x x x

Chapter 8: "To Alcohol; The Cause Of And Solution To All Of Life's Problems."

x x x

Six days later, someone finally bothered to track Kael down. He hadn't actually left his apartment, but he hadn't been showing up at the Agency, either. Instead, he had spent his time trying to learn as much about this time as he could, rather than just the historical records the Agency had wanted him to learn. He wanted to know how to get away from this entire planet, if he ever felt the need to.

Now was not the time, but he had decided that it was a high priority on his things-to-know list.

The firm rapping on his door startled him out of an internal debate over which planet in the Triangulum Galaxy had the better holiday brochures. He quickly dropped the travel guide, and when he stood he casually kicked it under the couch.

It turned out that the person at the door was none other than the Agency Director himself. This was perhaps the most unsettling way they could have chosen to bring him back. There was just something about this man. Even without any backup to drag him back if he refused, Kael found himself thoroughly intimidated by him.

The Director stepped into the small apartment, without any protest from Kael. He closed the door behind him, and looked around briefly, before speaking, "If you don't come in to the Agency today, you'll miss your promotion ceremony." he said bluntly, "Not that that would be entirely unprecedented... and there was that one Agent who attended her own promotion ceremony five times, but we don't talk about that to just anyone."

Kael snorted faintly at that. Yes, it was a very amusing thought. Back in the twentieth century, he had known a boy at his primary school who, when getting their school picture taken with an older panoramic camera, had been on one end of the long group... and once the first shot had been taken he had raced around the back of the group to the far end of the crowd before the camera turned that far, thus managing to appear twice in the picture. That was admittedly more mundane than real time travel, but it was still about as funny.

"Tell me why you've been away?" the Director asked him bluntly, making absolutely no move to sit down, nor giving any indication that Kael was allowed to do so... in his own home, no less.

Kael frowned, but then asked, "So I'm not in trouble for maiming another Agent?"

"Is that what you thought?" He chuckled, "Oh, no. I don't believe anyone would have minded had Warren been incapacitated for longer still. And you seem to be forgetting the medical advancements since your time. He won't even have a scar."

"Damnit." Kael cursed darkly, causing the Director to chuckle once more.

"Neither Warren nor Leliana have deigned to explain the circumstances of his injury to me. In fact, if you hadn't said you maimed someone, I wouldn't have known it was your doing. Was there a reason for it?"

Kael didn't answer. Just stared in mild shock at the total lack of concern this man held for the wellbeing of one of his employees. "Do you not like him, sir?"

"Everyone despises Warren Stone." the Director said with a shrug, "But he is very good at his job. Incidentally, I have your first assignment for you, here." He handed Kael a digital notebook, and Kael reluctantly accepted it. "This log will alert you to new assignments, as well. A full calendar for any work the Agency requires of you. Including the more menial tasks, but nobody gets those in their first week."

Kael frowned, looking at the notebook's blank cover for a moment, before asking, "So... if there's nothing on here, I don't even need to show up?"

The Director nodded, "That's right. As a matter of fact, I do try to encourage Agents to make the most of their free time, outside of the main building. You may even leave the planet, during the periods marked in green on your log."

Okay, so he had been looking for a way to escape, and mere minutes later the boss of the entire Agency was actively encouraging him to leave... during designated holiday time, of course. It was a bit of a shock, really. He had expected to be monitored very closely, especially given his unusual circumstances as Max's 'science project'.

In fact, this made him rather suspicious.

"You'll be tracking me, wherever I go, won't you?" he asked blankly.

"While we can trace your ID chip, if we have the need, we rarely find reason to do so." the Director said calmly, "And I certainly hope you won't be giving us any such reason."

"Of course not, sir." Kael answered automatically. The picture of innocence, he hoped.

x x x

The ceremony that afternoon was- as he had somehow expected- an excuse for the entire Agency to throw a party. Tam's promotion wasn't for another week, and it seemed that this was to allow them all time to sober up before the next excuse. Only those on active duty were excluded... and they seemed to have been assigned purposefully as the ones who either didn't know or didn't like Kael. Warren and Gerak had apparently been sent to the middle ages, while the rest of them celebrated.

He literally had no idea what had happened after he had received his official promotion... only that much alcohol had been involved, and this was not his own bed he was waking up in now.

"Ngh." a female voice next to him grumbled, and he glanced that way to see a mat of black hair on the pillow. Looked like it was meant to be shoulder-length, but it had been ruffled up quite thoroughly. "Hangover." the woman mumbled, reaching an ebony arm out to the bedside table and picking up something small enough to fit into the palm of her perfectly manicured hand.

She broke whatever it was in half, and handed one half to him, turning over onto her back as she did so. "Bet you're not feeling too great yourself, huh? You drank six bottles of Telonian ale. That stuff's mean."

Kael flinched slightly. Yes, his head was pounding like the neighbour's kid had just got a drum-set for Christmas... without a single lesson nor any sense of rhythm. And he was beginning to remember the Telonian ale, too. It was clear and had tasted somewhat like licking steel. And it had been Tam's idea, naturally. Kid was a menace.

"Thanks." he mumbled, accepting the object she offered, watching as she swallowed her half with a slight grimace. He had heard Tam mention hangover-cure tablets... and when he swallowed his half of it, the headache receded with surprising speed.

He closed his eyes, taking great pleasure in the relief from that affliction... and didn't notice anything else until the woman he had woken with shifted to lean over him. "You okay, Kael?"

He opened one eye a crack. He really didn't want to be awake. Or to face the fact he didn't know this woman's name. He hadn't even seen her around the Agency before, though admittedly he didn't spend any more time than absolutely necessary in the building itself. Half-blurred by sleep, he would swear for a moment he was looking up at his first love, Lisa. It was nothing about her face- nor anything as shallow as her skin-colour- but rather something about the way her eyes sparkled.

Morning person, just like Lisa, too.

"Yeah. Just tired." he answered. A weak excuse for the fact he was trying to remember how he had wound up in bed with this woman. It wasn't as great an offence now as it would have been in the twenty-first century... but it would still be a wound to her pride to say that she hadn't made a lasting enough impression to get past the effects of the excessive amounts of alcohol.

Tam would pay for this.

"I'm Melena Halliwell, by the way. I don't think we were properly introduced last night." she smiled brightly, "My friends call me Lena."

Kael really wanted to return to unconsciousness... or was it wake up from this messed-up dream? What were the odds of her having such a similar name, as well?

He concentrated on trying to recall anything after his third glass of ale... but that got him absolutely nowhere.

"I am going to maim Tamsen." he muttered, running his hands over his face, "How dare he get me so drunk that I don't remember the beautiful woman I've just woken up with?" Lena blinked at him, apparently unsure whether she should be amused or annoyed by this announcement. But Kael continued before she could speak, doing his best to be both diplomatic and charming as he asked, "Would you mind refreshing my memory?"

She giggled, clearly flattered now, "Gladly."

Lena turned out to be a great deal more fun to be with than Leliana ever had. Not to mention the fact that that morning entirely dispelled any connection to Lisa that he could possibly try form in his mind. They really were nothing alike, and he simply put those thoughts down to the alcohol and added to the list of reasons to maim Tam.

He left her apartment that evening with a rather interesting- if slightly unnerving- request from her. Not only an invitation for there to be a next time, but...

"You've had Rena, right? Would you mind asking her if she's interested in a threesome, sometime?"

x x x

"No way in hell." Kael announced with determination.

"It's standard procedure, everyone has them." Max insisted, "And you can't go on an historical mission without it. Have you any idea how to cope with the linguistic mutations of even a few centuries?"

"I can understand you just fine."

"Blame the Internet. Some time in the early to mid twenty-first century, it managed to solidify and stagnate the development of all our major languages."

"I have no idea how that's possible." Kael said coldly, "If anything it should have made things worse." By lolcats if nothing else.

"When there's a definitive and universally recognised linguistic reference, the larger the community using it the slower it mutates, because of the greater number of people who need to learn the new variations. This factor is exponential, so when it got to the point where the whole planet was speaking one or both of only two languages, it all just stopped evolving."

"Fine, whatever. I'm not letting you put that thing in my head."

Max rolled his eyes, "It's just a translator chip, what are you so worried about?"

"Ever heard of Cybermen?"

"Yes, they're a bloody inconvenience." Max admitted, "We like to look at them as a computer virus that got a bit out of hand."

"Right." Kael said derisively, "I've met them. Up close. They're very fond of implanting things in people's ears to control them."

"Look, this is a thoroughly tested and certified translator chip. It's been used for over a century, and I promise you all it does is allow you to understand about a million dialects of over ten thousand historical and extra-terrestrial languages. No mind control. I'm pretty sure we'd have noticed by now."

Kael gave him a very sceptical look for this.

"Besides." Max continued undeterred, "You need to have it to be allowed on active missions."

Kael glowered, but wasn't seeing a way out of it. "I promise, if something screws up and I get turned into a homicidal maniac, you're my first victim."

Max nodded, grinning cheerfully, "So noted."

x x x

It was a tiny little microchip... nothing like the clunky things Cybermen liked to use, which was at least a little bit reassuring. He read up on it before the procedure, which would only take a couple of minutes of sedation.

It was attached to the auditory nerve that ran from one ear- the right ear if you're right-handed, left if you're left-handed- and processed the information there before it reached the brain. It was set before implantation to the language of its wearer's choice, and any incoming data was analysed for linguistic patterns and promptly translated.

Nine hundred and eighty-six-thousand seven hundred and forty-three dialects, covering ten-thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven known languages, all stored on this one tiny little chip, along with the programming that could process and interpret all of it in real time.

Very impressive little device. Naturally, even with all the reassurances Max could give him, Kael was suspicious of it. Not that he could do anything about it, of course. He kind of needed it.

After the procedure, they ran through some tests, which were very disconcerting, though he was told he'd get used to it.

First, Max spoke in Mandarin- the only other human language to have survived the last three thousand years. He heard it as it naturally sounded in his right ear... but from his left he heard perfect English. Next was an alien language called Rigellian. Same result. Max then decided to show off, by making his computer play a series of shrieking hissing noises that Kael recognised as the horrible sound you used to hear when a computer tried to dial up over a telephone line to connect to the Internet.

Except he understood it... and it was a love-poem about the square root of three.

"We still can't help you speak these other languages, but at least you can know what other people are saying around you." Max explained afterwards. In English, he was thankful to hear. "It is statistically proven that people with the chip can learn other languages much faster on their own, though. Y'know, since you're hearing their language and the translation at the same time, helps you to pick things up."

"And in the meantime I look like a moron or a mute. Take my pick. Right?"

"Pretty much, right."

x x x

It was two days later that Kael's first mission was scheduled.

He showed up on time- maybe a little early, but he wasn't about to impersonate Tam's odd obsession with arriving exactly on time- on the third floor of the Agency building. It had been off-limits to him before now, and he did spend a bit more time than necessary looking around at the vast arrays of machines in the large open-plan room.

This had to be the nerve-centre of the time-travel part of this organisation. And his entire being itched to investigate what it said on those computer readouts, to learn how all of this actually worked. But he restrained himself and waited.

To his dismay, he was soon joined by Leliana, who did at least look suitably uncomfortable to be in his presence again after what had happened the last time he saw her. He stared blankly at her for half a second, before asking bluntly, "This is your millennium mission, isn't it?"

She nodded slowly, and he rolled his eyes in disgust. Irony was a bitch... and apparently she wore a very short skirt.

"Come on, ladies, this way." Max's voice called from behind them. An instant later he was stepping between them, and then he walked briskly on into another room. Leli shrugged, and turned to follow Max.

Kael sulked at Max's dismissive attitude, but also followed anyway.

The briefing room was pretty spacious, and eerily reminiscent of the conference room at Torchwood. He briefly wondered if Jack had designed that room to match this one on purpose, then decided that there couldn't be any other reason for the similarities and simply sat down.

In his usual seat!

And damn, but that felt weird.

The other seats were taken up by a couple of technicians, Leliana herself, and standing behind what Kael had always mentally dubbed the Captain's chair, was Max, holding a large file of notes which in themselves were very intimidating.

"Alright, people." Max said quickly, glancing over some of his notes, "We've got a run-of-the-mill stalker mission here, something nice and easy for a first-timer. Eighteen hour window, including a millennium event." He shot Leliana a very dark look there. He must have heard what had happened. "We don't know the who or the why, that's your mission. Just to find out, explicitly non-interference. We can tell you that the what is a near-miss destruction-paradox, the where is San Francisco, and the when is the turn of the year two thousand anno domini. Any questions?"

Nobody spoke. Even Kael was pretty sure of what they had to do, here.

"No? Alright, then. Have fun."

As everyone turned to leave, Max pulled Kael aside.

"You okay?" he asked in an undertone, "Sure you're ready for this?"

Kael nodded, "Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I dunno, just checking. Don't want my favourite science project getting beat up... or worse." Max reached into a pocket as he spoke, "Here."

He produced what Kael recognised as the stopwatch he had once found in the Hub. It had been sitting out on a desk, and when he had asked around no one else had claimed ownership, nor recognised it as a rift artefact. Jack had dismissively told him he could keep it. It had since become a particularly entertaining part of his relationship with Jack... but he didn't understand what it was doing here and now.

Max simply held the watch up to Kael, "Press the button before you leave. Just in case."

And now it hit him, "This... this is the device that saved my memory?"

"Nice disguise, huh?" Max asked with a grin.

Well that was the understatement of the millennium. Still, he shook off the shock as quickly as he could, and filed the information away for later.

"So... in case of what?" Kael asked sceptically, "In case I get killed on what you made sound like the world's most routine mission ever?"

"Can never be too paranoid." Max said with a shrug.

Kael took the watch, pressed the button- felt absolutely no sense of significance in the moment whatsoever- and handed it back to Max. "Happy?"

"Exceedingly." Max said with a bright grin, "Now you come back in one piece just to spite my paranoia. That's how it works." And with that he turned and hurried out of the room. Kael couldn't help but smile at the way he had explained that. It might seem completely ridiculous to most people, but he thought it was genuinely brilliant.

Kael stepped out of the office as well, and one of the technicians grabbed him by the shoulders and rushed him towards one of the machines, "Hurry up! These time-windows aren't flexible, and we still have to go over your schedule before you jump out!"

The schedule turned out to be an incredibly dull series of times and locations at which it was possible to make time-jumps during their mission. Emergency escape procedures, in case someone or something tried to attack them. A few of the escape routes took six or seven jumps and went through the Cretaceous and Mesozoic eras.

Travel via the Rift was very complicated, and the rules more than a little bit tedious.

Leliana brought out a wrist-strap from one of several lockers along the near wall, while one of the technicians presented Kael with a brand new wrist-strap of his own. "Once this locks to your DNA, only you'll be able to wear it without getting a very nasty shock. Others can still use it by simply holding it, but to much less effect and none of the time-jump settings work unless it's worn by its owner."

Kael nodded slowly, knowing there was a word in Torchwood for that- isomorphic- but also knowing it was probably smart not to share that detail.

The technician showed him which buttons did what; scanners, comms, Rift-trackers in case their pre-recorded jump-points weren't good enough, and of course the time-jump button itself. All that button actually did was access the Rift events and let the other plane of reality do all the work of dragging you through to your destination. Still, it was the second most advanced piece of technology- Earth or otherwise- that he had ever seen... Jack's Vortex manipulator being the first.

It took half an hour to get through it all, and that was only because they rushed. By then it was time to prepare for the jump itself.

They were directed to stand in a certain spot in the middle of what was apparently referred to as the jump-room, and then on the technician's word they were each to press their own respective time-jump buttons together.

"Ready?" the tech asked. Both nodded.

"Brace yourself. First time's a bitch." Leli warned him. He glared at her.

"Three." the tech began their final countdown. Kael looked down at his wrist-strap. "Two." His finger hovered over the button, and he glanced quickly at Leli to see that she was doing the same. "One."

And he pressed the button.

x x x

As was once said of hyperspace, in a somewhat popular Earth novel of the late twentieth century... Rift travel was unpleasantly like being drunk.

What's so unpleasant about being drunk?

Ask a glass of water.

x x x

Kael's feet slammed into the ground wherever and whenever they had landed, his knees buckled, and he stumbled into a conveniently placed brick wall.

"Bloody hell!" he muttered, a bit shocked, "That was horrible!"

Leliana, clearly already used to this form of transportation, was standing quite casually nearby, checking her wrist-strap. "There's three sources of temporal disruption in the city. One's uptown a bit, and quite out of the way. One's in the bad area of town but closer. The third is closest, in that building over there." She nodded down the side-street they were standing in, and across the street to the big building there.

A hospital. Walker General Hospital, according to the big sign out front.

Kael was immediately reminded of the reports he had read at Torchwood, involving a London hospital, the moon, and a large number of alien rhinoceroses. He hoped this one wouldn't be that bad.

"Well, then, we take them in order of proximity." Kael suggested, glancing at her, "Unless you're afraid of this 'bad area'?"

Leliana just gave him a dry look that clearly said she'd seen worse and laughed at it.

Kael rolled his eyes, "Let's go then." and he turned and led the way before she could protest.

The hospital was bustling with activity, and nobody took any notice of either of them as Leli led the way through the corridors, following her wrist-strap's scanner.

It felt strange to be back in his own time again, kind of like a surreal dream. Everything was slightly off from what he remembered... and he'd always hated hospitals at the best of times. But he'd swear even the people smelled different from what he had grown accustomed to in the fifty-first century.

It put him on-edge, and he found himself longing not for familiarity of the past, but to be back in the fifty-first century again. He had friends there, Max, Paige, Tam, even Squire on a quiet day. He hadn't had any friends in the year nineteen ninety-nine.

This time felt wrong to him, now.

As he came to this surprising revelation, Leliana suddenly stopped, directing an accusing look at her wrist-strap. Kael almost walked right into her.

"This isn't right." she said, still scowling at her wrist-strap.

Kael looked at his own scanner, and saw that while there was a distinctive signal very nearby- and actually headed their way- there were also a lot of background signatures. He recognised this from working with Torchwood... particularly from the night he met John Hart. Similar traces had been found on the man Hart had thrown off a roof.

It was the residual energy left over from physical contact with a time-traveller... and it was all over this building.

"Someone else has been here." he said simply, "E.R., O.R., morgue... car park. And it doesn't look quite the same as whoever we're tracking right now."

"So more than one." Leli agreed, frowning. "This gets more fun by the minute."

"Here it comes." Kael observed, as what they were tracking turned a corner in the corridor, heading right for them.

It was human. Or at least humanoid, Kael reminded himself... sometimes it was hard to tell.

Male, tall, pale, dark hair... and wearing sunglasses indoors. The man walked right by them, brushing close enough to shove Kael lightly as he passed. A glance over his shoulder at them felt like it was in slow-motion, the intensity of that gaze even through the shades.

Downright creepy.

"What's with the shades, indoors?" Kael whispered to Leli, "Who does he think he is, the Terminator?"

She gave a blank stare for that, "The what?"

Kael rolled his eyes dramatically, and turned to follow the time-traveller dressed as a member of the emergency services, and wearing sunglasses indoors. Yeah, Terminator 2, specifically, he thought with morbid amusement.

They turned into the crowded A&E area to find the man tapping idly on the glass at the reception desk.

Almost as if their arrival was cue for her to speak, the woman behind the counter greeted him, "Hi, Bruce. Why the shades?"

"I had a bad night." Bruce answered.

"Wow, even Arnie sounded more convincing." Kael muttered, "What do you think, Slitheen, Auton?"

"Who, what and what?" Leli sniped, glaring so intensely at the back of his head that he could feel it without taking his attention away from the reception desk.

Kael just shook his head. Still stuck in Torchwood mode, but some Agents did know their aliens. Just not Leliana, it seemed.

"Did you want something?" the receptionist asked, after Bruce had just stood there, still tapping the glass, since his last statement.

"What happened to the gunshot I brought in? I've got orders to move him."

"He died." the receptionist said bluntly. No sense of decorum or empathy there, whatsoever.

"Oh, yeah. Well." Not that Bruce cared, mind you.

"What's his name, John Connor?" Kael muttered darkly.

"Start making sense or I'll claw you." Leli growled. He knew her fingernails could hurt, and decided shutting up was a good idea... for now.

And speaking of fingernails.

"Oh, that's just wrong." Leliana suddenly said, aghast.

The man- Bruce- was literally peeling off the fingernail- the whole nail!- from his right pinky-finger. "I've got orders to move his body." And then he oh-so-casually flicked it away onto the reception desk, before leaning forward and asking, "Where is it? His body."

The receptionist was staring in horror at the fingernail, but she still answered the demand, "Haven't you heard? The body is gone. Stolen."

"Okay. Where are his things?" Bruce insisted.

"The kid that brought him in ran off with them." she answered, slightly bemused now.

"The Asian child." Bruce said thoughtfully.

"'The Asian child'?" the receptionist asked sceptically, "Bruce, you are sick."

Bruce smiled, "Thank you." and he turned and walked away.

Kael glanced at Leliana very briefly, before stepping out from their hiding place. As he passed a tray of medical equipment he picked up a pair of tweezers and a clear plastic biohazard-labelled bag.

"Kael!" Leli hissed after him, but he ignored her and casually approached the reception desk.

With a slight wrinkling of his nose in disgust, he picked up the fingernail with the tweezers and put it in the bag, muttering in his best American accent - which while a bit stereotypical, was also fairly accurate. "That's just unsanitary." Then he nodded to the receptionist, "Morning ma'am. Agent I, MIB." he flashed a fake ID badge way too quickly, "Can you tell me who that man was you were just speaking to?"

"Uh, well, I-" she stammered for a moment, "Uh, his name's Bruce Gerhardt. Ambulance driver, been working here for years. Why?"

"I think he has my sunglasses." Kael answered vaguely, before faking a smile and nodding politely to her, "Thank you, ma'am."

When he returned to where Leli was glaring at him, he shoved the offensive shed body-part under her nose and then dropped it. Lucky for her she had the good reflexes to catch it before he fell to the ground.

"What do you think you were doing, Kael?" Leli hissed in his ear, as they walked out of the building, in the opposite direction from Bruce, "Our mission is explicitly non-interference!"

"She'll think it was a joke." Kael said dismissively, "It's only three years since that movie came out, and I'm still young enough to look like just some punk kid." He stopped and turned to face her now, "We should analyse that DNA sample, it'll probably be corrupted human, since according to the receptionist our pet Terminator has been working here for years."

"What is a Terminator?" Leli asked, exasperated... but Kael had already turned and walked off towards the second time-signature.

x x x