Title: The Uninvited
By: b-w-williams
Pairing: Jack/Ianto & I/OMC
Rating: AO
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine!
Warning: Language, slash and some violence. (There is something that MIGHT be considered non-con, but it isn't really to be taken that way and I hopefully haven't written it that way either.)
Summary: A simple accident leads to something far more complicated. And far more troublesome.

***

The rain had turned to hail, tiny lumps of ice suddenly battering down upon Ianto Jones as he hurried along the path. He scowled and lifted one arm, attempting to shield his head from the unexpectedly harsh weather. It was a pointless effort and he soon gave up, opting to merely wipe at his soaked face instead and press onwards. In his other hand he held his gun, pointing safely down towards the ground, index finger stretched out along the barrel instead of ready on the trigger; he already knew that he wouldn't need to use the weapon.

The team had spent the day following a fair-sized group of Weevils through the city, their nest apparently stirred up by some earlier Rift activity. The beasts had all finally been accounted for, save a particularly sneaky one that he and Owen had been attempting to flank in the narrow alleyways that wound through a collection of run-down old buildings. Considering Owen's last call across the comms. that he already had hold of the Weevil, Ianto didn't really need to hurry, but he still kept up the swift pace, rather eager to get out of the icy cold rain.

The wind picked up, howling along the narrow road and pushing him forward. Ianto shivered and tugged the collar of his jacket up. He hoped, he really did, that whatever had disturbed the Weevils had not bothered anything else, because the day had already been long enough and all he wanted right then was to change out of his wet clothes and spend the rest of the evening somewhere warm and dry. Preferably with the largest cup he could find, full to the brim with strong coffee.

Almost impossibly, the wind grew even stronger, forcing him to stumble faster towards the next corner that would bring him back to Owen and his Weevil. The noise of the air moving past his ears shifted up from a natural wail, increasing in pitch and volume until his head rang and his vision blurred. He staggered, his foot slipping on the wet curb, but before he could regain his balance a flair of light exploded before his eyes and he fell into the road.

The grey world tumbled around him, spinning so that he could no longer be sure which way was up, until at last it slowed and came to rest and he was on the ground, staring up into the hail.

Shocked, Ianto lay there, motionless, blinking occasionally against the frozen droplets falling onto his face. He was numb with surprise and alarm, but as he turned his head to the side, pain blossomed along the entire length of the right side of his body. Ianto gasped loudly, eyes squeezed shut against the agony, mind whirling with confusion over what precisely had just happened.

The sound of footsteps broke through his bewildered thoughts, moving steadily towards him, not hurried, not hesitant. He twisted, trying to look up and caught sight of a figure crouching down beside him. A pale face appeared above his own.

"Don't worry," a female voice said. "You'll be all right. I wasn't going that fast."

Ianto heaved in a huge lungful of air, hoping to ask her what had happened, but all that came out was a pained groan.

"Shh," the stranger said gently, placing a hand on his right arm and causing him to clench his jaw before another moan could escape. "It's okay, Ianto. You'll be okay."

He barely even heard the reassuring whisper, or the use of his name by someone he was pretty sure he didn't know. His eyes rolled back into his head and a blanket of darkness settled over him.

***

Ianto was vaguely aware of being moved, his body manhandled from one pool of light to another, whilst his mind floated separate from everything that happened around him.

Finally, however, another voice broke though the haze. "Right, all done."

Ianto blinked, focus returning to his vision, and the blur in front of him sharpened into the familiar shape of Torchwood's resident doctor. He looked around, finding himself inexplicably seated on the metal bed in the autopsy bay.

Ianto gaped at Owen Harper for a long silent moment before looking down at himself. His clothes were a damp mess, ripped and bloodied, and his right arm was encased in a fresh fibreglass cast from hand to elbow. "What happened?" he asked, recalling only the fall and the agony that followed.

"You," Owen began matter-of-factly, wiping his hands as he spoke, "were hit by a car." He shook his head. "The whole day chasing bloody aliens and you get hit by a car? That's just embarrassing, mate."

Ianto blinked again and said nothing. He lifted his hand to examine the wet bandages and felt his body protesting the movement. From the feel of it he had bruises all down his right side, but that wasn't anything he couldn't handle; he had been bruised more than enough times to be accustomed to the sensation by now. He wiggled the exposed tips of his fingers, fascinated by the fact that he couldn't feel them moving.

Owen reached up, pressing at something on Ianto's forehead and the younger man flinched away from the contact. "Take it easy, I was just checking your stitches."

"Stitches?" Ianto echoed, futilely looking upwards.

Owen grunted in confirmation, tipping his head back and squinting down his nose at the wound on Ianto's forehead before producing a square of thick white gauze and taping it into place.

"Ah-hah! Back with us at last?" Captain Jack Harkness asked cheerfully, appearing on the walkway above them. Ianto looked up as the new arrival leaned over the handrail and grinned down at him. "You had us worried for a while there, Ianto, all non-compos mentis and so on. How's he doing, Owen?"

"There's no serious damage, other than the arm, and he's got a few bruises and a small cut on the head. He'll be in the cast for a good few weeks, but nothing really to be worried about."

Ianto frowned at his newly encased forearm. He had never broken his arm before, never broken any bones at all before, and whilst he supposed it was better than one of his legs being damaged, he couldn't quite agree with Owen's blasé declaration. How was he supposed to be of any use with only one hand?

There were more things said, but he ignored the other two men, paying attention only when Owen produced a blue plastic sling and told him to make sure his arm was kept dry and elevated as much as possible for the next couple of days. Ianto nodded dutifully, accepted the dose of fantastically effective painkillers that Torchwood employees were privy to, and excused himself.

"Whoa!" Gwen Cooper cried out, almost colliding with him at the top of the stairs. Her expression shifted from surprise to elation in the blink of an eye. "Ianto! How are you feeling?"

Caught off guard, he floundered for a suitable response before finally realising what she wanted to hear. "Couldn't be better, thanks," he lied, trying to move around her. Gwen reached out to stop him, accidentally brushing against his injured arm. Ianto winced but made no sound, though pain ran through his body like a shot.

In a perverse way the agony served better than his polite attempt to escape Gwen. "Sorry, sorry!" she said with a grimace, pulling her hand back sharply.

"It's all right," Ianto reassured her, forcing a smile and hurrying to add, "I'm going to get changed."

With that he hurried away, the weight of three pairs of eyes heavy against his back.

---

Almost half an hour later, Ianto finally dropped the shirt in his hand to the floor, frustrated. There was really no way he could replace his ruined shirt with a new one; he had been trying unsuccessfully to get the sleeve over his now-set cast for a long time, mindlessly focused, despite the obvious futility of the entire endeavour and the ache that his movements produced.

Admitting defeat, he grabbed a t-shirt instead, stretching the worn cotton fabric over his injured arm and then fixing the sling Owen had given him across his shoulder, holding his arm securely in place. He sighed, annoyed at the inconvenience of having one less limb to work with.

Back in the Hub's central room, Ianto looked around, unable to decide what to do with himself. He knew he had a long list of things that needed tending to but couldn't seem to recall anything actually on that list. Shrugging mentally to himself, he moved across to a workstation set away from the others, pulling over a chair and attempting to sit without putting too much weight on his bruises. He tapped at the controls with his uninjured hand, slowly flicking through various programs, waiting for something to catch his eye.

"What are you up to?"

Ianto jumped and twisted his head to look up at Jack, standing close behind the chair and peering over his shoulder. The younger man blinked, confused, then looked back to the glowing screen in front of him. There were lines of text there, and an image from the interior cameras just visible behind the main window. Ianto frowned a little as he scanned the text quickly, recognising a few figures from the Hub's internal systems. "I was just trying to help Tosh sort out the problems we've been having with the security sensors," he explained. Apparently, he added in his head, alarmed that he couldn't remember pulling up the information, let alone working on it.

"You should be resting," Jack told him.

Ianto gave him a bemused look. "It's just a broken arm. I've had worse."

"Uh huh," the Captain agreed reluctantly. "How is it?"

Ianto looked down at the cast cradled against his chest and considered the question carefully. "It itches," he replied at last, forehead creasing as the tingling sensation seemed to increase with his attention.

Jack rocked a little on his heels, hands shoved casually in his pockets. "Well, everyone else has gone home for the night, but if you'd like I could help scratch it?"

The frown deepened on Ianto's face. "They've gone?" he asked, lifting his undamaged left arm to check the time. It was almost eleven at night, meaning that over five hours had passed since they had all returned to the Hub after the hunt. And he had seemingly spent most of that time at the workstation, completely oblivious to what he was doing. "Oh," he murmured. "I should probably get going too."

The declaration made Jack hesitate. "I'm not sure you should be alone tonight," he began carefully. "You might be suffering from shock."

"I feel fine."

"That doesn't mean you're not in shock."

Ianto stood, forcing a smile onto his lips. "I'm okay, Jack. Just need a good night's rest." He reached across to switch off the monitor, abandoning whatever work he might have done in the past few hours, and then turned to make his way out of the Hub.

"You can't drive," Jack pointed out, once he was halfway to the exit.

Ianto's step faltered. "I'll get a taxi."

"Why don't you let me take you home?"

"I'll be fine, Jack, Thank you."

"Ianto!"

Ianto stopped, sighing to himself and waiting for Jack to continue. There came only silence and he gave into curiosity and turned around, tensing slightly to find that the older man had crossed the large room and was right behind him once again.

Jack held out his hand, a small bottle within it. "Owen left these for you. Painkillers." He watched intently as Ianto reached out to take the medication, and grabbed his hand when he made to move away again. "Are you sure you're okay?" Jack asked, squeezing the fingers in his grasp and ducking his head slightly to catch Ianto's eye.

The younger man returned the gaze, though his expression was flat and unreadable. "I just want to go home and sleep," he said and then offered a small smile that seemed to reassure Jack more than anything he could say.

Jack expelled a breath loudly and dropped the other's hand. "Go on then, get out of here. And take tomorrow off."

Ianto smiled honestly at that. "We don't get days off," he pointed out wryly, turning and exiting the Hub, leaving the Captain frowning at the door as it shut firmly behind him.

---

Ianto did not take a taxi. He did not even consider the manner in which he was going to get home, he simply began walking and some indeterminate time later found himself outside the door to his flat, shivering from the cold as he had, apparently, forgotten to pick up a jacket before leaving the Hub.

Letting himself into the small apartment, Ianto shoved the door closed and moved over to the sofa in the middle of the room, not bothering to switch on any lights as he went. He collapsed into the cushions, groaning in a mixture of pain and relief, eyes closing and chin falling forward onto his chest.

The ringing of a phone brought his head back up and he looked around drowsily, bewildered for a moment. It felt as though he had barely closed his eyes, let alone actually slept, but he couldn't be sure, especially as the room now seemed lighter than before. Glancing over to the window, he could see a thin line of daylight around the edge of the blinds; blinds he had forgotten to open the previous morning as he hurried to work and the trouble that awaited him there.

The phone was still ringing and Ianto rubbed at his eyes before bending awkwardly in order to reach the mobile tucked in his trouser pocket. He managed to extract it, flip it open and was just lifting it to his ear when the ringing sounded again.

Rolling his eyes, Ianto pushed himself up off the couch, abandoning his mobile on the cushions and heading instead for the landline. His fingers had barely closed over the receiver when it fell silent and he glared down at it accusingly.

A glance at his watch told him it was definitely morning, time for him to be getting ready to head back into work. He walked through his bedroom into the bathroom and stopped. A shower was out of the question with the cast, despite his longing for one, and a bath would take too long, so he set about washing as best he could, one-handed and aching, from the basin.

His right arm was throbbing, his leg was swollen slightly, his shoulders and neck felt as though they had been wrenched in the wrong direction and his head was pounding. The moment he had finished towelling himself off, he rummaged through his discarded clothes to find the pills Jack had given him the night before and swallowed a couple dry.

The phone began to ring again and Ianto huffed air loudly through his nose, stalking out of the bathroom, completely naked, to grab the phone beside his bed. He lifted it to his ear and growled, "Yes?"

"Hello? Hello, Mr. Jones?"

But Ianto wasn't listening. He was opening and closing his mouth, trying to speak, trying to make any sound with his voice. And failing.

"What?" he said, sure he had spoken and yet the word did not seem to reach his ears. "Hello?" he tried again, returning the phone to his mouth to see whether the person on the other end could hear him, but they had already hung up, presumably having heard only silence on the line.

"Hello?" Ianto repeated in disbelief, the cordless phone falling to the floor, forgotten. He shouted the word again, louder and louder until his throat was raw from trying, and still no sound emerged.

Baffled, he knocked on the bedside table, making the noise to check his hearing, in spite of the fact he had quite clearly heard the phone ringing only moments earlier. Unsurprisingly he could still hear, which, whilst a good thing, provided no hint at all as to how he might have lost his voice in a matter of hours.

Shocked, he could think of nothing else to do but finish getting ready. He focused on dressing, managing with some twisting, silent cursing, and a tiny bit of tearing, to slide the sleeve of a deep red shirt over his cast. He pushed the material up to his elbow, out of the way, and then twisted around to slip his left arm into the empty sleeve. The young man was sweating by the end of the ordeal.

Increasingly annoyed by his injury and the awkward start to his day, Ianto scowled at his reflection as he brushed his teeth, completely unimpressed by the grey tint to his skin, the dark shadows under his eyes and the livid red slash of the wound on his forehead, visible now that he had thrown away the stained gauze pad in disgust.

When he remembered that he couldn't drive to work, that his car was in fact still in the parking lot beneath the Millennium Centre and thus no use to him anyway, his irritation doubled, culminating just short of a full blown tantrum as he threw the phone against a wall, halfway through dialling the number for a local taxi firm.

***

The numbers on the screen whirled across Toshiko Sato's vision, her dark eyes flickering side to side, absorbing all of the information without having to pause the stream of data. There was something within the figures, something that was out of place, but she couldn't put her finger on precisely what.

She bit her bottom lip thoughtfully and then opened up a new window on another screen in a rush of inspiration.

"Jack?" she called out, tapping away frantically at the keys. Movement in the corner of her eye indicated his arrival and she went on. "I've found a connection between a surge from a week ago and the one that stirred up the Weevils yesterday."

"What kind of connection?" The Captain glanced over at the bank of screens with interest.

"The readings for the first event are identical to the second, which would suggest they originated from the same source. We've seen sets of identical energy signatures in the past and they've always been linked in some way."

"When have we seen them?" Jack asked, his tone suggesting that he already had an idea of the answer.

"Well, for example, we saw matching readings when Captain Hart both arrived and left again a few months ago," Tosh said slowly.

"Oh, don't tell me-" groaned Jack, but Tosh shook her head before he could finish.

"No, no, these aren't the same as his, but they're close. I don't suppose you were expecting any other old friends to drop by were you?"

Jack folding his arms across his chest. "I hope not."

"What's going on?" Gwen asked, appearing suddenly and joining the pair at Tosh's station. She looked at the monitors, saw nothing that would answer her question and turned to Jack with an open and expectant expression on her face.

"Jack's got another friend coming to visit," Tosh explained.

"Jack better not have," the Captain countered with a growl. "Where did the first event occur, Tosh? And why didn't we pick up on it at the time?"

Toshiko pulled up a map of the city. "It was last Tuesday in Grange Gardens, near the pavilion to be precise. But the spike was too small to be of any concern, and there were no reports of anything unusual happening around that time, so it was put in the 'To Be Advised' file."

"Ah," Jack said succinctly.

"Is that the file we never get around to because the 'Urgent' one is always overflowing?" Gwen joked, before her face fell. "Wait, last Tuesday?"

"Yep. Right when something so awful happened that we had to Retcon ourselves," said Tosh with a wary smile.

"You don't think they're related do you?"

The three fell silent as the worrying idea filled their thoughts. Finally Jack shook his head decisively. "No, can't be. We wouldn't have wiped Monday from our memories if the trouble only started on Tuesday."

Both Tosh and Gwen gave a relieved sigh at the Captain's logic, eager to embrace the idea that the similarity in timing was due to coincidence and nothing more sinister.

"Okay, we'd better take a look at-" Jack broke off as the large cog-wheel door began to roll aside, the familiar alarm that accompanied it filling the air and interrupting his orders. The trio glanced over to see Ianto walk in, the last of the team to arrive and over an hour later than even Owen had rolled in that morning. He was almost completely dressed in his usual impeccable manner, though his suit jacket was slung over his shoulders; his left arm tucked beneath the material and immobile in its blue sling.

"Good of you to join us, Ianto," Jack called, moving to the chain railing at the top of the steps and grinning at him. "How's that arm doing?"

The younger man responded with an unhappy glare as he climbed the stairs and walked past Jack, heading for Tosh's workstation.

"Are you okay?" Gwen asked as he sifted through the collection of items on the desk. After a moment he picked up a pen and pressed it against a pad of paper with his left hand.

He gave up after drawing a single wobbly line, reaching over Tosh instead to use her keyboard. Everyone leaned forward to watch what he was doing. 'I CAN'T SPEAK' appeared on the screen, right in the middle of a complex equation.

The two women and Jack turned to face him, confused.

Ianto's eyebrows rose above dark-ringed eyes and he moved his mouth, clearly echoing the words he had just written, and yet no sound emerged.

Jack was the first to recover. "How did that happen?" he asked and received a withering glower in response. "You don't know, do you?"

Ianto shook his head, seeming to deflate as he ran his free hand through his hair.

Jack turned towards the autopsy bay. "OWEN!" he hollered loudly.

---

Owen scanned the sheet of paper in his hand, frowned, and then looked up at the monitor displaying the same information, as though the figures might have changed somehow as they were printed. They hadn't, but he checked the paper again, just in case. "Nope," he declared at last. "There's nothing here."

"Nothing?" Jack repeated, sounding rather dubious.

"Nothing, nadda, zip." The young doctor threw his arms out helplessly. "There is nothing physically wrong with him, except his arm of course, and if I recall correctly from my days as a normal doctor dealing with normal ailments, the arms do not directly affect the voice."

Jack smirked. "But you're not dealing with normal ailments anymore," he pointed out.

"Nooo," Owen agreed. "Which is why I ran a full work-up on his blood, performed a dozen scans of his body, hooked him up to every machine we have, and still found nothing unusual."

There came a strange ringing noise and both men looked around to where a silent Ianto stood at the railing, knocking his knuckles against the metal to get their attention. He pointed to his mouth.

"Well I know that's unusual," Owen retorted. "But there's nothing out of the ordinary in your test results to explain what's caused it."

"So you've got no idea then," Jack surmised.

"Ah, now I didn't say that," Owen told him smugly. "The way I see it, there are three possible explanations for the loss of his voice without any corroborating medical evidence. Firstly, he lost it like people usually do, through screaming loudly or whatever, over a sustained period of time." He narrowed his eyes at Ianto. "You weren't out singing karaoke last night, were you?"

The sour look he received spoke louder than words ever could.

"Wouldn't he still be able to make some sort of noise though?" the Captain asked on Ianto's behalf.

"Yes, which is why it's unlikely and yet not entirely impossible. Second, we have the obligatory theory that this is something alien we've not encountered before and which doesn't show up in the system as an unnatural entity."

"Plausible, but I certainly hope that isn't the case."

"Right, though you might not like my third idea either." He hesitated and glanced briefly towards Ianto before looking back to Jack. "It might all be in his head."

Ianto's eyes widened at the other's words and he circled the walkway, moving nearer to the steps leading down to Jack and Owen. He opened his mouth to protest, only to shut it again immediately with a loud clack of his teeth.

Owen lifted his hands to placate him. "Just listen for a minute. Your vocal cords are adducting to the midline, which means you can talk, you just aren't talking. People who have experienced traumatic events sometimes develop functional aphonia but-" he trailed off as Ianto span on his heel and climbed out of the autopsy bay.

He hunched over Owen's desk, watched warily by the other two men until he finally turned and moved back to them, a notepad in his free hand. He held it up to reveal a word, written hurriedly with the wrong hand. 'Traumatic?' it said and he juggled the pad around in order to point a finger at his broken arm.

Jack couldn't help but smile. "After all that we've been through, a little RTA is your undoing?" He sighed in mock disappointment. Ianto turned his icy glare onto the Captain, who cleared his throat and looked quickly back to Owen. "He was fine yesterday. Shaken, maybe, but talking. I could tell, you see, because he argued with me and that's a sure sign of his being able to talk." He grinned at Ianto in the hope that his humour would ease the young man's irritation but it clearly wasn't going to work. He shrugged at Ianto's stony expression, unrepentant for trying.

"You might not think it was traumatic," Owen persisted, "but some people don't accept the danger until after the fact. You were hit by a car, which is a pretty big deal. You could have been killed, Ianto, and perhaps this is just the shock of that possibility kicking in."

Ianto rolled his eyes and walked away again, moving back to Owen's station and beginning to tap at the keyboard.

Jack exchanged a glance with Owen. "So it couldn't be anything to do with his head injury?" he asked, knowing full well that the skilled doctor would have already ruled that out.

"I doubt it. The wound wasn't nearly deep enough to cause any real damage and there's no sign of any other trauma to the head. Honestly, Jack, I think it's purely psychological."

"Hmm," said Jack. "So what now?"

"Now we wait, see if he makes a miraculous recovery and if he doesn't, we run some more tests and scratch our heads again in a few days time."

Jack nodded in understanding and made his way over to where Ianto was still working on something at Owen's desk.

"Are you okay?" he asked, placing a hand on Ianto's shoulder. The younger man met his gaze and smiled weakly. He shrugged and returned his attention to the monitor.

"Listen, don't take this the wrong way, but if you want to leave, have some time by yourself, you can."

Ianto nodded towards a blank screen and began typing. 'No days off, remember?'

"Ah but I'm the boss, remember, and I say sick days are acceptable."

One of Ianto's eyebrows rose in doubt.

"Well, all right, there was that time I dragged Owen straight from his bed to work, ratty boxers and all, but he was clearly hung over, not ill."

Ianto lifted a finger and stuck it in his open mouth, miming the act of vomiting and managing to do it with a surprising amount of elegance.

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean it really was food poisoning."

"It WAS food poisoning and you bloody well know it!" Owen argued loudly from the autopsy bay.

Jack laughed and ignored him, watching instead as Ianto began to type again.

'I'd rather be here in case anything else happens.'

"Like what?"

Ianto looked down at himself meaningfully. 'I dread to think,' he wrote.

"Eh," Jack said, waving away his concern. "All in a day's work. Well, the mysterious voice-loss side of things, not so much the accident. Oh, I've got Gwen on the case, by the way, tracking down the car that hit you. I'd have been inclined to forgive this stranger, but he went and ran away without even stopping to see if you were okay."

'She,' Ianto corrected.

"Oh really?"

Ianto nodded, then added to his writing. 'Pretty.'

"Oh really?" Jack drawled again, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. "And I suppose you just happened to notice her beauty as you tumbled over the bonnet of her car, right?"

Ianto began to nod, spirits lifting at the banter, but then frowned deeply in thought. 'Actually, no,' he wrote. 'She stopped. I remember her saying she hadn't been going that fast.'

"Huh." The Captain crossed his arms. "You didn't mention that yesterday." When Ianto shrugged unhelpfully he took a guess at what the younger man was thinking. "You didn't remember it yesterday?"

Ianto shook his head. He looked tired and Jack wondered if he had gotten enough sleep the night before. He hadn't been positive that letting Ianto go home on his own was a smart idea, but he was a grown man, one who could take care of himself, and Jack had been hesitant to force the issue when the young Welshman clearly wanted to be alone.

Some people would accept over-protectiveness only so far before they began to suspect the other person lacked faith in them. And Jack had a great deal of faith in Ianto.

"Well," he said, remembering suddenly what they had been talking about. "Even if she did stop, she left before we found you and didn't call for help. I think it's only fair someone has a little word with her about accident etiquette."

Ianto shook his head again slowly, well aware that it would be pointless to argue. He turned back to the monitor and flicked over to the files he had opened earlier.

"Ah, I'd forgotten about those reports," Jack said, noticing what he was doing. "What ever would I do without you?" He clapped Ianto on the shoulder, hard enough to make him tense his sore muscles. "Sorry."

Turning to move away, he had another thought and continued around, performing a full pirouette back to Ianto's side, one finger pointing upwards in punctuation. "By the way, if you have trouble doing anything you'd normally do with two hands, don't hesitate to shout for help." He smiled at the look on Ianto's face. "Okay, so don't shout. Make a noise, ring a bell, whatever, and someone will come help."

Ianto stared at him dubiously. Reaching across Owen's cluttered desk he picked up an empty mug and held it in his hand, eyebrows raised in silent query.

"That wasn't quite what I meant," Jack told him, gaze sweeping downwards for longer than was absolutely necessary. He looked back up with an unabashed grin upon his lips. "But if you're making one..."

***

"Okay, remind me again what we're doing here?" Owen grumbled, looking around the park without much enthusiasm.

"We're trying to find out what came through the Rift last week," Toshiko explained patiently, eyes fixed on the device in her hand. It was raining again, a light drizzle that was barely noticeable until one was completely soaked through, and she was continually pushing damp strands of hair out of her eyes.

"We didn't find anything earlier at that Weevil nest, what makes you think we'll find anything here?"

Tosh shrugged. "Because this is where the energy signature first appeared."

"We could at least have waited until it stopped raining," Owen went on, pulling the collar of his jacket up sharply.

"This is nothing compared to the last few weeks," Tosh pointed out. "Winter has set in, Owen, just accept it."

"I haven't even been on my summer holiday yet," muttered Owen wryly.

Ahead of them, Jack and Gwen were circling the pavilion, looking for anything out of the ordinary and clearly having no success. They had already revisited the site of the disturbance from the previous day, the area deserted now that the nest had been cleared out, but had found nothing unusual there. Certainly nothing to explain what had stirred up the Weevils.

Tosh tapped a few numbers into her PDA. "There is a faint residual reading, but really it's been too long to get anything concrete." She looked up to find that Owen was no longer beside her. Alarmed, she span around, spotting him instantly a few paces away, standing by a bench upon which sat a rather attractive woman huddled beneath a red umbrella. Concern turned swiftly to exasperation as she stalked over, catching the end of what the woman was saying to him.

"Tuesday last week, you mean? Oh God, I'll never forget that day!"

"What happened?" Owen asked, voice slipping into the tone he reserved for fearful patients.

"Oh," the woman said again, shaking her head. "It was horrible. Horrible! I brought my boys down to play," she pointed towards a pair of small children in raincoats and boots chasing each other around a nearby tree, "like I always do in the afternoon. I sat here watching them play and I felt fine. Absolutely fine. But clearly I wasn't, because the next thing I knew they were shaking me, trying to wake me up!" Her eyes had widened fearfully. "I'd fallen asleep, God help me. Sleeping whilst my babies could have been hurt or kidnapped or run off." She stared at the two boys, shivering slightly. "I felt awful, just awful. How could I have done such a stupid thing?"

Owen exchanged a glance with Tosh, the initial thrill of discovering something draining swiftly away. "Right," he said, unimpressed. "Well, I'm sure you'll be more careful in the future." And with that he turned on his heel and walked off. Tosh gave the woman a tense smile of apology and hurried after him.

Owen had already stopped someone else on the pathway. "Excuse me, mate, you didn't happen to be here a week last Tuesday, did you?"

The man gave him a suspicious look. "I don't have time to stop," he said as he hurried past, circling Owen as though he might be infected with something contagious.

"I'm not trying to sell you anything!" Owen called after the man, but he ignored the doctor and scurried off down the path without looking back. Turning to Tosh, Owen shrugged. "Do I look a bit dodgy or something?" he asked her.

Tosh smiled at him, taking in his wet and bedraggled appearance. "Perfectly trustworthy," she assured him, a flutter building in her stomach as he grinned in response.

"Right answer." And he turned away again, striding off towards Jack and Gwen, making her jog to catch up with him.

"Anything?" Jack asked, as soon as they were within earshot.

Owen shook his head. "A whole lot of nothing, right Tosh?"

"Well the residual energy is still here, just about, but it's really not enough to work with. I can't tell anything different from what I'm seeing here than what I had back at the Hub."

"See," Owen said. "Nothing. And we came all the way out here in the rain to find it too. Lucky us."

Gwen, who had possessed the foresight to grab an umbrella on the way out, moved over to cover Tosh, making Owen grumble something under his breath that she pointedly ignored. "We can't see anything unusual around the pavilion either. Nothing to indicate that anything actually came out of the Rift here." She looked across at the sodden Captain. "So we're back at square one I guess?"

"There are a few more programs I'd like to run the energy signature through," said Tosh thoughtfully. "And maybe if I change the calibrations I can pick up a more detailed trail somewhere, but I wouldn't be sure on its reliability. The higher the sensitivity, the more likely the results will be contaminated by other spikes of energy nearby."

Gwen frowned, trying to make sense of the other woman's explanation. "You can't get the computers to just search for this one signature then?"

"I could, however it's so faint that I'd have to allow for a certain degree of error, background noise and so on. It would be difficult to follow."

"I like difficult," Jack announced suddenly. "Makes the challenge worthwhile." He grinned at his team but got a rather damp and indifferent response from each of them.

---

"Ianto! Where did you put that paperwork I needed?"

Ianto shook his head in bemusement as Jack's voice bounced around the Hub. It was clearly time for a caffeine fix if the older man had forgotten, or simply didn't care, that Ianto couldn't very well answer when he wasn't within sight of the Captain. He rose to his feet and rubbed at his eyes, yawning as he did so.

He had spent the day in front of a computer screen whilst the others had ran about the city, searching for clues to the mysterious Rift activity, and his eyes were stinging with fatigue.

In his early days at Torchwood Cardiff he had spent most of his time in the Hub, providing a link to any of the systems that the team couldn't access from afar, as well as all of his usual duties. Although he had no problem with the role at the time, he now found it difficult to wait behind whilst everyone else was out investigating. Of course he'd possessed an ulterior motive back then, a reason to stay close to the underground base and the secret he had kept hidden in the deep passages, but after the loss of Lisa things had been shaken up entirely, including his place within the team.

He had only been there for a few months before her death, so it was entirely possible that his role would have progressed in the same manner without the shocking events leading up to Lisa's demise and the revelation that he was not merely a servant but a living being as well. Regardless of whether he might have forever been Torchwood's Tea-Boy or not, things hadn't worked out that way and he had grown surprisingly accustomed to dashing out with the others on some urgent quest.

Shuffling a handful of papers into a neat pile, Ianto slipped them one-handed into a folder and left the workstation, heading in the direction of Jack's office. He circled the large central room in order to spend far too long preparing a mug of incredibly strong coffee as he passed by the machine. He considered making enough for everyone else, but that would involve multiple trips back and forth across the Hub and as Jack yelled his name once again, he decided it would have to wait until the Captain was placated.

Once in the office he set the mug carefully down in front of Jack, who was staring intently at a half-completed form, and tried not to drop the file wedged under his arm. He then set about extracting said file without losing any of the loose paper within it and placed it neatly on the desk. After waiting a moment to see if Jack was going to either thank him or ask for something else, and getting neither, Ianto made to exit the room.

"Hey! Where do you think you're going?" Jack demanded, stopping Ianto just outside the office.

The young man popped his head back through the doorway, eyebrows raised curiously.

"You need to help me with this," Jack told him, waving the file vigorously enough to dislodge the pages tucked inside. They tumbled out, drifting far enough to almost entirely cover the floor. Jack looked down at the mess and then back up again, giving Ianto his most winning smile. "Oops," he said, sounding anything but contrite.

Ianto sighed and moved back into the office, crouching down to help Jack retrieve the papers.

"How is that arm of yours, anyway?" Jack asked, edging closer to reach another sheet.

Ianto paused to make an 'okay' sign with his left hand, not looking up from the scattered forms. It was true, for once; he had recently taken his painkillers, and his arm and bruises only throbbed rather than burned whenever he moved.

"Good, good," Jack murmured and suddenly he was in Ianto's face, causing the younger man to unbalance onto his backside, coming up hard against the panels of the desk behind him. Jack laughed and moved closer, crawling up the length of his prone body, whilst Ianto stared at him with wide, surprised eyes.

"Oh, don't give me that look, I didn't do it on purpose."

Ianto's gaze flicked sideways towards the door.

"Don't worry, they can't see us," murmured the Captain. He leaned closer, cheek brushing against Ianto's. "I missed you last night," he breathed into Ianto's ear, fingers trailing along his thighs. The young man gasped ineffectively as the ache of the bruises there flared up and he tried to pull away, but he was securely pinned and couldn't move in any direction. Jack chuckled again, failing to realise the reason for other's reaction as his lips followed the line of Ianto's jaw towards his mouth.

Ianto's left hand came to rest on Jack's chest, just as Jack kissed him hard enough to knock his head against the edge of the desk. A flash of pain blossomed at the back of his skull and then it cascaded, impossibly fast, through his body, until it felt as though his every nerve was on fire. Shocked, Ianto pushed harder, holding Jack at arm's length and blinking frantically to stop his vision from spinning.

One corner of Jack's mouth curled up, eyes darkening as though he had been challenged and he moved forward again, heated breath flowing over his lover's wet lips.

Ianto gritted his teeth, instinctively keeping himself from crying out, and with a burst of desperate energy shoved Jack far enough away for him to scramble clumsily to his feet.

Chest heaving as he fought for breath, he stared down at Jack, who was still on his knees, brow creased with bewilderment. "What's wrong?"

Ianto didn't respond, instead he wiped his hand over his heated face, deliberately slowing his breathing in order to calm down. The pain started to dissipate and he slumped wearily into a nearby chair.

Jack, who had apparently risen from the floor whilst Ianto pulled himself together, produced a notebook and pen and held them out for the younger man to use. Ianto slowly took the pen and began to write shakily with his left hand.

'Sorry,' he printed and Jack immediately shook his head.

"I don't care about that, just tell me what happened."

Ianto laughed once, humourless and silent. 'It hurt.'

Jack sighed and crouched down in front of him, staring at the pad in his hand for longer than was necessary to read those two words. "I'm sorry, Ianto. I didn't think."

Guilt filled the young Welshman and he reached out to gently touch Jack's hand, drawing the Captain's attention to him. He smiled, forgiveness shining in his eyes, even as his back gave a twinge at the small movement. Pushing it aside, he looked instead at the paper still scattered across the floor. Jack followed his gaze. When he turned back and grinned up at Ianto, he knew the matter was no longer an issue. Over and done with, just like that.

By the time they had finished tidying up the documents, Ianto's pain had completely gone and he settled in a chair beside Jack to help with the paperwork.

It wasn't long before Jack grew bored and one of his hands found its way to Ianto's knee, brushing lightly over the neatly pressed material of his dark trousers. Ianto had been expecting it and he smiled for a brief moment before suddenly leaping to his feet as another wave of agony passed over him.

Jack followed him as he stumbled away, reaching out and grasping him by his upper arms and trying to look him in the eye. "What? What is it?"

But the place where Jack's hands touched him were spots of bright torment for Ianto and he wrenched himself away, once again short of breath and shaking at his body's reaction.

"Ianto?" Jack said, voice softening as he saw the fear and confusion on the young man's face.

Ianto looked up, shook his head to show that he didn't know, that Jack would have to figure it out for himself.

The Captain easily caught the meaning of his gesture and frowned in thought. He took a step forward, lifting a hand slowly so Ianto would see it coming and realise what he intended to do. Ianto mirrored the pose, holding out his free hand to show his acceptance of the experiment.

Their fingers touched for a heartbeat before Ianto pulled his hand away, fist clenched and cradled protectively against his chest.

Jack closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath and then turned to the doorway. "OWEN!" he yelled, for the second time that day.

***

Gwen's elbow slipped suddenly, jerking her hand from under her chin and shaking her out of her reverie. She looked around guiltily, not entirely sure what had distracted her from her work but pretty confident that it hadn't been Torchwood-related.

In front of her, spread across the boardroom's large table, were dozens of sheets of paper; printouts from her search of police reports, newspapers, radio broadcasts, hospital records and anything else that mentioned events near Grange Gardens throughout the previous week. There was rather a lot of information, a fair number of accidents and incidents, but Gwen's accustomed eye could tell that they were all simply run-of-the-mill everyday occurrences.

Nothing that had anything to do with the Rift and whatever it might have expelled in the park.

She started to flatten the crumpled page that had been beneath her elbow – a report about a domestic argument that had spilled out into the street – only to pause as the ring on her left hand caught the light. Smiling, she remembered why her mind had wandered.

A few days earlier she and Rhys had revisited the venue they had hired for their wedding; mostly in order to make the final payment, but also to confirm in their minds that it was definitely the right place for their special day. Having a firm booking had served only to build her excitement at the approaching celebrations, despite the fact that it was still months away, and apparently daydreaming about it was inviting enough to pull her thoughts away from the trouble she was having finding anything helpful in all the paperwork surrounding her.

Sighing loudly, she climbed out of the chair and turned to face the large monitor behind her. A few of the reports she had already printed were still open and she shut them down, revealing the results of her secondary project; the one Jack had set to find the owner of the car that had hit Ianto.

As a police officer, Gwen had seen many road accidents, a disturbing amount of which involved fatalities. Ianto had been fortunate to walk away with only relatively minor injuries, although it had certainly served to shake up not just the young man, but everyone else in the Hub as well.

Gwen had been surprised to find herself so, well, surprised by the accident. It seemed that at some point she had stopped thinking about the concerns of the 'normal' world outside of Torchwood and began only to worry about threats from more bizarre and unnatural sources. She wondered when that had happened, when she had forgotten that people got hurt and killed by normal, everyday events.

On the large flat screen was a frozen image, monochromatic and grainy, which she had found on a CCTV system close to the location of Ianto's accident. It showed a T-junction joining two streets together, the smaller of the roads leading off towards the corner of the screen. Just at the edge of the image she could see the dark shadow of an object in the road. Ianto's body.

Gwen rewound the recording, though she had seen it half a dozen times already, and let it roll through again, slowing the playback until each frame remained on screen for a few seconds at a time. She watched the gradual progression of the silver hatchback as it appeared in shot at the top of the screen, moved steadily downwards and then swung through a left turn that took it onto the street along which Ianto was hurrying.

The interval between each shot of the camera was apparently six seconds long and during one of the jumps, the car clearly made contact with Ianto, for he went from being upright on the pavement, to out of sight in the road, blocked from the camera by the now motionless car.

A long sequence of identical shots began and Gwen leaned closer, trying to spot any changes between each one, something to suggest that the driver had exited the car, but nothing seemed to move at all. A few minutes after stopping, the car reversed a short distance and then pulled away, creeping around Ianto and leaving him lying face-up in the road.

It seemed as though an age passed where nothing happened on the screen, and then she saw herself and Owen, running along the main road to the junction and pausing briefly before moving over to Ianto.

She remembered the panic that had filled her as the young man failed to respond to their calls. They had split up: Tosh staying with the subdued Weevils in case anyone stumbled across them, Jack following the path that Ianto had taken through the estate, whilst Owen and Gwen circled around to where he should have appeared. At the corner they had paused, debating which way to go, and Owen had spotted Ianto in the dim lighting of the side street.

Alarm struck Gwen as they moved over to him, glancing about cautiously for any sign of trouble. They were sure that all the Weevils had been accounted for, but she'd kept her gun out just in case as Owen crouched down to check Ianto over.

Back in the boardroom, Gwen shivered, remembering the blood that had seemed to entirely cover him, though it was merely the work of the wet weather and the dark street that had made it appear so.

Tapping a button on the screen's controls, she called up another unclear image. A different camera near the warren of deserted streets had caught sight of the car as it exited the run down industrial estate. It didn't tell her much more about the incident, but it did provide her with a good view of the rear of the car. She played through the limited choice of shots, zooming in to find the best angle and then printing off the resulting image of the car's number plate.

Gwen was definitely more comfortable studying hard copies. She was sure she could see more in them than on the bright monitor, but even with the paper pressed up to her nose, she could only make out half of the registration number.

Seeing a figure pass by the open door, Gwen called out. "Tosh! Come tell me what you think this says. I've got as far as W-A-0-3 but I can't tell if the next letter is an 'N' or an 'M'. Or an 'H'."

Toshiko joined her with a helpful smile on her face and leaned over to look at the image. She took her time thinking about it, then straightened, leaving Gwen free to press it back to her nose. "What do you think?" Gwen asked, squinting at the blurred symbols. Tosh didn't respond and Gwen looked up curiously, finding the other woman staring at her in shock.

"Gwen?" Tosh said, only she wasn't speaking, just moving her lips and Gwen's own eyes widened with instant realisation.

"Oh, no. Tosh, tell me you're joking. Please tell me you're joking!"

Torchwood's technical expert shook her head, lips moving silently as she continued to talk, regardless of the fact that it was a pointless gesture.

Gwen groaned, grabbed Tosh's wrist and hauled her out of the boardroom, casting the printout aside without caring where it landed.

"Jack!" she called out the moment they reached the centre of the Hub. "Jack, get out here, I've got a BIG problem!"

But Jack was already out of his office, standing with Owen and Ianto on either side of him. She had clearly interrupted a conversation between the three men – well, between two of them at least – but she didn't care. Instead she dragged Tosh right up to them.

"Really? I bet I can beat it," Jack challenged, joking in spite of the hard look of concern in his eyes.

"Tosh can't speak," Gwen blurted out, ignoring him. She pushed the other woman in front of her, presenting her to the rest of the team as though they needed reminding who Tosh was.

The men stared as Tosh nodded at them, mouth moving as she continued to try to speak.
A moment of silent bewilderment passed before everyone turned towards Ianto, who was standing in the doorway to the office, looking as confused as the rest of them. He shrugged helplessly.

Owen groaned. "Well, that's just fantastic, isn't it?" he asked no one in particular. "Right, then, we'd better get everyone tested for..." He hesitated. "Everything."

---

"Okay, Jack, if you know of some alien race that intends to take over the Earth by inflicting everyone with a severe case of laryngitis, you'd better tell me now." Owen fixed the Captain with a searching look. "Before you can't tell me at all."

"Does that mean we've all got it?"

"Got it?" Owen rounded on Gwen. "I don't even know what it is! I was happy to accept that Ianto had flipped out after his accident, but there's no way Tosh just turned around this evening and decided she was going to jump on the bloody silent bandwagon!"

Ianto began to scribble something frantically on a pad resting on Jack's desk. The Captain leaned forward to read what he was writing and then reached out to take the pen from between the younger man's fingers. Ianto glanced at him in quiet enquiry, unconsciously bending away from the other so they wouldn't inadvertently touch.

"I don't know where you learnt that word, Ianto Jones, but I don't think using it to describe your doctor is a wise idea right now."

Owen swung around from glaring at Gwen to fix cold eyes on Ianto. "What did he say?"

"Nothing," Jack told him with an innocent smile. "And no, I'm not aware of any aliens who attack through the voice. I take it this means our blood tests came back normal as well?"

"Normal as normal can be," agreed Owen. "Even your sample."

"And Ianto's new scans, they show no changes either?"

Gwen looked up. "Is this the other problem you were talking about?" she directed towards Jack, whilst looking at Ianto.

The young man was standing in his usual place beside Jack, whilst the others faced them across the desk. It was an arrangement that the team often unconsciously fell into: Jack and Ianto on one side of the room, Gwen, Tosh and Owen on the other. It showed through in their work as well, Jack knew, where Ianto would concur with him more frequently than the other three.

He had noticed the looks upon the others' faces when that kind of situation arose, but they were wrong to assume that Ianto's allegiance was purely due to his relationship with the Captain. Jack was well aware that it was Ianto's faith in him that provoked such loyalty and he was always rather awed by that depth of trust. Apparently years of shady work and an almost constantly changing cycle of co-workers had made him come to expect more suspicion than confidence to be directed towards him.

Unfortunately, where Ianto used to radiate trust even in the way he stood close by the Captain's side, he now projected only tense caution; a full step further away from Jack than normal and his gaze directed pensively at the floor.

"Yes, it is," said Jack eventually. "It seems that Ianto has developed a very specific type of allergy."

"Oh!" Gwen said, surprise colouring her tone before she frowned in confusion. "Wait, what?"

"Apparently Ianto doesn't like me anymore." Jack could feel the weight of Ianto's eyes on him as his joke fell flat. "Every time I touch him it causes him to feel pain," he finished seriously, eyes tightening at his own words.

"Your touch hurts him?" Gwen looked over at Ianto. "What about us?"

"Owen's already tried and he's fine," Jack said. "You're next."

Ianto stepped forward then, holding out his hand to Gwen. She took it hesitantly between her own palms, watching his face closely for a reaction. He smiled at her and shook his head and she squeezed his hand in relief.

Releasing him, Gwen turned to Jack and held out a hand to him. His fingers closed around her own and she stared intently into his eyes, the experiment forgotten briefly as she revelled in the feel of his warm skin.

Jack let go of her hand and glanced across at Ianto, finding the other man watching him but failing to see jealousy in Ianto's controlled features, not even in his blue gaze. Jack smiled faintly, wondering why he worried about such things when Ianto had never shown any kind of misunderstanding over their arrangement.

Looking back to Gwen, he found that the emotions on her face were so mixed that they actually conflicted. She was worried about Ianto and Tosh, that was clear enough, but she also wore the look she often adopted at any hint of Jack and Ianto's 'relationship'; the look that combined basal intrigue with something very much like envy.

Jack had grown accustomed to seeing hidden emotions within the expressions of other people and he had easily learnt to read Gwen. It sometimes troubled him that a number of his own feelings were reflected back in her eyes, but it couldn't be helped. They could not be allowed to develop into anything more than that which they were already.

"How could something so specific hurt him?" she asked, shaking herself from her distracted silence.

Owen shrugged. "We don't know for sure that it's limited to just Jack. But at the moment he's the only thing Ianto can't touch." He paused and pressed his lips together into a thin line. "There've been no changes to Ianto's scans or X-rays, but considering this development came out of nowhere, he might develop sensitivity to other people or objects without warning."

Ianto's eyebrows shot up at that idea but gave no other indication of what he was thinking.

Beneath the calm exterior, the Captain knew that being unable to speak was troubling Ianto. Despite his quiet nature and the inclination to allow others to dominate a conversation until he felt something needed to be said, Jack knew that Ianto was far more articulate than others gave him credit for. He was an observer, one who absorbed every piece of information and tucked it away until it was required. At work he let the others take the lead, because they had been employed to do so. He, in contrast, was there for an entirely different reason, and it did not include attempting to take charge.

Outside of the Hub, or outside of usual operating hours at least, Ianto could talk up a storm; debating with the utmost argumentative skills, which was a trait that Jack found very enjoyable indeed. There was nothing quite like a heated discussion to get the blood pumping and ultimately force Jack to find another use for that mobile mouth.

But his mind was drifting yet again and he forced himself to suppress the delicious memories of their oral contests.

"We can test that possibility as we go along," he said, lifting a book from his desk and holding it up for Ianto. The younger man touched it and shrugged, clearly untroubled by the contact, and Jack dropped it back onto the cluttered surface. "Right, that was easy enough, but I think you'd better start touching everything in sight, just to make sure. Including yourself." He fixed a thoughtful look onto his face. "Your clothes aren't starting to hurt you, are they?"

Ianto rolled his eyes but his lips curled up into a reluctant smile. He leaned forward to reach his notepad and Jack read aloud his message for the benefit of the others. "Get back to the subject." He pulled a face, ripped out the page, screwed it up into a tight ball and threw it in the general direction of the bin. "Right, enough playing around, I think we should get back to the subject, don't you?"

Jack knew perfectly well that if Ianto had been able to speak he would have grumbled something offensive, but instead there was only silence as the younger man bent down behind him to tidy away the discarded ball of paper. "Owen, I think you'd better look into any other tests that might help us out here. I know you've done everything you can already, but perhaps there's something you haven't considered worth attempting, something completely out of the left field."

Owen didn't seem too impressed by the suggestion but he didn't argue. "I suppose I could-"

"Good!" Jack interrupted, before he could dive into an explanation. "Do that. Now, Tosh...where is Tosh?"

Gwen pointed a thumb back over her shoulder towards the open door. "She's out there."

"Well that's-" He broke off as an alarm wailed its way through the Hub. The four dashed from the office, making straight for Toshiko's workstation.

"What's going on?" Gwen asked, hurrying to the other woman's side and peering at the monitors. The familiar displays of Rift activity showed a large spike of energy – still occurring – whilst another program swiftly homed in on the location of the surge.

"You know," Owen said, his voice curiously upbeat, "I was just thinking it was about time we added another problem to the list. And look! Lo and behold, another bloody problem."

***

The SUV blasted its way through the sparse late-night traffic, heading towards the outskirts of the city with great urgency. Only Jack and Gwen were inside and they were eager to deal with the latest issue quickly before returning to their colleagues back at the Hub.

With the new developments concerning Tosh's loss of speech and Ianto's strange reaction to Jack, all involved had decided it was best if the pair remained behind in case anything else happened to them. Owen had also stayed to continue his latest round of tests and to act as their voice should Jack and Gwen need assistance. He had, however, complained profusely at the likelihood of being the next to catch whatever the others were afflicted with.

"Another five minutes," said Gwen, for the benefit of those listening through the comms. "It seems to be centred on a residential street, so we might be dealing with witnesses or casualties. Or both." She retrieved her phone from inside her jacket. "The police haven't been contacted yet, but we should get them there to help deal with the locals."

"No," Jack said, one hand leaving the wheel in order to stop her from dialling. "If no one else has called them, there must be a reason."

"But the size of that energy surge...something big had to have come through."

"Maybe, but I don't want to shake everybody up for no reason. If there is anything going on, we'll decide when we get there whether to call them in or not."

"You don't think we'll find anything?" Gwen asked, studying his profile as he concentrated on the road.

"We didn't find anything the last time, or the time before, and I don't think we should go stirring everybody else up until we know something more concrete. Tosh, have you found out anything about the spike yet?"

There was a pause and then Owen's voice answered him. "She says there's nothing she can tell from the current readings but she's got a few more ideas, something about writing a new algorithm or something. I can't be bothered to read the entire essay she's writing to explain it to me. There's still no sign of the residents kicking up a fuss, by the way, which means they're either oblivious to what's happening or they're incapable of calling for help."

"Hmm," Jack responded, noncommittally.

Gwen knew that tone. "Jack? What are you thinking?"

He shook his head. "I don't know. Nothing, I hope."

"Talk to me, Jack," she pressed but he refused to answer, focusing on driving instead.

The next few minutes passed in silence until the scanner in her lap beeped at their proximity to the Rift's latest release of energy. Jack brought the SUV to a sharp halt, throwing Gwen off balance as she leapt from the rocking vehicle. She looked around, eyes sweeping swiftly over the quiet street.

The area was lit by the usual streetlamps and the air held a chill, early-morning freshness that Gwen had always enjoyed. She drew in a deep breath, turning on the spot to examine the lines of neatly parked cars on either side of the road and the dark windows of each and every house. "Okay," she said, body tensed for action. "I'm not seeing anything."

"Me neither," agreed Jack, taking a few steps further away from the vehicle. He cocked his head, listening to the sound of distant motorway traffic and the rustle of a slight breeze moving through foliage. "There's nothing here."

Gwen lifted the scanner Tosh had given her and tapped at the screen. "It says we're right on top of it."

They both automatically looked down at the ground, then back up at each other. Jack scowled darkly. "No. This isn't right. There's nothing here," he repeated.

"Owen?" Gwen called into the comms. "Tosh needs to check the readings again. We're in the wrong place."

She received no reply and looked over to meet Jack's eyes. "Owen?" she said again. "Have you lost your voice as well?" She realised how stupid her question sounded and forced a laugh. "If you have, let us know somehow. Make a noise, send a rude text, anything."

The only response she received was silence.

Jack growled loudly, making her jump in alarm. "Get in the car," he commanded, climbing back behind the wheel.

"But what about the energy signature?" she asked, hovering warily by the open door.

"Just get in the car, Gwen," the Captain barked.

---

There came a burst of static and then a loud electronic squeal that caused Owen to try to flinch away from the receiver in his ear. Snatching the device from his head, he held it at arm's length and glared at it. "What the hell was that?" he asked. "Tosh? What's wrong with this thing?"

Toshiko said nothing, her attention fixed on her monitors and her fingers flying across the keyboard at great speed.

"Tosh?" Owen asked again impatiently. He took a step towards her, frustrated that she was ignoring him, and noticed the alert flashing on one of the screens. "Shit! Tosh! There's a huge spike of energy coming from the lower levels." He grabbed her shoulder and leaned closer to read the details. "Why didn't the alarm go off? Why didn't you tell me about this?"

She continued to ignore him, still typing rapidly. When he tried to turn her around to look at him, he was stopped by a hand upon his own shoulder, spinning him until he was face to face with Ianto. The younger man gave him a brief and humourless smile before jabbing a taser into his chest and pulling the trigger.

---

Ianto frowned as he fixed restraints around Owen's wrists and ankles. He didn't want to be doing it, he knew very well that he shouldn't be doing it, but he just couldn't stop himself. He stood and waited for Tosh to finish inputting commands into her computer.

She rejoined him at the lift in the middle of the room, where she had earlier helped Ianto carry Owen, and sat down on the thick square of stone to prop the unconscious man up against her back. Once Tosh was in place, Ianto restrained her as well, his aching body ignoring the silent clamouring of his mind.

Lifting the taser again, he struck his unresisting colleague in the side. She jerked violently and he reached out to steady her, arranging her limbs so she wouldn't be hurt going through the hole above them. Finished, Ianto stepped back and activated the controls, watching until the stone was in place and secure. A moment later he was back at Tosh's workstation, activating a full lockdown of the Hub. He tried valiantly not to click 'yes' when the question 'Are you sure?' appeared on the screen but his fingers simply wouldn't comply.

The main lights went out whilst everything clanged shut, then the secondary phase of Toshiko's programming began and the lighting gradually flickered on again. Ianto's sure steps never failed, even in the darkness, his knowledge of the Hub so deeply ingrained in his subconscious that he could have found his way around blind if necessary.

Down in a section of the lower cells, Ianto stopped, looking around at the empty row of chambers. The air was musty, this particular level having gone unused for as long as he could remember, and it tickled the back of his throat as he stood there doing nothing and wondering what he was waiting for.

A few minutes passed and then Ianto felt the still air inexplicably begin to move. He turned his head towards the end of the short passage, his skin tingling and the short hairs at the back of his neck lifting with the charged atmosphere. He tasted bile as the walls bent in on themselves but he couldn't move to back away to safety and was thus extremely close by when the fabric of reality tore itself open and the figure of a man appeared suddenly before him.

The newcomer had his back to Ianto, who was far too busy focusing on breathing instead of looking, but the moment the stranger spoke, Ianto felt his stomach drop in sharp recognition.

"Where the bloody hell have you brought me n-?" the man began to demand, though he stopped abruptly, having apparently figured out the answer for himself.

"Well, bugger me," Captain John Hart murmured, peering into the vacant cells beside him. "This is a bit of a turn up for the books."

***

Jack abandoned the SUV as close as he could to the tourist office, without actually driving through the pedestrian zone straight up to the door. He ran full pelt along the waterfront towards the entrance, with Gwen close on his heels and a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"What is it, Jack?" Gwen called breathlessly from behind. "What's going on?"

He shook his head, unable to give her an answer; he didn't have anything more than gut instinct telling him something had gone wrong. His head was buzzing, as though there was something lingering at the edge of his mind, something in the air that felt familiar, but he hadn't a clue as to what it could be.

The door to the office was locked and he bounced off it with a growl of annoyance. Gwen produced a key but Jack already knew it would be no good. He wasn't sure how he knew, but he did. Gwen struggled for a minute with the lock whilst Jack stared back the way they had come, scowling unhappily.

"Forget it," he declared abruptly. "Let's try the lift." And he started off again up the nearby steps to the Plass.

The clouded sky had lightened on the way back from the edge of the city, the long and disturbing night at last beginning to ease into dawn. The Plass was still lit from various sources, however, and distorted shadows flowed around the Captain as he hurried across the large open arena.

Gaining on the water tower, he spotted the two figures lying entangled on the ground, slumping to one side like a couple in a drunken embrace. Knowing perfectly well that wouldn't be the case, not on that particular step, Jack increased his pace even further.

Bleary eyes looked up at him as he crouched beside Owen.

"Jack," the doctor said with a relieved sigh. "Thank God. Get these things off me." He held up his hands and Jack swore viciously, hating that his concerns had been proven well founded.

"What happened?" he demanded, adjusting the controls on his wrist strap to unlock the coded restraints. The advanced tech took only seconds to determine the right combination and Owen cast aside the cuffs in disgust.

"Something's wrong with Ianto and Tosh, and I don't just mean their voices. When the comms went down I caught Tosh ignoring an alert for Rift activity within the Hub itself, but before I could do anything Ianto jumped me." He clenched his jaw, unhappy with his failure. "Next thing I know I'm staring at my reflection in that thing," he nodded towards the tower, "Tosh is sprawled across my back and you're running towards me like the world is about to end. Again."

Jack moved over to the unconscious woman, easing her away from Owen and checking her pulse. Gwen appeared at his side, helping Owen rise unsteadily to his feet before ducking down to tug helplessly at Tosh's restraints. "Jack, unlock these."

"No!" Owen objected. "She's being controlled by something."

"Then why is she tied up out here and not in the Hub?" Gwen countered. She patted the side of Tosh's face gently. "Tosh? Come on, darling, wake up, talk to us."

"Is Ianto still inside?" Jack asked, looking up at the other man.

Owen, who was examining his chest for contact wounds from the taser, shrugged absently. "I'd say so, unless he's able to tie himself up and throw himself out the door." He raised an eyebrow in question. "Tell us, Captain, does he have that talent?"

Jack ignored him and unlocked the cuffs around Tosh's wrists and ankles. She stirred in Gwen's arms and then, much to their surprise, she groaned weakly.

"Oh, my head," she said, eyes squeezed shut against the pain.

"Tosh?" said Gwen, alarmed.

Dark eyes blinked at her sleepily. "Gwen? What's going on?" She looked around, clearly surprised to find herself outside, then her gaze snapped back to the other woman's. "I can speak!"

Gwen smiled. "Yes, you can. Do you remember what happened?"

Tosh frowned, accepting Jack's hand to stand up and then swaying as she tried to regain her balance. "No, I..." she began before cutting herself off, "wait, yes. Yes, I do. Oh God, I created that alert to get you out of the Hub." She gasped, looking to Jack in bewilderment. "I'm so sorry, Jack. I didn't want to do it but I just couldn't stop myself."

"It's okay," Jack reassured her. "But we can't get into the Hub. Do you know what you did to the security systems? Or anything else you might have done down there?"

"Well, it didn't control me for long," Tosh said thoughtfully. "I remember setting the parameters for a lockdown and beginning a modified scan of Rift activity, but I don't think she made me do anything else before Ianto tied me up with Owen."

There was a moment of silence before Gwen finally asked what they were all thinking.

"She?"

Tosh nodded. "Yes, 'she'. At first I didn't know why I couldn't control my body, or why I was setting up those programs, but then I heard someone talking to me, even though there was nobody else around. She explained that she wasn't actually in the Hub, but that she could create telepathic links over great distances and use them to control people like Ianto and I." She frowned, thinking back. "I'm not sure why, but she told me her name and I kind of got the impression that she only told me so I would tell you, Jack."

"What was it?"

"Lurrelia, I think."

Jack shrugged. "I don't recognise it. Did she hint at what she wanted in the Hub?"

"No. But I think it had something to do with the surge of energy Owen noticed building down in the cells. She might have needed to be in the Hub because she was waiting for it to happen, I don't know. All I can be sure of is that she was still in control of Ianto when I let him stun me."

Owen sighed loudly. "Great, so something's happening in the basement and Ianto's involved. Why doesn't that surprise me?"

"Shut up, Owen," Gwen said, glaring at him. "It could have been any of us."

"It would have to have been an engineered event," Jack announced, deciding to ignore Owen's remark. "The Rift doesn't just open up on its own inside the Hub, we've got too many obstructions in place to stop that from happening."

Tosh caught onto the direction of his thoughts. "So someone intentionally created the anomaly? Yes, of course they would, it was an opening after all." She realised everyone was staring at her and hurried to explain. "I remember seeing the readings whilst Lurrelia was controlling me. The energy was gathering slowly due to the restrictive barriers but it was definitely manifesting as an opening in the Rift."

"Which means what?" Owen asked. "She's taking delivery of some extraterrestrial mail-order?"

"Or she's sending something through it," Gwen said slowly.

"Like what?"

"Like Ianto, maybe?"

"Don't be stupid. It's more likely she's stealing all the alien things we've got down there."

Gwen shrugged. "It was just a suggestion."

"What could she possibly want with him, anyway?"

"Well, she did get into his head first."

Owen sneered at Gwen. "So he was the easiest target, so what?"

Jack growled, effectively bringing their childish argument to an abrupt halt. His attention had been upon his wrist strap, which was apparently still failing to activate the lift no matter what he pressed. "Have I ever mentioned just how much I hate people breaking into my house and touching my stuff?" He didn't wait for a response. "Well, I hate people taking my staff for joyrides even more. We have to get in there right away. Ideas?"

No one said anything, though Owen and Gwen looked at Tosh expectantly, who was deep in thought.

"Obviously the lockdown is meant to be impenetrable," she began slowly.

"But there are ways of getting in again, right?" pressed an anxious Gwen. "I know we've been locked in before, but has this ever happened?"

"You mean being locked out of our own secret base?" Owen asked wryly. "Yeah that's happened before. Locked in, locked out, frankly I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often."

"I'll need some things from the SUV," Tosh announced, her expression having shifted from pensive to determined.

---

John Hart turned, examining his surroundings with a relaxed air until he caught sight of Ianto standing behind him. He swayed back in surprise, hands dropping immediately to rest upon the weapons slung low on his hips.

"Eye-Candy!" he exclaimed in a mixture of surprise and amusement. He looked at Ianto warily, clearly a little confused by the fact that the young man was not only there, but had also failed to draw a weapon or call for back-up.

Locked inside his own mind, Ianto was swearing fluidly, willing his body to move, to make some sign that he wasn't as defenceless as he appeared.

The former Time Agent, however, had already decided that he was harmless and stalked forward intently, eyes narrowed in query. "Lurrelia? Is that you?"

Ianto frowned, confused, but then his mouth opened, lips moving ineffectively. Hart's own forehead creased at the lack of sound, but he did not dwell long on the matter, a grin spreading across his face. "I can't believe you chose Eye-Candy!" he said, laughing gleefully. "That is by far the best gift you have ever given me."

He said nothing else for a moment, head tilting to the side as though listening to a sound only he could hear, and then his smirk grew impossibly wider. "Oh, that is absolutely delicious!"

Hart leaned close, staring into Ianto's eyes. "I know you're in there Eye-Candy and I'd apologise for my dear friend's hijacking of your body, but really I can't imagine a situation I'd enjoy more." He gaze slid downwards and he licked his lips thoughtfully. "Well, actually there are quite a few I can think of, but all in good time. For now, your hitchhiker has something rather important to do."

Ianto moved then, turning around in order to lead the amused Captain upstairs into the centre of the Hub. Hart followed a few paces behind him and Ianto cringed inwardly at the knowledge he was being watched as he walked.

It was clear that whoever 'Lurrelia' was, they were the reason he had ceased to be in control of his limbs. They were probably also the cause of Toshiko's similar, if short-lived, disobedience. The revelation came as somewhat of a relief, after the past few hours of being unable to stop himself from hurting his colleagues and adjusting the Hub's internal systems. He had been terrified of what he might do next and had actually been glad that Tosh and Owen had been sent outside before he did anything worse to them.

And yet, having an explanation for his actions did nothing to resolve the fact that he was still under someone else's control. He had been attempting to reclaim command of his body since he had first realised there was a problem and knowing for sure that another being was involved made absolutely no difference at all.

Having passed the base of the water tower, Ianto found himself taking Hart into Jack's office and straight over to the safe. He groaned silently as his fingers worked to open the lock and he tried to think what the Time Agent and his 'friend' could possibly want from inside the vault.

He knew every single item that was stored there and yet, whilst there were many things that certain disreputable people would be all too happy to get their hands on, he couldn't begin to guess what Hart and the alien inside his head might want.

Unbidden, Ianto's fingers called up an object that had thus far been tagged as unknown, regardless of the numerous tests that had been performed upon it. It was a thin length of some unearthly material, flexible and yet metallic, with a complex design etched into its worn and scratched surface. It produced a trace amount of radiation similar to the energy found within the Rift, which was the only reason they had kept it sealed inside the safe, just in case it had some relevance they had yet to discover.

Clearly it did, as Hart leaned close to Ianto to look over his shoulder. "Well, well, well. You're a lucky girl, aren't you? Who'd have thought one of those would turn up here?"

Ianto frowned and his confusion must have been obvious. "It's like listening to half a conversation, isn't it?" Hart asked the young man knowingly. "She's telepathic, you see. That's how she got inside your head and how she's speaking to me without you hearing." Hart moved closer, pressing himself against Ianto's back. "If she wanted to, she could open up a link between our minds and I would be able to hear your thoughts too." A hand slid around Ianto's side, stroking up and over his chest. "I bet that would quite an experience."

Ianto cursed inventively inside his own head, wishing desperately that he could move away from the unwanted touch. If there was some telepathic being in his head, he was going to make sure she knew precisely what he thought of both her and Hart's actions.

But the other man removed his hand almost immediately, reaching out to take the metal strip between his own fingers. He bent it around Ianto's left wrist, which the Welshman had unwillingly lifted to aid the process. It was flexible enough to create a complete circle, the ends touching and, inexplicably, melding together until the seam was no longer visible.

Even in his current situation Ianto couldn't help but marvel as he watched the metal edges joining. It fitted neatly against his skin as well, not too tight to pinch or too loose to move, as though it had been purposely made for him. But what on Earth was it?

"It's a kind of anchor," Hart explained in a cheerful voice, guessing at Ianto's thoughts. At least Ianto hoped he was only guessing, because of all the people he wouldn't want to root around in his head, Captain John Hart was right there at the top of the list. "It's something to help people hone their psychic abilities. Some people can touch certain minds depending on their proximity or relation but if they stray too far they can become lost, so the bands are used to help lead them back to their own bodies."

It made a vague kind of sense that Ianto had come to expect since joining Torchwood, but it didn't explain why it was on his wrist.

"Because," Hart said, his breath ghosting over Ianto's ear, "her body is so far away that she needs the strength of two bands to lead her mind back to it. She's already got one with her body and now this one here completes the set."

Ianto's head was beginning to hurt. Whether Hart was telling the truth or not, the young man was far more alarmed by the fact that the other was still guessing his thoughts with suspicious precision.

The Captain chuckled, hands returning to Ianto's chest, arms encircling him from behind. "We're terribly close, Lurrelia and I, and she is very generous when she knows there's something I want." Another quiet laugh stirred the hair at the back of Ianto's neck. "She took my mention of the link as a hint and," he shrugged, "here we are. Oh, but it only goes one way, in case you were wondering."

Ianto cringed, trying not to think of anything and failing miserably. It seemed he couldn't help but note the warmth of Hart's hands as they twisted their way inside his suit jacket, his heartbeat rising with apprehension, but then the unwelcome fingers knocked against his broken arm and the pain of the disturbance swiftly altered the subject of his thoughts as he tensed, mouth open in a silent gasp.

The hands vanished from his chest and Ianto span around to face the other man. "Sorry," Hart said, a surprisingly contrite look upon his face, but Ianto wasn't listening. Instead he was desperately trying not to think about the brief split-second of control he had regained over his body, precisely when the unexpected agony had swept through him.

Of course, desperately not thinking about something meant having to push something else into the subsequent gap and Ianto filled his mind with the metal band on his wrist and the alien who was apparently going to be travelling through it.

Captain Hart's guilt melted away at the Welshman's thoughts and the cocky grin reappeared. "If you're trying to stop yourself thinking about me, then you're wasting your time." He leaned closer and tapped a finger against Ianto's temple. "I know I saw pleasure in there, why not just admit it?"

Ianto willed an image of the band's etching into his mind.

"Okay," Hart said. "I understand. You want Lurrelia out of your head, fair enough, but once she's sorted, I'm going to have all the time in the world to test your resolve." He licked his lips and grinned. "Then we'll see how strong you are."

***

Owen gaped up at the shining reflection of the sky. "That?" he said again, just in case the others hadn't heard him the first time. "Your big idea is to go through that?"

Tosh smiled patiently. "Yes, Owen, that. It's the quickest way I can get us in."

"But..." Gwen frowned, searching for the right words. "But it's the Rift, isn't it?"

"It's one end of the Rift," the other woman agreed absently, "but even though the structure helps fix it in place, it isn't actually a part of the Rift itself."

"So, going inside the water tower isn't like going into the Rift?"

"There's no reason to think it'll be dangerous whilst the Rift is dormant," Tosh said, still distracted by the tangle of wires surrounding her. She had shown no restraint in ripping out the various consoles and scanners from the SUV, the challenge of creating something entirely different from them inspiring her almost as much as the desire to get back inside the Hub.

Owen cleared his throat. "'No reason to think it'll be dangerous...'" He looked around. "Anyone else not finding that statement very reassuring?"

Jack appeared from behind the tower, around which he had been stalking ever since Tosh had begun infiltrating the Hub's security system. He glanced at the clouded sky, the light of the morning revealing just how much time had passed. "Tosh, tell me we're going to get in there soon. I'd rather not have an audience when I start vandalising this thing."

"Five more minutes," Tosh replied, concentrating on the scavenged keyboard and monitor. "No, wait, I'm done." She turned the screen around so the others could see. On it there was a wire-frame model of the water tower, thick and thin lines representing the struts and supports that held everything together; a three-dimensional blueprint showing the tower both above and below the ground. "Okay. There's a gap here, between the outer lining of panels and the inner structure, which should be safe enough to climb through."

"SHOULD be safe?" Owen spluttered.

"So long as we stay within this area, everything should be fine. However, I would suggest only travelling a short distance within the tower itself, just in case," Tosh went on, ignoring Owen. "I'm going to have to manually adjust the disruption field every few minutes in order to keep the sensors from tracking us, meaning we'll have to stop a few times."

Jack nodded. "Right, two things. Firstly, Tosh, I knew there was a reason why I loved you. And secondly, I'm going in alone, so you can give the sensors your full attention from up here."

Gwen bristled at the Captain's announcement. "You aren't going in there on your own, Jack."

"I'm not going to argue about this, Gwen," he countered. "If Tosh is wrong about the tower I don't want any of you near it."

She opened her mouth to protest but the glare she received was enough to make her falter. Jack was angry, really angry, and there was only so much more he would take.

Satisfied that Gwen was going to hold her tongue, Jack picked up one of the tools Tosh had laid out for him. Owen followed him to the tower.

"To your left," Tosh told them and they moved over to the next mirrored rectangle. Taking each side, the two men slipped crowbars into the edges of the wet panel, jiggling the metal until there was a gap large enough to slip their fingers into. Gwen hovered close by, making faces as she alternated between moving forward to help and rearing back every time the sheet wobbled.

Her caution proved accurate as the panel of stainless steel slipped suddenly from its fixings and tumbled to the ground. The crash rang out, echoing impossibly loud around the deserted Plass, and everybody froze until the final reverberation had died out.

Owen and Gwen stepped over to stick their heads through the tumbling water and peered down into the hole. Faint illumination from the increasing daylight highlighted a web of girders and thick cables, encircling the core of the tower which was hidden from view by a skin of dull metal plates.

"There isn't much room," Owen observed, pulling back and shaking his head, sending water flying over the others.

Gwen automatically turned away from him, though she already looked as though she had just taken a bath fully clothed. "Owen!"

"I don't need much room," Jack said, taking a look for himself and leaned back to wipe his face. "I'm not planning to hold a party in there."

"Here," Tosh said, handing the Captain a mobile phone, already on call to her own, and a Bluetooth earpiece. "The main comms are still out so we're back to basics." She gave the others their headsets and slipped another over her ear.

Jack pocketed the phone and fixed his earpiece into place. "Okay, can you hear me?"

The other three nodded, the fact he was standing only two paces away from them making it impossible to respond otherwise. Jack seemed to realise the vanity of his question but shrugged it off with a grin and climbed through the hole they had made. Owen handed him a coil of rope, which he hooked over his shoulder.

"Tosh?" Jack prompted, before clamping a torch between his teeth and looking down. The beam of light bounced off a geometric tangle of metal.

"Hang on." She tapped at the keyboard. "Right, you're clear to go."

Jack began to descend, climbing nimbly down the supports. Gwen and Owen moved forward again to watch his descent whilst Tosh tracked his progress on her glowing screen. After about fifteen minutes, moving only when Tosh told him to, the Captain stopped, hooked one arm around an upright pole and took the torch in his free hand.

"I'm at the partition, Tosh," he said, scanning the blockage beneath him. The bulkhead at his feet was a foot-thick barrier between the Hub and the outside world; another defensive system to keep anyone from simply careening through the water tower and falling down into the underground base.

"You're going to have to go through quickly, Jack," Tosh's voice told him apologetically. "I can open the seam directly below you, but I won't be able to hold it for long."

"How long?" Jack asked, not liking her tone.

There was a hesitation. "Not long," she said.

Huffing, Jack slipped his torch into a pocket and checked that everything else was secured. "I'm ready when you are," he called over the headset, but the sound of scraping metal drowned out his words.

"Now, Jack!" Tosh cried and he let go, dropping through the gap in the thick partition into unexplored darkness.

As his limbs flailed for something to grab hold of, the metal plating slammed back together again, having been apart for mere seconds, and the edge of his long coat was caught in the vice-like grip. Jack hung there for one incredibly tense minute, swinging violently from side to side before the heavy material ripped and he fell again, crashing onto a horizontal girder below.

The air whooshed out of his lungs as his chest took the full brunt of the collision but he ignored the pain, scrabbling desperately for purchase on the beam and heaving one leg over so he could lie flat on the narrow support.

A handful of clattering sounds echoed upwards and Jack lifted a hand to his head, finding the earpiece had been knocked off during the fall. Cursing, he rummaged in his pocket for the phone.

"I'm here, I'm here," he told the voices frantically calling his name. "I lost the Bluetooth."

"You're lucky you didn't lose your head!" Owen declared, sounding somewhat awed.

"If you had been a second slower..." added Gwen, unnecessarily.

"But I didn't and I wasn't," Jack wheezed into the mobile. He dug out his torch and shone it around his new surroundings. Everything appeared much the same as it had above the bulkhead, though there were perhaps a few more structural beams in this lower half of the tower. It would make climbing down easier, so long as he didn't fall again and impale himself somewhere rather more tender than his chest.

Tosh came back on the line. "You have to go down five more metres before you'll be level with the framework around the ceiling, but once you're out of the tower and on the scaffolding, you should be able to make your way down to the walkways without too much trouble."

Jack twisted in his uncomfortable position, trying to plan a way down before setting off again. "Okay," he said, rubbing at the bruise forming across his chest. "Five metres down and hopefully only a short leap across, because I gotta admit, it's been a while since I practised my gymnastics." He put away the torch. "At least not without netting of some sort."

"Jack, what you do in your private time is-" Owen broke off as a low rumble filled the air. "What the hell was that?"

The metal between Jack's legs began to shudder.

"Jack?" Gwen's voice cut in, the concern clear in her tone.

"Is that what I think it is?" asked Tosh, calm in spite of knowing full well what was happening.

"Yep," the Captain bit out, annoyed at the latest setback. "That would be the Rift Manipulator starting up. Right beneath me."

---

By the time Ianto's body had walked into the centre of the Hub, Captain Hart had already opened the panel in the base of the tower and was fiddling with the workings situated there. Ianto winced, recalling what had happened the last time the Rift had been forcibly opened and the horrible turn of events that followed. Granted, Jack had sprung back to life from both awful deaths, but it was hardly a time that Ianto remembered with much fondness. His own part in the betrayal against Jack was a wound from which he had yet to entirely heal.

Hart looked back, meeting his gaze with one of unexpected compassion, but then smiled brashly and the expression vanished as though it had never been there. "Don't fret, Eye-Candy, we've got an expert working on it this time. In fact, you'd better let her get started, unless you want a repeat of the last disaster you failed to stop."

Seething, Ianto could only watch from behind his own eyes as he walked over to Tosh's desk and started working at the controls there. A few minutes passed in silence, whilst Ianto's fingers moved swiftly and his mind attempted to distract them to no avail. Sooner than he expected, the being within him was finished and he stepped away stiffly.

"Come help me with this," the former Time Agent called out, shoulder deep in the complex machinery. Ianto walked over and did as the other instructed, ending up uncomfortably close to the leering man. "When this is all over," Hart began, grunting a little as he adjusted something that had stuck within the tower, "I'm going to teach you a few tricks even your precious Captain daren't show you. The kind that will ensure you'll never get enough of me."

Ianto couldn't respond in a very satisfying manner, though he was sure that his thoughts on the matter were heard by the other man. Hart grinned and licked his lips, a motion which Ianto found himself inexplicably watching with great interest. He became aware of the other's scent, similar to Jack's and yet different, individual to the younger Captain. His thoughts were slow and vague and with his mind not entirely under control all he could focus on was the warmth of the body close by and the tongue that darted out to wet those lips once again.

Something clicked without warning under his blindly groping fingers and Ianto tensed in surprise. The Rift Manipulator whirred into life, and both men pulled their arms out of the way, Hart still grinning and Ianto looking right back without even a twitch of his features to reveal his internal discomfort.

"Okay!" Hart declared enthusiastically, rubbing his hands together. "Time to get started!"

Pain tore through Ianto and he curled in on himself, his left arm coming up to join his right against his chest whilst his legs gave way beneath him and he fell to the floor, his entire body shaking.

"Oh, right, forgot to mention," Hart sang out from where he stood over the young Welshman. "When there are two bands pulling together, it can hurt a little." He paused. "Or maybe a lot. I always get those two mixed up."

A loud explosion sounded from above and the air filled with spots of silver light. Alarms began to wail, a tormenting sound that battled against even the Rift Manipulator at full power.

Ianto's head twisted in order to look up and he caught sight of a dark figure sliding down the side of the tower, one hand wrapped around a length of rope that ended about ten foot from the ground. Before he could even register the fact that he recognised the newcomer, the shards of fractured metal ceased to be airborne and clattered down around the base of the tower.

Hart swore in surprise, attempting to flee the deadly rain but in his haste forgot that Ianto was behind him. He fell, straight onto Ianto and crushed the broken arm caught between them. The agony already coursing through Ianto doubled and he opened his mouth to cry out. A weak reedy sound escaped his throat and through the pain he realised what that meant. When Hart pushed himself up and stumbled away, Ianto rolled to his knees and grabbed his cast, aggravating his arm and managing to keep control of his body by making the pain constant.

He lurched to his feet and forced himself over to the workstation, twisting and squeezing his broken limb, barely noticing that the metal band on his wrist was burning even more ferociously than before. Clenching his jaw and trying to focus through the agony, Ianto punched in the commands that would interrupt the Manipulator and keep the Rift from fully opening.

The machinery stopped mid compression, the rhythmic whirring giving way to alarming silence, and Ianto collapsed back to the floor, chest heaving. He wrapped his fingers around his arm again, intent on staying in control whilst Captain Hart was on the loose, but struggled to find the energy to stand up once more.

A whirl of heavy material swept across Ianto's face as Jack leapt over his prone body, pouncing upon the fleeing Hart.

"What the HELL are you doing here?" Jack roared at the former Time Agent, shaking him so violently that his head slammed against the concrete floor.

"Jack!" Ianto gasped, rolling onto his stomach and reaching out his free hand towards the Captain. "Jack, don't!"

The struggling pair froze; Jack gawking back over his shoulder at Ianto's unexpected – in more than one way – declaration and Hart grinning in pleasant surprise from beneath Jack.

"Oh I knew you liked me, Eye-Candy," he crowed, apparently untroubled by Jack's death grip around his throat.

Jack was looking at him, surprised by his protest, but Ianto ignored him, glaring instead at Hart with fury in his eyes. "Don't," he said again, breathing harshly through gritted teeth. "I want to kill him myself."

***

Next part of The Uninvited.

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