Chapter 1.
The weevil sprinted through the night, focusing not on the noise and presence of the team hunting it down, but on some command only it could hear, driving it towards the opera house. Its frenzied pacing kept it just ahead of Jack, whose patience had been left back in the van, stopped by the infuriating presence of a malfunctioning bollard system around the pedestrianised city streets.
Owen was closest on Jack's heels, his shorter stride compensated for by the unexpected advantage of being dead. His lack of respiration stopped the usual trouble of lactic acid build up, and his inability to feel pain meant it wouldn't have affected him anyway. If only I could heal, he thought. I'd be the perfect agent. Tireless, remorseless (though I manage that anyway), unstoppable. Come with me if you want to live. He chuckled as he ran, then giggled, before breaking into fits of hysterical laughter, though he wanted to cry. He surged forward, passing Jack easily, not feeling the wind on his face, or the ground under his feet, as he gained on the weevil. Just as he got within spitting distance, and I can't even do that either, the weevil smashed into the door, bounced back, and kicked in the glass panel, lurching inside, its cardigan flapping in the wind.
As Owen pulled his gun and peered in, Jack arrived, arms flailing, and jumped through the hole. Gwen was in straight after him no surprise there thought Owen, and headed in after them, trying to not be distracted by Gwen's pear-shaped rear end.
The weevil had stopped by the stage and was bent double, its arms clutched around its abdomen as it screeched in pain. It continued to scream as the team approached, and fell to the floor as Jack reached it. It pulled at the cardigan, and as it revealed its stomach, Gwen gasped at the sight. The weevil's skin was stretching and retracting, as shapes moved beneath it. Finally, the skin stretched to breaking point, and a blood coated creature crawled from the body of the now dead weevil. Jack acted on instinct, aiming, priming and firing all in one swift movement. The creature exploded, the momentum of the bullet tearing it apart, and spreading its corpse behind the weevil, which began to smoke.
"What's happening?" asked Tosh, stepping back quickly, to avoid a patch of floor that had begun to bubble where some of the green blood had landed on it.
"I'm not sure", said Jack, leaning over the corpse. "It looks like it's smoking."
"It should give that up, it's bad for your lungs" quipped Ianto. Gwen hit him.
"I can only assume, given the pattern and appearance of the burn marks, that the blood of this thing is highly acidic" stated Owen, nudging a pen into the body. "Incredibly acidic" he corrected, as his pen melted.
"How deep is the acid going to go?" asked Jack, standing back to protect his eyes from the painful sting of the fumes.
"At least to the sub-basement" replied Owen, lying on the floor by the hole. "It seems to have stopped there though. Must not have enough left in it to go any further. I suggest we don't get any closer to the acid than we have to until it's neutralised", making Tosh shiver as she thought about the consequences of being covered in flesh eating acid.
"Alright, let's get a chemical kit out of the car and clean this up, and then get this monster out of SHIT!" Jack jumped back as the thing that had been in the weevils chest exploded a second time, releasing a small cloud of what looked like spores. The cloud was caught by a stray breeze from the door, and floated past Toshiko, heading for Gwen. She stumbled backwards, and fell awkwardly to the floor, fearing death had finally decided she'd been a bit too cocky. As she closed her eyes, she heard a spraying noise, and opened them again, to see Ianto in front of her, blowing back the spores with what looked like a can of hairspray. The spores blackened and died on their return trip, the prolonged exposure to oxygen destroying them.
"Thanks" said Gwen, as Ianto pulled her to her feet, "you saved my life".
"You're worth it" replied Ianto, a boyish grin spread across his face.
As Gwen re-established her balance, she looked around, checking out the rest of the team. Jack was stood rock still, having pulled his gun on the corpse, while Owen placed a particulate mask over his face and returned to his examination. Ianto began to arrange the clean-up and sterilisation of the site, and Tosh, as always, was confirming the presence of remnant rift energy. If I didn't know better, thought Gwen I'd think that detector was stuck in the RIFT ENERGY DETECTED position. She sighed, and began to assist Owen with the corpse, convincing Jack to finally put his gun away.
"So where did that thing come from?" she asked Owen.
"Well, it looks like there's a cavity here, in the centre of his abdomen, about where his stomach should be. It looks like the creature gestated there, as these tubes - see, there and there - connect to various internal organs. I can only assume it's a parasitic life form, that leaves the host body when sufficiently developed. Nasty huh?"
"Is there any way to detect it? Could we find out if there's more about?" asked Jack.
"The alien scanner we've got down in the basement would find it," answered Owen "but as far as I can tell, you couldn't detect it otherwise. It shows no outward signs of the alien."
"Apart from the enormous hole in its chest" remarked Ianto.
Owen threw a spleen at him.
"Moving swiftly on" said Gwen, "anything specific you can give us Tosh?"
"Not yet. I need to analyse the data properly first. I'd like to run it past my new biology program. Figure out how that acidic bloody doesn't destroy it from the inside."
"Alright," said Gwen, "Owen, postmortem soon as, let's see if it shows similarities to anything we've previously seen. Tosh, same for you, from the energy side. See if its frequency matches anything we've seen previously. If it scans similarly to one of our non-threats, let's find out if they know what it is. Jack, when Owen's had a good rummage around, see what we've got that'll take it down without spilling its blood. I know you're fond of shooting things, but as Ianto has mentioned to me, sometimes you can be a little quick off the draw."
"He said what?" roared Jack. "I'll bloody prove him wrong later", and he stormed off, muttering about guns and that thing he does with his tongue.
Ianto smiled at Gwen, mouthed "Cheers", and then louder "So what about me, ma'am?"
"You can get the coffee out, and less of the ma'am, you're making me feel old."
"Yes ma'am."
"And after we've had a brew, you and I can go looking for weevils, so go get me the netguns, and a black coffee with two sugars."
"On it" replied Ianto as he went for his thermos.
On the other side of the room, Owen struggled to move the unknown alien onto a carrying board, without spilling its corrosive blood. He swore as the second board in as many minutes dissolved in front of him.
"Why not just neutralise the acid?" asked Tosh, approaching him carefully, keeping an eye out for splashes.
"I'd love to," replied Owen, "but I'd also love to study the biology of this alien, not the biology of the puddle of goo that would be left when I poor a highly alkaline solution onto it."
"You know, glass is usually pretty resistant to acid. Why not try putting it on glass?"
"And where am I going to get a piece of glass that big?" asked Owen peevishly. He'd rather liked that pen, and was mourning its loss.
"How about the pane in the door that the weevil didn't jump through?" replied Tosh, sounding a little wounded.
"That's actually quite a clever idea. I knew we kept you around for something other than your boobs. Come on, grab the tool kit, and let's go melt some glass. That heat ray we confiscated from that green chap from Raxacoroexphalliadocious should let us shape a bowl out of it if we press it over a bollard."
Tosh followed, her thoughts tugged between his gruff disposition, and the comment about her breasts. Maybe the new bra is working!
As they exited, Ianto entered with a tea service and a smile. Placing the service down with exaggerated care, he poured out coffee, added the requisite amount of sugar and stirred dramatically, striking the spoon on the edge of the cup twice. This ritual complete, he passed the coffee to Gwen, who threw it down in a single gulp, missing the anguished look that shot across Ianto's face.
"Right, down to business" she directed at Ianto, who had just taken a dainty sip, "bring it with you, you can drink it on the way."
With a last forlorn look at his coffee and small plate of small sandwiches, Ianto followed out of the door-shaped gap.