Hidden (audio story)

Hidden was the first release of the BBC Torchwood audio stories, later collected in Torchwood Tales.

Publisher's summary
After a series of violent and seemingly unrelated deaths, the solution to a riddle seems to point the finger of blame at Captain Jack. Can the Torchwood team uncover the truth, which lies hidden in the heart of the Welsh countryside, in time to save their leader?

Plot
Four Environment Agency representatives die in a helicopter crash the day after their project leader, Sir Giles Walbridge, and Torchwood begins its investigations. Jack leaves the Hub to pursue a line of inquiry and tycoon Robert Craig, an associate of Walbridge's, dies in a car accident several hours later. Tosh accesses Jack's mobile phone and finds that he received a call from Alice Proctor before she died in the helicopter crash and that his most recent calls were with Craig's gallery and the Caru Clinic, so Gwen decides that she and Owen will go to the EA's archaeological dig in Breconshire, Ianto will go to the Caru Clinic in Caerphilly and Tosh will act as mission control at the Hub.

Ianto finds that Megan Brook and two of the clinic's other staff members have been brutally murdered. Posing as police officers, Gwen and Owen question archaeologist Steven Parks and are taken by him to a crypt dedicated to 17th century alchemist Thomas Vaughan where three canisters holding vellums purporting to contain his secrets have been found. Owen discounts the possibility that the deaths were because of what the EA were working on at the dig.

Jack is arrested and questioned by DC Jenkins and her DCI at Cardiff Police Station as he was in touch with Alice, Craig and Megan Brook of the Caru Clinic in the hours before their deaths. He calls Tosh and, not wanting to give away any information which could help the police solve the mystery before Torchwood, successfully passes on a hint about DNA which leads her to call Ianto to let him know that the clinic is where everything began. He is then confronted with photographs of him inside Robert Craig's car during the accident and waiting for the car to explode with Craig inside, but he denies responsibility.

Whilst on the phone with Tosh, Ianto is driven off of the road by a Honda and found slipping in and out of consciousness by Gwen and Owen after Tosh gives them his coordinates. He is flown away to receive treatment and the remaining members of Torchwood reassess their approach. Tosh reads about Thomas Vaughan whilst Gwen and Owen meet Ella Contas at the laboratory where the heavily damaged vellums were sent and are informed that they have been stolen, but they are able to view photographs and learn that they contain a coded chemical formula for the philosopher's stone. Contas is killed in an attack on the laboratory by gunmen employed by Azureus Security, a shell company owned by Craig, but Gwen and Owen are able to escape.

Tosh starts rebuilding deleted DNA records from the Caru Clinic's hard drives and researches Craig, finding that the real son of Thomas and Rebecca Craig died in an accident with his parents shortly after his birth and that the pretender's biography is a fiction. The restored records reveal that the clinic was concerned with genetic research into curing a clone of Craig, who was actually the immortal Thomas Vaughan. After being released by the police, Jack explains that Alice came to suspect the truth about Craig and informed Walbridge, who attempted to blackmail him and which led to the two of them being killed by the Arcanis Servitorus, a group set up by Craig to protect his secret. He then visits Ianto in hospital.

Characters

 * Jack Harkness
 * Gwen Cooper
 * Owen Harper
 * Toshiko Sato
 * Ianto Jones
 * Megan Brook
 * Ella Contas
 * Sir Robert Craig
 * Simon Craig
 * DC Kate Jenkins
 * Steven Parks
 * Alice Proctor
 * Christian Vancarlo
 * Sir Giles Walbridge
 * Arcanis Servitorus

Worldbuilding

 * Sir Giles Walbridge was head of the Environment Agency's species recovery programme.
 * Alex Channon was forty-two and fought in the Middle East, where he flew 122 missions, between 2003 and 2006. He was decommissioned through injury after losing his left leg below the knee and was returned to the United Kingdom where he was treated at Charterhouse and was in rehab for eighteen months. He was seconded to the EA in December 2007.
 * Alice Proctor was a twenty-seven-year-old Oxbridge graduate who studied Archaeological and Museum Studies. She joined the Environment Agency straight after her graduation in 2002 and became Walbridge's personal secretary.
 * Peter Files was a forty-six-year-old History professor at Glamorgan University who joined the EA in an advisory capacity in 2006 at Walbridge's request.
 * Michael Gilroy was an EA geophysicist.
 * Tosh looks on CrimNet.
 * Robert Craig owned the Craig Gallery in London.
 * The Caru Clinic is in Caerphilly.
 * Ianto sees Van Gogh's sunflowers painting in the fertility clinic.
 * Henry Vaughan was a poet.

Continuity

 * Owen mentions the Resurrection gauntlet and the ghost machine. (TV: Everything Changes, Ghost Machine)