Ficlet: Safety Measures

[badly_knitted]

 



Title: Safety Measures
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Tosh, Owen, OCs.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Nada
Summary: Jack tasks Tosh with creating something that will help keep the team safe. It comes in useful sooner than he expects.
Word Count: 760
Written For: Prompt 38: Beacon at anythingdrabble.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
 
 


It had been Jack’s idea to microchip all members of the team after he and Ianto had accidentally wound up in the middle of nowhere without their clothes. Getting back to Cardiff on that occasion had been a tricky business. Not only had the roads been too hot to walk on and the verges too painful thanks to stones, broken glass, and thorny plants, but unsurprisingly nobody had been willing to pick up two naked hitchhikers, although a helpful truck driver, no doubt impressed by Jack’s considerable charms, had kindly loaned him her phone to call the Hub and arrange for rescue.
 

Once the two of them had been safely back in Torchwood’s underground base, and while Ianto’s sunburn and sore feet were being taken care of, Jack, now dressed, had called Tosh up to his office.
 

“I have a job for you,” he’d told the team’s tech expert. “I need you to invent a miniature homing beacon that can be injected into all of us, so that in future, if any of us goes missing we can be easily found again, even if our phones are taken and we’re stripped of all our clothes. I wish I’d thought of it sooner,” he’d added, staring out of his office window at his lover, who was hobbling painfully up from the medical bay to sink gratefully onto the battered old sofa. “It would have spared poor Ianto a lot of discomfort.” Turning his attention back to Tosh, he’d asked, “Can you do it?”

 
Tosh had nodded. “I’ll start work on it right away. What sort of range do you want?”
 

“The best you can get.”
 

“If I use GPS and satellite tracking… The chip might have to be a bit bigger and surgically implanted under the skin rather than injected, but as long as none of us get locked in a lead-lined room or something, range shouldn’t be a problem.”

 
“Fine, do it. Waking up naked with no idea where we were or how to get home really wasn’t as much fun as you might think.”

 
Being the genius she was, Tosh had got on with the task right away, and less than a week later she had a working prototype, which she enclosed in a sterile silicon capsule and implanted in Jack’s arm. It was thoroughly tested to see that it could be tracked not only over long distances but when the person it was implanted in was inside buildings constructed of various materials, aboard an aircraft in flight, on a submerged submarine, or deep underground. Adjustments were made after each series of tests, until the tracking chip was as immune to outside or internal interference as it could be, and within a month she had five of the devices ready for use. With her assistance, Owen inserted one into the forearm of each member of the team.
 

It was a good thing Tosh had worked so quickly, because just over two weeks later she was snatched while on a retrieval, tied up and thrown in a van, while her phone and PDA were tossed in a nearby dumpster.
 

When she failed to return, Ianto checked the CCTV, saw her car still parked near the coordinates of the Rift spike, and activated her tracker, quickly pin-pointing her location. Less than an hour later, the thugs responsible for her abduction, a gang of criminals dealing in alien tech, were apprehended, Retconned, and dumped on the other side of the city, their whole operation shut down for good.
 

“Not a bad afternoon’s work,” Jack said with a grin as the team headed back to the Hub with the boot of the SUV crammed full of confiscated technology. “We got our Toshiko back and shut down a bunch of idiots into the bargain!”
 

Tosh smiled. “Thanks for the speedy rescue; I never imagined I’d be the first to benefit from the tracking chips.”
 

“Neither did I,” Jack admitted. “But it’s a good thing you had one; we can’t afford to lose you. I think they might well be your most important invention ever.”

 
“Maybe Myfanwy should be fitted with one as well,” Ianto suggested. “Just so we always know where she is.”
 

That didn’t go down well with Owen.

 
“No bloody way! Your bald budgie would have my arm off if I tried!”
 

“You’re exaggerating. A finger or two at most,” Ianto teased.
 

“Oi, I need all my fingers! I’m a surgeon! What good would I be without fingers?”
 

Owen’s protests kept the whole team laughing all the way back to the Hub.
 

 
The End