Fic: The Sea After a Storm (102/?)
Title: The Sea After a Storm, Chapter 102
Rating: R
Warnings: Referenced violence
Spoilers: Season Two thru Something Borrowed (2x09)
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Disclaimer: Torchwood, Doctor Who and all their wonderfulness belong to the Mighty Beeb and He Who Must Not Be Named. No infringement, only worship intended! All ©'s to Phil Ford for situations borrowed from Something Borrowed.
Summary: In which Jack, Ianto and Owen figure out what impregnated Gwen...
Notes: Almost forgot to post! Head colds are the worst, y'all. Have a great week! You can find all the previous chapters of The Sea After a Storm here. This is a sequel to Vizzini’s Rule and To The Pain. Thanks again and forever to my amazing beta and wonderful friend
thraceadams for all the help and support and beta work; any mistakes are mine!
The Sea After a Storm: Chapter One Hundred-Two
Previously on The Sea After a Storm: Ianto was able to procure Gwen a wedding dress that fits her suddenly expanded figure, but then things went from bad to worse...
"Jack! We've got a problem."
"What is it, Owen?" Jack asked.
Owen jerked his thumb towards the med bay. "You need to see this," he said.
After exchanging a worried look, Ianto and Jack followed him down the stairs to the body of the alien laid out on the exam table, mercifully covered by a sheet.
Owen immediately headed for a small tray and picked up a large, purple internal organ of some kind. Ianto grimaced in disgust.
"Look what our friend was hiding," Owen said.
"And that is...?" Ianto managed not to gag, but it was a close thing.
"A proteus gland." Owen explained further, "The shape-shifting organ of a Nostrovite."
"And what is that, exactly?" Ianto asked, trying to come up with any information about Nostrovites from memory and coming up blank.
"Trouble," Jack said seriously. "Big trouble." He turned and ran back up the stairs as Owen tried to drop the gland back in the pan. It finally released from his glove with a horrible sticky, sucking noise. Ianto hurried after Jack with Owen bringing up the rear.
"A Nostrovite is a shape-shifting carnivore with a taste for human flesh," Jack explained, rolling down his sleeves and fastening the cuffs. "It's intelligent and sneaky and... dammit, I should have seen this before." He gave Owen a guilty look which Owen shook off with a shake of his head.
"That's it with shape-shifters, innit? You never know what you're looking at."
Ianto retrieved Jack's Webley and his holster from the desk as he asked distractedly, "What's the big deal? It's dead."
"Yeah. This one is." Owen held up one finger to highlight his point.
Ianto gave them a pleading look. "Oh, does there have to be more?" He handed Jack the loaded weapon.
"Nostrovites mate for life. You know, like swans and penguins," Owen said, stripping off his lab coat.
"Yeah," Jack added as he let Ianto help him into his coat. "Except you don't find Nostrovites on greetings cards."
"Right, and then the male Nostrovite carries the fertilized eggs in a sac in its mouth and passes it on to a host with a bite." Owen sounded like he was giving a report at school.
"Gwen," Jack said gravely.
"And where does the mother come in?" Ianto asked, following Jack out from behind the desk.
"Well, she tracks down the host and rips it open."
"That's Nostrovite childbirth." Jack finished strapping on his holster. "And momma's out there right now, looking for Gwen. Come on."
Owen grabbed his jacket from the back of his workstation chair on their way out whilst Ianto stopped to pick up the SUV keys.
"So the other signal Tosh and I investigated must've been the female and not a malfunction," Ianto mused. "I wonder how she got away so quickly without leaving a trail of some kind?"
"Bastards are fast, the females especially."
"How do you two know so much about these things?" Ianto asked.
"Ran into a pair, what? Three years ago? Nasty buggers," Owen replied.
Jack nodded. "Right after you started."
"But I've never seen them referenced in the archives."
Owen and Jack exchanged guilty looks.
"Uhhh... I thought you did the report?"
"Not me, mate, you said you'd take care of it, right?"
"Not how I remember it," Jack said.
Ianto rolled his eyes. "Never mind," he muttered. "I'll meet you by the water tower," he said and veered off for the garage leaving the other two behind him, still arguing about who'd bollocksed up the report.
When he drove up, Jack was standing alone with the water feature at his back. Owen came running around the corner a few seconds later, carrying a rucksack that he'd clearly gone back for.
Jack pulled open the passenger side door and said gravely, "Tosh isn't responding."
"Then let's get going," Owen said, echoing Ianto's thoughts perfectly.
Jack hesitated. "Sure you're ready for this, Owen? You know what a Nostrovite can do - you think you got it covered a hundred feet away, and it's already chewing on your liver."
"I don't need my liver. You need me, Jack."
"Oh, whoa whoa whoa!" Jack exclaimed, glancing in the rucksack as Owen put it in the SUV. "The Singularity Scalpel? Where are you going with that?"
"Right. We need to get to Gwen before the Nostrovite does. We might not have a chance to get back to the hub and the microtron weighs about two tons."
"Uh, that thing kills people," Ianto pointed out.
"I saved Martha with it," Owen said reasonably.
"Lucky shot."
Owen sighed. "Listen, you two, you'd better start trusting me, okay? I've been working on it, and I reckon I've got it sussed. Besides, with that Nostrovite around, we really don't have too many options."
"He's got a point," Ianto said to Jack.
"What is it with you?" Jack complained. "Ever since Owen died, all you ever do is agree with him."
Ianto rolled his eyes as the other two men climbed into the vehicle. "I was brought up never to speak ill of the dead, even if they still do most of the talking for themselves," he deadpanned.
Jack surrendered. "Okay, Owen. But you better be sure you know what you're doing."
"When was the last time you heard from Tosh?" Ianto asked once they were on the motorway.
"She checked in after she gave Gwen the dress, half hour ago or so. She said thanks, by the way. Gwen did, I mean."
"Glad to help. How worried should we be? I mean, the Nostrovite doesn't have any reason to go after Tosh, right?"
"Doesn't need a reason," Owen muttered, fiddling with the Singularity Scalpel.
Ianto sighed and pressed the accelerator a little harder. The wedding site was a stately hotel about halfway between Cardiff and Swansea. Ianto had just started to look for the turn off, when Owen asked, "How much further?"
"A few minutes."
"What I don't understand is, if people are going to make such a big deal about getting married, why come all the way out into the middle of nowhere, where no one can find you, to do it?" Jack asked, his sudden rant surprising after a long silence. "That, to me, suggests inner conflict."
Ianto glared at Jack. "It's because the happy couple want everything to be perfect."
"An alien egg in your belly and its mother coming to rip you open. Yeah,
perfect," Owen muttered.
"Sorry," Jack said a few minutes later, in more calm tones, shooting Ianto an apologetic glance. "I'm just worried."
"I know. We're almost there, it's right up ahead."
They were all silent as Ianto drove right up to the front door of the hotel. Jack and Owen hit the ground running before the SUV was fully stopped. Ianto followed them into the lobby where he heard the startled concierge tell Jack that the service had already started.
"Damn! OK, you two, find Tosh. I'll stop the wedding. Rhys can't hate me anymore than he already does," Jack added grimly.
Ianto turned his back on the reception desk while powering on the hand-held scanner from the SUV. He coughed to cover the beeping it made when it picked up their comms and then widened the search area, catching a fast-moving dot that must represent Jack as he ran towards the hall where Gwen's wedding was taking place. He frowned and widened the search even further.
The scanner beeped faintly. Ianto caught Owen's eye and jerked his head towards the stairs. Owen reached for his gun and then let his hand drop to his side, shooting an irritated glance at the concierge who was still staring at them with a horrified look on her face.
"Rooms this way?" he asked politely.
The concierge nodded and pointed at the stairs with a shaky finger.
"Come on," he told Ianto and hurried up the stairs.
Ianto nodded and followed. He caught up with Owen just out of sight of anyone in the lobby.
"If the wedding's happening now then most everyone will be out of their rooms, yeah?"
"Makes sense," Ianto agreed.
"You keep scanning, I'm gonna give the halls a quick listen. Maybe I can hear something through the doors."
Ianto raised his eyebrows. "Did death somehow give you super hearing?"
Owen grinned. "Not super, but it's pretty damn quiet in here now," he said, tapping the side of his head. "No heart thumping, no blood racing - you'd be surprised how much noise that makes."
Owen drew his gun with a wink and rushed down the hall in the other direction, checking the corner quickly before making the turn. Ianto shook his head and then scouted down the hallway, watching the scanner carefully as he got closer to Tosh's comm frequency signal.
"Anything?" Owen yelled, racing back towards Ianto.
"Shh," Ianto cautioned. "I've got a fix on Tosh's comms."
"Let's go!"
"It's this room," Ianto said quietly, trying the door which was locked. "Do you think that thing is in there with her?"
"Only one way to find out," Owen replied grimly. He set his shoulder to the door and then stepped back, clearly preparing to ram it open. Just before he surged forward, he stopped and looked sheepishly at Ianto. "Um, probably not the best idea. D'you mind?"
Ianto stuffed the scanner in his jacket pocket and drew his gun. "On three," he whispered. "One... two..."
On three, he kicked open the door. The sight that met their eyes was like something out of a horror movie. Tosh was bound with an unknown man to the four-poster bed, trapped in some kind of black sticky webbing.
"Tosh! Are you okay?" Owen yelled, running towards the bed.
"Just get me out of here!"
Ianto did a quick sweep of the room whilst Owen began tearing at the webbing.
"All right, mate? I'm Banana," the man trapped with Tosh said conversationally.
"More like a gooseberry," Tosh sneered.
Ianto stepped around the bed and froze in his tracks. "Owen," he said, choking back the bile that suddenly rose in his throat at the sight of a half-devoured corpse.
"Oh, Jesus, that's disgusting."
They changed places, Owen inspecting the remains while Ianto gladly moved away from the body and took over freeing Tosh and the man called Banana.
"I'll get you out of here," he promised.
TBC...
. This entry was originally posted at http://buttononthetop.dreamwidth.org/123719.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Rating: R
Warnings: Referenced violence
Spoilers: Season Two thru Something Borrowed (2x09)
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Disclaimer: Torchwood, Doctor Who and all their wonderfulness belong to the Mighty Beeb and He Who Must Not Be Named. No infringement, only worship intended! All ©'s to Phil Ford for situations borrowed from Something Borrowed.
Summary: In which Jack, Ianto and Owen figure out what impregnated Gwen...
Notes: Almost forgot to post! Head colds are the worst, y'all. Have a great week! You can find all the previous chapters of The Sea After a Storm here. This is a sequel to Vizzini’s Rule and To The Pain. Thanks again and forever to my amazing beta and wonderful friend
thraceadams for all the help and support and beta work; any mistakes are mine!
The Sea After a Storm: Chapter One Hundred-Two
Previously on The Sea After a Storm: Ianto was able to procure Gwen a wedding dress that fits her suddenly expanded figure, but then things went from bad to worse...
"Jack! We've got a problem."
"What is it, Owen?" Jack asked.
Owen jerked his thumb towards the med bay. "You need to see this," he said.
After exchanging a worried look, Ianto and Jack followed him down the stairs to the body of the alien laid out on the exam table, mercifully covered by a sheet.
Owen immediately headed for a small tray and picked up a large, purple internal organ of some kind. Ianto grimaced in disgust.
"Look what our friend was hiding," Owen said.
"And that is...?" Ianto managed not to gag, but it was a close thing.
"A proteus gland." Owen explained further, "The shape-shifting organ of a Nostrovite."
"And what is that, exactly?" Ianto asked, trying to come up with any information about Nostrovites from memory and coming up blank.
"Trouble," Jack said seriously. "Big trouble." He turned and ran back up the stairs as Owen tried to drop the gland back in the pan. It finally released from his glove with a horrible sticky, sucking noise. Ianto hurried after Jack with Owen bringing up the rear.
"A Nostrovite is a shape-shifting carnivore with a taste for human flesh," Jack explained, rolling down his sleeves and fastening the cuffs. "It's intelligent and sneaky and... dammit, I should have seen this before." He gave Owen a guilty look which Owen shook off with a shake of his head.
"That's it with shape-shifters, innit? You never know what you're looking at."
Ianto retrieved Jack's Webley and his holster from the desk as he asked distractedly, "What's the big deal? It's dead."
"Yeah. This one is." Owen held up one finger to highlight his point.
Ianto gave them a pleading look. "Oh, does there have to be more?" He handed Jack the loaded weapon.
"Nostrovites mate for life. You know, like swans and penguins," Owen said, stripping off his lab coat.
"Yeah," Jack added as he let Ianto help him into his coat. "Except you don't find Nostrovites on greetings cards."
"Right, and then the male Nostrovite carries the fertilized eggs in a sac in its mouth and passes it on to a host with a bite." Owen sounded like he was giving a report at school.
"Gwen," Jack said gravely.
"And where does the mother come in?" Ianto asked, following Jack out from behind the desk.
"Well, she tracks down the host and rips it open."
"That's Nostrovite childbirth." Jack finished strapping on his holster. "And momma's out there right now, looking for Gwen. Come on."
Owen grabbed his jacket from the back of his workstation chair on their way out whilst Ianto stopped to pick up the SUV keys.
"So the other signal Tosh and I investigated must've been the female and not a malfunction," Ianto mused. "I wonder how she got away so quickly without leaving a trail of some kind?"
"Bastards are fast, the females especially."
"How do you two know so much about these things?" Ianto asked.
"Ran into a pair, what? Three years ago? Nasty buggers," Owen replied.
Jack nodded. "Right after you started."
"But I've never seen them referenced in the archives."
Owen and Jack exchanged guilty looks.
"Uhhh... I thought you did the report?"
"Not me, mate, you said you'd take care of it, right?"
"Not how I remember it," Jack said.
Ianto rolled his eyes. "Never mind," he muttered. "I'll meet you by the water tower," he said and veered off for the garage leaving the other two behind him, still arguing about who'd bollocksed up the report.
When he drove up, Jack was standing alone with the water feature at his back. Owen came running around the corner a few seconds later, carrying a rucksack that he'd clearly gone back for.
Jack pulled open the passenger side door and said gravely, "Tosh isn't responding."
"Then let's get going," Owen said, echoing Ianto's thoughts perfectly.
Jack hesitated. "Sure you're ready for this, Owen? You know what a Nostrovite can do - you think you got it covered a hundred feet away, and it's already chewing on your liver."
"I don't need my liver. You need me, Jack."
"Oh, whoa whoa whoa!" Jack exclaimed, glancing in the rucksack as Owen put it in the SUV. "The Singularity Scalpel? Where are you going with that?"
"Right. We need to get to Gwen before the Nostrovite does. We might not have a chance to get back to the hub and the microtron weighs about two tons."
"Uh, that thing kills people," Ianto pointed out.
"I saved Martha with it," Owen said reasonably.
"Lucky shot."
Owen sighed. "Listen, you two, you'd better start trusting me, okay? I've been working on it, and I reckon I've got it sussed. Besides, with that Nostrovite around, we really don't have too many options."
"He's got a point," Ianto said to Jack.
"What is it with you?" Jack complained. "Ever since Owen died, all you ever do is agree with him."
Ianto rolled his eyes as the other two men climbed into the vehicle. "I was brought up never to speak ill of the dead, even if they still do most of the talking for themselves," he deadpanned.
Jack surrendered. "Okay, Owen. But you better be sure you know what you're doing."
"When was the last time you heard from Tosh?" Ianto asked once they were on the motorway.
"She checked in after she gave Gwen the dress, half hour ago or so. She said thanks, by the way. Gwen did, I mean."
"Glad to help. How worried should we be? I mean, the Nostrovite doesn't have any reason to go after Tosh, right?"
"Doesn't need a reason," Owen muttered, fiddling with the Singularity Scalpel.
Ianto sighed and pressed the accelerator a little harder. The wedding site was a stately hotel about halfway between Cardiff and Swansea. Ianto had just started to look for the turn off, when Owen asked, "How much further?"
"A few minutes."
"What I don't understand is, if people are going to make such a big deal about getting married, why come all the way out into the middle of nowhere, where no one can find you, to do it?" Jack asked, his sudden rant surprising after a long silence. "That, to me, suggests inner conflict."
Ianto glared at Jack. "It's because the happy couple want everything to be perfect."
"An alien egg in your belly and its mother coming to rip you open. Yeah,
perfect," Owen muttered.
"Sorry," Jack said a few minutes later, in more calm tones, shooting Ianto an apologetic glance. "I'm just worried."
"I know. We're almost there, it's right up ahead."
They were all silent as Ianto drove right up to the front door of the hotel. Jack and Owen hit the ground running before the SUV was fully stopped. Ianto followed them into the lobby where he heard the startled concierge tell Jack that the service had already started.
"Damn! OK, you two, find Tosh. I'll stop the wedding. Rhys can't hate me anymore than he already does," Jack added grimly.
Ianto turned his back on the reception desk while powering on the hand-held scanner from the SUV. He coughed to cover the beeping it made when it picked up their comms and then widened the search area, catching a fast-moving dot that must represent Jack as he ran towards the hall where Gwen's wedding was taking place. He frowned and widened the search even further.
The scanner beeped faintly. Ianto caught Owen's eye and jerked his head towards the stairs. Owen reached for his gun and then let his hand drop to his side, shooting an irritated glance at the concierge who was still staring at them with a horrified look on her face.
"Rooms this way?" he asked politely.
The concierge nodded and pointed at the stairs with a shaky finger.
"Come on," he told Ianto and hurried up the stairs.
Ianto nodded and followed. He caught up with Owen just out of sight of anyone in the lobby.
"If the wedding's happening now then most everyone will be out of their rooms, yeah?"
"Makes sense," Ianto agreed.
"You keep scanning, I'm gonna give the halls a quick listen. Maybe I can hear something through the doors."
Ianto raised his eyebrows. "Did death somehow give you super hearing?"
Owen grinned. "Not super, but it's pretty damn quiet in here now," he said, tapping the side of his head. "No heart thumping, no blood racing - you'd be surprised how much noise that makes."
Owen drew his gun with a wink and rushed down the hall in the other direction, checking the corner quickly before making the turn. Ianto shook his head and then scouted down the hallway, watching the scanner carefully as he got closer to Tosh's comm frequency signal.
"Anything?" Owen yelled, racing back towards Ianto.
"Shh," Ianto cautioned. "I've got a fix on Tosh's comms."
"Let's go!"
"It's this room," Ianto said quietly, trying the door which was locked. "Do you think that thing is in there with her?"
"Only one way to find out," Owen replied grimly. He set his shoulder to the door and then stepped back, clearly preparing to ram it open. Just before he surged forward, he stopped and looked sheepishly at Ianto. "Um, probably not the best idea. D'you mind?"
Ianto stuffed the scanner in his jacket pocket and drew his gun. "On three," he whispered. "One... two..."
On three, he kicked open the door. The sight that met their eyes was like something out of a horror movie. Tosh was bound with an unknown man to the four-poster bed, trapped in some kind of black sticky webbing.
"Tosh! Are you okay?" Owen yelled, running towards the bed.
"Just get me out of here!"
Ianto did a quick sweep of the room whilst Owen began tearing at the webbing.
"All right, mate? I'm Banana," the man trapped with Tosh said conversationally.
"More like a gooseberry," Tosh sneered.
Ianto stepped around the bed and froze in his tracks. "Owen," he said, choking back the bile that suddenly rose in his throat at the sight of a half-devoured corpse.
"Oh, Jesus, that's disgusting."
They changed places, Owen inspecting the remains while Ianto gladly moved away from the body and took over freeing Tosh and the man called Banana.
"I'll get you out of here," he promised.
TBC...
. This entry was originally posted at http://buttononthetop.dreamwidth.org/123719.html. Please comment there using OpenID.