Chapter Text
Prologue
After fifteen years of being locked away in the secure wing of Providence Park Psychiatric Hospital, Iolo Jones hadn't expected escape to be as easy as walking out the front door.
But it was.
He had tried to escape nineteen times since he’d been committed at the age of eleven, and had been thwarted every time, until the fateful day that terrorists attacked Cardiff.
The first time he'd tried to escape, he'd pulled away from an attendant, made a mad dash through an unlocked door--and wound trapped up in a broom closet. Not the most sophisticated of plans, he'd be the first to admit, but to be fair he was eleven years old at the time, had only been there a couple of days, and the sedatives they had given him were interfering with his ability to reason.
The last time he'd tried to escape, several months back, he had been far more successful. He had forged an ID bracelet and disguised himself as an inmate about to be released into the care of a social worker who had never met him or the other man before. She and Iolo were nearly five miles away when the victim, knocked out and hidden in that same broom closet, came to before expected and started calling for help. Security had phoned the social worker, she had stalled for time by stopping off for lunch at McDonald's, and his short-lived trip ended when staff arrived to escort him back to the asylum. Iolo had to hand it to the social worker—she'd had quite the poker face and he'd never suspected anything was wrong until it was too late.
He had been put in Isolation for a long time after that. He had no idea for how long. Time had little meaning in the asylum, and none at all in Isolation.
When he was finally released from the cell that was smaller than the bathroom he normally had access too, Iolo claimed that he had really learned his lesson this time and had renounced all ideas of escape. His doctor had seemed skeptical, and Iolo couldn’t exactly blame him. He wouldn't have believed himself either. They were slow to restore his privileges, like television and library access, this time, but Iolo knew he’d earn them back eventually. He always had before. His doctor wasn’t stupid, but he had one fatal weakness. He believed that Iolo could change. That he could get better. That given therapy and the right meds, he would get better.
That was a laugh. Iolo didn’t want to get “better”, because there was nothing wrong with him in the first place. It was the world that was fucked up. He had no intention of changing, though for the time being he'd act the part of the model patient and spew the bullshit they wanted to hear in therapy for as long as it took him to implement his next plan.
He would never, ever give trying to escape, not when his twin brother Ianto was walking around free as a bird somewhere out there, living a happy, normal life while he, the smarter, cuter, older-by-three-minutes-brother, was confined to this stagnant purgatory. He had lived most of his life—if you could even call it living, it was more like existing--in Providence Park, and he knew he would die there too unless he took matters into his own hands.
And it was all Ianto's fault.
No, he’d keep trying to escape until he either succeeded or died, of that he was sure. He was in the middle of formulating a new plan, an elaborate affair that involved removing part of the ceiling in the laundry room and making his way through the facility's maze of ventilation shafts, when opportunity knocked. As opportunity is wont to do, it knocked when Iolo was least expecting it.
No one was expecting the terrorist attacks that hit Cardiff and environs that evening; multiple, simultaneous explosions that rocked the city and sent everyone within fifty km into a panic. Iolo found much to admire in what the terrorists had accomplished. In a matter of minutes, the crafty bastards had toppled numerous buildings, blown up several key bridges, and shut down the Internet and all of the phone networks. There were hundreds of fatalities, thousands more were injured, and the city was brought to the brink of nuclear calamity when critical systems failed at the Turnmill nuclear power plant. There were even rumors of monstrous creatures roaming the streets. Iolo had had his suspicions the “monsters” were nothing more than the product of imagination run riot--what happened when people were suddenly deprived of their TV's and radios and stuck in the dark--for the power had gone off everywhere.
Everywhere.
Iolo had just been locked in his room for the evening when the first explosion went off—a dull "thud" somewhere in the distance. He didn't pay it much attention, absorbed as he was in the book he had just been allowed to have back, Fortran 95/2003 Explained (Numerical Mathematics and Scientific Computation). Then came another explosion, much closer, and the room went dark.
Iolo leapt to his feet, all senses on high alert. Fortran 95/2003 Explained tumbled off his lap onto the floor.
The lights flickered back on at half-power, which signified that the facility’s backup generators had kicked in. Iolo sighed, then bent to retrieve his book.
‘Power substation across town was probably vandalized again,' he thought. 'They really should do something about security. The neighborhood isn't what it used to be.'
Then came another explosion, the loudest yet, from the basement directly under his feet. It went dark again, pitch-dark, and stayed that way. Iolo froze, knowing that could only mean one thing. The backup generators were down too. That never happened.
A high-pitched alarm shrieked somewhere nearby. A scream, a woman's or a child's, pierced the darkness. A man called out in a voice tight with fear, demanding to know what the hell was going on.
Iolo barely registered these sounds, for he was focused on another--the barely audible “click” that signaled that the electronic lock on his door had just released.