When Gwen was suspended and off chasing ghosts, Ianto and Jack had spent practically the entire weekend chasing Weevils. The rapport they had developed in their personal relationship easily transferred itself to their professional relationship.
They found they worked well together, instinctively falling into a routine in a short amount of time. Jack soon learnt Ianto’s strengths and weaknesses, and how he would react in certain circumstances. Similarly, Ianto had quickly worked out Jack’s methods of dealing with the same situations. It didn’t take them long to be able to know what the other was going to do without any words being exchanged.
That night, as Jack ran down the alleyway and trapped the Weevil they were chasing in a dead-end, he knew exactly where Ianto would be. He trusted him to know when to have his stun gun ready or when to have his gun out instead.
Jack stopped running and watched the Weevil with a half-grin on his face.
“Hate to break it to you, but you’re not my first!” Jack heard Ianto snigger behind him as he taunted the Weevil. He held up an item in each hand and showed them to the Weevil in turn. “Anti-Weevil spray. Hand clamps.”
The Weevil jumped off the stack of pallets it had crouched on and hissed at Jack. Jack heard Ianto readying the stun gun.
“Come on, let’s make this easy for all of us,” Jack continued.
Suddenly the Weevil went on the attack and rushed at Jack, its sharp claws scratching long, deep gouges into his chest. Through his pain, he heard Ianto’s sharp intake of breath.
Ianto was torn; he knew he had to maintain his position to keep the Weevil trapped, but he wanted to see if Jack was all right. While he knew that Jack would not be permanently injured, he was still in pain and Ianto wanted to be able to help him. He and Jack looked at each other for a moment and the Weevil took the opportunity to make an escape. Pushing Ianto and Jack aside, it ran out of the dead-end and into the street, soon disappearing from sight.
Jack groaned in pain and frustration but still had a grin for Ianto. “Ahhh… This always happens when you give them the night off!”
Ianto smiled back at him and they turned and chased after the Weevil.
A few blocks away, Gwen and her boyfriend Rhys were sitting at an outdoor restaurant. Rhys was ranting about the food; his steak hadn’t been cooked enough for his liking and it reminded him of a time when the two them had gone to Paris and had the same thing happen.
Gwen was not listening to him though. Her mind kept drifting back to how strained things had become between Owen and herself, and she still wasn’t entirely convinced that letting Emma go was the best decision.
For Rhys, unfortunately, this disconnection between them had become a regular occurrence. He would often be talking away and Gwen would simply not be listening. He wondered if it was something he’d done… or not done. Rhys was starting to get fed up and that night, as Gwen was sitting there looking at him like she’d rather be anywhere else than with him, he finally lost his temper.
He had just started venting his frustrations, embarrassing Gwen in the process, when he noticed a strange-looking creature running down the middle of the street. He frowned when he saw two men chasing it; one of the men looked like he was wearing that flashy coat one of Gwen’s co-workers always wore.
“What the hell was that?” Rhys asked.
Gwen turned around and saw Jack standing out in the road, with Ianto hovering nearby. She smiled at them both as she stood up.
Jack noticed Gwen standing there and pointed her out to Ianto.
“Should we grab her while we’re here?” he asked Ianto.
Ianto looked over at Gwen and Rhys. She pointed at herself as if to ask whether she was needed. Ianto shook his head at her.
“No, it’s her night off,” Ianto replied, taking note of the indignant look that appeared on Rhys’ face when it became obvious that Gwen wanted to join them. “She needs to stay with Rhys.”
Gwen looked disappointed when Ianto signalled no, but sat back down again regardless.
“Rhys, that was Jack and my boss, Ianto.”
Rhys nodded sullenly. He had seen how eager Gwen had been to go running off with the two men. He stared back at Gwen without speaking.
“They’re working a case. They would’ve needed my help,” she tried again to make him understand.
Rhys sighed. “You’re with me tonight. One night off. You promised.” He couldn’t help a bit of petulance creeping into his voice as he spoke.
Gwen grabbed her bag and then put it down again. By now, she was just as angry as Rhys. They glared at each other for a few moments before Gwen looked away. Slowly, and reluctantly, her thoughts started going back over to earlier in the day when she had begun to realise that out of the men in her life, the only one that was committed to her and loved her, was Rhys. Owen and Jack had other distractions.
She forced her anger back and smiled as calmly as she could at him. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She placed a hand on Rhys’ forearm and looked at him earnestly. “Let’s just go home.”
Rhys glared at her a few moments longer; then a slow smile crept across his face. He never could stay mad at her when she looked at him like that. Calling for the bill, they stood up and left the restaurant.
Ianto and Jack continued running after the Weevil. They skidded around a corner and stopped as Ianto used his PDA to check for signs of the Weevil. Jack looked at the screen with him.
“There!” Jack shouted. “Three hundred metres on the right, car park!”
Ianto and Jack ran into the car park and looked around urgently for the Weevil. Ianto spotted it running in the distance and pointed it out to Jack. They started running after the Weevil again but before they had a chance to get close, a white van with blue markings drove up and screeched to a halt near the Weevil.
Before the Weevil had a chance to react, three men dressed in black and armed with electric cattle prods poured out of the van and subdued the Weevil. The men shoved the Weevil in the van and then got back in themselves and drove away.
Ianto and Jack started to run after the van, but were soon left behind. They stood there panting with the exertion of the chase.
“Who the hell were they?” Jack asked.
They stood there looking after the van helplessly. Neither of them had an answer.
The two men walked quickly back to the SUV, both of them noting that Gwen and Rhys were no longer at the restaurant as they walked past. Once in the SUV Jack drove them back to the Hub as Ianto called Tosh and Owen in. They would have to work out exactly who the people kidnapping the Weevils were.
When Gwen arrived at the Hub the next morning, she soon realised that Ianto, Jack and Tosh had worked through the night. Owen was nowhere to be seen.
“We tried calling him over and over but he never answered,” Tosh said in answer to Gwen’s question about where Owen was.
Gwen tried ringing him herself. “Owen’s still not answering his phone,” she said in frustration.
“Well, he’s been even more erratic than usual since that thing with Diane,” Tosh carried on with her work to avoid looking at Gwen as she spoke.
“Since the what?”
Tosh got up and walked away quickly.
“It’s none of my business.”
Gwen followed her.
“What thing? What thing, Tosh?”
Tosh sighed in resignation. “Owen and Diane. Before she took the plane, they had a… thing. You knew that, right?”
“Oh, yeah, of course I knew that. I just didn’t know they had a ‘thing’ thing.” Gwen tried to sound nonchalant, but her insides were tying themselves in knots. The man she was cheating on Rhys with had cheated on her? She didn’t know whether to feel angry or relieved. Angry that Owen had gone behind her back, or relieved that now this whole sordid affair would finally be over.
Ianto and Jack coming back into the main area after being in Ianto’s office for a while distracted both of their attentions. Tosh showed the three of them where the van had gone. She had discovered it had gone straight from the car park out to the docks at Cardiff Bay. Ianto sent her and Jack out there to investigate.
When they came back, they brought a dead man with them. The man appeared to have been killed by Weevils and Ianto wanted an autopsy performed to see what else they could find out.
“Tell Owen to get his bony little arse over here now,” Jack said as Ianto called Owen one more time.
Reeking of alcohol and insolence, Owen finally made his way back to the Hub and did the autopsy. The autopsy only raised more questions when it became obvious that humans had also done a fair bit of damage to the man’s body before the Weevil or Weevils had got to it.
Gwen was sent to tell the man’s family of his death. Owen was instructed to go with her, but he sat silently in the SUV the whole time. When she left the dead man’s residence, she felt emotionally drained. The argument with Rhys last night, the realisation that the fling between her and Owen were effectively over and her inability to separate work from her personal life were all taking its toll.
She looked at Owen, disappointed by his lack of support. She shook her head.
“Why are we still doing this, me and you?” she asked.
Owen finally bothered to look at her. “Fine, let’s not. I was getting bored of your fuck-tricks anyway.” Owen opened the car door and got out the vehicle.
Gwen’s temper flared. “You can be such a wanker sometimes, Owen, do you know that?”
“I do, as a matter of fact,” he shouted as he slammed the car door and stalked off.
Gwen started the car and drove off with a screech of the wheels that would have made even Jack proud.
By the time Owen finally made it back to the Hub again, Toshiko had come up with a plan. She had set Owen up with a fake identity and matching website, ready to infiltrate the estate agency that was looking after the warehouse where they had discovered the body. Tosh had realised that the people using the warehouse must have known it was empty, meaning they either owned it or they had previous contact with the actual estate agents.
After Owen had left and planted the device that enabled them to hack into the estate agent’s computer system, there was not much else the rest of the Torchwood team could do. Owen would be meeting with Mark Lynch, one of the owners of the estate agency, later that night so it was just a matter of waiting for Owen to do his stuff. Ianto said everyone could go home for the afternoon; they would all need to come back in the evening to be ready to act, if Owen sent the word.
Gwen left as soon as she could, but Tosh decided to stick around a bit longer. She had noticed a surge of unusual injuries being reported at the A&E unit. The victims had had chunks taken out of their legs and arms, and deep wounds to their backs and stomachs. She thought it looked like there had been a surge of Weevil attacks, just one more thing to add to their problems.
Ianto headed down to Jack’s bunker to have a shower. When he got back up to his office, his attention was drawn by a package sitting on his desk. The package had arrived a couple of days before the committee called him away. He knew who it was from and what it was, but he hadn’t had a chance to open it yet as he needed Jack to not be around when he did.
He went to leave the office, when something else caught his attention. Something on his desk wasn’t right. He looked at it, and everything on it, carefully. It looked like something had moved. He looked at everything again, his eyes eventually falling on the container of retcon on his desk. Ianto reached out and tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the top. The container was only out because he needed to refill it, there were only a couple of tablets left in there. His fingers grabbed on to the lid and he picked up the container. Having a look inside he frowned when he saw two tablets were missing.
He looked out his office to Tosh sitting at her workstation, Jack was standing beside her, looking at what was on her monitor and Gwen was long gone. Would one of them have taken the tablets? It wouldn’t have been Owen because he had access to his own supply as the team doctor. He couldn’t see Jack or Tosh taking them without letting him know. That left Gwen, but he couldn’t see why she would need the retcon.
Tosh turned slightly in her chair and called out to him as soon as she saw him. Ianto had to out aside the question of who had taken the tablets for a while as Tosh had tracked down another set of suspicious injuries reported at the hospital. Ones that sounded pretty bad. Ianto decided he would go with Jack to the hospital to interview the victim.
They returned a couple of hours later, having not been able to get any useful information out of the victim. Tosh had to laugh as Jack was joking around about how well he and Ianto did the good cop/bad cop routine.
Jack nudged Tosh on the arm. “Although, obviously, Ianto’s the good cop, he’s too cute to be the bad cop!”
Ianto rolled his eyes at that but a pleased smile crossed his face.
“Come on you two,” Ianto said to change the subject. “Let’s go get some dinner. It’s up to Owen now.”
On their way back from dinner, Gwen called through on the comms. The three of them looked at each other in confusion. No one was supposed to be at the Hub.
“What are you doing there? I told you to go home,” Ianto asked.
Gwen ignored the question and started telling them what she had found out. “There’s a text message that’s just come through on Dan Hodges’ phone. Charlie Foxtrot One Zero Six Bravo Yankee.”
Tosh started entering the information into her PDA.
“Seems to be a postcode for a building. One that’s gonna have a Lynch Frost sign outside,” Gwen finished.
“OK, I’ve got the location,” Tosh informed them.
Jack looked over to Ianto who nodded back at him. “Gwen, we’ll pick you up on the way.”
“So, people get in the loop by text message and they head to a property…” Ianto began.
“A property Mark Lynch knows is empty,” Tosh finished off for him.
Jack nodded. “So the question is: what happens when they get there?”
The two men looked at each other. On the way back from the hospital, Jack had wanted to send their resident Weevil Janet out with a tracker in her boiler suit and leave her in the car pack where the unknown men had captured the other Weevil. He thought that way they would be able to track down where the men had taken it. Ianto quickly vetoed that idea, saying there was no telling what would happen. He wanted to find another way of tracking the men down.
It seemed they had found that alternate way after all.
Bilis Manger relaxed back in his chair in the office at ‘A Stitch in Time’ and smiled in satisfaction.
“Only a few more days to go,” said the girl sitting across the table from him.
Bilis’ smile grew impossibly wider and even eviller than the girl could ever have imagined possible.
“Yes, indeed,” Bilis said. “Only a few more days, and one hundred and eleven years of waiting will finally come to an end. As will that damned freak, and his beloved Mr Jones. Their time is done. The time for our Lord to rise approaches!”
The girl smiled joyfully with him. “And you, his loyal Servant, will finally get everything you deserve.”
Bilis looked at her. “I have devoted my life to my Lord, that is reward enough.”
The girl nodded agreeably. Just a few more days…