VS3:07 -- "The Hunt", Part Two

[code_4268656637]

The Hunt -- Part Two

Gwen tried number after number without success. Jack, Ianto, even JJ. When those hadn't worked she tried Andy, and finally Rhys. The phone beeped as if it was connecting, and then the calls would drop. She tried texting Jack, punching in an SOS by the beam of her torch. When she hit 'send', the phone rebooted.

She sighed, frustrated. On the verge of tossing the mobile back into her bag, her hand stilled as a faint vibration tickled at the soles of her boots. She slipped the phone inside, careful not to make any noise of her own, reached for her gun, and racked the slide, wincing at the harsh metallic sound. With the torch trained as a sight, Gwen circled rapidly around her prison. She was still alone.

"You're getting jumpy," Gwen muttered. She took a breath. And then a cautious sniff. The air seemed a little less stale and slightly less alien, not that she had a lot of experience with alien air, but it did seem more familiar.

A light. A small, orange, indicator began to flash on a previously unbroken surface. There was a sound, barely audible, but growing stronger by the second. Gwen strained her ears. It sounded like an alien language. Several alien languages. Then the words became human: Habla. Sprechen. Boolnaa. Taler. Dozens of languages. Then, "Speak."

Gwen looked up at the ceiling in surprise. "Who are you?"

"Speak," the disembodied voice repeated.

Gwen trained her pistol towards the source of the voice. "You want me to talk to you, tell me who you are!"

"Talk. Speak. Converse. Language acquired. English."

Gwen spun around, the white beam of light playing crazy patterns over the walls and floor.

"Emergency protocols initiated. Assistance requested."

"Who are you?" Gwen called to the ceiling sharply as she dropped into a shooter's crouch. "Why did you bring me here?" She fanned the chamber with her pistol, peering fruitlessly in the dark for a target. "If you want me to help you, you're going to have to give me some answers."

The voice ignored her. It was flat and impersonal. And the inflection was slightly off as if the speaker had learnt English in some second-hand manner. "Confirm location. This is Sol 3. Terra. Earth. B-"

"Why?" Gwen cut in. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously as she furtively looked around the room. It might have been her imagination, but it seemed there was the slightest uptick in the thrum of energy that had first attracted her attention.

"Location required to facilitate exchange of information. Confirm location," the voice repeated. "This is Sol 3. Terra. Earth-"

"Yes, yes," Gwen replied impatiently. Her gut was telling her that while she was in trouble, she wasn't in danger. "This is Earth."

"Designation: Transport vessel Siiu Anto Mala. Request assistance locating UNIT, Firefox, Phoenix, Rising Dragon, Torchwood."

"Torchwood!" Gwen blurted, and then grew cautious as her wits returned. "What do you want with that lot?"

"Require assistance."

Gwen sighed. This was going to be one of those situations where you had to give a little to get a little. "Gwen Cooper. Torchwood operative 4936266737." She shifted her gun back to her waistband, reached into her bag and pulled out her wallet. She extracted the laminated photo identification, held it up before her, and shone the beam of her torch on it. "See? That's me. I'm Torchwood. How can I be of assistance?"

"Transport vessel Siiu Anto Mala damaged. Crew dead. Mission compromised. Request assistance."

"I got that part," Gwen said, a trifle impatiently. "I've already said I'll help you if I can. But you've got to do something for me."

"Assist Gwen Cooper."

Gwen smiled in the darkness. A nice, friendly, disarming smile, just as she'd been taught in police training. Build bridges. Build trust. Use commonalities to resolve conflict. "Good. That's good. We'll help each other." She looked down at the torch in her hand. She'd been so busy, she hadn't taken time to rotate the batteries, and the beam was starting to fade. "Do you suppose we could have some lights?"

Jack stopped abruptly, one foot in mid-air. "Hold up a second. We may have caught a break." He set the foot down, and watched as the wind blew the crumpled remains of a Gazette up the street ahead of them.

Rhys strode past, his eyes on the road in front of him, concentrating so intently that it took him several seconds to focus on Jack's words. He stopped and followed Jack's gaze. A woman stooped in the street retrieving a lager bottle. Parked behind her was a shopping trolley piled high with bottles, cans, and other recyclables.

Jack strode toward her. A welcoming grin lit his face as he said exhuberantly, "Nama!"

She jumped at the sound of her name and dropped the bottle. It bounced but didn't break. She looked up, frightened, but her expression quickly changed to one of cheerful recognition. She plucked the bottle from the street and placed it among the others, then bowed, hands clasped before her forehead. "Captain Jack, may your night be filled with laughter."

"Thanks, Nama, sweetheart. May your cluster's search be fruitful."

Rhys frowned at the odd exchange. As he viewed Nama in the halo of a street light, his frown deepened. She was like many street people, dressed in a variety of mismatched cast-off clothing, most of it too big for her tiny frame. The clothing was clean and well mended, he noted as he moved closer, though her hands seemed unusually dirty. A silver-grey coat of grime extended up to her forearms.

"Rhys Williams, this is Nama," Jack said. "Nama, Rhys. Rhys is cluster-mate of Gwen Cooper."

"Pleased to meet you." Rhys awkwardly copied the bow Nama had offered. He shot a confused look at Jack as the hood of Nama's sweatshirt slipped off her forehead, revealing a distinctly pointed pair of ear-tips, and eyes just a shade too wide to be human. The silver-grey colour wasn't dirt. "Uh, you're not from around here, are you?"

"Transplanted, yes," she replied. "Was hatched in London."

Rhys tried and failed to keep the surprise off his face. "Right. Look, darlin', here's the thing. My missus didn't come home. And we wanted to know, you being out on the street and all, if you've seen her tonight."

Nama nodded. "Saw Gwen Cooper, yes." Nictitating eyelids fluttered up over black irises. "Gwen Cooper distracted. Spoke only to Gwen Cooper."

"She's had a lot on her plate, Nama," Jack said. "I'm sure she meant no slight."

Nama cocked her head in an inquisitive manner. "Would please Captain Jack if Nama asked rest of cluster?"

Jack bowed. "Would please Captain Jack very much."

Nama closed both sets of eyelids and bowed her head. Thirty seconds passed. She opened her eyes and shook her head. "Regret, Captain Jack. None seen Gwen Cooper." Her expression grew worried. "Much unrest on street tonight. Have care, Captain Jack and Rhys Williams." Nama pulled her hood securely over her head and slowly pushed her trolley away.

"More aliens in Cardiff," Rhys said as Nama turned into an alleyway. "Running bakeries. Living on the street. How does she get by looking like she does?"

Jack shrugged. "How often do you notice street people?" A police car screamed past, blues and twos on. "Nama's right, the streets are restless tonight. We should get a move on."

Ianto and JJ were silent on the short drive to the second crime scene, each lost in his own thoughts. JJ was looking out the window at the passing cars. "Do you suppose they have any idea what's going on right in front of their noses? The aliens, I mean," he clarified.

Ianto consulted the GPS as they rolled up to a traffic light. "A few, yeah, but not many. And it's our job to keep it that way. Let people have their illusions that they're alone in the universe." A gust of cold air blew through the passenger compartment and Ianto frowned at JJ. "Must you have that window open?"

"I need a little air after... you know." JJ went quiet for a moment, watching a group of kids laughing, oblivious to the dangers prowling through the streets. "Why?"

Ianto shrugged as the light turned green. He waited for traffic to clear, then turned left onto a street already crowded with pandas. He angled the SUV into a parking space before replying. "People have enough to worry about." He got out of the Range Rover, grabbed his gear from the back seat and, with an expectant lift of his eyebrow, suggested that JJ quit wasting time and do the same.

They fought their way through a crowd of onlookers. The police had formed a human shield, blocking the view of spectators eager to get a glimpse of the lurid scene, while the crime scene technicians hurriedly assembled a more sturdy barrier of temporary fencing.

"Word is spreading already," PC Singh said to Ianto as he allowed them to pass through the cordon. "People are saying we've got our own Jack the Ripper."

"Let's keep a lid on that sort of talk, Constable," said one of the detectives, arriving just behind Ianto and JJ. "The press have big ears and we don't want to give them ideas."

"Ma'am," Singh replied contritely, as he held the tape up again for her to pass.

Ianto surveyed the scene with a quick, sweeping glance. The killer had struck in a street full of small shops and other businesses. The area should have been brightly lit, but the lamps closest to the crime scene seemed to be operating erratically, the bulbs sputtering on and off and on again. He frowned and, withdrawing the scanner from his bag, swept the area for energy signatures. The same odd mix of Rift and electromagnetic energy made the needle dance. He stored the readings and dropped it back in the bag as he approached the murder scene.

The victim was female. The headless body looked pathetic lying on the tarmac, a carrier bag containing tea and a quart of milk, now puddled and faintly pink as it mingled with the blood spatter. A large canvas tote had spilled open revealing a partially completed baby sweater and a paperback novel. Ianto stepped carefully around the bits and pieces of the dead woman's life, and tried not to wonder who the sweater was for. "May I?" he asked the harried technician who was doing her best to guard any trace evidence from trampling before SOCO could record it.

Ianto stepped carefully through the gore and knelt at the victim's side. Shining his torch, he noted the same tearing injury to the throat and the same deep puncture wounds that he'd observed on the other victim. He sniffed carefully. The scent of ozone hung near the body. Definitely not a weevil, or any of their other natural predators.

"Inspector!" Another constable jogged up. Another unfamiliar name. Red hair, female curves that wouldn't be tamed by the unflattering uniform and stab vest. "Sorry, sir." She regarded Ianto curiously. "Oh, you're one of those Torchwood blokes. I heard you was on scene. I was looking for DI Gunderson, but I suppose you need to know. The witness has come to."

"Thank you, PC Owens," Gunderson said from behind her. "That will be all."

"Sir." She touched her fingers to her bowler hat and moved away as an ambulance siren split the air.

"About bloody time they got here," Gunderson muttered. "Come on. Let's see what we can get out of the poor devil."

"I've found something!" JJ called from further up the road.

All over the street, heads turned. Gunderson and Ianto veered away from the witness to converge instead on JJ.

JJ had his torch trained downward. A constable, one of the first to react, bolted away, pale and shaking. Ianto took a deep breath then jogged forward.

It was the woman's head. It lay on its crown, dark hair streaming. Ianto exchanged a look with Gunderson as someone pressed a pair of latex gloves into his hands.

"Wait," Gunderson said, gesturing a crime scene technician over as Ianto knelt. "Shoot it first."

There was the harsh illumination of a camera flash repeatedly firing from multiple angles, and then the technician withdrew.

Ianto knelt. He shined his torch on the head and frowned. A trickle of thick green fluid mingled with the blood that stained the woman's neck. "Get the doctor."

"What is it?" Gunderson asked.

"I'm not sure," Ianto replied. He looked around for JJ and found him, hands on his knees, hyperventilating. He crossed quickly to the young man's side. "Get a hold of yourself. I need you to go with the witness to the hospital. Get a statement. Don't let them sedate him until you do. Understood?"

JJ closed his eyes and got his breathing under control. "Yes, sir."

"Get moving," Ianto ordered as Gunderson yelled his name. "I'll collect you when I can."

Gwen's eyes went wide as she stepped through the door out of the transport bay where she'd been initially confined, and into the tiny pilots' cabin. The emergency lights provided a soft blue glow, barely adequate illumination, but she wondered if she would be happier in the dark. Two bodies were slumped over the controls. And while the air scrubbers were doing their best, they couldn't quite mask the foul scent of burnt flesh and death that hung on the air.

Gwen closed her eyes and breathed through her mouth until she regained her sense of determination. She crossed closer to examine the bodies. The race was unfamiliar. She wondered from where they had travelled, these beings with their long, bare, distended skulls that were crowned with a coronet of spiral-shaped horns. Their singed flight suits had no markings she recognised. The writing wasn't writing at all, just a series of jagged lines similar to the ones that marked the consoles and panels. The unburned patches of skin on the aliens' faces and hands were green in the faint glow of the emergency lights. Gwen straightened and stepped away. The deaths were regrettable, but there wasn't anything she could do to help the crew except get their ship working somehow and send it home.

"All right, Siiu." Gwen looked around the cabin. Only a few lights blinked to indicate live circuitry. The rest of the control panels and displays were in an alarming state. Smoke stains tarred the pale walls, and burns had melted and warped portions of the bulkheads. No indicator lights winked cheerfully on the main control console as she imagined they should on a functioning craft.

"It is all right if I call you Siiu, for short, I mean?" She looked up. The voice system seemed to have its speakers wired somewhere near the ceiling and it only seemed polite to address the ship that way. "Or SAM. I could call you SAM. That's a nice, friendly name. And," she admitted, "a bit easier for me to pronounce."

"Agent Gwen Cooper, Designation 4936266737, may call Siiu Anto Mala, SAM."

"And why don't you call me Gwen?" she suggested. "It's less of a mouthful. Now tell me, SAM, how do I get a message out to contact my colleagues at Torchwood?"

"Comm system down. Main power down. Emergency systems will fail in bena tal."

"Sorry," Gwen said. She looked up at the ceiling. "I didn't quite catch that last bit."

"Translation matrix failure."

The voice went silent. Gwen frowned. The whatever-it-was picked a great time to stop talking. "Could you repeat that last bit again?"

"Emergency systems will fail in three hours."

Gwen ran a hand through her hair, thinking. Then SAM's words hit her. "All the emergency systems? Does that mean life support too?"

"Confirmed. Primary power conduit fault occurred during emergency transfer of Gwen."

"Can you transport me back off the ship?" Gwen stared up at the ceiling, her gaze intent. "Let me bring you some help."

"Negative. Transmat system is non-operational."

"Shit!" Gwen looked at the dead pilots and made up her mind. She gave the ceiling a rueful smile and removed a pair of latex gloves from her purse. She pulled them on and, with a grimace of distaste, wrapped her arms around the body of the nearest pilot. She dragged the corpse out of the chair, looked around the room, and decided that the furthest corner was as good as it was going to get. With as much reverence as she could muster, considering the alien pilots were at least twice her bulk and two feet taller, she manhandled the corpses out of the way.

The exertion left her breathless. Gwen turned away from the bodies and bent over, cradling her stomach with one hand. She looked at her hand and its position and sighed. "You've only got three hours, Gwen. Or none of it will matter." She straightened. "All right, SAM. You're going to have to walk me through all this."

"Translation matrix failure. Define: Walk me through."

"Explain," Gwen said, trying to keep the impatience out of her voice. "I'm not a technician and I don't know your systems. If you want me to repair you, then you're going to have to tell me how."

"Understood."

"Lovely," Gwen said, forcing confidence into her voice. "Why don't you show me where they keep the tools then, okay?"

JJ clambered into the back of the ambulance and took up a station opposite the attendant, a sturdy woman in her thirties with blonde hair and brown eyes that had seen too much. He winced as the door slammed shut and smiled in what he hoped was a compassionate manner. "Cosy in here, isn't it?"

She looked him over and pointed at his phone earpiece. "Shut that off. It interferes with the equipment."

Hastily, JJ pulled it off, powered down his telephone, and put the device in his pocket. "Sorry." He gestured at the stricken man. "How is he?"

"No one will believe me!" The man moaned, a guttural sound that made JJ's blood chill.

"I'll believe you." JJ leaned close to the stretcher and looked into his eyes. He whispered conspiratorially. "I promise. I've seen things, too. I'm JJ. You can trust me, Mister..."

"Witherspoon," he rasped. He was in his fifties and had black hair going to grey at the temples. He still wore a white apron over his argyle patterned sweater-vest, white dress shirt, and dark blue trousers.

The ambulance attendant gave JJ a warning look but didn't interfere. JJ pressed his advantage. "Just tell me what you saw. I promise, I can help."

"That poor lass." The man closed his eyes in pain and horror. He began to sob, clutching at the thin grey blanket that the attendant spread over him as the ambulance pulled away from the crime scene.

JJ braced himself with one hand against the roof panel, but took the man's hand in the other. "Trust me."

Mr. Witherspoon glanced at the attendant with nervous eyes that darted rapidly back and forth in their sockets. She discreetly turned her back on them, looking out toward the crime scene receding behind them.

JJ gave the shopkeeper another encouraging nod, then extracted his pen and pad from his pocket, turned to a blank page, and noted down the time.

Mr. Witherspoon began to speak in a soft, hesitant tone. "I was closing up the shop. She was my last customer. I sold her milk and tea. She turned and waved and watched me as I locked the door behind her. She never saw it coming, thank God."

JJ bent his head even closer. Mr. Witherspoon's words were pouring out in a torrent.

"The lights, outside, they went a bit funny, they did. Flickering-like. And then, out of the shadows..."

"Yes?" JJ prompted. Witherspoon's voice had dropped to a nervous whisper.

"Suddenly, she was hanging in mid-air. Just hanging there. Nobody there. No nothing. And then-" He turned his head away. "I don't want to see. I can't see it. Not again."

"Please, I need to know. You can't help that woman, but there might be others."

Witherspoon screwed his eyes tight shut. "Her head. It came clean off. Then-" He began to rock, clutching his arms tight against his chest as the memory became overwhelming. "What kind of a monster would do that?" He began to cry, his sobs echoing off the metal interior of the ambulance.

The attendant had enough. "The man's hysterical. He's going to do himself an injury if he keeps this up."

JJ looked down at the broken shopkeeper. He nodded. "Go ahead. You're right."

The attendant efficiently prepared a syringe and administered it. Gradually, Witherspoon began to settle. By the time they pulled into the ambulance bay, he was out cold.

"And what's this called when it's at home?" Gwen held a long, thin, metallic wand up toward the ceiling. The air was growing stuffy again and the threat of slowly smothering loomed large as she shuffled through the supply cabinet looking for suitable tools.

"Untranslatable term."

Gwen sighed and rubbed at her cheek with the heel of her hand. This was the sixth tool, and they were falling into a tedious pattern. "What's it do, then?"

"Function. Repair circuit paths by application of superheated air to metallic traces."

"Fine." Gwen picked up the circuit board she had cradled in her lap. "So if I take this gadget here." She held up a pincer-like tool and clamped the board into it. An amber indicator light bloomed on the handle, and the defective and damaged pathways on the board glowed pale green. "And then I put the tip of this here-" She touched the tip of the tool to one of the traces. "Then it should-" The pathways under the tool turned silver and then faded to white. And the light on the tool's handle turned orange. "That's it, then?" Gwen looked upward, her lips curving in a tentative smile. "I've fixed it?"

"Correct assertion."

The smile dropped from Gwen's lips as a fit of coughing overtook her, and a wave of dizziness caused her to topple forward onto her work. Somewhere in the environmental system another circuit had failed. "Right. No time to rest on my laurels, then," Gwen wheezed, struggling to her knees and ramming the freshly repaired board none too gently back into place.

Ianto muscled the SUV back toward the Hub, paying little attention to the other cars on the road. He veered around a taxicab, causing it to swerve and the driver to lean on its horn. Part of his mind - the careful, fastidious part that grimaced and gnashed its teeth every time Jack pulled a similar manoeuvre - admonished him to have more care, but he ignored it. The picnic cooler resting in the passenger foot-well rocked precariously. Ianto was glad he'd taped the lid securely in place.

The claw had been an interesting bit of evidence, but until they had a doctor on board who was more skilled in the art of DNA extraction, it was mostly useless. The green residue from the victim's neck, on the other hand, if it proved to be saliva or some other bodily fluid, as he suspected it might, that would give them something to run through the alien database. And if they knew what they were tracking, then they might be able to figure out what it wanted, where it was headed, and capture it. He realised it was a desperate plan, but with the team effectively two members down and only an inexperienced rookie as field support, it was the only plan he had.

Ianto hoped Dr. Muli passed her background check and trained up quickly, because at the rate things were going, they couldn't afford any sort of a learning curve.

"No." Gwen considered tossing the spanner. Well, it wasn't really a spanner. Most terrestrial spanners didn't have blinking lights and self-adjusting jaws, which were dead handy, when you got right down to it. But she realised she was becoming fond of the tool and didn't want to break it. "It's no good. This entire circuit is fried."

"Translation matrix failure. Define fried."

"Non-functional. It needs replacement, not repair." Gwen scooted out from the service panel where she'd been working and wiped her hands on her jeans.

Life support was stabilised and no longer in danger of failing, but the communication system and navigation were a complete disaster. Even with the ship's self-repair mechanisms back on line, it would be hours before she'd be able to get help. Her mouth was dry, she was hungry, and she was tired. She needed to step away from the work for a bit before she started to do more harm than good.

As if in response to her thoughts, a robotic trolley appeared bearing a flask and a thick, yellowish bar on a small tray.

"Biometric sensors indicate Gwen requires nutrition and hydration."

Gwen looked down at the offering doubtfully, but smiled at the ceiling. "Thank you, SAM. That's very kind." She reached down, picked up what she supposed was some sort of energy bar, and sniffed it. "It is safe for humans?"

"There are no components designated harmful to humans in its composition."

"Just checking. I can't be too careful these days." Gwen's eyes strayed down towards her abdomen. "I've got a baby coming, you see."

"Baby. Offspring. Child. Bundle of Joy. Sprog. Felicitations are correct protocol in this instance?"

"Yes, I suppose so," Gwen replied. She took a bite out of the food bar. It was a bit on the dry and crumbly side, but the flavour reminded her a bit of prawn crackers and oranges. She opened the accompanying flask and found it full of cool, slightly flat-tasting water. She settled as comfortably as she could on the deck and leaned back against the bulkhead. "I wasn't really expecting to have a baby. At least not anytime soon. It's been a bit of a shock."

"Shock. A violent collision. An emotional blow as if struck."

"Yes," Gwen cut in before SAM could recite more of the dictionary. "That last one. You see, my job at Torchwood, it doesn't really give me much time for a home life. A proper home life, I mean. I'm always getting called away. Out at all hours. It's going to be hard to keep a baby on any kind of a schedule with that going on."

"Does Gwen have a mate. A life partner. A spouse?"

Gwen smiled. "I do, yeah. That's Rhys." Her face crumpled. She'd gotten so involved in SAM's problems, she'd forgotten all about Rhys. "Oh, God. He must be frantic. I was supposed to be home ages ago."

"Regret. Gwen."

Gwen might have been starting to imagine things, but the computer did really sound quite sorry.

"Query: do human mates not both care for offspring?"

"Well, yes, they do," Gwen replied as she popped the last of the prawn cracker-orange bar into her mouth. They really were quite tasty once one got over the initial texture. Maybe SAM would give her a few as a souvenir. "Rhys is going to be a great dad. He's got a real way with kids." She settled more comfortably against the bulkhead. "The trouble is, I always thought I'd be the one to raise our kids. But I really love my job. The aliens are a bit scary at times. But protecting people. Keeping them safe. It gives me a real sense of purpose. Not even being in the police gave me what I have now. I'd hate to give it up." She sighed. "Protect the world. Have a family life. It's not fair that I have to choose."

"Query: why must you chose?"

Gwen blew a breath out through pursed lips, feeling a little silly that she was nattering on about her personal life to a computer, but it was better than letting the same thoughts chase round and round inside her head. "Can you access human physiology in those data banks of yours?"

"Confirmed."

"Yeah, well look up pregnancy, symptoms, physiological changes, all that." She gave SAM a minute to access the relevant information. "In a couple of months I'm going to be out to here." Gwen held her hand out in front of her belly to demonstrate. "Everybody is going to want to protect me. I won't be able to do my job. I'll be confined to my desk, if they let me into work at all. And after the baby comes? It will be small and helpless and dependent on me to take care of it. Feed it. Change its nappies." Gwen sighed again as she pushed up off the deck and prepared to get back to work. "Sometimes I wish there were two of me. It seems like the only way I'm going to get what I want out of life."

"Bypass power coupling has been rerouted."

"Right. Let's get back to it then." Gwen looked upward. "Thanks."

A light shone above a new circuit panel. Gwen looked up at the computer, but it seemed even SAM thought their chat was over. Following the computer's visual cue, Gwen removed the cover and exposed a new tangle of wires.

A feminine scream pierced the air.

Rhys froze stock-still, listening. The sound repeated, and he was off, head bent forward, arms and legs pumping smoothly as he sprinted against the wind.

"Stay behind me!" Jack ordered. He had his revolver drawn, held down at his side as he bolted up the road.

"Like hell. That could be Gwen!" Rhys panted as Jack overtook him.

The sound was coming from the depths of an alleyway. There was a great commotion. The sound of something metal clanging. A guttural growl. The woman bolted from the alley's mouth past Jack and into Rhys' arms. He stumbled backward but kept his feet, barely. "Shh, I've got you, darlin'," he said, attempting to soothe. The woman struggled in his grasp. Hysterical, she tried to knee him in the groin. Rhys avoided her strike, but not by much. "Calm down!" he roared.

"Monster," she gibbered and finally fainted, going limp in his arms.

Jack pressed against the wall of the alleyway, his gun raised. He pivoted on the toe of his dress shoe and darted forward into the alley. A Hoix was rummaging in the rubbish skip, pulling out choice bits and stuffing them into its maw. It looked up at Jack, growled, and lunged.

Jack stumbled backward, barely ahead of its claws. "I don't have time for this!" He levelled his Webley and fired.

Three rounds struck the Hoix square in the chest, enraging it. It looked down and back at Jack, and roared.

Jack fired again. The fourth slug shattered the creature's teeth, travelled through the soft palate, and into its brain. It dropped with a final, hideous groan.

"What the bloody hell was that?" Rhys, his arms full of unconscious blonde co-ed, still managed to point at the lumpy carcass lying in the middle of the road.

Jack spun the cylinder of his revolver, ejected the shells, and reloaded. "That was a Hoix. Voracious, bad-tempered, and now it's very dead." He looked down at the body and grimaced. "The question is, what are we going to do with it?"

Rhys shrugged in response. "I don't suppose a call to Emergency Services is in order?"

"Hardly." Jack picked the Hoix up by the arms and started dragging it back toward the alley. He gave Rhys an expectant glance. "A little help?"

"Oh, right." Rhys looked down at the unconscious girl in his arms. "What am I supposed to do with her?"

"Never mind. Keep an eye on the street." Jack got a better purchase on the Hoix and dragged it into the shadows. A moment later, a battered old Ford hatchback backed into the street, Jack at the wheel. He parked in a pool of lamplight, leaned over, and opened the passenger side door. "Relax," he called to Rhys. "It's her car."

As gently as he could, Rhys settled the girl into the seat and buckled her into place. "Now what?"

Jack looked heavenward, as if seeking divine inspiration. "One problem at a time." He picked up the girl's handbag and rummaged through until he found her driving licence. "Good. This address isn't too far from here." He reached into his inner coat pocket and extracted a pill vial, popped the cap open, and slipped a small, white tablet under her tongue. "That will take care of her monsters. But we still need a better hiding place for the Hoix. We don't have time to get that body back to the Hub, and I'm sure Ms. Stanstead here wouldn't appreciate its blood all over her upholstery."

A small figure pushing a shopping trolley shuffled into view. "Perfect," Jack said with a grin. He got out from behind the wheel and went to intercept the newcomer. "Na'ma. It is a lucky Captain Jack that encounters your cluster twice in one night."

The wizened alien bowed back. "We are the fortunate ones."

"Tell me, Na'ma," Jack said, crouching to eye level. "When do they collect the rubbish in this neighbourhood?"

"In two days' time," she replied with a nervous shuffle. "I regret, Captain Jack, my haste. The cluster is converging." Na'ma bowed politely, but moved away as quickly as her stumpy legs would carry her.

"Another problem solved." Jack gestured toward the alleyway. "Come on. This time I will need your help."

Rhys was still watching the alien shuffle away. "I thought you said her name was Nama."

Jack shook his head before he disappeared into the alley. The sound of bags hitting the tarmac started echoing off the walls, and Rhys followed it hastily. Jack glanced at him then pulled another bag out of the skip. "No, that was Na'ma. Different member of the cluster. It's like with identical twins. They're not, really, if you know what to look for." He dumped two more bin bags onto the ground, then looked over at Rhys with a satisfied grin. "Now, we'll just bed down the Hoix temporarily."

Jack bent to grab the feet. Belatedly, and with an expression of disgust, Rhys picked up the arms. They lifted and heaved, finally tipping the corpse into the trash bin. Jack picked up one of the discarded bin bags and dumped it on top of the body. "Well, come on." He picked up another bag, and Rhys caught a clue. They piled the remaining bags back into the skip. Jack pulled out his PDA and made a note, then dropped the device back into his pocket. "Right. Now we drop off Ms. Blondie there and get back to looking for Gwen."

Something SAM had said had been nagging at Gwen. Now that the most critical ship's functions had been stabilised and she began to feel a little more confident that she wasn't going to suffocate or crash, her thoughts began to dwell on the phrase 'mission compromised'.

"SAM, just how did you end up on Earth?" she asked while unwrapping a bundle of cables and tracing the leads back to a platter of small, round circuit boards.

"Mission parameters: capture and transport colony of Tenda Zal from planet Parla Nota. Relocate to Parla Bena. Six subjects: three females and three juveniles successfully captured and placed in stasis for transport. Male subject escaped through uncalculated Rift in time and space."

"Uncalculated." Gwen looked up from her work. "You mean normally you can predict when the Rift will open, but this one caught you by surprise?"

"Correct assertion."

"Nice to know we're not the only ones getting caught with our pants down," Gwen muttered around a mouth full of wires. "Go on. So then what happened?"

"Pursued. Encountered severe Rift turbulence. Systems failure. Primary Life Support failure. Crew failure."

"You mean they died," Gwen clarified.

"Correct assertion. The crew died."

"You were alone," Gwen said softly. She put down the circuit board she'd been attempting to troubleshoot, and sat back against the hatch of the navigation system's main power relay. "All those organisations you mentioned when I first arrived. I know UNIT, but who are the others? I've never heard of them and, ah, alien relations," she said, grabbing for anything that sounded less confrontational than a typical week at Torchwood, "is a pretty small community."

"Temporal Error. Disregard."

Gwen frowned. "What do you mean, 'temporal error'? You mean you're from my future?"

"Correct assertion."

Gwen looked down at the board in her hands and her eyes widened in surprise. Not only was her host alien, it was like Jack, from some other point in time as well. And it knew about Torchwood. She felt a bit breathless as she asked, "How far in the future?"

"Time code locked. Information not retrievable."

But Gwen couldn't let go. "So Torchwood and the rest, they're public knowledge where you're from?"

"Correct assertion. Designated points of contact."

That was something, at least. For the first time in a long while, Gwen felt something lighten in her heart. As bad as things were, in the scheme of things, it was only a rough patch. Torchwood would survive. And from the sounds of things, they wouldn't be alone; there would be an entire network of agencies that dealt with off-worlders.

Gwen smiled as she imagined it. The twenty-first century was when everything changed and she was in the middle of it all. She was building the future, right now. She picked up the circuit board, placed it in the diagnostic tool. Her hand trembled a bit as she picked up the companion tool and placed it over the defective trace. The pathway healed and the indicator light glowed orange. "Right. This one's fixed." She racked the board back into its holder and reached for another.

The Hunt: Part Three