Chapter Text
‘I can’t believe it’s taken us so long to get around to doing this,’ Catrin says as she clinks her bottle against Rhys’s, Gwen’s and Tosh’s over the table of the Italian restaurant.
‘I can believe it,’ Rhys mutters as he brings his beer to his lips.
‘That’s what you get for marrying into special ops,’ Gwen tells him over her glass of lemonade. She eyes the beer and wine the others have chosen and holds in a sigh. With everything that’s been going on lately, she feels like she could do with a nice, chilled Sauvignon Blanc. Potentially a whole bottle.
‘I love how you lot all call it “special ops”,’ Catrin says, air quoting the title. ‘You must have a different name you call it at work yourselves, surely?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know,’ Tosh teases.
Gwen smiles over the table at her. She likes seeing this version of Tosh, more care-free, more confident. Catrin is good for her and Gwen would be lying if she said she didn’t feel the least bit pleased with herself for that bit of match-making.
‘I’d love to know,’ Catrin says. ‘I really would.’
‘Good luck with that,’ Rhys says.
‘You must know more by now, Rhys,’ Catrin says, leaning back so the waiter can lay a basket of seeded bread rolls down on the table. ‘You and Gwen have been together forever.’
Gwen rests a hand on Rhys’s thigh under the table and gives it a squeeze.
‘Don’t be silly, Cat,’ she says. ‘You have met Rhys, right? He’s not exactly great at keeping secrets.’
Rhys rests a hand on top of Gwen’s.
‘Yep, you know me,’ he says. ‘Remember when Uncle Llew made us swear not to tell Mamgu that he’d crashed her car in the supermarket car park with us and the Christmas turkey in the back?’
‘You told her as soon as you walked through the door,’ Catrin says with a laugh. ‘Bampi boxed him round the ears.’
‘Llew made me give him back the tenner he’d bribed me with. There went my dreams of buying out Woolworth’s pick and mix.’
Gwen takes one of the bread rolls, tears it, and unwraps a foil packet of butter. The butter is stiff as she tries to spread it, listening in as Catrin explains to Tosh that ‘bampi’ is a Welsh term for grandad and teases that she’ll have to teach her some more Welsh if she’s going to keep living in the country.
It’s nice to be around normal conversation like this, to have a moment to sit back and spend time with Rhys and friends. The restaurant is done up like a faux trattoria, a beachside scene painted onto the brick of one wall, their table tucked under a stone archway. Between them, a red candle flickers in a glass bottle wrapped in twine, years’ worth of wax built up along the neck of the bottle.
Around them, couples and groups of friends chat and talk at their own tables, splitting huge pizzas between them. Many of them must live in this city that Gwen fights every day to protect. There are probably some here who’ve had experiences with the Rift or things that have come through it, even if they don’t understand what they’ve seen. Torchwood came in and saved the day, cleared up the mess, and now here they are living life as if their city isn’t situated on a space-time anomaly.
They don’t know what Gwen knows. They don’t know what Torchwood goes through to keep them safe.
Or what Torchwood is going through right now. She meets Tosh’s eyes across the table as Rhys and Catrin laugh about some other time Uncle Llew had got in trouble – this time involving losing the family dog – and Gwen knows Tosh’s mind is elsewhere, just like hers. They may be free to have the evening out, but their thoughts can never be too far from what they do or the conversations that had been had in the Hub earlier that day.
Gwen spreads butter on another segment of roll and leans back, remembering.
*~*TW*~*
It’s early morning and the team are gathered around the boardroom table. There’s no joking or messing around today. Gwen can see the focus on the faces of her teammates - they know something’s up, and are impatient for Jack to break his silence.
The captain gets to his feet at the head of the table.
‘We’re being watched,’ he says, finally revealing more about what he and Gwen had been worried about since they’d seen Martha. ‘I don’t know exactly who by, or why, but there may be a target on all of our backs.’
‘What do you mean watched?’ Owen asks. ‘Are we being tailed?’
‘Have you noticed anyone tailing you?’ Jack asks. Gwen can see that he’s being totally serious – beyond what Martha had attempted to tell him, he’s as in the dark as the rest of them.
Owen raises his eyebrows, alarmed at Jack’s tone.
‘No, but seems like I should be keeping an eye out,’ he says.
‘How do you know we’re being watched?’ Tosh asks.
‘Martha,’ Jack answers. ‘She didn’t use those exact words, she said we needed to watch our backs. She wanted to tell me more, wanted to talk away from UNIT eyes and ears, but we didn’t get a chance.’
‘She was suddenly pulled onto another project that put her off-grid,’ Gwen adds.
‘Suspicious,’ Ianto chips in. The black eye he’d gained on the undercover student job still blooms purple across his pale skin.
‘Very suspicious,’ Jack agrees.
‘And we haven’t heard from her since,’ Gwen says.
‘I have, actually,’ Jack says. ‘Last night.’
Gwen frowns.
‘What did she say?’
Jack fishes his phone out of his pocket.
‘See for yourself,’ he says, sliding it across the table to her.
Gwen catches the phone before it slips off the edge of the table and opens the message, reading it aloud for the others to hear.
MARTHA:
Been given access to my phone again – finally! All good here, might be home in 2 weeks. Hope you and the team are good. We’ll talk then?
‘Sounds like she still wants to talk about what’s going on then,’ Gwen says. ‘Two weeks… We need to see her as soon as she gets back from wherever she is, see if she’s found out more.’
‘I’ll go and pick her up myself,’ Jack says.
‘What do we do in the mean time? Are we in danger, Jack?’ Owen asks.
Jack draws in a deep breath, tucks his thumbs into his suspenders.
‘I don’t know,’ he admits. ‘But we should be cautious. Gwen’s police friend says our old pal DCI Brooks has been digging around, trying to find out more about us.’
Owen laughs.
‘Brooks?’ he says in disbelief. ‘If that’s who’s watching us, what’ve we got to be worried about?’
‘He’s not doing it off his own back,’ Gwen says. ‘Andy told me that a woman has been in to see Brooks. No one knows who she is, but when she showed up, Brooks had even more questions about us.’
‘So, we’ve got a mystery woman working with the police, and maybe UNIT too if Martha’s heard things…’ Ianto muses. ‘Sounds like they’re ganging up on us.’
‘And we’ve only ever tried to be friends,’ Jack says.
‘But what do they want?’ Tosh asks. ‘Do they want something we’ve got? Do they want to stop or – or take over from us?’
‘UNIT’s always wanted all of that,’ Jack says. ‘They think they should monitor the Rift, but they don’t know anything about it.’
‘What do we do then?’ Ianto asks. ‘Do we go fully covert, hide ourselves from prying eyes?’
Jack shakes his head.
‘That’ll only raise suspicions. We need to act to like we don’t know anything but we’ll be conducting an investigation of our own. I want us to find out who’s poking around in our business, trying to learn more about all of us, so we can turn things round on them.’
‘I’ll start with the attempts to hack us,’ Tosh says. ‘There must be a connection there.’
Jack nods.
‘Exactly what I was thinking,’ he says. ‘Gwen, Ianto, I want you to dig through security footage and visitor logs from the police precinct, see if you can find our mystery woman.’
Gwen nods in unison with Ianto as she starts to compile a mental checklist of how she’s going to take on the task just assigned to her. She feels better now that they’re forming a counter-attack.
‘What if all of this gets their attention?’ Owen asks. ‘Could they shut us down? Try and pick one of us off?’
Jack looks round at the team, taking them all in one by one.
‘We take care of our own,’ he says. ‘No one is to work a case outside of the Hub alone. Everyone has to have a tracker on them at all times and let the rest of us know where you’re going. I know you’re not children, but until we have a better idea of what’s going on here then it’s better to be safe than sorry.’
‘What about Gwen?’ Owen asks. ‘Her maternity leave starts in a month.’
‘And Martha should be back, hopefully with answers, in two weeks. We’ll make a decision then.’
‘Are you okay with that, Gwen?’ Owen asks. ‘Parenthood by committee?’
Gwen glances down at her hands, her fingers laced across her baby bump. She’d known, ever since she had found out she was pregnant, that her journey into motherhood wasn’t going to be the same as anyone else’s. She accepted that. But she didn’t want it to be so different that Rhys and the poor kid would end up having to hide away from danger that she’d brought to their doorstep.
‘It is what it is, Owen,’ she says, looking from him to Jack, who nods. ‘I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep my baby safe.’
‘We all will,’ Jack says. ‘Now, let’s get to work.’
*~*TW*~*
Just as the waiter places the dessert menus down on the table, Tosh’s phone starts to ring.
‘Here we go,’ Rhys says with a wry smile in Catrin’s direction. ‘You’ll get used to this. We’ve been lucky here, nearly made it to pudding.’
Gwen nudges him in the ribs with her elbow as Tosh answers the call.
‘Jack?’ she says.
Gwen eyes the dessert menu mournfully. She really wanted a chocolate lava cake.
‘Do you need us both?’ Tosh asks, already getting to her feet and sweeping her bag off the floor.
‘Okay,’ she continues. ‘We’ll be there in ten.’
She hangs up and looks over to Gwen.
‘All hands on deck, apparently,’ she says, then turns to Catrin. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Catrin says. ‘You’re both clearly very important.’
‘Thank you for understanding,’ Tosh says, then leans down to press a quick kiss to Catrin’s lips. ‘I’ll come by yours later, if we don’t finish too late?’
‘Come by even if you do finish too late,’ Catrin replies with a grin. ‘And be careful, yeah? You’ve got some gnarly scars for someone in IT…’
‘Computers can be very dangerous,’ Gwen says, as she squeezes herself out of the booth and gets to her feet. Rhys reaches for her hand.
‘You too, love, yeah?’ he says. ‘Be careful.’
‘I’ll be co-ordinating from HQ,’ she says. ‘I’m a desk jockey now, remember? Gotta keep Rhys Junior safe.’
Rhys kisses the hand he holds in his.
‘See you later,’ he says.
Gwen follows after Tosh, who’s already nearly at the door.
‘What’s going on?’ she asks.
‘Ianto intercepted a call in to the police. Something big and toothy – Jack’s words, not mine – loose on a building site at Cardiff Gate.’
‘And those three strapping lads couldn’t handle it by themselves?’ Gwen asks, stepping out onto a dark and drizzly Albany Road.
‘You know they’re useless without us, Gwen,’ Tosh says as she opens up an umbrella and holds it over both of their heads. ‘Come on, they’re going to pick us up by the library.’
*~*TW*~*
Jack brings the SUV to a squealing stop in the centre of the building site. He switches the engine off and takes in the half-built houses all around them, roofless and windowless boxes in uniform rows exposed to the Cardiff rain, which is coming down hard now.
‘This city keeps spreading,’ he says. ‘This all used to be fields.’
‘God, Jack, you sound like my dad,’ Gwen says from beside him in the passenger seat, before putting on a deep voice and intoning in a broad Swansea accent, ‘When I was a lad, Gwen, we used to ride our bikes through here, now look at the state of it.’
‘Coming back to the task at hand,’ Ianto says from the back seat, looking down at his PDA. ‘I’ve cleared any mentions of what’s going on here from the police logs. There shouldn’t be anyone here, no security on site, and the builder that called it in initially has gone home. I intercepted his call with the police, took his statement, and said we’d visit him tomorrow with an update – probably with a dose of low-grade retcon.’
‘Just us and our toothy friend then,’ Jack says. ‘How big is this site?’
‘Three hundred houses, around seventy being put up at the moment.’
‘That’s a bit of ground to cover. Gwen, you stay here and co-ordinate – keep the doors closed and locked. The rest of us will spread out in pairs – Tosh, you’re with me, Ianto and Owen take the opposite direction.’
‘If “big and toothy” is the only description we’ve got to go on, what kit are we taking?’ Owen asks. ‘Do we think it’s a hoix?’
‘Could be,’ Jack says. ‘Tosh, picking up any life signs?’
Tosh studies her PDA screen, then leans through into the front of the vehicle to show Jack what she’s looking at.
‘There’s definitely something within a two hundred metre radius of here. I can’t narrow it down any further because I’m still working on this software, but I’m getting signs of extra-terrestrial life on site. Whatever it is, it’s big.’
Jack takes this in, then runs through the SUV inventory in his mind.
‘Alright, sounds like we should take some of the big guns then, I’m thinking tranqs and Nymonian blasters, as well as the net guns.’
‘We’ve only got one,’ Ianto says. ‘I haven’t managed to untangle the net in the other one since Owen decided to test it on Myfanwy.’
‘Sounds like a job for Owen when we get back later.’
‘It wouldn’t have got so tangled if she hadn’t flapped about so much when I caught her,’ Owen protests.
‘How would you feel if a net suddenly blasted through the air and trapped you?’ Ianto asks in disbelief. ‘You owe her a lot of chocolate.’
Jack rolls his eyes.
‘Come on, let’s get the kit together and get this done. Gwen and Tosh might be able to get back for dessert if we’re fast.’
*~*TW*~*
Jack’s boots splash through puddles in the potholed ground as he makes his way towards the nearest house, Tosh a few steps behind. He tucks his shoulder up against the wall and leans through the open doorway, swinging his torch through the empty frame, checking each corner.
Tosh falls in against the opposite side of the door, peering in and following the arc of his torchlight as it glides across the exposed brickwork.
‘Clear,’ she says.
Jack lowers his torch and steps through the door – something on the ground has caught his eye. He steps towards it and crouches down, running his hand over the freshly laid concrete of the building’s foundations. He feels the soft ripples that have formed in the surface due to the way the liquid concrete had been poured, then comes across something else. He directs his torch towards his hand and finds a crack, larger than his splayed fingers, with a dent running just below it.
‘Is that a -?’ Tosh starts.
‘A footprint,’ Jack says. ‘A big one.’
He tucks his torch between his teeth and presses his hand firmly into the indentation. He removes the torch and gets back to his feet.
‘It’s warm too,’ he says.
‘So it’s close by?’
‘Could be. Don’t stray too far away from me.’
Tosh nods and steps a little closer to Jack, checking over her shoulder. She shines her own torch along the floor.
‘How come there aren’t more?’ she says.
Jack shakes his head.
‘I don’t know.’
He taps his finger to his ear, activating his comms.
‘Ianto, Owen – anything your side?’ he asks.
‘Nothing,’ Owen says. ‘Just freezing our arses off.’
‘Gwen, any luck getting the thermal imaging camera up and running?’
‘Nearly there,’ Gwen replies. ‘It’s taking a little while to boot up.’
The thermal imaging camera is a new piece of kit that Ianto has recently added to the SUV, and this is the first chance they’ve had to use it. Mounted to the roof, it can scan one hundred and eighty degrees around the vehicle, picking up heat traces up to half a kilometre away.
‘Let us know when it picks something up,’ Jack says.
He gestures to Tosh and leads them back through the doorway they’d come through previously, before jogging over to the next house to conduct a similar search. Still nothing, and no footprints this time.
He’s just about to lead the way to the next house when Tosh grabs out at him, catching the sleeve of his greatcoat.
‘Did you hear that?’ she asks.
Jack straightens and strains his ears. All he’d heard was rainfall, a gentle trickle against the brickwork… but there is something else, now he’s listening out for it.
Breathing. The crunch of gravel nearby.
Another rattling breath, sucked in deep.
Jack pulls Tosh in behind him and backs her towards one of the more complete corners of the building, concentrating on keeping his steps as quiet as possible. He switches his torch off, casting them into a darkness that’s broken only by a slim, silver slither of moonlight.
A heavy exhale, more gravel skittering under foot as whatever it is moves closer to them.
Gwen’s voice in his ear.
‘I’ve got the camera up and running – Jack, Tosh, whatever it is is pretty close to you. It’s on its own, but it’s bigger than you, Jack, and it’s burning hot.’
Jack catches Tosh’s eye but neither dare to respond.
‘Where are they, Gwen?’ Ianto’s voice over the comms now, commanding. ‘We’re coming.’
Jack reaches over his shoulder to grab the tranquiliser gun that he has slung there.
‘It’s on the move,’ Gwen tells them. ‘Jack, Tosh, are you hearing this?’
Jack hears more footsteps, but he still can’t see anything. Just behind him, Tosh is squinting through the darkness, trying to make out whatever it is.
‘It’s fifteen metres away now, on your twelve,’ Gwen says. ‘What is it? What can you see?’
Jack looks to Tosh. If it’s on their twelve they should be able to see it by now, through the open front door and down what will one day be a neatly laid garden path.
But there’s nothing. Even the breathing sounds have stopped.
Getting the gun ready to fire, Jack takes a few slow steps forward.
His foot catches a screwdriver that’s been left loose on the floor. Jack watches as it rolls away across the floor and knocks against the wall.
A screeching growl breaks through the air. Jack looks up – where there had previously been nothing, not even a sign of life, there’s now a hulking, great creature bearing down on him, only metres away.
It’s almost twice as tall as him, with glistening black skin slicked wet with rain. It stands on two powerful legs, muscles thick as tree trunks, with a broad set of arms set in its wide shoulders and a second pair of arms extending from its torso. Six black eyes, glittering like a spiders, blink in its shadowy face. Its grey lips are drawn back, rictus, against several rows of dagger-like teeth.
Jack has never seen anything like it. The alien leans forward and – although Jack has no idea what it is, has felt his stomach churn at the sight of it – he recognises that stance.
‘Tosh, get back!’ he yells as the thing charges towards him with a guttural cry.
He can’t get his finger on the trigger fast enough. The alien is on him in three steps, swinging a vicious set of claws out at him. Even as Jack feels his skin tearing, feels the hot blood pouring out from his shoulder right down to his opposite hip and knows that several organs have been punctured, he tries to fight back.
The alien is on top of him, keen to finish its work and wrap its jaws around Jack’s throat, but he manages to point the tranq gun upwards and pull the trigger. A dart fires directly into the creature’s stomach, piercing the skin.
The creature leans back and lets out a howl that echoes across the site.
As Jack fades into oblivion, he thinks he sees the creature fading from his vision too and hopes he’s done enough.
*~*TW*~*
Jack gasps back to life minutes later with Ianto’s arms around him, Tosh and Owen crouched nearby. Between them, they’ve managed to drag him under the part-built staircase of the house. Ianto’s grip tightens as Jack flails, then relaxes as Jack puts a hand up to grip his forearm.
‘That looked like a messy one,’ Owen says, nodding down at Jack’s shredded shirt. The pale blue is saturated with scarlet.
‘Felt like a messy one,’ Jack says, pushing himself up. Ianto breaks away to give him space, shuffling along the wall. Jack meets the other man’s eyes and offers him a small smile to show he’s alright.
‘Do you know what it was?’ Ianto asks.
‘Never seen anything like it,’ Jack answers. ‘Wouldn’t care to again either. Where did it go, Tosh?’
‘You’re not going to like this,’ Tosh says. ‘It seems to have teleported.’
‘Teleported?’
‘Best word I’ve got for it. Just before you were – uh, incapacitated – it flickered and disappeared.’
‘Are you sure it’s not just invisible?’
‘Given what I’ve seen of it, I think it’s capable of both.’
‘What do you mean?’ Owen asks, looking around wildly. ‘It could be here right now?’
‘I think Jack’s tranquiliser dart upset it, at least for now, and that’s why it teleported. But don’t you remember, Jack? Right before we saw it, Gwen said it was right ahead of us, only metres away. But there was nothing there until – there it was.’
‘Bloody brilliant,’ Owen says. ‘It’s big, ugly, angry, and we can’t see it.’
‘What’re you getting on the thermal view, Gwen?’ Jack asks over the comms.
‘Nothing since you darted it,’ she says. ‘Can I come over and help now?’
‘No,’ the remaining four Torchwood members tell her simultaneously.
‘Stay in that SUV, Gwen, I’m deadly serious,’ Jack adds. ‘I’m tempted to send the rest of you back there too, I’m not sure we’ve got the kit to tangle with this thing.’
‘If it can teleport, it could be anywhere by now,’ Ianto says. ‘Is it even still in Cardiff? Could it have left this planet?’
Jack shakes his head and starts to get to his feet. He still feels a little light-headed from all of the blood loss, can feel where his skin was broken, so uses the wall to support him. The unfinished staircase prevents him from standing to his full height, but he doesn’t feel like he’s got the energy for that just yet anyway.
‘There aren’t many aliens I’ve come across that have the biological ability to teleport,’ he says, ‘but those that do have it can’t go far. It’s an evolutionary escape mechanism, not meant for travelling huge distances. And that thing didn’t look like it was carrying anything, so all of these abilities are its own. It probably hasn’t gone far.’
‘Shall we go back to the SUV?’ Tosh suggests. ‘Run some wider-ranging scans, see if we can pick it up again?’
‘Uh, guys,’ Gwen’s voice sounds in their ears. ‘I don’t think you need to do that. It’s back – looks like it’s about a hundred metres down the road to your right.’
Owen ducks down and makes his way over to the nearest window frame. He cautiously pokes his head through then turns back to the others.
‘The chip in my head has made my vision far better than it ever used to be,’ he says, ‘and I can’t see shit.’
‘It’s activated its invisibility,’ Ianto whispers.
‘What’s our plan here, Jack?’ Owen asks, scampering back over to the others. ‘Is a net going to contain this thing?’
Jack reaches out towards Ianto and takes the Nymonian blaster from him.
‘This needs pure firepower,’ he says. ‘We aren’t going to make friends here. For our safety and for the city’s, we need to take this thing out.’
‘It’s getting closer,’ Gwen says. ‘Can you see it yet?’
Owen checks through the window again.
‘Nothing.’
And then there’s a growl. Jack readies the blaster.
‘This isn’t safe for any of you. I’ll distract it, try and take it down. The rest of you should get back to the SUV and wait for me there.’
‘We can’t -,’ Ianto starts.
‘That’s an order,’ Jack says.
‘But what if it -,’ Ianto tries again.
‘I said that’s an order, Ianto,’ Jack says again, raising his eyebrows at Ianto. He needs Ianto to understand that he’s saying this as their leader, as the man who has to make the judgement calls.
That he’d also feel a lot better if Ianto and the others were back in the SUV, protected by bulletproof windows and a highly enforced chassis, is by-the-by.
Ianto holds his gaze for a few seconds, studying Jack’s face. He only relents when another growl ripples through the air, closer this time.
‘Fine,’ he says.
Then it’s Owen’s turn to argue back.
‘I can help you, Jack,’ he says. ‘With my new super strength – or whatever we want to call it, I haven’t decided yet, I don’t want to sound like some comic book character – I could help you take this thing down.’
‘I know,’ Jack says, ‘but I want you to use it to get Tosh and Ianto back to the SUV. Have the other Nymonian blaster ready and watch out for the others from there.’
Footsteps creeping towards them. More growling, heavy breathing outside. A claw flickers into view, spindly fingers wrapping around the doorframe, the rest of the creature still invisible.
‘Might be too late,’ Owen says.
The claw disappears again. An eery silence.
Then Owen is knocked clean off his feet. He yells and kicks out. Jack looses off several high-calibre rounds from the blaster, aiming just above Owen. One of them makes contact with the invisible creature; the site of the injury becomes visible to their human eyes, black blood bursting from a split in the alien’s side.
Still largely invisible, it shrieks and launches itself upwards. Jack can hear it scuttling around on the ceiling above them.
‘Owen!’ he says. ‘Are you alright?’
Owen coughs weakly on the ground, holding his ribs.
‘Just bruises, I think,’ he says. ‘Don’t think it managed to cut me.’
Tosh dashes over to help him to his feet. Ianto falls in behind Jack, going back-to-back with him, both heads tilted up towards the half-built roof.
‘Can you make it to the SUV?’ Jack asks Owen.
‘Let’s sort this out first, eh?’ Owen suggests, freeing himself from Tosh’s support.
The creature on the ceiling shrieks again and Jack fires in the direction of the sound. He doesn’t make contact but he has succeeded in angering it. It drops from the roof, landing hard on Jack, bowling him over once again.
As he attempts to fire the blaster, he feels cold liquid splash over him, sees bright white start to stain his hands and clothes.
He doesn’t have time to properly process what it is as he manages to get another shot off at the alien, triggering its teleport reflex.
They’re left alone in the dark again, only this time Jack is covered in – he raises a hand to his nose and sniffs.
‘Is that -?’ he starts.
‘Dulux Egg White Emulsion,’ Ianto answers, holding the can up for him to see. ‘I thought it was a theory worth testing.’
‘And that theory is?’ Owen asks as Ianto offers a hand to Jack and helps him get to his feet.
‘Assuming that the alien can only make itself invisible, and not anything in contact with it, we’ll now be able to see it. Well, we’ll be able to see a bright white splash running around anyway.’
‘Good theory,’ Jack says, looking down at himself. ‘This is going to be hell to get out of my coat though.’
‘Lucky you have a good dry cleaner,’ Ianto says. He chucks the empty paint can into a corner.
‘It hasn’t gone far,’ Gwen says from the SUV. ‘I’ve got it on the camera two houses to your right.’
‘Maybe it can’t go as far with its injuries,’ Tosh says.
‘Makes sense,’ Jack agrees. ‘About time I finished it off then. And you lot will go back to the SUV, Captain’s orders.’
There’s no dissent this time. Owen leads the way out of the house, checking for the creature, then gestures for Tosh and Ianto to follow.
Jack gives them a few seconds head start, letting them make their way quietly down the road towards the car. He closes his eyes and readies himself to face the thing again, gripping the blaster hard, taking solace in the fact that it seems to be doing some damage. If he has to take a few more hits, a few more resurrections, but the others are safe, then so be it. He knows when to take them out of the line of the fire – he learnt the hard way.
He opens his eyes when he hears a scream rip through the skies. It’s definitely not the alien this time – it’s Tosh.
He sprints through the door, looking wildly from side-to-side.
Tosh, Owen and Ianto have only made it a few houses further down the street. Although they’d headed in the opposite direction to where Gwen had said the alien was, it’s now in front of them, between them and the junction they need to take to get to the SUV.
Ianto’s theory has been proven to be accurate – although Jack can’t see the full shape and size of the alien as he had seen it before, he can see splodges of bright white rippling in the air, like oil suspended in water.
And it’s on the move again, the white splashes streaking towards the team.
‘Take cover!’ Jack yells as he runs as fast as he can towards them, readying the blaster. He pumps his legs hard, trying to cover ground as quick as the alien can, but he hasn’t got a chance. This thing is built to hunt.
Ianto dives to one side and Owen dives to another, taking Tosh with him. The alien goes for Tosh, a paint-stained arm swinging out at her, but Owen throws himself into the path of the attack. He wraps his wiry body around the arm, grappling with his newfound strength to hold the thing back.
‘Get to the car!’ he shouts down at Tosh, who scrambles to her feet.
On the other side of the road, Ianto is back upright, attempting to line up a shot but the chance of hitting Owen is too high given the wrestling match he’s now in with the alien. Jack can see this as he, too, can no longer safely land a shot on the alien. He changes tact and tries to go for its feet hoping that, even if he doesn’t make contact, he’ll distract the creature into letting Owen go.
It works. The alien – which had been raising Owen slowly above its head – drops him and turns to face Jack. Owen hits the ground hard and Ianto runs over to him, dragging him away from the creature as it puffs out a hot, angry breath and lumbers towards Jack.
Jack pulls the trigger of the blaster repeatedly, sees several shots land, black blood leaking against the white paint like a Jackson Pollock. The alien shrieks again, but doesn’t seem capable of teleporting any more.
Jack hears the trigger squeak but nothing comes out of the barrel. It’s out of charge. He tosses it aside and goes to pull his Webley from his belt, but it’s not there, he must have lost it in one of the other scuffles.
The alien flickers fully into view. Its lips pull back, displaying its many sharp teeth as if smiling, as if it knows Jack doesn’t have anything else in his arsenal.
‘Come on then,’ he tells it.
The creature puts his head down, it’s secondary pair of arms hitting the ground to become forelegs, ready to race at Jack at top speed.
But it can’t move as fast as an SUV being razzed in top gear by a screaming, pregnant Welshwoman.
With a crunch like that of a very large bug being stepped on by an even larger boot, the bonnet of the SUV pummels through the alien. Jack just has time to get out of the way of the speeding vehicle before it takes him out too.
Gwen slams on the brakes, the battered alien coming to a rest under the hefty tyres of the SUV. It twitches several times before falling still.
Jack rests a hand on the bonnet, getting his breath back, as Gwen puts the window down.
‘Thought you could use my help,’ she says.
*~*TW*~*
Bruised and battered, the team clamber into the SUV, Gwen still at the wheel.
‘Think you could do that with a baby in the passenger seat?’ Owen asks, head slumping back against the headrest, eyes closed.
‘I’m hoping not to find out,’ Gwen answers, twisting in her seat to take them all in. ‘You all ok?’
Jack scans his team, assessing the three in the back seat. Ianto and Tosh look tired, clothes a little scuffed up but otherwise not too bad, whereas Owen has several scrapes on his face and is holding his ribs.
‘This’ll be a good test of the chip’s ability to heal me,’ he says. ‘Get your notebook ready, Tosh.’
‘Home time, I think,’ Jack says. ‘Ianto, can you help me with this body first?’
Ianto is reaching for the door handle when Tosh throws an arm out and stops him.
‘Jack,’ she says. ‘I’ve just had an alert through. Someone’s broken into the Hub.’