Adam Mitchell Chronicles - The Second
Jul. 15th, 2010 05:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
The second half of 2013 was almost worse for Adam than the year of silence had been. He wasn't relegated to a cell any longer, but he was not allowed out of the Tower. For the first three months, there was always a shadow assigned to him, to make certain he did nothing untoward and made no attempt to escape the building. The next three months were a crash course in just how physically intensive a position in Torchwood could be.
The director, who turned out to be the man that had made the offer at his cell, never let up and never showed leniency.
Torchwood was nothing like GeoComTex. These were not greedy, power mad people scrabbling for every little piece of space junk in the hope of owning the stars by proxy. These people knew the technology they dealt with better than he did. GeoComTex bristled with body guards, and every little presentable artifact was given its own display, just like a private museum. Torchwood bristled with scientists packing weapons, and locked away every identified artifact in little black boxes, rarely ever to be seen again. Van Statten only cared to learn if it got him power in some way, Mr. Jones and his crew sought to learn everything that could conceivably protect--or help to protect--Earth. No one was allowed to take technology outside or use it for their own purposes.
He was never allowed outside.
The year 2014 was a better one. He befriended a quiet scientist assigned to help him calculate how to integrate the infospike into 21st century computers. It wasn't the first time she'd worked with advanced alien technology in an effort to make it cooperate with 21st century Earth. She was kind, if shy, and it was a strange and welcome change from the sort of workers Van Statten would hire. With her help, it turned out to be a much more comfortable, much more productive year.
He saw the sky again in the Summer of that year, when Dr. Sato asked him along on a field experiment. He returned with the worst sunburn of his life, and an answer to interface with all of the world's transmissions.
The director furnished him with his own flat and his own mobile.
The first person he called was his mother.
The director, who turned out to be the man that had made the offer at his cell, never let up and never showed leniency.
Torchwood was nothing like GeoComTex. These were not greedy, power mad people scrabbling for every little piece of space junk in the hope of owning the stars by proxy. These people knew the technology they dealt with better than he did. GeoComTex bristled with body guards, and every little presentable artifact was given its own display, just like a private museum. Torchwood bristled with scientists packing weapons, and locked away every identified artifact in little black boxes, rarely ever to be seen again. Van Statten only cared to learn if it got him power in some way, Mr. Jones and his crew sought to learn everything that could conceivably protect--or help to protect--Earth. No one was allowed to take technology outside or use it for their own purposes.
He was never allowed outside.
The year 2014 was a better one. He befriended a quiet scientist assigned to help him calculate how to integrate the infospike into 21st century computers. It wasn't the first time she'd worked with advanced alien technology in an effort to make it cooperate with 21st century Earth. She was kind, if shy, and it was a strange and welcome change from the sort of workers Van Statten would hire. With her help, it turned out to be a much more comfortable, much more productive year.
He saw the sky again in the Summer of that year, when Dr. Sato asked him along on a field experiment. He returned with the worst sunburn of his life, and an answer to interface with all of the world's transmissions.
The director furnished him with his own flat and his own mobile.
The first person he called was his mother.