She didn't remember falling asleep. The last thing she did clearly recall was sitting down on the too hard bed and leaning back against the too lumpy pillows to work on seeing if she couldn't find a workable solution to the phone problem. She vaguely remembered being frustrated by the lack of one that she could come up with using the materials she had brought here with her. She had definitely not anticipated a need to have to fix a buggy mobile network. Archangel was supposed to be global, as Owen had pointed out in his little pique earlier. As usual, she had over-packed a bit with everything she would need to fix her computer if anything untoward happened to it: screwdrivers of various styles and sizes, screws of every size she had been able to find in her apartment and the Hub on such short notice, a miniature hammer for just in case (in case she needed to flatten a piece or in case of co-workers, it never hurt to be prepared), and plenty else besides that.

But fallen asleep she had, though a quick glance at her watch said it hadn't been for long. Maybe fifteen minutes; Gwen had been asleep nearly an hour. What had woken her up, anyway? It couldn't be the fact there was something else in the room. Yes, she was used to sleeping alone, but there was a good metre or so between Gwen's bed and hers, and apparently the other woman was too exhausted to do more than just lie there: she hadn't moved an inch that Tosh could tell, and she certainly wasn't snoring or sleepwalking to have dragged her from unconsciousness.

From the end of her bed, her computer beeped again. In large red letters over the Archangel logo, the screen read, 'Saxon Broadcast All Channels'. A few keystrokes changed the screen over to the news feed she had turned up earlier. Mister Saxon was just settling in to speak, and she spared a half second to glance over at Gwen, wondering if she should wake her up. But then he started to speak before she could make up her mind properly. "Britain, Britain, Britain... What extraordinary times we've had. Just a few years ago, this world was so small."

She felt her eyes go wide. This couldn't be going where it sounded like it was going, could it? Still, she leaned back and banged on the wall behind her bed, startling Gwen awake as well. The only reason she didn't look over to find a gun trained on her was because she had slid it out of Gwen's back pocket after Owen and Ianto left the room. "Wh-What is it?" the other woman sleepily asked, sitting up slowly, even as a second or so later, Ianto and Owen burst back into the room.

"What?" Of course Owen was surly that was a given. Anyone who knew him knew to expect something like that.

"Shush. I believe Mister Saxon is talking about aliens."

Now that got their attention, and before she knew what to do, there were three more people piled on her too hard bed with its too lumpy pillows, all of them trying to see the laptop as their Prime Minister continued speaking.

"And then they came, out of the unknown, falling from the skies." On the screen, a spaceship flew into the clock face of Big Ben, and she sat up a little straighter.

"That was when I met the Doctor!" she exclaimed quietly, conscious of not overwhelming the audio on the feed.

"You've seen it happen. Big Ben, destroyed. The spaceship over London. All those ghosts and metal men. The Christmas Star that came to kill. Time and time again, and the government told you nothing."

This time it was Owen sitting up straighter, looking utterly affronted. "And it's so much better to start a mass panic and risk hundreds of lives than to keep people in the dark and only risk a few trained people? Please."

"Well, not me, not Harold Saxon. Because my purpose here today is to tell you this: citizens of Great Britain..." Oh, something about this gave her a sinking feeling in her bones; this was not going to go well. To her side, Gwen looked almost physically ill with worry. "I have been contacted. A message for humanity from beyond the stars."

He looked to his right and nodded slightly. Another video overlaid the one of the Prime Minister, this one displaying a small metal ball. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she was categorising it for addition into the records database: not too big, about the size of a human skull, black with blinking lights on around its centre. When it spoke or the recorded message began or whatever, the voice reminded her of a nursery school child: childlike, with a gait and pitch that adults seemed to lose for the most part. "People of the Earth, we come in peace. We bring great gifts. We bring technology and wisdom and protection - and all we ask in return is your friendship."

"Don't buy it," immediately came from Owen. She couldn't help agreeing. They had me so very few non-hostile aliens in their careers at Torchwood that it was easier to believe the worst than the best. A small nod from Ianto and the determined look on Gwen's face seemed to indicate they were united in this assessment.

The camera cut back to Mister Saxon, and frankly she had to grin at the face he was making at the camera, serious situation going on or not. "Oh, sweet. And this species has identified itself. They are called the Toclafane."

She found Owen's attention turning to the rest of them. "Ringing any bells for anyone here?" She shook her head, holding on to hope for a few scant seconds that maybe she had just been out sick that day or something, but then Ianto and Gwen also shrugged in confusion. So an alien race that Torchwood had never heard of. The whole damn thing could possibly have grown more interesting, she was sure, but she wasn't too sure how.

"And tomorrow morning, they will appear, not in secret, but to all of you. Diplomatic relations with a new species will begin. Tomorrow, we take our place in the universe. Every man, woman, and child. Every teacher and chemist. Every lorry driver and farmer. Oh, I don't know, every..." he paused for a long breath, " medical student." He smiled broadly, and the feed cut back over the news announcer. Almost immediately, she cut the volume nearly off and leaned back.

All four of them sat in a sort of stunned silence for several long moments, gazing at the laptop like it had done a particularly impressive trick, before Ianto finally gathered his thoughts and spoke. "I do hope Torchwood Two or U.N.I.T. are involved in this. Otherwise it stands to get very out of hand very quickly."

"And if the Americans get involved, it'll just get worse," Owen complained bitterly. "So we have to operate and hunt our aliens in utter secrecy-"

"Except you don't know what that word means," the other man fired right back.

"-but Mister Saxon gets to announce his on television? On his first day on the job at that! Where's the justice in that?"

"Maybe it's because the aliens he's dealing with are supposedly friendly?" she hazarded a guess. "While we have the ones who want to play Jack the Ripper. It makes a difference, I suppose.

"At least they aren't playing at being John Christie or Peter Sutcliffe." Unsurprisingly that came from Gwen. And somehow comparing their aliens to serial killers made the situation that much more bizarre. "Do you suppose he knew about these... Toclafane before he sent us out here?"

Owen shuddered. "I don't even want to consider it. Why take us out of the picture when there are aliens coming, after all?"

"We do have a bit of a reputation of shooting first and asking questions later," Ianto voiced his opinion softly. "If these aliens are as harmless and, forgive the term, child-like as they seem," and good, someone else had gotten the same 'child' feel from the aliens, "then maybe it's so peace can be negotiated. 'Diplomatic relations with a new species', and all that, as he said."

"There will probably be follow-ups, if you want to stay around to watch," she offered and promptly winced to herself. No way Owen would let that pass by.

And of course, he didn't. "Sorry to disappoint you, Tosh, but even I don't sleep with someone on the first date." She winced again to herself; a crack like that was no doubt assured to set Gwen off in turn, and from the way he looked vaguely uncomfortable, she could just bet he realised it as well.

"Is this a new rule, then?" Right on cue, as she had predicted and Owen had clearly anticipated as well. Gwen probably would not appreciate it in the least that she was at least this predictable to them, but in the face of something like it looked they were facing, it was good to laugh; even Ianto cracked a faint smile.

There wasn't going to be a lot of time for humour soon, something told her, after all.

* * *

She had deliberately taunted Owen for the chance to lighten the situation some. For a while it had worked like a dream, far better than some of her plans she made when she wasn't exhausted. Perhaps she needed to make more plans when she was only half-awake, she thought in vague amusement.

Shortly after Mister Saxon's second broadcast of the day, Ianto had gone out to try to get them all coffee. They were all definitely too awake now to try to go back to sleep, after all. Once he'd returned, with the promised coffee and a few light snacks as well, though, they had sat down and started going through the files they had with them. There weren't that many, just what they hadn't cleaned out of their bags from other trips and what she herself had had in her bag and hadn't bothered removing before they had left Cardiff. It had also been amusing seeing what files were available: the grave majority were the files she had had on the Doctor, but there were also some notes on disappearing motorists in Brecon Beacons left over from their nearly disastrous trip to the Welsh countryside (They were sure to never get Owen to go camping again, and frankly she had lost a bit of interest in it herself as well, only species in the universe to camp or not), one or two concerning Guy Wildman and Sandra Applegate and missing nuclear fuel rods ("Not our best job there, but at least we didn't let Cardiff flood," Tosh cast in her opinion), and even a few on the rewired pig and Downing Street bombing.

That last last set of files had naturally led to some fairly good-natured teasing from Owen, while she and Ianto sat around the room, files open near them, grinning broadly. "Don't you ever throw anything away, Toshiko?" he was still going on.

Apparently Tosh was taking a page from her book, as she picked up an empty sugar packet and threw it at Owen, sitting on Gwen's bed. It didn't have the momentum to make the distance, though, and ended up falling to the floor between the two beds. "It taught me a very valuable lesson." Tosh's affectedly prim voice utterly did not match her behaviour nor the grin on her face. "If it looks like a pig in a spacesuit, it might indeed be a pig in a spacesuit."

Gwen opened her mouth to speak and ask if that was anything like something looking the Rift grabbing people but really was ritualistic cannibals doing their once a decade equivalent of a midnight snack, when the computer flashed another news update concerning the Prime Minister; it had apparently been a simple thing for their resident computer genius to add a search for the Doctor back on to her already running search after the Prime Minister’s first speech. She leaned back on Tosh's bed so she could see the computer's screen, out of the corner seeing Owen and Ianto moving to Tosh's other side to watch - and she promptly felt her blood run cold.

Right there on BBC 24 was a picture of the Doctor, a little blurry and shot with his head down but definitely the Doctor. Large letters across the screen declared 'NATIONWIDE HUNT FOR TERRORIST SUSPECTS', while the scrolling text continued 'Prime Minister Saxon has taken the terror threat to a maximum, closed all ports and ordered an unprecedented nationwide search for three suspects'. But even that wasn't a third as disturbing as what the announcer was saying: "The ringleader who goes by the name of "the Doctor", with a second Martha Jones, and a Jack Harkness," she had to wonder if this was what people felt like right before they passed out from shock, "who also identifies himself as 'the Captain'. They are known to be armed and extremely dangerous."

When the topic changed, Tosh leaned forward and switched the news feed back to a background program, staring at the screen in undisguised shock. A half glance to her side showed that the two men look equally as surprised as Tosh and as she felt, but she wasn't too surprised that Owen recovered his voice first. No, what got her was that the first thing he did was look over at her and intone, "You might have been right." Confusion must have shown on her face because he elaborated, "That Jack might be with the Doctor willingly. How did you know?"

She shook her head, suddenly all too conscious of all the attention being focussed on her. "I didn't. I just..." She trailed off, trying to think of what to say that wouldn't be a complete lie but would answer the question. She could tell them about Jack's 'right kind of doctor', she supposed, but it was really more Jack's story to tell if he decided he wanted them to know. "It just seemed like that, if Jack was being held against his will, he would have found a way to contact us. It's what he would expect us to do, at least, if the situations were reversed."

Owen nodded as if that explanation was perfectly acceptable, pushing himself to his feet; something in the back of his eyes told her, though, that they would discussing this in greater detail when they were alone. "All right. We need to get some rest for real now, people. Once night falls, we're going back out there to see if we can't find a few aliens; that's not too long now, so we need to grab what sleep we can. Tosh, you'll let us know if there are any more reports?"

She nodded. "Of course."

"And the broadcast with the Toclafane will be tomorrow, right?"

Again Tosh nodded. "Eight o'clock London time, so around noon here. It promises to be interesting."

* * *

Gwen was keeping secrets. That was all he could say with any degree of certainty, and that annoyed him. In fact, with everything else that was going on at the moment, with Captain Jack gone and apparently working in collusion with the Doctor, the Prime Minister sending them halfway across the globe the day before he revealed a new and apparently friendly species of aliens had made contact with him, the phones still being down and no amount of persuasion was getting anyone around here to let them use a phone to call internationally for some reason, the utter lack of the aliens they were sent here to locate, and him having to share a room with the tea boy, when he added in Gwen's new-found closed-mouth policy, it was everything he could do not to give into the urge to start raving like a madman and possibly shooting things.

And when had she gotten so good at avoiding him when he wanted to have it out with her, yell a bit, and in general give her hell till she told him the truth, the complete and total truth? He had tried to get her to come with him last night to look for the aliens, but she'd vanished with Toshiko almost before he could even think to ask her to come with him. And of course, now Toshiko and the tea boy were in the room as well, so he didn't want to start demanding answers. It'd end up going sour fast.

Well, that was fine. She could ignore him all she wanted right now. He'd corner her eventually and find out just what was going on in the little mind of hers. It wasn't like there was anywhere she could go: they were in a foreign country, not a one of them spoke the language, and the translator tool was in his and the tea boy's room. So they could sit all piled on Tosh's and Gwen's beds again, eating what pretended to be chips from wherever the tea boy had gone to get them something almost like a meal, and complain as President Winters droned on and on. Seriously it was getting to the point where he wanted to chunk a stale almost-chip at the screen and hope for it to go through and hit the man. Bloody annoying git.

Over on the desk, one of the mobiles - he wasn't sure which of the ones over there it was - beeped that it was through charging. Bit silly to recharge them when they weren't carrying a signal, but all four of them had completely drained the batteries on their mobiles trying to get through to Jack with no luck. He had found himself wishing one of them had thought to bring their personal one with them: they might have succeeded in getting through. After all, if their wildest conspiracy theories were correct, maybe it was just their work phones that were blocked, though that wasn't a theory he really wanted to invest too much time in trying to prove.

A bit reluctantly, he tuned back into the man speaking on the news feed, since he was finally moving past the 'blah-blah-my fellow Americans-blah-blah-historical moment-blah-blah' bits. "...great day for humanity. And I ask you now, I ask of the human race to join with me in welcoming our friends. I give you, the Toclafane."

And there they were, four of them anyway, four small black balls with blinking lights. Gwen reached over him for the complimentary notepad and pen and pen and started sketching them down. "What, don't think we're going to see them again?" he demanded, still a bit peeved that she had managed so well to avoid letting him question her.

"Doesn't hurt to be thorough." And while he probably could find fault with that statement, right now he didn't want to, not with aliens on the news. At least the television station here was broadcasting it as well, though he couldn't imagine anyone not picking up a historical event like this, blah blah blah. Dear God, his mind was starting to pick up on Winters' babbling.

"...welcome you to the Planet Earth and its associated moon."

This time he did throw the chip he'd been just about to try to choke down at the television. "Jesus Christ, what a wan-"

"You're not the Master."

They exchanged a worried look among them as the things - the Toclafane - continued to speak. No, 'whine' might be a better word for it. "We like the Mister Master."

"We don't like you!"

"This isn't going to be good," Tosh murmured, biting down on one of her knuckles worriedly. At his side, Gwen had stilled in her very rough sketching attempt. On the other bed with Tosh, Ianto's hand had gone white around his coffee cup he was gripping it so tightly; frankly it was a wonder the paper hadn't torn under the pressure.

"I... can be master if you so wish. I will accept mastery over you if that is God's will." Winters was floundering, that much was immediately obvious. He was completely out of his depth, and it didn't look like there was any way he was getting back into his depth with his dignity intact. Still, he could stand to see the man taken down a peg or two.

"Man is stupid."

"Master is our friend."

"Where's my Master? Pretty please?"

In the history of televised blunders, this one had all the potential to be the biggest and the worst ever. Of course the Americans just had to get involved and now it had all gone to shit. But still... 'the Master'? What did that mean? Better still, who?

"Oh, all right then, it's me!" What? Why was the Prime Minister jumping to his feet and grinning like a deranged clown? What did he mean it was him? "Ta-da!" Or a deranged salesman perhaps instead? "Sorry, sorry, I have this effect. People just get obsessed. Is it the smile? Is it the aftershave? Is it the capacity to laugh at myself? I don't know. It's crazy!"

"What the hell?" And with that, Gwen just about summed up everything he was thinking. Probably Tosh and Ianto too.

"Saxon, what are you talking about?" Winters demanded on the screen, the cameras snapping back and forth between them, trying to keep up with one of the world's weirdest conversations. And frankly, for once, he was in agreement with Winters.

He wouldn't want to be in the man's shoes, though, as Mister Saxon - the Master? Master of what? - turned to stare at him, the camera zooming in on his face. "I'm taking control, Uncle Sam, starting with you." The camera held tight on his face as he glanced to his side at one of the Toclafane hovering there. "Kill him."

Tosh's hands clapped over her mouth as Winters exploded into red confetti, for lack of a better way to think of it; his brain seemed to have frozen, and no description was horrible enough for what he had just seen. For an irreverent split second, all he could think was that he was glad Jack hadn't done that when he shot him. Come to think of it, that was about the same expression Tosh had worn when he pulled the trigger on their boss, though without quite as much of the personal horror. Oh well, that was probably because she didn't personally know Winters. Poor bastard.

The cameras captured guns appearing on people he had just been assuming were dignitaries of some sort, not guards or anything. People were screaming. And Mister Saxon, the Master of something, maybe, was laughing almost hysterically, all but bouncing as he clapped his hands and dashed up the stairs to where Winters had stood a few scant seconds before, yelling for the guards as he did. A moment later, he noted Lucy Saxon - Where did she figure into all this anyway? - hurry up to stand by his side to the tune of said guards ordering people not to move.

"Now then!" The cameras zoomed in close on Mister Saxon, and frankly he found himself leaning back from the screen. Somehow Gwen's hand was in his, and she was gripping it so tightly that it hurt. This was real and it was one of the most horrible things he'd seen in all his time in Torchwood and it was real and they were watching it on tele like it wasn't their job to stop this sort of thing from happening - and by God, it was real. That was all he could focus on.

It was really happening. Their Prime Minister was working with aliens and had just blown up the American President on television. It should be utterly surreal, but the pain from her grip on his hand was just enough to remind him it was real. "Owen," she whispered, almost too low to hear.

"Peoples of the earth, please attend carefully..."

"Well, it's not half cold."

She fixed Owen with a dark glare. "After all the complaining last time we left Cardiff, I never thought I'd hear you say something like that."

"Well, it's not exactly home, but it's definitely not the bloody Welsh countryside. Less of that horrible smelling grass stuff for starters, and the locals seem less likely to try to kill, skin, disembowel, and eat us, but that's just my first impression. They've yet to disprove it though; that's always good."

Out of the corner of her eyes, she noted Tosh and Ianto were beginning to look a bit green, and Tosh went as far as to set her food back down. That wasn't exactly something she wanted so graphic a reminder of either, and she hadn't had half the experience those two had at the hands of those wretched cannibals either. She hadn't been able to eat meat for a week afterwards, after hearing that horrid man comparing Ianto to veal, after all, and frankly, she had actually thrown up on Rhys for even mentioning meat on the very first day after she'd come home.

"Thank you, Owen." It might be her imagination or Ianto's voice might be shaking just slightly. Amazing: Tosh mentioning a friend getting hepatitis off roadside burgers didn't phase him, but bringing back up the cannibals, now that definitely got a reaction. Not a pleasant one either, but she hadn't really been expecting one. "Now I won't be able to look at anyone without wondering if they mean to eat me."

"Probably get a better meal of you than me, mate. They would probably think I'm a bit too stringy to be a good meal." How odd. She actually couldn't tell from Owen's voice if he was being sarcastic, cruel, or if this was some sort of bloke thing. A glance over at Tosh showed the Asian woman wore an almost identical puzzled expression to the one she felt on her own face.

"You shouldn't belittle yourself, Owen. All the running you field people do, you should be nice and lean." Jesus Christ, it was a bloke thing. It was some sort of weird bloke bonding ritual designed to be incomprehensible to females and disgusting to the population in general. She knew to expect weird things like that from Owen, but Ianto... She'd have never thought in a million years he would join in on something like this. Watch from the sidelines and offer little one line comments, perhaps, since he'd done things like that before on the very rare occasion, but actually get into a pissing contest over who would be a better meal for cannibals with Owen? Perish the thought.

"Still, they'd get a better meal off you. If we get cannibals again, you should cover yourself in ketchup and make yourself an appealing target so the rest of us can get away."

"How about we cover the pair of you in ketchup and let you both be the sacrificial lambs so Gwen and I can get away? We'll promise to remember your sacrifice in the annals of Torchwood for at least, say, ten minutes." Tosh offered with a smile. She felt herself grinning as well, if only because the others were as well. It felt good to be able to joke and laugh with them. After all, it had been the lack of someone to talk about her work problems with that had driven her into Owen's bed, at least partially, so if there was an opportunity for them all to relax and do things like this as a team from here on out, that would be a huge relief for her. For all of them, she suspected, and maybe even Jack as well. They were a fairly small team, after all; there was no reason one person to be excluded, as Ianto had once been and Jack sometimes was.

Still, this was a bit like a holiday. Actually, no, in fact, it was a lot like a holiday, and strange besides that. After all, they had been here for a very long night and part of a day, checking out the area as best they could, given that their equipment tended not to work too well in the cold beyond their hotel rooms, and yet they had still managed not to see any sign of the aliens they had come here after. Either the one in Cardiff was a terrible example of these creatures' stealth, holding true to their adolescent theory, or the creatures had moved on to a new locale with possibly better weather, or they were gone in some other manner... or worse of all, they had never existed. She wasn't really fond of the last theory: it would mean they were here without a purpose. She was giving it one more day of searching before she made her thoughts on the matter abundantly clear.

And the last theory also brought another dark thought chasing on its tail: if someone was sending them off on a merry chase, then who? The information had come from the office of Harold Saxon himself, and something in her prevented her from thinking he would be willing to lie to them for something as dangerous as this. For what purpose would he do something like that anyway? Why get one of the only forces in the United Kingdom with the know-how to fight aliens out of the way, out of the country even, chasing aliens that apparently only existed on or near the Cardiff Rift? No, even Harriet Jones she could believe would betray them like this, but not Harry Saxon. Not a chance. But that could mean someone in Mister Saxon's staff was corrupt...

But speaking of Harry Saxon... "Tosh?" That caught their attention, turning it back to her. "Isn't it about time for the Prime Minister's first speech?" She was interested in seeing it. In light of everything that was happening right now, he should have something to say that might pique their interests. And Mister Saxon was quite bright, after all, being the man behind the Archangel Network: he might even have something to say, in a veiled way that might pertain to what they were doing.

"You actually want to hear a politician give a speech?" Owen sounded derisive, but she would note that he was moving towards the television, trying to see if he could pick up the news in a language they would understand. They had a few nifty U.N.I.T. gadgets with them, one of which was at least portable enough for them to carry with them and get a general translation of what people wearing saying (About like running a foreign language through Babelfish, Owen had cynically declared, and frankly, none of them could disagree), but it didn't work worth a damn on televisions. And even if it did, they only had the one and the screen was tiny, designed more for ease of portability than several people around it trying to all read what it was saying at once.

The lack of a clear station to see what they wanted to apparently frustrated Owen, given the hearty slap he gave the television and give it a few choice words regarding what he thought of it. "I'm getting a clear streaming feed here!" Tosh announced though, saving the day via laptop again. Ianto quickly rearranged the chairs and they dropped down in front of the desk as she finished setting up the visuals, muttering to herself as she completed the commands necessary to keep it running off a satellite link she had set up on the flight over.

Poor Toshiko, on that flight. She had never realised the other woman was a bit afraid of flying, but once they were in the air and somewhere over France, she'd figured it out quickly. She had never seen anyone cling to a seat with such a white-knuckled grip since the last time a designated driver got pissed along with everyone else and conveniently forgot to mention that little fact till the car was in motion. They had come up with things to talk about, discussing their ideas on the aliens that they simply could not find and what to expect, but she suspected Tosh had still spent a lot of that flight thinking of everything except that they were thousands of miles above the ground. Who knew what she had come up with in that time?

When the announcer's voice filled the small room that she and Tosh were sharing, she almost had to smile. It was good to have a touch of home, especially here on what was almost a working holiday. "Mister Saxon has returned from the palace and is greeting the crowds inside Saxon Headquarters."

"Bit like being at home, isn't it?" she commented in the lull as the new Prime Minister smiled to the assembled people.

"Nah, screen's too small." She quickly balled up a piece of paper from the complimentary writing pad and tossed it past Ianto to hit him on the head.

"I'd be watching it at the Hub on the bigger screens in the conference room myself." She almost gaped to hear that come from Ianto.

"And the phones would be working, and there would be pizza on the way," Owen finished. "And decent beer."

"Nutters, the both of you," she muttered under her breath.

"Children... Do I need to separate all three of you?" She couldn't resist grinning at Tosh for the dry yet long-suffering comment. It had been just too perfect. And just a bit better than watching Saxon kiss his wife on the screen; Lucy Saxon had always looked just a bit too pretty and doll-like for her tastes.

Mister Saxon stepped down a few more steps from the rest of his entourage and spoke, the very tone of his voice one of confidence, the air of someone who believed in what he was saying. It was also one of a friend confiding in another, and she figured that was what she had liked so much about it from the beginning. No matter what he was saying or who he was saying it to, it always sounded like he was talking to her in particular and no-one else. "This country has been sick. This country needs healing." She found herself nodding in agreement, and if she wasn't mistaken, she wasn't the only one in the room doing so. "This country needs medicine. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that what this country really needs right now is a doctor."

He was smiling at the screen, but she couldn't make herself pay attention to it. She was just in too much shock, and again, she wasn't the only one. Of course, though, Owen was the first to recover his ability to speak. "He just called him out. Mister Saxon just called the Doctor out."

She found her own voice next, also perhaps no surprise. "He just called the Doctor out on television. All over the world... He just called the Doctor out for the world to see."

"You saw that, right?" Owen continued as if she hadn't even spoken. He turned to stare briefly at each of them as he spoke. "He just did what I think he did, didn't he?" If she didn't know, she would think he was a kid at Christmas, with how brightly his eyes were shining, like Father Christmas had just brought him the toy he had always wanted. If he wasn't a full-grown man who happened to also be her ex, it might have actually been cute.

"Do you have a crush on him now or something?" Tosh piped up, switching off the feed when it was clear there was to be nothing more at the moment. Her voice was just a bit softer and shakier than Gwen had heard it in a while. And why not? After all, their brand new Prime Minister had just issued a challenge to the alien described in such detail in their original charter and hundreds of documents since. Easily hundreds, maybe more. The charter and all subsequent documents about the Doctor and Rose Tyler penned by Queen Victoria and her few surviving entourage - or rather photocopies of those original missives - had been among the materials she had taken with her to her hotel room not that long ago: hard to believe it had only been the night before last. It was even harder to believe Jack had been gone only three days. What was hardest of all to fathom, though, was that they were still alive; she would have never thought they would have made it this long running alone. As many times as Jack had bailed their arses out of sticky situations before, after all...

"Well, maybe I do now." She nearly got whiplash whipping her head back around to stare wide-eyed at Owen. "I mean, that takes... I mean... I mean, the man just basically told the Doctor 'here I am, come and get me' - all over the tele! I don't think anyone has ever had that much nerve in the history of the fucking planet. I hope someone back home recorded that: I'm going to have to watch that again."

She laughed as he reached for his phone and started putting in numbers and shook her head in a bit of disbelief. "You are just so sweet, Owen."

"Like a schoolboy with his first crush." She resisted the urge to pat Tosh on the back for that one. As far as she was concerned, it was a bit masterful. He flipped them off, hanging up his phone without saying a word, and she felt her face fall even as she saw the same thing happening to both Tosh and Ianto. Toshiko was the one to ask the question on the rest of their minds, though. "The phones are still down?"

He tossed it a bit roughly on the desk, so that it skittered a bit, bumping against the side of the laptop. "So much for Archangel being worldwide. Still doesn't work in bumfuck Nepal or the damn Welsh countryside. Can't call out and no calls are coming in. Just the damn 'your network is being upgraded, please continued to be patient' message. I'd like to find whoever recorded that damn message and shoot them. No, tie them up and make them listen to it for hours."

Impressive. She wasn't overly fond of that message herself, but then she hadn't kept trying to get through like Owen had. She had to wonder if there was someone back there Owen was worried about or if he was just be stubborn. If it were anyone else, she would definitely choose the former, without hesitation. It was Owen, though, and she knew Owen so well. It could very well be either option, but if she had to place bets one of the two, she'd go with the second. Not that she was ruling out the other, but the latter just seemed so much more likely with him. Though Owen did seem to have a women in every bar, for a time herself included, he just didn't get attached enough to warrant this much annoyance. It had to be stubbornness.

"Look," Ianto stepped in, his voice soothing, "we're all a little stressed. It's been a trying week, and none of us have gotten any sleep at least twenty-six hours. After all, we got off the plane, checked in and dropped our belongings off, and went straight to searching for these aliens. A bit of sleep wouldn't be a bad thing right now, for us all. Maybe if we look at this in a few hours with a fresher eye, we'll find something we missed. Some vital clue, perhaps."

Tosh nodded, obviously leaping on the suggestion. "That sounds like a good idea, Ianto. We could do with some sleep. I'm going to leave the laptop running in case anything else important comes through."

She hopped into the conversation, grinning as broadly as she could stand to. She hadn't even felt the exhaustion till Ianto brought it up. She'd barely slept at the hotel as it was - maybe an hour to two, three tops, between finishing up her analysis (a copy of which had in theory been sent back to London with Mister Saxon's assistant) and getting up to run photocopies of said analysis - and suddenly the exhaustion was overwhelming. All she wanted to do was sleep. "Now, scoot, boys. This is the girls' room."

She didn't even wait for them to leave, instead dropping down still fully clothed on the small bed on the right side of the room. She faintly heard the scraping of chairs over thin carpeting, but that was about the extent of it before the darkness swam up to swallow her.

* * *

"She's asleep already?" Ianto sounded a bit surprised. Personally Tosh wasn't in the least. From what she was gathering from Owen's face, he wasn't either. This had apparently been the needed impetus for his temper to wane a bit. They had all had a stressful few days. No, more than a stressful set of days: a stressful few weeks, maybe even months. It had been a bit non-stop, after all.

Still she shrugged out her thoughts on the matter. "We have all been driving on empty for a bit now. Collapsing sooner or later was inevitable."

Owen yawned broadly, stretching as much as his injury would allow. "I have to say I think she has a marvellous idea. I think I'm going to do the same." And he was out the door, heading to the adjoining room he and Ianto had been assigned before anyone else could put in another word to him.

Ianto winced slightly. She had to say she felt a bit embarrassed as well, the two of them the only ones still conscious and/or in the room. Those two had both been pushing themselves too hard, and while she had noted it, she had done nothing about the situation. She had let them keep pushing themselves till, like now, they dropped. Well, that settled it: she would make a terrible leader if Jack didn't come back soon. And for now all she could hope was that nothing happened in the next few hours.

"We'll be next door, I suppose then," he said softly, obviously trying not to wake Gwen up, unlike Owen. Of course, Owen would know how deep a sleeper Gwen may or may not be. The other possibility was that he was also tired and just didn't give a damn. "The room to the right of this one. Just knock on the wall if anything comes up."

"Of course. Sleep well, Ianto." She smiled a bit tiredly at him as he left the room, closing the door with a quiet click.

She was nearly as exhausted as he had seemed to be. The day before had been nerve-racking, from the heightened fear - no, of absolute terror - that the alien had induced in her which had left her afraid of her own team-mates while it had her in its grasp, to finding out there was an alien in their basement that had made her forget all about her apparently seeing it, to the woman from Harold Saxon's office showing with this assignment, to the plane trip, to searching an unfamiliar area for pitch black coloured aliens. She did wish they had had the time to properly examine the alien before they had been sent off here; abilities like it seemed to possess could be a great asset to Torchwood if utilised properly. A bit like the invisible lift, but perhaps something that did not just randomly appear out of nowhere during the immediate aftermath of the earthquake a few years ago.

She couldn't tell if it was the exhaustion catching up with them all, but they all seemed a bit off lately. Maybe it was a combination of the stress they were all under suddenly multiplying, or the disappearance - no, apparent kidnapping, to be honest - of their leader at a time when they definitely needed him most, or the odd circumstances and place they now found themselves in, but they all were off their game, just a tiny bit, as of late. It was distressing, to say the least.

As it stood, she just hoped they survived to make it home and find Jack. Surely that wasn't too much to ask.

...Was it?

It shouldn't have surprised her to see Owen and Gwen leave together and come back together. They were thicker than thieves sometimes, back when they were sleeping together and again now that they weren't. They were acting like they were friends again, which was both a relief and a bit worrisome. She didn't relish the thought of them teaming up against her or Ianto or both of them. In a retaliatory war, she had the distinct feeling that those two would win: she had never been good at those sorts of things, and she just couldn't picture Ianto stooping to pranks and the like when they couldn't even get him to join them in a game of basketball from time to time. Yes, if there was ever a Torchwood prank war, she and Ianto were claiming Jack on their side. He'd probably be rather amazing at it, she could just bet. That would be the only way she and Ianto would win though. Otherwise, it wouldn't even begin to be a fair fight.

And all of this, as random and utterly out of context as it seemed, was better than thinking about that she was in the air. She had never been fond of flying, probably a good bit of the reason why she had never gotten to see the Himalayas nor more of the other sights of the world she wanted to see before now: sometimes even the thought of flying made her ill. Sometimes she could barely stand to look at planes, and Owen's girlfriend Diane's plane terrified her; she hadn't even been able to stand it land when they had gotten the tip that something that looked like a Fifties plane was picked up on radar. And now she had to make herself sit through a several hours' long flight.

When she'd initially gotten so excited about the prospect of going to the Himalayas, she had managed to forget it would mean flying. She'd managed to make herself forget it would mean hours trapped in a small box of thin metal, with almost nothing to protect them from the ground should they crash. Statistically, she knew she was more likely to die in a car crash than in a plane crash, but that didn't mean a lot to her. Thanks to Owen's girlfriend, now she had another worry to add to the 'crashing and dying' list: there was now also the concern that they could fly through the Rift and wind up in their future - or even worse, some time in the past. They could end up in the twenty-second century or conversely the eighteenth, either of which time zones this plane would very much be an anachronism. Or, to make matters worse, now that the Rift was more active - and they had managed to pick up a particularly dangerous alien through it - it was entirely possible that they might end up on another planet altogether.

One more thing she had apparently let herself forget till they were about to board the plane: she would be stuck in a very confined space with no way of escape for a long period time with Owen, Gwen, and Ianto. When it finally hit, she had immediately tried to volunteer to go back and mind the Hub till the others returned. Mister Saxon's assistant had politely but firmly reminded her that they were dealing with three aliens that two of them had a great deal of trouble taking down, that they would need the entire team - as much of it as was available with Jack missing - to take down the rest. So here she was, seated on one of the few seats on this small plane that didn't have a window near it, desperately gripping the armrests and trying not to jump at every slight fluctuation in the plane's otherwise almost smooth path through the skies, and trying to ignore the fact that her co-workers were insane.

At least Ianto was steady and slow in his insanity: he was making tea. That was good: she didn't think that she could take coffee right now. She was plenty enough jumpy as it was. Gwen was seated next to the window with her head leaning against it, staring out in nearly mute fascination yet looking entire too lost in thought to be paying any attention to the scenery outside. Owen had, improbably, fallen asleep just after take-off. How, she had just no idea. She could never manage to do something like that before; she couldn't manage to do something like that now. It was all she could do to keep from screaming in sheer terror and keep screaming till they reached Nepal. Simply breathing almost normally was enough of a task to keep her a bit busy for another half hour or so perhaps.

"Here." Ianto's voice cut through the panic for a moment as a cup of tea appeared before her. Bless the man for being a rock... a rock that made damn good tea. He had even the decency to make the tea how she liked it and not fill the cup; that was good, given how her hands were shaking when she managed to unclench them from the arm rests. She nodded her thanks, taking a quiet sip. "I didn't realise you don't fly well," he observed casually, sinking slowly into the seat next to hers.

"We haven't had to fly anywhere before as a group," she returned quietly. "It's just a bit of a phobia. I've never enjoyed it, no matter how nice the plane is."

He glanced around appreciatively. "Yes, Mister Saxon certainly spared no expense on our accounts, didn't he? A private plane to make up for how quickly we had to leave was a nice touch. Though I think we would have all preferred to wait to do anything till we found Jack..."

"That's for certain." She fidgeted slightly in her seat. It was all she could do not to full-out squirm uncomfortably. Talking about feelings hadn't been her forte even before the pendant and it was doubly not so now. "How are you holding up, Ianto?"

He looked almost as discomfited as she felt, to her relief and consternation. "I'm all right. Thank you for asking."

"I'm sure Jack is fine," she offered hesitantly. She really was rubbish at this. "And if he's not, he will be soon. You know Jack: he always bounces right back."

"Not always." His tone was a bit dark and sad. "Not even Jack bounces right back from everything." Abruptly she was reminded of him locking himself in his office after the list of the dead at Canary Wharf came in, and when Estelle died and the fairies took the child, and after meeting the other Captain Jack Harkness. No, not even Jack could bounce right back from everything.

The latter two times she'd seen Jack not bounce immediately had been intensely personal, though, not like Canary Wharf. Even if she still wondered sometimes when she was trying to fall asleep at night if Bilis Manger had deliberately thrown the other Captain Jack in front of their Jack to distract him, to keep him from noticing details that normally he'd have seen and she'd missed, so that Owen would have to open the Rift, so that the Rift would be weakened, so that he could tempt them with the fear of losing what they cared for most or regaining what they loved more than anything else in this world, so that Abaddon the Great Beast and Destroyer of Worlds could be released, it had been so very personal. In one night, only a few short hours, it seemed like Jack had fallen in love and had his heart completely broken by having to leave. And if Gwen's worst, darkest theory was correct and it was Jack who had met Estelle during World War Two, then he had to see a long-time love murdered senselessly. So what was so importantly about Canary Wharf? Who had Jack lost at Torchwood One?

"Still..." It wasn't good that her voice was so hesitant and nervous, was it? She trailed off, cleared her throat to try to alleviate the problem, and gave it another shot. "Still, we will get Jack back." She placed her free hand on his arm. "And if he's not all right, then we can just let Owen shoot whoever hurt him. That should cheer him right up."

"You make me sound like a gun-happy freak." Owen didn't even open his eyes when he spoke, though Gwen did turn away from the window, an amused grin on her face. "Do I sound American now or something?"

"Nope," Gwen fired back, "definitely not an American. A git, an idiot, and a freak - in your own words - but definitely not American."

"Oi!" He swiped in her general direction, but she dodged easily with plenty of room to spare. "Is it Pick on Owen Day or something?"

"I'm behind then." She nearly burst out laughing at Ianto's deadpan comment.

"In that case, it's just our patriotic duty to insult you," she joined in. "So no offence, Owen, but it's for the Queen. You understand."

Gwen was giggling and grinning. If Owen was amused, he was hiding it well, though. All she could read on his face was annoyance and a sense of putting up with more than he wanted to, but he wasn't cursing them out yet, so maybe that should be as good a clue as any that he wasn't as angry as he might be trying to seem. After a moment or so of letting them have their fun, though, he finally opened his eyes, sat up, and seriously asked, "Do either of you remember the alien Gwen and I brought in last night?"

She shook her head, and to her side, she could see Ianto doing the same. "I know what you were saying about it this morning and what Gwen said on the phone, but I don't remember seeing it. Did I see it?"

"Did either of us?" questioned the man beside her. "Because I don't remember it either."

"This kind of alien can make you think it's not there. It can make you forget all about it." And that might be the most horrific thing she'd heard in a while, and considering what they dealt with on a regular basis, that Owen saying this was the worst was fairly impressive. But then Gwen had to go and top it.

"We think it was also behind what happened this morning, where we started feeling like prey and predator animals. It did it again right before... before..."

"Before it tried to kill us and we ended up having to kill us instead," Owen finished, shooting her an indescribable look. There was annoyance still but also worry and concern and, maybe, guilt. Why would he look guilty? Maybe they'd had it out like real exes, yelling and screaming at each other under its influence. Though from what she could recall from this morning, what had pierced the haze surrounding her conscious mind, there hadn't been a lot of talking or even yelling. It had been all feelings and almost total incoherency. They weren't giving her time to think about it though. Owen was speaking again. "That's not all we have to look out for, though. The one we captured managed to kill two people that we found before we brought him in. We're fairly certain we captured a juvenile version, and these look more full-grown. It was about two and a half metres tall; these are going to be bigger."

"The good news is," Gwen stepped back in with some of the most wonderful things she'd heard in at least an hour, "they're extremely sensitive to electricity. You figured that out, Tosh, and you helped us keep him unconscious till we got him locked up downstairs, Ianto."

It was so strange to hear things she didn't remember doing only yesterday being discussed so frankly. "How odd," Ianto was saying, obviously feeling much the same way. "I don't remember a thing about it. That's quite a talent they have."

"Isn't it though?" Gwen sounded grim, and frankly she couldn't blame the other woman in the least. "The electricity only works for about half an hour, at least on the adolescent version, so bear that in mind."

"I think its scales are a bit more resilient than they look. They're not bullet-proof," Owen chimed back in. It was not quite a tag-team conversation, but it wasn't far off from it either. It can be hit, but only up close or, maybe, with high impact rounds. Chest and abdomen wounds will slow it down and even hurt, but headshots are the only thing we know that kill them."

"So, big, bad, telepathic, and hard to kill?" she summed up, feeling her stomach sink - and just from the plane ride this time.

"More empathic than telepathic," the other woman corrected her, "but otherwise pretty much on the nose. It gets in our head and controls what we feel, not what we think."

"The running theory is that it's a prey animal on... wherever it's from. It seems to trigger the aggression-fear response in things it perceives as a threat, apparently so whatever is after it will destroy one another or, if there's just one, think of... well, whatever is the biggest, baddest thing on its planet and make the predator paralysed till this thing can get away. Don't assume that's correct, though," Owen advised. "This is all conjecture, except for what we observe."

"Ability to make us forget," Gwen hopped back into the conversion to remind them, "and inducing the fear-aggression response." She winced slightly. "Oh yeah, and big claws, big teeth... just big all around."

Oh, Owen looked like he wanted to add something awful to that, probably something laden with innuendo that she wouldn't get right away, Ianto would disdainfully ignore whatever he said, and Gwen might end up hitting him. And if Jack were here... She shook her head slightly. But Jack wasn't here. They wouldn't be doing any searching for him while they were gone - they certainly wouldn't be in or even near what seemed to be the Doctor's location of choice: England, and of lately, specifically London, not to mention that, besides physical proximity, there probably wouldn't be time. If half of what Gwen and Owen were saying about the creatures were correct, then it would take everything they had to capture or destroy the things. Speaking of which...

"Does Mister Saxon want them captured and brought in alive or killed?" she had to ask. It could end up making a difference in how they proceeded from here on out. On some level it almost galled her to think that they might just have to kill these beings without giving them a chance. She'd never really thought it prior to a few months ago; Gwen had wrecked so much change on the way they had operated, especially compared to when Yvonne Hartman had been the Director of Torchwood, the sort of over-all leader that Jack now was. She was definitely not complaining: it was good to see humanity slowly leaking back into this organisation. But it would be... disappointing for them to be a slightly more human group and then have to go back to what they'd been before: 'if it's alien, it's ours'.

She had never been a huge fan of that policy. No-one at the Cardiff branch was. Of course, under Yvonne, being reassigned to Cardiff, at the time little more than a listening post for the Rift, was a punishment for disagreeing with one of her rules for those people with too much talent to be gotten rid of, so a good number of the people there were of like minds. She hadn't been assigned to Cardiff: apparently Jack had specifically requested her after she had been hired. Who knew? Maybe he saw something in her CV, but it wasn't like he had ever said anything about it and she had never asked. Owen had been a troublemaker (too damn smart and too aware of it, was how Yvonne had apparently put it to Jack, if she remembered the memo he'd had her feed to the pterodactyl correctly, but it had been in her first few weeks and she was still feeling overwhelmed) and had been reassigned, as had Suzie, though she didn't recall what it was for; Suzie had been there for a long time by the time Jack hired her. Ianto had been, as far as she knew, the only person who had survived Canary Wharf to stay on with Torchwood. And Gwen was the first person to be brought on since Canary Wharf, and frankly, she didn't think Yvonne would have hired her. If she had turned up Torchwood back then, on a good day she would have been retconned heavily enough that she might not remember several weeks instead of several hours and disposed of more permanently on a bad day, but she was fairly certain Yvonne would have never let her be hired.

But that was Yvonne and the old regime, not Jack and the newer way of doing things. She might not always agree with the newer way of doing things, but even on the days when things were at their worst (the fairies... the other Captain Jack... the cannibals... Abaddon...), somehow they always seemed to get results. Maybe not always results she could stand behind and maybe not always positive results or results that could be happily discussed over a drink or two, but there were always results, always a sign that they had accomplished something. In some sense, there was always a resolution, even if it was one she wanted to scream at God, the universe, and/or Jack about the unfairness of.

"From how the little chit put it," Gwen interrupted her thoughts, "I think they want the things dead and disposed of, to prevent an international incident and from letting people know about the presence of potentially hostile aliens on Earth."

Tosh nodded in sad reluctance. "It's a wonder it hasn't gotten out already. We would want a mass panic starting when we could do something to prevent it."

"Speak for yourself," Owen opinioned. "I just want to get them before they get me."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "From Nepal? Don't be utterly daft. I don't think it could go that far quietly, and the one we found in Cardiff wasn't all that fast." She winced, obviously thinking of something that she wasn't privy to yet. It looked like she was going to elaborate though. "Just remember those two blokes it got back home: one had headphones on and the other was on a mobile phone. Neither of them was bothering to pay enough attention to get out of its way."

And they were off with the sniping again. How typical. "What? You think just because we'll be paying attention we'll be all right?"

"Well, it won't hurt! That's what makes the difference with these things."

She almost hated to get involved with one of their arguments, but there was something she had to know about. "The one we captured and killed, it killed two people?" All of them were looking at her, and she fought the urge to squirm in her seat. One more set of eyes, and she might not have been able to resist the urge. "Do I need to set up cover stories for their deaths?"

Silence descended on the plane for a long moment, before Owen finally shook his head. "No, I wouldn't think so. Anyone who saw an alien kill two full-grown men without even stopping didn't remember it five minutes later. That's how quickly it can start working on you."

"Not even that long. It kicked in on you that once, while you were feeding the Weevils, in no more than three or four minutes," the other woman disagreed.

"That quickly?" she intoned softly, already trying to take that information into account with her projections for how they should proceed. So once they sighted one of them, they couldn't afford to let the creature out of their vision for more than a few minutes, if even that, or they could possibly forget what they were tracking. What could they do, then, if they lost it? They would have to set up a way to keep in constant visual of the aliens, on top of their usual audio relay, which may need to be reconfigured for the sub-freezing weather in the mountain areas. She would need to do a test on the stun guns to make certain they worked in the cold and if there was any significant loss of power. If there were, she would have to either purchase new gear for them or find a way to alter their current weaponry to stand up to the weather.

"Yeah, that quick," Owen answered her in the affirmative. "You see them, but very shortly thereafter, you forget about them. It only seems to work with visual line of sight; you remembered Gwen telling you about the alien we had over the phone, after all, but when she turned away from it to talk to you, she forgot about it. The aggression-fear stimulation, that's more long-distance. If you recall, we were in the conference room several levels above it when it first hit us with that little trick. It has a range: moving up to the tourist shop, several more floors up, did a lot to take care of the problem."

"For us," she stepped back into the conversation, "because we have had psychic training. We know, at least in theory, what to do in case of a psychic attack, not that did it a lot of good for the original assault. We got over it quicker, at least compared to Gwen," the other woman looked over at her in something very much like embarrassment, "who hasn't had it and got her head muddled."

"There's an upside to that." Even Owen looked confused as to what the good part of what had happened to all of them and had hit Gwen herself so strongly. At least she had the decency not to make them wait long for an answer. "Because my head got so muddled, as you put it, Tosh, the first time, it was harder for it to get back in my head a second time."

Obviously this was news to Owen, if the hard frown on his face was anything to go by. She, on the other hand, thought it was thoroughly fascinating. Until now she'd been thinking of this ability like a particularly trying computer virus: very difficult to get around and possibly that the affected system would have to be completely re-hardwired to deal with the issue, but this made the problem sound a bit more organic, something that should put it more up Owen's line of expertise. "So it's like some disease: if you're exposed badly enough the first time, you develop an immunity?"

Gwen shrugged, a grin on her face that she thought was most likely mirrored on her own. "I suppose."

"That's the best news I have all day," finally dryly came from Owen. "Now we just need to figure out how to use this to our advantage."

The Himalayas... Well, Toshiko had always said that she wanted to see them at some point in her life. She'd never thought that she'd actually get to go, much less go on someone else's ticket with someone else paying her entire way. That the government might be paying for her to go there never crossed her mind, though maybe given where she worked, it should have. In the years she'd been with Torchwood, though, it had never happened; she'd been to all corners of Wales, England, Scotland, and parts of Ireland with Torchwood, but the job had never sent her out of the country before. Besides, Jack would have probably never allowed it, not if it meant he'd be stuck in Cardiff with Owen and Ianto and only Suzie to play mediator between them in the days before Gwen joined, and after that, things had just been going non-stop that it seemed they scarcely had a chance to breathe before something came up again: if it wasn't fairies, then it was cannibals, or sex aliens, or spaceships parked in Cardiff Bay, or homicidal robots, or any number of other things.

Still, such short notice! Apparently Mister Saxon wanted them on a plane within the day, and there was one waiting to take them off shortly after two in the afternoon. It only gave them a few hours to get their things together and set the Hub to order. She supposed it was bad to be glad that Ianto was having to figure out what to do with the Weevils. The pterodactyl could just be let out to hunt for her own dinners. Jack and Suzie had trained her not to eat people, something she didn't want to think about how they'd accomplished, though it had eventually been done. No-one would be eaten by the pterodactyl if she was let out, but they might end up missing some household pets - but there was nothing she could do about that on such short notice.

As it was, she was scrounging to find her thickest winter coat and wondering if it would be thick enough. It was warm enough for Cardiff winters, and this one had been particularly mild so she'd let her warmest coat drift to the back of her closet. At least she'd managed to turn up some gloves and a scarf or two. That would be helpful. If worse came to worse, she supposed, she could always buy clothes once they landed. Cardiff just probably wasn't the best place to acquire winter clothes for the Himalayas. Well, they'd just all have to make do as long as they could till they could find something better. Every last one of them were good at that, she expected.

Finally! There was the coat! She pulled it off its hanger and carefully placed it in her bag on top of her other warm clothes. At least it hadn't been June when Mister Saxon asked them to go to the other side of the world. She would hate to have to get into the boxes she usually packed her non-seasonal clothes away in for something to keep her from freezing to death in Nepal. She wasn't bothering to properly fold and place everything in yet. Right now she was just worrying about getting in it all located and at least in the vicinity of her bag while also juggling the phone and trying to explain to her neighbour that she was going to be out of town for a while and wouldn't he be so kind as to step in occasionally and make certain everything was okay and that no-one stole her car.

After she got off the phone with Mister Davies, she still needed to call her parents and let them know what was going on. She'd stop by to see them, but time was short and growing shorter the more the man on the other end of the phone droned on. Finally she managed to find a break in her idle but ceaseless conversation, made her apologies and goodbyes, and ended the call. With exaggerated carefulness, she set her phone on top of the television and complained to herself that the man didn't half have a gob. He was definitely one of those 'why use one word when twenty work just as well' type of people, the type that got her nerves on a fairly regular basis, especially when she'd had a long, hard day at work.

For the past few months, it seemed like that was all that Torchwood Three had had: long, hard days and sometimes nights at work. She really should suggest to Jack if - no, when - they got him back that they start recruit more staff. Five people was barely a skeleton staff and was only just barely that, so increasing the staff - hopefully with real people, not alien constructs sent to monitor the Rift from this side - should be sufficient to cut individual workloads. In turn that would lessen the likelihood of burnout, as well as giving them a chance to specialise more than they were at this time. Of course, if she was going to present this idea to Jack, she would have to find a way to put it that didn't sound like corporate doublespeak. He had a notorious dislike of double-speak that rivalled his hatred of fairies.

It was starting to look like she had everything that was available here to get already in her bag or in its general vicinity and mostly ready to go, once she got it properly folded and in the tote and set just inside the door. Setting herself to that task, she picked up her mobile and dialled her mother's number out of habit. It would be the best place to start with her more important calls, she decided, listening to it ring and folding her clothes up both neatly and as small as possible. Nonetheless, as the phone rang quietly in her ear from its precarious position balanced between her shoulders, she did have to hope everything was going well for the rest of the team.

There was a quick click and she involuntarily straightened as a woman's voice spoke in her ear, "Moshi moshi?"

"Moshi moshi, okaasan. Toshiko desu...."

* * *

It really all came down to timing, she supposed. She had gone with Owen to his place to get his things together, still feeling a bit guilty for making his arm worse (and he was probably completely enjoying every moment of that), so he was driving her back over to her flat (her and Rhys's flat, even if she hadn't been there for a week). She really couldn't help it, but she was dreading going there after this long away. What was she going to say if Rhys wasn't there? Just raid the place for her warmest clothes and maybe, maybe leave a quick note? 'Haven't been kidnapped but am out of country. Clean out the fridge, and don't forget to buy more milk. ~Gwen' perhaps?

But even worse, what if he was there? Then she'd have to explain where she'd been the last week and why she had never gotten around to contacting him to let him know she was all right. The truth just was never going to cut it for that. Rhys would never buy 'My boss died and it was kind of our fault, so I had to wait for him to get better, and he woke up three days later, but then he was kidnapped, so we've been trying to find it', not in a million years. Shame how the truth was not usually the best answer. But no easy lie immediately came to mind either, so she was left with no real answer to give if Rhys was there. And now she hoped he wasn't.

"I can smell you worrying from over here," Owen commented in a monotone. "Knock it off. It's annoying." From the driver's side of his car, he glanced over at her. "We'll handle your Prince Charming once we get to it."

"You're coming up to help?" she had to ask in dumb-founded shock. She could count on one hand, with four fingers left over, how many times any member of Torchwood had been in her place, and that had been Jack, when the fairies had made a right mess of the flat, burying her living room in foliage and flower petals. At that moment, she'd understood why he disliked fairies so much. At that moment, she had too. "I wouldn't exactly say no, but you know you don't have to. I can pack my bags on my own. Been doing it rather well on my own so far in fact."

He laughed, a sardonic little chuckle that, when they'd been sleeping together, had gone straight to the part of her brain that liked to scream 'sex now', smirking at her across the car. Hard to believe just two months ago, she'd have probably made him pull over so she could screw him senseless. Now it just made her smile back. "I'm not agreeing to any heavy lifting or shit like that. You can just forget about that now. I'm back-up against your boyfriend, and that's it."

"My knight in shining armour," she drawled out. "What would we do without you?"

"Oh, that one's easy. You'd all have bled to death long ago. Well, maybe not Jack. Or he would have bled to death and woken back up. How does that work anyway?"

She shrugged. "He didn't exactly give me details. All he said was that he couldn't die."

"It's more like he dies and then wakes right back up. I wonder how it happened: some kind of bleed through from the Rift we should be worried about, or knowing Jack, maybe an alien STD."

She couldn't help it and burst out laughing. "Now that sounds right up Jack's alley," she giggled. "Life lesson there then: if you get screwed by aliens, then you'll really get screwed by aliens. Do you think it - the alien, I mean - thought Jack was a good enough..."

"Gwen?" Owen interrupted, and she trailed off to look over at him curiously. "I don't want to talk about Jack's sex life. In fact, it's a topic I want us to stay off of for the rest of my life."

"Oh really? That's why we had to talk about it my first day?" she shot back. It was true, after all, and it had shocked her till she realised just how much of an enigma Jack was to his own team. Instead of talking about the aliens they had seen that day, when they went out for drinks after work, they discussed their theories on Jack, ranging from the outlandish ("He's a pensioner they brought out of retirement; he just moistures a lot, why he looks so good for his age") to the serious ("Wasn't there any other way to get the fairies to leave than for him to just give them the girl?") and everything in between. And now that the other three knew about his immortality, she could foresee many new topics of conversation about Jack coming up, with theories as wild as an alien STD or as serious as Rift radiation no doubt coming up then too. And maybe this time, Ianto might even join them; he'd surely have ideas on the matter. Right now she didn't really care, as long as Jack eventually came back - and hopefully soon. They were more or less lost without him there already, and she would hate to see how they'd be if it stretched much longer. "My first day and several other days after that?"

"Hey, some people gossip around the water cooler about whatever is on the television. We gossip about our resident immortal, gay boss."

"I still don't think he's gay," she argued back automatically. "I mean, there was Estelle: I don't think that was his father in that 1940s picture with her, and Tosh did say he acted like he belonged in the Forties; it had to have been him. He's bi at the very least." She grinned out the window. "I still agree with Tosh: he'd probably shag anything if it's gorgeous enough."

"So if Jack's immortal and Jack was alive in the 1940s, what is he waiting around Cardiff for? There has to be something. No-one just sits around Cardiff like this just for fun." Oh, she should have known not to let Owen get started. She could swear he was worse for gossip than her grandmother and every bit as likely to keep going till someone shut him up or changed the topic. "Still, if he's immortal, what's he waiting on?"

The right kind of doctor immediately jumped into the forefront of her mind. And oh, God, that made a sickening kind of sense. How had she not thought of it before? It was one of the first things he'd said to her when she joined Torchwood and one of the last before he vanished: 'the right kind of doctor'. She felt like a complete idiot. But if the Doctor was Jack's 'right kind of doctor', then might he have left of his own free will? And if the Doctor was Jack's doctor, then were they ever going to see him again? But 'the right kind of doctor', that was Jack's story to tell. She shouldn't have even told them about his immortality, but she definitely could not tell Owen about this. She couldn't tell anyone this. It would be too much a betrayal, on top of what she had already done. She just couldn't.

"He never said anything to me," she finally lied. It didn't matter that it wasn't the truth. It wasn't like Owen would know till Jack got back, plenty enough time for this to die down some.

"And what? You never asked?" He sounded absolutely shocked, like the idea that not pushing for the information was just absolutely an anathema to him. "How could you not ask? How could you not be curious? Weren't you supposed to be a copper once upon a time?"

She rolled her eyes. "Of course, I was curious, but it's not my business. He told me about the immortality the day I joined; I was a bit too overwhelmed to ask too many questions. Remember: I had no idea anything like this existed before then. I was... Overwhelmed is the only word I can think of. And you've driven past my street three times already, Owen. What are we doing here?"

"Mostly, avoidance. We are avoiding your street. I don't feel like dealing with your boyfriend, you look like you don't feel like dealing with your boyfriend, so why don't we just swing into a store and buy you all new clothes for the trip? Avoid the entire thing."

It really shouldn't be so tempting, she thought to herself, grumpiness warring with exhaustion and resignation within her as she considered the option. It would avoid the confrontation all together, without the hassle of worrying if he was home or if he wasn't home or even if he might come home while she was packing. She wasn't planning on it taking long, but she wasn't too certain where her warmer winter clothes were: this winter had been so mild that she hadn't bothered getting out her winter garments and had just worn layers. That wouldn't work up in the Himalayas, though, so she would need her clothes if she were to go in there, but the temptation to listen to Owen was strong, almost too strong to ignore. "Were you trying to distract me from going to my flat?" she asked instead, countering his questions with another question.

"No, of course not!" He paused under the stern glare she turned on him. "Well, maybe a little." Like quicksilver, his mood changed abruptly. "Till we get Jack back, someone needs to keep this team going. No way it's going to be Tea Boy, you're getting your head scrambled, and Tosh is rubbish in the field, so who does that leave?"

"No-one has to lead till Jack gets back. We can share the responsibility and Jack's duties till he's back, then dump everything back on him so fast his head spins." He grinned, lightning fast, and finally turned down her street as they came to it again. "So what's the verdict?"

"If his car's there, we go shopping and get our last spot of decent food for a bit. If it's not there, then we grab your clothes and go get our last spot of decent food for a bit. The world won't end if we're not in the damn Himalayas by a certain time."

"I meant about leading Torchwood, dummy," she returned almost affectionately. They really did seem to get along better after the affair than they ever had before. And now, with Jack gone, suddenly they had found a few things to agree on: finding him and keeping the rest of the team safe. Those two things had become the most important things in their lives, more important anything else save the job, and they were going to do it. She got the feeling they were both pushing the matter for the same reason as well: they both still felt guilty about what they had done to their actual leader. What they had done to Jack was nigh unforgivable, but she hoped that keeping Torchwood safe while he was gone was a good start.

And if he was with the Doctor and he was with the man by choice (And that still utterly boggled her mind to think about. Not humans going with the Doctor. Definitely not that: the man had a long and checkered past of various assistants traveling with him. No, what confused her was the idea of Jack with him. It'd be like putting two alpha male dogs in a small place and hoping for there not to be an explosion. A bit foolish, if anyone bothered to ask her) and it didn't seem like he would be back (If the Doctor was Jack's doctor, the one he was waiting to fix him, the only one who could have tempted him with visions to open the Rift, obviously the one Jack had so very strong feelings for, then how cruel could they be, asking him to give that up for them? She wasn't sure she had it in her to do that to him), then she'd at least make certain there was a good legacy left here in Jack's name. She wanted people to know it was Captain Jack Harkness who founded Torchwood, the one that survived anyway. No, not just survived: thrived, maybe even becoming a viable world power. If the twenty-first century was when it all changed and Jack wasn't here, then Torchwood would have to make certain everything and everyone was prepared, starting with them.

He was slowly down as they got closer where she lived and she leaned forward to try to look more closely for Rhys's car. "It's a valid idea," he conceded. "Who knows how it will work in the field, but it is a decent idea."

"Oi! It's more than a decent idea!" she shot back. "We can't afford to spread ourselves too thin, and I think we would do that if one of us trying to do all their own duties plus all of Jack's while the others just look on and twiddle their thumbs. It's not how Torchwood does things - and if that's how it is, then we need to change it. There are four of us: we can split everything more or less evenly, and get everything done. Why are you laughing, Owen?"

"I think Tosh and I had the same conversation. I can't really remember. I think we were standing next to our former resident scaly, telepathic alien at the time. That I remember even that much is pretty much a miracle . Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, after all. Who knows what's going on wherever they are."

The car wasn't there, so he pulled to a stop, letting her jump out. To her surprise, he shut off the car and followed her. Mounting the stairs to head to her flat, she hazed out a question: "Owen, what if Jack's with the Doctor by choice?"

"Like studying him or something? That'd be helpful. Not a very Jack-like thing to do, but helpful nonetheless." He stared over at her. "But you don't mean that. You mean, like... in a friendly way?"

"Maybe."

"I... don't know. If it's by his choice, then maybe it's not such a bad thing. Maybe."

"Harold Saxon? He's sending someone out here?" Toshiko felt a bit like a parrot, repeating the words back at Ianto, but really, the shock had gotten to her. There was just so much that had happened in the last week that visit from the new Prime Minister was just about enough to leave her utterly speechless or at least reeling a bit. To say the least, she wasn't at her most with it mental state. "The Prime Minister is sending someone to Torchwood?"

"More to the point," Owen groused, "he's not even officially Prime Minister yet. How the hell does he know about Torchwood? Whatever happened to the whole 'secret organisation' thing?"

"I believe that went out the window the first time Eugene IMed you," Ianto countered rather neatly. Mentally, she award Ianto a point for the small jab. She'd long since lost count of the actual score numbers between the two now, but she was fairly certain that Owen was still well in the lead. Of course Owen did have a more acetic wit more easily given to these small 'points', but every so often, Ianto would get zings like that one in.

Owen shot him a dark look that frankly would have been a lot more impressive if there wasn't still a hazy blur in his eyes from the morphine he'd had to take to let Gwen stitch him up. And she'd still like to know what exactly had happened with that alien to leave the two of them in the shape they were in, Gwen half-strangled and Owen with busted stitches that she was willing to believe were more than half-healed. What had that alien done, with them insisting that the mental abilities were worst than its physical attributes? "I think we'd all agreed that Eugene was a subject we were all dropping. You can't agree to something and back out on it when it's convenient."

"Why not? You do." She winced at Ianto's choice of a rejoinder and mentally awarded him five more points. He'd only get to keep them if Owen didn't try to kill him, of course, but it was a fairly snappy comeback, if it didn't get him dead.

She waited a tense few seconds, the air in the Hub thick enough to be sliced with a knife, and she was right in between the two groups. Ianto was all but leaning against the inner barred door (or he would be if it didn't require relaxing and she wasn't sure if he knew how, which raised all new questions she'd never ask about his and Jack's relationship), and on the other side of the Hub, over at Owen's desk, Gwen and Owen stood almost like a united front of the walking wounded. If they were a united front, it might be the first time without a real threat around them: the end of the world, aliens, cannibals... Of course, her desk was between them, so it was up to her to play mediator.

"Okay, everyone," she finally stepped in. "If someone from the new Prime Minister will be showing up soon, this place needs to be presentable."

"Mum..." She glared at Owen for that, not that it made a lot of difference, but she rather expected that when it came to him. "I don't think they're coming down here with a white glove to inspect us. This isn't school."

How exactly did Jack manage to not shoot him all these years? She'd be damn glad when he was back. How exactly had she ended up with the mediating part of his job? Maybe she needed to take a page from the guys' book and shoot whoever ends up disagreeing with her. It might save some time and perhaps inspire more of them to be more agreeable more of the time. It was worth considering. Hopefully Jack would be back before she had to think about it too long, before she had to give in to the urge to kill one of them.

"No, it's not school, but we are still professionals. We should present ourselves as such." Because we don't behave like pros, she finished to herself but didn't say aloud. That would be starting another fight, and that was something she didn't want to get involved in, much less begin. "It's either we tidy up down here or we only meet them in the tourist shop." She stopped briefly to assess their faces then continued quickly before they had a chance to argue the validity of the second option. "If we only meet in the tourist shop, then we'd best hope they don't need us to show them anything down here because it still looks like a bomb went off."

Owen at least seemed to seriously consider this, sinking down to sit in his chair, while meanwhile Gwen managed to clear out enough a spot on his desk to hover and Ianto moved to stand just over Tosh's shoulder. "If they know we exist already, when they shouldn't, they should know about Abaddon and the Rift opening. They may even know about Jack already."

She shook her head. "That's a stretch. We haven't even reported it to Torchwood Two, and we should have done it two days ago. If anyone was going . No-one should know about Jack that's not in this room right now."

"And the Doctor," he reminded her almost softly. Almost, of course.

Finally she wasn't able to hold back a short laugh. "Owen, ten minutes ago, you were theorising that the Doctor might be trying to sabotage Harold Saxon's campaign. Now they're bosom buddies trading kidnapping secrets. Make up your mind: are they friends or enemies?"

Gwen snickered, not even bothering to try to hide it. "Neither and both," she commented cryptically under her breath with her head ducked, just barely loud enough for Tosh to hear. Owen shot her a concerned glance, a look weighted in promises that they were going to speak more when they were alone. It was almost tempting to try to eavesdrop on them whenever that conversation finally came around to happening, but that would be too much of an invasion. After the pendant and reading all their thoughts, she wanted to know as few deep, dark secrets of theirs as possible. If there was some reason why Gwen was talking like a loon and Owen was looking at her like he knew the reason but was hoping something like this wouldn't happen, then frankly she had no wish to know. The other woman glanced up, apparently telling Owen 'Later' without saying a word, just as she distinctly got the impression of 'Everything is okay' from the expression on her face when she met Tosh's eyes. "I think we can just meet with them in the shop upstairs. They'll understand the mess if they have to come downstairs. And I'd really like to lie down for a bit if that's okay by everyone, just till they get here. Are they flying over or driving?"

"Driving," Ianto answered. "They were already on their way when they called, but you still have an hour or so if you want to lie down."

"Good," Gwen agreed and nodded, already getting up and wandering over to the couch against one of the walls. She didn't have to look hard to see the worry on Owen's face as he watched her all but collapse down on the couch, eyes immediately going closed, like a switch had been flipped to off in her. She had never seen anyone fall asleep so quickly. Clearly that was why Owen was concerned; as a doctor, co-worker, ex-lover, and friend, it had to be worrisome.

"I am going to tidy up the upstairs office and put the 'Closed' sign up," Ianto stated, moving to head back upstairs. "If you need me, please use the mobile in case I step away from the main phone."

"Yeah, right, us needing you. That's a bloody great laugh." She didn't think Ianto heard Owen's muttered words. If he did, he gave no indication of it as he left the main level to go back upstairs. Slowly she turned back to the program sitting open on her desk still, eyeing her code manually a line at the time trying to locate any errors before she started on the next section. "How are you holding up yourself then, Tosh?"

"What?" she yelped, before promptly wishing she could take it back. She couldn't help still being a little shy around him sometimes. It was almost engrained into her DNA now. At least she always recovered quickly. "Oh, fine. I'm fine. A bit tired as well, but nothing as bad as poor Gwen there. These programs are taking up just so much of my time lately."

"You did say you'd finished the one, right?" Well, colour her shocked. He'd been paying attention to what she was saying after all. "The one to track the police and the media for anything on Jack?"

She nodded. "The Doctor as well, but yes."

"No chance you could also tap into U.N.I.T. frequencies, is there? They're rebuilt enough to keep tabs on aliens as well, aren't they?" And that as good as told that he still hadn't called Bambera. If he had spoken to the woman at all, he'd know that U.N.I.T. was rebuilding itself quite nicely - and much more quickly than Torchwood was. Supposedly they'd even built themselves some sort of airbase currently hovering over Northern Europe. Yeah, they were definitely getting back on their feet quite nicely.

"I can try, but Bambera won't like it. She might share the information freely if we asked properly. I don't fancy pissing off U.N.I.T." She glanced down at her keyboard like it could convince her whether to ask her questions or not. "Do you really think that the Doctor is going after Torchwood?" One of them slipped out without her meaning for it to, and she winced sharply, feeling the need to clarify further before he took offence. "I mean, Harriet Jones seemed convinced that he was a good guy, with the way she addressed him on the tele and the references to a Code Nine being the Doctor."

"That was before Canary Wharf though," he stepped in. "And if Gwen's right about the whole 'different bodies but same bloke' thing, as well as her time travel theory, then... then maybe he just found out about us. Plus remember: strong rumour has it that he turned on Harriet Jones because of us, because Torchwood One followed her order to fire on the Sycorax."

"That just doesn't sound like the Doctor I met though," she argued, carefully keeping her voice low as to not disturb Gwen. "I can't imagine that Doctor being involved in something like the massacre at Canary Wharf."

"Different face. Maybe he acts differently with every new face. Who the hell knows? He's an alien, Tosh. Don't try to apply human logic to them." He paused, looking at her a bit more closely. "If you don't think he's after us, even with him taking the remaining real leader of Torchwood, then why are you working so hard on tracking him down?"

"I want to ask him what's going on. I want to hear his explanation in his words. I want to know why he let nearly four hundred people - that we could confirm! - die in London, and others get yanked through Torchwood One's artificial rift in pieces." The words just kept tumbling out of her, and she took a deep breath to calm herself before speaking again. "It's never wise to make judgements on anyone - human or alien - without knowing all the facts. And besides, remember: didn't Jack say that there was more to the Doctor than is in all our files?"

* * *

The woman sent out by Harold Saxon was blonde and a bit on the willowy side. Owen was certain to like her on sight, Gwen figured a bit sleepily. At the moment she hated her. It felt like she'd just laid down when Tosh shook her awake to say the representative was here. Right now all she could say was the woman was dressed all in black, one of those smart but severe business suits that always managed to make her feel like under-dressed when she saw someone filling it out properly, no matter what Gwen herself may be wearing, and she looked like she'd never smiled a day in her life. The cop in her wanted to say she looked like she was the kind of person who had been too busy taking apart kittens and pulling the wings off insects to bother being a bully as a child.

She'd politely refused both tea and coffee, and she had yet to formally introduce herself. A quiet, more paranoid part of Gwen wondered if she was a robot, made up to look human. It sounded a bit science fiction, but then what was life at Torchwood if not a bit science fiction? She kept expecting someone in a red shirt to beam down or whatever, like on those old American sci-fi shows a friend of hers back in school had loved.

"I know," the woman began, "that Torchwood is stretched thin at the moment, but Mister Saxon requires your assistance on a matter of some importance. I'm certain you must have questions. I will do my best to answer them." She appeared to fidget slightly in the chair Ianto had produced from God knew where, but quickly she returned to the same straight-backed position she'd occupied since she took her seat. It looked like there was a rod shoved down her back.

"How do you know about Torchwood?" Owen fired off immediately, almost as soon as she'd finished speaking. And so much for her theory about Owen fancying her on sight, for him with a woman, that was bordering on flat out rudeness.

Evidentially it didn't startle her too badly. She barely more than twitched at the venom and calmly answered, "As you know, Mister Saxon was Minister of Defence before running for Prime Minister. While I am certain we are not supposed to know about Torchwood, rumour does travel. Unfortunately, the first we heard of you was... the Battle of Canary Wharf, the metal monsters filling the skies and in every home - and so many of your people dying." Oh, she was good. This strange woman had all the right words and all the right facial expressions, but her eyes were blank. Pretending empathy only really worked if your eyes could act as well as your face did. "We utilised some of Torchwood's technology salvaged by Harriet Jones to shoot the Racnoss out of the sky later that year."

Impressive little laundry list, she noted to herself, taking a sip from her own cup of coffee. She'd done her homework on them, at the very least.

"What are you after us to do?" The next question came from Tosh, and if she didn't have a mouthful of hot liquid, she might have nodded her approval and agreement. "We're not exactly a service for hire." She cracked a nervous smile, which usually meant she was about to try to be a little funny. "And I'm sorry, but I'd be rubbish at babysitting the Prime Minister."

She had to smile at the comment, giving Tosh that expression as a silent form of solidarity, especially when the blonde didn't even so much as twitch her lips. Yeah, she was definitely not liking her. "Thankfully, then, we don't need Torchwood to guard the Prime Minister. There is an alien menace threatening this planet. It may not have plans of world domination, but it clearly homicidal. We've captured images of three of them so far, and we have reports of at least twenty dead to date. We cannot deal with this threat, as we can't cross international borders. Torchwood is beyond the United Nations, though, and is more ideal to the situation than U.N.I.T. There's no need to alarm the planet to the existence of aliens yet, is there, and that's what U.N.I.T. would do, calling in entire brigades and attracting too much attention."

She was vaguely reminded of something Jack had said to her, one of her first days on the job. No, it had been before her first day. 'The twenty-first century is when it all changes, and you've got to be ready.' She'd gotten the feeling that Jack was working from some sort of mental countdown, so she had never asked when in the twenty-first century they needed to be ready. This might be too soon, though: the countdown couldn't have expired already. And she didn't think Jack's disappearance was enough to move the deadline forward. If it was, she might have to hit the Doctor herself: for someone that Harriet Jones billed in those reports she read last night as humanity's defender and he changed something like that, so it changed with Torchwood too crippled without their leader to fix it or at least ease it in, then he wasn't living up to his billing.

"I know Torchwood is running short-staffed still, with the disappearance of Torchwood Four and the overwhelming loss of life at Canary Wharf." Apparently the woman was too damned cruel or out of it to realise the effect her words were having on them. She hadn't been at Torchwood long enough to have even been to Torchwood One before its collapse, but apparently the other two of them had and they knew Ianto had lost his girlfriend to the Cybermen's conversion process. The woman probably also didn't know they'd all recently had wounds, old and new, dragged across the coals recently. Otherwise she wouldn't be talking so matter of factly about the death of four hundred people, some of who had been near and dear to some members of this team. If Ianto was a little closer, she'd lean over and try putting a comforting hand on his arm; as it was though, she had to settle for a sympathetic glance across the counter. "And I know you must still be reeling from the events of the last few months - the last week in particular - and be feeling a little lost without Captain Harkness."

"How do you know about Jack?" Owen was out of his seat, looking particularly murderous. She couldn't blame him. Just how close was the Ministry of Defence keeping an eye on them? For them to know about Jack, when they hadn't blabbed about it to anyone off the team, even taking care when discussing it mobilely to be in a fairly secluded place.

She barely blinked, and Gwen mentally adjusted her original idea from slightly sociopathic and out of it to just sociopathic. "After what happened to Harriet Jones when she went against the Doctor, we've made it a policy to keep up to date on his doings. I understand that, after Canary Wharf, Torchwood might want and would deserve first shot at him, but we are also interested in finding out what kind of alien he is, where he came from, and how he got here, as why as he is so eager to keep changing Earth's history."

"Do you think we have any way to catch him?" Ianto was leaning forward, apparently momentarily forget his utter perfect composure. "Torchwood One only got him by accident."

That finally got something that resembled in a smile in the way her teeth bared and little else. "Mister Saxon has a few ideas on the matter. Please, at least for now, leave the Doctor to us. We'll work out how to deal with him, if we accidentally happen to succeed in capturing him before your return. I know you're more than capable of eventually capturing him, but Mister Saxon has requested that as patriotic citizens of Great Britain and inhabitants of this planet, that you help us with this other alien menace."

Simultaneously, Owen and Toshiko asked "What is it?" and "Where is it?", respectively.

Leaning down, the woman opened her brief case and produced a set of photos, handing them over to Owen. Gwen was actually able to watch him go pale before he bypassed Tosh to hand the images over to her. And in turn, she was able to feel the blood drain from her own face as well. The images captured on the pages before her could only be of the same breed as the alien that had just dealt with downstairs. The body structure and features were almost identical, but this one was different in two major ways: it lacked the red colouration points theirs had had, and it was at least a metre taller. Maybe Owen's theory about it being an adolescent were correct, in which case these were the adults.

If their alien had been an child of that species and these were adults, that might explain the increased body count. Just how far international were they talking, she had to wonder, though. "Where are they?" she croaked out a repeat of Tosh's question.

"Nepal," the blonde answered. "In the Himalayas. Not too far from Kathmandu, to be exact. You see why we cannot allow U.N.I.T. to become involved; it's just too close to political hotbeds and who knows what the Americans might make of that?" She glanced at each of them, her face conveying utter hope while her eyes remained distressingly dark and empty. "Will you take the assignment?"

They glanced among themselves, silently communicating as months of working closely together had taught them. Finally Owen spoke up for all of them. "We'll help you out with this, but..." She raised an eyebrow, apparently at the idea of a stipulation. "It looks like the Doctor took Jack, Captain Jack Harkness, the leader of Torchwood. Kidnapped him right out from under us might be a better way to put it. If Jack is still with the Doctor, he might be being held against his will. If you manage to get the Doctor before we're back, could you send Jack our way?"

She smiled, and it chilled Gwen's bones. "Don't worry. We'll handle it all for you."

She opened her eyes cautiously, not quite sure when she'd squeezed them tightly closed. It was strange to be so surprised to still be alive. No matter how much it may still pain her to do so at the moment, she was still breathing. Owen hadn't shot her. No, all the bullets had hit the alien squarely in the chest with two off shots piercing its abdomen. She'd be amazed at his aim and grouping, but she'd seen him do better. Jack demanded better of his team, injured or not. If Jack was here to see this, Owen would have been out on the target range requalifying for his weapon; as it was, she might demand it, since the damned thing was still alive as well. She could feel it scraping desperately at the edges of her mind, scrambling for a foothold on some dark piece of her consciousness. It wasn't going to make her forget about it, not with her staring right at it, exactly as Owen was doing also, but it was trying to distract her from it, so it could escape as near as she could figure from the feeling of 'run hide flee' it was invoking in her.

She shook her head lightly, careful to keep her eyes open. "It's still alive, Owen." It probably was not necessary to point it out to him, but it still seemed like the thing to do. It also gave her a chance to test if her voice still sounded as horrible as she feared it would. It was good to prove that her assumption was correct: she sounded a bit like the last time she'd been sick, had had next to no voice, and had ended up rasping everything out for days. She wasn't going to convince Andy she was fine and there was no need for a missing person's report if she sounded like this. Nothing to do for it, she supposed. Maybe she could just go into the station and do it in person, as long as she had someone convenient to be an excuse to leave quickly before she ended up having to stay long enough for Rhys to show up. That would take entirely too long - and she wasn't ready to go back to that apartment yet. Not till Jack was back to send her back there.

One of the Weevils growled, and she shivered. Well, maybe she should be glad he just tried to throttle her and not toss her in one of the other occupied cells with one of Torchwood's other favourite guests. She had just been being glad at the time that he hadn't shot her or succeeded in strangling the life out of her that the worse options had occurred to her till now. Going by their previous theory, if it was trying to keep them busy so it could escape and that would indicate that it preferred them both be too busy to chase after it. So obviously it was used to rather dangerous predators... Did that mean this huge thing with the horribly sharp and completely alarming teeth and claws might be a prey animal? It was almost too terrifying a thing to even contemplate.

"Should toss it in Janet's cell and let her finish it off," Owen muttered. He'd dropped all pretences of gender pronouns, she noted. The alien was now just an 'it'. That meant he was disassociating from it, the cop in her murmured, making it easier to kill the thing. Adolescent or not, she couldn't find it in herself to be too upset. Ordinarily, that would upset her or accuse herself of being more alien than the aliens they dealt with every day, but the alien had fallen out of her good graces - or at least ability to forgive - shortly after she first saw it, after she had found out it had killed two people but before it had messed with her head and definitely before it had tried to get Owen to kill her. Now she might be willing to hold the gun steady for him to kill it.

There was enough panic floating around her mind that it was hard to tell how much of it was her own and how much belonged to the alien, but she could at least tell it was just hers. "It's scared," she stated plainly. It would have been harder not to be plain; it felt as detached from the situation as Owen was sounding like he was. "It's damn terrified."

"No shit." Owen's words were a growl, as harsh as any the Weevils produced; in fact, it reminded her more than a little of a Weevil. Give that she was less than happy with the alien herself and wouldn't really mind growling at it herself, though, she wasn't going to say a word. "Maybe I should shoot it a few more times and see if doesn't get really unhappy." She was silent, waiting on him to wind down. It took a little while, but eventually he took a deep breath, released it as a sigh, and asked, "What did you mean then, about it being scared?"

"It's terrified right out of its mind and into mine. It sounds daft, I know..."

Owen fixed her with a dark look. "What's daft is that you keep trying to talk. You sound horrible." She would have taken offence, probably to his scathing tone if nothing else, but the past few months with Torchwood had taught her that he had a tendency to act like a git when he was worried about someone. Okay, more of a git than he usually was, to be fair, since he was trying at the best of times. "It's still transmitting at you?"

She hesitated, eyeing him standing in the open doorway to the lizard alien's cell, her gun still in his hand and still trained on the creature bleeding blood so dark that it might actually be black onto the concrete floor, his own blood leaking slowly out from her grabbing at his shoulder to break free, almost earnest eyes watching her while still keeping some of his attention on the alien. If there was anyone left in the tattered remains of Torchwood Three who could keep a secret, it was Owen. She'd had a brief affair with him, and still she sometimes felt she knew nothing about him. She'd trusted him enough then not to tell her boyfriend about the affair, and he'd followed through on that trust. He'd even mostly followed through on keeping it from the rest of their co-workers; Tosh had only been able to figure it out when she was able to read their minds. (Jack had probably figured it out sooner, but then that was Jack. Something - the same something whispering little things at her, about the alien, about Owen - told her he was older than he seemed; he probably had more experience than any psychologist or profiler on picking up the little things going on around him.) She'd trusted Owen this far; in theory, she should be able to trust him even further.

But he'd also shot Jack. She wasn't sure what there was between them - some sort of a weird mentor-pupil thing, though even just thinking that was nearly enough to make her burst into silly giggles, at the Star Wars-like images it put in her mind - but that did imply there were some boundaries he was willing to cross, trust or no trust. To be fair again, though, she'd betrayed Jack as well, so what did that say about how much people could trust her? Probably not too great of things, so who was she to cast aspersions?

"Maybe just a bit." She shook her head slightly. "It's like the damn thing opened up a door in my brain and I don't know how to close it." She paused, rethinking her words. "No, more like I can't turn off whatever it did to me."

"Great," he drawled. "I'm stuck with an empathetic equivalent of a drippy sink." She started to protest that he was over-simplifying this a bit too much, even for him, but he was already continuing to speak. "Only you, Gwen, could manage to get a bit of your brain jiggled loose by an alien. I guess there's just one way to deal with this then."

* * *

When Tosh came downstairs at last to announce the completion of her second project, a program to check for Jack in the media and police reports, already running on her laptop and set to email an alert to her mobile phone, at first she thought Owen and Gwen had been abducted as well. For the two of them, this was just too quiet, she had just decided when she finally heard the first trace of them: downstairs in what she tended to think of as Owen's room. She was certain if he had his choice, he'd spend more time in the autopsy room/miniature medical facility than at his desk. She was fairly certain that if he could drag his computer, a decent rolling chair, and a fridge not occupied by various medical supplies, Owen would set up permanent professional shop in here.

It wasn't in the least unusual to see someone sitting on the autopsy table being stitched up from some various injury. She'd been on there about a week ago, letting him work on her hand. Shortly after that, Jack had been there just long enough for Owen to give him a cursory examination to determine that he definitely was dead, at least at that time: death wasn't a permanent thing on Jack apparently, but they hadn't know that then, and so they had just thought they had lost a team member for the second time in a day - though thankfully at a hand other than their own the second go-round.

No, what was unusual was to see Owen sitting on the table, Gwen standing in front of him brandishing a needle. His shirt was on the table next to him, and the bandages that had been covering his shoulder had to be the bloodied ones in the rubbish bin next to the table. They weren't even arguing: Gwen would come near him with the needle, he'd dodge, she would give him a dirty look and reach at him with the needle, and the process would repeat itself again. The second time through she watched them pantomime this out, she couldn't resist a giggle. Two sets of dark eyes turned to stare balefully up at her. Predictably, it was Owen that spoke first, such that it was, snapping out a quick "What?" at her.

She shook her head. It could prove amusing to see their faces if she told them that they were just too cute, but all the nagging that would undoubtedly ensue from a comment like that made it not worth it, at least for right now. "What happened?" she had to ask. "You look awful."

"Why, thank you. Nothing much happened," he answered easily. "Pulled a few stitches. Gwen here thinks they need to be stitched back up, and as you can see, she's all set to do them herself. I still say butterfly sutures would do just as well, especially when she's being stingy with the morphine." Gwen mumbled something under her breath that sounded a lot like sneezing and made Owen glance at her sharply. "What was that?"

"I said that you're chicken shit." If Owen looked like a slice of raw hell, Gwen sounded like it. She didn't think she'd sounded nearly so bad when they'd been having breakfast upstairs. She was pretty sure she'd remember Gwen sounding like that before now. She hadn't heard her sound so bad since she'd caught some sort of bug after the whole thing with Suzie and the glove; Owen had theorised that Suzie's leech trick weakened her immune system briefly, letting a nasty cold bug from being laid out on the dock get to be a problem entirely too quickly. That was similar to how she sounded now, but without the shivering, sneezing, and coughing fits that went with it last time. No, this had to be something different. "I've done one autopsy before, so you know I'm decent with a needle. And you've had enough morphine. Now let me work on that."

He shied away from the other woman again and instead looked up at her where she leaned over the railing near them. "Was there something you needed, Tosh, or did you just want to poke fun at my plight here?"

He was playing it up so melodramatically that she had to grin at him as she spoke. "I got that program set up, the one to monitor the police and media for any word on Jack. It's up and running in fact. When it finds something, it will page my cell phone." She sighed heavily. "I started to run one on the Doctor, and it was setting off alerts left and right. Nothing that included Jack, though, but the most recent one was about a week or so ago, not too long before Abaddon and before Jack was taken. Apparently he was involved in those difficulties being reported at Lazarus Labs."

Owen snorted sardonically, almost managing to sound like he was just amused. "Now there's a surprise: the Doctor showing up somewhere and everything going to shit. And just before before Election Day too."

She started in surprise. "You think the Doctor's out to sabotage Harold Saxon's campaign?" She just couldn't imagine an alien like the Doctor deliberately messing up an election, but stranger things had happened, after all. One couldn't take anything to do with aliens for granted, as she'd learned the hard way. And if the Doctor was getting involved with the elections of public officials, this could go very bad very quickly.

"I heard a nasty rumour through U.N.I.T. that the Doctor was involved in Harriet Jones' health scare. Wouldn't put it past him," he confided with a completely reverent smile. "So much for Britain's Golden Age, or whatever bullshit the media was calling it." Another small, dark laugh escaped him. "Besides, didn't you hear?" He nodded at a radio sitting on the other side of the room, shut off now but not in the place it usually was; obviously they'd been listening to it earlier. "The results are finally in. Saxon is Prime Minister now, or he will be soon. Supposed to meet with the Queen tomorrow, I think they said."

"Well, that's a relief." It was a good thing, she thought. She'd liked Harriet Jones well enough, but she did like Harold Saxon. In fact, she'd go as far as to say she believed in him, not something to say lightly of a politician in her opinion. "Gwen said something on the phone about an alien down here." She hadn't sounded as bad on the phone as she did now. Unless Gwen had be screaming in the time between when they spoke and now - no, the entire time since they'd talked - she shouldn't sound so bad now. It just didn't make any sense.

"It's dealt with." Owen wasn't exactly meeting her eyes, but that might have something to do with Gwen advancing again with the needle. She would have all her attention on the person with an instrument that could cause her pain as well, not the person trying to talk to her; it just wouldn't be as big a deal. Normally she'd offer to stitch Owen back up herself, but she didn't want to make the stitches any worse than the ones he had managed to do to himself. With her hand still bandaged as it was, it was a real possibility. "It's in a locker till we can deal with it. I want a closer look at its brain."

He was evading actually answering the question as fully as she'd like, but sometimes one had to take what one could get with Owen. That was something that all of Torchwood Three had come to accept. If one couldn't accept that of him, then there would have be either a killing or a retconning occurring soon. He was a bit of a genius, after all, and he knew it. And oh, how Yvonne had hated him for that. He was too good for her to sack, but she had transferred him to Cardiff. At the time it had been little more than a remote monitoring station with delusions of grandeur of competing with the exponentially bigger Torchwood One in London and so it had been quite the impressive punishment, even if it had been billed to him as a promotion with relocation attached, but with the Battle of Canary Wharf, that had all changed. Suddenly there were only a half dozen or so members of Torchwood still active, instead of the nearly one thousand, counting the missing Torchwood Four, and Jack had stepped up to the task of rebuilding the network, slowly working them back to the efficiency that had once existed. It wasn't a task she envied him nor one she'd wish on her worst enemy; to say there was resistance to change was probably the understatement of the decade.

"Its brain? Did you turn into a zombie or something when I wasn't looking?" she tried to joke. It probably wasn't one of her best attempts, and usually even they fell flat in this crowd.

Gwen cracked a smile, though, and Owen snorted something like amusement. "It kept making us forget about it, and we figure it was behind the aggression-fear experiences we had before," he explained. "Also it was extremely hard to kill: three shots to the chest and two to the abdomen didn't kill it. It just laid on the floor, bleeding, trying to mess with our heads. Had to shoot it in the head to kill it. Gwen figures that wherever it was from, it was a prey animal."

"Telepathic and a prey animal? Seems an unlikely combination." She refused to think about her previous experience with a telepathic alien; Mary was a subject she didn't like breached and enjoyed bringing it up herself even less. In fact, she would really rather prefer it was never brought up again. Being privy to the thoughts of the greater Cardiff area was not a experience she wanted repeated, no more than being so in love with someone and having that love turned against her. "I suppose if the predators are impressive, then prey might evolve telepathy."

"Why it had it isn't important. I want to find out what we should be expecting if we run into anything else with telepathy." So should she just be glad he hadn't gotten it in his head to dissect her while she had that damned pendant? No, she had to believe Owen wouldn't do something like to her. "Besides no matter how big and scary it looked, it was plenty dangerous enough with just its mind."

What an odd way for him to phrase it. "How do you mean?"

"It tried to kill both of us. That's how I popped my stitches."

It made sense. It made perfect sense, and he put it so succinctly. It made absolutely sense, and he was lying. How she knew, she wasn't sure, but he was definitely not telling the truth. Which part of it wasn't true, she couldn't be certain, but he wasn't being completely honest at the least. She wasn't naive enough to think this was the first time she'd been lied to by her team-mates - the incident with the pendant had taught her that much at least - but she wasn't going to press the issue this time. Well, at least not much. "What about Gwen?" The other woman looked up, a guilty expression abruptly clear on her face. "Her voice?" She glanced a little closer. "And the bruises starting to show up on her throat?"

"Same thing. It tried to kill us." Another stretch on the truth, she was fairly sure, but again, she wasn't sure where he was doing it. There were enough secrets and mysteries around here right now without adding in her two co-workers acting abruptly different and lying to her to her face. "My stitches got ripped, and Gwen was nearly strangled."

"My God," she gasped. "Are you both all right?"

Owen opened his mouth to say something, but Gwen managed to smoothly cut in, her voice still rough but just loud enough to be heard. It was actually a bit painful to listen to, though hopefully that would fade soon. "I'm fine. Owen will be if he lets me stitch him up."

"It'll take a lot more morphine than this to get me to go under your needle," he fired right back. "I saw your stitch work on corpses, and they don't exactly move. I don't want to see how you do when it's on a live subject that might twitch."

"I can fix it so you don't move. I think I saw something in the medical cabinet that might knock you out. Or if you'd prefer, I always have a baseball bat in my car." There was a tight grin on the other woman's face.

"Well if we're talking about immobilising me, how about we just go with some light bondage? I'll be you still have some restraints in your desk left over from your copper days right. We can just tie me down to the table and bypass the stitches, yeah?"

"Hmm... How about no? Quit bitching, Owen. You're worse than a little kid." He glared at her, and she fixed him with a stern glare. "Seriously, you've probably bitched off that entire dose of morphine, so you'd rather sit there hurting than let me help. You're like a little kid who doesn't want to take his medicine. Just re-dose yourself and let me get this done. I'm tired and my throat is killing me. Arguing with you isn't exactly helping."

Tosh had to hold back a smile and a laugh as he slowly capitulated and obeyed. Well, if she wasn't the one having to stitch him up, she wasn't sticking around to watch the impromptu surgery. She still had work to do on her primary program, to trace the Doctor's machine, the TARDIS, and maybe she should also loan her secondary, completed program on the Hub's computer, just in case her laptop ran into some kind of problems and wasn't able to run the program. It was important that they find Jack; Torchwood needed its leader; but she also wanted to know just what the Doctor wanted with Torchwood. After meeting one version of him that one time, she wanted - no, needed - to know what would make him go after Torchwood. They were actually helping him with his job, if what Harriet Jones always said was true and he was supposedly defending the Earth, so why go gunning after them? Because they were supposed to also be his guard dogs?

It just wasn't easy setting up a program to track something when you had no idea what it was or how it worked. And saying she had no ideas on the TARDIS was such an understatement that it was almost laughable, but she had to know, so she had to figure out a way to track it. She wasn't placing all her bets on the media program working. The Doctor had been clever thus far in his life, for the most part avoiding the media, so she doubted anything would turn up. Though she still had to wonder if she should extend the media program to include newspaper archives. It couldn't hurt and would only take a few minutes to set up. Perhaps she would make it once she'd worked something out on the primary program. Tracking the TARDIS and finding Jack - and asking the Doctor her question - were the top priorities right now.

She'd sat down and had just long enough to get the secondary program loaded onto her workstation when the main doors opened again, and Ianto stepped into the main area. The faint stamp of surprise on his face would be exaggerated shock on anyone else, but he did seem a bit gobsmacked. "What is it?" she had to ask.

Out of the corner of one eye, she noted Gwen and Owen stepping back up to the main level of the work stations. He had yet to pull on a new shirt, but the bandages did a good job of covering much of his chest. While Ianto was obviously gathering his words, Owen grabbed a button-down shirt hanging from his workstation chair, shrugging carefully into it with Gwen's help, and carefully buttoning it. "Yeah, so what's the problem, Tea Boy?" He was back to his usual smarmy self, she noted with something like pleasure.

"We just got a call from the office of Harold Saxon. Apparently there's something they need Torchwood's help with. They're sending someone out to speak to us."

All he could really say for the lizard thing was, well, it was ugly. The first thing that came to mind was a very rough comparison to an iguana of some kind, if an iguana ever got up to about two and a half metres tall, grew gigantically long claws, and some rather nasty teeth, not to mention learned to walk in a vaguely bipedal fashion. Any picture he'd ever seen of a iguana showed them to be green or grey in colour for the most part, not the shiny black and brilliant red of the thing in front of him. Teeth and claws like that, and all he could think was predator.

And then the smell hit him. It was almost physical how strong it was, almost overpowering. It was like a million or so odours wrapped all into one, and his head was hurting already trying to pick out individual ones: rotting bananas, old milk, burned vegetation, fresh tar, dog shit on hot concrete, some of those bums that hung around the Millennium Centre on cold nights... And it clicked. The smell somehow made the pieces come back together in his brain. "Hello again, Charlie."

"'Charlie'?" Gwen repeated, alternating between looking at him like he was mad and staring a bit closer at the creature in the cage. "What is this thing doing down here? How did it-" His patience in waiting paid off as realisation dawned on her face. "We captured it on the streets upstairs yesterday. How in the world did I forget about it being here?"

Personally he seconded that question completely. Their smelly friend here was a bit too big, a bit too mean, and a bit too smelly to have just utterly forgotten about the way they both had. "Wasn't just you," he admitted. "I forgot the bastard was down here as well. What do you want to bet Tosh and Ianto forgot about him as well?"

"I'm not taking that bet," she answered, instead setting down the bucket of the Weevil's food (Frankly he was a bit surprised that she'd managed to hold on to it as long as she had. He'd have probably dropped it when he spotted Charlie himself.) and pulling out her work mobile. "I'm going to check, though."

Evidentially Toshiko picked up on the first ring because Gwen almost immediately began speaking. He let her voice fade into the background as he moved forward closer to the glass to examine the creature as closely as he dared. There was definitely no way he was going on the other side of the glass; he'd learned his lesson there with Janet's assistance in a cage that had been much less secure than he was now hoping these were. Gwen's attention was split between the mobile and the Weevils, leaning against the wall next to Janet's cell. She seemed to be dead certain that the glass would hold. Just because it had so far didn't guarantee that it would continue to do so. If it didn't, if Charlie managed to get out, getting them both out of here alive and hopefully in one piece would be an adventure he wasn't sure he wanted to have, at least not without back-up. And it wouldn't be the Tea Boy or Toshiko he wanted for back-up either.

No, he'd want someone with him who wouldn't debate a point to hell and back before pulling the trigger (not that he'd been particularly upset that Ianto hadn't just shot him the minute he'd first mentioned opening the Rift to get Jack and Toshiko back). Jack had, in an odd way, tried to talk them down from opening the Rift the second time, but he'd seen it in the man's eyes: if Gwen hadn't punched him when she did, he wouldn't have hesitated to shoot them. He probably wouldn't have been aiming for the shoulder either, as Ianto still claimed to have done. He also wouldn't particularly mind having Gwen as his back-up; that punch, as well as the predator-prey experience they'd had earlier, seemed to indicate similar things about her. She'd probably feel guilty as hell about it later, but when it came to keeping the team safe, of the three he had left to choose from till Jack got back, she'd be his first pick.

"Owen?" her voice interrupted his dark thoughts, a curious tone in her voice. Glancing over, she had her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and was eyeing him closely. He raised his eyebrows in silent communication to continue. "What was I supposed to be telling Tosh about?"

That quick? Just taking one's eyes off Charlie for about two minutes was all it took to forget about it again? He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the holding cage where the lizard-like alien was imprisoned. "You were going to ask if she remembered him." He was betting the other two didn't though, not if she could forget that quickly. As soon as her eyes landed on the iguana creature, he could see the remembrance bleed back into them. "Keep your eye on him. I'm going to feed the Weevils." She gave him a thumbs up and moved away closer to Charlie's cell so that he could get to the Weevils' cell.

Gwen's voice was a low hum at the edge of his attention as he went about what was normally Ianto's job. Janet didn't seem too fond of the company, but there wasn't really anything to do be done for it. If the other Weevil they'd put in the cell with her had been given a name from Jack yet, he wasn't aware of it, but she didn't appear to be any happier, hissing lowly at him. He growled-hissed back at her, and thankfully she backed off.

What the hell was Gwen babbling about over there? It wasn't like Tosh wasn't right upstairs, just a few levels above them. What was so important that it couldn't wait? he mentally grumbled to himself, especially since she was supposed to be helping him feed the Weevils. As the Tea Boy would probably point out, they didn't exactly feed themselves down here. Closing the door to Janet's and her cell-mate's cage, he turned to give her a piece of his mind on the matter - and there behind her was the biggest, ugliest, meanest-looking damn iguana he'd ever seen. A moment later, as she thumbed the off button, the smell hit his nostrils, and everything came rushing back with the olfactory offence. "Damn, that's potent," he couldn't help commenting.

"The smell or the way he can make you forget he's even there?" She eyed the creature a little more closely. "Either way, it's... wow. Do you suppose it's behind what hap-"

Charlie launched himself at the wall, the glass the only thing stopping from taking a huge chunk out of Gwen's head with one of those claws. Hell, its hand (for lack of knowing the proper term) was about the same size as her head; he wasn't even going to really consider what kind of damage it could have done if the wall hadn't been there or hadn't held. Gwen had immediately scrambled back, nearly tripping over him in the process. And it looked like his earlier thought had been right: her gun was in her hand, levelled almost steadily at the alien, keeping trained on it as it thrashed about the wall, evidentially trying to find a weak point in the glass.

"I think he likes you," Owen finally cracked, once they both had calmed down at least a little.

Gwen shifted her grip on the gun (He really should probably make her check it back into Weapons Storage, but that wasn't an argument he relished the idea of having, so he might save that one for Jack when he got back - because he was coming back and that was how it was going to be and no-one, not even Harold Saxon himself, was going to convince him otherwise), not actually lowering it but adjusting it to be a more comfortable and long-term hold. "Well, he's fully welcome to stop any moment now. He looks like he should be too big to move that fast."

He took a deep breath to steady himself - and reassure himself to the fact that Gwen could probably shoot it before it did fatal damage to him - and he stepped forward to examine the thing more closely. There was no getting by the ugliness. Looking at it proportionately, though, using other bipedal species as a basis, he was able to draw one extremely tentative conclusion. "It may not be full grown yet," he offered. "It looks like... well, like it's going through a teenage gangly phase."

"It's going to get bigger?" Gwen looked a bit ill at the prospect. He couldn't say where he blamed her. The ceiling of the cell was going to be an issue if the thing got any bigger, really, and the others on levels below them were no better. "Tell me you're joking."

He shrugged one shoulder again. "No idea. I'm guessing based on Earth standards, but I'm betting he's not a local boy, not in any timezone."

"He probably fell through the Rift, yeah?" She was clearly thinking aloud, so he didn't bother answer. "And if that's the case, then it's extending itself beyond just moving people through time: now it's starting to reach through space. We might start getting aliens from all over. If he's an example of what's to come..."

"Then we're fucked," he finished succinctly. That copper habit of hers of reasoning everything out was so damn annoying, especially when she thought she had to do it aloud. Why couldn't she just think to herself like normal people did? No-one needed to hear her every thought and possible deduction on the matter. He certainly didn't want to hear it all. "Completely and utterly fucked. Torchwood has already proven we don't stand a chance against things that can get in our heads, and if Charlie-boy here can do just that and make us forget he's there - and God knows what else he can do to us - then we are so far beyond fucked."

* * *

Owen was losing his mind. That was the only inescapable truth she could get out of this surreal moment. Owen was losing his mind, and they had an adolescent alien locked up in their cells that could make them forget about it within five minutes of them taking their eyes off him. Jack was still missing, they were no closer to finding him, there was a missing persons report out on her, there was something - maybe even the alien here - messing with their heads, and now to make it all that much better, Owen was going batty. Wonderful, just absolutely wonderful. The stupid fucking little wanker had to pick right now to lose his damn mind. What the hell had been possessing her to make her sleep with him before? Some new and different kind of sex-starved alien, not quite like what had possessed Carys but not not too dissimilar either? Or maybe temporary insanity? There was no way she'd slept with him repeatedly of her own free will and in a clear state of mind. The mere thought was just disgusting to her. He would be better off taken out of the gene pool before he had a chance to spread his unfortunate genetic material on to the unsuspecting next generation.

Her hands were lifting, her finger slipping around the trigger to do just that (Just one shot, bang, and there would be no next generation of Owen Harpers, and wouldn't that just be a relief for the entire planet?), when she caught herself in her thoughts. It was starting again. The damned fear and aggression cycle was starting again. She made herself thumb the safety back on the handgun and jam it down in its holster before the temptation to use it became too strong. No matter how nice the thought of shooting Owen might be, she was going to have to make herself resist for two reasons: one, it really wasn't her thoughts buzzing around up there making her want to murder him, and two, shooting him was more Ianto's thing and she'd hate to deprive him of this little bit of fun.

She wanted, with what bits of her conscious mind that were still functioning, to close her eyes and try to breathe her way through this, but she couldn't. No way was she taking her eyes off Owen or the alien for however long that might take. It probably wouldn't be a quick thing to accomplish. She was still reeling a bit from the last time (No psychic training, Tosh had said; that was why this was hitting her harder and longer than the rest of them. As soon as Jack was back and settled back into the swing of things, they were going to have to sort that out for her), but the rest of them had seemed over the mental assault. Yet if that was what it was and it was repeating itself so soon, it seemed to be hitting Owen harder than it was her. Why would that be? Because her mind was still muddled from before? That would be just brilliant. Saved from a mind fuck by having been mind fucked.

The aggression was screaming through her brain, pounding in her veins in quick time, loud like drums warning of approaching danger. Warning her of Owen? Or trying to warn Owen of her? She couldn't be certain. "Owen?" she questioned uncertainly.

"That's all there is to it. We're fucked." He shook his head hard, obviously trying to clear his thoughts. She couldn't tell how much success he was having. "Can't be the Doctor though."

Well, that was a very different tune from the last few days. Every other time, he'd been perfectly willing to blame the Doctor: for taking Jack (that one they were fairly certain on, at the very least), mind fucking them, destroying Canary Wharf, the toast landing butter-side down, and everything else that had gone wrong for Torchwood. Hell, he might have even been blaming the man for the loss of Torchwood Four - and even Jack had no idea what had happened to them. "Could it be him?" She nodded over his shoulder at the alien in the cell behind him.

"Who?" Damn, that was the most efficient ability she'd ever seen. How did that thing keep making a thing like this happen? To her, she could understand it happening, with what Toshiko had mentioned about psychic training (Why in the world would Jack have not bothered training her in that? Okay, granted, he had waited till after she'd had to use a gun to train her on how to use one; if that meant Jack's approach to training was 'let them see how bad it is without the training first then train', she might be forced to hit him - just on principle's sake), but it was happily tripping through Owen's mind like there was nothing to it and he had had the training. And frankly that disturbed her with what it could mean: there were things out there beyond their training, well beyond the scope of their experience. No, frankly it went well beyond disturbing her, right into frightening her. "How long has that thing been-" He shook his head again, recognition entering his eyes again. "Damn, he's good at that. Yeah, I'd say it's Charlie doing it. It makes sense."

"If he's doing this thing where we keep forgetting about him, mightn't he also be doing the other thing? Where we all wanted to kill each other?" The way his eyes were glazing over, not a lot, just enough to be noticed, something - likely this alien - was definitely still trying to work that trick on him. Weirdly, she could feel it scraping around the outer edges of her brain, the aggression beating a four-note beat in her head while her pulse was doing overtime, but her mind wasn't going under, not like it had before. She was willing to stick to her conclusion that it couldn't get back in because it had messed her mind up too much before and it hadn't yet completely recovered, too brain fucked to be brain fucked again, in other words. (Oh, she just bet that Jack would love hearing her say that. He'd probably be endlessly amused by the quaintness of it.)

He nodded slightly, more a loose-necked bobble than an actual conscious movement, though he was evidentially agreeing with her. "It would follow. So Charlie here has some sort of telepathic - no, telepathic and empathic ability. He can make us forget all about him, as well as stimulate fear and aggression in others." He rocked back on his heels to try to get a full view of the creature. "That might be a defence mechanism."

"How?" she had to ask. "It sounds like that'd be a good way to get himself killed. How does that work in his defence?" She really did have to ask. It was less how curious she was on the matter, though she could admit to being plenty, and more that Owen seemed more in control of himself when he was in 'Doctor Harper mode', as she and Tosh had gigglingly referred to it once. If she could keep him in that frame of mind for a little while, maybe they could figure out just what was going on and what they should expect from here on out from their new guest. No, he was too dangerous to be called a guest; adolescent or not, if the theory was correct, it was just too risky to think of him as anything other than a prisoner.

He raked a hand through already dishevelled hair, the gesture obviously both impatient and thoughtful at once. Oh, it was definitely at least trying to work on him, if it wasn't already in the back of his mind, needling away at him about little things that ordinarily would not be cause for violence, but in this case, it was apparently just as easily done to make them want to try to kill someone for saying the wrong thing as if they'd actually done something worthy of death. He repeated the gesture again, looking all too ready to start pacing except for the fact that he'd let the alien out off his sight and promptly forget about it again, before speaking at last, sounding a bit out of breath. "I'm really just guessing here, Gwen. Maybe it uses that thing - that whammy, for lack of a better term - to make predators turn on each other so it can get away. I don't know. The point is, it looks like he's using it to try to get away from us."

"But he can't get through the glass so he's just spinning his wheels, with the bonus side-effect of driving us crazy," she concluded. "That's my favourite part, after all." She took a step closer and leaned forward, running a finger along the glass. "Do you think it will keep holding?"

She barely had time to see motion out of the corner of her eye before she found herself pressed up against the wall of the next cell, the hiss of a Weevil at her back and hot, human breath on her face, and a heavy arm bracing across her chest. Damn it, she shouldn't have taken her attention even partially off Owen. She should have remembered that the alien wasn't the only threat in the room; the human was just as capable of wreaking havoc as it was, maybe more so since he wasn't stuck on the far side of a thick, nigh unbreakable glass wall. She could just seem her tombstone now, if Jack let her have one after this: 'Here lies Gwen Cooper, Died from being stupid'. Jack also could get Ianto and Toshiko shirts to wear to the funeral (if she got to have one) that said 'I worked with the stupid bint they're putting in the ground' or something. It would be just wonderful.

The arm slid up to lie across her throat with heavy pressure, and she could feel her breathing starting to get just a bit hard; he wasn't pressing down hard, but he didn't have to as long as he kept the pressure up. She didn't even have to think about trying to pull him away; her own hand was already up and trying to yank him away, to ease the pressing so she could get a full breath in her lungs, anything. She just needed air, and none seemed to be forthcoming. This wasn't far the way she wanted to go out: choked to death by her own team-mate. When the alien let up and Owen was back in his right mind, this was going to be sheer hell for him. He took everything so personally, and choking was a very personal way to kill someone, not like shooting them...

Shooting them... That might actually work. Maybe not shooting him - she didn't think she could get her gun out with him pressed so tightly against her, but there was still something else she could do. It might work just as well as shooting him herself (even if that was really more Ianto's shtick than hers) or it might not work all, but she was putting bets on the former with how careful he'd been being since the tumble he'd taken this morning. Getting a punch in was a lost cause; the quarters were just way too tight; but oh yes, there was still something she could do to make him hurt enough to let go.

Already gasping for breath (He was stronger than he looked, but at least the aggression messed with his head enough that he didn't seem to be able to use anything he'd undoubtedly learned at medical school or working through Torchwood on her) and feeling the edges of her vision starting to blur and go fuzzy, she reached up and wrapped her hand around his right shoulder. With all the strength she had left in her, she squeezed, a final gambit towards getting free while she was still alive.

It was strange: she was so hyper-aware of everything around her, especially everything that had anything to do with Owen, that she could feel the bandages sliding beneath her hand, thick and heavy fluid that could only be blood leaking through to wet her hand, and finally the yelp of pain immediately preceding her being dropped to the cold, damp concrete floor, coughing and choking but finally breathing again. Even though the noise she was making relearning to breathe, she could even hear him scrambling back away from her; she didn't have to see his face to know he looked horrified. It was the closest they'd come in a while, a week, since they killed Jack, since Ianto had shot Owen, to any real violence being done to a member of the Torchwood team, and for it to nearly be done by another member of said team yet again...

* * *

He'd almost killed Gwen.

He'd almost killed Gwen, and he hadn't even been in his right mind when he was doing it. Now if there was a point when he should complain about the unfairness of anything, this should be it: he'd almost killed his ex-lover and he'd barely been aware he was doing. He hadn't been aware of much at all, to be honest, not until the pain set in. It was good thinking, going for where he was already hurt rather than try to inflict a new injury to get free. He was going to have to patch it back up again, maybe do a quick shot of painkiller, but not till he checked on Gwen.

A half-step forward put the cell in his line of sight. Somehow it wasn't a surprise to see Charlie still there this time. If he could ascribe human emotions to aliens, he'd say this one looked hopeful, like it had shown them what it could do so couldn't they let him out now, in a weird way. Gwen was carefully climbing to her feet as well, looking at the alien also, though he did note that she was also keeping an eye on him as well. Not making the same mistake twice, in that case, he thought to himself, almost pleased.

"I take it back," she rasped out. "That's one hell of a defence mechanism." She was rubbing her throat lightly; there were probably going to be bruises soon. That would be interesting to explain to Toshiko and Ianto, not to mention her boyfriend. "So what are we going to do about him?"

Silently he moved his hand beneath the back of her shirt where her gun rested in its holster, pulling it out before she had a chance to object. Gwen fell a few wary steps back towards the door leading to the rest of the Hub.

A moment later, the sound of several shots cut through the still air of the Hub.