard the subtle drips of water throughout the Hub, the shuffling of whatever small things lived in the dark. Now it was only silence, and it felt wrong.

"Something is off," he murmured. "Do you hear anything?"

"Nothing," Owen whispered back. "And it's damn spooky."

"Agreed," said Ianto. He pulled out the handheld scanner he'd brought down with him and stepped into the main Torchwood archives: dozens of shelves lined with boxes, too many to count, collecting dust since 1885. The scanner showed him a completely normal room. "I'm not getting anything unusual," he said, eyes roaming the stacks. "But I can practically feel it."

"Me too."

There was a sound like a cackle, a ghostly laugh that echoed throughout the room, bouncing off the stone and brick. Owen stepped closer to him. "How can our equipment not pick up that?" he muttered, pointing down row G at a luminous orb hanging in mid-air and moving toward them.

Ianto unconsciously took a step backward and swore when he tripped over Owen. He was only saved from falling on his arse by the doctor gripping his arm. Hard.

"Still don't believe in ghosts then?" Owen asked as the glowing light shifted into a vague humanoid shape. There was another moaning sound. It made the hairs on Ianto's arm stand up, but it also sounded so ridiculous that he straightened up and took a step toward it, determined to show Owen that it wasn't a ghost—and that he wasn't afraid of it. A small voice in his head tried to remind him that the archives could hold any number of very real, extraterrestrial dangers, but he took another step forward anyway.

"No, I don't," he said, hoping his voice sounded stronger than he felt. "Who are you?" he asked the white light. "What do you want?"

The soft moan became another cackle as the shape grew, stretching into dozens of streams of light that reached down the row toward them. They both scrambled out of the way with inarticulate shouts. A cold wind blew past them and the overhead lights went out again—and behind them, the door to Ianto's office slammed shut and locked.

"You're fucking kidding me," Owen said as he jiggled the handle. Ianto felt like they were suddenly trapped in a bad horror movie. "It's like one cliché after another."

"Clichés all come from somwhere," Ianto told him. He pulled out the small torch he had slipped into his coat pocket and shined it on the door. It only locked from the other side, the idea being that if there were ever a situation in the archives, it would be contained if it were locked in and unable to get out. Which meant they were locked in now as well, unless they shot off the door lock, or the hinges, only—

"Can we shoot our way out?" Owen asked, obviously thinking the same thing. "Door lock? Hinges?" Behind them came the sound of rattling chains. It was unnerving, to say the least, and Ianto decided it was more like an old Victorian novel than a horror film.

"Won't work," Ianto told him. "This room was built to be virtually impenetrable. The bullet would likely bounce off and hit us on the head."

"And then we'd join our friend back there." Owen kicked at the door. There was a crashing sound from behind them, as if something fell from the shelves.

"What about that gadget that opens locked doors? The data scanner?" Owen asked. "You know where it is?"

"There are thousands of items down here, Owen," Ianto replied. "I don't know where every one of them goes. I have a computer system for that."

"So much for knowing everything about the Hub," Owen muttered.

"Well, I do know the data scanner is on my desk. Because I was using it."

"Brilliant. Any other ideas?"

Ianto tried not to sigh in frustration. Sometimes he didn't like being the one who was supposed to know everything, do everything for the team. Sometimes he wanted to be the one who didn't have a clue and was scared witless. But then, he wouldn't have survived in Torchwood this long if he didn't keep his wits about him. It was just going to be harder with Owen Harper hounding him to figure it all out.

Especially with a ghost in the archive haunting them.

Author's Note:

Happy Halloween! While this could have been one longer fic, two parts helps me edit better. Part two in a few days! Thank you for reading!