Chapter Text
Ianto flicked through his journal, still annoyed that there were pages missing. They hadn’t been torn out, they’d been carefully cut and removed. Which, if he was honest, was something he would have done if he had to take the pages out. Jack had brushed off the week that they’d all forgotten but the others still seemed a bit unnerved. He certainly was. The door of his domain opened and a very familiar, well dressed, woman entered from the chill of the morning.
“Martha, it’s good to see you again.” He smiled, placing his journal away.
She gave him a warm smile in return. “You look great. Glad to see the world hasn’t ended over here.”
“What have you been up to?”
“Oh you know, came back to earth, started working for UNIT, got promoted to medical director, the usual.”
“Just the boring day to day stuff then. Go on, I’m sure Jack’s waiting for you. Oh, and if you’re going to visit Owen remember to knock on the wall or something.”
“Why? Is he working on something important?”
“Well, Tosh is important, but I wouldn’t call it working.” He said drily, hitting the button to open the hidden door.
Owen was working on a body that looked like a prop from an alien film. There was no other way to describe it. Something had made its way out of the mans body the hard way. He’d looked up the mans medical records but what was left of them didn’t line up with the blood samples he’d taken. It was going to be one of those cases.
“Owen, I heard you’ve been busy.” Martha chuckled from the archway, Jack standing next to her with a smirk.
He rolled his eyes. “You get caught one time. So, trying to take my job?” He teased.
“I think that would be a bit of a pay cut. Plus your skills are better used here. Is this what your message was about?”
“The one from this morning? Yea. Looks like I won’t be able to join you for drinks tonight.”
“Now I’m interested.”
Jack chuckled. “Now I’ve lost you both to it.”
“Sorry.” Martha grinned. “Just half an hour?”
“Ok, ok.” He winked and left them to it.
Owen moved so she could join him on the lower floor.
“So, what happened to him exactly?” She asked.
“Not sure yet, but that’s not what’s interesting. I dragged up his medical records using his ID, and even though the photo matches it can’t be him.”
“Oh?”
“Our body, other than the giant hole in his stomach was in perfect health, but his medical records say he was HIV positive.”
“So either the records are wrong or…”
“Or he was cured before whatever dug its way out, dug its way out.”
“But that would be world changing.”
“And should be all over the news, so someone’s keeping it a secret.”
“It can’t be a government project then.”
“And it still leaves us with what the hell crawled its way out of him. Fancy helping me find out?”
“Let me get a lab coat on and scrub up.” She beamed. “So when did Ianto catch you and Tosh?”
Owen sighed. “Yesterday. It was a quiet day, nothing to do, thought everyone else had buggered off.”
“Oh come on, it’s a bit funny.”
“I thought it was too but Tosh is still a bit upset over it.”
“Ah.”
“She’s just embarrassed. Try not to bring it up.”
She mimed zipping her lips.
“Anyway, being as this is the third body I’ve got who died this way I want to find out the cause asap.”
Toshiko had been quiet, even for her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t an active part of this investigation. Using the sparse medical records as a starting point she’d been building an image of the mans whole life. She’d recovered what she could, but a lot of the data had been carefully removed. Nothing would bring that back. It was similar to other cases they’d received. As much as everyone was trying to keep light hearted about everything for Marthas benefit, they were worried. It had been why Tosh hadn’t been thinking straight around lunch time the day before. She just needed a distraction from the dead ends she was facing. She could hack into the pentagon without being detected, but recovering these files had been rendered impossible and the thing that could tell them what had killed these people was likely in that data. It was incredibly frustrating. She was about to take another break, just to stretch her legs and clear her mind when she saw a familiar contact on the mans email account. It was just a normal name so she hadn’t paid too much attention to it but this was too much of a coincidence. The email was about a meeting of some kind, or a journey. Either way it was overnight. Each email gave the same address. A medical research centre known as the Pharm, run by a medical researcher. Dr Copley. She used the email address to try and find others that might have visited there recently. One person out of the four was still alive.
“Jack, I might have found the next victim.”
He was at her side in an instant. “Get me her address. Gwen, we’re going to go and ask a few questions.”
The woman in front of them looked very cheerful and gladly invited them into her home.
“Would you like anything? Coffee? Tea?” She asked, leading Jack and Gwen into the humble living room.
Gwen gave a polite smile. “No, thanks. We just wanted to ask you about your contact with a medical research centre.”
“The Pharm. Yes, they’ve given me my life back.”
“Can I ask about your treatment?”
“I know I shouldn’t say but… Well. I only went for it because my diabetes was out of control. No matter what I did I couldn’t manage it. When I was there they gave me this little pill, reset they called it, and the next morning my blood sugar was fine. I couldn’t believe it, but since then I’ve been better than ever before. It’s amazing. I owe everything to Dr Copley.” The woman enthused.
“Were you given any information on this drug?”
“Let me see…” She walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a stack of papers. Flicking through she didn’t find what she was looking for. “Sorry, I must have thrown the little pamphlet they gave m-” Her body jolted.
“Are you ok?”
“Y-yea… I just-” She coughed and grabbed at her throat.
Gwen moved to approach but Jack grabbed her arm and pulled her back, seeing the long line of blood begin pouring from the womans mouth. Her throat distended as what looked like spindly, insectoid, legs sprout from between her lips. A large dragonfly like insect pushed its way out, fluttering its translucent wings as they began to dry, free from its human cocoon. Both Jack and Gwen aimed at the thing but before they could fire a bullet swept past them, shattering its chitinous form before the womans body fell to the floor with a damp thud. The captain turned just in time to see a figure dressed in black attempting to escape the scene.
“Cut him off.” He gestured to the front door as he dashed around the back.
Gwen sprinted to stop whoever had shot the creature, seeing him running past the SUV followed by Jack. She fired a round into the balaclava masked mans leg, dropping him to the floor, hard.
“It looks like someone at the Pharm wanted to keep their test a secret.” Jack said as he watched Owen patch the assassin up. They didn’t want him to bleed out before they could find out what was really going on.
“Can’t we just go and ask? I mean Dr Copely isn’t some quack in a lab coat. Do you really think he’d let this happen under his nose?”
“I don’t think someone could hide these huge insects from him. Anyway, before she died the woman mentioned him by name.”
The assassin growled as Owen dressed the wound on his leg, or at least that’s what they thought he was growling at.
“I gave you enough pain killers that I could stab you in the leg and you wouldn’t feel it. You can knock it off.” The doctor said before looking up and changing his mind. The bound man looked deathly pale, and had a thin sheen of sweat across his brow. “Have you taken anything?”
The assassin shook his head. “Fuck it hurts! Feels like something’s moving.”
“The woman said something about reset. Were you given anything by that name?” Asked Jack, having a sneaking suspicion about what was happening.
“N-no!... Argh… I had to catch one of those bugs after it hatched… It stung me… But that was days ago… Copely said I was fine!”
“Jack, help me lay him down and call Martha. Tell her to bring my field kit.” Owen took his scissors and cut away the mans body armour and shirt. Jack didn’t argue. He helped the writing man out of the chair and onto the floor, watching the skin of his stomach move unnaturally. The doctor got to work immediately, using the last of the local anaesthetic he’d brought for the bullet wound to numb out the flesh above the parasite.
The assassin looked down, terror in his eyes. “Oh god. There’s one of those things inside me?”
“What’s your name mate?”
“Billy… Billy Davis.”
“I’m Dr Owen Harper and I’m going to try and save your life, but this is going to get messy.”
“Please, I don’t want to die.” Billy sobbed, still looking down at the thing moving in his stomach.
Martha ran in and handed over the bag before pulling on a fresh pair of gloves. Owen opened the bag and found what he was looking for.
“Billy, I need you to look away. This might still hurt a bit.”
Martha took the moment to hold Billys hand and move so he could look at her instead of what was happening to his stomach. Owen carefully cut just below the movement, hoping to let the insect out before it did any more damage. He hoped he’d been fast enough to save the man as he extracted the insect, one hand gripped tightly around the flys thorax so it couldn’t bite or sting him. Its damp wings fluttered in the open air before Jack, returning wearing a pair of gauntlets, took it and placed it into a tank held by Ianto in the hallway.
An hour, and a very inopportune surgery, later Billy was stable and still alive. He’d need a long time to recover but he was alive. That’s what mattered.
“The whole place is heavily guarded. Other than the front gate, there’s no way in.” Tosh said, looking up from her screen.
Jack nodded. “And you haven’t managed to hack their system?”
“It’s closed off. I’d need to get access to one of the computers on their network, which are all inside.”
“Damn… We need to get inside.”
“We’ve still got Billys van. We could use it to get in undetected.” Gwen offered.
“They’d know as soon as we pulled up.”
Tosh glanced over to the medical bay. “Maybe we could convince Billy to drive us in. Owen and Martha did just save his life.”
“I don’t think he’ll be in any state to drive.”
“He won’t need to. I can control it from the back. As soon as I can get access to one of their computers I can shut down everything inside the building.”